so bizarre

empty hands

I could understand using a fucking broken one, just to maintain appearances, but if there's no scanner then it's obvious as shit that you aren't scanning people.

that's what I was trying to convey

sorry if I was unclear

If I was working at an inner city school, and the metal detectors were broke, I'd say wand the kids anyways for the few days it takes to get working metal detectors in, just so that not as many of them will know how vulnerable they are.

With any luck, by the time someone realizes they can smuggle in a knife you've fixed the problem.

almost all of the people on my work "level" in africa have major problems learning new software even if straight out of college

some are ok, but most are crap

I had the great honor of tutoring a graduate student from Uganda.

She was taking college algebra, and couldn't do basic arithmetic. Even basic addition, with two digit numbers, was too much for her.

The level she was at, she shouldn't have been able to pass third grade, let alone high school, and especially not college.

there is an enormous discrepancy

that says more about the education system in Uganda than anything else

no, that's an international graduate student from Uganda, accepted to the first world

@tereško - I think we should give people a chance to prove themselves, and then judge accordingly. We should be splitting kids up by ability starting around second or third grade, and there should be more splits as you progress in education, because a lot of kids are going to be at vastly different levels and it would be deeply unfair to them to have them all in the same class.

another level

Yeah, international student. Graduate level. Accepted into the United States.

Couldn't do basic fucking addition.

might help

basic mineral ID is what I have trouble with

Quite frankly, anyone looking to immigrate into the United States should take a "skills test." If they cannot read, write, and do math at a fifth grade level, then they cannot come here. We should impose that test retroactively on any immigrants too, and deport anyone that can't pass.

@Arthur Grayborn ideally we should have classrooms of 6-12 kids. But to get that, we probably need huge advancements in AI, to get virtual teachers.

basic fucking mineral identification from first year college

they can't do the simplest stuff

@tereško - Small classrooms only make a difference for low performing students.

The research found that results were negligible for white students - they learned just as well in a large lecture hall as they did in a smaller hands-on class.

Where it made a difference was for black students, but it still came nowhere near closing the gap.

no, it makes huge difference for all students

I gotta crash

good talking

later all

it a way for more talented students to get even better results

@Arthur Grayborn it's not just the "slow" kids that get hold back by huge classrooms, it also affects the smart ones

and it all comes down to current systems being geared towards "teaching to pass a test"

I found the study, @tereško:

"This effect was concentrated in the first year that students participated in the program. In addition, the positive effects of class size were largest for black students, economically disadvantaged students, and boys."
https://www.brookings.edu/research/class-size-what-research-says-and-what-it-means-for-state-policy/

For gifted students you're better off being more selective about which teachers you hire, and giving them room to work.

Home School

naah, home schooling is a terrible idea

kids need to socialize and compete

They do

Doesn’t have to be through school.

Genetic confounding.

If smarter people are more likely to home school, then home school could outperform public school for entirely unrelated reasons. That said, home schooled students do have higher college graduation levels, lower crime rates, and better test scores across the board.

There are no recorded measures that I know of, where home schooled students perform worse than public school.