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Liberals, how should education be handled? (1 Viewer)

bostonfred

bostonfred

Footballguy
I'm a union man, twice a shop steward and once blackballed in my field for helping unionize Albq's hospital employees, but any step in education reform that occurs before toppling NEA & AFT is wasted.

 
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Maybe we should take off the glasses of what do Liberals or Conservatives think about an issue and focus on collective governance and outcomes that we'd all like to see occur in our - and other - communities. 

 
Koya said:
Maybe we should take off the glasses of what do Liberals or Conservatives think about an issue and focus on collective governance and outcomes that we'd all like to see occur in our - and other - communities. 
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I think that's the right end result.  I've been creating these liberals/ conservatives threads about issues, not politicians or current events, in the hopes of finding some common ground.

 
bostonfred said:
I think that's the right end result.  I've been creating these liberals/ conservatives threads about issues, not politicians or current events, in the hopes of finding some common ground.
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I think be framing the issue through a party lens, we all but eliminate any ability to arrive at a truly viable and just solution. 

#### Liberals vs Conservatives.. what common desired outcomes do we share (which will be far greater than points of disagreement, if put in human terms rather than party / ideological terms) and how can we achieve those? 

That is a foundation for governance, not ideological power plays. 

Its like the copout of those who say they want "smaller government" as if their desired STRATEGY is the intended outcome. What would you want from life/the government and from there we can address whether or not "smaller" (or more intrusive) govt is the best strategy / approach by which, to get there.

 
I’ve seen two proposals on Twitter that I think are worth considering.

1. Make educational status a protected classification so that employers are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of what degrees somebody has or from where.  This will make schools compete with each on actual education rather than mainly signaling via certification. (It would remain easy enough for employers to evaluate intelligence and knowledge, which is what they should care about, through third-party testing services formed for that purpose.)

2. Have public universities set individualized tuition based on the average housing cost of the applicant’s neighborhood. This solves two problems at once. It discourages NIMBYism because adding affordable housing to a given high-end neighborhood helps existing residents with their college plans (while refusing to add such housing hurts), and it makes college tuition relatively more affordable for people from low-income areas. (The proposal might have concerned admittance quotas rather than tuition; I don’t quite remember.)

Both involve practical difficulties, but they attack the problem from an unconventional angle, which I think is a needed approach. The standard proposals of more loans or more subsidies will never solve the main problem of spiraling costs of education as a positional good.

 
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Maurile Tremblay said:
I’ve seen two proposals on Twitter that I think are worth considering.

1. Make educational status a protected classification so that employers are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of what degrees somebody has or from where.  This will make schools compete with each on actual education rather than mainly signaling via certification. (It would remain easy enough for employers to evaluate intelligence and knowledge, which is what they should care about, through third-party testing services formed for that purpose.)
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I'm a big believer in the college-as-a-signaling-device theory.  Signalling theory and human capital theory are not mutually exclusive, but I think it grossly distorts our view of higher education if we completely ignore the signalling aspect.  This the reason why MOOCs never took off, and it's the reason why so-called microcredentials are not gaining any serious traction in the labor market.

That said, colleges can't easily be replaced by intelligence tests.  One of the key values of a college course is that it forces a person to show up day in and day out, whether they really want to or not, and demonstrate a mastery of a subject that the student might find boring as hell.  In other words, your college track record signals not just raw intelligence, but also your work ethic, time management skills, the ability to stay on task, and other important job skills that no intelligence test can hope to measure.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
That said, colleges can't easily be replaced by intelligence tests.  One of the key values of a college course is that it forces a person to show up day in and day out, whether they really want to or not, and demonstrate a mastery of a subject that the student might find boring as hell.  In other words, your college track record signals not just raw intelligence, but also your work ethic, time management skills, the ability to stay on task, and other important job skills that no intelligence test can hope to measure.
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Right, that useful aspect of college (useful to employers, not to students) would be lost if employers were not allowed to take college graduation into account. It’s a trade-off that would have to be considered against (hopefully) more efficient educational practices generally, including potentially greater use of MOOCs.

 
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IvanKaramazov said:
That said, colleges can't easily be replaced by intelligence tests.  One of the key values of a college course is that it forces a person to show up day in and day out, whether they really want to or not, and demonstrate a mastery of a subject that the student might find boring as hell.  In other words, your college track record signals not just raw intelligence, but also your work ethic, time management skills, the ability to stay on task, and other important job skills that no intelligence test can hope to measure.
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Completing a college degree is in large part about the bolded. Completion demonstrates to the potential employer that the employee made the commitment and kept the commitment to earn the degree. Anyone can say that they could have completed college if they wanted to. Actually completing it shows the person had the drive and dedication to follow through with that claim.

MT, I guess I'm not clear about the "no discrimination on what degrees somebody has or where they are from" part of the argument. Does it imply that a degree from an Ivy League school or a top state school are not allowed to be considered favorably by the employer over a degree from a lesser ranked university for example, and/or that a degree in Engineering and a degree in English must be considered the same by the employer, even if the company is trying to fill an Engineering position?

 
Grace Under Pressure said:
MT, I guess I'm not clear about the "no discrimination on what degrees somebody has or where they are from" part of the argument. Does it imply that a degree from an Ivy League school or a top state school are not allowed to be considered favorably by the employer over a degree from a lesser ranked university for example, and/or that a degree in Engineering and a degree in English must be considered the same by the employer, even if the company is trying to fill an Engineering position?
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Whether a job applicant has a degree at all would not be considered, much less what subject the degree is in or what school it is from.

Obviously an employer seeking to fill an engineering position would want somebody proficient in engineering. That should be easy enough to test without looking at degrees. Engineering applicants would take some test (by the employer itself or by a third-party testing agency) measuring their proficiency in engineering (and whatever other subjects the employer deems relevant). But if somebody has all the engineering knowledge required, it wouldn't matter whether he learned it from one school or another or was self-taught.

As Ivan mentioned, there are really two aspects of a college degree: it certifies that a student has learned some stuff, and it certifies that the student was able to withstand a boring regimen while being a good conformist.

There are easy enough substitutes for the first aspect. The second has no similarly good substitutes, so finding other means to test a candidate's ability to withstand boredom is a cost that must be taken into account.

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
Whether a job applicant has a degree at all would not be considered, much less what subject the degree is in or what school it is from.

Obviously an employer seeking to fill an engineering position would want somebody proficient in engineering. That should be easy enough to test without looking at degrees. Engineering applicants would take some test (by the employer itself or by a third-party testing agency) measuring their proficiency in engineering (and whatever other subjects the employer deems relevant). But if somebody has all the engineering knowledge required, it wouldn't matter whether he learned it from one school or another or was self-taught.

As Ivan mentioned, there are really two aspects of a college degree: it certifies that a student has learned some stuff, and it certifies that the student was able to withstand a boring regimen while being a good conformist.

There are easy enough substitutes for the first aspect. The second has no similarly good substitutes, so finding other means to test a candidate's ability to withstand boredom is a cost that must be taken into account.
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As a proponent of higher education and advanced degrees under most circumstances, this idea is a bit radical, but it is still somewhat intriguing the more I think about it, as it could help provide a more equal playing field among employees while forcing employers to place a larger emphasis on actual experience/proficiency. Something to think about, thanks.

 
Free public education from Pre-k to 12th grade.  Focuses on giving people the most up to date information humanity has gathered on a variety of subjects, including what it means to be American, american values, etc.

This should be done in as standard a way across all 50 states, so that people moving from one state to another can expect similar things to be taught at similar grade levels anywhere in our country.

We should start looking more at teaching methods using technology, investing huge amounts of money into digitizing curriculum and even teaching series.  Studying the efficacy of using online learning, teaching videos, by the best teachers in the country.  We should be able to start putting together different courses for kids depending on how they learn, where the teachers are pre-recorded giving the best lessons on various subjects, tailored to a student's learning style.  Kids should be able to advance through curriculum as fast as they want, and with a digital library of complete courses available to them, this should be much easier than traditionally possible.

We are still stuck in the industrial age in terms of how we teach, and we're several ages ahead technologically.  It's a damned shame our country doesn't invest more in trying to figure out how to use technology and in-class teachers in tandem to improve the quality of education we're delivering.  

But overall, and in a similar justification for currency, we need to standardize education across the country to make travel between states as easy as possible.  We need to better utilize technology and improve our education delivery and bring it into the 21st century and take it out of the 1800's.

Educating our kids is one of the most vital things we can do as a country.  Encouraging critical thinking.  Updating humanity's knowledge generation after generation.  Valuing the principles of our country, our freedoms, our institutions...these are things that will make America great for centuries to come.  

 
first, I'm not a liberal...my thoughts from a high level are:

  • get rid of tenure...It's absolutely absurd that someone in this day and age should have a guaranteed job for life after 3 years.  That doesn't exist in other industries and there's no reason it should for teachers. 
  • make teaching an admirable, well paid, competitive career like it is in many other countries.  You want to attract the best and brightest who want to teach and salary shouldn't be a disqualifying factor.  
 
Grace Under Pressure said:
Completing a college degree is in large part about the bolded. Completion demonstrates to the potential employer that the employee made the commitment and kept the commitment to earn the degree.
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An important factor in college completion that your ignoring is the support system in place for the student. If the student comes from an impoverished background with few role models or peers to turn to for questions, there are all sorts of structural barriers that impede progress. On the other hand, if a student is surrounded by white collar professionals and peers that have successfully passed courses, those students have many advantages from test and homework archives, to tutoring, to course schedule planning, to more free time to study (due to not working), not to mention having family to give you instead of distract and judge you.

Ok, mini-rant over.

 
I'm on board wif MT's evolution away from credentialism and towards imparting knowledge in new ways. Even if there are costs for doing that which are hard to quantify.

As far as Fred's basic question goes, I would like us to think outside the box, cooperate with more advanced countries (seems weird to say that in such a routine manner but the truth is that other places are far more willing to experiment with new concepts and thus more likely to move forward while our own inertia keeps us doing the same thing over and over again) in scientific research and experimentation with new ways of exposing the world's great reservoirs of knowledge to the next generations. And let's give serious thought to shutting down the big traditional schools just because a handful of kids might benefit from being on sports teams.

 
wikkidpissah said:
I'm a union man, twice a shop steward and once blackballed in my field for helping unionize Albq's hospital employees, but any step in education reform that occurs before toppling NEA & AFT is wasted.
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Well, no one wants to discuss the unions which have bound education in bureaucracy, so i'll try this:

Authority. Education has nothing to do with producing happy children. It has only to do with producing productive adults. The species will not thrive and may not survive without willing & capable contributors coming out of our education system. Learning unpleasant but necessary tasks, such as being quiet, aiding the flow of social order, cooperation, processes for processing's sake are far more vital to lifelong success and happiness than revelling in personal value, letting exceptions change rules, providing distractions, entertainment, good feeling. Doing both is optimum, but the first set is entirely more valuable and is only achievable by the responsible and unequivocal use of authority.

Believe it or not, children are happiest when serving someone. In farms & ranches and family businesses and homes where difficult circumstances require children to pitch in, the children thrill to show value in necessary tasks and are by & large much happier than 'activities' kids. They are certainly less selfish and, as Coach John Wooden used to say, "Happiness begins where selfishness ends." It is the being required to serve which makes them unhappy, but properly-trained, well-compensated & supported people managed that work in our classrooms for generations. The school system was monolithic and told the community its needs, not vice versa. There are, of course, aspects of authoritarianism that were well-discarded when education liberalized, but discarding too much has turned out worse than doing none at all.

And we are not doing the science of educating right, if at all. Education is run by social science and not brain science and that is patently ridiculous. Children from 8-10 years of age are absolute sponges and are in the LAST period in life when they should be being offered distractions & personality guidance instead of tasks, tasks and more tasks. Children could actually have MORE fun in grade K-3 & 7-12 if they were put to the wheel in 4-6. But the poor dears might pout. Poor them.............. so poor us. Yeah, that's smart.

 
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adonis said:
We should start looking more at teaching methods using technology
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This post will be a bit off-topic and belongs in the FFA, but if I were advising students today, I would recommend making very heavy use of Anki -- described here. I've been using it faithfully, 20-40 minutes each day, for the last 11 weeks, and it's remarkable how well it works (and it becomes more efficient, as compared to cramming, the longer you use it).

It's an app that helps you memorize things for good, putting them in your long-term memory, with as little time-investment as possible, using spaced repetition (like flash cards to be reviewed at optimized intervals).

The applications are obvious to subjects that require a lot of rote memorization -- foreign languages, medical school, etc.

But if you use it right, it's also very helpful in subjects that don't seem like they involve a lot of memorization -- e.g., calculus. A deceptively big part of understanding complicated subjects is just keeping the basics straight in your easily accessible memory. See the essay I linked in the first sentence. It does take some practice and trial-end-error to get the hang of using it for complicated subjects, but it's well worth it, IMO.

(Disclosure here that everyone learns in different ways, so what's helpful to one person may not be as helpful to someone else. But it's hard for me to imagine Anki, or something similar, not being helpful for someone.)

When I first started using Anki, I didn't have a specific goal in mind. I just read about a cool memory app and looked around for something to memorize just so I could try it out. In the first week of using it, I memorized (a) the 45 Presidents of the US in order (if you say "23," I'll instantly shoot back "Benjamin Harrison"), (b) the top 20 NFL passers of all time (if you say "13," I'll instantly shoot back "Vinny Testaverde"), (c) the top 20 NFL rushers of all time, and (d) the top 20 NFL receivers of all time. That was all 10+ weeks ago, and all of them are still in my instant recall. The next week I started in on geography: where all countries are on the map, their capitals, and their flags. I've always been terrible at that stuff and I figured it would be worthwhile. Learning 20-40 new things a day while reviewing old things, it took maybe 6-7 weeks to get through all the countries, capitals, and flags, but it worked. After learning all that stuff for no particular reason, a friend randomly showed me the QuizzUp app by doing the World Capitals game, and I knew all of them. Turns out I'm now pretty much world class at the World Capitals and the World Flags quizzes on that app after knowing very little just a few weeks prior. I then memorized a long-ish essay I like (using the LPCG Lyrics/Poetry Cloze Generator plug-in), though not precisely word-for-word.

Now that the rote memorization aspect (Presidents, NFL players, geography, an essay) no longer interests me so much, I've been using it more to remember stuff that I read. Whenever I read a book or essay or Wikipedia article, etc., I (a) put any unfamiliar words into Anki with their definition [quizzing me both ways -- give me the word and I'll tell you the definition, or give me the definition and I'll tell you the word], and (b) put any substantive points into it that I want to remember. I've found this extremely useful. Until I'd done this (and had to later answer quizzes from Anki), I didn't realize how easily and quickly I typically forget things that I've read. Just one day after looking up the definition and putting "amanuensis" into Anki, I'd completely forgotten the definition. But when it quizzes me on it today, and then a week from now, and then a month from now, and then a year from now (the spacing is roughly geometric), it will stay in my long-term memory along with everything else I'm putting into Anki, all for a relatively minimum investment of time. And substantive points are just like vocabulary in that respect. I read a little about the succession from William Henry Harrison to John Tyler (a constitutional crisis!) about a month ago but didn't Ankify it, and when I read it again a few days ago, it was only vaguely familiar -- I'd forgotten the details. So now I've put the interesting aspects into Anki and can be confident that it will remain in my long-term memory.

I recommend reading the essay I linked to, then playing around with Anki. The shared decks are fine for stuff like memorizing Presidents or World Geography, but the real value is in creating your own cards with stuff inherently interesting to you.

In any case, I think school would be more worthwhile if students permanently remembered the stuff they learned, rather than forgetting it shortly after the test, which seems to be the general norm.

 
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1. With climate change I trust the scientists. With medicine I trust the doctors. With education I trust the educators. I don’t feel qualified to say what should or should not be emphasized, and I don’t think most of us who haven’t studied education are. 

2. That being said, I think most of it should be standardized. There’s no reason why a first grader in Newport Beach, California, shouldn’t be receiving the same basic education as a first grader in Boise, Idaho or New York City. 

3. Eliminate tax write offs for private religious schools. 

4. Eliminate Home schooling. I don’t trust it to produce good citizens. 

 
IvanKaramazov said:
I'm a big believer in the college-as-a-signaling-device theory.  Signalling theory and human capital theory are not mutually exclusive, but I think it grossly distorts our view of higher education if we completely ignore the signalling aspect.  This the reason why MOOCs never took off, and it's the reason why so-called microcredentials are not gaining any serious traction in the labor market.

That said, colleges can't easily be replaced by intelligence tests.  One of the key values of a college course is that it forces a person to show up day in and day out, whether they really want to or not, and demonstrate a mastery of a subject that the student might find boring as hell.  In other words, your college track record signals not just raw intelligence, but also your work ethic, time management skills, the ability to stay on task, and other important job skills that no intelligence test can hope to measure.
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Really?   I had courses where I wouldn't have been able to pick the instructor out of a lineup.

 
timschochet said:
Please defend your point, and stay away from insults, thanks. 
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You insulted first by stating that home schooled people doesn't produce good citizens.

There have been many successful and "good citizens" that were home schooled, i.e. why I said your comment was asinine.

 
timschochet said:
1. With climate change I trust the scientists. With medicine I trust the doctors. With education I trust the educators. I don’t feel qualified to say what should or should not be emphasized, and I don’t think most of us who haven’t studied education are. 

2. That being said, I think most of it should be standardized. There’s no reason why a first grader in Newport Beach, California, shouldn’t be receiving the same basic education as a first grader in Boise, Idaho or New York City. 

3. Eliminate tax write offs for private religious schools. 

4. Eliminate Home schooling. I don’t trust it to produce good citizens. 
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I don't see much wrong with this post

 
widget said:
You insulted first by stating that home schooled people doesn't produce good citizens.

There have been many successful and "good citizens" that were home schooled, i.e. why I said your comment was asinine.
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I didn’t insult anybody. Can it produce good citizens? Sure. But I don’t think that’s the rule. 

 
There’s a big difference between saying “Home schooling doesn’t produce good citizens” and saying “I don’t trust it to do so.” The former would be an insult, but I didn’t write that. 

 
Memory is useless without attention. And the human animal in the three years before mental puberty (my term for the 2nd growth spurt in the pre-frontal cortex - the conductor of the orchestra, as it's called in the brain game - which hardwires executive function to storage capacity) has greater memory than an adult can ever dream because the door is all the way open without no bouncers. It is a nearly criminal waste of opportunity to not be absolutely shoveling knowledge into children of that age.

 
timschochet said:
4. Eliminate Home schooling. I don’t trust it to produce good citizens. 
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Man, I was 100% with you on the first 3. Then this. Can you break this down some more? I have anecdotal evidence to the contrary here (not that it matters), but this seems to be a sensationalist claim. Good citizens? That's got a lot of implication behind it.

 
Ramblin Wreck said:
You clearly lack even an ounce of knowledge to be discussing this.  You're clearly scouring the internet to find anything and everything to back up your stupid comment.
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Wrong again. My wife was a kindergarten teacher for 8 years with as masters in early childhood education. Her best friend decided to Home school her children with disastrous results, many matching the article I just posted. 

Look I don’t trust it. I don’t trust too many religious private schools either (though there are some tremendous exceptions there.) Socialization is as important an element as education in primary school. The reason we have public schools is because we don’t trust parents to teach proper socialization. 

 
timschochet said:
Wrong again. My wife was a kindergarten teacher for 8 years with as masters in early childhood education. Her best friend decided to Home school her children with disastrous results, many matching the article I just posted. 

Look I don’t trust it. I don’t trust too many religious private schools either (though there are some tremendous exceptions there.) Socialization is as important an element as education in primary school. The reason we have public schools is because we don’t trust parents to teach proper socialization. 
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So one disaster means it is bad for all.

Got it.

 
ShamrockPride said:
Man, I was 100% with you on the first 3. Then this. Can you break this down some more? I have anecdotal evidence to the contrary here (not that it matters), but this seems to be a sensationalist claim. Good citizens? That's got a lot of implication behind it.
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Yes it does. Glad you’re with me on the first 3 anyhow. 

There are different kinds of home schooling. Some are better than others. Those that follow standard curriculum are better, but the socialization part is still missing. Those that don’t follow standard curriculum- well put in the way- I don’t want children believing that climate change is a hoax, or that evolution is a hoax, or that the Earth is 6,000 years old. I think we harm our society when those ideas are taught. I don’t want children believing that homosexuality is evil. 

Beyond the socialization issue, those are my concerns. 

 
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