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Is there any internationally agree scale that relates IQ or other ability measurements to the level of maths that can be acquired?

Most people don't need calculus, of course.

In fact most people don't need to go to university.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
If you teach people to shut up and focus when they're children they'll be finishing calculus before they're halfway through high school

This seems like a pretty big assumption to make. Is there any credible evidence to support the idea that average students (not just a few exceptional ones) can finish calculus halfway through high school? When you answer, keep in mind that calculus for science and engineering is a three-semester subject in college.

I am exaggerating a bit for effect, but calculus is pretty easy once you actually get to it. I think the biggest problem teachers face is a disinterested and undisciplined student body; if they were able to focus they could likely teach themselves calculus. The discipline to sit down and learn something because "shut up" is a crucial part of benefitting from education, and one I certainly wish had been instilled in me earlier than several years into college. At least I had the benefit of being disordinately sharp to mostly carry me through high school and the earlier college classes.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
If you teach people to shut up and focus when they're children they'll be finishing calculus before they're halfway through high school

This seems like a pretty big assumption to make. Is there any credible evidence to support the idea that average students (not just a few exceptional ones) can finish calculus halfway through high school? When you answer, keep in mind that calculus for science and engineering is a three-semester subject in college.

Ironically Sir Pseudo made my point better than I could.

I'm a pilot- extra calculus wouldn't help me a stitch in life. My fiancee is a vet. A lot of schooling, sure, but physics? Not useful in the field. My sister is an ER nurse. Why would she need physics and calculus? All of these are valuable jobs to the community and the economy as a whole. All of them, with the possible exception of mine (gulp) will probably be around for a while. None of them need any kind of physics or calculus. Hardly any jobs in America need physics or calculus. I studied geology in college, just because I liked it, and I did have to take physics (calc-based) and calc through differential equations. I have never in life used those skills since I left college. The idea that we have to shape our entire educational system to support a very small group of professionals is pretty untenable. Give everybody something they can use- willpower. If you focus on that while they are young you haven't even left any years of education on the table. Willpower training isn't like a separate class or something, it's just holding kids in schools to exacting standards at all times- even in terms of non academic stuff. Posture, manners, correct speech. People didn't force that on kids because they were really important in themselves, they forced it on them because having to abide by all these rules and strictures builds willpower that later you can use for more productive things. The biggest problem with American kids in school today isn't that they are dumb, it's that they lack willpower. There is a great book, just called Willpower, that contains all the latest research in the field. It's very illuminating.

For what's its worth, calculus came really easy to me.

Got my arse kicked in Algebra.

Silverthorne wrote:Give everybody something they can use- willpower. If you focus on that while they are young you haven't even left any years of education on the table. Willpower training isn't like a separate class or something, it's just holding kids in schools to exacting standards at all times- even in terms of non academic stuff. Posture, manners, correct speech. People didn't force that on kids because they were really important in themselves, they forced it on them because having to abide by all these rules and strictures builds willpower that later you can use for more productive things. The biggest problem with American kids in school today isn't that they are dumb, it's that they lack willpower. There is a great book, just called Willpower, that contains all the latest research in the field. It's very illuminating.

So long as one makes it clear why they need to follow all these arbitrary rules, instead of trusting them to figure it out for themselves. Kids aren't smart, but they are cunning enough to realize when something's pointless; they may do it anyways to avoid punishment or get some manner of reward, but they'll still resent and act against it when given the chance.

I mean, there's plenty of arbitrary behavioral rules in place, and plenty of blatantly useless topics taught in school, but for all that I saw this firsthand the underlying point of it all escaped me until I was in college. Most people don't seem to ever fully understand the whole process, and make light of just how useless much of schooling is, which shows that making people adhere to rigorous standards isn't a surefire way of instilling discipline in them.

whembly wrote:For what's its worth, calculus came really easy to me.

Got my arse kicked in Algebra.

Calculus was so much easier than some of the more advanced algebra that I learned* years before taking calculus. Most of the worst was just stupidly convoluted ways of doing things calculus accomplishes in a tenth of the time. I don't understand why calculus gets treated as some esoteric and super-advanced topic - it's simple and awesome. I might not need to use it day-to-day, but I can still derive an equation drunk - and often have because when you're drunk it seems that much more awesome.

*Had to study, and used all of once: on the test to demonstrate I knew how to do it. I don't even remember more of it than that.

Differentiation is pretty simple as long as you don't worry too much about limits and what it actually means in some physical systems, but I do think integration and some other forms of differentiation (I'm remembering partial derivatives in my thermodynamics course, I found that tough) are challenging, and more complex than any other algebra, especially if you want to know why you're doing it that way and what that means in a physical system. If you use it as a black box that you put variables into and get an answer out of, it's not too bad though.

On the subject of willpower, I'd be okay with altering how we teach at primary school to instil more willpower and work ethic in kids. I also think we should focus on reading, writing and maths as well as thinking skills with young kids, and only teach "science" and the humanities in a fairly basic way. Secondary school is when their brains are developed enough to get the most out of those subjects, and to think critically.

 Da Boss wrote:
If you use it as a black box that you put variables into and get an answer out of, it's not too bad though.

Dude, calculus works because magic. It's like an IRL cheat code.

On the subject of willpower, I'd be okay with altering how we teach at primary school to instil more willpower and work ethic in kids. I also think we should focus on reading, writing and maths as well as thinking skills with young kids, and only teach "science" and the humanities in a fairly basic way. Secondary school is when their brains are developed enough to get the most out of those subjects, and to think critically.

Yeah, "science" as taught at the lowest levels is laughably useless. Just a basic primer on the scientific method and the philosophy behind it should be pretty much all that kids could really understand or benefit from at that level. Go beyond that and you're just trying to burn time. That's not to say they don't remember much of it, it's just necessarily restricted to a "basic trivia" level by the constraints of time and the abilities of the students.

Student motivation will happen when both the teachers and parents push the students. Without parent or teacher support, the student has little incentive to excel at school.

One of the things I am hesitant about merit pay is that some teachers luck out and get a great school to work in and others draw crappy schools and no real involvement. I still remember in high school, some kids will never learn and will be screwups. Which is why I would advocate starting things like apprenticeships with vocational jobs starting at age 16. Everyone should be able to go to college but not everyone is cut out for college. I know because I have to deal with remedial college students who use Wikipedia for their papers and then come to me with help finding books and articles (but the perks of being a librarian is knowing you helped them get an A on their assignment).

 Silverthorne wrote:
I don't agree. What I described is the classical model of education. Many of the greatest thinkers of all time were so educated. It's a bootstrap issue. If you give someone willpower, he can give the rest to himself. If you have finished instilling willpower by 8th grade (my timeline, sorry if that was unclear) then you are able to get a ton more work out of people in the more productive time period of high school. I'm always a little taken aback when you look at how little people learn in elementary and middle school, given the virtually logarithmic progression of learning possible at young ages.

It shouldn't take till your 18 to culture willpower in kids. By 6th grade it should be there, and after that it is just maintenance and you can focus on whatever other educational goals you have.

You need to go and read up on schooling in Asia and the problems their approach causes. Hours of homework and very strict learning by rote. And in the end it gives you students that can give the periodic table from start to finish, but can't figure out or adapt to any new problem.

It's interesting you mentioned the Navy SEAL earlier. First up, you aren't getting into SEALs with an 85 IQ, and second up those guys (like all spec ops) are noted for their ability to adapt and think on their feet. A kid who's just taught discipline won't make the grade.


Point being, the absolute most important thing to instill in kids is to teach them how to learn and think for themselves, and the most important cultural value is for them to treasure learning and thinking.


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Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
That's not what he's saying. He's talking about refocusing earlier education into more openly and efficiently doing what is in many respects the only valuable part of much of schooling: the discipline to do something pointless, arduous, and useless because doing so benefits you for unintuitive reasons. If you teach people to shut up and focus when they're children they'll be finishing calculus before they're halfway through high school, in addition to the general good this will do society at large.

And they'll have absolutely no idea how to apply that knowledge to the real world.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Silverthorne wrote:
I'm a pilot- extra calculus wouldn't help me a stitch in life. My fiancee is a vet. A lot of schooling, sure, but physics? Not useful in the field. My sister is an ER nurse. Why would she need physics and calculus? All of these are valuable jobs to the community and the economy as a whole. All of them, with the possible exception of mine (gulp) will probably be around for a while. None of them need any kind of physics or calculus. Hardly any jobs in America need physics or calculus. I studied geology in college, just because I liked it, and I did have to take physics (calc-based) and calc through differential equations. I have never in life used those skills since I left college. The idea that we have to shape our entire educational system to support a very small group of professionals is pretty untenable.

The ability to understand abstract concepts and use the rules and systems of that abstract system to solve problems is an essential building block, whether or not the specific abstract skill ever ends up getting used in the real world.

 Manchu wrote:
IME, many undergraduate programs basically are remedial courses.

I would go so far as to say that many undergraduate programs involve no education at all, merely expensive pieces of paper.

 sebster wrote:

You need to go and read up on schooling in Asia and the problems their approach causes. Hours of homework and very strict learning by rote. And in the end it gives you students that can give the periodic table from start to finish, but can't figure out or adapt to any new problem.

Care to elaborate on this? Because the school systems in Asia are either third world systems, with all the attendant problems, or are Japan, which is worse about discipline than most American schools, and is all-around a pretty substandard system, which fudges the numbers by ensuring only the best students take their standard tests so as to appear better on paper.

Point being, the absolute most important thing to instill in kids is to teach them how to learn and think for themselves, and the most important cultural value is for them to treasure learning and thinking.

The problem being that without the discipline to act against impulse when it is beneficial to do so, learning something to any great degree is impossible without some overwhelming fascination with it. Action is a much bigger part of life than studying; experience is the only true teacher, and without the discipline to work and practice in a given field (which is tedious at best, for all that a particular interest in the matter makes it more tolerable), then a simple "respect for learning" isn't going to do anything.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
That's not what he's saying. He's talking about refocusing earlier education into more openly and efficiently doing what is in many respects the only valuable part of much of schooling: the discipline to do something pointless, arduous, and useless because doing so benefits you for unintuitive reasons. If you teach people to shut up and focus when they're children they'll be finishing calculus before they're halfway through high school, in addition to the general good this will do society at large.

And they'll have absolutely no idea how to apply that knowledge to the real world.

How does "teach children to study something boring (though we've established calculus is awesome and probably magic, so bad example there) and complicated because doing so benefits them" work out to "they'll have no idea how to use what they learn"?

 whembly wrote:
For what's its worth, calculus came really easy to me.

Got my arse kicked in Algebra.

Calculus is easy, what kills people is the Algebra. More focus should be put on that part of it.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Care to elaborate on this? Because the school systems in Asia are either third world systems, with all the attendant problems, or are Japan, which is worse about discipline than most American schools, and is all-around a pretty substandard system, which fudges the numbers by ensuring only the best students take their standard tests so as to appear better on paper.

Japan's problem isn't only discipline, but with the basic way in which they handle learning. And you can throw South Korea as having the same problem, even more so.

The problem being that without the discipline to act against impulse when it is beneficial to do so, learning something to any great degree is impossible without some overwhelming fascination with it.

Without some kind of motivation or internal drive for the kid (like a valuve placed on learning for its own sake) then what you're really doing is telling kids to sit down, shut up and write what teacher puts on the board.

How does "teach children to study something boring (though we've established calculus is awesome and probably magic, so bad example there) and complicated because doing so benefits them" work out to "they'll have no idea how to use what they learn"?

If calculus reads to you as if it were magic then you got taught really terribly. Maybe the result of just sitting there, staying quiet and writing down whatever teacher wrote on the board.

When you compare doing the same thing with Calculus vs doing it with Algebra it kinda seems like magic. The difference in difficulty is night and day.

I don't remember what i was exactly, but there was something I learned in Calculus that is another way to solve for something in Algebra too, maybe it was Derivatives and the Power Rule. Anyway, when I learned that in Calculus every thing was so clear. Algebra had taught me the long convoluted way to do it. And that made me absolutly livid for about 5 days.

 sebster wrote:

Japan's problem isn't only discipline, but with the basic way in which they handle learning. And you can throw South Korea as having the same problem, even more so.

Right? I just threw the discipline bit in there because it seems it's a common misconception that their discipline is stricter, when the teachers and administrators actually have their hands tied quite a bit more than in the US. The system is more exacting, yes, but in a weird, excessively punitive way.

Without some kind of motivation or internal drive for the kid (like a valuve placed on learning for its own sake) then what you're really doing is telling kids to sit down, shut up and write what teacher puts on the board.

A strength of will is an internal drive, and a far more reliable one than some abstract "respect for learning", and I think you're taking a bit of a leap to conflate learning a topic because you need to with rote memorization of what is effectively trivia. I think the practice of straight up "teaching the test" is despicable and undermining, and have no regard for most matters where study amounts to memorization of specific entries rather than requiring the understanding of a system.

I mean, the only academic topics I've ever been so fascinated with as to actually learn anything meaningful about them on my own terms have been Latin (and to a lesser extent, several other languages, none of which I learned to any real proficiency) and programming, and only the former managed to remain engaging in the form of a class. I've only rarely been interested in any subject, but even what few shreds of discipline I had were enough to sit down and learn to do something pointless (and almost every subject is rather pointless in terms of its own merits, at the highschool or lower levels, anyways) for the sake of passing a class.

The discipline to work, even when it seems pointless, or understand a complex subject even though doing so can be arduous and boring, is far more valuable and possessed of much broader usefulness than some vague idea of fostering learning for the enjoyment of learning.

If calculus reads to you as if it were magic then you got taught really terribly. Maybe the result of just sitting there, staying quiet and writing down whatever teacher wrote on the board.

It's a running joke, and meant more along the lines of "it accomplishes magic" than it literally being some unknowable and eldritch force.

IIRC the Japanese culture itself is what is actually the restrictive part, not the schools or anything they have in place.

Any culture that finds it socially acceptable or, god-forbid, culturally mandated to commit suicide in certain situations is just disgusting. I like many parts of Japanese culture, but that one thing really gets my goat.

Failing a placement test, losing your job, etc... Silly stuff to kill yourself over. Not that anything ever would make it acceptable.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

The discipline to work, even when it seems pointless, or understand a complex subject even though doing so can be arduous and boring, is far more valuable and possessed of much broader usefulness than some vague idea of fostering learning for the enjoyment of learning.

So your argument is that people should do what they're told?

 dogma wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

The discipline to work, even when it seems pointless, or understand a complex subject even though doing so can be arduous and boring, is far more valuable and possessed of much broader usefulness than some vague idea of fostering learning for the enjoyment of learning.

So your argument is that people should do what they're told?

Not a bad start, but it shouldn't be all you do. We don't want to make mindless zombies.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Right? I just threw the discipline bit in there because it seems it's a common misconception that their discipline is stricter, when the teachers and administrators actually have their hands tied quite a bit more than in the US. The system is more exacting, yes, but in a weird, excessively punitive way.

Sure, but you've now managed to talk past the problems of Asian schooling without actually addressing why your idea of discipline won't just end up being exactly the same thing.

A strength of will is an internal drive, and a far more reliable one than some abstract "respect for learning", and I think you're taking a bit of a leap to conflate learning a topic because you need to with rote memorization of what is effectively trivia. I think the practice of straight up "teaching the test" is despicable and undermining, and have no regard for most matters where study amounts to memorization of specific entries rather than requiring the understanding of a system.

That's my point. That if you just instil discipline to study without fostering any kind of curiousity or drive to understand what's actually being taught, then you're just going to produce kids who will sit there, shut up and memorise what you tell them.

And discipline comes when someone has something to work towards. Instruct me to dig a hole and fill it in again and with five minutes I'll be bitching that my back is sore and goofing off. But if I have a strong personal reason of my own to dig a hole and fill it in again (say perhaps to bury a body) then I'm not even going to notice the hard work until I'm done.

Teaching kids the value of knowledge and the ability to learn, and you'll be surprised how much they'll find out on their own, without anyone needing to crack a whip.

It's a running joke, and meant more along the lines of "it accomplishes magic" than it literally being some unknowable and eldritch force.

Cool. I largely got it the first time around but it seemed such a neat way of wrapping up my point on rote learning that I just couldn't resist

dogma wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

The discipline to work, even when it seems pointless, or understand a complex subject even though doing so can be arduous and boring, is far more valuable and possessed of much broader usefulness than some vague idea of fostering learning for the enjoyment of learning.

So your argument is that people should do what they're told?

Not exactly, or exclusively. People should act according to the situation, not their impulses. If the sitation requires following orders, then they should follow orders, even if they'd rather not. There's obviously conflict in an actual situation, which is necessarily more complex, but as a general rule of thumb following an authority figure whom you are obligated to follow is usually a better course of action than flagrantly ignoring them because you'd rather, say, sleep all day.

Grey Templar wrote:IIRC the Japanese culture itself is what is actually the restrictive part, not the schools or anything they have in place.

Any culture that finds it socially acceptable or, god-forbid, culturally mandated to commit suicide in certain situations is just disgusting. I like many parts of Japanese culture, but that one thing really gets my goat.

Failing a placement test, losing your job, etc... Silly stuff to kill yourself over. Not that anything ever would make it acceptable.

Japanese culture is weird, and not in the wacky way people often think. Ritual suicide makes sense for leadership in a more militaristic and primitive context (Roman nobility was expected to kill themselves or have one of their followers kill them to avoid the disgrace and torture surrender or capture would bring, for instance; also something of a moralistic justification of slavery for them: "slaves surrendered rather than die, and so are immoral, justifying their mistreatment"), but it's obviously out of place in a modern society. I think part of the responsibility for its prevalence in Japanese culture goes back to the whole mythical samurai image created by the fascist government as a piece of military propaganda, but it also highlights a darker side-effect of discipline (when understanding of why discipline is such a virtue is incomplete or lacking entirely): the propensity to shrug off and ignore stress-inducing circumstances without rectifying the cause of the stress when one is able to bear discomfort instead of just lashing out immediately. Most of the time, the situation changes on its own, so powering through stress rarely results in such long-term misery that unhealthy breaks occur (suicide, spree killing, etc), but when it doesn't abate, or when it gets pushed up a notch or ten on an already strained individual, then you get bad situations, to put it lightly.

 sebster wrote:

Sure, but you've now managed to talk past the problems of Asian schooling without actually addressing why your idea of discipline won't just end up being exactly the same thing.
...

That's my point. That if you just instil discipline to study without fostering any kind of curiousity or drive to understand what's actually being taught, then you're just going to produce kids who will sit there, shut up and memorise what you tell them.

And discipline comes when someone has something to work towards. Instruct me to dig a hole and fill it in again and with five minutes I'll be bitching that my back is sore and goofing off. But if I have a strong personal reason of my own to dig a hole and fill it in again (say perhaps to bury a body) then I'm not even going to notice the hard work until I'm done.

Teaching kids the value of knowledge and the ability to learn, and you'll be surprised how much they'll find out on their own, without anyone needing to crack a whip.

Discipline is acting without immediate and obvious personal interest. Knowing that something needs to be done should be sufficient motivation to do it, with a proper amount of self-discipline. Interest makes it a lot easier, sure, but discipline should prevail even in its absence.

I don't see how that conflicts with subjects not being rote memorization. That seems far more an issue of how understanding is tested: if it's easier to game the test and just memorize exactly what it wants, people are going to do that. To encourage actually learning a subject both the test and the teaching methods should be focused on that understanding, instead of getting good with a few specific scenarios. I didn't need (and certainly didn't have) an interest in chemistry in college (taking it in highschool rather killed any interest I may have once had in it) to understand it better than anyone else in the class (to the point that in the labs people would sooner ask me for instruction than refer to the manual (which I didn't own) or the teacher), but I certainly would have benefitted from the discipline to actually do the work instead of just acing the tests, for instance.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Not exactly, or exclusively. People should act according to the situation, not their impulses.

The situation, apparently, doesn't include the acting party.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

If the sitation requires following orders, then they should follow orders, even if they'd rather not. There's obviously conflict in an actual situation, which is necessarily more complex, but as a general rule of thumb following an authority figure whom you are obligated to follow is usually a better course of action than flagrantly ignoring them because you'd rather, say, sleep all day.

The word you're looking for isn't "better" it is "easier".

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Discipline is acting without immediate and obvious personal interest. Knowing that something needs to be done should be sufficient motivation to do it, with a proper amount of self-discipline. Interest makes it a lot easier, sure, but discipline should prevail even in its absence.

Simply doing something because it must be done, but with no interest or appreciation for it will produce people who once studied enough to know how to do calculus, but have since forgotten all of it. People who read How to Kill a Mockingbird in year 9 and The Great Gatsby in year 10, and nothing ever since. People who's entire economic knowledge is a vague recollection of demand and supply graphs from year 8. People who remember that water is H2O, but no appreciation of how the scientific method is used to learn more about our world every day.

Actually expanding on that basic knowledge requires some level of interest, some level of personal motivation. For people to actively seek to learn past highschool.

I don't see how that conflicts with subjects not being rote memorization.

Really?

That seems far more an issue of how understanding is tested: if it's easier to game the test and just memorize exactly what it wants, people are going to do that. To encourage actually learning a subject both the test and the teaching methods should be focused on that understanding, instead of getting good with a few specific scenarios.

Yes, and focusing on that is exactly what schooling should be. To the extent that discipline is needed for that it should be developed, but no more.

 Grey Templar wrote:
When you compare doing the same thing with Calculus vs doing it with Algebra it kinda seems like magic. The difference in difficulty is night and day.

I don't remember what i was exactly, but there was something I learned in Calculus that is another way to solve for something in Algebra too, maybe it was Derivatives and the Power Rule. Anyway, when I learned that in Calculus every thing was so clear. Algebra had taught me the long convoluted way to do it. And that made me absolutly livid for about 5 days.

I'm older than dirt. I have a multibillion dollar poprtfolio and built multipage project cash flow models for fun. Yet I never, ever needed calculus for anything. I want to beat my first calculus teacher with a hammer.

Especially the same for my grad school micro economics. I love economics before I took his class. Now we hatz it more than catz.


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Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:
Many of the greatest thinkers of all time were so educated.

Many of the "greatest thinkers of all time" also lived at a time when there was a lot less knowledge. Now we've reached the point where even a basic science/engineering education (IOW, an undergraduate degree) requires that you start day one of college with calculus/engineering physics/etc or you won't be able to finish even the basics in four years. And TBH current standards are already too low, cutting back even more on pre-college math and science in favor of "willpower" would be a disaster.

That's not what he's saying. He's talking about refocusing earlier education into more openly and efficiently doing what is in many respects the only valuable part of much of schooling: the discipline to do something pointless, arduous, and useless because doing so benefits you for unintuitive reasons. If you teach people to shut up and focus when they're children they'll be finishing calculus before they're halfway through high school, in addition to the general good this will do society at large.

bs. The average student doesn't need calculus, and can't handle it.

Education needs to teach them to understand, think, have a throough basic knolwedge of science, history, math, government and government theory, a foreign language, and basic economics (and evidently by my typing - typing!). Concentrate on that first. Once they graduate they then have the tools to move on to universeity or an excellent trade school (which is where the vast majority SHOULD be going). Sorry but you don't need a college degree for 75% of what college grads do.


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 Silverthorne wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
If you teach people to shut up and focus when they're children they'll be finishing calculus before they're halfway through high school

This seems like a pretty big assumption to make. Is there any credible evidence to support the idea that average students (not just a few exceptional ones) can finish calculus halfway through high school? When you answer, keep in mind that calculus for science and engineering is a three-semester subject in college.

Ironically Sir Pseudo made my point better than I could.

I'm a pilot- extra calculus wouldn't help me a stitch in life. My fiancee is a vet. A lot of schooling, sure, but physics? Not useful in the field. My sister is an ER nurse. Why would she need physics and calculus? All of these are valuable jobs to the community and the economy as a whole. All of them, with the possible exception of mine (gulp) will probably be around for a while. None of them need any kind of physics or calculus. Hardly any jobs in America need physics or calculus. I studied geology in college, just because I liked it, and I did have to take physics (calc-based) and calc through differential equations. I have never in life used those skills since I left college. The idea that we have to shape our entire educational system to support a very small group of professionals is pretty untenable. Give everybody something they can use- willpower. If you focus on that while they are young you haven't even left any years of education on the table. Willpower training isn't like a separate class or something, it's just holding kids in schools to exacting standards at all times- even in terms of non academic stuff. Posture, manners, correct speech. People didn't force that on kids because they were really important in themselves, they forced it on them because having to abide by all these rules and strictures builds willpower that later you can use for more productive things. The biggest problem with American kids in school today isn't that they are dumb, it's that they lack willpower. There is a great book, just called Willpower, that contains all the latest research in the field. It's very illuminating.

Exactly.

Replace calculus with basic programming.

dogma wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Not exactly, or exclusively. People should act according to the situation, not their impulses.

The situation, apparently, doesn't include the acting party.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

If the situation requires following orders, then they should follow orders, even if they'd rather not. There's obviously conflict in an actual situation, which is necessarily more complex, but as a general rule of thumb following an authority figure whom you are obligated to follow is usually a better course of action than flagrantly ignoring them because you'd rather, say, sleep all day.

The word you're looking for isn't "better" it is "easier".

No. Discipline is the capacity to choose the better option over what your gut wants you to do, and the better option is determined by the specific circumstances of the situation.

sebster wrote:People who read How to Kill a Mockingbird in year 9 and The Great Gatsby in year 10, and nothing ever since.

Perhaps they shouldn't use dry, antiquated reading materials in English, then. Make them read A Song of Ice and Fire or something, and focus more on grammar and spelling than spurious analysis of no-longer-relevant books.

Actually expanding on that basic knowledge requires some level of interest, some level of personal motivation. For people to actively seek to learn past highschool.

To address this, and the larger list culled above: basically all of these matters are perfect examples of my premise: that about 98% of schooling is good for nothing but instilling the discipline to shut up and work or the basic language skills necessary to do so. Shift over the earlier focus to maximizing the efficacy of this fundamental aspect of schooling, and you can devote more of schooling to meaningful and productive study rather than just more instilling self-discipline.

Yes, and focusing on that is exactly what schooling should be. To the extent that discipline is needed for that it should be developed, but no more.

The thing is, as said above, when schooling ultimately already revolves around instilling self-discipline, we can clearly see that's the most important aspect of the current system. Improve it early on, and you can branch out and accomplish useful, meaningful study in high school, as its current task will already be done, meaning high school becomes a more productive period wherein topics may be studied to a greater degree in less time than a course that barely surpasses common trivia can today, as well as covering more technical topics (counting programming, engineering, and the like as "technical" here) fields. Basically, turn it into what college at its best can be.

Yeah, keep the reading relavent. Maybe have a couple classics, but make sure they also read contemporary books(that are also popular)

Seriously, who wants to read How to Kill a Mockingbird? Like maybe 10% of each class. Have them read something they'd actually like for a change.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, keep the reading relavent. Maybe have a couple classics, but make sure they also read contemporary books(that are also popular)

Seriously, who wants to read How to Kill a Mockingbird? Like maybe 10% of each class. Have them read something they'd actually like for a change.

Is this serious? Really? So the only literature we can learn from is that we enjoy? You're going to tell me John Grisham has as much to offer as Marcel Proust?

feth man, I can't even come back thats just so idiotic.

feth, I had to erase my comment 5 times just to make sure I'm not banned. And I'm still not sure getting banned isnt worth refuting the slowed things you've said.

Did I say we should only read what we enjoy for school?

No, but they should have some stuff that is enjoyable.


Its not hard to find good books that the students would enjoy that would also be qualified as good learning literature.

If Schools need a book that teaches X or illustrates Y, I'm sure they can find one that that would also actually be enjoyed. The fact they most of what is assigned is so-so as far as entertainment value goes shows a lack of imagination, or just lazyness. "We've always assigned this so no need to change it *hurr durr!"

Learning is always better when its fun and enjoyable. So people should try to make it that if its in any way possible.

I can kinda see Grey's point. I stopped going to English class my Junior year of high school, because it took me a couple hours to read Hawkin's "The Scarlet Letter" and meanwhile the rest of my class could BARELY plod through a chapter a week. Same issue in Senior English, we were doing readings from MacBeth out loud in class then rereading the covered material at home. How the hell hard is it to put just a DROP of emotion into freaking SHAKESPEARE!? Hellfire have a little fun with it if you have to do it.

Then again, I'm the weird kid who was at a high school reading level in elementary school, and by seventh grade my favorite novel was (and is) The Count of Monte Cristo. So perhaps I'm the wrong person to ask about this.

I had similar issues, being ahead of my scheduled reading level.

The hardest book I ever read was the Iliad and the Odyssey, and that was because it was an older translation. Big mistake