Is school a waste of time?
- Thread starter Big Rig
- Start date
This is your reply? So you posted an article that proved me right, because you yourself couldn't be bothered to read past the first sentence, and after humiliating yourself like that all you can come up with is people hate me?
You aren't capable of debate at my level and you hate me because I'm smarter than you.
i don't debate the the racist likes of you who use feelings instead of facts. all you do is respond with insults and name calling towards anybody who disagree with you. an example is the michelle fields thread when the police and everybody at the scene investigated and no crime has committed you constantly claim she was assualted when no crime took place
No surprise there about Friedman. I guess I'm not understanding the voucher argument. My bad.
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Sorry to hear about your experience. I think that's pretty common, or at-least it was for me. Except I remember I really liked history and learned to touch-type before high school somehow, so I was pretty bored in typing class.
Well, it sounds like you dodged a bullet at university or college. It's even tougher to take whatever those mandatory first and second year courses were when you're paying for them (plus opportunity cost...).
Hypothetically, if you could have chosen 100% of your courses (no mandatory courses) during high school, would that have made an OSSD more valuable to you (or at-least, not a waste of time)?
Obviously, "any" course wouldn't be possible. A class with only a couple butts in the seats or a course where teachers lack experience/expertise can be removed from this hypothetical.
I would have chosen a lot of math and science as a child as I found it conceptually fascinating. Literature as well. This stuff is offered of course and I loved it when the teacher was a hard competent worker but I was a vegetable by high school
Tantric massage as a teen would have been great. Hell weekend run by a ex special forces guy would have been great . Everyone needs to experience being pushed beyond your known limits.
A school that never closes with other stuff such as serious acting and practical stuff such as rebuilding an engine but no time for history, geography, basketball etc Nothing wrong with that stuff per say but only so much time in the day.
As well, if you do not respect education or are there to be the popular class clown then get the fuck out of my school as my school is private.
I think I am describing a school for bright kids as my IQ has been measured high by a psychologist in a four hour assessment . I was quite startled by the assessment and still have hard a time accepting it.
As far as critical thinking goes, that seems like something you just do . I understand in logic you give names to bad thinking patterns but you are just giving names to something you naturally avoid if you are a good critical thinker IMHO
To be exact, my fantasy school is , starting from age 3 or 4 , a school that is designed for the individual.
This means there needs to be a much greater variety of schools. Public schools cannot possibly do that.
This would easily be accomplished with school vouchers IMHO because the free enterprise system gives the consumer WTF he wants
Voucher system is easily explained by Friedman - competition increases variety and quality while keeping prices down in everything and education would not be the exception to this rule. Of course there would be bad private schools but solution is simple - caveat emptor.
[h=2]Anti-Intellectualism and the "Dumbing Down" of America[/h]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201407/anti-intellectualism-and-the-dumbing-down-america
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201407/anti-intellectualism-and-the-dumbing-down-america
It is not so much what you learn but whether you learn how to learn. I think this is why those in harder major often end up earning more than those in easier majors that supposedly are more job-oriented. Payscale does a survey every year of earnings by those with only an undergraduate degree. it is common for those with degrees like physics, applied math and economics to have mid-career salaries higher than those with degrees like Human Resources, marketing, general business, etc. I can tell you that no one with only an undergraduate degree is going to get a job as physicist or economist. However, by majoring in something hard, they have to learn how to learn.
I think that a major problem with universities is an increasing focus on spoon feeding students or concentrating on teaching them specific job skills rather than making them learn how to learn. The specific job skills go out of date but knowing how to learn does not.
If someone has a hard degree they are smart . Cant teach smart . At least not yet. With school vouchers some Telsa type genius will have the incentive figure it out then get rich as he damn
well should. Or someone will steal his idea and they will get rich as JP Morgan did to Telsa and the genius will die alone in a one room apartment. It is called the merry dance of capitalism.
Bill Gates hires only bright creative people. He does not care a twit what your degree is or is not. He will teach you WTF you need to know . Cant argue with his success.
My two cents
I dont think it's necesary but very few people have the discipline or drive to self learn. If they had those qualities, then most likely they have a degree. The only real field you see people without a degree with those qualities is tech.
With apologies, I don't know what I was thinking about when you first mentioned vouchers. As you described them, it sounded different to me from the Betsie DeVos stuff in Michigan, but I see now this was just a lapse in my attention to that part of your argument.
On voucher system in Wisconsin: http://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/
The Betsie DeVos stuff in Michigan I almost forgot about: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/12/08/a-sobering-look-at-what-betsy-devos-did-to-education-in-michigan-and-what-she-might-do-as-secretary-of-education/?utm_term=.912c1eebf924
Another couple studies: http://time.com/4832923/betsy-devos-trump-administration-school-choice-vouchers/
The most recent article I could find: https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2017-06-28/the-school-voucher-research-wars
Maybe you and MF are right. He was right about a lot. Competition certainly cuts waste and has the potential to increase choice, usually for the most financially flexible. But in a race to the bottom, there are no winners when it comes to educating the next generation of Canadians IMHO.
I dated a Finnish teacher while living overseas and thought they had it figured out. I understand this is the directional shift in many school boards if not at the Ministry level in Ontario in recent years.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/
thx for the research as it is an interesting concept of no practical value unless you decide to become a political activist LOL
I shall read it later as I am at a truck stop refueling and watching "betting on zero" the story of Herbalife and betting a billion dollar short they would collapse. Nearly four-and-a-half years after Bill Ackman bet $1 billion that Herbalife stock would fall—a losing bet so far for the hedge fund manager—the nutrition products company is approaching what many investors see as a watershed moment, the final test that will determine which side was right.
Capitalism does have its joys and betting short on a pyramid scheme and making money on the short is one of them
If this was early in my career, I'd say that teaching people soft skills is more important..... "you can't teach personality, but anyone can learn to use a computer". But as someone in the middle of their work life, and seeing how people act, and being someone who trains others how to do stuff, I 100% change my view.
Teaching people hard skills is much more important. And the older they are, the harder it is to teach. It gets to a point some people can't be taught anymore technical stuff. Trust me. When I have to train people in financials and systems, the younger people get it. They may make mistakes because they lack experience, but you can see they are trying to get it. Some guy who is 25 years old will get it even though he's still green behind the ears.
The 50 year olds that need to learn to use a program or a new way of analyzing data are 99% stuck and can't do shit. They rely on pen and paper stuff from 25 years ago, or that basic way they figured out how to do on Excel 12 years ago and hopes that primitive way can still work in 2017. It likely won't. And that's when those older people come running for help. They don't have the analytical skills, don't have the computer skills, and have trouble processing the huge swaths of info and data that churn out nowadays.
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." (W. B. Yeats)
You hit the nail ! The most important skill of the 21st century will be the ability to learn. The reason why the value of a bachelor's degree has declined is because education has become an arms race and too many people have access to what once was a privilege of only the middle and upper classes. The answer is not less but more education. But many traditional educational institutions are stuffy and archaic, ripping-off families with their unethical tuition-text book-student-loan racket, that even banks participate. I don't think people should put up with traditional brick-and-mortar schools. I predict that virtual schools accessible 24/7 at a fraction of the cost of brick and mortar schools will be the primary purveyors of education of the future.
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I vaguely remember that. But I think that was after he had won a Nobel Prize, while he was a Senator or whatever he was. I imagine by comparison, he was less a school inspector than Einstein was a patent officer.
Poem was called among school children
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Not my fav Yeats poem
This is
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; ...................... totally gorgeous two lines
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, .................... the purple must be some flower
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core
