my first day of computer logic the prof said, "Look to the left of you, look to the right of you, look in front of you and look behind you, because by graduation day, four of the five of you won't be here." and he was right...
Posted on 11/04/2011 1:57:53 PM PDT by neverdem
LAST FALL, President Obama threw what was billed as the first White House Science Fair, a photo op in the gilt-mirrored State Dining Room. He tested a steering wheel designed by middle schoolers to detect distracted driving and peeked inside a robot that plays soccer. It was meant as an inspirational moment: children, science is fun; work harder.
Politicians and educators have been wringing their hands for years over test scores showing American students falling behind their counterparts in Slovenia and Singapore. How will the United States stack up against global rivals in innovation? The president and industry groups have called on colleges to...
--snip--
The chemistry department gave the lowest grades over all, averaging 2.78 out of 4, followed by mathematics at 2.90. Education, language and English courses had the highest averages, ranging from 3.33 to 3.36...
--snip--
“They learn how to work with their hands, how to program the robot and how to work with design constraints,” he says. But he also says it’s inevitable that students will be lost. Some new students do not have a good feel for how deeply technical engineering is. Other bright students may have breezed through high school without developing disciplined habits. By contrast, students in China and India focus relentlessly on math and science from an early age.
--snip--
Teachers say they have been surprised by the sophistication of some of the freshmen projects, like a device to harvest kinetic energy that is now being patented. But the main goals are to enable students to work closely with faculty members, build confidence and promote teamwork. Studies have shown that women, in particular, want to see their schoolwork is connected to helping people, and the projects help them feel more comfortable in STEM fields, where men far outnumber women everywhere except in biology...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Remedial math for college freshmen & freshwomen should be a national disgrace!
Regardless, we need to push more advanced math at high school, IMHO. They shouldn't be seeing calculus for the first time in their first year of college.
I think that reflects society placing too much of a value on a high GPA than on learning something useful.
I’m sure the OWS guy who is all over the news today had a perfect 4.0 when he got his degree in Puppetry.
Give me an engineer with a solid 2.5 anyday.
In other countries, if you flunk a class... you flunk a class.
However, flunking has been made illegal in America.
You see, it hurts the feelings of the people who flunk.
What the guns of the world could not do to America in two hundred years, the rancid hypocrisy, drooling stupidity and savage arrogance of liberals have, indeed, accomplished.
Before you get to a battery, you need a generator, which is what they invented.
I don’t think the answer is to encourage the masses to flood into science departments. Nor is it, necessarily, to condition them for the lab from the crib, like the do in China. That leaves you with not a population of Newtons, but some geniuses (per usual) and lots and lots of people who are pretty good at math. Same as how a national Push for Literary Greatness wouldn’t produce a nation of Shakespeares, rather reams of mediocre doggerel.
No, the solution is to locate, pluck out, and encourage those with natural aptitude and desire. Prepare the ground for geniuses to rise. Mass factory education never could manage that; at best they raise the average a bit.
“Regardless, we need to push more advanced math at high school, IMHO. They shouldn’t be seeing calculus for the first time in their first year of college.”
I was in the humanities, so maybe this doesn’t apply. But I got to calculus and trigonometry in high school and passed the basic minimum requirements to get into normal college math classes. But once I was there, all they required of me was algebra. Which was weird, since that kicked me back to, like, the 8th grade.
For my wife's niece, high school was a social mecca. I am not sure she learned anything beyond the sixth grade but managed to graduate from high school without repeating a single year. She did some summer courses but that turned out to be a formality in attendence.
true.
I just can't help but wonder if they're poorly prepared. There's no reason to believe that kids who like math and science have any better reading, writing and analytical skills than the rest.
Even in my day, the science geeks were notoriously poor at spelling and English Composition, but they could probably write circles around today's youth. This is all a generalization, of course, some sort of bell curve still exists.
In the Winter Semester of 1958, I took my Freshman Chemistry class. At the first class meeting our instructor noted the rather large enrollment and then remarked, “That’s OK. About half of you will be gone by midterm!”
THAT put the fear of God in me, and I began studying my assignments that night and every day after that for all my classes.
It must have worked. I finally got my PhD in Biochemistry after several years of hard work and study.
Oh by the way, my chem teacher was right. About half the class remained at midterm.
That is interesting. I took calculus in high school in 1966, and it was a nice boost going into engineering school. Despite all the talk of advancement, I'm not sure that students today learn as much as we did in the 60s.
my first day of computer logic the prof said, "Look to the left of you, look to the right of you, look in front of you and look behind you, because by graduation day, four of the five of you won't be here." and he was right...
Remedial math for college freshmen & freshwomen should be is a national disgrace, but nobody is willing to call it that.
Much of our dearth of science students is caused by teachers’ unions’ work rules; they often prohibit paying a science teacher more than a gym teacher, so the people who could teach science leave for the private sector leaving gym teachers in their place as science teachers.
My science in grammar school was atrocious; any questions from students were answered with, “I’ll get back to you on that” (and the teacher never did). It was better in high school (a private one - no union), and great in college.
You are to be congratulated. That was attrition indeed.
as are you for you took a much harder road than i did, and that 50% drop out in your class was for THAT class... if i had to guess i'd guess graduation rate was lower than 50%
I think they learn MORE!
It just happens to be the wrong stuff!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.