This is an excellent brief overview of the crucial problems in American education by Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist and engineer at the University of Washington who also served on an advisory committee under GW Bush. From his first hand view, he does not seem kindly disposed towards Republican policies in science.
Presidential scientific advisory committees have been politicized. I have seen this firsthand. The general denigration of science emanating from the White House, and the near completee failure of the President’s Science Advisor, Jack Marburger, to speak out, is poisonous. Right here in Seattle, consider the Discovery Institute and its “intelligent design.” (“Faith-based science” is not what made this nation the world’s leader.) Think about our immigration policy. This nation became the world’s leader by welcoming the best and the brightest from all nations, but today we have a devil of a time getting foreign students into UW, or hiring faculty who are foreign nationals; foreign students who are educated here are “sent back where they came from” upon graduation rather than being retained to grow the technological base of our nation.
We’re rotting from the top down and the bottom up, I fear. We’ve got a fantastic university system that ranks highly in the world community, but we’ve got a political leadership that sees science as something that gets in the way, a K-12 educational system that is being starved, and a populace that is encouraged to wallow in superstition and buy more Big Macs. This is not a stable situation. And here’s one big worry, one that Lazowska is describing from a Washington state perspective, but that applies everywhere.
Obviously, there is a huge pipeline issue. Eighty-five percent of our undergraduates in UW computer science and engineering are from Washington state, and they are mind-blowingly good. But that’s only about 150 students a year. Kids, by and large, don’t come out of K-12 prepared or inspired to pursue careers in science and engineering. Take a guess — what’s the fastest growing undergraduate major in the U.S. today? “Parks, recreation, and leisure” — preparing people for the booming Alaska tour-boat industry. At the higher-ed level, did you know that Washington ranks 49th among the 50 states in the participation rate in public bachelor’s education? God bless Mississippi! At the same time, we rank fifth in community college participation rate. Our higher education system is oriented toward a manufacturing economy.
I don’t entirely understand why parents aren’t screaming bloody murder about an educational system that isn’t preparing their kids appropriately before they get sent off to a public college that’s going to cost them $15-20,000 dollars a year, but they aren’t. We get these bright, enthusiastic students who don’t know basic algebra and suffer in college, and end up struggling their way to some vague, general degree at best. There is so much potential being thrown away, or made to idle in years of poor education directed only at getting the kids to pass some boring NCLB-mandated test, and you can’t help but feel that Americans want it this way.
(via Dave Neiwert)
There’s an interesting discussion to be had about the ration of US/non US citizens in university science depts.
Is it a good or bad thing that there are so many foreign postdocs? My feeling is that science is a global endeavor- and it’s good for science to have a good mixture of nationalities in each dept. Still- it should be a little unsettling to Americans to learn that in many labs US graduate students/postdocs are becoming a rarity.
(I’m a befreckled foreign postdoc over here to steal your jobs and your women)
Hear, hear! But it’s not all bad. In any college course, you have a few brilliant students who are bright and well-prepared and eager for a challenge. The problem is that some many others are unprepared and drag the class down. It’s impossible teaching to both ends and tough to find a good middle ground without leaving the majority behind. That’s a shame for the top students.
There’s a simple reason for this. NCLB. It’s a disaster of (dare I say it) Biblical proportions. Schools as a system must teach to the test or lose funding. What did you expect would be the outcome? (And don’t tell me this outcome isn’t what the architects of NCLB had in mind.)
As for the F and J student and scholar visa program, like all immigration policy, it’s FUBAR. As a PDSO (Primary Designated School Official for certifying student visas), I’m convinced US higher ed is never going to fully recover from this debacle. There’s a generation of internationals coming up who aren’t even going to consider the US as a destination, meanwhile Australia and the UK are pumping big bucks into recruiting the best and the brightest into their systems.
Some of us parents are screaming bloody fucking murder, but we’re yelling into a maelstrom of willfull goddamn ignorance, PZ. What the fuck else can we do? Strap C4 to ourselves and walk into an evangelical church an detonate ourselves?
Goddamn, our elected leaders only are only elected based on religious tests. The next governor of my state believes the fookin’ planet was created in 6000 years and he’s a RHODES SCHOLAR!
Politicians are whores and serial killers. They’re only going to go where the johns and victims are.
The Chicago Tribune had this article today, which seems very a propos:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-christian_schools_finaloct08,1,3924668.story
a computer scientist and engineer at the University of Washington who also served on an advisory committee under GW Bush
don’t tell me, he resigned, right?
I think GW has had more people resign from committees and appointments under his reign than any prez in living memory.
If he worked for Bush, I want to know why.
That’s a pretty slimy thing to do.
What nutty political ideas does he hold?
it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it.
I mean, after all, there’s always the slight chance Shrub might actually listen to a piece of advice coming from one of his advisory committees.
Our primary education system is designed to produce compliant menials unable to think for themselves, and unprepared for the modern world. It’s established under the understanding that common folk are untrustworthy, stupid, and need to be controlled all the time. It’s how our elites, conservative and liberal, prepare us for life as slaves.
It is a way for our leaders to maintain their positions. By making it hard, if not impossible, for people to even think of raising up new leaders they can keep their jobs. Negative political advertising, the legalization of false political advertising, even the inflation inherent in running a campaign for office act to discourage the participation of most of the voting population.
An educational system that encourages rote learning and teaches to the test, while actively discouraging individual initiative and actual understanding of subjects is aprt and parcel of this. Our leaders want people who do as they’re told without protest, and primary education is all art of the plan.
But then secondary science education comes into the picture, and for science to be effective as a method of discovery, it needs people who are independent, self-motivated, and who know in a fundamental way what they are dealing with. Science as a community needs people of a type diametrically opposed to what our elites desire. And so we get the clash of values we’re seeing today.
The problem really lies in our philosophy of governance. Until that changes we will never see any meaningful reform in leadership or education.
Ed doesn’t have any nutty political ideas that I’ve ever seen expressed. He’s good people: an educator, an entrepreneur, a scientist, and a gentleman–one who cares about students and about our society.
Time was, before the current crop of Republicans made a total mockery of the concept, serving on a Presidential advisory committee had a certain amount of prestige. It was considered academic and patriotic service.
He’s helping to bring women into science. That’s a good thing.
N.Y. Times:
Dr. Lazowska and Dr. Blum, with colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Google, are working on materials that high school teachers can use to tell students about the challenges and opportunities of computer science. They are developing them for teachers of math, science and English because, as Dr. Lazowska put it, “many young women have opted out of the field before they even get to computer science” in high school.
He and his colleagues at the University of Washington (which never had a programming requirement, he said) have produced a Web page for prospective students with an explicit goal of breaking stereotypes about computer science and demonstrating that computer scientists “work in a broad range of interesting fields” — everything from designing prosthetics to devising new ways to fight forest fires.
There really are serious problems in our educational system: schools forced to teach to the test being one of the major ones. But specifically there is a big problem with the way science is being taught is K-12. In my personal experience, I was always an arts/English/history girl. But I remembered liking science well enough in younger grades. Then, as my math wasn’t up to par, I got tracked into a lower science class and I remember the classes just being boring, condescending, and only about learning the facts of the day’s lessons. Fast forward 10 years: while trying to determine if the alternative medicines my friends recommended were bogus or not (they were bogus) I discovered popular science writing. I LOVED it! I was entranced by the world view, and for the first time really “got” how the scientific method is used to test theories. How could this happen? How could I have missed the grand concepts of science in school? I think one of the problems is that science is often taught as a series of unrelated facts. Students need to know the facts but if they don’t know how those facts impact the way the world, and their individual lives, work they wont care. The concept of science as a way of looking at the world can be taught to kids whatever their educational ability. If kids learn about the beauty of science in school it will lead to more science professionals AND a more engaged and informed populous.
here’s my $.02 from my blog:
Actually, I beg to differ w/Lazowska. It IS that we are at war that is the issue. Where we once spent money on research and social services, we now spend money on private contractors and bullets up the wazoo. If we would stop bleeding money and lives, we might have more money available to fund research into disease prevention, mental health and all manner of good things. You’re the expert Mr. Lazowska, but you seem to be missing this.
No, the UK isn’t. The UK is wasting money on religious nutters who want to subvert education and is about to pay to train and bribe existing non-science teachers to pretend to be capable of teaching science, rather than pay that money to people with genuine scientific ability to actually become scientists and science teachers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7030194.stm
@SEF
I’m not sure the article really supports your statement. It seems to me that the article says the Government in the UK has at least identified the problem in getting young people interested in science and is trying to do something about it. If there is a shortage of science teachers, training people to become science teachers seems like a good idea. If the problem is there aren’t enough science grads to teach science then you need a different approach. Teaching is only partly about knowing your subject in great deal. It’s also about getting people to engage with the ideas you are teaching so that they become interested in pursuing them further. I’d certainly rather have enthusiastic and talented teachers who are non-degree educated in that subject but inspire kids to further in science fields than a dour and uninspiring science grad who is teaching because they had nothing else to do.
As for “wasting money on religous nutters who want to subvert education” I’m not sure this is supported either. The government has been very clear that it is not acceptable in a state school to teach creationism in science classes no matter who runs the school. Whether or not faith groups should get to run schools is a different debate, and one on which I probably share the view of a PZ or Dawkins.
Drowned
Don’t worry the UK is going the same way, teaching to the test, discouraging independent and critical thinking. Even here in Scotland where they never implemented the tests they have down south my kids in the last 2 years of secondary school were marked down for giving correct answers that did not use the prescribed sentence. The teachers acknowleged that the answers were correct but told them that only the approved sentences would be marked correct in the exams (external). So the student’s learn that creative thinking gets you no marks. Both are now struggling with University despite having two university educated parents and being very bright. Suddenly nobody was spoon feeding them absolutely everything (though they get spoon fed much more than we ever were) and they flounder.
Meanwhile my fellow academics complain bitterly that they are not allowed to fail students and the student’s know it so can’t be bothered to turn in anything even halfway decent.
With the upcoming Democratic presidency, perhaps historians will look at 2000-2008 as the Dark Ages in the US.
I think that we have two opportunites to help turn this around. The first is that NCLB is up for reauthorization. I think it would be good that all of us who really are sure that this program IS NOT the way to prepare students need to let our representatives in Congress know that. A concerted effort might get NCLB actually left behind! The second is the election. We need to work together as a group to elect people who actually appreciate science and will properly work with science.
I really wish I had more insight the school system, especially in the high school level, but I get a feeling that teenagers are being considered “old enough to be left alone” when they reach high school; huge class sizes and generalized activities. Teenagers should be inspired as they approach the end of the institutionalized education, and actually get to decide their career track and specialization, but providing them with this inspiration costs money and high schools are not expected to cost that much. It’s crazy to think that a person will stop needing assistance when they reach a certain age. People acknowledge this when starting study groups in college or when creating teams at their work for tackling a problems relating to their company. Yet, a person in their late teens is expected to figure it out on their own. Decisions should of course be up to the individual, but we should at least work to give them the best menu possible to choose from.
That’s mostly because it’s the government-boot-licking non-critical-thinking highly-sanitised BBC version of events, without any in-depth consideration of the issue or its consequences. If I had included more links in my post, ScienceBlogs would have confiscated it. I’ll try another couple of links, but it’s pretty futile expecting any reporters to do their jobs properly these days.
However, it does back up the fact that people who are already proven non-scientists (by virtue of being teachers in completely different subjects who haven’t already been taking on some maths or science classes) are being paid to pretend to do something for which they almost certainly don’t have the aptitude. Creationists are going to leap at this chance to fake being a science teacher and corrrupt more children when they couldn’t possible get a science degree honestly. There has to be something to prevent just any old teacher transferring.
Times
Grauniad
Being a scientist is VERY different to being a science teacher. I am a high school science teacher in the UK, who specialises in physics, and so I know a little about the system.
In the majority of cases, the skills a good teacher will have can be transferred from subject to subject. However, it is a given fact that we do not have sufficient science graduates to fully supply the need for science teachers. So, it makes perfect sense to give already good, qualified teachers, the boost in knowledge that they will need to teach the subject.
What precisely do you imagine the alternatives are? The government is NOT able to magically grow physics graduates from seeds between now and Easter when jobs become open due to retirement.
People love to establish new things that the government is required to provide for us, but they hate specifying means – or even determining whether those things are logically possible.
If we’re entitled, government will find a way. (sings) “Gov. will find a way…”
I think the good news that everyone missed is this:
He’s an engineer who isn’t a creationist!
Every time I see the word “engineer” in a post by PZ I cringe, expecting the usual embarrassment to my profession. I am an engineer and rational. I do not see design everywhere I look. I was just a physics major that sold out to get a job.
Silly people, arent they Caledonian?
Dont they realise that the government wont provide quality education systems, but the Magic Markets will.
The correct thing to do would have been to pay that money to people who have already demonstrated the ability, ie pay the degree fees of just the science (and maths or similar subjects) students without going back to also subsidising the waste-of-space types doing meejah studies and other new fake degrees. Of course, that’s the one thing the government will never do, because it would require them to admit that some subjects (and students) really are better than others and are not all of equal merit (as per the current popular government lie). The rot goes right back to the 80s and the introduction of GCSE with its reduced science content.
Am I misreading this, or is he suggesting that going to a community college is somehow … bad?
Public schools have a significant number of problems, most of them stem from political roots:
1) Local leadership and funding: This problem is two-fold. First, it allows higher SES families to move into high property value areas, pay a lower percentage in taxes, and obtain far higher quality education for their students. What this means is, those who can afford to do so, move out of the cities into suburbs, gutting them of their funding. Few states have much, if any, legislation in place to equalize funding. The second issue here is that small, local elections, make it easier for a group of motivated fundies getting their “we just want to teach the controversy” candidate elected.
2) Conservative Republican push towards privatization: The vast majority of charter and voucher schools aspire to sucking, especially in those communities where there is little or no regulation. (What is it with Republicans that they want to privatize everything with no oversight? Do they sleep through the ‘Gilded Age’ in History, or do they dream of returning to it?)
3) The push for more “accountability:” This is simply a buzzword for testing. High stakes testing with little or no provision for students with learning disabilities, English language learners, etc. Also these “advocates” almost never fund the new tests at all, let alone fully.
The combination of these factors leads to public education that has little money, especially in lower income communities, have the dual threat of tests and challenge of trying to find the money to pay for their own execution (rather like the chopping block in England). Add in wackos who dream of an America with only religious private schools who honestly want to destroy public education, and you get the foundation for our problems.
What makes it scary is, for the most part, they all believe they’re doing the right thing.
SEF,
So, your solution to problems in education would be to focus money on teaching the children who are good at science? lets not worry about the need for other children to have a quality education, lets just pump money at those who are, probably, going to make it anyway!
Not per se, but taken together with the university stats, it suggests that many people in Washington state are finishing after community college and not going on for further study. That means that they’re not going to be the ones participating in positions of responsibility and authority in the state’s research infrastructure, so there’s a gap between the research needs and educational outcomes in the state that has to be filled somehow.
No, it’s to encourage people not to drop science by giving it a clear advantage. Whereas laziness in choice of subject content needed to pass at all, plus the self-centred chance of stardom or greedy hope of big future earnings are currently pushing people away from studying science at university. Labour pretends to want poor people at university but all it does it make them poorer with huge student debts. The way to get people a decent education is to bring back grammar schools and free university tuition – but just for worthwhile subjects and not the popular trash.
well I have another dark view of this period and the current admin. in Wash.
The “war on terror” is going to fail is failing now
our “lead in education” slipping
science research is suffering
our national debt is mounting to amazing levels
trade deficit is growing worse by the day regardless of
the dollar is “struggling”
we are sacrificing our liberties for security
our military the greatest military in history is stressed to the breaking point
our influence in the world is not what it was.
we are no longer a manufacturing world leader but a consumer
if the world as a whole is to ever solve the looming problems we are all facing.. population growth, poverty, global warming-climate change with the troubles that they will bring, war, famine, and disease we will have to tackle them together and not separately and individually. It will not happen by some order from the U.S. It will happen by the cooperation of equals.
I do not think that will happen until it becomes clear to us the citizens of the United States, that we come to see ourselves as equals to the other peoples and states of the world not the superiors to everyone else. I am afraid that will happen only when we fall from our self appointed place as “leader of the free world”.
we are in the midst of that “fall” now
I think that it will have to get worse yet before we as a people realize we are just like everyone else and all in the same boat
it ain’t going to be pretty or fun
it is dark inside my head hope I am wrong
well I have another dark view of this period and the current admin. in Wash.
The “war on terror” is going to fail is failing now
our “lead in education” slipping
science research is suffering
our national debt is mounting to amazing levels
trade deficit is growing worse by the day regardless of
the dollar is “struggling”
we are sacrificing our liberties for security
our military the greatest military in history is stressed to the breaking point
our influence in the world is not what it was.
we are no longer a manufacturing world leader but a consumer
if the world as a whole is to ever solve the looming problems we are all facing.. population growth, poverty, global warming-climate change with the troubles that they will bring, war, famine, and disease we will have to tackle them together and not separately and individually. It will not happen by some order from the U.S. It will happen by the cooperation of equals.
I do not think that will happen until it becomes clear to us the citizens of the United States, that we come to see ourselves as equals to the other peoples and states of the world not the superiors to everyone else. I am afraid that will happen only when we fall from our self appointed place as “leader of the free world”.
we are in the midst of that “fall” now
I think that it will have to get worse yet before we as a people realize we are just like everyone else and all in the same boat
it ain’t going to be pretty or fun
it is dark inside my head hope I am wrong
Yes he is. The reason why is followed by the statement..
Community college and tech schools teach you how to do a particular job. They don’t give you information. Many CC’s don’t require anything but the ‘core’ classes which directly involve whatever field you are going into. No math or science or language (english or otherwise) are required to get these degrees in many cases.
Heaven forbid we teach people humanities, so they don’t just become worker bees. Perhaps we should show them art, or literature, to give the worker bees something to work for.
Most of *our* students are here for our health science programs. Nursing, dental hygiene, physical therapy, etc.
All of which, by the way, have the usual “general ed” requirements that students love to mouth off about. “Why do we have to take chemistry? Why do we have to take a language elective? Why do we have to take a humanities elective? Why do we have to take a history course? Why do I have to take all this *math*?” are a few things I hear regularly from my health science students.
Explain, please.
Have you actually looked at the requirements for associate’s degree programs? You might be able to make the case that *certificate* programs aren’t that broad, but those aren’t the community college’s bread and butter, anyway. Health sciences and college transfer – that’s where the students are.
—
That’s not all too surprising. A RN with an associate’s degree makes more money and has much better job prospects than someone with a BS in chemistry, biology, or physics. And your typical community college student has a family and needs to make a living, first and foremost.
That’s true, but the career path typically also tops out sooner, as well. In many places, an AA/AS RN has trouble competing with a BSN for the same job. (And in many places, that’s not true, too.)
But if you’re concerned with the research infrastructure, as Ed is here, and you’re looking at who is going to be heading research labs, that’s neither the terminal BS student nor the AA/AS student. It’s PhDs, and the point I think he’s trying to make is that so many of Washington’s students are choosing the path which puts food on the table immediately (a very good thing in the short term), but that the state’s (and the nation’s) long-term infrastructural needs are ill-served by the gap between AA/AS students and BS students going on to advanced degrees and independent research work.
Grammar schools? What the fuck? No.. seriously, what the fuck???
You think the key to our educational problems is to select at the age of 11. That is 11, before puberty has even kicked into top gear. And, at the age of 11, decide WHO gets the good education, and who gets shunted off into the shitty level of schools so they can be shepherded into a nice safe job in one of the many factories offering a job for life?
That depends entirely where you are. Community colleges are like that back East, but here on the West Coast it’s generally different. In California they’re more like halfway universities; here they were designed, and are still used (though not as much as they used to be), as an alternative to your lower division at a UC or Cal State.
No, I think they could actually select some a lot younger than that(!), but could also go on selecting afterwards. I’m not asking for the other schools to be rubbish either. Extreme streaming (of the sort that rich kids can already pay for) is the only way to be fair to any poor but smart kids who might exist (as well as the thicker ones still failing to keep up to the lowered standards). Look what happens to them otherwise if they dare try to “rise above their station” in the no-grant fee-paying version of UK education:
Telegraph vs BBC
(on the other hand it could be an interesting investigation for whomever ScienceBlogs sends over …)
I’m not the one with the reality problem. You’re the one buying into the fantasy that previous maths and science no-hopers can suddenly magically not only understand but also teach maths and science effectively just because they’ve managed to land a job as some other sort of a teacher and then taken a bribe and a quick fix training course.
OK. So, my theory was correct. You are utterly ignorant of the education of children and of young adults.
You imagine that the world is divided into “people that can do maths” and “people that dont do maths”. You forget that MANY people who could do maths simply choose not to, for MANY reasons other than some inate inability.
You also imagine that streaming is a sensible way of grouping students, forgetting that an ability at woodwork is not necessarily related (positively, or negatively) with an abilty at Latin.
As it happens, I HAVE seen some science “no hopers”, as you so wonderfully put it, and as others have labelled them, achieve some truly magnificent results in the world of scientific investigation. But hey, what would I know? I am just a physics teacher who happens to think that ALL children deserve a fucking great science education.
Spoken like a non-scientist (in the truest sense of that) and …
… as a consequence of your unscientific attitude, you are wrong. You fail to consider the evidence and jump to false but self-reinforcing conclusions.
No, I think there’s a continuum but that many people (including self-admitters on this blog) don’t measure up to the standard necessary for doing science. While the boundary is fuzzy, it does exist in some meaningful sense.
Once again the available evidence has already demonstrated the falsity of your assertion. You’re simply choosing to ignore it or are incapable of thinking properly (probably due to your irrational prejudices against streaming – not all such things are religious!).
If you weren’t so assiduously avoiding noticing it, you might have managed to read that for my plan of encouraging people not to give up science, I must be fully aware of some people being capable of maths but choosing not to use it. I even put forward some of the reasons (cost vs expected gain and effort vs likely result) for that.
You continue to fantasise inaccurately in your next paragraph too. Finally …
By which remark you try to defame me by implying that I don’t regard them as deserving. You are wrong once again (possibly deliberately but possibly just through your own prejudice-caused stupidity and ignorance). I simply recognise, unlike you, that they would also do better by progressing at their own rate. They certainly don’t constitute a good enough excuse for retarding the less able pupils in the way that is currently happening in the UK. The lowest common denominator approach merely results in everyone getting a rubbish education – which is what those on the receiving end, tutoring at universities or employing people, see in comparison with what they used to get as intake.
I have my doubts as to whether you could be a good physics teacher but, from your incredibly poor comprehension, I can be sure you would be a very bad English teacher beyond the most meagre basics.
Now that it’s no longer so extremely late at night, I’ll address a couple of the other glaring errors in Donalbain’s post which demonstrate his failure to think straight.
Let’s suppose, as you contend, that there’s no correlation between math ability and woodworking ability. In that case, there will be no difference for good (or bad) math people to be in a mixed woodwork group than if they were non-math-streamed and in a mixed woodwork group. Similarly, if woodwork were itself something which could benefit significantly from streaming, then with enough children in an area’s schools to have more than one woodwork class in each school at all, the same situation would applies if they were used as grammar and non-grammar schools. With no correlation the woodwork streaming would look exactly the same. So you have no legitimate complaint. But, tellingly, you are incapable of noticing that for yourself.
NB One thing you couldn’t know and didn’t ask about my ideas for education (because you were too busy jumping to false conclusions about my views based on your own prejudices) is that I’d like parts of some school days (probably certain afternoons) to be increasingly set aside at the upper ages (ie at the very least the O-level/GCSE group) for swapsies out to specialist establishments or centres in various schools for subjects such as advanced or exotic sports (eg equestrian, gymnastics, dance) or technical or practical specialisms – things for which schools simply can’t provide a wide range otherwise.
Now, getting back to your fantasies, I didn’t suggest that Latin be the criterion for streaming at all but a more general IQ one. However, there really is some correlation between ability in one academic area and another. Eg Those who are good at maths and English could well be slightly better on average at Latin too. So the streaming of other non-physical subjects will get a head-start in IQ segregated schools. This means that, in theory, schools could offer a wider choice of languages and get away with having just the one class of each (as is already the case in private schools where the kids are half-segregated by IQ anyway because of their fee-paying parents’ abilities and attitudes). That possibility then applies to both the grammar and the non-grammar schools instead of just the rich but not the “everyone else” schools.
I want equal opportunities for poor kids to have a wider education and a wider choice, whether they are at the top of the range or the bottom. I don’t want them to be stuck knowing and doing only what their parents handed on to them or what little they were artificially retarded into learning at school and getting pushed into your imaginary jobs for life (which no longer exist in most circumstances). Your irrational antipathy to IQ streaming actually acts against that laudable goal – and you don’t even see it!
1) You obviously dont know what the word “streaming” means in an educational context. That is nothing to be ashamed of, but probably means that you shouldnt advocate it. You seem to be suggesting that woodwork should be SET, not streamed.
2) I would be FASCINATED to see the evidence you used to come to the conclusion that private educated children have higher IQs than state educated ones.
But, still, thank you for your assesment of skills as a physics teacher. I am always pleased to have feedback, especially when it comes from someone who does not have the first idea what they are talking about.
Untrue. Streaming is the process (verb). A set is another term for the entity so generated as a class (noun) but “setting” would be largely equivalent as the verb. Schools could be streamed primarily by woodwork and then have maths sets within them too, but that would be very silly. It’s entirely possible that English usage has changed a little though, especially as part of the standard going down overall by your generation.
I notice that you are completely unable to address the substantive point of the post though and instead resort to irrelevant ad hominem attacks based on quibbling over the richness of English. That’s very revealing (albeit of what I had already noted about you and your inability to make valid, logical points).
Not all do. I said half-segregated. The private schools (including faith-based ones) get to choose their intake as much as the parents do – and they don’t typically do so purely on the basis of money or genuinely on faith at all. They do so on ability (with scholarships and reference to children’s past performance). Their better end results reflect this dishonest behind-the-scenes streaming (which is why rich parents are then encouraged to pay, even if their kids are thick). I just want the streaming to be up-front and fair to all.
PS Given your current inability to think straight, I’d probably better explain in more detail the importance of streaming.
Suppose there are only 12 language slots per week available for students in a school. The smart kids might be able to take 3 languages (4 lessons per week each) and reach the same level of proficiency as average kids taking 2 languages (6 lessons each) but only if they are kept together as a stream (in a completely separate school or within some enormous school). Meanwhile, those kids struggling academically might learn one language to a functional level (8 lessons perhaps) while spending the additional time catching up on English.
Similarly the smart kids could cover 3 separate sciences because they are kept together as a stream, while the other kids do the mixed GCSE course. They might reach a higher level in mathematics if not held back to the lowest common denominator and/or have time to pack in another subject.
It works better for the time-tables if the kids are separated by overall ability so that more can have as wide a choice as possible while not being disadvantaged.
PPS Since I have a very bad feeling you are still going to be able to misunderstand, I’ll take the wood-working example further.
Suppose people were streamed on the basis of wood-working ability (whether for separate schools or within a huge school). That type of ability would almost certainly apply to a range of similar subjects. So people in the top stream might study metalworking, plastics, textiles etc too while those in a lower stream concentrate on their favourite one or two choices from the available options.
They could still, in a big enough school, end up in sets (separate classes at the same time) but, because they are streamed, they get the advantage of potentially having the wider choice of what subjects they actually study within that general area of ability (before any possible, but probably unnecessary, subsequent setting within individual disciplines). This can only happen because the time-tabling is kept together for that whole stream.
What you are describing is NOT streaming. It is setting. There is a difference. The fact that you do not know the difference is nothing to be ashamed of, but pretending that you DO, is.
And thank you for imagining you even know what generation I am. That gave me a chuckle. I also note that you rather amusingly referred to an hominem attack that you imagined I had made just a few sentences later.
You claim to be a physics teacher. That does rather narrow your age down (unless you are lying)! You aren’t retired and you aren’t still a child.
I’m describing both (and it involves the same underlying process anyway!) and probably an older version than you are used to (if you really are in the UK rather than the US and are limiting your definition of streaming to being a group within a class). You do seem to having great difficulty understanding (probably self-inflicted because you are so prejudiced and opposed to the basic facts). I’ll try and put it even more simply though in case there’s anyone else out there hard of thinking but who actually wants to know, unlike you.
If you stream children according to a broad ability, eg IQ is the one I’m primarily suggesting (and between schools rather than in some mega-school), then you can get away without much further setting (separating the whole stream into classes by subject area ability). If you don’t need the ability setting of classes then you are able to offer more real choice instead. NB If you are reduced to streaming tiny groups of children within a single class (like primary school reading groups named by colour or animal!), then what you have at higher levels is just a mess and they don’t genuinely get the attention or level of material they need at all. It’s Little House on the Prairie time.
What this (ie my scheme) means for even the average children is that they don’t have to be in good set vs bad set for the same tiny range of subject choices. Instead they can actually choose between German class or French class, and perhaps Physics class or Biology class (though obviously you’d try to include all sciences earlier on). Meanwhile, the top IQ stream (ie grammar school bunch) can either get further in each subject (taking basic ones early) and/or study more subjects overall (several languages and all the sciences) and still have more choices.
My way, everyone wins. Your way, everyone loses. This is why I like my way better. It’s really not that hard to understand.
Incidentally, it could also theoretically be done under the existing Academy scheme – except that there would probably be an outcry from people like you. If you accept that some people might be generally more sporty than others and go to a special Sports Academy designed to favour several sports while providing a limited range or limited setting of other subjects, then you ought to accept that some people really are more academically gifted than others. So they could go to a special Academic Academy (call it a Grammar school, why don’t you) in which they are pre-streamed for IQ (or nearest convenient measure) and get the chance to really shine at things pertaining to that, while still having lots of choices.
So have the sports Academies the government wants (or which it feels safe talking about) and perhaps even those wood-working Academies (with other related manual work skills) but do also let the academic Academies (grammar schools) exist. Then the country will start having some decently educated children again instead of everyone being artificially retarded to the same low level under the pretence of them all being equal anyway.