Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Don Y Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design Subject: Re: Visualizing Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2024 10:17:47 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 91 Message-ID: References: <308436@dontemail.com> <2dlmdj55j1s123l3fpi7gs27gpe9dkna9i@4ax.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2024 19:18:00 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="086db94f0332e0d3735a46b01b44aae1"; logging-data="1534617"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/VfLRqleprYofwW7KGIQDW" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.2.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:UgQ7/anX9seyLqhKQqFYve0/WSI= In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US Bytes: 6091 On 9/7/2024 7:03 AM, Ralph Mowery wrote: > I wish that school when I went had a way to educate children in what > they were interested in. And, what do you do about the kids who aren't *interested* in "school"? The role of the (public) school system is to provide a basic education to ALL students so they can be productive members of society. To make an attempt at ensuring that they all have some "basic" understanding of the subjects that society considers important. In years past, this was a reasonably broad suite that also included things like art and music. These seem to be among the first to go when "cuts" are proposed. > I was great in math and science but could not > remember the people's named or dates in history and did very poor in > English. I was good in math and science -- and, according to the teachers, *english* as well (much to my dismay!). History? Blech. Too much rote memorization. OTOH, in college, we were required to take 8 "humanities" courses (one per semester, on average) and I chose American History as one of my electives - thinking I had already had two o*years* of this in jr&sr high school. The teacher was an economist and taught everything with an emphasis on the economic factors at play -- which was far more interesting than just remembering "stories"! > I did go to two sumers of what was called enrichment studies > where we did not get graded but was exposed to many things that came in > hand in later life such as speed reading and general information about > other countries and some science. I really enjoyed those two years. The > ones in that program were ones that seemed to be at the top of the > school class. We had a similar "program" for science and reading. The school system funded the program (paid for teachers and facilities) but "transportation" was the student's responsibility. E.g., the reading "class" was held at a building half a mile distant from the science "class". So, you spent your lunch hour walking from one to the other. There were other "remedial" classes ("summer school") that addressed kids who were lagging in different subjects. Much of the quality of an education (public or otherwise) can be traced to the level of funding and commitment (of parents and educators). My teachers recognized that I was easily bored by the material that challenged the rest of the class so would funnel other materials to me for "independent study". Then, expect me to make presentations to the class about what I had learned. (I remember one year where I spent a day each week -- in "math class" -- presenting bits of the Trachenberg system to my fellow classmates. Gave a short course in "optics" another year based on what I'd learned from the bag of lenses and book given to me by my science teacher.) I built an interactive "football" game as a special project, one year, using "analog computers" and "logic boxes" (each a small suitcase that the student could take home during the school year for "homework"). It occupied a 4'x8' sheet of plywood and was more interesting that it worked, at all, than it's actual technological basis (lots of analog meters scattered around the board to tell you the position on the field, "down", yards gained/lost on that play, "time" remaining, etc.) The school system paid for me to attend another facility in a remote part of the state ( now more of a "charter school" than a "gifted program") where I was exposed to other fields of science that were beyond the capabilities of the public schools. E.g., I started using computers 6 or 7 years before they *had* any in our school system) We had a "math team" that competed with other schools around the state, after school -- relying on one of our teachers for transportation ("VW microbus with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction") Out-of-state "field trips" were relatively common -- NYC, Washington DC, Boston, etc. -- as they were 2-6 hour drives (and the school system would rent the *commercial* bus for our transportation -- sunrise to after sunset!) It's all "just money"... :-/ Jr&Sr high school sorted students into "college prep" and "business" curriculae. And, as there are only a fixed number of hours in a school day, this meant you didn't take some classes in order to accommodate others. E.g., I never had time for "auto shop" in high school -- but managed to fit wood shop, metal shop and drafting into jr high. So, students had *some* flexibility in what they could take (though 4 years of english and 4 years of phys ed were required to graduate high school; I had to bring proof that I'd taken a year's worth -- 2 semesters -- of each back from my freshman year at college in order to get my high school diploma... utter nonsense!)