I had the same problem. I took every AP course available, got release to take college classes, and still the majority of my time in school was wasted. Schools tend to teach to the lowest common denominator, ensuring a very low level of overall learning and limiting the development of the best students.
Yes, and whoever that poster is wants to make kids waste more time in and out of school. My school even took away some of the tougher classes I was going to take this year because not enough kids wanted to take them, but instead they add classes for stupid kids. And this mastery bs isn't going to work. Most kids are going to forget some things after a while no matter how much time you spent on it for a week.
Chemistry, Calculus and Physics. The Chemistry was good enough to get me through my first semester of College chemistry with little studying. The physics the same. The calculus got me through 6 weeks of college. There is no way you would have been able to pass any of the above from the high school I went to without paying close attention to lecture, especially the chemistry and physics. If you could, then you don't need to be wasting time on online boards, you should be in grad school in physics. I'm guessing you don't take a lot of hard science.
Then they didn't truly learn it. Basically, you are railing against the repetition in our curriculum (which I agree with you about), but similarly you are against truly learning the material. I want you to waste no time in school. I want you to learn new material every day. I want you to master material, so that it doesn't have to be retaught 8 times. Can't do that if you teach 30 minutes and give a student 20 minutes to work on homework. That is the big time waste.
I took or am taking all of those. Chemistry and physics is easy. Calculus was a little harder, and I had to spend more time out of class doing homework.
In school, some homework is a waste. Math was the worst. Often it was the same problem over and over and over - no learning, just repetition. English was more understandable, it is hard to read a novel in class. History, geography and most basic science homework was a bit of a waste - just an excuse for the teacher to not bother teaching the material. Overall, I can understand the need for the repetition when it come to less intelligent students, but the smartest ones, the ones who stand a chance of really making a difference, should be given far more opportunity than they currently are. We should attempt to maximize the achievement of our children who have the most potential, not aim for a minimum level of learning for every student. There are a lot of ways to do this, some of which wouldn't even require too much more effort from our teachers. Maybe give the student a textbook and let them study for a week. Then they could take the midterm. If they pass, give them another week, let them take the final and they get that score for the class. This would work fine for many subjects - science, geography, etc. Math and English would be a little different, but you could still have a student knock them out in a couple of weeks. An intelligent student could probably finish all of the coursework for a year of school in three or four months. They could finish school and move on to college in half the time. Then they could take equivalency tests and knock out the first couple of years of college (which were very similar to high school.) Twelve years of being held back by the extremely slow and easy progress in school will destroy work ethic and desire to succeed.
I agree with you on most points, but that is going to bring about a lot of societal change if kids start going off to college by the 8th grade. When I have kids, I probably wouldn't want them leaving by the 8th grade even if they were mature enough and smart enough to handle it on their own. There are a few solutions to this like starting school at a later age, having a shorter school day, having more upper level teachers in high schools, and what I suggested earlier of government paying for taking college credit classes either at the high school or a local college if the student has decent grades. More than half of the time I spent in school I was just staring at a wall. Schools need to be much more efficient and actually get students to want to learn.
If we had 5 hours of school instead of 8, your idea might not be that bad. But if we have 8 hours of school and you expect students to do 3 hours of homework, I'm sorry, but you are retarded. There would just be 3 more hours in school that are wasted everyday.
You do understand that repetition is necessary for learning, don't you? The point in math is to get to where problem solving is almost automatic. The only known way to do that is repetition. Ideally, yes. However, repetition is needed to learn. You didn't learn to read by just reading once. You read over and over again. You must not have been a science major. In science, pretty much the first semester of a course is the equivalent of high school. After that, it's new material. It will destroy intellectual curiousity, maybe, but encourage the work ethic and desire to succeed.
Yet, when I suggest something that increases efficiency (bell to bell learning), you are all against it.
I know that is what many people believe, and what many people require, but it isn't true of everyone. I know plenty of people who can pick up on an idea or method in one try, repetition isn't required. But I learned many things by reading about them once. A young child may have to learn the basics through repetition, but once a person reaches a certain level of cognitive reasoning, they can learn without repetition. I wasn't a hard science major, I had a double in Psychology and Business management. Regardless, all of the 100 level courses and many of the 200 level courses I took were no harder than high school. (OK, I admit I didn't take very many, a couple of my AP courses counted, and I CLEPed out of most of the basic requirements, but I still took a few low-level courses.) Even the upper-level courses I took weren't really much harder than high-school, just a little bit more advanced knowledge. I'm working toward a grad degree now, and even that isn't much harder, it just has a bit more of a workload - 6-10 pages of writing a week - maybe a couple of hours of effort. You really believe that having a student go through twelve years of school catching every idea quickly, getting perfect scores on nearly every test and assignment without studying or any real effort and having the class progress so slowly that they can read a book during most of their courses and still stay ahead of the class will teach work ethic and desire to succeed? What it actually teaches is that life requires no effort or work, everything is easy and success will come automatically. They will have a rude awakening when they hit the real world and encounter something that takes actual effort.
Talking to this guy is pointless. What do you think of the government giving kids scholarships to take college classes in high school? These kids are going to be getting scholarships anyway, so they can get a headstart if they want to.
That is one way to challenge our better students, especially if they could use similar college classes as alternative credits for similar high-school classes. Sure they would basically get double credit for those classes (both high-school and college credit), but they would also be pursuing their college degree, and if what perdidochas claims is true, they would be working on much harder material, so they deserve better credit for their efforts. Maybe not a perfect solution, but it would be a start.
Very rare. Those people must not be in technical fields. And that is total bull. That explains it. Of course. They will learn that genius alone is worthless, and that they have to work to achieve. What science and math courses did you take in high school? Is possibly the problem that you just chose uninspiring courses? Which is why teachers need to do more than test. Require students to write papers/do projects that can't be done in a single night's cram session. My suggestion is that teachers ramp up the intellectual requirements to pass. Part of that is to stop the garbage of lecturing 30 minutes, and allowing the students 20 minutes to do homework. They need to be engaging the students in relevant learning for 50 minutes.
My local school system does that. A former babysitter for my boys finished most of her college freshman and sophomore classes in her junior and senior years in high school. It's already being done in some places--for example, all 28 community colleges in Florida offer it. I think it's a good idea. Oldjar wouldn't like it. College teachers don't give time for homework in class.
I was trying to delete saying that you're an idiot, but it wouldn't let me delete it. Usually, I avoid calling people names on the internet. I apologize for that, though I still completely disagree with you.
You're wrong on a lot of things. I have a thick skin on the internet. It really didn't bother me. The thing is, you just don't understand much beyond your limited experience. You will learn, you seem like a bright kid.
i'm sure no person with special needs has ever been a genius *cough* Steven hawking* cough* eienstien had dyslexia, attention deficit disorder and autism Thomas edison was kicked from school when they said he had dyslexia and was 'too dumb' Just saying.
The pint I am trying toget across here is that simply because a person is disabled or mentally handicapped does not mean they are useless to society and should be given up on. Another fact of the matter is denying a person the right to go to a public institution because of the fact they are disabled is discriminatory.
They can go to a public institution, but they don't need to be given special treatment. I never said to give up on them. We need to stop wasting so much money on them, though. If they went to the special education programs that are in schools now, they wouldn't have accomplished any of the things they did.
Doubtful. Edison and Einstein were geniuses. It's possible they would have done better had they learned ways to deal with their disabilities.
