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Originally posted by tomk80

Guys, take your example from the Netherlands
Third place (IIRC) on Math in the last OESO education research and happy students. Oh, we are so good. And we still use red pens to correct math homework.

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Originally posted by Rubicon95
There has been a persistant belief that education should build self esteem not well knowledge.

In one of my links, a teacher felt that using a red pen to mark wrong answers. It made the students feel they got it wrong. WTF?!?!

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"The red mark is associated with 'This is wrong,' and as you're trying to guide students in the revision process, it doesn't mean this is wrong. It's just here's what you can do better."

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That is the attitude that has to be fought. Not everyone should go to college. Trade schools are valid institutions.

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It's just PC and cultural Marxism.

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Originally posted by Rubicon95
In some subjects that require achallenge or helps the thought process, I would agree. Gym being one, creative writing another. However, the thought in the article is that the color of the pen issue threatens the esteem of the student,and by their thinking, impairs the student. This I find to be hyper sensitive and ludicrious.

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Marking up a sentence in a way that notes bad spelling or problems with grammatical structure but still encourages revision and improvement (rather than demoralizes) is a good thing, no?
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It is a good thing to encourage self-improvement. Mistakes, wrong choices and the consequences are part and parcel to improvement. I disagree with the perceived threat to a student's self esteem from a red marker. That kid has issues and needs a psych.

Your addition of demoralization to the argument, in my opinion, is an appeal to emotion and quite revealing.

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Still, should schools strive to destroy the egos of students? I'm not so sure.
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Interesting, you brought up demoralization and destroying the ego. Kids are a lot tougher than they appear. By the way, would you ban honor roll because some students would feel inferior?

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Should all student go to college? Probably not. Should trade schools be pushed more as viable alternatives? Absolutely
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We have an accord!

However suggesting to a student that they should not go to college could "demoralize" them.

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“Cultural marxism"? Sounds like some conservative code-speak. Explain this...
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Are you making a statement that I am a conservative or fishing for an answer?

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Originally posted by Cuneiformist

Such people hate the humanities and only find value in education if it has direct application to society. Engineers=good; English lit=bad. You may have had an entirely different thinking, but I don't know, hence my question.

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Originally posted by Rubicon95

I like your posts C....

Actually, I believe we aren't too far apart in our views.

I am concerned about the state of education in USA. I see a trend towards dumbing down and lowering the bar. Each generation must build upon the last or else society doesn't grow.

Science is good. History are great (I am biased). The Humanities are a must. It just gives a well rounded human being

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BTW, I do consider myself a conservative. No I didn't vote for Bush. There are conservatives who don't like what Bush is doing.

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In regard to education in Brazil, I had a very interesting experience. I was teaching a group of students who would ultimately become teachers, since at that time there were not many opportunities in Brazil for a highly trained person in science. These students had already had many courses, and this was to be their most advanced course in electricity and magnetism — Maxwell’s equations, and so on.

The university was located in various office buildings throughout the city, and the course I taught met in a building which overlooked the bay.

I discovered a very strange phenomenon: I could ask a question, which the students would answer immediately. But the next time I would ask the question — the same subject, and the same question, as far as I could tell — they couldn’t answer it at all! For instance, one time I was talking about polarized light, and I gave them all some strips of polaroid.

Polaroid passes only light whose electric vector is in a certain direction, so I explained how you could tell which way the light is polarized from whether the polaroid is dark or light.

We first took two strips of polaroid and rotated them until they let the most light through. From doing that we could tell that the two strips were now admitting list polarized in the same direction — what passed through one piece of polaroid could also pass through the other. But then I asked them how one could tell the absolute direction of polarization, for a single piece of polaroid.

They hadn’t any idea.

I knew this took a certain amount of ingenuity, so I gave them a hint: “Look at the light reflected from the bay outside.”

Nobody said anything.

Then I said, “Have you ever heard of Brewster’s Angle?”

“Yes, sir! Brewster’s Angle is the angle at which light reflected from a medium with an index of refraction is completely polarized.”

“And which way is the light polarized when it’s reflected?”

“The light is polarized perpendicular to the plane of reflection, sir.” Even now, I have to think about it; they knew it cold! They even knew the tangent of the angle equals the index!

I said, “Well?”

Still nothing. They had just told me that light reflected from a medium with an index, such as the bay outside, was polarized; they had even told me which way it was polarized.

I said, “Look at the bay outside, through the polaroid. Now turn the polaroid.”

“Ooh, it’s polarized!” they said.

After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant. When they heard “light that is reflected from a medium with an index,” they didn’t know that it meant a material such as water. They didn’t know that the “direction of light” is the direction in which you see something when you’re looking at it, and so on. Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing had been translated into meaningful words. So if I asked, “What is Brewster’s Angle?” I’m going into the computer with the right keywords. But if I say “Look at the water,” nothing happens — they don’t have anything under “Look at the water”!

Later I attended a lecture at the engineering school. The lecture went like this, translated into English: “Two bodies… are considered equivalent… if equal torques… will produce… equal acceleration. Two bodies, are considered equivalent, if equal torques, will produce, equal accelerations.” The students were all sitting there taking dictation, and when the professor repeated the sentence, they checked it to make sure they wrote it down all right. Then they wrote down the next sentence, and on and on. I was the only one who knew the professor was talking about objects with the same moment of inertia, and it was hard to figure out.

I didn’t see how they were going to learn anything from that. Here he was talking about moments of inertia, but there was no discussion about how hard it is to push a door open when you put heavy weights on the outside, compared to when you put them near the hinge — nothing!

After the lecture, I talked to a student: “You take all those notes — what do you do with them?”

“Oh, we study them,” he says. “We’ll have an exam.”

“What will the exam be like?”

“Very easy. I can tell you now one of the questions.” He looks at his notebook and says, “‘When are two bodies equivalent?’ And the answer is, ‘Two bodies are considered equivalent if equal torques will produce equal acceleration.’” So, you see, they could pass the examinations, and “learn” all this stuff, and not know anything at all, except what they had memorized.

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Originally posted by Dave W.

Feynman gave a lecture in which he asserted that the university wasn't teaching any physics whatsoever, and the students and faculty both seemed to understand and agree with his points.

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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
No, I'm not in favor of banning honor roll, or other awards. Personally, I'm not a fan of such things (I'd rather kids learn for learning's sake and not because they can be recognized on a list), but I don't think it should be banned.

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