Message from @tereško
Discord ID: 610758325117779985
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.
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.
And (and this is the kicker) the parents are in control of of the rhetoric.
“How should a nation educate its children?”
Is a very different question to,
“How should *you* raise *your* kids?”
*"In addition, the positive effects of class size were largest for black students, economically disadvantaged students, and boys"*
@Arthur Grayborn that by definition is more than 50% of all students
and that just says "largest positive effects" .. no mention of negative effect at all 😃
@tereško - Have you also considered that class size might have an influence on academic performance, entirely unrelated to the teacher? Smaller class sizes mean fewer disruptive students, which means a larger percentage of your time can be spent on actual education, and not glorified daycare work.