More on Education

[Nemmerle]

Originally Posted by AnOriginalName

The problem is that teachers have Master's degree's, they have to have them to work, yet they don't get paid nearly as much as other professions which require that. Whatever benefits they have are being stripped away due to budget cuts. If it wasn't one of the most satisfying jobs out there then you'd find no one would be a teacher.

That may be very sad for teachers. Yet, unless it's in some sense their fault - i.e. they're not good at their jobs, or choose not to do them well - I don't see how you're explicitly relating it to the quality of education. If you can get high quality people at a bargain price, then that probably just means there are a lot of high quality people shooting for that position, so you can play them off against each other. Paying more wouldn't necessarily get you any better a result.

[Adrian Ţepeş]

Indeed. Actually, in the states, a teacher makes about the same as a biologist with a master's degree.

The hard sciences aren't really in great demand either unless you have a doctoral degree in the subject. And even then, it's pretty competitive. No one really wants bio or chem majors unless they have the word "engineering" immediately after.

[Pethegreat]

Originally Posted by Nemmerle

That seems like just a round-about way of blaming the teachers.... If we offered more money maybe they'd work harder, or we'd get better people wanting to be teachers....

As a whole the US spends more per student on education than most of the world.

Spoiler:

The PISA exams returned some interesting results

Spoiler:

If you are white or asian your education in the US in on par with the best the world according to the PSIA scores.

Online education looks to be a promising way to better educate students while reducing costs. Salman Kahn, the man who created Kahn Academy, wants to use the internet to have students learn at home at their own pace, and use classroom time to practice concepts and get help from teachers and fellow students.

[Rikupsoni]

Originally Posted by Pethegreat

If you are white or asian your education in the US in on par with the best the world according to the PSIA scores.

Damn, those Chinese first-generation immigrants enjoying the white privilege...

Politically incorrect truth: take black, white and East Asian students from any class to an IQ test. The black will have the lowest, East Asians the highest and whites in between. (Roth et. al. 2001)

[Commissar MercZ]

Originally Posted by Pethegreat

As a whole the US spends more per student on education than most of the world.

Important thing to remember though- US educational policy or funding isn't really influenced and funded at the national level, most of it comes down to the state and local levels. Here in Texas, property taxes dictate essentially the level of schooling quality you can expect to receive and I think it's the same in most other parts of the United States as far as school districts and the means by which they receive the majority of their funding is concerned.

You can find a lot more variation in school resources obviously between a well-off suburb and an inner-city school.

It's correct that simply throwing money at the problem won't solve it, but neither is the current scheme which is basically trying to retain funding the way it is and expand classroom sizes.

I've liked the idea of internet classrooms but like any other case of using technology in the classroom, we risk using it as a crutch rather than a tool. Especially if it's just another means to cut down classroom sizes/ costs while continuing the same teaching styles and curriculum problems, it might not solve anything.

[Adrian Ţepeş]

Originally Posted by Nemmerle

Other skills.

Arts, science, maths, history, business, economics....

Are these really other skills or specific permutations of one or the higher level skill we've called getting to the truth? Does everyone need them? And can they be more efficiently learnt at a later age?

Well I remember you said this in an older thread:

If I could mandate that one subject be learnt in school, out of all the possible subjects I could pick, it would be business studies. It is that important. A lot of people get fucked in life because they just learn what you could broadly term classical studies - Maths, English, Science - and find themselves utterly unequipped to live in a world of give and take.