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That's what happens.
If the world hadn't been filled with douchebags like you, we could all still be talking greek.

THANKS A LOT.

english is better =D
and you can thank me latter

Again; we need to cut funding. Schools are given 11,000 a student, which they do not use correctly. Teachers are unmotivated, and administrators, knowing that not doing their job will not lead to them being fired, do not do their job.

Private school administrators face competition, both from the public school and by people looking to take their jobs, and therefor outperform.

Take the silver spoons out of their mouths. Give them a 3rd world environment. 3rd world kids never perform poorly academically due to slacking off, why?

Because they want to get out of the shit hole they are living in, and education is seen as a way out,. Although statistics would probably show that ghetto kids slack off also. Make education more fun? The real issue is how to make education more prized, and ignorance shunned. Nothing more then a culture change will produce that. Mabye get anti tobacco campaigners on the job of promoting education, they did a good job of changing peoples attitudes about smoking. Its on the verge of becoming completely outlawed to smoke in public places in Australia.

ok brilliant new idea guys why dont we just make everyone asian?

At 6/24/08 05:04 AM, bobomajo wrote: Take the silver spoons out of their mouths. Give them a 3rd world environment. 3rd world kids never perform poorly academically due to slacking off, why?

Yes they do. You're just woefully ignorant because you've only seen a small sample of people in 3rd world countries. You're not seeing the entire population.

The real issue is how to make education more prized, and ignorance shunned. Nothing more then a culture change will produce

People should be judged on the context of their merits in a given field. Ignorance should be shunned in the context of learning, but in general society even the ignorant deserve respect.

At 6/24/08 01:34 PM, Al6200 wrote: even the ignorant deserve respect.

of course, it's not crime to be ignorant.
We're all ignorant about the vast majority of things we could know :o

But you know those people who scoff at "intellectuals"? Fuck those idiots.
That's STUPIDITY.
People who don't value knowledge are STUPID, and that's a crime.

At 6/22/08 04:54 PM, poxpower wrote: How many subjects is "nearly all subjects"?
5?
10?
50?

One math teacher is usually enough to cover all of the forms of math you'll need at a high-school level (Algebra, trig, geometry, calculus). One science teacher can usually cover all of the basic sciences you'll need for college (Chem, Bio, Phys, Geo)... foreign languages are a tricky one, since rural schools usually can only offer one or two because a teacher that teaches another class might be semi-fluent in it. English classes can be handled by one or two teachers... Music by one or two, Art by one, history by one or two, trades classes can/could be an apprenticeship program that works towards high school credits, IT classes can be done by a single teacher. Unless you're in an area with only 3 people teaching and 10 kids in a class, this is a very feasible way to structure high school.

Don't really know what you'd teach kids that they don't already know, maybe except a class to show them how to type, how to do proper research on the net, or to produce a legible essay document or how to make a powerpoint presentation...
meh.

All of those are skills useful in life/college, so having a class on them seems to me to be a good idea. Further classes can go more into networking, programming, even lightly into electrical engineering if the teachers have enough expertise.

This BBS is a really funny example.
You can usually tell what age someone is just by how they type and formulate phrases. I'm serious, I can usually guess within a year.

Truf.

I have impeccable grammar because I was homeschooled for 4 years

nerdlol

Yup. On so many levels...

At 6/23/08 10:58 PM, Cuppa-LettuceNog wrote: Again; we need to cut funding. Schools are given 11,000 a student, which they do not use correctly. Teachers are unmotivated, and administrators, knowing that not doing their job will not lead to them being fired, do not do their job.

That has little to do with the money and more to do with teachers' unions... which do need to be taken down a peg, f'realz.

Also, I doubt you really know what goes into a school's budget to say that schools aren't using their money "correctly". As such, why don't you give us a breakdown of where that $11,000 per student should go... seriously, write up a budget plan for a year's worth of school on $11,000 per student, see how easy it is to pay for everything you want.

At 6/24/08 04:04 PM, Ravariel wrote: this is a very feasible way to structure high school.

What you're enumerating is basically the same thing I had in my last 2 years of high school, and I wouldn't really call that "diversified".
It was either science or bullshit classes that couldn't get you into college in sciences.

There wasn't any "engineering" or "psychology" or "law" or whatever. I thought that's what you meant.
Just general biology, chemistry, math etc is something most high schools already have I guess.

nerdlol

Yup. On so many levels...

Do you own any of those badass Star Wars LEGO models?
They have like 3000 pieces and they rule. The Star Destroyer is fucking awesome.

At 6/24/08 04:14 PM, poxpower wrote: There wasn't any "engineering" or "psychology" or "law" or whatever. I thought that's what you meant.

Well, for the larger schools with more teachers, those subjects certainly could be introduced.

Do you own any of those badass Star Wars LEGO models?
They have like 3000 pieces and they rule. The Star Destroyer is fucking awesome.

Used to... also used to have a ton of Go-Bots... y'know... the Transformers' red-headed stepchildren?

At 6/24/08 04:04 PM, Ravariel wrote:

Also, I doubt you really know what goes into a school's budget to say that schools aren't using their money "correctly". As such, why don't you give us a breakdown of where that $11,000 per student should go... seriously, write up a budget plan for a year's worth of school on $11,000 per student, see how easy it is to pay for everything you want.

For 11,000?

A class of 25 students has $275,000 dollars to spend. That is a LOT of money. You can pay $150,000 that year to hire the absolute best teacher around. With $25,000, you can purchase the newest and most up to date text books, learning aids, video's, books, etc. With another $25,000 you can give each student a laptop, to keep, which will allow them to research and type things up quickly. Another $35,000 will cover bi-monthly field trips to educational institutions and one or two speeches/lectures from renound scholars in the field. The remaining $40,000 could cover administration costs. Hell, at that rate, you could hire a seperate administrator for every two classrooms!

See? It's WAY more then enough, considering schools can do excellent with 4,000 a student.

"Forcing kids to play sports is just torture.
Fat kids don't need team sports because they always lose. They're always the worst players. Fat kids need physical training they can do on their own.
And for non-fat kids, they do sports just for fun anyways.

And no one should waste time learning an instrument or learning how to do art if they don't give a shit. I was pretty good at playing instruments, but I can tell you that a lot of kids just fell embarassed and retarded when they had to play in front of the entire class and they sucked. I supposed they reaped the rewards of their lazyness but still. It's tantamount to bullying to force a kid to do something so useless."

Thank you for underlining why I think there needs to be more discipline in school. The school is not supposed to be a "pleasure dome", it's an institution for learning and the advancement of the individual.

Fat kids are fat because on their own, they DON'T discipline themselves to do something physical every day. At least when they're on a team they have a little incentive not to let teammates down with shitty performance. When they're on their own they fail no one but themselves, and they're kids, so they don't give a shit anyways. They do 2 pushups, then grab ice cream and head back to GTA 4.

They're kids, by nature they're undisciplined. You're telling me you were so on top of your game that your parents never had to tell you to do the chores, clean your room, or do your homework? Get real.

And last I checked, unless you did solos, no one ever played alone. Band was always just that, a BAND.

Playing a contact sport builds character, playing an instrument builds character. Something I've noticed has been increasingly lacking in successive generations. They don't like it? Tough shit.

Hell, the "Freshman 15" is EXACTLY why these kids shouldn't be given the choice. When it's left up to them they're completely out of control!

I would carry on the same policy my elementary school had: 4th grade everyone took Violin. 5th grade you chose an instrument, band or orchestra, and played it until 6th, where you could either keep with it or take chorus. Either way, the kids were learning music, a damn good skill to have by itself imo, but which at a minimum helped with MATH.

I live in Ann Arbor dude, like, the bourgeois capital of the midwest, knowing how to read Liszt earns points. Knowing how to PLAY Liszt earns 2x points.

Hence why one dresses UP to hear Beethoven being played, but dressed DOWN when Rhianna is on stage.

Maybe if more kids learned to play instruments, they wouldn't be so fucking illiterate their freshman year in college.....

At 6/25/08 05:15 PM, Cuppa-LettuceNog wrote: A class of 25 students has $275,000 dollars to spend. That is a LOT of money. You can pay $150,000 that year to hire the absolute best teacher around.

Okay, that's one teacher... what about the other 5 or 6 they go through in one day?

See? It's WAY more then enough, considering schools can do excellent with 4,000 a student.

You're forgetting a LOT of the ancillary costs of running a school. Property costs and maintenance, the people to run those programs like sports, lunches, after-school activities, marketing and equipment for all of those programs, utility costs, transportation costs (busses aint cheap), licensing costs, etc etc.

Try again, you're not taking all variables into consideration.

At 6/25/08 07:01 PM, Imperator wrote:
Thank you for underlining why I think there needs to be more discipline in school. The school is not supposed to be a "pleasure dome", it's an institution for learning and the advancement of the individual.

It's not boot camp.

Fat kids are fat because on their own,

Probably their parent's fault. Kid doesn't buy his food.
Fatness is a vicious cycle. Fat people don't like sports and so they stay fat.

The key to losing weight is not exercise, it's diet. Your body burns calories just by living, eat less and you will lose weight by doing such intense activities as thumb-wrestling and taking a bath.

And last I checked, unless you did solos, no one ever played alone. Band was always just that, a BAND.

Except those loser kids who classical music.
Anyways, there's enough bands already. We don't need more 15 year old kids starting bands because they own drums. Certainly wouldn't waste a dime on making kids do something they do on their own anyway.

Either way, the kids were learning music, a damn good skill to have by itself imo, but which at a minimum helped with MATH.

How is "playing the violin" a good skill to have?
I think doing magic tricks is a much better skill. Or juggling. They should teach magic to kids.

Imperator:

Discipline is indeed one of the main things that needs improvement when it comes to education, but trying to learn kids descipline through subjects and/or activities they definitely won't take advantage of later in life isn't even half as effective as it would have been if the kid had learned discipline through subjects and/or activities that they would have been able to take advantage of later in life. My point is, forcing a 100kg 12-year-old to learn Football is quite useless compared to forcing a 100kg 12-year-old to learn Math.

A couple of interesting cost-analases for comparison to my budget challenge:

http://www.welfareacademy.org/pubs/child care_edu/cost_per_child_early_edu_and_ca re.pdf

http://www.preknow.org/documents/meaning fulinvestmentsbrief_may2008.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1487641 (need JSTOR access)

http://www.hoover.org/pubaffairs/dailyre port/archive/2856591.html

At 6/25/08 07:25 PM, poxpower wrote: It's not boot camp.

Because obviously it's one or the other... Gym is not boot camp, even for fatties.

The key to losing weight is not exercise, it's diet. Your body burns calories just by living, eat less and you will lose weight by doing such intense activities as thumb-wrestling and taking a bath.

Are you fat, or have you ever been fat? Serious question.

Except those loser kids who classical music.

Do I need to stab you through my monitor, pox, or is this just you being a troll?

How is "playing the violin" a good skill to have?
I think doing magic tricks is a much better skill. Or juggling. They should teach magic to kids.

http://www.childrensmusicworkshop.com/ad vocacy/researchontherelationship.html

there are more studies out there if you want...

At 6/25/08 07:25 PM, poxpower wrote:
It's not boot camp.

Once again, leave it to Poxpower to take the example to the absolute extreme.....
Because when I say "more discipline", I obviously mean let's turn all elementary schools into military training institutions......

Lewis Black was right; we don't have Common Sense anymore.

Probably their parent's fault. Kid doesn't buy his food.

Because little Jimmy can do no wrong.

And even if you change it to the problem being their diets, it still doesn't solve the issue. Were you never 7 or something? Do you live in a cave? I guess your parents never told you to "finish your vegetables" either......

Kids, left to their own devices, do NOT tend to eat healthy. They go to the fast food joints, feed their broccoli to the dog, trade their lunches, and buy absolute shit. Kids buy shit food ALL THE TIME. You act like no child on Earth ever leaves their parents' basement.

18 year olds entering college typically gain 15 fucking pounds because Mommy and Daddy aren't there telling them to eat vegetables. They eat pizza and coffee for breakfast, and greasy burgers for lunch, and pound beer like it was the last case on Earth.

What planet do you live on where it's the "parent's fault" that the fatass trades his apple for pudding?

Except those loser kids who classical music.

That'd be me asshat. And that relative clause needs work good sir. I'd rag on that more, but I think the connection here based on the link I provided should be sufficient. You're not that bad....

Anyways, there's enough bands already. We don't need more 15 year old kids starting bands because they own drums. Certainly wouldn't waste a dime on making kids do something they do on their own anyway.

You're showing your comfort zones quite clearly Pox. What high schools do you know that sanction rock bands?

Allow me to clarify:

"Band" in elementary and high school refers to the collection of instruments outside your strings.

The elementary "orchestra" was your violins, violas, cellos. The elementary "band" was your woodwinds, brass, percussion. Unfortunately their terminology sucked, but they separated the two and couldn't find any better terms.

How is "playing the violin" a good skill to have?

Takes a rigorous discipline, and learning how to read music tends to help with things like fractions.
Tell me how knowing how to dissect a frog is a good skill to have?

But please, take it to the extreme, and tell me what a waste of money it is to fund kids to play in chamber orchestras till they're 25.

there are more studies out there if you want...

Fuck it. It should just be considered common fuck knowledge, but he's starting to irritate me. Once again, objective truth takes a backseat to winning the goddamn argument.....

http://ur.rutgers.edu/focus/article/Musi c%20helps%20students%20retain%20math/177 9/
http://www.apa.org/releases/music_memory .html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200 4/08/040820082332.htm

I mean, it shouldn't take a fucking genius to figure out that having to know half notes in 6/8 time might have some sort of effect when the kid learns how to add 3 1/4 to 2 5/8 but apparently shit needs to be spelled out to the Nth degree.

At 6/21/08 06:46 PM, Idiot-Finder wrote: For science class have the kids watch Bill Nye The Science Guy.

We do that at my school. Those are the best films ever!!!

At 6/21/08 05:50 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Stop being a bunch of ethical sissies and start being more disciplinary.

That's all i have to say.

Worst idea in terms of educational merit.

Kids like to learn, but they hate to be taught.

Basically, classroom time should be dedicated more to open discussion and less to getting the answer correct. Getting the right answer is for tests and assignments.

hell, it should be boot camp.

At 6/25/08 07:21 PM, Ravariel wrote:

Try again, you're not taking all variables into consideration.

I was just giving an example of how much money $275,000 was. More realistically, those textbooks and learning aids would only need to be bought, say, 3 times a year ($8,300 a year-- add $16,600 a year), and new laptops (let's just keep them in class, now keeping them) every 5 years; add $36,6000. That's enough to pay your share of the busses, the technical repairmen at the school, etc.

Or, how about a real life example;
Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.

The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.

The article fails to mention, but in that class was also a total-emmersement foreign language program where students studying a foreign language took ALL their classes in that language, and there was a fleet of Taxi's to drive students to their schools instead of buses.

At 6/25/08 09:49 PM, puddinN64 wrote:

At 6/21/08 06:46 PM, Idiot-Finder wrote: For science class have the kids watch Bill Nye The Science Guy.

We do that at my school. Those are the best films ever!!!

I used to watch it at PBS, it was fun and you can learn many things as well.

Cut the funding for the war in IRAQ for two days....that's it...just two.

Use the money to get me a DECENT TEACHER (I'm looking at you epperson)

Also...I Want a school issued laptop...and a steak.

And Stop The advisory Bullshit

(Some of that won't make sence unless you go to my school)

So, cuppa, what you're telling me is that a school that spent $11,900 per student, that had the highest per-student cost in the country, had a bad result in test scores? My gawd, the horror!

nevermind your insistence that schools (implying ALL schools) got 11k/student...

I've never said that spending a lot is necessarily better... you also need to spend well. Using Taxis? Pff, that school was wasting money like whoa. Also, your excerpt doesn't mention what scores they're talking about. Are they talking about the standardized NCLB test scores, average GPA, ACT/SAT scores? Can you link to the full article, or is what you posted all there is?

Anyway, as the studies I linked to showed, it costs approximately 9k/yr to educate a primary-school child. We can extrapolate this into high school, and be safe in the knowledge that the cost will rise as the child gets older, uses more resources at school (food, etc), needs more specialized teachers, etc. Also, the average spending per student at schools is about $7500 as of the 2001-02 school year.

Sure, schools can probably get by on 4k/student per year, and in fact Michigan does, but it doesn't mean that they'll get better. Simply removing funding won't fix anything any more than adding funding will. We need a fundamental change in the way we teach our highschoolers. Implementing a Major/Minor system (similar to college), lengthening class times, having the States determine the standardized testing (and having different tests based on Major) not the Feds, and powering down teacher's unions will be the first good steps in that direction.

And hey, once these changes are shown to work (which, I admit, they may not), if they can be done cheaper, then bully for us.

Simple solution: better teachers, better doctrines, more effective management (MUCH MORE), better funding

Basically all the simple solutions are common sense equations. They have been spelt out for years, unattainable.

If I had the complex solution I would be rich.

I'll think about it. ;)