Fucking education! How does it work?

[Kael]

How are these laid out for the students to identify? Do they have a human-anatomy-diagram and just have to label key parts, or is only the part in question shown in picture or sketch?

Just curious, I mean, I can't think of a reasonable excuse that a student who just took an anatomy course would confuse the heart and the brain...

[The Lone Ranger]

Everything's there: they have to identify body parts from models and from dissected cats. I wouldn't be so mean as to show them a picture or a model of an isolated organ.


I'm feeling a bit better now. The students in the advanced Human A&P course did much better. But then, these are the survivors; they've had to pass at least 2 bio courses before getting to this one (plus at least 2 chemistry courses). That tends to weed out the slackers.

Cheers,

Michael

[davidm]

I'm struggling to understand how a college student in a biology class can't tell the difference between the heart and a lung. I mean, honestly, I think I knew the difference when I was about six or seven.

I mean, wtf?

[The Lone Ranger]

Tell me about it!

All too often, I find myself wondering how some student managed to get out of high school. Occasionally, I find myself wondering how a student managed to get out of elementary school.

A colleague once explained our admissions policy thus:

"If they have a pulse and can pay the tuition, they're accepted.
If they don't have a pulse, we'll put them on a waiting list."

That might have something to do with it ...

[davidm]

This is so depressing.

[Waluigi]

Every time TLR posts an update on his classes

[One for Sorrow]

Maybe those students were just trying to be funny because they knew they were going to otherwise ace the exam and had plenty of points to spare.

No?

[The Lone Ranger]

Alas ... no.

[One for Sorrow]

TLR, all your posts about woefully ignorant biology students inspired me to give my sister one of these for her 10th birthday.




Hopefully she'll at least know the brain isn't located in the chest cavity by the time she reaches a college level biology class.

BTW, she said, "It's so cool! And kinda gross, but mostly cool!"

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Okay, a student just identified the left lung as the heart.

You'd think I'd be used to this sort of thing by now, but it never fails to leave me completely gobsmacked.

This is just too depressing. There's a nice arboretum not too far away; I'm gonna go take a walk ...

My first year students used to give pretty hilarious answer too.

Like, we'd ask them to calculate the orbital period of a planet, going around a star about the mass of the Sun, at about the same distance as the Earth is from the Sun.

And one of them would inevitably write "10^-92 seconds" and I would need to resist the urge to staple Taco Bell application forms to their assignments.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by Dragar

My first year students used to give pretty hilarious answer too.

Like, we'd ask them to calculate the orbital period of a planet, going around a star about the mass of the Sun, at about the same distance as the Earth is from the Sun.

And one of them would inevitably write "10^-92 seconds" and I would need to resist the urge to staple Taco Bell application forms to their assignments.

Um, I never took physics, but I would guess about a year?

[lisarea]

OK. So I have some theories about this, and I will readily admit that they're colored by my strong conviction that we should expect more from people, and that to be considered a fully functioning adult and citizen, you should have at least some general understanding of the world around you in the form of a well-rounded liberal arts education. I don't think we should just accept that huge swaths of the population can be dumped into some vocational track based on their lack of engagement in academics, particularly as children.

I am not denying that a lot of kids being forced into college, particularly right out of high school, fall somewhere along the apathetic to resistant spectrum; but I think a good number of those are that way because they've been pre-broken by their schooling so far.

To illustrate: A teenager of my acquaintance is taking a computer class right now, and was getting in trouble for not turning his assignments in. He's been telling everyone that they're stupid and boring and pointless, but hey. That's what kids always say when they're lazy, right? So I asked him to show me what his assignments were, to see if maybe I could help.

He takes me back, and dude is 100% correct: These assignments are stupid, boring, and pointless. The whole class is just an astonishingly tedious series of assignments consisting entirely of performing simple but time-consuming tasks using commercial social networking software.

They have to create an account on a stupid little fake Facebook portal, then they have to post messages on it regularly. They have to make stupid little quizzes using those stupid little quiz generators like the kind where you take a test to find out if you should be on Team Edward or Team Jacob or whatever. They have to make some little drawings in--wait for it--PICNIK. Yes, that Picnik. The web based photo editing software that was officially shuttered earlier this month, with a long advance warning. So it's not like that's a surprise. I think they have the software hosted on their school server or something. I don't know if the teacher even realizes that the software they're using is already obsolete.

The bugbear project he couldn't get started on was making a video in Xtranormal. That's the web based software that is the chosen medium for whiny people to 'reenact' customer service scenarios and other frustrating encounters that never actually happened with comically stupid and entitled people.

Notably not included in the lesson plan for this computer class for teenagers who use computers all the time are: Anything actually about computers. No explanations of how anything works, nothing about using search engines effectively or other research skills, not a Hello World or a discussion about how we integrate computers into our lives and the wonderful and horrible effects of this, nothing. Just a series of tedious and time-consuming registrations and dumb, application specific tasks, for no reason at all. The only way I can imagine a teenager being able to slog through this stuff is if they're incredibly patient and tolerant of mindless tasks, if they really love that type of social networking stuff so much that they don't mind doing it for no reason, or maybe if they are unfrozen cavechildren who have never used a computer before, which is the only way any of those assignments would be challenging at all.

So it's easy enough to say, "Oh, just cowboy up and do the dumb Xtranormal video," but that's just one assignment out of many for one class out of many. Language arts and math and science are all the same, to varying degrees. Every now and again, you will get a decent teacher who understands and cares about the subject they're teaching, and can present it in a relevant and engaging way, but those, for whatever reason, are the minority.

And this is in a 'good' school in a 'good' school district. I can't even imagine how awful it must be in the underperforming ones.

So by the time those kids even get to their compulsory college education, they're already bored and cynical and seeing education as a series of dull, pointless, repetitive tasks. They were probably salvageable at some point, and maybe, if they took a few years off between high school and college, they could become salvageable again.

I'm sure there are outlyers who are actually, inherently incapable of doing the work, but I'm equally sure that a lot of the kids who don't have just been broken down by the system the way it is and just can't fathom the idea of education being anything other than pointless and tedious.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by lisarea

maybe, if they took a few years off between high school and college, they could become salvageable again.

But seriously, yes. To all that.

And I think I get what you mean about the liberal arts, specifically, too. As a math and science geek, I tended to deride the liberal arts portions for being fluffy or soft. But my major at State was in the engineering school and when I switched to UGA, it was in the college of arts and sciences. I had to go back and meet a bunch of new requirements in foreign language, literature, history, and multiculturalism. I chalked it up to it being a much older university with stuffy old definitions of a well-rounded education, but I was getting paid and didn't have anything better to do, so I dove right in. Fucking-A, do I value that education now that I have it.

But of course I'm surrounded by sheltered 18-21 year olds who entered UGA right out of high school and could honestly care less about any of it other than what is the minimum required to get the grade they want.

[lisarea]

I mostly mean liberal arts in the general sense, meaning general academic studies that aren't specifically vocational, so it does include math and sciences.

Funny thing is, though, I also took a dim view of social sciences and fluffy subjects when I was in school. Apart from literature classes and two or three mandatory overview type classes, I didn't take much of anything in the humanities sections of the course catalogs. I even CLEPped out of stuff, so I got a full semester's of mostly humanities credits that way.

I've come totally around on it, though. I am sorry to all the Sociology majors I made fun of for that.

[fragment]

Lisarea, why do you think a college style liberal arts education is the only way to get that kind of well-rounded knowledge about the world? Historically there have been other ways, from the auto-didactic to workers education centres to probably a bunch of other things created by people who were in one way or another excluded from a system that bears some degree of baggage in the form of the cultural assumptions of the elite classes it has always had the job of serving (among other more wortyh goals, to be sure).

[LadyShea]

they're already bored and cynical and seeing education as a series of dull, pointless, repetitive tasks.

Yep

They were probably salvageable at some point, and maybe, if they took a few years off between high school and college, they could become salvageable again.

I was only going to take a year off, 24 years ago. But, yeah, many homeschoolers (especially those on the unschooling side) suggest a "deschooling" when removing kids from public or private schools. One month of nothing for every year of school. Many swear that this allows the kids to sort of reset their brain and remember that humans are hardwired to enjoy learning in general

The serious problem remains though that as long as employment and earning capability is tied to outrageously expensive degrees, at least some burned out and uninspired kids will buy degrees with their butts, by putting them in a university chair. They don't want to be at (boring pointless) school anymore, they want to be able to make a living some day. They will take out loans so their butts can rent that chair, and then hope they can get a job renting their butt in another chair out to pay it back. Then they buy stuff and maybe get married and have kids and have no notion that becoming educated is an active worthwhile pursuit, rather than passively being a butt in a chair, unless they come across discussions or books or that open their eyes or have time and energy to introspect a bit or come to the realization somehow, hopefully when they're young*.

It's so depressing I want to scream every time I think about it.

*That last sentence is semi-autobiographical, without the degree part

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by fragment

Lisarea, why do you think a college style liberal arts education is the only way to get that kind of well-rounded knowledge about the world? Historically there have been other ways, from the auto-didactic to workers education centres to probably a bunch of other things created by people who were in one way or another excluded from a system that bears some degree of baggage in the form of the cultural assumptions of the elite classes it has always had the job of serving (among other more wortyh goals, to be sure).

I don't think that is why. I actually got a little mad for a second and wanted to fight you for thinking I did think that. So there.

In the case of TLR's students, I think they should be getting most of that by high school, though. Hell, some of the things he has brought up seriously sound like elementary school level stuff. Labeling major internal organs like the brain and heart and lungs? Isn't this like an elementary school coloring project? My point is that the K-12 schools have clearly failed these kids already, and very likely done more harm than good. These kids showing up who seem incapable of doing the work have obviously been damaged by the system if they're so far behind and unable to catch up.

And I don't think that college proper is the most accessible or even necessarily the best way to get a college level education, either.

I do think that a well rounded liberal arts education is a fairly quick and effective way to reach a certain level of competence, and a college degree is a fairly quick and effective way for employers to screen large numbers of applicants for those who have those competencies.

I don't think that's a very accurate measure on an individual level, though, and I don't think it's a sustainable practice on the larger scale either, as college is getting much too expensive for that.

Also, FYI, I only had like sevenish years of formal K-12 education myself, and I just told you I tested out of most of my core curriculum in college, too, so that would be a super weird and probably self-loathing form of snobbery for me to adopt.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by lisarea

I don't think that is why. I actually got a little mad for a second and wanted to fight you for thinking I did think that. So there.

Not sure what thoughts you think I've ascribed to you. My post perhaps wasn't as clear as it could have been, due to being posted on an annoying small touch screen (hence "wortyh").

I agree with you on the importance of well-rounded knowledge and critical skills for everyone. It just seemed unnecessary to criticise vocational training as part of advocating that, due to the multiplicity of ways in which education can be achieved, some of which can complement vocational stuff just fine. I think of things like the early twentieth century movement for workers' education (e.g. History of WEA )

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by fragment

Not sure what thoughts you think I've ascribed to you. My post perhaps wasn't as clear as it could have been, due to being posted on an annoying small touch screen (hence "wortyh").

I agree with you on the importance of well-rounded knowledge and critical skills for everyone. It just seemed unnecessary to criticise vocational training as part of advocating that, due to the multiplicity of ways in which education can be achieved, some of which can complement vocational stuff just fine. I think of things like the early twentieth century movement for workers' education (e.g. History of WEA )

I don't mean to criticize vocational training. I mean to criticize the notion that some children should be shunted off into vocational training when their schools fail them at academics, which is something that some (nobody here as far as I know) have suggested as early as High or even Junior High school. And something that's already being done to some degree already.

I don't have any issue with some students focusing on vocational training after high school, but in the US, kids are guaranteed access to a high school education, and that education should include a solid liberal arts curriculum. If kids are showing up in college with high school diplomas and no concept of basic human anatomy, it's obvious that the schools are pretty consistently failing to provide those kids with even the most basic level of education necessary to be a fully functioning adult.

I'm saying that there is a basic level of competency that should be the default in our society, and our K-12 schools are consistently and spectacularly failing at doing that.

[Kael]

I think a refocus on K-12 education, better methods, better standards, better curricula, would render moot a lot of the current debates about the importance of college.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by lisarea

I don't mean to criticize vocational training. I mean to criticize the notion that some children should be shunted off into vocational training when their schools fail them at academics, which is something that some (nobody here as far as I know) have suggested as early as High or even Junior High school. And something that's already being done to some degree already.

We're cool, then. In context of the thread when I read through it did sorta look like you were responding to the previous mention of vocational training (from TLR). FWIW there's probably also a country difference thing here: we used to have lots of that kind of shunting at high school here, but not so much any more AFAIK. Although I suspect lots of the kids who would have been shunted end up effectively getting neither a vocational track nor a decent liberal arts education.

[lisarea]

Oh. I just realized another possible disconnect.

In the US, vo-tech training is practically synonymous with fraud. We have a huge private industry that's dedicated to suckering naive and disenfranchised people into paying out the butt for "vocational training" that often does more harm than good.

I don't know much about how it works in skilled trades, but I'm sure there are legitimate programs if you want to drive a truck or be an electrician or a mechanic or something like that.

The big commercial schools, though, normally focus on health care and IT, and make grand promises of fulfilling careers in those fields, where they show people doing medical billing and coding wearing scrubs with stethoscopes around their necks, and, well, this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=h-VkZ5Jg5fo

And these vo-tech degrees usually cost MORE than it would cost to get a bachelor's degree at a state university.

I've been involved in a whole bunch of hirings and stuff in different companies, and I don't think I've ever seen a candidate with a vo-tech computer degree get hired. IT is a problem-solving kind of field, so you want less someone with specific skills (as those specific skills can become obsolete overnight) than you want someone who is quick thinking and capable of learning new things quickly.

If you're hiring an early 20 something for an entry level job at a tech company, the quickest and easiest way to do an initial sort is to find recent graduates with liberal arts degrees. Self-taught can be good, too, but that's a lot spottier and more difficult to sort. I know it's not fair, but if your HR department is sorting through hundreds of applications for a single position, you have to do some sloppy culling.

Those poor kids with computer degrees from ITT Tech or DeVry get tossed in the first round.

I don't have an issue with actual trade schools that teach skilled trades.

[Ari]

Originally Posted by lisarea

[Be a game designer]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=h-VkZ5Jg5fo

Ha! I know some game designers and by the end of a development cycle they are often so damn tired of 'playing' their game over and over again they want to be doing anything else.

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by lisarea

So by the time those kids even get to their compulsory college education, they're already bored and cynical and seeing education as a series of dull, pointless, repetitive tasks. They were probably salvageable at some point, and maybe, if they took a few years off between high school and college, they could become salvageable again.

I'm sure there are outlyers who are actually, inherently incapable of doing the work, but I'm equally sure that a lot of the kids who don't have just been broken down by the system the way it is and just can't fathom the idea of education being anything other than pointless and tedious.

I'm pretty-much certain that this is the major problem. I'm sure that very, very few students are suffering from a true inability to learn. Rather, the problem is that a shockingly high percentage have never learned how to learn, and see little or no reason to do so, because they see education as a pointless and tedious exercise.

And so long as they're given passing grades for simply showing up to class occasionally and not making too much trouble, why should they make any effort? I'm sure that's what they're thinking.

I've had many students tell me outright that I'm the first instructor they've ever had who actually cared whether or not they learned anything. While I doubt that's actually true, that's certainly the perception that a lot of them have -- that most "teachers" don't really care, and will give them a passing grade so long as they show up and don't make too much trouble.

Originally Posted by lisarea

I'm saying that there is a basic level of competency that should be the default in our society, and our K-12 schools are consistently and spectacularly failing at doing that.

A frakkin' MEN!

Every time I teach an Introductory-level course, I wind up being simply appalled at the things that it seems to me that any remotely-competent person should have learned by high school -- heck, by elementary school.

Hell, in the Introductory Biology course I taught last semester, we spent weeks learning what atoms are! I'm not talking about distinguishing between quantum-mechanical models and the Bohr model or anything; I'm talking about: "electrons are negative, protons are positive, and neutrons are electrically neutral." We spent literally weeks on this, and many of the students complained that it was too hard. And their performance on the exams indicated that they weren't just bitching and moaning for the sake of it.


Now, I don't necessarily expect an Introductory-level Anatomy & Physiology student to know the layout of the bronchial tree without prior instruction, but if that person doesn't know the difference between the heart and a lung, the educational system has seriously failed that person.



Every time I teach an Introductory-level course, I come away with three overwhelming impressions:

1.) How can so many people who somehow managed to get through high school be so ignorant -- especially when we're covering material that in all too many cases, they really should have learned in elementary school?

2.) How could so many people have absolutely no idea what critical thinking is, and how to evaluate claims? (The sheer lunacy of what many of them believe just astonishes me.)

3.) These people can vote.

Suddenly, American politics makes a lot more sense.

[The Lone Ranger]

A thought.

Predictably, I've already received e-mails from a few students wanting to know either why they got the grade that they did or what they can do to get a higher grade.


Since I give them a breakdown of the total number of points that they can earn during the course of the semester on the very first day of class, and how many points each assignment is worth, there really should be no question at all as to why a student gets the grade that (s)he gets. After all, I post the results of every single assignment, and so all a student needs to do is add up the total number of points earned and divide by the total number they could have earned to see their percent score.

So where is the mystery?*


It's the "what can I do to get a higher grade?" question that really bothers me. (And why the heck don't they ever ask this question before the last week of class?)

How can the students even ask such a question? What they must know in order to pass each test is laid out very clearly beforehand. It's not like the grades are assigned arbitrarily or subjectively.

But then, it occurs to me that if a student can get out of high school without being able to do simple math, and without knowing the difference between a heart and a lung, then it almost-certainly is the case that an awful lot of the grades that they've "earned" up until this point were arbitrarily assigned.

So maybe it isn't so surprising that a great many of them seem to be laboring under the impression that I just assign grades, instead of totalling up the points they've earned and dividing by the total.



*Though perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised. More than one of them has freely admitted to me that (s)he has no idea how to calculate a percentage score.