Science classes are only for who?

Interesting take on education in this article from the East Bay area of Berkeley.

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.
...
Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students.​

I would think that it means science labs are mainly for students that can already read. If they don't have the basics, these classes would be beyond the students.

I have already seen this in Kentucky- elementary kids struggling with reading were pulled from science and social studies for intensive reading class, and I have heard of doing this in other schools.

It is too bad that struggling kids are still struggling when they get to high school- even if they were allowed to take the science classes, they would still be "missing" them.

The most appalling thing about this is that there are kids in HIGH SCHOOL who can't read!

Anyone care to address how our current education system is failing these kids (or the teachers struggling to teach them)?

IMO in many cases it is because the inmates are running the asylum - backed up by lawyers and parents more interested in assigning blame than in their kids getting an education................and then things are further distorted by people politicizing classrooms and adding religion into the mix.

The most appalling thing about this is that there are kids in HIGH SCHOOL who can't read!

Anyone care to address how our current education system is failing these kids (or the teachers struggling to teach them)?

IMO in many cases it is because the inmates are running the asylum - backed up by lawyers and parents more interested in assigning blame than in their kids getting an education................and then things are further distorted by people politicizing classrooms and adding religion into the mix.

It would appear you are right on all counts. So sad.

I am so very thankful that my parents, esp., my dad taught me to read(basics) before I ever got to school. He gave me a head start that many kids don't get. Instead of just toys, books were a great part of my early childhood. That and the fact that teachers were respected and allowed to teach helped me.

I worked as an adult reading tutor in my teens at the local college. Many of the older students(senior citizens) had to get jobs instead of being allowed to go to school and this was the reason for their inability to read. The students today, I fear are as Scootie describes.

The most appalling thing about this is that there are kids in HIGH SCHOOL who can't read!

Anyone care to address how our current education system is failing these kids (or the teachers struggling to teach them)?

IMO in many cases it is because the inmates are running the asylum - backed up by lawyers and parents more interested in assigning blame than in their kids getting an education................and then things are further distorted by people politicizing classrooms and adding religion into the mix.

For me and a lot of others, reading seemed like something as fundamental as learning to speak. It was something our parents did with great frequency, so we assumed that we would, could, must learn how to read. It seemed very natural, something you sort of pick up. School helped to guide us and explain the mechanics, but I always felt having a strong motivation was as important as the instruction received in school. For this reason I blame the parents for not providing that motivation.

I don't know who taught me how to read (relative, parent, teacher, babysitter) - what I do know is that I knew how to read before I started elementary school and that education was always a priority.

Based on what I hear from parents, kids, and teachers about schools these days I do not think education is such a big priority anymore - and that is one GIANT problem that needs to be solved and addressed ASAP!

One other thing...motivation. When I was growing up, by the time I was a Sophmore in high school I knew what I wanted my career to be and so did about 80% of all my friends.
I no longer have kids in school but my grandkids seem to be clueless about what they want to do with their lives. Even my 18 year old granddaughter who is in college. It doesn't seem to be just reading. From what little I see of our youth it is a general malaise about what I want to do with my life. It seems to be an "oh well, it will take care of itself" attitude rather than an aggressive "this is what I want" attitude.

I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was 18. There were some areas of study I was interested in, but no definite plan (aside from getting good grades, hard work, and graduating college).

I think part of it is that it is rare these days for someone to pursue a field of study/career and have that job for life. Kids change their major an average of 3 times and have 5-7 jobs.

Another (big) part IMO is that kids are so coddled they don't have the self-motivation or decision making skills many older people do.

One of the things I hear from a friend whose son teaches at the public school is that the kids say don't have to learn/prepare for a job because they can just get a check from the government. :angry:

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

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!

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

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.

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' .

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

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

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?

BTW it's "for whom."

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.

I totally disagree! How you learn and who you learn from can be just as important or more important than what you learn.

IMO part of the problem a todays schools is the focus on passing some standardized test and not on the body of thought and knowledge that test is supposed to beevaluating.

I totally disagree! How you learn and who you learn from can be just as important or more important than what you learn.

IMO part of the problem a todays schools is the focus on passing some standardized test and not on the body of thought and knowledge that test is supposed to beevaluating.

School has always been about passing tests. Tests have always been imperfect and sometimes worthless. The same could be said about school. I can't tell you how many times where instead of paying attention to the lecture I was doing my math homework in my English class and my English homework in my history class. Then when in college, it's quite common not to even go to class.

The ones I was referring to are those who simply will never adapt to the school system under any circumstances. It's absurd to think that everybody can be persuaded through discipline and better teaching to be motivated enough to endure the system. A different way is needed for some. I understand this because I was one of those who hated school but played along. I now can see how that would be impossible for some. It would be impossible for me to be motivated to go back to school at this time without a cash advance in addition to tuition. Money talks, always has, always will.

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.

Are these students offered trade school or forced into them?