Regarding today's youth as it relates to school...

[Coytee]

One of my bankers was invited to the local high school to participate in a day project.  It was designed to give each child a budget sheet....  they would fill it out as they did a round robin setup in the gym.  Each station would be one facet of life and the kids would fill out their budget sheet to see how much free cash they'd have at the end of the sheet (month).

 

I guess it was to open their eyes that there is more to life than their Ipad and Starbucks.

 

My banker was going to discuss 401K's so she invited me to go along.

 

I later found out, we were exposed to the entire senior class and perhaps the junior class as well.

 

What I found interesting (scary) was when the kids got to our table, they didn't know what to do.  They were issued a budget, assigned a "job" with an annual income.  They were also issued a calculator so they could do any math.

 

When they got to us, (our table was 2nd in order so many had not calculated their monthly income by dividing their annual number by 12)

 

We talked about 401K's.  I had created a spreadsheet based on historical numbers so that I could simply input their annual contribution and it would calculate out to age 65.

 

Side note....  did you know that if you are 18 years old and contribute no more than $100/month, based on some historical numbers, when you are age 65, you will have 1.5 million? 

 

What was amazing is, the student might have had a monthly income of say, $3,500.  I'd dare say that 99% of them were stumped when I said we were going to use 10% contribution (of their monthly income) for simplicity....

 

I got empty stare after empty stare...  "uh...  how much is that?

 

Not only was the mental concept of simply moving a decimal point over....  many (many many) of them actually had to be told to "take .10 times the amount of your monthly income"

 

My banker has her masters in teaching and quit teaching to get back into banking.  She had some of these students in Junior High.

 

I told her I was speechless at their lack of math abilities.  She quickly informed me that this school was one of the best schools around....that many of these kids will go on to be doctors, scientists and engineers.

 

She went on to say that they have simply been coddled in a culture of using their calculator and didn't have the confidence to "know" instinctively that 10% of $3,500 is $350 without using their calculator.

 

All the while, she was showing me why she was frustrated with teaching.  During a break, someone came to her and basically told her that she (me) needed to quicken the pace as we were slowing down the process.

 

I was trying to talk to each child....  take their annual contribution to their mock 401K and show them how it might grow at age 65.  I had quite a few eyes get as big as dinner plates as their light bulbs seemed to go off.

 

After the "hurry up" admonishment, we spoke to them as a group....and what I noticed is most of them were simply looking for the answer to what goes on that line so they could move on to the next table.  They didn't have an eye opening experience.

 

That frustrated me so rather than talking to each child about their respective contributions and what it would grow to at age 65, I simply spoke to the group before us and used the $100/month story equaling $1.5 million at age 65....but if their sheet showed them making $200 or $300 month contributions, they could have 2x or 3x the results.

 

I had never done anything like this before, so my goal was to try to reach their light bulb regarding saving hard and saving early.  The kids on the other hand, were more conditioned to simply go through the process so they could get a number for their form and move on to the next.

 

My banker said that was why she quit teaching......she said she felt she wasn't allowed to teach but rather, she was forced to simply process them through to the next station.

 

 

[mustang guy]

Teach the test baby!

[Coytee]

Not to sound melodramatic but, images of The Wall and that type picture kept going through my mind, over and over, and over and....

[dtel]

It's sad, add to that all these kids are bombarded with Tv commercials and peer pressure telling them to get a new car, the latest phone, nice houses, eating out, but only telling them about credit cards and how to make loans but little on how to make money or save. Don't even get me started about them having anyone to look up to, look at the trash on TV and how they act.

[twistedcrankcammer]

Agree with Eldon, NO roll models and common core is BS!!!

Roger

[twistedcrankcammer]

The whole concept of College is not so much learning facts as it is to train the mind to think!

I surely see no thought process in teaching one to regurgitate a test....

Sounds like an excellent way to put this country yet further behind the rest of the world in both technology AND industry.

What Libtards idea was this again anyhow??

Roger

[garyrc]

All most of them need is ONE good math teacher, who is awake and alive, and exposes them to the exciting and even beautiful aspects of math, and screw teaching to the test.  It's a pity that most don't get such a teacher in grade, middle or high school.  But for some, it's not too late.  Community colleges, and even four year colleges often have special courses for students with math deficits, or for those who simply want to review.  And, there are online courses, for those who don't need a flesh and blood teacher. 

Edited April 25, 2015 by garyrc

[sheltie dave]

Mark, kids read tons of books in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. IF they stay in an English track in high school, ie college prep, they will hit four or more great books each year.

 

Most kids get exposure to higher basic math principles at work, like running a cash register. Being a bank clerk is great for errors, as after three or four weeks of running a drawer, tellers learn the ins and outs of how to recognize errors in their drawers, and how to avoid fraudsters.

 

Calculating percentages is a concept not normally used, so even the more advanced students often don't get it. However, if you pay for your own car expenses, or pay down a note, or work after school running a register, you learn the concept inside out after two days.

[WMcD]

Well, I was fortunate to go to a very good high school and had a very fine physics teacher.

However, the rest of the science and math faculty was spotty. The same might be said of all schools, though.

Back there (NY) and then (late 1960's) there was the New York State Regents system which might be like set up today of very rigid curricula and government tests. The goal was to pass the many Regents exams and earn a Regents diploma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_Examinations

Anyway. About 20 years ago I was having lunch at a diner with a Ph.D. EE who was head of the EE department at a state university. Just across the aisle were two young people who had just received the bill. One said to the other, "How must is ten percent of $8.32?" I thought, "Not only can't this person do simple math, they're a cheap tipper!"

WMcD

[garyrc]

 

What Libtards idea was this again anyhow??

Roger

 ... Teaching to the Test is a fundamental principle of the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001 ...

 

The following will never happen, because students cannot be randomly assigned in a public school.  But, it would be interesting to compare how two randomly assigned groups of students would perform on the same government mandated tests.  One group's teachers would teach to the test.  The other group would have hand picked spellbinders as teachers, teaching however they thought best.

Edited April 26, 2015 by garyrc

[Travis In Austin]

The whole concept of College is not so much learning facts as it is to train the mind to think!I surely see no thought process in teaching one to regurgitate a test....Sounds like an excellent way to put this country yet further behind the rest of the world in both technology AND industry.What Libtards idea was this again anyhow??Roger

Which Libtards? The government program of conditioning federal education funds on school meeting minimum standards is commonly referred to as "No Child Left Behind." The Act required all states to design and implement basic skills assessment tests if they wanted federal funds.

The bill was was the "brain" child of W who announced it during the State of the Union address. Shortly thereafter John Boehner officially introduced it into the house as HR 1. It was signed into law by W at a local high school in Hamilton, Ohio.

So the official answer is W and Boehner, however, the bill received bipartisan support. The unofficial answer is W and Congress are all to blame. The real answer is that Hamilton, Ohio is to blame, they had a chance to lock them all in one room together and never let them out but they failed us. There have been at least 12 sessions of Congress since then with no changes being made, so I guess to be fair we should blame them too.

I am helping to raise a 13-year-old, and I get the joy of helping with math every night. They are a full grade ahead of where we were at that same grade for grade level math, and the advanced students can advance far enough that they can start at either geometry or algebra II their freshman year.

They just finished basic statistics which I never saw until college. I am with Richard, I see a lot of problem solving ability in the specific area they are teaching at the time, but there in little ability to visualize how to carry those abilities over to something similar.

For example, I ask him "what is half of 26"? "I don't know, we are not doing fractions yet, that is next unit, we are doing percentages and the question asks what is 50% of 26, so whats the answer." I ask him what is 26 divided by 2 and he immediately responds 13. I explain that deviding by 2 is half, and that 50% means the same as a half. He looks at me like I am making this up and asks "why didn't she just ask that"? I am finding that I have to teach him the tricks our teachers taught us to visualize a problem so you can solve it different ways. The teachers

do not have the time, they just teach that specific skill, .5 x 26.

They are futher along in skills, but they have no concept of what it is those skills can solve.

[Travis In Austin]

What Libtards idea was this again anyhow??

Roger

Teaching to the Test is a fundamental principle of the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001.

Opps, I had not read the wholenthreadbyet and didn't realize you answered Roger's question.

[Quiet_Hollow]

I had quite a few eyes get as big as dinner plates as their light bulbs seemed to go off.

I wager it would have been more productive to introduce them to leverage, risk, and hedging than 401K...and to also discus with them that the three concepts extend well beyond the confines of money. Extra credit would be how to protect themselves from other people's interest in that regard.

 

Talking about leveraging a $100 into one million would be a real eye opener.

 

They do those "banking and investment" talks all the way up into undergrad territory. Where as the real meat and potatoes of money is dowloaded in principals of accounting.

 

 

Calculating percentages is a concept not normally used, so even the more advanced students often don't get it.

"getting it" comes with development of spatial reasoning....not usage. I've witnessed 8 year olds that "get it", old men that still can't, and others where it doesn't jive until much later in life. Has nothing to do with useage and everything to do with the way a person's mind grows and processes data, which is as physically unique as a fingerprint. Took me forever to get comfortable with percentages, and it wasn't from rigorous problem solving but rather concepts learned in pre-calc. Once it clicked it couldn't be turned off.

[Chris A]

I created the material from scratch and taught a graduate-level engineering course for several years whose basic premise was the synthesis of engineered systems (as opposed to natural and human self-organizing systems--the subjects of biology and psychology/sociology). 

 

I found that there was a great divide in the students' abilities for individual students to abstract and think intuitively across multiple domains, like engineering, mathematics, finance, organizational and decision-maker psychology/sociology, advertising, competitive analysis, operations analysis/management science (OR/MS), and the target domain of the system from user/developer/evaluator/supporter standpoints. 

 

When the students were asked to pull together the concepts into a candidate set of top-level design views on a topic of their choice for an individual semester project, I found deep disconnects in understanding the material in an integrated way.  Some of the student difficulties fell along lines of personality (Myers-Briggs/Keirsey), the level of experience of the students in general (perhaps correlated to age), prior educational paradigms in which they were educated in (i.e., rote or algorithmic approaches vs. liberal arts vs. abstract/integrative methods), and even what part of the world that they were raised.

 

What I've found is something called "Bloom's Taxonomy" that relates the depth of knowledge of the educational material to the levels of use of the material by the student, the highest levels of which shows synthesis and judgment of other people's use of the material, and the lowest (beginner) levels exhibits "parroting back" of the material.  A Bloom's Taxonomy-like view is useful when discussing these type of "educational failures". 

 

I think that the people who decide what students should know and how well they should know it don't have much a clue as to how to do it, and exactly what outcomes they should have for each student, i.e., education as a system design.   Even if they did, they couldn't enact these educational system designs since they are not empowered to do so.  No one is in charge.

 

If you look at the U.S. Department of Education for instance or state school boards (a subset of the world educational views) and what they say that students should be educated to do, I think that you'll understand why there is so much thrashing on this general subject area: they never actually state what the outcomes/objectives of student education should be, only a poor set of quality factors like "equality of educational experience", "appreciation for the values of the community" (i.e., things that the parents should teach their children), etc--nothing that can be used to determine whether or not the educational system itself is performing as designed. 

 

We're focused on students and educational failures, but what we have is educational system design problems, IMHO.  No one can agree on what the students should be able to do/know/understand when they graduate.

Edited April 26, 2015 by Chris A

[Coytee]

 

...

 It was signed into law by W at a local high school in Hamilton, Ohio.

 

....The real answer is that Hamilton, Ohio is to blame, they had a chance to lock them all in one room together and never let them out but they failed us.

 

Ouch, that hurts.  My hometown and my old high school.

[Coytee]

 

I had quite a few eyes get as big as dinner plates as their light bulbs seemed to go off.

I wager it would have been more productive to introduce them to leverage, risk, and hedging than 401K...and to also discus with them that the three concepts extend well beyond the confines of money. Extra credit would be how to protect themselves from other people's interest in that regard.

 

 

Perhaps....but, we were already being admonished for slowing the students progress through the 'system' and our bottleneck was getting them to figure out the measly 10%.  I learned a bit yesterday myself.  I got to better understand the 'get them in, get them out' mentality as it relates to the local schools.  I found it quite unfortunate for the students.

[dtel's wife]

 

 

I had quite a few eyes get as big as dinner plates as their light bulbs seemed to go off.

I wager it would have been more productive to introduce them to leverage, risk, and hedging than 401K...and to also discus with them that the three concepts extend well beyond the confines of money. Extra credit would be how to protect themselves from other people's interest in that regard.

 

 

Perhaps....but, we were already being admonished for slowing the students progress through the 'system' and our bottleneck was getting them to figure out the measly 10%.  I learned a bit yesterday myself.  I got to better understand the 'get them in, get them out' mentality as it relates to the local schools.  I found it quite unfortunate for the students.

 

 

 

The "get them in, get them out" mentality isn't just in your local schools.  It's all over.  

[tigerwoodKhorns]

The lack of any sense of budgeting is very disturbing, but so common.  If you spend $6 a day at Starbucks, that is $180 a month or $2160 per year (you can do this in your head, $6 x 30 = $180;  $180 x 10 months is $1800 and $180 x 2 months is $360, add em up).  If you buy a fancy Kurig and drink 2 of the tiny K Cups a day at 50 cents each that is at least $400 per year because some days you will drink more. 

 

There is nothing but traps to catch those with their eyes closed.  The lay away of the past was replaced with credit cards in the 60s and 70s.  MOst will fail, the smart and industrious will succeed.  There are some very good books out there on the subject. 

 

As to math skills, most seem to have one or the other.  I am an engineering type in most evey aspect and math and science are natural to me.  I had to force myself to write as much as possible until it became second nature.  Spelling is very natural to most literary types, but never came natually to me and I still have trouble.  I think that most engineers will say the same thing. 

[sheltie dave]

Grade and high schools, for the most part, teach to a body of facts and usage that reward memorization and regurgitation.

 

Most college experiences and majors further distill this paradigm to a single subset of knowledge. What we create are a strong minority of didacts, who believe they are better than the B and C students. Most didacts are then stunned when they see the lesser students pass them in the fast lane of life.

[Jeff Matthews]

Grade and high schools, for the most part, teach to a body of facts and usage that reward memorization and regurgitation.

 

Most college experiences and majors further distill this paradigm to a single subset of knowledge. What we create are a strong minority of didacts, who believe they are better than the B and C students. Most didacts are then stunned when they see the lesser students pass them in the fast lane of life.

 

I underlined the language which shows a value-laden attempt to measure "success" in education.  To use "passing them in the fast lane of life" as a valid measure, you must first posit (or at least concede) that the accumulation of material things is the best indicator of success.  On doing that, we can then agree that a good education ought to be measured by how much it will assist a person in accumulating material things.

 

There is not anything particularly incorrect about this value system, since after all, it matches the values of probably 80% or more of the rest of the population.

 

But nonetheless, I question whether this is the best we can do.  At some point, the pursuit, by itself, of money and material things can become dull.  Money is certainly important, but dying with it... not so much.  We spend quite huge chunks of our precious lives trying to accumulate things to leave behind when we die.  It's unfortunate.  On the other hand, it takes money to accomplish many things we consider challenging and worthwhile.  If you have enough money and some other skills, you can do some great things that are also fun, like finding cures for cancer, etc.  However, most people don't seek money for that purpose.  They seek it for raw consumption - the McMansion, trips, watches, and just to say, "Look at my money!"

 

More unfortunate is that many of us blame our kids for this type of behavior.  "I want to make sure my kids are okay.  I want to treat them well.  I want to leave them something."  Many of us say all those cliche things to hide behind the fact that it is our greed we are trying to satisfy.  Don't blame it on the kids. The kids are going to be just fine without all the crap you might leave when you die.

 

Consider another possibility. The kids might have a little more fun in life without you handing them all your crap when you die.  The thrill of the chase and all...  

 

I might not be a typical person, but I'd much rather go through life finding my way as opposed to somebody blazing a known path and then handing me a walking stick.  I realize that nobody truly blazes their own way, but some do more than others.  The curse of being "successful" might be to handicap your own kids.

 

Over time, I have seen my values concerning money change from being a status symbol to being a tool.  By that, I do not mean a tool to buy a McMansion. I have had my McMansions.  It was fun "accomplishing" that.  But what's next?  A bigger McMansion?  Dull.  There has to be more in life.

 

I realize 80% or more of the population doesn't see it like I do, and so perhaps raising kids to be greedy and materialistic is what it takes to unleash their unfettered creative potentials.  Something has to inspire them.  But at least, I think we need to make room for the possibility that some kids might not be quite as enthused about Cadillacs as we'd hope.

 

Should the goal of education be to train kids to accumulate wealth? Should we measure the effectiveness of education by how much wealth children accumulate by using it?

 

When I went to U of H Business School, there were all kinds of poster boards around the hallways, showing many of the "successful" graduates from U of H.  So-and-so, MBA, 1950.  So-and-so, BBA-Finance 1974.  On and on.  What was the common factor warranting such recognition?  Wealth.  Where were all the posters of the people who did not become rich?  "So-and-so.  BBA - Marketing.  Didn't make a lot of money, but was happy as a lark all his life."  Those kind of people are not recognized very often, if ever.

 

So, the yardstick we use for education is "success."  But are we defining "success" correctly?

 

I became bored with the law.  After 20 years at it, I saw that my mind was not growing anymore.  I saw I was not hungry anymore.  That led to burn-out.  That led to a mid-life crisis.  That led to some entrepreneurialism and risk-taking.  I am having fun like a high school kid again.  These last few years have been like a new beginning.  Fun, exciting.  A new path to blaze for myself.

 

This had nothing to do with the legal profession.  I would have followed this same path no matter what profession I chose.  20 years is a big chunk of life - a long as heck chapter.  There comes a point when you just want to start a new novel.  For example, I have a degree in accounting.  I could not imagine it would have been any different had I gone that route.  "Counting people's money?  Is that what my life is supposed to be about?  Counting other people's money all my life and then, I die?"

 

The only thing I can take from my own experience is that life is too complex to be reduced to something formulaic.  The moment we put a formula to measuring "success" in the education system is the moment we begin to fail a whole lot of students.  We are trying too much to mold them into robots who function according to specified formulas.  Naturally, this is bound to happen in specialized societies.  However, we need to always be aware of this and how limiting it can be.

Edited April 26, 2015 by Jeff Matthews