My niece recently graduated from a prestigious university. Talked to her the other day, she was complaining that her new Honda was getting only 14 mpg. Turns out she was dividing the miles driven by the total gas tank capacity, not the actual amount of gas it took to fill the tank. Took several minutes of explanation before she realized her error. Apparently she was following the instructions of a friend from school. All that theoretical calculus sure came in handy. Where's the Gas Mileage 101 course when you need it...
That's allright. My step-granddaughter thinks that: Paris-London is one city. Brooklyn is a state. Harvard University is in Harlem. A quarter to the hour is 25 minutes to the hour (after all, a quarter is 25 cents).
I don't things have changed that much. When I was in college 40 years ago there were a lot of kids who just didn't get math especially how to apply it to real life situations. As a matter of fact these days primary and secondary schools are teaching a lot more practical things than I learned 50 years. Back then we were give all kinds of made up problems that had little to do with real life. Today, they teach the young kids about money and making change. The problems my kids get in grade school are a lot more relevant than I ever had.
"Larry Bud" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Well, it's good for their self-esteem, you know. That's more important than actual achievement, since if you try to make kids achieve, they might get their feelings hurt.
College is just a mechanism to teach you how to teach yourself, IMO -- college does not somehow magically makes you smarter. All the stuff you learn is basically the equivalent of a stupid pet trick if you cannot apply it.
Doesn't sound like a problem with her ability to do the actual calculation. She knew to divide, and divided correctly. Rather, her problem seems to be in reasoning.
One friend insisted there's butter in peanut butter...
A girl my wife works with thought Bellingham was a state (it's a town in north-west Washington state). She also couldn't figure out why all those cars from Washington (DC) were driving around when she visited the State of Bellingham...
Heck, when I was in 9th grade, we had a whole semester's course called Consumer Education, where we learned about such things as the difference between simple and compound interest, how to calculate mortgages, how revolving credit works... being in Canada, all forms of Metric/Imperial conversion were covered... all sorts of practical, day-to-day applications of math.
That's just silly: for any group to have an agenda, they'd have to agree first. They can't agree themselves out of a wet paper bag.
I am not a political animal, but "no child left behind" - /COME ON NOW/ - what a joke! While I am not blaming the current regime for the education mess, can it truly be said that what was recently done is helpful?
How many in this country - educated during a non-liberal period - are functionally illiterate? They can read but cannot understand while they are doing so. They can write, but not without making many errors. They cannot do simple math. We're not even talking higher education, but just high school level.
How many kids educated in /liberal/ countries surpass our kids in math and sciences?
So having a left or right agenda has nothing to do with education.
The real problem is that our kids are not educated correctly from early on. There are many truly dedicated teachers out there, but some are just there for a paycheck - and we are not allowed to weed them out. Good teachers are not identified and thus are not being paid what they truly deserve - some never even become teachers for that reason.
We cut school programs like music, shop, arts, special science programs -- all the stuff that teaches you more than just stupid facts.
On top of that, our student/teacher ratio is ridiculous. Material is often old and lacking. We expect our schools to teach our kids manners or discipline. We complain when our kids get two hours of homework because they need too much help and we don't have that kind of time.
This is because we spend an average of 10 minutes 'quality time' with our kids each day - a term invented to ease a parent's concience, btw. We spend too much time at work, spend way too little time with our family and pay other people to take care of our kids.
Not a formula for parental success.
It largely is due to the type of society we are. (remember why Rome was bowled over? Or does one only learn about that in a liberal school system :)
Let me get off my soapbox now and get back to working on my vw bug..
Chuckle- look at NM's license plates. Pretty sure they are the only state that feels the need to put 'USA' on the plate. Probably urban myths, but I've heard tales of rental companies refusing one-way rentals to NM, because they don't do international rentals, and old-time long distance operators trying to charge international rates to Taos, etc.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.