Education Reform

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My mum was the polar opposite. She didn't care about my grades. She offered me no advice for my education. She had no understanding of the system.

I think people with uneducated parents are at a massive disadvantage but society expects them to just figure everything out for themselves.

My mum was good for the first few years of life but then she started watching TV all day, stoned on antidepressants.

She kept putting me on different medications, which really f*cked me up in the head.

Eventually I became like her for a while. Just watching TV, stoned on anti-psychotics I didn't need. I've felt much better in the last few years since I stopped taking the anti-psychotics.

If I win a nobel prize or an academy award, I won't be thanking her in my speech. I was raised by a TV set.
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my precious lil "parents" came to the united states when my sister was 6 and i was 2. thus, they wrongly assumed that in "Beautiful Country" (literal translation of united states), if you work hard "you can be whatever you wanna be when you grow up." the entire educational system was and remains, much more difficult in the former country. getting into college requires taking entrance tests. with fierce competition. and the school, especially math, is much harder in the former country than in the united states.

likewise, plenty of chinese parents are totally obsessed with school. and that was why my precious lil "parents" were obsessed with school.

why did your mom not care about grades?

it has to be a balance though. grades/school serve a function. but many things in life serve a function. school deserves some amount of energy wasted/spent/invested. but plenty of things deserve some energy.

yeah, IQ scores are nature versus nurture .

thus, yeah. all other things equal, people with uneducated parents are at a large disadvantage to people with educated parents.

some statistics claim the more education someone has, on average, the more $$ someone earns.

so, inherit fewer IQ points. (on average).

get fewer things $$ can buy, due to lower parental income.

Theory of 7 Intelligences. theory of multiple intelligences

doing a wide variety of activities makes it easier to develop a larger IQ score. with less $$, can't afford those expensive activities.

oh well. whatever. "life" ain't fair.

in terms of finances, health, crime, emotions, and politics.

so whatever

Having an entrance test is fine but it seems crazy that you can't retake it. The ones who fail the entrance test end up studying here in Australia.A tragedy of the commons arms-race. Study longer not to ace the test but so you can outstudy someone who's trying to out arms-race you. What gave you an edge before is now needed just to keep up. If you all agreed to study one less hour per day, you'd still be at the same level.

I read about a guy in a Chinese boarding school in which they prided themselves on getting 8 hours sleep per night. Except the rule was 8 hours of no bathroom breaks, which lead to bladder pain induced insomnia.I don't know how they get through school that hard. It's like they have super powers. Tell me how they manage to get such incredibly strong willpower?

I'd love to be that good at maths. I can't do above trigonometry.She cared about my education as much as she cared about her own education (not at all).

I'll admit that I enjoyed growing up without any rules but I didn't enjoy growing up without any guidence.I can accept that life isn't fair. That's fine. What riles me up is that the "haves" think life is perfectly fair.

True I grew up in a disadvantaged family and went to a poverty row school. The school was not underfunded but the teachers didn't expect any of us to amount to anything and taught us accordingly (also less specialised subjects). In truth I'd have preffered better teachers over better equipment.

Anyway, I accept that I didn't have the advantages some people have but what I hate is when some people act like everyone had an equal chance.

I don't mind people getting a better chance in life than me but I hate when people get a better chance and then act like everyone gets an equal chance.

I don't mind not having meritocracy but I hate having false meritocracy.

In the middle ages the lord would say the peasant will always be a peasant because he was born a peasant. Nowadays wealthy say it's the peasant's own fault for being "lazy". In the middle ages the peasant was never blamed for being a peasant.

"Having an entrance test is fine but it seems crazy that you can't retake it. The ones who fail the entrance test end up studying here in Australia."

the rules are the same for everyone. so if it is "crazy that you can't retake it", then the alleged insanity affects everyone more or less equally. it doesn't much matter what the rules are, as long as the rules are the same for everyone.


"I don't know how they get through school that hard. It's like they have super powers. Tell me how they manage to get such incredibly strong willpower?"

dunno. if i did then i would have strong willpower myself.

"I can accept that life isn't fair. That's fine. What riles me up is that the "haves" think life is perfectly fair.

True I grew up in a disadvantaged family and went to a poverty row school. The school was not underfunded but the teachers didn't expect any of us to amount to anything and taught us accordingly (also less specialised subjects). In truth I'd have preffered better teachers over better equipment.

Anyway, I accept that I didn't have the advantages some people have but what I hate is when some people act like everyone had an equal chance.

I don't mind people getting a better chance in life than me but I hate when people get a better chance and then act like everyone gets an equal chance.

I don't mind not having meritocracy but I hate having false meritocracy.

In the middle ages the lord would say the peasant will always be a peasant because he was born a peasant. Nowadays wealthy say it's the peasant's own fault for being "lazy". In the middle ages the peasant was never blamed for being a peasant."

yeah some precious lil "people" take their unfair advantages for granted. and that gets on my nerves too.

Speaking of the arms race, here's a depressing new opinion about education.



Even though I graduated high school I apparantly no longer have the equivileint of a high school diploma.

That's pretty much true. I remember how proud I was to go to job interviews and talk about being a University graduate, only to be told repeatedly "so what?" and given weird looks. It was almost like my 40 year old friend bragging about getting a license: not exactly an uncommon or special occurrence and pretty much expected from any adult. I would almost include Masters degree in this category now: I know so many people with them and few can be classified as successful.

Who is doing the best? The "dropouts" who become plumbers and electricians!

That's pretty much true. I remember how proud I was to go to job interviews and talk about being a University graduate, only to be told repeatedly "so what?" and given weird looks. It was almost like my 40 year old friend bragging about getting a license: not exactly an uncommon or special occurrence and pretty much expected from any adult. I would almost include Masters degree in this category now: I know so many people with them and few can be classified as successful.

Who is doing the best? The "dropouts" who become plumbers and electricians!
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sooner or later so many precious lil "people" will have Masters degrees, that masters degrees will be treated like high school diplomas.

plenty of precious lil "people" i know have Masters degrees. and they do not look, in my biased opinion, particularly sophisticated or academically smart either. even though many of them have humungous egos.

especially the ones in the psychological counseling field.

OH MY GOD FROTO THROW THE FREAKING RING IN THE FIRE!

We need to stop labeling people just so they can get help in school. We need to do what we did in the old days... provide extra help to struggling students WITHOUT the student having a label.

This is so depressing. It's like I'm not even up to the adult level.

Me neither. I'm 29 and was too scared to get my drivers' liscense and never really needed to anyway so never got it. Now I know I really should get it, because I might need to drive in an emergency someday, but keep putting it off. As for HS, I finally got my last HS credit at age 23. I still haven't asked the school for my diploma. I don't work right now, that's why. I also keep having wierd dreams of being back in HS. *goes back to the recurring dreams thread I never posted in, because I finally have something to post* Oh, and my longest job was 4 days.

This is so depressing. It's like I'm not even up to the adult level.
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ok i am 34 years old. and i do not fit into clothes from department stores in the Mens section. have to wear children's. either that or sew my own. or alter the clothes. or order them from the internet. but then, can't try them on.

yeah sometimes i feel like i ain't an adult either. like of the jobs that i had, almost all of them fired my worthless corpse by the 3rd day.

while i do have a driver's license, my driving skill makes other drivers respond in disgusted ways.

and i ain't never gone on a date, much less gotten married. and no children.

do not know how to cook. do not know how to fix appliances.

pretty much all i know, is what i learned @ school. and i flunked out of school.

It sounds like I'm in good company

It sounds like I'm in good company
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among other autistics, yes.

but among neurotypicals no.

and the world contains a lot more neurotypicals than autistics.

Personally, I think there should be better teachers; lots of them don't know about the psychology of learning and the role teachers play in the learning process, or the importance of something becoming intuitive. Just think about it, would you rather do homework for a class which is taught by an old prick or one which is taught by a teacher who you actually like? And what percentage of students study to do well on tests, rather than to learn something useful?
If the teachers' jobs aren't done correctly, there are bound to be many students who will have learnt next to nothing at school. That's a lot of wasted years.
In my opinion, teachers should not only be capable of teaching a subject comprehensively, but should also teach how students should study a subject and retain what they learnt, and should teach in a fun and memorable way. When learning things like vocabulary, there should be lots of reviewing, but for formulas and theorems in science, the mathematical intuition and perhaps proof should always be taught. After all, these are incredibly important in mathematics.

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yeah but it is necessary to attract better teachers, with higher salaries. or some other compensation.

"those who can, do. those who can't teach."

where i live, the local schools' teaching credential programs (plural), require a 2.67 undergrad gpa. out of 4.0. and mine was only 2.189. so, i can't even apply to the teaching credential program.

furthermore, i can't "do" either.

thus i can't "do" and i can't "teach".

so what is left? medical research subject? panhandling?

b/c for a long time i applied at a wide variety of jobs. and a lot of them.

only got minimum wage jobs. and got fired.

seriously

maybe ought to start panhandling

but hey whatever

my cousin is about 33 and. about 10 years ago he graduated with a BS in Aerospace Engineering. unemployed/underemployed. living at home since.

so, whatever.

I've always said

Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, teach phys. Ed.
Those who can't teach phys ed, end up being administrators.
Those that can't handle administration, end up being politicans.