Me too. My technology/engineering classes have been about critical thinking/problem solving since day one and I've been at it for 20 years.
I think it's an awesome way to go. Teach a kid to problem solve, and they can apply that to any situation. Like I said, I did common core before I knew what it was. I just didn't do the amount of writing.
I saw somewhere a couple of months ago that if you took our best students that would be tested as if in other countries, we would blow the rest of the world away and it isn't close.
My college has a lot of international students. I remember having a study group with a Chinese native and an indian native for an economics class. we would quiz eachother and i would give in my own words the response to their questions. their answers would literally be word for word from the textbook as though they had a photographic memory. my attempt was to learn the concepts and therefore my answers came out in my own words. mostly i took this approach because it was a hell of a lot faster than memorizing the text and i'm pretty lazy. but I've always thought they'd be terrible employees and over the years I've noticed that to be the case. back when i used to do consulting we hired many Chinese nationals (because we were doing a lot of work in china). if you didn't give them step by step instructions they'd have a panic attack.
we have by far the best college education system in the world. what % of the worlds best universities are in America? 80%? maybe higher? I've always found it questionable to think that we are so far behind other countries given that fact.
I believe, and people will have a very hard time to convince me otherwise, that the US' population size and completely shotgunned demographics (so many ethnic, religious, national, and political differences) make us always look bad when compared to a place like Sweden, where most of the population is the same ethnicity, religious beliefs, nationality (obviously) and politically all think a lot alike because of this. It is the US' strength, and in many ways, its weakness.
You hear that remedial courses are at an all time high at colleges. Well, we are pushing more kids to attend college than ever before. Many of them just aren't college material, but as a society, we stigmatized skilled labor and taught that everyone should go to college. They shouldn't.
When I took Calculus in high school our teacher would always give us a "Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century" word problem at the end of every test. I was always shocked how most of the class would [itch bay] and moan about not knowing where to start solving a word problem. In some ways I'm amazed our society functions as well as it does.
I like how Mike Rowe is using his platform to try to talk sense into some of these people. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...the-worst-advice-in-the-history-of-the-world/
I completely agree. My wife was an AP English teacher and I dropped dead when I read some of the stuff these kids would write. If I wrote like that when I was in HS I would not think i'd be an ap student. to me writing is by far the most important skill someone can have for the American workforce. hell I compose emails all day and surely don't want my clients thinking i'm an idiot.
It is. That's good for the country. I think Technical "Colleges" have helped. The kids are still going to "college" but are getting a skill instead of a degree. I wish high schools would do this instead of waiting for the tech schools to do it.
Denso and Alcoa (and other smaller companies as well) are working directly with Pelissippi State to design courses/programs to help alleviate the problem of skilled workers locally. The tech lab at the Pelissippi Blount Co campus is pretty friggin cool, complete with 10 ton crane.
one of my friends just got hired as a shop teacher for one of the public HSs. made me happy. i didn't know they existed here.
