Texas_Signmaker
Very Active Signmaker
This grading model is so polite. They don't even say "Needs Improvement" anymore..
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Todays school aged kids get gentle grades...
- Thread starter Texas_Signmaker
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Notarealsignguy
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That's cuz the a-hole parents raised holy hell about teachers calling out the sorry students for being sorry. The root cause is that stupid people can't accept the fact that they have stupid kids and there's no shortage of either one.
Texas_Signmaker
Very Active Signmaker
We are homeschooling too... but this is our foster care daughter and they require public school
Harshly put, but I don't disagree. It's true.
It's been pretty "polite and gentil" for years. I thought so when my kid was in elementary school. She's starting high next year. She did excell in the early years, so I wasn't ever worried. But middle school has been different. Add a pandemic where she couldn't go to school (really) and... God help this generation.
Basic idiocy is at epidemic levels in our nation. We had an open position in our design department recently that is now for the time being going to remain vacant. Unfortunately I was not involved in the job interview process. Out of more than a dozen applicants the person we ended up hiring lasted only 2 and a half work days. Not only did the "winning" candidate completely misrepresent the claimed proficiency in applications like Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW, this person just couldn't fathom math at all. We're talking basic elementary school stuff, whole number operations, fractions, etc. We're not doing astro-physics rocket science stuff in sign production. But basic math and geometry is used all the time.
I was dumbfounded. This person claimed to have attended college. How can anyone get into middle school without understanding simple math? I got even more worried about this person just making it in adult life. This person was in the early 20's age group and (I think) still living with parents. You can't balance a check book without understanding basic math. Good grief.
The situation got me thinking about Zoom meeting videos with people at Adobe Systems and noticing most of the software engineers were all from India, Pakistan, etc. I'm pretty worried America is turning into a nation of morons.
I was dumbfounded. This person claimed to have attended college. How can anyone get into middle school without understanding simple math? I got even more worried about this person just making it in adult life. This person was in the early 20's age group and (I think) still living with parents. You can't balance a check book without understanding basic math. Good grief.
The situation got me thinking about Zoom meeting videos with people at Adobe Systems and noticing most of the software engineers were all from India, Pakistan, etc. I'm pretty worried America is turning into a nation of morons.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
Not really surprising and it's only going to get worse, especially considering all the backlash that 2 + 2 = 4 is getting in current day politics.
Going thru college is going to mean squat. Maybe there is still going to be hope for tech schools, but by the time my kids would even remotely consider stuff like that, I dunno.
Certainly schooling isn't really about teaching anymore. As far as colleges go, especially in the tech field, think about it, a lot of the big companies have their own "campuses" that allows for teaching right there with what people entering their workforce needs. Why get one's workforce from a college, when they are more then likely being taught something woefully outdated and irrelevant and have to teach them anyway on the job.
Notarealsignguy
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Its a selfish society where everyone thinks they're smarter than the next guy. Self realization is gone and that's because the stupid people yell the loudest. Sorry y'all but that's the drive behind home schooling. Thinking that teachers are dumb, I know more than they do but when it comes to your trade you can't fathom how anyone can be better than you either cuz you have experience. You're growing this problem by not exposing your kids to different people, points of view, teaching methods etc. Many people claim that schools are indoctrinating kids but by teaching only what you choose, you are actually the ones doing just that.
All the criticizing of college educations by people that never even went to college cuz they're smarter than that, maybe you're actually not? Maybe you are actually the person that you think everyone else is? Getting a degree takes work and dedication, that's 95% of the reason so many companies require a degree. It's not just the education, it shows you can focus and see something through to the end, at a young age and with no monetary incentive. Education can't fix stupid but that's not the fault of the university system.
The other thing growing this laziness is the rise of easy cheap credit. You don't have to work harder to get the things you want anymore cuz you can pay for them over time. When making the payment gets old, just go refinance your house and throw it into the mortgage. This couples with social media has made conspicuous consumption go out of control. It's all dumb, just like people today.
All the criticizing of college educations by people that never even went to college cuz they're smarter than that, maybe you're actually not? Maybe you are actually the person that you think everyone else is? Getting a degree takes work and dedication, that's 95% of the reason so many companies require a degree. It's not just the education, it shows you can focus and see something through to the end, at a young age and with no monetary incentive. Education can't fix stupid but that's not the fault of the university system.
The other thing growing this laziness is the rise of easy cheap credit. You don't have to work harder to get the things you want anymore cuz you can pay for them over time. When making the payment gets old, just go refinance your house and throw it into the mortgage. This couples with social media has made conspicuous consumption go out of control. It's all dumb, just like people today.
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WildWestDesigns
Active Member
You are assuming that that is how everyone does it.
Even though my dad hadn't been religious since he was 7 yrs old, he had the family go to church and I had asked why did he do that, when according to him, he hadn't believed in the church since he was so young. He said, that they (he and my mom) wanted my sister and I to make our own decision on rather or not we believed in it or not.
That's just one example as well.
So no, while that may be the case for some, that isn't the case for everyone.
Myself Equine Nutrition/Reproduction and Ag Economics (double major). However, how many courses that I had taken and how long I had been in the system, I could technically have a few other degrees in there. My college experience was like a blackhole with regard to time spent.
My wife, my parents, my sister, my niece and both grandmothers went to college (only one grandmother graduated though). My wife graduated Summa Cum Laude with many many chords from honor societies. 2 of the people on the list have JDs and one has an LLM. A computer science degree, biology in there. So we aren't just talking liberal arts degrees.
My family has been thru the system.
This depends. In quite a few of the classes it was about spitting back exactly what the teacher wanted. It was a game, remember X and spit it back at the appropriate time. Now that depended on the class in question. I had some that wanted you to extrapolate what you learned and apply it, but that wasn't as many as one would think.
I had one biology professor that had a competition with another professor as to who could give the hardest test to get the lowest score. The man was handing out 30/40 pt curves.
As to monetary incentive. There is one. That's attached to the salary of the job that the graduate is striving to get when they get out of college.
And you have some politicians clamoring for free education for everyone. Imagine what that will do to the laziness factor.
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WildWestDesigns
Active Member
I saw that and that gets me going.
The problem here is though without someone telling him, how does he know which criticism goes from those that went from those that didn't?
My wife actually had to deal with that no child left behind debacle when she was student teaching (it actually got her away from teaching and into accounting).
Stacey K
I like making signs
My youngest who is now a Sophomore had always gotten straight A's. Now some classes use 1, 2, 3 4 and it translates to D, C, B, A. BUT in order to get a 4 you need to "exceed" you grade level, do extra work that is considered the grade above you. So, he now he gets straight B's, a couple A's in the classes that still use ABCD grading. It drives me insane. He was always a grade level ahead in math but now that doesn't matter, even though he's ahead, it's expected so he still can't get a 4! It's ridiculous. And the requirements for a 1 are pretty much show up breathing, so nobody fails, nobody excels, we are all the same.
Notarealsignguy
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I was making a generalization. I'm not gonna address specific individuals here considering I know little to nothing about them. I just took the long road to say that college isn't a waste of time, it is simply a very good tool. It's up to the individual to learn how to use the tool. If you (as in someone, not specifically you) never went, how can you say it's worthless? College is just like everything in life, you get out what you put in. It doesn't make you smarter, it's just more tools for you to use.
You ever run into a mechanic that has $100k in fancy snap on tools and can't fix shit? They're everywhere too.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
Yes, but the rub here is that there are teachers in the equation and some are good and some are very very bad. Some that are still there even though they are bad are kept because they have tenure (and really only that apparently, unless there is someone with dirt on someone).
I would say those that are properly motivated have a better chance of excel despite how crappy the teachers are, but those are also the ones that in some ways know to question things as well. And if a person is able to excel on their own despite how bad the teacher is, then college, at least for those applicable courses, was indeed a waste. And really despite how properly motivated someone is, a teacher can really have a disillusioning affect on a person as well. This actually happened with my wife. She was doing student teaching and the teacher that she was shadowing was just really really awful in what credit she gave the kids. I don't recall granny weatherall being a retired MI6 ninja assassin (yet according to those papers, she was (and they were marked as correct)). That was in a HS class. While other examples that my wife told me may not be that far fetched, I'm willing to bet that a lot of that stuff is going around other places and it is doing a great disservice to kids from an intellectual education perspective.
If the tool (school) is made crappy (as in what it teaches), no matter how motivated a person is, they are still using a crappy tool. And when kids are taught to listen to their teachers and the lessons that they give, that's no bueno if it is crap. Is that all schools, no, but there is a definitive trend as to what schools that tend to have this problem versus those that tend not to. Where my wife went to college, it was known as a place where research was done. As a consequence, teachers were motivated to put out more research papers then anything else. So the classroom suffered. However, the school got more money, grants due to research, so that's were the teachers were focused on.
There are a handful of degrees that are truly needed. As in required by law for required licenses. And they require a specific education body to give those certifications. For that, college is necessary. For the vast amount of other degrees, college is not. It is a big monolithic entity that is in it's own world. The things that they teach are not necessarily always bleeding edge (keeping it software related, think of all the major tech companies that have their own campuses, doing their own teaching and having it bleeding edge and not having to worry about getting someone with bad habits, or knowledge from an institution that is more reactive then proactive, curriculum have to be approve by committees when things change and we all know here how much we love when more then one person is involved in the decision making process, imagine that in the education process). Now, there are other social form of education that could be learned at college (my dad did far more of that then I did (I didn't do any of that, so that part of the college experience was a no go for me)), but even then that isn't a truly well rounded experience as it also slanted one way (some colleges have even gone backwards in some ways in that aspect as well). College really isn't preparing people like it may have once done.
Depending on where "you" live, some teachers (at the K-12 level) have shown where their priorities are. Some don't even want to come back to school. Some don't want to go back in person for their regular kids, but go elsewhere to teach other kids in person.
I'm not as smart as the next person, I'm not even as smart as my wife. But I can promise you, I would be far more motivated to give my kids what I could for an education then what passes for some teachers (at the K-12 level) that are out there. Especially those getting caught in zoom calls during this nonsense. Now, that does not necessarily equate on advocating sheltering the kids either.
As far as AP classes, there is actually a movement to get rid of those entirely. I swear, I think in a lot of ways the death knell was the participation trophy for a lot of things.
Notarealsignguy
Arial - it's almost helvetica
There's bad in every field, it doesn't mean anything. Again, it's up to the student to want to learn and we've all had bad teachers. It's no different than when you get a new job. Some bosses are good teachers, some are terrible. Either way, the job benefits you so if you want to keep it, you'd better figure it out one way or another. Saying a teacher or boss or whatever didn't do a good job teaching you is nothing but an excuse and sounds a bit entitled.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
The point is being missed, I don't think I'm explaining it right. Let's try a different way.
It's not about the mere fact that a teacher is or isn't a crap teacher, it's what makes them a crap teacher. A teacher that is like something out of Ferris Bueller (good economist by the way, Ben Stein, who actually is an economist in real life) is not the same thing that I am talking about here.
Particularly as things have been "dumb" down.
You have colleges that used to allow for both sides of a hot button issue to go on campus and discuss things. That isn't the case anymore. You think that home schooling provides a sheltered eco chamber like environment, so does that. And that is being approved by the higher ups. It's not necessarily that colleges have people that are one side or the other, it's the fact that they clearly have a very certain bias towards one side, that if the teachers don't tow that line, there are repercussions for that. That doesn't do anyone any good.
If they aren't getting it thru K-12, they aren't going to get it through college. Think of it this way, 2 + 2 = 4 is a controversial topic nowadays in the school system. Some elements of biology and chemistry are also controversial topics and are being taught differently now. And they are controversial, because they aren't fair. Which to your point, not everything is fair, but they are trying to change things to somehow make it fair. In whatever wacked world they live in anyway.
K-12 schools are about passing certain tests to get funding for the school. That's really it, it isn't about teaching kids the tools to be able to handle things and given the socio political climate in the school system, that isn't helping either. Now to be honest, that climate on colleges has always existed, it's just par for the course in that type of environment, but it is on steroids now. That's not about teaching tools to help kids when they get out in the real world.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everything should be coming from the education sector, there are things that need to come from the parents as well (for the most part, this has festered because a lot of parents haven't been involved as much as they should have been with the school system), not everything is the purview of the school system, but then again, the school system is actually also intruding on that sector as well.
But as the saying goes, "The world owes you nothing, it was here first". But if schools are going this way, they are actually making themselves irrelevant. Huge debt (on average for most people, they will have debt) and not really getting much of anything out of it, not even for employers as well, along the lines of what tech companies are doing etc). Certainly not in terms of critical thinking, which used to be the biggest benefit that people got out of the education system, because that would allow you to apply what you have learned as well.
Edit: I should add to the biggest benefit, for degrees like JD, MD, CPA etc those that are required by law to have come from certain accredited institutions, they provide that extra benefit as well as that is required to have, but once you get away from a legal requirement and talk about things in general, that's when the benefit takes a nose dive.
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