Most kids, if they sit the f down and study AND they have an IQ above 110, they should easily be able to graduate from high school by middle school and go directly to college.
14 comments:
William
said...
I disagree, Cappy. I'm a gen Xer, and I remember most of the kids back when I was in middle school and they weren't really all that smart, even the ones in AP classes. And I grew up in Silicon Valley, CA.
The key information is all right there in the first paragraph...
"Mia Turell was in first grade when she asked her father to teach her how to chart the probability of losing her baby teeth over time."
It sounds like it's safe to assume that her father didn't respond with a blank expression or worse a proud proclamation of ignorance. Or that she asked him during a long distance phone call.
Kids with smart, present parents hardly need school at all - they thrive in spite of it.
Kids with dumb, absent parents are fucked unless they go to Good Will Hunting high school and then A Beautiful Mind university. But they don't... they get to go to Wilbur T Dipshit high-school and then Cockwomble Community College where they learn jack root of shit.
Of course you are correct. However, education has devolved into little more than a racket. The school administrators and teachers' unions will fight like crazy to prevent more bright kids from skipping the system and moving on to university.
"School," as it has been structured for the last 100-plus years, is not only generally useless, but actively harmful. This girl's situation really isn't that unique - for families that home school their kids. I personally know of two homeschooling families whose kids were essentially done with what is now considered K-12 "school" by the time they were 12 years old and were working with their parents in the families' respective businesses. They only reason that they still even pretended to adhere to a formal school curriculum was for appearances sake, in order to keep the State off their backs with their bullying, nannying regulations.
The SOLE purpose of publik skoolz is to indoctrinate kids in Caesar-worshiping nihilism. That always has been and always will be their primary purpose. Putting your kids through the what is the State's definition of "school" is child abuse at its most unforgivable.
Even better just skip college...Bachelor of Arts degrees are a joke...just go read Wikipedia and you'll be just as "educated". Many B.S. degrees are just that.
But, Cappy! How can we allow these intelligent kids to bypass their average peers? Do you know the damage that would do to all of the other kids self esteem? Also, don't you understand that every butt in the seat means the state gives schools more money! Why would you want to take away the food from teachers mouths? They need every penny they can get! Every dime keeps them from having to turn to selling their bodies in back street alleys just to buy another twelve pack of ramen! Wont somebody please think of the teachers for once!?
I once looked at the work my mother was assigned at Walton High in the Bronx (public high school) in the early 1930’s. It was so much more rigorous than that of high schools of today. In previous generations, a high school diploma was the equivalent of a state college bachelor’s degree now. Students were taught to write grammatically, with good spelling and penmanship. There has been a precipitous decline not only in the quality of teaching but in the sophistication of the writing of the students.
Nobel laureate Heckman showed that the U.S. high school graduation rate is only 75%. If a quarter of kids can't handle high school at 18, then most can't handle college at 12. Some average coddled 12-year-old's still believe in Santa Claus!
Also, that article suspiciously says students learned logarithmic functions and vector calculus. Logarithms are pre-calculus, and vector calculus is third-semester calculus.
Actually they do. There is a program here called Running Start, probably replicated in many states, where Juniors can go to college and get dual credit for college classes in order to earn AA and HS diploma. Here's the problem, though. The college classes they are taking are no more rigorous than what we teach at the high school. I have kids who can't get through basic math with me getting As at the college. I am suspicious.
They can also take college classes online through universities like BYU. I have students come into my classroom to take a final (I am the proctor for our high school) and get through the final of a college course in ten to fifteen minutes. These aren't particularly smart kids but they are taking "college" classes called Drug Use and Abuse Intervention. I am suspicious.
Finally, I teach AP Calculus. I routinely have students in my calculus classes who struggle with algebra and can't remember how to solve different types of problems from day to day. They are great kids but not college ready as they don't have the discipline and have not learned to struggle through difficult problems.
I think that college is, to a certain extent, a matter of maturity rather than intelligence. I have no problem letting kids who are ready go to college. I also think it would be beneficial if many of the kids I have could leave at 16 and go get an apprenticeship in something they are interested in. I am not worried about my job as I am a) a math teacher, of which there is always a shortage and b) a Harley mechanic of which there is always a shortage, and c) have a degree in engineering if I really wanted to go back and use that again I'm sure I could.
14 comments:
I disagree, Cappy. I'm a gen Xer, and I remember most of the kids back when I was in middle school and they weren't really all that smart, even the ones in AP classes. And I grew up in Silicon Valley, CA.
The key information is all right there in the first paragraph...
"Mia Turell was in first grade when she asked her father to teach her how to chart the probability of losing her baby teeth over time."
It sounds like it's safe to assume that her father didn't respond with a blank expression or worse a proud proclamation of ignorance. Or that she asked him during a long distance phone call.
Kids with smart, present parents hardly need school at all - they thrive in spite of it.
Kids with dumb, absent parents are fucked unless they go to Good Will Hunting high school and then A Beautiful Mind university. But they don't... they get to go to Wilbur T Dipshit high-school and then Cockwomble Community College where they learn jack root of shit.
Of course you are correct. However, education has devolved into little more than a racket. The school administrators and teachers' unions will fight like crazy to prevent more bright kids from skipping the system and moving on to university.
"School," as it has been structured for the last 100-plus years, is not only generally useless, but actively harmful. This girl's situation really isn't that unique - for families that home school their kids. I personally know of two homeschooling families whose kids were essentially done with what is now considered K-12 "school" by the time they were 12 years old and were working with their parents in the families' respective businesses. They only reason that they still even pretended to adhere to a formal school curriculum was for appearances sake, in order to keep the State off their backs with their bullying, nannying regulations.
The SOLE purpose of publik skoolz is to indoctrinate kids in Caesar-worshiping nihilism. That always has been and always will be their primary purpose. Putting your kids through the what is the State's definition of "school" is child abuse at its most unforgivable.
Even better just skip college...Bachelor of Arts degrees are a joke...just go read Wikipedia and you'll be just as "educated". Many B.S. degrees are just that.
Better yet, end mandatory Kid Prison all together. It's an egregious violation of due process.
But, Cappy! How can we allow these intelligent kids to bypass their average peers? Do you know the damage that would do to all of the other kids self esteem? Also, don't you understand that every butt in the seat means the state gives schools more money! Why would you want to take away the food from teachers mouths? They need every penny they can get! Every dime keeps them from having to turn to selling their bodies in back street alleys just to buy another twelve pack of ramen! Wont somebody please think of the teachers for once!?
And it's in California, of all places. Hopefully she's smart enough not to fall for the indoctrination that's typical of colleges.
The State indoctination program known as Public Education could easily be accomplished in a couple of years I would think.
I once looked at the work my mother was assigned at Walton High in the Bronx (public high school) in the early 1930’s. It was so much more rigorous than that of high schools of today. In previous generations, a high school diploma was the equivalent of a state college bachelor’s degree now. Students were taught to write grammatically, with good spelling and penmanship. There has been a precipitous decline not only in the quality of teaching but in the sophistication of the writing of the students.
Nobel laureate Heckman showed that the U.S. high school graduation rate is only 75%. If a quarter of kids can't handle high school at 18, then most can't handle college at 12. Some average coddled 12-year-old's still believe in Santa Claus!
Also, that article suspiciously says students learned logarithmic functions and vector calculus. Logarithms are pre-calculus, and vector calculus is third-semester calculus.
Actually they do. There is a program here called Running Start, probably replicated in many states, where Juniors can go to college and get dual credit for college classes in order to earn AA and HS diploma. Here's the problem, though. The college classes they are taking are no more rigorous than what we teach at the high school. I have kids who can't get through basic math with me getting As at the college. I am suspicious.
They can also take college classes online through universities like BYU. I have students come into my classroom to take a final (I am the proctor for our high school) and get through the final of a college course in ten to fifteen minutes. These aren't particularly smart kids but they are taking "college" classes called Drug Use and Abuse Intervention. I am suspicious.
Finally, I teach AP Calculus. I routinely have students in my calculus classes who struggle with algebra and can't remember how to solve different types of problems from day to day. They are great kids but not college ready as they don't have the discipline and have not learned to struggle through difficult problems.
I think that college is, to a certain extent, a matter of maturity rather than intelligence. I have no problem letting kids who are ready go to college. I also think it would be beneficial if many of the kids I have could leave at 16 and go get an apprenticeship in something they are interested in. I am not worried about my job as I am a) a math teacher, of which there is always a shortage and b) a Harley mechanic of which there is always a shortage, and c) have a degree in engineering if I really wanted to go back and use that again I'm sure I could.
Got to appreciate that there are still prodigies in this day and age of "dumbing down".
College might actually be intellectually stimulating and useful to a 13 year old too. It’s certainly not for 19 year olds.
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