How we can improve education for the bottom 10-20%

Discussion in 'Education' started by Doug1943, Jul 12, 2018.

  1. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I've got a special interest in how we can improve education for the bottom 10-20%. A recent development is interesting, and perhaps related to the above: there have been some recent studies of young people who get special help in high school, to make them 'college ready' (they're mainly inner-city Blacks). It turns out that a lot of these kids can pass the SATS, get into college ... but then drop out.

    Evidently, the problem was not academic (we're not talking about the terrible situation where Black kids who are smarter than 75% of the population are admitted to colleges where everyone else is smarter than 99% so that they're automatically at the bottom, no matter what people pretend).

    The problem has been called lack of 'grit', and they're trying to address this now. How to deal with setbacks, etc. I don't know if this is just another academic fad, but there could be something to it.
     
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  2. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    Well, in terms of first generation college students, I wouldn't quite call their dropping out to be "lack of grit." It's lack of models and low expectations. It's moving into a predominantly middle/upper middle class world.

    My wife taught 8th grade math last year. She saw a lack of grit in many of her students. They wanted to be spoonfed the answers, and would get frustrated and give up at the drop of a hat.
     
  3. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    You are talking about a situation in which people are bright enough for the course work but just have no motivation or interest to do the work.

    I'm not sure, in this society, that anything can be done for them.
     
  4. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Have a look at these Youtube videos:

    One from 1966, Sig Engelmann leading a math class ... (terrible audio). He's pioneered a method of teaching called 'Direct Instruction' ... came out better than all the 'progressive' methods when they were tested against each other in 'Operation Follow Through' ... but his methods go directly against the dogma of the educational establishment, so they buried it.

    Also look at what Marva Collins was able to accomplish.

    Michaela School in the UK.

    It can be done. Takes political will.
     
  5. tkolter

    tkolter Well-Known Member

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    Bottom 20%, cut off their education at 8th Grade and offer two years of workforce skills training say for 20 hours a week and be done with it if they show any initiative, for the really mentally deficient don't even offer that. I don't see why we should waste money on more school than they will likely even benefit from especially four years of High School which would cost far more than basic workforce education.
     
  6. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Charles Murray said, and I agree with him, that we ask too much of the bottom third, and too little of the top third.

    The dogma that everyone is actually equal, that you can be anything you want to be, etc . actually gets in the way of providing a useful education for the young people who are in the bottom third in terms of IQ.

    But the real problem in schools now is discipline, not intellectual ability.
     
  7. Merwen

    Merwen Well-Known Member

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    School for the mentally deficient is actually a form of publicly funded daycare. It keeps them with their parents and out of institutions longer than would otherwise be feasible.
     
  8. tkolter

    tkolter Well-Known Member

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    Well it depends if they want to learn skills can be taught where work is available warehouse workers as temps is one available area of work, so those skills could be taught, as an example. Also what about ability to benefit if a person is disabled, and of average IQ in such a way most jobs aren't practical they are say unable to walk so working in a restaurant would be a challenge and retail work impractical then we should strongly consider cutting off their education and just place them on welfare now the same person with college aptitudes might then be able to benefit a teacher or scientist doesn't necessarily need to stand. Its situational for me.

    I would say we need to do our best to rule out other factors but if the child is just not that bright but wants to learn we need to focus on what they can benefit from and give them a shot, an IQ of 90 isn't hideous it just has a limitation in some areas of work eagerness and a desire to be productive is a good thing and used to be enough. To work on an assembly line in 1950 didn't demand much intelligence and smarter workers could move up and hard work could lead one to be a foreman or supervisor. Now that isn't really an option for the people we are considering.
     
  9. Merwen

    Merwen Well-Known Member

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    An IQ under 70 is necessary for welfare eligibility. That is the group I was referring to. It is cheaper to keep such people in school as long as possible; institutionalization costs more. Educability has little to do with it.
     
  10. tkolter

    tkolter Well-Known Member

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    Well I'm talking those whose IQ's no longer fit the world of work an IQ under certain bars reduce work options to even work in an Amazon Warehouse and expect any chance at a okay job you need a good work ethic and a decent IQ with skills for higher level work most are temps and are far worse off in the lower IQ range of say 90. Below that work options go away fast. I'm not a popular person I know when adding in the disabled to the list adding in physical and mental considerations when someone has multiple disabilities and is of average IQ your not likely going to be employed since employers won't hire them over fit people law or no law. Now we could do what England did for decades require by law employers hire a quota of disabled persons backed by government education for them even as adults or fine businesses harshly so not complying hurts their bottom line worse than complying. But we won't do that.

    So to be practical give them a basic education and maybe keep them in some regiment of education part-time for three years then end it seem to be the best option parents can handle their care that's their legal obligation after all to arrange.

    I never ruled out self-employment many people need work done and we could encourage temp agencies help in this regard with perhaps incentives.
     
  11. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    How about start putting the primary emphasis on other alternatives besides putting the entire focus on trying to make them 'college ready', to the detriment of everything else?

    If you put the entire focus on 'college ready' then you may indeed help 10-20% of them but you will completely fail the other 80-90%. We've been trying this for decades. Maybe time to try some alternative goals.
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2018
  12. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I agree completely. Another malign outcome of the 'everyone must go to college' craze is to dumb colleges down. You get fake degrees like 'Black Studies', and they're even watering down the entry requirements for the real subjects, like engineering.
     
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  13. Merwen

    Merwen Well-Known Member

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    Societies need to include structures that leave room for people of all ability levels.
     
  14. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Absolutely.
    I tutor kids in math and science. This year I had a young woman, about 17 years old, whose IQ, I would estimate, was pretty close to 80, probably below that.

    She was a lovely person, hoping to be a childminder. If society cannot find a place for her, and so arrange things that she can earn a decent living, in the public sector if need be, then it has failed. But she had to pass math -- including algebra. Insane.

    About four years ago I had a boy who was an intuitive mathematician. Not just someone who was going to get an A+ (or A-star as it's called here in the UK), but an intuitive mathematician. I've had a lot of very smart kids, but this fellow was different. He was a pain in the backside at his school -- morose, couldn't write an English sentence ... but he was a real Mathematician. His parents were not academic ... just some sort of genetic freak accident. He should have been plucked out and sent to a special school. But he wasn't -- they didn't really know what to do with him.

    Frustrating. It's not lack of money, it's lack of imagination.
     
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  15. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Without imagination there is little need for more money...
     
  16. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    If external factors can be identified perhaps something can be done. For example, kids living in areas in which the schools are **** holes, there is rampant crime and drugs and gangs, etc. and ghetto conditions. What about things like poor nutrition, poor health, toxic home environments? There is a lot society should be doing before we worry about each student's abilities...
     
  17. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A close, hard look should be taken at Early Childhood Education.
    From what I've read about it, it's not a panacea. Headstart kids see the effect fade by the time they're eight, apparently.
    But there are some programs ... I think one is called the ABCDarian program, which do seem to have a long term effect, not academic,
    but on life-outcomes: kids who have passed through it tend to get and hold jobs.

    Anyone interested in this subject should go on YouTube and search for the videos on 'Marva Collins' and on 'Siegfried Engelmann' (or 'Direct Instruction' and 'Project Follow-Through').

    Then they should Google on Michaela School in the UK.
     
  18. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    I thought society had already been spending decades and billions trying to tackle just those problems?
     
  19. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Well...do some traveling in our inner-cities and rural America...
     
  20. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    And they've actually done a pretty good job. Our poor today live like kings compared to the poor 50 years ago. The problem is that our middle class and rich live like emperors compared to their group 50 years ago.
     
  21. Merwen

    Merwen Well-Known Member

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    That is not true for the average middle class denizens--and will soon not be true even for the upper middles.
     
  22. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    Of course it's true. The cars we drive, if put into the 1960s, would be luxury cars. Power windows and power locks were once only on luxury cars. Most of us in the SE now have air conditioning. We didn't in 1968. We all carry mobile phones now, again, something the rich could have. The average house size in 1968 was 1665 sq. feet or 551 sq. feet per person. In 2014, the average house size was 2657 sq. feet or 1046 sq. feet per person. The only problem with the middle class is that we have fewer in the middle class, because they are joining the upper class, not because they are becoming the lower class.

    House size article
    https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-a-home-the-year-you-were-born/2/
     
  23. tkolter

    tkolter Well-Known Member

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    Okay lets keep this simple lets look at IQ ranges 71 (just above legal retardation as a disability) to 89 as the basic focus for this. Now as I see it most of these people are going to be more and more unemployable so why waste time educating them, I know the ADA and expectations are do so but its to me a waste of resources. Now lets look at breadth of education that should be in elementary grades and open to all then decide if four years of more education is considered is it worth spending the money and time over just giving two years of more skills education at most then move them to the workforce or if they fail to work by eighteen put them on welfare.
     
  24. squidward

    squidward Well-Known Member

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    How's about study or be tired cold and hungry forever?
     
  25. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Why not try the feckin obvious? Achieve a more equal society and then allow equality of opportunity with education?

    The likes of the US has a big problem as it has allowed a pisspot output soundly based on class repetitition.
     

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