This is part one of four in my Educational Reform Series. Each post will highlight a (non-exhaustive) set of potential reforms, with a brief description of each suggested change.
This post deals with elementary and secondary education.
Implement Tracking: The flat bell curve is a myth perpetrated by educational romantics and liberals. A distribution of ability exists for mental acumen in every subject area. The general intelligence factor, g, is an accurate approximation of overall intelligence and is reflected in student performance. Education must begin accepting innate differences in intelligence by instituting tracking. Tracking places students in different classes based on exhibited ability.
This groups students with similar peers, encourages benign competition, and allows a curriculum to be tailored appropriate to the class' average ability. In America, tracking only appears during high school; yet measures are even underway to undermine this positive aspect of education (stuffing AP classes with underqualified NAMs). Tracking should begin in first grade. It should be flexible so that late bloomers are accounted for. The tracks should be based primarily on mid-year and end of year standardized tests that largely reflect g and some measure of learning. Individual tracks will study different material in a different fashion, with higher tracks stressing more creative critical thinking and lower tracks focusing on learned skills.
The only reasonable opposition to tracking is that some rare students will lose out. Possibly, their emotional well-being negatively affected school performance or extreme test anxiety underestimated their actual ability. This will undoubtedly occur, but education spending should be viewed as an investment in the country's future. In accordance with this, rare individual sacrifices for a greater utilitarian benefit must be accepted.
Increase and Encourage Vocational Training: College prep represents an imminent path to failure for the left half of the Bell Curve. The 'college for everyone' brigade falsely imbues these children with the idea that they're capable of rigorous intellectual challenges. Rather, their potential success in a blue-collar position is wasted as they struggle through meaningless, esoteric academia. Education, at any stage, should provide a means for success later in life and for many, that doesn't mean a college education. Vocational and real-world apprenticeships will prove beneficial for a large portion of the population. Vocational training is a more seasonable avenue than wasting four years meandering through Hawthorne and trigonometry.
Why is vocational training scoffed at by elites? As a means to justify their own egos, elites consider intelligence and intelligence based activities as the zenith of value and sophistication. By denigrating practical education and glorifying academia, their constructed value system depicts them as the paragon of esteem.
Instill basic values: silly girl and others have advocated this objective for elementary and secondary education, especially with regards to the left half and their social dysfunction. While religion largely remains the supposed bastion and purveyor of morality, educational institutions could provide a secular, practical indoctrination of values. This does not entail any moral teachings on contentious issues that will remain the domain of personal choice. Rather, the values considered here would include cooperation, discouraging aggressive responses, teaching future time orientation, and withstanding completion of tedious tasks. To live as productive and functioning members of society, the left half must learn discretion, patience, and the consequences of violent outbursts. Will this have any lasting effect, given the natural tendencies of those with low IQ? I'm not sure, but it's worth a shot. Currently, we have groveling teachers afraid to condemn "special kids", desperately shirking helicopter parents, and using teaching methods designed to coddle students, not mold them.
Increase use of rote memorization and repetition: For many topics, the left half is largely unable to process the nuances of intellectual discussion. In opposition to educational ethos, this is inconsequential in learning. For example, take long division. Even the smartest kids barely understand the rationale behind the algorithm, yet through repetition, they master the process. The left half needn't understand the proof of Pythagorean theorem or the reasoning underlying the supply/demand economy. Rote memorization has been unfairly demonized in spite of its efficacy.
Streamline curriculum by discarding useless material: I'll refrain from suggesting when school should end. Some believe gifted children can handle college material at age 16. I'll remain agnostic on the issue. Rather, in implementing the above reforms, the curriculum must be streamlined. Right now, students meander through tons of useless tasks, many of which become lost in a haze of boredom. History is a necessary component of education, but stick with the important stuff, not the creation myths of the ancient Mayas or some obscure treaty from 1300's France. Students must understand literature, but how many essays on transcendentalism can a hormonal 15 year old handle? Most of math, the subject supposedly ubiqutious throughout our lives, is superflous. The solving of the quadratic formula, the number of degrees in an n-sided polygon, and rotating a function around a given axis to find the volume of a 3-d object all fit this description.
Let me qualify this last suggestion briefly. This overabundance does not always apply to the highest tracks, those likely pursuing technical and intellectually loaded fields, as their future depends on understanding high level concepts. Rather, the left half suffers most intensely from such insipid study of almost no use in the practical world.
Part Two: How the college admissions process is failing.
14 comments:
I agree on most of your points except tracking starting in first grade. Accuracy of testing children this young is compromised by their immaturity and would likely disadvantage boys significantly. If a kid is tired or needs to go to the bathroom, he will quit working on a standardized test. The younger you test, the more it favors girls who are more compliant and less wiggly.
Having said that many districts offer academic testing for preK students entering Kindergarten. If they didn't, a huge fraction of able students would be in private schools. They assure these parents that their kids will be is separate classes. Parents can apply for the gifted programs every year, so even if you move into the district or didn't qualify last year, you can still get in the next year. If you are a really pushy parent you can get your kid in just by bullying/charming a counselor. Failing grades are an automatic out of the program as are low conduct marks.
The lack of focus on vocational education demonstrates the educrats' misunderstanding/denial of fundamental human nature, the desire to make money. Kids as young as 12 or 14 can understand the idea of a money-paying job. Kids who know they will never go to college get depressed at the thought of enduring all of high school before even beginning job training. They just want a job and to live their lives. Too much of the high school curriculum is a dead end for them. Job training and apprenticeships are what they want, not college prep. The curriculum is just begging for dropouts.
I agree that the math is too theoretical. Most students need practical math. Many schools offer classes in math models after Algebra II. The rest of the curriculum is too feminized. Too much emphasis on literature instead of reporting and essays. Often English classes are taught by less than objective teachers. Too much multiculti "appreciation" and too little logic. Literature is no more a job skill than Art. It should be largely part of the elective classes. I am not arguing for zero lit, just much less. Teaching Shakespeare to a 16 year old with a 3rd grade reading level is insanity. Show them the movie and then teach them how to read an apartment rental contract, a skill everyone needs.
We need to see schools as practical training which serve the practical needs of students. The law states that students are entitled to a free appropriate public education. Unfortunately the curriculum is not really appropriate to the needs of most students.
I agree with the original post and the first comment. I would be a lot better off today if I hadn't been convinced to attend a college and take a curriculum that was beyond my ability to complete, and I know of other people in similar situations.
Gee, I hope someone is listening to you. Being one of the great unwashed masses of the innumerate, I believe I understand what the left half is going through, being forced to try to learn things that are beyond their ken. It's no wonder they become truants, delinquents, or - worse - burdened with student debt and a salary that will never allow them to pay it off. From Algebra II on, I was mystified most of the time. If I had been told, "You must enroll in an all-math, all-the-time curriculum, because that's all we're going to offer you," I don't want to think about what would have resulted.
Singapore's public school system implements tracking, but it begins at age 10/grade 4.
Is it flexible enough to accommodate 'late bloomers'? Hard to say - they tend to be difficult to identify because by the time they 'bloom', the peer/expectation effects of being in a lower track have already kicked in. If they can't be identified, they can't be retracked.
Second, the distinction between 'vocational' and 'academic' seems pretty fuzzy (at least to me). Is a BA in hospitality mgmt or game design vocational? Is a BA in accounting and finance academic?
As for vocational education, Singapore's experience might be of interest. Despite spending far more on vocational schooling (and vocational-track students who are the vast majority of the student population), vocational education is still scoffed at... not by elites per se, but by the market in terms of wages, career advancement etc. Maybe the market isn't being efficient? Maybe vocational training jobs are just too easily outsourced?
Very well put together, dude.
"Why is vocational training scoffed at by elites? As a means to justify their own egos, elites consider intelligence and intelligence based activities as the zenith of value and sophistication. By denigrating practical education and glorifying academia, their constructed value system depicts them as the paragon of esteem."
That, and they can encourage individuals who would otherwise do well in a trade to go to college and rack up tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I remarked in this conversation with Obsidian that reinvigorating the blue-collar careers would go a long way towards helping poor blacks and whites.
I think part of the problem is that many elites feel guilty and ashamed about their superior intelligence.
Here's a thought experiment: Imagine an MIT Professor is being interviewed and is asked how he got where he is. Suppose he answered by saying "First of all, I was born with innate intelligence superior to that of 99% of the population."
Everyone would think "gosh, what an elitist asshole!" Even though his statement is true.
So the professor is incentivized to mumble the usual bullshit about how anyone can achieve with enough interest and motivation.
Similarly, elites everywhere are incentivized to push college for everyone. It makes them feel good about themselves and look good to others. On the flip side, they are afraid to state the obvious that for many people, college is a total waste of time.
My opinion only.
sabril:
"Here's a thought experiment: Imagine an MIT Professor is being interviewed and is asked how he got where he is. Suppose he answered by saying "First of all, I was born with innate intelligence superior to that of 99% of the population."
Everyone would think "gosh, what an elitist asshole!" Even though his statement is true.
So the professor is incentivized to mumble the usual bullshit about how anyone can achieve with enough interest and motivation."
I've actually witnessed this!! This absolutely brilliant beyond belief MIT prof, Seth Lloyd, was on a Science Channel show about a year and a half ago. I can't find a link for it, but they took 7 people all experts in their own field (him, chess grandmaster, fighter pilot, award winning artist, etc.) and ran them through a bunch of tasks to see who was the "smartest".
Well the first task looked to be a regular IQ test. Of course, he scored the best, off the charts. Well after they were all informed of the scores, he says something like:
"Well, come on guys, it's only because I do this kind of stuff everyday."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv76_KYLayI&feature=PlayList&p=19FB99BF32EA99E9&index=61
@ mike:
Thanks for the link.
mike's link provides the background for the program. At the link below is what I describe in my comment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MsiXVGLRQc&NR=1
His statement is at 0:48.
It all comes back to the curriculum. Educators, the US president included want to focus on the quality of instruction and not what is being taught. Students will strive to meet their own goals. If they are in a program of zero interest that does not lead to a money paying job, they will not even try to learn. What would be the point? How many of you would put forth a ton of effort to learn to knit and paint ceramic figurines? Very few. It is pointless and boring. I like sweaters and stories as much as the next guy but I am not going to make money creating them, so get me out of here! Much of the curriculum is functionally equivalent to knitting and painting ceramic figurines. Difficult to learn and has no job market value.
Vocational education serves students and society by training people to do work that needs to be done. There are many fields that will be facing critical shortages soon. Fields like nursing. Plenty of girls who are 13 or 14 are intelligent enough to be in an RN or LVN, or nurses assistant program. That way they can graduate at 17 and get a real job. A job that needs to be done and which they will work hard to study for because it pays real $$. Right now you can't even start a nursing assistant program till after you graduate at 18 or 19. A big waste of public $$ and the students' time. Society can be assured of their qualifications because they have to pass state licensing exams and go through supervised internships just like they do now.
By ignoring human differences in time orientation, we set kids up for failure. A 14 year old facing 4 years of high school and then 3-4 years more for training or college, just says, "Forget it, I will get a GED, or not, and get a job, but I am not spending 4 more years institutionalized. No way. I want a life where I don't have to get permission to go to the bathroom."
Measured IQ and proxies for it do favor older people. At their site, the College Board has statistics for people both older and younger who take the SAT. Obviously an 8th grader who gets a 1600 combined math verbal is probably smarter than a 45 year old engineer who gets a 1600.
I don't know what IQ test they used for the artist, astronaut and physicist, but there are different IQ tests for different ranges of IQ. You don't give kindergarten kids the same test you would give adults because you assume that you are testing a different range. There are IQ tests for expected Low, Normal, and High intelligence which are really only accurate for people who are actually in that range. We could probably all do really well on the test they give kindergartners but it wouldn't be accurate. That is the guy who missed one or two could actually be smarter than a guy who didn't miss any. No test is 100% accurate. The people at the very top need to be retested with a test that is designed to assess a higher range.
Dallas Morning News article today:
A new state law aims to stop school district policies that bar teachers from giving students grades lower than a 50, a 60 or even a 70.
Dallas ISD officials say that because the law doesn't specifically mention report card grades, district policy remains that teachers may not assign a grade lower than a 50 on six-week grades.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/081809dnmetgradingchanges.3d76d47.html#slcgm_comments_anchor
Grading policies are another way educators game the system. If you think the teens are irresponsible manipulators, trust me, school administrators are worse. At least the kids have the excuse of youth and inexperience.
"I don't know what IQ test they used"
The series was very amusing. They ran a battery of tests, ranging from the conventional (written IQ test with some bogus knowledge questions), to the practical (try to get a cork out of a wine bottle - everyone failed), to the bizarre (how many things can you think of to do with a sock - "put it on my face and pretend it's a mustache" was an acceptable answer), to the absurd (shoot a basketball while wearing goggles that turn everything upside-down).
After a dozen or so tests and several more that weren't shown, they revealed the final tally, with no explanation of how they arrived at it. Shockingly, the white male physicist and the black female "dramatist" came out tied for first place!
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