Schools today - training our kids to be wimps

Discussion in 'Random Thoughts' started by purr1n, May 29, 2019.

  1. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    We used to play smear the queer. Boys will still find Eyewitness books of weapons and stuff and roughhouse. There's no getting away from it. Kids are basically puppies. They will play fight each other until they grow out of it.

    Sure California will take those picture books of swords and guns out of school libraries but kids will just watch Gladiator on Amazon Prime and learn what swords and flaming cannonballs do to people. This public access channel used to show uncut samurai movies in between the screaming Korean preachers and foreign news when I was growing up so any kid could tune in on the weekend and see ninjas getting cut in half. We used to hit each other with yardsticks.
     
  2. DEATHxMACHINE

    DEATHxMACHINE Friend

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    I think it is more important than ever for a parent to be more involved in teaching their kids. School used be just a place to learn facts. Now it has become a delusional social experiment by the weakest of our society. Parents really need to focus on year 3 to 5 to build independence, resilience and self reliance before the brainwashing begins. Luckily as @Psalmanazar stated, boys will be boys and girls will be girls and seek out information that schools are trying to deny them.
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2019
  3. dasman66

    dasman66 Self proclaimed lazy ass - friend

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    Smear the Queer... loved that game.

    'murica K-12 public schools today are teaching kids that they can't fail. Everyone gets an A. Everyone is on the Honor Roll. The exceptional kids coast through school on talent, don't know how to study, don't know how to work, and have never tasted less than a 95%. The schools specialize in getting "proficient" ratings on standardized tests, getting kids into college and bragging about the amount of scholarships the kids get.

    Then the kids get to college...it gets hard and they can't deal with it. They don't have the study skills or the work ethic to succeed. They don't know how to deal with failure. They don't have the resilience to pick themselves up and they end up on academic probation and suspension. The K-12 schools still brag about how great they are... but never follow up to see what percentage of kids are successful; how many years it takes them to get a degree; or if the degree is in the field they started out in.

    The Feds used to track the percentage of people taking 4 and 5 yrs to get a degree. Now they are tracking 4, 5 and 6+. I believe they are now saying that 65% of male college students take 5+ yrs to get their degree.

    Pathetic
     
  4. Senorx12562

    Senorx12562 Case of the mondays

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    It might be worse now, or it might not, but relying on the schools (probably any of them, public or private) to instill character (which is really what we are talking about, methinks) in one's children has always been doomed to failure. The only way that happens is by them watching examples of same from people they love and trust. I am not aware of any shortcuts or substitutions.
     
  5. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    As someone who coasted through school, not knowing how to study, I just do the same thing at college. I don't really study or anything still, completed my sophmore year, still set to graduate within the 4 years with my major in mechanical engineering and minors in math and computer science.
    That 65% figure seems way too high...
     
  6. aamefford

    aamefford Nothing like chamberpot coffee

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    Smear the queer. In Washington where I did my “older” grade school, it used a football. Whoever had it was the queer, and got smeared. Pretty much complete anarchy. Most of the time you’d grab the ball on purpose and get creamed. Sometimes you would huck it up in the air at the last minute, and some other poor bastard would grab it. No other rules, no point at all. Complete mayhem. It was awesome!
     
  7. Senorx12562

    Senorx12562 Case of the mondays

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    ^ This. The other name, which was far more descriptive, was kill the man with the ball.
     
  8. dasman66

    dasman66 Self proclaimed lazy ass - friend

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    I'll have to find the reference... it may have been limited to those in STEM majors at larger public universities.

    My wife and I were stunned by the number. In our area, the number of kids that coast through high school, and then come home after 1-2 years in college (or end up switching/transferring/etc) is a real problem. It's why I started looking into the statistics.

    As an employer of engineers, I will also say that the number of students coming out of certain colleges with 3.5+ GPA's as suspect. We have a list of colleges where we immediately discount the GPA when receiving a resume/application. For example, we view 3.5 candidates from Penn State and Purdue differently.
     
  9. Ringingears

    Ringingears Honorary BFF

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    I’m retiring tomorrow after 33 years of teaching in public high schools. Some of you have some valid points. The rest of you come see me after you have taught for at least 30 years. I only say this because, just because you went to public school, doesn’t mean you really know about teaching. I thought I did before I started. Nope. Isn’t the case.

    Edit: My post is not intended to be in your face.
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2019
  10. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    Still though, I am a STEM major (and minors) and that number seems high, though I have heard that there is only like a 40% graduation rate of engineers at my school in 4 years.
    Maybe I'm just smart, but it doesn't seem that hard...
     
  11. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    @Ringingears I'd honestly be inclined to think that hearing from someone who's had a life teaching kids would be in a far better position to speak on the topic. I take a(n unnecessarily strongly opinionated) stance disbelieving that anyone can fully divest themselves of inherent bias, but at the same time, experience does speak volumes. You're busy getting things ready for a long, idyllic life of lollygagging around like every high school kid wishes they could I imagine, but if it's not too much trouble I'd love to hear your thoughts.

    Speaking of thoughts, here's one: you've retired from teaching but are still very much in a position to keep "schooling" people over the interwebs ;)
     
  12. DEATHxMACHINE

    DEATHxMACHINE Friend

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    Wait a year when you have completed a few semester/quarters full of 300 or 400 level mechanical courses before you come to any conclusions. You are about to start the real part of college. lol

    @dasman66
    I would be interested in that reference. Not really surprised by it since the "5 year plan" joke was being made when my mother graduated as an engineer in the early 80s.

    Could you elaborate on the 1-2 year college drop out or switching/transferring, specifically the switching/transferring. With the insane costs of college, young adults should consider heavily what degree they want to pursue and if it worth pursuing. Rather than getting a degree in communications, someone should consider becoming a skilled worker.

    You are completely right about weighing GPA from different schools. I completely question a nearby satellite college and their electrical engineering program. Worked with some one that some how was able to get their degree and I doubt they knew that red is positive and black is negative on a car battery.
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2019
  13. aamefford

    aamefford Nothing like chamberpot coffee

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  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    It depends upon the school. With the "illustrious" UC system, this is difficult to do with some STEM majors unless you take 18+ quarter units for these reasons:
    1. Lack of capacity to actually teach all students which were accepted into said majors. As a result, weed out classes for the first two years. 30% were guaranteed to receive a D or F. 40% a C, which was discouraging. In my successive math and physics classes I went ranked from #11 of 160, to #24 of 80, to #28 of 40 with respective grades of A, B, and C. I thought I was smart out of high school. This taught me how dumb I was. Those accepted as affirmative action: 98% chance of being crushed by the end of the first year.
    2. Justification for the existence of nonsensical liberal arts programs such as Indian Basket Weaving, Progressive Modern Art, Cultural Geography, etc. which necessitated the requirement for STEM majors to load up on an additional 18-24 quarter units on top of the 180-200 required for the major. By the late 80s, this was in full force and and I was fucked. I still hold this against the UC system because I wanted to get a music minor, but doing so would have required 6+ years.
    3. Lack of availability and space for core classes for a student to proceed to the next set of classes. There were ways to get in, but there are not commonly known. The point is there were further mechanisms for in place to ensure students stay in school for another year.
    4. Lack of counselor availability to get special dispensation for class substitutions (I preferred the graduate level courses in algorithms and CPU architecture). At a critical juncture, my counselor took a long vacation without notice and I couldn't get paperwork filled in time for permission to take a course. I still hold this against the UC system.
    In retrospect, I was dumb and naive, and I didn't know to work the system or brown nose professors to get the UC system to work for me.

    I know USC gets flak for being a dumb rich kid school, but talking with some smart friends who went to USC, I wish I had gone there instead (they offered me 25% for tuition). There is a reason that UC Alumni generally don't give a f**k and donate so little back.
     
  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    It's never the teachers like you. It's the younger admins who are angling to move up to Super or politics. Combine that with SoCal douchebaggery, the Kardashians, susceptibility to fame, and being able to name-drop.

    Since my son is will be out of elementary school: the principal's LinkedIn photo says it all.

    The old principal who retired a few years back, an old-timer like you who stayed put there for decades because she loved the job and the kids, was great. The parents loved her. The kids loved her. Kids were still allowed to play football. And for some odd reason, even though her approach was less fascist, I heard about less fights and explusions.
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2019
  16. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    The weed outs are there to get rid of people who can't already do the work even though they told them they would teach them to do the work. Then after the weedouts, they proceed to teach them a bunch of shit that's irrelevant for the low level coding work those kids will end up doing that they all could have done just out of high school with on the job training as a lot of these kids already know how to code and are hopeless nerd losers uninterested in anything but getting a job and consuming. They'd be happy with Domino's pizza and internet porn, not merely using Domino's pizza as a convenient source of calories while they fulfill themselves making DOOM, creating Bittorrent, or programming a space telescope.

    Most kids going into CS STEM programs are:
    1. Loser nerds (the modern consumer idiot type of nerds who watch my little pony, jerk it to cartoons, buy picture discs, and think marvel movies are actually good) who will never make software engineer as they have zero economic value and only will have jobs due to the inflated tech industry in the bubble scam USA economy.
    2. Idiot scammers and do nothings who want to profit off said economy. The same kids were going into finance in the 80s. They want to profit off temporary economic bubbles that should have been popped way earlier but politicians wanted to ride them to personal power in the current giant scam USA economy.

    The kids legitimately interested in higher level, theoretical topics are far and few. Why are they in academia for it then? We basically have an entire industry that mostly cannot make money (think spotify but there are thousands of these. the entire current industry has to be a net economic loss for the GDP. twitter long term profitable my ass.) full of zero economic value losers propped up by low interest rates. The professors who do enjoy research and teaching the kids who are interested do not give two shits about the would've been finance bros and hopeless nerd losers. Then on top of that college in the USA is mostly a rent collection scam full of useless employees and overpaid administrators. The people teaching the mostly disinterested losers and scammers in the weed out courses are woefully underpaid and overworked so some idiots handing out condoms so fratboys don't get chlamydia can get paid more than them and the university president can get 200k to one mil a year.

    Most of the idiots and scammers would be totally hopeless in computer engineering, really any engineering, or any of the liberal arts that require you to do real work writing well-referenced research papers with hundreds of footnotes. That requires real work and interest. The conformist nerd losers and tech bros would think those guys are weirdos. These people are disinterested in the topic and unwilling to do the work. Now if we, the USA, chucked half the people out of college who were there, told them to go get a job, provided actual support and training, and said they could come back to a more focused and useful higher education later (to prevent oxbridge type british idiocy), then that would be much better.

    Right now higher education in the USA reminds me of the imperial Chinese civil service exam. Study the Confucian classics which will not teach you how to regulate commodity agricultural markets, allocate military resources, sail a boat, dig a ditch, or design a machine. We aren't that far gone yet (they were Russian Empire in WW1, modern middle east, buy tanks to say you have tanks but don't drive them, level incompetent) but if we do not change, we will eventually suffer similar spectacular calamities.
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2019
  17. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    Yeah, in my computer science classes, I don't get it, but all the kids are just really stupid. None of them know anything, and they are all so bad at computer science.
    I am actually interested in it, for a minor at least, and so far in my classes I haven't learned that much because everyone else struggles so much.
     
  18. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    You are describing 98% of high-achiever Asians. Seriously, my mom has visited and said dumb stuff like "Oh, you know how to paint the house and do electric wiring? Who teach you?" The UC undergraduate system is custom-tailored for Asians - probably unintentionally and over-time.
     
  19. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    Partly, sure; but likely at least partly due to more people doing double majors in the hope of giving themselves more options for graduate programs or future employment. Case in point, Mrsdegraded's youngest, who added a year to his engineering degree to take enough urban planning to (he hoped) shortcut the requirements for postgrad architecture or to gain planning / architecture employment.
     
  20. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Experience no competition, no aggression, no physical pain, no humiliation, no germs, be always safe, taken care off, and for God's sake never have to deal with your hurt feelings.
    That means you reach your "adult" age not really knowing how to deal with all of the above. I think the Evolution is preparing for a big KILL. But what the f**k do I know I am old.
     

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