We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I do not really blame teachers, I blame the kids. Most kids are not scholars or intellectually-inclined, and just need readin, ritin, and rithmetic to get by. By and large, that works if you have a useful skill. Ignorance is the norm, generally-speaking.
Boys in all ethnic groups and social classes are far less likely than their sisters to feel connected to school, to earn good grades, or to have high academic aspirations. A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research documents a remarkable trend among high-achieving students: In the 1980s, nearly the same number of top male and female high school students said they planned to pursue a postgraduate degree (13 percent of boys and 15 percent of girls). By the 2000s, 27 percent of girls expressed that ambition, compared with 16 percent of boys. During the same period, the gap between girls and boys earning mostly A’s nearly doubled—from three to five percentage points.
This gap in education engagement has dire economic consequences for boys.
As I have said before, all boys have some ADD. The best male students have some OCD to compensate.
It tests your math and related skills, literary and writing skills, historical, art and music knowledge and sophistication. Unlike the SAT, it doesn't look for your potential - it looks at what you have under the hood.
Of course, a good interview would reveal all of that in under an hour with a handful of pointed questions. For a job, though, it's not about what you know about Beowulf, but it's about what value you can add and what sort of personality you show.
A Liberal Arts education - however obtained - is for life-enrichment and enlightened citizenship, not commerce. It was designed mainly for the wealthy and prosperous who didn't have to worry too much about those things and could learn on the family or family-related job.
The
Collegiate Learning Assessment--Let's Support It - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/09/the_collegiate_learning_assess.html#sthash.uhy0a9kE.dpuf
The worst class I took in education school was on “math teaching methods.” It was taught by my advisor at the time. (I say “at the time” because shortly afterward they changed advisors on me, and she no longer taught courses, but worked with Ph.D. candidates. From what little biographical information I have seen about her, she has not ever taught any classes, math or otherwise, in K-12.)
The math teaching methods class was remarkable for its embrace of every educational fad I detest...
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the projected number of jobs requiring such degrees. Despite incredibly lax standards (the typical full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and rampant grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to graduate within six years.
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates
are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of
graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the
projected number of jobs requiring such degrees.Despite
incredibly lax standards (the typical
full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and
rampant
grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to
graduate
within six years. - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/08/too_many_people_are_going_to_c.html#sthash.MdCB3djG.dpuf
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates
are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of
graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the
projected number of jobs requiring such degrees.Despite
incredibly lax standards (the typical
full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and
rampant
grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to
graduate
within six years. - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/08/too_many_people_are_going_to_c.html#sthash.MdCB3djG.dpuf
That conclusion should be obvious. Roughly 48 percent of our college graduates
are in jobs that the require less than a four-year degree, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the future looks worse: growth in the number of
graduates in this decade is likely to be nearly three times as great as the
projected number of jobs requiring such degrees.Despite
incredibly lax standards (the typical
full-time student spends about 30 hours a week on academic matters) and
rampant
grade inflation, well over 40 percent of entering students fail to
graduate
within six years. - See more at:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/08/too_many_people_are_going_to_c.html#sthash.MdCB3djG.dpuf
Our historical knowledge is really a history which praises, ends up praising, ourselves—how much wiser [voice drips with sarcasm] we are, how we have seen through the errors of the past…Hegel already knew this danger of history, of the historical human being, when he said that every German gymnasium professor teaches that Alexander the Great conquered the world because he had a pathological love of power. And the proof that the teacher does not have a pathological love of power is that he has not conquered the world. [laughter] We have set up standards of normalcy while speaking of cultural relativism, but there is no question that we think we understand what cultures are, and what kind of mistakes they make.
That Richwine article generated plenty of heat. Truth is, everybody talks about or at least thinks about IQ all the time. At the least, every time we see somebody do something stupid, or express something without basis or thought. We also think about it when somebody says something that opens our eyes.
IQ is just one of the many personal traits across which individuals vary. It happens to be a valuable trait, but it is never determinative in life outcome. However, there is no measure for life outcome anyway. Life's outcome is death.
People have been talking about an American general-purpose post-college exam, presumably open to all because I see no reason why a college degree should be a precondition.
I suppose it would be like a post-college SAT, including specialized AP or achievement-like sections. It would doubtless help employers weed out the bullshitters - but many jobs are perfect for good bullshitters (see Animal House).
It doesn't seem like a radical concept to me. Anyone who applies to grad school takes some sort of post-college exam to evaluate knowledge and skills acquired, and mental fitness for the task. Many jobs require both an interview and an exam designed by HR. The simplest example is (was) the typing speed and accuracy tests for secretaries, in the good old days. My first post-college, post-military job required that I take an IQ test. I guess I passed it. The military got me used to test-taking.
As we have preached before, life itself is one exam after another, one test after another of what we have going for us and of our ability to stretch our strengths and to exercise our frailties. The ultimate exam can not be scored by a machine. It's not even our credit rating. The ultimate exam measures how near we get to achieving our goals in life, whatever goals we choose.
It makes no sense to me for the Feds to be involved in primary education at all. These Washington experts and consultants are living in a dream world in which their fantasies can never be reality.
To some extent, yes. Every boy knew that when they were in school. On the other hand, some boys are natural, powerful scholars who are more driven by curiosity and competition than by pleasing teacher.
Co-education is a crazy idea. I am grateful that I was spared that for eight years, spared the social and sexual distractions which so dominated vacation time anyway. Most of our Masters were male, and each one had to coach a team on the side. The handful of lady teachers could never imagine what fantasies they were subject to regardless of their appearance. They did not coach: they worked in offices instead during sports time. I also hope the faculty wives were never aware of our terrible thoughts about them.
Yes, we had a couple of gay students and a couple of gay Masters, and everybody knew but nobody really cared. It was not a Big Topic in those days, just a subject of casual amusement. As far as I know, none of them acted on their desires on campus. However, I did know one prep school classmate who had a hot affair with a hot faculty wife. That did not end up well, for her or for her kids. He was the envy of all. Damn handsome, socially-precocious, rich, tall, blond Aryan quarterback. I still hate guys like that to this day. He went to Harvard, and made a ton of money after that and is still with wife #1. Big donor to the school, now.
Nothing bothered me more, in local kids' sports, than the handing out of 'participation trophies'. I never got one as a kid, so I was really angry. It's just not fair! I didn't get one and my kid did!
Actually, the concept is so foreign to me I laughed the first time I heard about it, thinking it was a joke. I was always motivated to try harder if I didn't win. My mother always prodded me if I came in second with "if you studied/practiced/tried harder, you'd have won."
But we're in a brave new world where kids who try harder to penalized and told they win too much.
Why have completion times in the New York Marathon? Everyone who finishes is a winner.
Nobody knows what "higher ed" means anymore. In other words, it means nothing in particular. Employers want to know what you can do for them today to improve their profits. That's simple. It's not what higher ed was designed for in the 1300s and 1500s and 1800s, but it seems applicable today. Practicality.
It's a great loss, but people do need to make a living. Higher ed is not just for the elite and the intelligentsia anymore. Things have changed. Estate taxes, for one thing. The Gentleman's C is a thing of the past.
The term "higher" is obsolete. People like Oprah are today's elite.
It is a powerful and discouraging report. Those are not underperforming schools. Those are underperforming kids and underperforming parents in an underperforming subculture. "Underperforming" by bourgeois standards, anyway. Perhaps not by their standards. Free food is fine.
America contains many subcultures without bourgeois expectations or standards. It's a free country. As we always say at Maggie's, do whatever you want with your time and your life, but not on my nickel.
Sometimes I wonder whether requiring "education" does any good. School learning is not a passive procedure. It requires, at the least, both inner and external discipline and, at most, inner desire, curiosity, and motivation.
In the younger years, clearly a positive connection with authority - a "master," a teacher - helps. One wants to please them and not to disappoint their efforts on your behalf. Our schooling is probably more designed for gals than for guys, or also for highly-domesticated or high IQ guys.
Can those things be "inspired," i.e. put into the air so that they are taken in by breathing? I don't know. I can say that, for me, school discipline and parental discipline put me on the road to an independent restless desire for knowledge and thought, but I may have been born with that anyway.
My IQ is probably not dramatically high, but my interests in all things is quite high and I have a temperamental or cultural restlessness which leaves me without a lazy bone in my body. I don't know what "relax" means, and I do not want to find out. My lack of interest in relaxing has served me well and enriched my life. Not mainly financially, but in all ways. I do not even like to sit down. My Maggie's Farm hobby is an expression of that. Call it ADD if you want.
Even on "vacation" from my day job, I want to either work or learn or eat, but the eating fattens me and drinking makes me lazy, so I minimize them. It's not about virtue. It's the way I developed, and my parents are the same way. "Retirement," endless vacation, is my nightmare.
Whatever you decide you want your relationship with sex to be about, there are opportunities out there. Whether you want to have sex or you don’t, you’re looking for love or a one-night stand, you’re gay or straight or somewhere in between, it’s all possible. And whatever happens remember to be safe, get consent, and watch out for your friends.
Well, OK. What seems odd to me is the college administration selling this. Is selling sexual experimentation part of their job?
Regarding consent, I'd suggest recording it on video on your iPhone, ladies. Make sure the fellow gives you sober consent for you to enjoy his body.
Despite Sweden having backed off a bit from their socialist and statist excesses, its traditions of authoritarianism and paternalism persist.
The government controls higher ed in Sweden, and they do not expect much of their students: Six Years on Taxpayers’ Money - A graduate student from Sweden compares U.S. and Swedish higher education.
"Don't Buy The Hype, College Education Is Not An Investment"
The article is referring to an expensive Liberal Arts education. However, most American higher ed does not involve the elite and expensive private colleges. Much higher ed is career-oriented at community colleges, for just one example.
Many colleges, even prestigious universities like Cornell, have a multitude of career-oriented colleges. Even Agriculture and Hospitality colleges. You can go to college to learn how to maintain golf courses. Such grads get instant jobs with big future potential.
I have a lot to catch up with after over a week in Wyoming, riding the ranges and the foothills with She Who Must Be Obeyed. Got lost a few times. High prairie. I always carry a compass in the great outdoors. A compass, the sun in the sky, and a pocket knife. A pocket GPS is cheating. Next time, I'll carry one anyway rather than following a fence line to nowhere.
After a few days, I can begin to adjust a bit to Western-style riding. Still, I do find it strange. Loping, galloping - different gaits from our refined Eastern style but at least the saddle has a handle! We saw Pronghorns, some Mulies, a few Golden Eagles and a Prairie Falcon. And lots of cattle, steak on the hoof.
Friends sometimes ask me why I never take photos. I never, ever, take pictures, even at Christmas. My eyes and brain are my camera; my hippocampus is my photo folder. Taking pictures can become a goal in itself, I found long ago, and interferes with fully "being there." So, rightly or wrongly, I quit it.
But on to today's link. I started college as an English Lit major. I liked talking about books. I liked writing essays. After a year or two, I began wondering why I was making my Dad spend money so I could do what I would do anyway in my spare time, so I switched to Chemistry. I love chemistry, but was not smart enough to make a career in it.
I guess that's wasn't what that idiot on The View would term "rape-rape."
This seemingly naive or reckless young girl (which is not to blame her) should have called the cops, and let the DA sort out the facts and the details.
Perhaps the issue is that college kids these days do not view themselves as part of the big adult world yet.
