Lost Kid with ADHD found in CO - searchers adjusted search for ADHD...interesting...

[lemon boy]

The Russians do well with more emphasis on theory...we don't do well.

Point of order:
The Russian school system is a total cock up right now and whatever the merits of your other arguments, you should've left this one out.

[Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo]

A super-quantitative guy like you should know that one anecdote -- your life story -- can't tell much at all about the performance of the system as a whole. Or, you could just look at the numbers of foreign-born engineers, physicists, and others in quantitative fields. The reality is our schools do not do a good job of building mathematical skills.

The Fins do a good job while starting the "serious" stuff relatively late. Singapore does a good job with a more-structured approach. The Indians do well with a lot of drills. The Russians do well with more emphasis on theory...we don't do well. We don't do particularly well teaching, say, foreign languages in our schools, either.

You're kidding right? Oh I forgot about all the American kids and parents sending their children to Russia and India and France for school cause their systems are so much better than ours. My younger brothers valedictorian in HS(a public one) was a Sikh from India who had lived here since he was about 7 and he went to MIT not because the schools in India where better but because his parents placed a high value on education and expected their kids to do well in school. My older brother went to a public high school, Princeton, majored in English, graduated summa cum laude and is now head of his department at Ohio State Med School, a true renissance man. And all he ever tells me is how he wish's he went to school in Finland or Russia or even Singapore. Man he was screwed!

[Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo]

Sadly my freind I can promise that their are thousands and thousands of other "anecdotes" like these. How many "anecdotes" do we need before they are no longer the exception to the rule? And I am not sure these are "emotional" anecdotes since numerous statistical studies demonstrate the large number of foreigners coming to our schools each year and the miniscule amount of our children who go to school abroad.

[Viva]

Your responding with a couple more emotional anecdotes to my point about systemic outcomes fairly well demonstrates the lack of numeracy here in the U.S.

Ooooh! I love emotional anecdotes!

Here's what I've seen. About 1/2 of the Chinese graduate students and postdocs who come to to work in US academic laboratories are either eminently mediocre or flat-out stupid. Yeah, they can perform differential equations in their heads (it's been drilled into them, apparently), but they can't think for shit, they can't ask questions, and their problem solving is problematic.

Now, the top 10-15% or so of these Chinese were fuckin' brilliant. They weren't taught that, they simply are what they are.

The Japanese postdocs were a mixed bag as well, but they tended to be a lot more fun when going out drinking.

The Euros who come here are generally pretty good or better. There were a few retards, though.

So, what's my point? I dunno. If you're good, you're good, I guess, and no educational system is going to inculcate into one a predisposition for ultimate success.

[bklyn]

Never underestimate the power of parental involvement. Smart people and not so smart people love their kids and are very involved in their education. There are those kids who are successful without this help, but they are the exception.

Coming from one of those 'elite EC private schools' I must agree that if you pay you may be motivated to see that investment do well. On the other hand, you might not spend a dime and instead put some old fashioned sweat equity into augmenting your children's education.

Are genetics (with the exception of crippling disabilities) as important to the development of intelligence as (prenatal/early childhood) nutrition and stimulating experiences?

The book is not closed on nature vs nurture.

[Viva]

The brain is not unlike the body in that, while there's definitely a genetic component that determines potential, it must be trained, worked, used in order to reveal it capabilities.

[Buzzworthy]

This thread has spawned some interesting conversations at home. Dr. Erica does much more work in this area than I realized, as many things she can't ethically talk to me or anyone about.

She works in a University setting in the Student Counseling Center. With the previous comment made that ADHD was a diagnosis of childhood, why does she test 18+ years olds on almost a daily basis for ADHD? I did not realize how much time is spent on assesments like this. Far greater than I would have thought.

But then we talked about what Dr. Twoplanker's education entailed as it was a program still in the same college that Dr. Erica was in, Psychology.
2P's education from what I understand is assesing education itself, along with much more. Research Evaulation Methodolgy if I am not mistaken. So learning more on what his education and then knowing what he does now for a living has enlightened me that he is becoming a specialist in this field. Education.

I had a good evening with my wife just talking about things and the future education of our daughter.


Tap, good thread. It has enlightened me quite a bit on many fronts.

[13]

I have a soft spot for those with ADHD, so I refuse to debate whether or not it exists, because I know for a fact that it is real. I refuse to stigmatize or marginalize someone who couldn't help the way their brain was wired.

As for education, I dunno about you guys, but were I a parent, I'd rather take a greater level of responsibility for my kids' education than to lay it on a teacher that has 30 other students to worry about.

So a teacher tells me my kid is having some difficulty with multiplication ... I can work on it at home a few minutes a day instead of expending hours calling the teacher/school dist. and harassing him/her to do it.

There is a nationwide emphasis on team sports, pep rallies, and "special education" over any sort of tracking or gifted/talented programs. This is true nearly everywhere, in every school district.

This emphasis proves my point about the current system, which is that it is designed to foster obedience (49! 36! Ten-hut!), conformity (Give me a C! Give me an O!), and creating the maximum number of functional worker drones (special education).

Nobody forced me to go to pep rallies or join a team, man. Was that the case with you?

[shmerham]

I think it's safe to say that there are way too many variables in education to pinpoint what exactly is best. For starters, if you ask a variety of people what the goal of education is, you'll get different answers: worldly views and knowledge, an understanding of how things work, professional training, personal development, life training, etc. This, of course means that you can't really create a metric for success. Is it the adulthood happiness of the student, the money that student makes in their life, the college they go to, the score they got on a standardized test? ...and which performed better: a "successful" school with students that have high IQ's, or a mediocre success with students that have low IQ's?

Some thoughts and anecdotes:

My best friend went to the same elementary and junior high schools as me. He then went to a well-regarded private high school that did have sports teams, but no pep rallies. I went to the public high school that was pretty big on sports and pep rallies and homecoming parades. He was an average student up until high school. He graduated salutotorian. We both ended up at the same college and performed similarly. He had a higher GPA, but he was in an easier major. I got higher scores on the GRE's than him, but he got into Berkeley grad school and I didn't. Personally I think private high school was necessary for him to do as well as he did, but for me I don't think it would've made a big difference. Obviously the public schools didn't fail him or else he would've been too far behind when he got to the private high school. The key here is working to potential. What was learned obviously wasn't a factor, since we both did similarly at the same college.

I'm not familiar with Sudbury schools but I do know about Waldorf and Montessori schools. There's no doubt that students from these schools are smart and happy. Kinda hard to argue that there's anything wrong, but my experience is that these students don't know how to deal with assholes and lazy fucks. As painful as that learning process can be, going to public schools teaches you about all the different types of people we have in this world. Not just the happy ones whose parents care an awful lot about them.

I was not an athlete or popular, but I kinda liked pep rallies. It's nice to support your school's teams; it brings the school together. I understand and embrace inviduality... but that doesn't mean having to reject unity. It bothers me when I hear park rats or skateboarders say they do it because they hate being on a team. I think it's sad that these people don't enjoy accomplishing something as a team. It seems like it would be a lonely life accomplishing everything on your own and for yourself.

[Twoplanker]

But then we talked about what Dr. Twoplanker's education entailed as it was a program still in the same college that Dr. Erica was in, Psychology.
2P's education from what I understand is assesing education itself, along with much more. Research Evaulation Methodolgy if I am not mistaken. So learning more on what his education and then knowing what he does now for a living has enlightened me that he is becoming a specialist in this field. Education.

Research Evaluation Methodology major. Gravity Research Methodology minor. Enough yappin'. Let's finish off this thread with some stoke!



But everything really cool that I know I learned from Splat.