A bad way to address underperforming students?

truethat said:
I think you are trapped in your world view my friend. And sadly teachers like you continue to trap young people as they come along.
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In my friend's defense, I must say that I hold drkitten responsible for expanding my world view greatly. If nothing else, I have always found him/her willing to answer my (probably quite moronic) questions conclusively.

mike3 said:
What about poor performance by any students, non-white and white? Also, why does the racial bias exist in the first place, and what could be done to blast that root cause?
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Many things, presuming we can identify the root causes - there's certainly not going to be one cause that's universally responsible for these students doing poorly. Given limited resources, it makes the most economic/moral sense to build the programs according to the needs of the majority and most of these poorly performing students are members of minority races. If you'd like to contribute more money to expanding the program to include all students, school districts are not commonly going to refuse donations.

truethat said:
Part of the solution in my opinion would be to add to the schema of the students by engaging them in internships or part time jobs in these kinds of field. Say data processing in a lab or calling in blood test results.
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In many cases jobs are made interesting by or because of the responsibilities inherent to them - the less responsibility involved (aka data entry, whether in a lab or not) the less interesting a job is. In this case I'd argue that grades are necessary precisely to help us gauge the level of responsibility an applicant is capable of handling.

~ Matt
 
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Hey Matt C, you're on a message board not in a classroom. So that's one difference. And you might like this line of thinking and more power to ya. I wouldn't necessarily say that you should do it my way. But unfortunately many educators are people who are willing to follow the rules and not rock the boat, cow tow to authority, be willing to do tons of paperwork, be bored and deal with crap all day. Not everyone is like that. I'm not saying that's all a teacher has to offer. I have a lot of respect for teachers. However pushing this world view on students with the expectation that students must accept boredom and should do paperwork just "because' and treating students as if they are failures in life if they don't follow this perspective is no different than shoving a relgious view down a students throat and punishing them for not buying into it.
 
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daenku32 said:
They are still going to learn science...
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They may learn science facts, but not the scientific method.

Science Fact: Water is composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen.

Scientific Method: Run a direct electrical current through a volume of water. Measure the volume of the gases released at each electrode. How does the total volume of the two gases compare to the volume lost from the water? How do the volumes of the two gases compare to each other?

Eliminate the labwork, and you have a buncha singing jocks remembering the facts only as long as required to pass the next test.

Science is not just memorization; true science must include experimentation. Not only that, but a true scientist should also must know how to determine what experiments to perfom. Otherwise...

Science Fact: Water is composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen.

Interpretation: Drink a glass full of water. Write a poem describing the experience and your beliefs and/or feelings about water. Extra credit will be granted if you set this poem to music and perform it in front of the class. Instruments are optional, but must be provided at the student's own expense.
 
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But what if you have no interest in being a true scientist. What if (god forbid) your interests are in sports, or competative skiing? Why should students be forced to learn something they probably will never relate to or use in the rest of their lives?

If students ARE interested in science then let them enjoy it. I know plenty of kids that love science.
 
truethat said:
Racial bias would likely be explained by the students schema. Most minorities don't have family members working in the science fields so it holds little interest for them.

Take my second underperforming son. His father owns four stores in Manhattan. He's giving each of the boys a store when they graduate. So for them, unless they are really interested in science, they won't be drawn to that.

Take a student whose mother is a nurse, that student is more likely to be drawn to the field of medicine than my son.

Unfortunately these are the legacies of racism in this country and we will ultimately have to wait until it rectifies itself over time.

Part of the solution in my opinion would be to add to the schema of the students by engaging them in internships or part time jobs in these kinds of field. Say data processing in a lab or calling in blood test results.

But many young people are simply not interested because it doesn't relate to their life in any way.

Movies like I am Legend and other films that depict the black protagonist as a scientist is also another way. When is the last time you saw a Mexican doctor in a movie?

Creating a new paradigm would go a lot further in making a difference.
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Re: Mexican doctors in movies - I do see them a good bit - but then I love Mexican (and most other ) horror films!!
 
fuelair; said:
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The biggest problem with teachers/classes as I see it, is that teachers have preferred teaching methods and students have preferred learning methods. Why no one has hit on the brilliance of assigning students to teachers based on the preferred style of each, I do not know as it would be by far the most productive method for all...
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According to the research presented here http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-140513111X.html that is a myth of popular psychology, often taught in Education departments.
 
mike3 said:
What about poor performance by any students, non-white and white?
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Some students will always perform poorly, just as some students will always perform well. It's only in Lake Wobegon that all children are above average. The school can't fix all instances of varying performance.

They can, however, try to fix systematic instances of varying performance -- if all students of [identifiable group X] do poorly relative to their peer group (or which is usually [identifiable group Y]), that is a systematic problem that the school can try to address. It's also in many cases something that the school is legally required to try to address.

(Analogy -- If your company just laid off 20% of its work force, that's unfortunate. But if your company just laid of 20% of its work force, and they all happened to be black, that's not just unfortunate for them, but that's a problem for you.)

Also, why does the racial bias exist in the first place,
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A lot of ink has been spilled on this, and it's not practical to summarize all the theories that have been presented.

and what could be done to blast that root cause?
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Lots. But they all involve spending money to blast that cause, money that has to come from somewhere.
 
truethat said:
But what if you have no interest in being a true scientist. What if (god forbid) your interests are in sports, or competative skiing? Why should students be forced to learn something they probably will never relate to or use in the rest of their lives?
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Well, even the students who are interested in skiing will need to do something to earn a living.

The NCAA has been running commercials recently pointing out that something like 98% of their scholar-athletes (at the college level) go on to work in something other than the sport that they played at college. (I was certainly one of them; I was a runner, but nowhere near as good as I would have needed to be to turn professional, or even to coach.)

The NFL drafts, for example, about 250 players a year. With walk-ons, perhaps 300 new players enter the league each year. The NCAA gives away nearly 8,000 football scholarships each year, so fewer than 5% of recruited football scholarship athletes successfully turn pro (and many of those draftees, of course, will be cut before they play their first regular season game). And, of course, most high school football players are not good enough to be offered a college scholarship. The odds are even worse for most other sports -- how many professional golf players are out there, and how many new players enter the PGA tour each year?

So part of the job of a teacher is to recognize that even a student who is primarily interested in sports needs to know how to read, to write, to do math, to understand science, and so forth. And to teach the students those things that she's not interested in but needs to know anyway.
 
Jeff Corey said:
According to the research presented here http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-140513111X.html that is a myth of popular psychology, often taught in Education departments.
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Nice JC!

Here's a very recent article finding no evidence that people have learning styles:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091216162356.htm

I'd submit that a large % of american kids will never ever learn science to any appropriate standard for various reasons like lack of interest and or ability, and the fact that many people can live lives with high-levels of well-being even if they're wholly ignorant of how science works.

Many of these people will still contribute to society; even if they hold less than rational / science based beliefs.

Til we fit our education with the fact of reality that people differ, all this is gonna fail.

I think blank slate has wasted billions of dollars in education funding. Imagine taking money spent on ignoring science and applying it to global warming or killing more people for oil!
 
This is unfortunate news. Just the same, I find myself unable to agree with the sentiment that says "cut sports, cut choir, cut prom!". That feels just as wrong to me, and I just can't claim without reservation that science is unambiguously more important than the rest (ok, except prom).

The academic rigour and respect for truth that one can learn from a good science teacher/program is vitally important, to be sure. That said, I think there is something deeply valuable to be taken from an education in music and the arts. I live what I consider a balanced and fulfilling life, and I honestly believe such extracurriculars play(ed) a huge role in that. Sports/P.E. as well. Giving kids a structure for developing and sustaining their physical health is not something that I can convince myself is of a secondary importance.

So, I guess my overall feeling is that any proposal to cut education is a non-starter; every formulation is a losing proposition. IMHO, schools should not be about merely creating good workers, but good people. I think a lot of the classes people are calling for to be cut in place of science can be just as important in achieving that end. For me the real question is one of priorities and why schools find themselves in this position in the first place. I'm no pacifist, but I believe the answer to the problem has a lot more to do with military vs. education spending than it does science vs. choir.

Or maybe I'm simply not cut out to make tough decisions.
 
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He is at least on article telling how university sports are losing money.
http://www.doubleazone.com/2008/07/athletics_departments_face_fin.php

About ten years ago I went to university and lived with a jock in the dorms. He claimed that the football teamed there got tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships. The thing is the astrophysics dept got a combination of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants. A couple of years latter they got a grant for a computational astronomy dept of a million dollars, a lot more then the footbal team ever brought in. I am not saying get rid of the sports departments but I think the jocks should see reality, that most of their programs cost money.
 
I don't know what the local politics are like in Berkeley, but if I read a story like that in my town my first thought would be that threatening to cut lab science was just a way to blackmail taxpayers to agree to an override of the cap on their property taxes.

I don't mind a tax increase to fix schools if it can be shown that as much waste as possible has been trimmed from education costs, and that the extra money actually will bring an improvement in results. I'm inclined to think that a far more productive place to trim than lab science is in administrative personnel, though.
 
Davidlpf said:
He is at least on article telling how university sports are losing money.
http://www.doubleazone.com/2008/07/athletics_departments_face_fin.php


About ten years ago I went to university and lived with a jock in the dorms. He claimed that the football teamed there got tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships. The thing is the astrophysics dept got a combination of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants. A couple of years latter they got a grant for a computational astronomy dept of a million dollars, a lot more then the footbal team ever brought in. I am not saying get rid of the sports departments but I think the jocks should see reality, that most of their programs cost money.
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Ok, the way you phrased that I'm guessing you're not an American, so first a few questions....

Scholarships: Wouldn't that take money from the schools? Here, the NCAA pays for some, but most are from the school itself.

Are they counting donations and jersey/tee/sweat shirt/cooler/etc... sales?

Does any one have the actual numbers, as far as cost for sports, for most schools?
 
I do not know about Duke.
The university I went was in Canada and I doubt they made a fortune on sales. Maybe they got donations but I doubt they came close to the astronomy dept., and the many other departments combined. The thing is it might be good for school spirit but most teams are financially bad for the schools. Plus high schools should not be ran like business in the first place.
 
Prometheus said:
I don't know what the local politics are like in Berkeley, but if I read a story like that in my town my first thought would be that threatening to cut lab science was just a way to blackmail taxpayers to agree to an override of the cap on their property taxes.

I don't mind a tax increase to fix schools if it can be shown that as much waste as possible has been trimmed from education costs, and that the extra money actually will bring an improvement in results. I'm inclined to think that a far more productive place to trim than lab science is in administrative personnel, though.
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If you read the link I posted earlier ("this is interesting...") it appears the science labs are offered before and after regular school hours - zero and 8th period. This was established a few years ago and funded through a special bond referendum. I imagine this is part of what's pissing off some parents there - they voted to fund these labs and now the principle is proposing their elimination.
 
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