Science classes are only for who?

[poppy]

I will be 59 yrs. old next month and I still don't have a clue what I want to do with my life.

 

[LuciferSam]

I will be 59 yrs. old next month and I still don't have a clue what I want to do with my life.

Good point. This is all just a game, just a ride, and all the so called "useful" and "productive" stuff we do gives life the illusion of purpose. As the late great Bill Hicks once said, "We're a virus with shoes." With that in mind, please pass the host!

 

[Beauty hunter]

I will be 59 yrs. old next month and I still don't have a clue what I want to do with my life.

Some of the greatest people in history didn't figure it out until the last lap
View attachment 15547

What did you like to do as a child?
Sometimes when we "grow up" we actually forget who we are because of life's demands and peer pressure.
You are a unique gift to the world - please don't forget it

 

[Bob]

in europe, those who test poorly in core academics are offered trade schools. there's no hand wringing over the failure of schools, and the remaining school population easily score higher than their american counterparts. this should be done here.

 

[sunspotbaby]

in europe, those who test poorly in core academics are offered trade schools. there's no hand wringing over the failure of schools, and the remaining school population easily score higher than their american counterparts. this should be done here.

I agree, not everyone is cut out for 'school' .

 

[Miss Critter]

Good point about trade schools, Bob. My dad attended one and made a very good living as an aircraft mechanic. I have a bachelor's degree that appears to be worthless. As I recently read somewhere, you can't outsource a clogged toilet to India.

Food for thought:

The True Value of a College Degree ? LifeReboot.com

In fact, one in four college grads takes home considerably less than the top quartile of high school grads, according to a College Board study. Even some people with doctorates earn less than people without so much as an associate degree, it shows.
For an indication of how out of touch the degree factories are with economic reality there's no need to pick on UCLA's course in queer musicology or Edith Cowan University's degree in "surf science." U.S. universities also minted 37,000 history degrees in 2006, including 852 Ph.D.s. That for a field with fewer than 500 job openings and average pay of $48,500. Plumbers, by contrast, enjoyed 16,000 new jobs that year and earned only $6,000 less than historians, census figures show.

The Great College Hoax - Forbes.com

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.
In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

 

[Miss Critter]

Good point about trade schools, Bob. My dad attended one and made a very good living as an aircraft mechanic. I have a bachelor's degree that appears to be worthless. As I recently read somewhere, you can't outsource a clogged toilet to India.

Food for thought:

The True Value of a College Degree ? LifeReboot.com

In fact, one in four college grads takes home considerably less than the top quartile of high school grads, according to a College Board study. Even some people with doctorates earn less than people without so much as an associate degree, it shows.
For an indication of how out of touch the degree factories are with economic reality there's no need to pick on UCLA's course in queer musicology or Edith Cowan University's degree in "surf science." U.S. universities also minted 37,000 history degrees in 2006, including 852 Ph.D.s. That for a field with fewer than 500 job openings and average pay of $48,500. Plumbers, by contrast, enjoyed 16,000 new jobs that year and earned only $6,000 less than historians, census figures show.

The Great College Hoax - Forbes.com

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn?t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That?s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course ? with no benefits ? than it is to hire full-time professors.
In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

 

[Beach Runner]

I am a Junior Leaguer, and our mission is to help children. It came as a surprise to me in our many meetings that our county has a 40% illiteracy rate. Parents who can't read are incapable of teaching their children to read. Our League has set up and/or funded many initiatives to help these children.

This was all an eye-opener for me. I had no idea that so many children are in need of help.

But then as a college professor at an institution that requires all professors to teach an occasional core class outside their area of interest, it has been an eye-opener regarding how poorly prepared most students are in mathematics. When as a grad student I was an instructor at the University of Florida, one course I taught was for high school teachers to get certified to teach high school math. I'll never forget one principal who was dumb as a brick, managed a low C in my class, and became certified to teach high school math. God Almighty, I'd be raisin' hell if he were teaching my child.

This fall I taught a core class that teaches Excel and the mathematics of finance. There is one problem in the text that talks about winning 1.5 million in the lottery. Many students don't know how to write this number, that is, that 1.5 million is 1500000. ARGH! Many students don't know how to write 6-1/8% as a decimal. Some students don't even know how to round off a number to the hundredths place.

I think the European system sounds good. Don't socially promote someone if s/he doesn't have basic skills. Differentiate between "real" high school grads and those who are clueless. Not politically correct, I know. But why should I have to spend the time and energy in my college classes and waste the time of my well-prepared students explaining something that I knew in the third grade?

 

[Beach Runner]

BTW it's "for whom."

 

[LuciferSam]

I saw an interesting video on youtube. It was geared toward the the really poorly performing unmotivated student. The idea was you've got some students whose home life is a wreck, they come daily to this prison like institution (school), which understandably they despise. They are told that if they spend another 15 years in this lovely environment and they play their cards right, it will all pay off and they'll be able to get a job which they might be able to retain if they play the office politics game appropriately. I could certainly see how such a student would lack motivation and incentive.

The solution offered by the teachers and schools of course is going to be to throw more money at the teachers and the schools (institutions). An alternative offered in the video is instead of throwing money at the institution, spend money on motivation. In other words, pay the student to pass tests such as the GED. How he acquires the knowledge to pass these tests is up to him. This makes sense to me. With today's technology, there are so many ways to learn things that don't require the use of an institution. It's a fallacy to think that the only way to acquire information is to have another human convey it to you. I personally felt that school was primarily a place I went to take tests and get certified. The learning comes mainly from within.