GS Chandy
Posts:
4,348
From:
Hyderabad, Mumbai/Bangalore, India
Registered:
9/29/05
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Re: The Real World
Posted:
Sep 30, 2012 11:20 AM
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Wayne Bishop posted Sep 22, 2012 8:01 AM (GSC's response follows):
>
>Paul regularly "proves" for us how strong US students are including those at the top end of the performance spectrum. From community colleges to prestigious institutions such as Princeton, it is beyond ridiculous. Not that anything will slow him down, of course. Nothing ever does. This one from Princeton is about physics but with physics, engineering, advanced economics, etc., the problem is not the weakness of physics, pre-engineering, or economics, it is the weakness of the underlying mathematics.
>http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012
>/08/29>/look-east-young-man/
>Here are a couple of excerpts:
>
> If the Asians are the most industrious, the best
> prepared are the Eastern-Europeans, who come equipped with the vestiges of old Soviet-style education. Those students, passing through a system largely influenced by the mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov, have often attended special math-science schools and have been fire-tested through Olympiads. Few Russian undergraduates are visible in Princeton physics, but our Bulgarians , Romanians and Serbs tend to be so well trained that not long ago I was forced to quip to a colleague, ?Anyone whose last name ends in ?ovich,? ?adzich,? or ?escu? should be put in the honors course without discussion.? No exaggeration. Each year a tiny handful of studentsfour or fiveplaces out of freshman physics altogether via an in-house exam. Last year none of these were American.
> As for the perpetual debate over math skills, I am >not privy to standardized exam scores, but the incoming >algebra level in calculus-based 103 has been declining since I arrived at Princeton, and last yearafter returning from a sabbaticalit appeared to have glitched downward to the worst I?ve ever seen (something I heard from other institutions as well). ?These are the future bridge-builders of America? has been the mournful refrain echoing through the long corridors of the Princeton physics department.
>Wayne
>
>------- End of Forwarded Message
Well, many of the claims Wayne Bishop puts forth may be true (though I observe Paul A. Tanner insists that they are pure "non sequitur". I leave it to Wayne Bishop, Haim and their cohorts and consorts to deal with that, if they can).
The question I want to raise is somewhat different:
How, from wherever you are, do you arrive at the respective positions to:
"BLOW UP THE SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION!"
and
"PUT THE EDUCATION MAFIA IN JAIL!" ???
I'd suggest that both of the above are non-responses to whatever may be the challenges being faced by the US public education system. Both of the above could, I suggest, be effectively addressed by gathering the views of genuine stakeholders in the US public education system, and then integrating them **effectively**,
as suggested in the attachments herewith. I personally believe that these desiderata are most effectively addressed through the tools I'm suggesting. (There are other tools. Some of them are very good indeed, but none is as effective as what I have suggested for kind of problem solving that such issues involve: see, for example, the tools developed by the major consulting firm, Kepner-Tregoe - check out "e-think" at http://www.decision-making-confidence.com/kepner-tregoe-decision-making.html or
http://www.kepner-tregoe.com/theKTWay/WorkingWithKT-TeachYou-PSDM.cfm).
To conclude, the following question appears relevant:
How come both Wayne Bishop and Haim seem to prefer to put forth such impossible 'solutions' as noted above - but do not ever bother to look at practical means to help actually improve US education (if such improvement is in fact needed)?
GSC
("Still Shoveling Away!")
Message was edited by: GS Chandy
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