Midwestern Public Education

Milossarian · February 20, 2000, 9:51pm

I am a Midwest public education victim, northern Michigan, graduating class of 68, no computer lab until 8th grade, then it consisted of about 6 computers.

So, you’re disillusioned that your Midwestern education consists mainly of memorization and regurgitation, and that you’re then going to be at a disadvantage when you go on to college and they actually ask you to think?

Hmmm … maybe, if you actually take the time to commit the lessons before you now to your memory, you will have some historical, factual and cultural basis on which to spew forth those collegiate thoughts.

You want a public education that allows you to discuss every issue, to share your youthful, uninformed thoughts and opinions throughout every portion of the curriculum?
Is there a Jerry Springer Audience Member Academy out there?

“You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment.” - Bill Hicks

Falcon · February 20, 2000, 10:07pm

First, a rebuttal:

OVERALL, perhaps. But Purdue IS one of the best ENGINEERING colleges in the country. For whatever reason, it’s just not counted as one of the “better” schools by US News. (Whose rankings suck anyway.) And since when was second tier that bad? Hell, the school I went to is ranked second tier, and it’s known as one of the better schools in the nation for liberal arts.

And now to my rant. Rousseau, shut up. Yes, you need to be able to think and synthesize information. However, to DO that, you need to have the basics memorized first. All my advanced economics courses would have been pretty pointless if I hadn’t memorized the laws of supply and demand. Being able to argue about civil rights in my government seminars and determine public policy in my current job would be impossible if I hadn’t sat down in high school and memorized what the branches of government do.

So, please…go back east, and complain about how you had to memorize things. And when you can’t look it up any longer on your first college test, I hope you fucking flunk.

Oh, and FTR, I live on the east coast. In DC. And I learned BOTH memorization and how to think in my high school classes. Mine were a lot like what Talera’s sound like. But wait…that can’t be. Classes in DC and the Midwest being the SAME??? Never.

TVeblen · February 20, 2000, 10:42pm

Rousseau, you’re screwed, both in your thinking and your prospects for the future. You’re pissing and moaning about being patronized, intellectually stifled and not allowed to choose your own educational methods. Oh, and that you’re smarter than your teachers–and no doubt the cud-chewing drones who are your classmates.

Because you don’t like your high school, you pout, whine and issue a blanket condemnation of about 1/4 of the country. Those bovine boinking, straw-chewing dolts! The nerve, boring and stifiling poor Rousseau!

This ain’t exactly a persuasive argument in favor of your intellectual attainments. Oddly enough, it sounds like the wailing of a spoiled rotten little snot.

Your time has been wasted by futile teachers who dared to ask something about the history of the science they’re teaching? Of course they’re just stalling and wasting your valuable time, because obviously they’re just second-raters stuck in the boonies. Who needs to know about Crick and Watson or Penzias and Wilson, etc? Possibly because the history of science can teach, you conceited twit.

And being forced to memorize and learn stupid basics, when it’s so much simpler to just look things up on a chart–well, how boring. You’d much rather take, yes, the easy route and ignore that knowledge is interrelated and a process. The charts and tools are distillations of broader intellectual concepts, and slogging through all that dreary, totally-beneath-you drudgery is the best way to genuinely learn foundations.

Oh, but I forgot. You’re deeply concerned with being challenged. After all, forget the chance that’s being handed to you on a fucking plate. You don’t have to appreciate the opportunity, or the value of it because you already know better.

Rousseau, your statements here are some of the most disgusting, self-pitying, lazy, self-serving, limp, lowliest outhouse seepage it’s been my misfortune to read. No chance to learn is beneath you, chump.

Go back to the east coast or wherever you want. You’ll take along this fact: learning is a life-long challenge, and it rarely comes in comfy, pre-fab forms. You’re flunking the challenge kid, and a change of venue won’t matter.

Veb

Wendell_Wagner · February 20, 2000, 11:05pm

Without trying to address the general issue of whether there’s any overall difference between the educational systems in the Midwest and elsewhere, let me make a couple of points:

It’s not clear that schools which employ large amounts of memorization are better than those which rely more on discussion/discovery techniques, even if it seems that memorization seems to produce higher results on standardized tests given within a year of taking the courses. The real goal is how well the student has learned the ideas of the course and how long they remember those ideas. The proper way to resolve this then is to see how well the students do in higher courses and how well they do in applying their knowledge in their later life. I have no idea how memorization-based learning or discovery-based learning would come out in such tests. Does anyone have any reliable, non-anecdotal evidence about this?

Incidentally, the Japanese just decided recently to start to turn away from their heavily memorization-based education. They decided that in the long run something more discovery/discussion-based would be better.

aha says:

> I know a guy who thought he was smarter
> than his teachers all through high
> school…still does. And he may be, who
> knows or cares? He’s currently making 5.50
> cents an hour in a lacky job because he
> failed to catch the subtle people/life
> skills that many teachers include along
> with academic lessons taught. He was just
> too damn smart.

Let’s see now. I thought I was smarter than my teachers in high school. Perhaps that was because I was. I now make $36 per hour. If I had tried to please all the students and teachers who wanted me to fit into their stereotypes of how a student at my high school should act, I would, at best, now be a high school teacher, making a little more than half of what I’m now making (since they couldn’t even conceive of getting any better degree than that). I wouldn’t even be a principal, since only football coaches become principals. I would never have moved away from my hometown, since (according to them) there’s nothing anywhere else worth seeing. I wouldn’t be reading all the time, since wanting to learn anything more than what’s necessary to pass your courses just makes you a nerd (according to them). I would have gotten a gun and blown my head off, since (according to them) being only 4’11", I was too small to play football and thus didn’t even deserve to exist.

Sorry to sound bitter, but while it’s true that to some degree you do have to learn how to deal with people like your fellow students and your teachers, to some degree you have to learn that there’s a big, wide world out there and you don’t have to spend your life with the people you went to high school with.

TVeblen writes:

> Before you get your undies in a knot,
> consider that Iowa consistently ranks
> first in the nation in quality of public
> education.

Could you cite me the statistics that show this? I’m not saying that I don’t believe it, I’m just saying that I want to see some reliable, non-anecdotal statistics to back it up. Let me give you an example of some statistics that don’t prove this. Several years ago, in a Washington Post article, there was a list of the average SAT scores in each state. I thought it was intersting that states in the upper Midwest seemed to generally have higher scores and Iowa had the highest score of all (not by a great amount, mind you, but by a significant amount). In an article the next day about the same subject, the Post explained that it was not useful to compare states using just the SAT scores. Remember, SAT tests are not given to all American high school students, nor are they given to all American high school students going to college. What is true is that nearly all college-bound students take either the SAT or the ACT (or both). ACT scores are used mostly by Midwestern public universities and some Midwestern private colleges. In general, the closer you get to Iowa (where the ACT tests are created and scored), the more likely a college is to ask for ACT scores. The only students taking the SAT test in Iowa are those applying to out-of-state (and usually better out-of-state) universities. Thus the average SAT scores were higher without this proving anything.

I’m not saying that it might not be true that education in Iowa is better. I’d just like to see some accurate statistics.

Melatonin · February 20, 2000, 11:44pm

Smarts don’t get you through life. Adaptability does.

Maybe you ARE smarter than your teachers. Chances are, though, they know a hell of a lot more about life and factoring trinomials than you do.

Let me not be mistaken as any sort of champion for public education. I thought it sucked when I was being subjected to it (in the East, in the West, and points between.) And I bitched about it, too. Not on a bulletin board, though. In the local newspapers. I found this to be a more effective way of communicating my discontent to the people who might have the power to do something about it.

Of course, I didn’t just stick around bitching about public education and sneering at my teachers and classmates, groaning about how I was being treated like a kid and how the system was not geared towards fostering the intellectual growth of kids like myself. You know why? Cause it’s PUBLIC EDUCATION. It’s not supposed to be geared towards kids like I was, or towards you Rouss. Public Education is designed to educate the masses in the most streamlined possible way.

Of course, that screws some of us. But if we’re so smart, we should be able to figure out a way to foster our OWN intellectual growth, and look at the Public Education Factory as training in the sort of groveling and subordinating rituals with which ALL of US will have to wrestle at some point in time in our lives.

If you’re not getting what you feel you need out of school, why don’t you just drop out, get your GED, and toot your ass over to community college?

Kyla · February 21, 2000, 1:07am

As much as I dislike getting involved in these Pit arguments, I’d like to point out that any college education comes from self-motivation. You can get a terrible education at Stanford (which doesn’t have a grade of F, and therefore is impossible to flunk out of) and a great education at your local state college. It all depends on what you put into it. Rankings mean little to nothing.

~Harborina

“Don’t Do It.”

Wendell_Wagner · February 21, 2000, 3:59am

I understand your point, but the fact is that if you want to get that great education recognized, the best way to do it is to go to a top college and do well there. Do you seriously think that doing your best at a third-rate state university will get you as much recognition (for graduate school admission or job interviews or whatever) at doing your best at a top college? Think about it. An admissions officer for a top graduate program (or a recruiter for a good entry-level job) has applications for a slot in a graduate program (or for that good job). After eliminating the clearly second-rate applicants, he still has applications from four people who went to Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, and Princeton. They have grade-point averages ranging from 3.74 to 3.89. He also has your application. You went to Podunk State and got a GPA of 3.97. He also knows from experience that a Podunk State student is on the average equal to one with a GPA about a half-point lower at a top school. I’m willing to bet that your application is the first one he’s going to eliminate. Of course, you may be smarter than those other people. You may be better educated. How is he going to know that though? He’s got to go with the student who has challenged himself most, and it’s most likely it’s one of the ones who went to a top school.

Furthermore, if you want to challenge yourself, you should go to the top school you can get into just to prove it to yourself. Do you want to spend the rest of your life as the biggest fish in a small pond? Wouldn’t you rather find out if you could be the biggest fish in the big pond?

Kyla · February 21, 2000, 7:05am

Wendell, I don’t disagree with you. I thought we were talking about education and self-fulfillment.

~Harborina

“Don’t Do It.”

Wendell_Wagner · February 21, 2000, 8:42am

Kyla,

Well, you did say that “Rankings mean little to nothing.” If you mean that they mean little to nothing about how much you can learn by teaching yourself, you may be right. If you mean that they mean little to nothing about how you will be perceived by others, I think you’re clearly wrong. A high GPA at a top college is perceived as being more impressive than a high GPA at an obscure one. Furthermore, it may even be true that you really will learn more at the top college. With the best professors to teach you and with the best classmates as competition (or as fellow scholars to bounce your ideas off of), you would certainly seem to have a better chance to learn at the top college.

TaleraRis · February 21, 2000, 9:20am

I was treated as an adult at my school because I showed my teachers I was one. I never bitched about the tardy policy or talking in class because they’re necessary evils for the people that weren’t like me and I accepted that. And what if they weren’t there? Then people would walk into class at any time, they would talk when they wanted and no one would learn anything. It’s only idiots like you that don’t see the good they serve in a public high school.

And you can get a stellar education at a lower rate school. I wouldn’t touch a higher rate school actually. I read in more than one book while I was searching for a college that places like Yale and Harvard deliberately keep things easier and aren’t as hard on their kids as, say, a state school does so they can keep their reputation as a school having most of their students with C or above averages.

Oh, and for the one that mentioned it, I did forget Rose Hulman and Notre Dame. IU and PU were just the first two that came to mind. The things I read about them said they aren’t easy on their students at all and they don’t pass people just to keep their averages up. Purdue is renowned as a great engineering school and IU from what I read has one of the best pre-med and biology departments in the nation. Second, if I remember right. So the kind of doctors and scientists it spits out could blow Harvard out of the water.

Frankly, I would much rather go to a college that some snobs would term a less than desirable college than a fake one that is only playing at teaching students anything.

When are you going to realize being normal isn’t necessarily a good thing?

ubermensch · February 21, 2000, 12:19pm

wendell–

i’ve never been asked once on any application what my GPA was. maybe that’s been my experience, but every business i’ve ever worked for wanted to know about my previoius jobs or experiences and how well i did, and not book learnin’.

on a side note, i go to a smallish state university, not a great one, but because of that, i’ve excelled more than most people here. i’ve gotten more chances here than i would have at any other college, perhaps, and, coupled with my first point, makes me a pretty hot commodity.

Rousseau · February 21, 2000, 4:52pm

First, let’s set the record straight here. Words have been put in my mouth, and assumptions have been made, and I resent them.

I never said I was smarter than any of my teachers.
I never said that I was never schooled in the basics. Basic memorization (indoctrination) took place a little earlier on in education in my old school system, and by the time you got to the upper grades in high school, they were trying to get you to apply and synthesize the information. Then I come out here, and I’m sitting in classrooms listening to kids read answers out of a book.
“So, you’re disillusioned that your Midwestern education consists mainly of memorization and regurgitation, and that you’re then going to be at a disadvantage when you go on to college and they actually ask you to think?” I didn’t say that I was going to be at a disadvantage. So, I’m not being intellectually challenged in school. I am, in fact, trying to keep my mind sharp. That’s one of the reasons I like this board–it’s one of my two real outlets for good intelligent discussion (my parents being the other). I’m taking the opportunity to read things that I want to read, and learn things on my own (although I haven’t been playing that much chess lately, I have nobody to play with in person, and I can only take so much internet chess). The reason I’m complaining isn’t because I’m scared of going off to Columbia and getting swamped next year. But I look around me and see over 2000 kids in this school that are learning nothing more than how to learn facts for multiple-choice tests.
Speaking of which, I happen to love standardized tests (I’d be dead without them), although I don’t think they’re an effective way to compare high schools.
There’s nothing at all wrong with a “second tier” university. I was just saying that there are better examples of midwestern colleges (Purdue’s engineering school, by the way, is ranked 11th in the nation by the US News, and they don’t rank medical programs). Plus, the title of the thread says “Midwestern public education.” The best public college in the Midwest is the University of Michigan.

A lot of you guys who are immediately jumping to the defense of rote memorization by saying “well, you need basics before you can do anything else,” are pretty much proving my point here. I’m not saying that memorization is unneccessary. I’m saying that by the time students get to 11th and 12th grade, it should be out of the way. You refuse to even consider this, since it doesn’t jibe with the dogma that you’ve been brought up on. And that’s exactly my point about my new school out here. They recently rejected block scheduling without any good reason aside from the fact that it’s new and they’re scared of it. I had block scheduling for three years, and I can tell you first hand that it’s the greatest educational innovation since the slide rule. But people out here seem to know what they like and like what they know. And yes, their system will continue to net them big scores on the standardized tests. And yes, as the rest of the nation continues to move forward in education, the students that come from these traditional school systems will be left behind. That’s my opinion, and if you guys want to call me a whiny baby for it, then go right ahead, cause I really couldn’t care any less (for clarification though, Melatonin, there are pronouns that fit me better than “she,” if you know what I mean).

“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” -Winston Churchill

Falcon · February 21, 2000, 5:03pm

Rous -

Point of order…by 11th and 12th grade, memorization is still needed. I didn’t take Physics until 11th grade. I took AP Chem in 12th. I couldn’t fit my Economics elective in until 12th grade. Believe me…there was still a LOT I needed to memorize.

Just wanted to point out that memorization is needed in ANY grade. Depends on the subject, really.

Rousseau · February 21, 2000, 5:14pm

Well, certainly if you are taking the subject for the first time. And I have AP Chem now, and I know and accept that there’s still stuff that needs to just be ingested and memorized. But there’s still room for some more…“cerebral” learning.

“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” -Winston Churchill

meara · February 21, 2000, 5:50pm

Seems to me that Rousseau has a legitimate gripe. In a university, there is much to be memorized, but it is rarely the focus of learning outside of your declared field. A medical student must memorize anatomy, but doesn’t need to know the Chinese dynasties, etc. backwards and forwards. Even where rote memorization is necessary, students are expected to accomplish it on their own in preparation for classtime, not during the classes themselves.

The biggest shock of college, IMO, was realizing that professors expected a whole lot from me before I showed up to class each week. For example, all of the assignments for my first programming class were to be completed in C on Unix machines. 90% of the class knew neither C nor Unix, but we were expected to pick those up on our own, rather than waste precious classtime going over syntax when there were complicated algorithms and design techniques to be discussed.

Of course, the professors aren’t going to force you to learn anything or hold your hand while you memorize. High School needs to prepare kids for that and expose them to more and more freedom in their later years so they can learn that cutting class and skipping assignments is a bad idea before they go off to a place where someone’s paying $100/hr in tuition for their opportunities.

Sounds like Rousseau has a handle on the basics, so don’t rip her apart for wanting more. Rip her apart for assuming that the Midwest has a monopoly on bad teaching, or perhaps for the hypocrisy of attacking the very standardized tests which have allowed her to escape to Columbia.

Bucky · February 25, 2000, 7:28pm

[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Rousseau:
** In NJ, they taught us how to think.

Later Rousseau will claim that college professors want thinking students, and East coast students will do better in college, etc. I submit that since I taught in the East (Cornell) and Rousseau has not, I might be a little more qualified than she on the subject.

Bullshit. To generalize slightly, I found my New Jersey students boorish, egotistical, untrained in the basics, and yet unable to think. I have, in your postings, found no evidence of an ability to reason logically. You have little to no idea of what you speak.

They spend NO money on computers. I came from a school that sunk all thier money into technology- they decided that computers were the best investment for the future.

Well, they’re wrong. Computers have not been shown to have any cost-effective benefits as presently used in education other than teaching people how to use computers. I’ve got the cites at home, would probably have to wait until Monday to post them IF WE’RE NOT HACKED TO DEATH BY THEN!!

Your ego is using this name is mind-boggling. Your hasty generalizations are juvenile. You have displayed the temperment of a boor and a brat, and you have an exceptionally inflated and erroneous sense of your ability to think.

Perhaps you need to learn to walk before you can fly.

Bucky

Oh, well. We can always make more killbots.

Bucky · February 25, 2000, 7:29pm