Education Fix, Guaranteed to Work

Teacher · 2019-01-13T00:20:31.034Z

IMO a hundred years from now most students will be going to college online.

In fact right now I would recommend those who want a degree to go to Excelsior college online all the way.

Also someone posed a good question, something like how can the best country in the world have some of the worst student test scores among industrialized countries? Good one. As a teacher I can say that students are not stupid, they are just not good in math, and science. Companies like Apple just import the ones they need with those skills, and probably even pay them a bit less starting out.

We do have the best country in the world and I hope it stays that way forever. But, it will not. With the continued mass illegal immigration of people from all over the world we are doomed. The majority will vote Democrap and so our future is doomed. Unfortunately, but IMO, true.

Eagle-Keeper · 2019-01-13T00:22:34.144Z

lulubee:

Some won’t stay in business. Colleges are forced to close every year because of declining enrollment and small endowments. They rely on tuition to keep them afloat.

The rich elite schools have massive endowments, but enroll just a tiny percentage (1%-2%) of all college students. And most who apply, even with outstanding stats/EC’s etc. do not get accepted. In addition, approx 40% of these students come from families that can pay the full tuition without blinking an eye.

Imo, people need to vote for state representatives who support fully funding their state’s higher education system. Many legislatures have been cutting off funding and now many state schools (for example PA - where COA is now $35k+ at Penn State) have to raise their COA to make up the difference. Wisconsin is another state that has drastically reduced their state university system.

Keep voting for Republican State Reps, Senators and Governors and it will only get worse.

This is one area I see things differently. This is another article I found regarding the issue of funding for higher education:

“The rapid disinvestment by states this century in public higher education happened not because of one event, but a confluence of factors that has made it more expensive for students and their families to attend most state colleges. First, funding levels failed to keep up with the influx of students to public campuses last decade because of the rising numbers of high school graduates.”

“At the same time, spending in other parts of state budgets started to crowd out higher education. Public colleges and universities have long been known as the balance wheel in state budgets. Lawmakers know, for instance, they can always raise tuition for students and their families to pay for higher education, but they can’t do the same for prisoners when it comes to corrections. In the last decade, lawmakers used higher education as a bank for other needs, mostly state and local public welfare programs. “State Medicaid spending is the single biggest contributor to the decline in higher-education funding at the state and local level,” according to Webber.”

First point the number of students going to college went from less than 10% in the 1960’s to over 34% today. Taxes would have to more than triple to keep up with those figures. Look, I don’t know where you live but in NJ taxes haven’t been going down because of cuts to higher education. In other words taxpayers haven’t been living high on the hog because of these cuts.

Eagle-Keeper · 2019-01-13T00:23:34.089Z

Here is the full article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/08/states-decision-reduce-support-higher-education-comes-cost/?utm_term=.a57db5ac76e1

Eagle-Keeper · 2019-01-13T00:33:56.248Z

Teacher:

IMO a hundred years from now most students will be going to college online.

In fact right now I would recommend those who want a degree to go to Excelsior college online all the way.

Part of the problem in particularly in middle and upper middle class districts like the one I taught in is that many of the students want to go out of state to college, which virtually doubles the costs! It’s like they literally have no concept of the amount of debt that they and their family are going to incur. Personally I would love to see schools take a more practical approach to higher education (and by that I mean both high school and college) and get people into the work force in a total of 4 years instead of eight. Not sure if that will ever happen though. If my son does go to college what you have proposed is clearly a better and less costly approach to take.

lulubee · 2019-01-13T00:50:29.063Z

I’m not going to debate this issue with you.

But I will suggest is you do more research in this area.

Now, I’m going to bow out of this conversation as it will just become a waste of my time.

Eagle-Keeper · 2019-01-13T02:04:55.173Z

Here we do agree a fruitless debate is indeed a waste of time. Nonetheless I definitely have a better understanding of how financial aid works than I did before.

FlyersGirl · 2019-01-14T17:22:12.762Z

The “recall” of the information is not the responsibility of college professors. If you want to fix the 50%-80% statistic you’re quoting, then how about changing up primary and secondary educational formats? Bake a quick review of the previous day’s lessons into the schedule. There you go!

In case it’s not obvious by my response, I don’t believe that this will, in and of itself, fix the problem.

Teacher · 2019-01-14T23:57:07.317Z

To all> Lots of good thoughts but none of us have the clout to fix the problems.

Might as well delete: Education Fix, Guaranteed to Work because it did not work.

Bye y’all

carpe_diem · 2019-01-15T00:02:03.929Z

yes teachers are required to follow a curriculum, but how they go about teaching them
is entirely up to them.

Most students aren’t going to be eager to learn, unless the teacher is eager to teach.

carpe_diem · 2019-01-15T00:07:36.209Z

Every little thing in this world no matter how small, or how big can effect someone’s life greatly.

Everything that all of us come across in our lives effects us in some way, shape, or form.

I’m sure if you stayed and made posts on other threads, or made other Threads,
you’d contribute greatly to the intellectualness of this Forum. You’d also possibly enjoy the intellectual debates yourself.

But if you must go, then “to each is their own.” Thank you for your service of being a teacher for all of those years. It’s not an easy profession to be in.

Teacher · 2019-01-15T02:23:04.736Z

<<Most students aren’t going to be eager to learn, unless the teacher is eager to teach.> >

Great comments, but as a Texas teacher I do know that despite how well we teach, it is all about our
presentation skills. Nothing in our entire program about making sure that the students will remember what they are being taught. Such a waste.We are all evaluated on how well we execute the Student Learning Objectives, aka SLO which is one of the dumbest acronyms of all time.

I did a quick search and carpe diem means: “Seize the day, put very little trust in tomorrow (the future)”.

That is so cool.

Too bad Sean the Great will not get involved.

carpe_diem · 2019-01-15T02:32:03.630Z

The chances of any non famous person reaching out to a famous person and then becoming rich or famous off of it, or even known for anything, is extremely rare. You’re not the only one. It’s happened millions of times before you.

Teacher · 2019-01-15T03:08:57.695Z

Que sera, sera.

Eagle-Keeper · 2019-01-15T12:43:41.493Z

Teacher:

To all> Lots of good thoughts but none of us have the clout to fix the problems.

Might as well delete: Education Fix, Guaranteed to Work because it did not work.

Part of the problem in this is that most of the American people are ignorant to some of the things you suggest and or just accept the way we do higher education as it is and its costs. Keep talking to others and continue trying to get your message out.

Eagle-Keeper · 2019-01-15T15:59:48.843Z

carpe_diem:

yes teachers are required to follow a curriculum, but how they go about teaching them
is entirely up to them.

Most students aren’t going to be eager to learn, unless the teacher is eager to teach.

There is a certain amount of flexibility but there is not a tremendous amount of variation between teachers. Do you really believe that an Algebra 1 class is going to be radically different from on teacher to the next? And believe me there is only so many ways to present a specific subject matter.

Regarding students being eager to learn, there are many other factors with that no matter who the teacher is. As a former high school teacher I can tell you that is much more dependent upon who the student is and their parents, which is why many teachers do not won’t to work in the inner city schools.

carpe_diem · 2019-01-15T21:44:02.706Z

We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.

Obviously you and Teacher have been teachers before, so you know what it’s like first hand, and I do not. But I do consider myself a little different than probably most of the students out there now adays. At least at a College level of learning. In high school I didn’t care. In college I did. In high school a student is forced to go to school. College is a choice. It changes the game entirely, because each student has to worry about how they’re going to get money to pay for college, hence making it a lot more valuable that they actually learn, and get good grades. Than again, now adays with Bernie Sanders and Socialists taking over the country, they want free Liberal brainwashing College for everyone.

Eagle-Keeper · 2019-01-16T15:55:39.319Z

carpe_diem:

We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.

Obviously you and Teacher have been teachers before, so you know what it’s like first hand, and I do not. But I do consider myself a little different than probably most of the students out there now adays. At least at a College level of learning. In high school I didn’t care. In college I did. In high school a student is forced to go to school. College is a choice. It changes the game entirely, because each student has to worry about how they’re going to get money to pay for college, hence making it a lot more valuable that they actually learn, and get good grades. Than again, now adays with Bernie Sanders and Socialists taking over the country, they want free Liberal brainwashing College for everyone.

I personally don’t think we disagree all that much. Again I speak as someone who taught in a high school in which the system forces everyone to do things they don’t want to do and force them to learn stuff that they have no interest in. This is especially true with the lower level students.

I completely agree that a person can change their feelings about school when they get older and mature. The biggest problem with higher education - and I’ll say this over and over again - is that much of what is done is on a practical level a complete waste of time that will add nothing to a persons productivity in the workforce.

reflechissez · 2019-01-16T17:46:58.753Z

Eagle-Keeper:

The biggest problem with higher education - and I’ll say this over and over again - is that much of what is done is on a practical level a complete waste of time that will add nothing to a persons productivity in the workforce.

That’s not a useful statement. Education is not just for being productive in the work place.

Perdidochas · 2019-01-17T21:49:24.183Z

janer:

Not clear to me. You say that the first two years of college are high school all over again - what is being credited? And I would add that, while for two of my kids, the first year, at least, of college was largely remedial, and the equivalent of a high school AP level course (primarily in reading, English composition and basic math), this was not the case when I went to college. We were expected to come prepared for college-level course work. At no time, was the work a reiteration of high school material.

IMHO if k-12 education was stronger, more focused, stronger academically and less concerned with social engineering, there would be no reason for colleges to waste a freshman and possibly sophomore year in remediation.

I don’t buy the argument that the first two years of college are high school all over again. Now, maybe the first month of every semester in freshman level classes are high school again, but I found that after that, it was new material. That’s why so many freshmen have problems. They know everything the first couple of weeks, so they give up on studying, etc.

Eagle-Keeper · 2019-01-18T13:17:37.899Z

reflechissez:

The biggest problem with higher education - and I’ll say this over and over again - is that much of what is done is on a practical level a complete waste of time that will add nothing to a persons productivity in the workforce.

That’s not a useful statement. Education is not just for being productive in the work place.

I didn’t say that, notice the emphasis. American students get a general education in all the key basic subject areas from K to 8th grade. So in other words they are getting a basic education for 9 years. By the time they get to high school they are 14-15 years old. At this point we have a very good idea of which students are going to have more success academically. Hence the goal of publically funded education should not be about trying to make well-rounded polymaths out of every student but to encourage the one who are more academic to go further and to give more options to those who are not to seek out areas in our labor force in a more expeditious manner.