octave
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Posts posted by octave
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When things started to go bad, it was because the good teachers had all of their authority taken from them. I partly blame their union for this.
How so?
I am always suspicious of vague anecdotes.
I have just returned home from my biggest teaching day of the week as a music teacher. I teach kids (and adults) one to one. I am quite certain the the biggest determiner of academic success is the parent. I always assume that people who think that the system is appalling are people who have been disappointed by the the results of their children or grandchildren.
After 30 years of teaching and following my ex students I can tell you that the particular school is no predictor of success form exclusive private schools to poorer rough schools. The successful students come from families that are caring and supportive and value education. Harsh discipline does not contribute to success.
Re the internet. My assumption is that people who bag the internet as an educational tool are those who are unable to navigate it sensibly or whose children are unable to use its resources.
Nothing wrong with books but in many fields of employment the book published last year is hopelessly out of date, information is changing at an ever increasing rate. Those who are comfortable with today's technologies will find it easier to thrive than those who cling to the past. This may be uncomfortable for some but this has always been the case.
Of course there is nothing wrong with WELL INFORMED criticisms but remember that there are psychological reasons why every generation bags the following generation, it is well understood, this has occurred since Platos time and probably before his time.
Too many links on this to post.
My father used to quiz me on capitol cities. He was horrified that at school I did not learn the order of British monarch. I feel I have done alright especially in terms of happiness and whilst I am not rich I am financially self sufficient.
The notion that young people are as a group are illiterate can not really be supported by anyone who has actually read and understood the source material of the latest moral crisis. The fact is although we have slipped marginally and other countries have slightly we are still well within in the top 25 of the world.
I suspect that news stories about the new awful youth of today are popular with older people who need to believe that they are the greatest generation. The truth is that as we get older we do find it harder to keep up and maintain our relevance. I personally put a lot of work into keeping up. I am happy to report that most of my friends are younger than me and some of my best friends are educated and successful 20 somethings. I find that I have less in common with some of my older friends who have reached the unhappy "you kids get off my lawn stage"
Nearly all of my work colleagues are around 30 years younger than me. Sometimes I can see they suffer from lack of life experience but they are much more talented and educated than me, between us we do good things.
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Octave, with all due respect, I feel you are viewing the "depth and breadth" of internet through your own thorough investigative paradigm. Sadly, such curiosity and forensic tenacity (or personal open minded debate) is neither taught, nor actively encouraged by schooling or most parents.
Yes, some of us are like a kid in a toyshop, exploring, learning, balancing differing information, verifying sources, etc. And for us it is a great boon. But most young people are growing up in an environment where simple answers are easy. For instance, I am disappointed by the lack of logical thought, diagnostic sifting that had been shown by diploma level trainees in the technology industry that I recently left. They had no ability to question or verify anything.
The potential is there, just like the great educational potential for advancement of civilisation that was promised by TV back in the 1950's. That age of information hasn't lived up to its promise too well. I see our new age of information as being rather limited by the lack of will, by people who have an attention span of a goldfish.
So the answer is to equip people to use the available tools in the best way not discard the tool.
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If the kids you teach have taken on the task of learning to play an instrument, and learn to read and comprehend the syntax —rules for ordering elements such as notes, chords, and intervals into complex structures of music, then I'd say they are exceptions to the general population, and are more likely to undertake other complex pastimes.
According to AUSSTATS around about 20% of children learn a musical instrument, I would imagine that you may find similar or greater results for sports and other pursuits. Hardly exceptional.
I think it is important to not right off any age group. I could go down to the local club and see the retired folk feeding money into pokie machines as many do but this is not the definition of an older person. Many older people are still working or doing volunteer work or fighting fires with the bush fire brigade.
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Please help, what do you guys reckon is going to boom?
I think the days of a career for life are ending. I don't have any young young people in my family who are at that stage in their education but my advice would be to be adaptable, to develop a love of learning new things.
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Quote
"Whilst a book may provide a self contained body of knowledge that was relevant at its time of printing it does not necessarily present the depth and breadth that can be obtained using the resources of the internet."
I see a problem with that statement.
I regularly come across dated information on the internet. There is a great deal of uncorroborated or downright incorrect information out there. I'm not saying that every book is a perfect record of facts, but at least it is time/date stamped. Books are more frequently proof read than internet stuff.
"Depth and breadth"?
From the internet?
Bah!
The internet provides opportunity to check multiple sources instantly. I believe we do need to use new tools correctly and to know that the information from some sources is not as reliable as from other sources. Have you ever used Google Scholar? I can go to the NASA website and download raw satellite data if I wish. I can look up a subject and get input from many contributors not just one author.
Yes I assert that the internet can provide depth and breadth.
Breadth because pretty much any subject you are interested in you can find information of various qualities. Depth because you can find very specific and detailed information.
A quick search of a randomly selected subject 'goat breeding" (something I have absolutely no interest in) yields 27,6000,000 results some of which will be useless of course but many from reliable sources, often information from people who have also written books.
Whilst a book may provide an interpretation of a scientific paper on the net I can actually read the original paper.
I am most definitely not anti book but I am definitely pro information and throughout history the methods of delivery have changed and will continue to change, I intend to make maximum use of all sources of information.
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Have you seen kids making any plaything lately? When was the last time you heard of a young woman making her own clothes (don't fire back "sexist comment").
Yes I have, Knitting has become quite popular amongst young adults. I guess it is a matter of where your experience of young people comes from, of course there are many people who pursue hobbies that are not manual and that is fine. They might not be doing the hobbies that we know from our youth but some are still building things. Perhaps the young people I know are exceptional but with my music students I often ask them what else they do. Quite a few build computers from scratch one builds robots, The fact that young people of school age or university age are not necessarily out there doing multiple manual hobbies is hardly that surprising given the time demands. I am often stunned by how many activities my younger students are involved in.
I am impressed by most of the young people I interact with.
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My point about preferring books, comes from the fact that a electronic reading gives no indication of how vast a subject might be,
Whilst I agree that books are perhaps better for younger children it is crucial that at school children learnt to use the technology they will be working with. Whilst a book may provide a self contained body of knowledge that was relevant at its time of printing it does not necessarily present the depth and breadth that can be obtained using the resources of the internet. There are skills that are required when seeking information and verifying it. If I read a book about cosmology by Stephen Hawking I may get one interpretation of the evidence. If I read an online article i can see what perhaps another cosmologist has to say.
One good thing about a book is rather than telling me what is known at this particular point in time it tells me what the information was at the date of publishing, this is good in an historic sense.
Children need to learn to wisely use the tools at their disposal and the tools they will be called upon to use in their career.
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Reading is incredibly important an personally I don't feel that ink on paper is necessarily superior. They do have different characteristics but the jobs of today do require you to be able to search and absorb information by the current methods. rather than saying I am a fan of books I would rather say I am a fan of information.
We never taught my son to read in a formal way so I am sometimes bemused when people talk of phonics etc. I realize that it is very different teaching but for us the only thing we ever did towards reading was to read to him, often the same book over and over again until he started to become mildly irritated because we went too slow for him. I recently came across an old cassette of us reading to him, great to listen to.
I think the biggest determinant of how a child will progress is the parent and I would suggest that attitudes are absorbed from home. In my music teaching at a music studio at the moment I have 7 students from the same school, they are all in the same class and have similar socio economic backgrounds yet some are doing brilliantly and a couple are not. Often I don't meet the parents until i have been teaching the student for many months but I can always predict what the parents will be like from teaching there child.
It is popular to blame the system and of course there are many faults but I believe that in most cases the pattern is set before the child gets to school.
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Just thinking and reading about this I would suggest that there is more than a little hysteria. Whilst it is very true that we should always be striving to do better pronouncing today's youth as being illiterate is not not born out by the facts. This story is about the results of the PISA test and the league table it generates.
What seems to have happened is that in some subjects we have shown no improvement whilst other countries have overtaken us and in other subjects we have slipped a little.
This in no way implies that our young people are illiterate. The fact that results are declining (except in Victoria it seems) is serious and does need to be addressed but not with hysteria. We are around the 23 country in the world. We do need to do better but we are doing better than the majority of the world I do note we are several places behind New Zealand.
These stories do get people fired up because every generation thinks they were the peak and that standards have dropped since their day. The details are important.
Here are the previous results. I can't find the latest presented in list form. http://factsmaps.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-average-score-of-math-science-reading/
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It seems that the non-State schools are getting much better results on average than the State schools,
Not necessarily
I have been a private music teacher for most of my working life. I get students from many local schools. During my 14 years teaching in Canberra I can tell you that some of most challenging kids came from some of the so called exclusive schools. Many have these schools had pretty harsh discipline.
It is clear that given the success of the Finish education system which is not built on old fashioned methods of discipline that there are many ways to learn.
There is plenty I do not like about the education system, in fact with our own son we chose to home educate which we did in a very unstructured way. I am sure this would horrify many. I am happy to report he is very happy and highly successful with his own company doing what he loves. We did not formally teach him anything. We read to him several times a day, we taught him that learning was enjoyable and facilitated his interests so at 12 was building computers and rebuilding cars. This was done without any harsh discipline, despite this he is extremely self disciplined. This is much more difficult to achieve in an institution that is why we took matters into our own hands.
In terms for these latest results we could emulate Korea or Japan and try to achieve their high academic results or we could emulate Finland, I vote for Finland, high achievement and happy people.
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I don't think I'll get into an argument if I say that our kids and grandkids are NOT morons, but a hell of a lot of them are illiterate in the 3 R's compared to other First World countries.
Their grasp of the 3 R's has been on a steady decline https://www.3plearning.com/blog/australian-student-literacy/ so we must look to find the cause so that we can save them from becoming the menials of the Future.
Call me old fashioned, but I believe that the root of the problem is the failure of education philosophers to allow classroom teachers to demand and enforce discipline. I'm not advocating corporal punishment. I was subjected to that sort of regime, and while not broken by it, I believe that it has had life-long repercussions. What I am advocating is the right, even the duty, of classroom teachers to demand that students are behave in a disciplined and respectful manner.
There should be no more pandering to the child's wounded feelings. It's a tough world. If you do the crime, you do the time. Am I proposing military style discipline? No. What I would look for is obedience to, and compliance with, reasonable directions. "Stop talking in class." "Don't run through doorways." "Walk through crowded areas in the school grounds." If children are made to comply with those sort of directions from Day 1 in Kindergarten, then as they grow they will more easily comply with directions applicable to their older years.
Teachers must be given the OK to be tough. Afterall, while the children are in school, the teacher is in loco parentis (in the parent's place). The teacher has a duty of care to ensure the safety and well-being of the children, so by enforcing disciplined responses by an individual, they often ensure the safety of other children. Parent's have to accept this philosophy, too. They put their children in the hands of the teacher for the sake of the child's education, both academically and socially, so they should stand beside the teacher in support of instilling discipline into the child. Unfortunately, the current crop of parents are the product of a coddled upbringing, which makes them quick to object vehemently if their little Ray of Sunshine is shown to be a whirling Cu-Nim.
Once the children understand the reason for the teacher's commands, and learn to respond appropriately, the teacher can concentrate on educating the children. With more time spent on the 3 R's in Primary school, the literacy rates must surely soon reflect the intelligence of our kids and grandkids.
We could copy copy the worlds most successful education systems perhaps Finland
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A quote from Wikipedia about Breitbart...
"Its journalists are widely considered to be ideologically driven, and some of its content has been called misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist by liberals and many traditional conservatives alike.[11] The site has published a number of lies, conspiracy theories,[12][13] and intentionally misleading stories.[14][15]
Breitbart News aligned with the alt-right under the management of former executive chairman Steve Bannon,[16] who declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016.[17] In 2016, Breitbart News became a virtual rallying spot for supporters of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.[11] The company's management, together with former staff member Milo Yiannopoulos, solicited ideas for stories from, and worked to advance and market ideas of, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups and individuals.[18][19] After the election, more than 2,000 organizations removed Breitbart News from ad buys following Internet activism campaigns denouncing the site's controversial positions."
Yep, sure looks like they would be a fair and unbiased source of information.
The hallmark of good science is to quote from reliable sources and to look for corroboration between different data sources. If I wanted to know if, lets say, vaccines caused autism I would not sight articles from political magazines.
The sources I rely upon are the usual scientific sources not the odd contrarian, Breitbart, Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones etc. or the odd geoscientist who earns their living from the mining or fossil fuel industries.
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Eee, trooble at' Mill...
Hey, have you heard about the way Yorkshire people are injecting Ecstasy into their mouths?
They call it "E by gum"...
Yorkshire born Yorkshire bred, strong int arm week int head
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Octave, you might need to be a minimum of five or six years older. I've got a brother born in '61 and he wouldn't be familiar with too many of them.
Ironically, his son was a millennial and loved the old sayings and regularly used them. Did his bit for preserving them for future generations.
Probably geographical also. My parents are from Yorkshire so there are old Yorkshire sayings that I know that would probably meaningless to Australians
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So we label sources and discount them? It is either a true report or not, easy to check.
You discount NASA dont you?
CO2 412 PPM and increasing
Global Temperature 1.9F since 1880
Arctic Ice minimum 12.8% per decade reduction
Ice sheets 413 Gigatonnes per year reduction
Sea Level 3.3 mm increase per year.
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Do the Millenials get the meaning of some of our good old sayings, or is it Hash Tag Huh!?
I think some of these sayings not only mean little to millennials but little to me (1962) Some I have heard but only form older folk (older than me that is)
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I look at the data and dont accept the religion. No climate model has successfully predicted anything. There is overwhelming geological evidence that disproves the relationships relied upon. There is ample chemical evidence that CO2 cannot drive climate. Why would anyone believe the dogma?
Because of the majority of scientific evidence.
Which models are you referring to I believe the majority of projections have been accurate.
Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming?
What do we learn from James Hansen's 1988 prediction?
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2018/06/22/no-hansen-wasnt-wrong/
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Like all other extreme events, this proves nothing about climate change but is consistent with what we expect from a solar minimum.
Some would argue that the solar minimum could actually be masking the severity of climate change.
Despite the a solar minimum the average global temperature has increased (or do you believe it hasn't.)
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Elon Musk suddenly lost $274 mil.
The share price dropped I believe 6% and has now gone up 5%[ATTACH]50460._xfImport[/ATTACH]
Steel ball was somewhat fool hardy I feel especially after having a few goes before the event. I am not sure why anyone would want such tough glass really.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1198090787520598016
I bought shares in Tesla just before Q3 and they have done quite well. It will be interesting to see what effect the start of production form the China gigafactory will have on sales.
Like or hate the new design it is exciting to see innovation happening rather than the tiny incremental changes we usually get. I certainly would not buy a cybertruck because I do need a truck of any sort, if I did I would probably be interested.
Tesla Cybertruck To Join Dubai Police Force
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What is the real worry, and which was not addressed in that video, is the safety of the vehicle. All very well being able to hit it with a sledge hammer, but what about crumple zones? I'd be very interested to see testing of this and what ANCAP rating it'd achieve.
I imagine that the presented version will evolve somewhat into the production model. It will of course have to pass crash tests etc and conform to regs. I do find it more interesting and exciting the more I see it.
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And a prime example of what happens when Homer Simpson does the styling.
I'm much more impressed with the Rivian (pics below). Although at the moment the projected price point of over $100,000 for the SUV puts it beyond our means.
[ATTACH]3400[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]3402[/ATTACH]
When I first saw the cyber truck I thought WTF but it is growing on me. Most new designs that are not incremental tweeks of older designs are usually jarring at first. I imagine if you dropped a 2019 car into the 50s people would be horrified, they would want to know why there was no chrome and why so curvy etc.
Most talk in the popular media has been quite superficial and there seems to by little consideration over why that shape was chosen. ie cost and aerodynamics. Here is a video where these things are discussed.
I guess it is down to personal taste but many things we find fashionable now were initially thought to be ugly. I wouldn't buy one myself or any other pick up truck because I have no need but if I did I think I would looking for price and function first, lets face what truck is good looking.
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and if I can get a 250m+ range, I will go for one (Why 250m+? Because you can be stuck in traffic for a darned long time in the UK).
My son owns a BMWI3 and has just purchased a Tesla 3P (which I am looking forward to driving in a few weeks - he lives in NZ) On our last trip he loaned us the I3 to get around which is delightful to drive. On one occasion there had been and accident so traffic was bumper to bumper and stop start all the time. There is no better car than an EV in this situation, all the other vehicles constantly idling and burning fuel meanwhile when we were at a standstill with virtually no power draw.
I think his new Tesla will charge to %50 in 20 minutes at a super charger and its stated range is 310 miles, this model was not cheap though. The BMWI3 has a range extending motor which is really just a BMW motor bike engine which can be set to kick in and will hold the charge at its current level.
One thing that acts as a disincentive to purchasing an EV is the up front purchase price (at this time) although they are cheaper over their life people (including me) are not good at doing a whole life comparison. We avoid up front cost even if the eventual cost is better.
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Bugger the figures just didn't add up to make this viable, but that was 17 years ago and things will have changed.
As an illustration of how prices have fallen, I designed and installed a 12 volt system for my remote off grid house. In 1990 I purchased 60 watt panels for $595 each, that was a lot of money back then. I note now that a 60 watt panel, if you could be bothered with such a low output panel will cost you $156 and $511 will buy you at 360 watt panel. I cant remember the battery price but I suspect there has been a large price drop also.
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I would like to see every household producing and storing their own electricity and having a connection to the grid, for those times when they cannot collect and store electricity.
This is becoming more and more viable each day. I did live off the grid for 21 years but back then the technology was expensive and the only thing that made it economically viable was the enormous connection fee we would have had to pay due to the remoteness of the property.
Now we live in suburbia and we have just organised for a solar system to be installed. We use a touch over 4000 MW per year and the system we are installing is predicted to produce around 6200 MW per year. We did look at getting a Tesla powerwall but at this stage it would not quite be economically viable although given the trajectory of battery prices over the last few years we expect we will add a battery at some stage within the next few years. Perhaps what will happen before then is we may buy an EV an utilize EV to house technology.
I think power generation companies are going to have to adapt to some new realities. I read a prediction that claimed that we are heading to a situation where power will be able to be generated AND STORED at home for a price that is lower than the grid transmission costs, that is excluding the cost of the power company generating the electricity. At this point power generating companies will have a big problem with there business model.
A cure for our kids' illiteracy?
in General Discussion
Posted
If we consider that one of the purposes of education is to prepare people for the workforce then we need to teach them to use the tools of the age. As a couple of examples, my wife recently retired from a small engineering company that builds cutting edge water treatments units (built into shipping containers) for the mining industry as well as many other areas in Australia and all around the world. This small company is a world leader and is able to build bespoke machines to suit particular circumstances form a bowling club to a chicken far to a large mine to a refugee camp. What is built depends on local conditions such as salinity levels etc. I can assure you that they do not look up this information in Encyclopedia Britannica, information from 6 months ago is already out of date.
A young friend of mine is from Poland and she is doing her PHD in Nanobiotechnology. In her research she needs to access other people's scientific papers, she does not go down to the local library for 2 year old books. Now I can imagine some of you expert hating folks saying what she does is ridiculous. What she is researching is the packaging of cancer destroying molecules in nanoparticles that are able to insert themselves in cancer cells but not healthy cells. Sound like money well spent to me.
As a music teacher back in the day I purchased a set of Groves music encyclopedia for I think about $2500. Eventually I got rid of these books, they only covered music theory and history up until 1985 and I can't take it anywhere to use.
Although books have their place there are some things that I can now find online that I have difficulty finding in books to help my students. Consider this video (I accept you will not find that interesting but if you jump forward a couple of times you may get the point.) I have to get students of all ages interested in music analysis. This even for the most smart and enthusiastic student can seem a little dry and boring. I recently turned one of my young adult students to analysis analysis of Bohemian Rhapsody. i am not sure what physical book could have done this better.
The people regardless of age who are enthusiastic and smart enough to fully exploit all the available tools (including books) will thrive and succeed.