OT: What Are They Teaching Our Kids Today?

[BoyScoutKevin]

These are from "Bizarre News." And are actual answers given by children on science exams. While they may not be the answer, the teacher was looking for, they do have an external logic all of their own.

Q: Name the four seasons?
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.

Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink?
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep, and canoeists.

Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.

To be continued . . .

[daveblackeye15]

Don't look at me!

[ulthar]

As a former college chemistry professor, I'd like to state for the record that I've seen Freshman (18 year olds) give answers that were very similar to these.  In that case, though, it's not cute; it's sad.

[peter johnson]

Sounds like "urban legend" stuff to me --
It reads like a made-up joke.
Not that I doubt the modern generation is stupid -- I'm sure it is --
It's just that any time a "true" study comes along, it's usually unverifiable & ultimately turns out to be made up.
How does Bizarre News document their "acutuality" quotent here?
peter johnson/denny crane

[akiratubo]

What are they teaching people who make tests?  Only one of those "questions" should have ended with a question mark.

[ulthar]

Well, I don't know about this (or other) 'study,' but I can tell with 100% accuracy that I have SEEN answers similar to these on real freshman college chemistry tests.  I asked a lot of short answer/essay type questions so I could gauge if my students understand stuff, rather than merely recognized a correct answer (like in multiple choice), and I got some truly strange responses.

In my case, it is not urban legend; I experienced it.

[peter johnson]

Okay!  So we have a Primary Source here --
Ulthar:  Give us some real examples of real stupid answers that you can verify really happened here please . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

[Dr. Whom]

I like the idea that you can make water through flirtation, though.

[Ash]

I own an "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" book and in it, this same topic appears.
Ultra dumb answers really given by real college students on essays or exams they took.

I totally believe ulthar.

I've not yet completed college but I have taken many courses...(I'll finish it all up soon)
I've sat in the same classroom with people who've given ridiculously wrong answers out loud after they raised their hand and the instructor called on them.

I remember snickering to myself after hearing some of the dumbass questions and answers people ask and give.

I'm so glad that I really paid attention in most of my high school classes.

They helped turn me into the Grammar Nazi that I am today!

[Just Plain Horse]

They're not doing anything but taking the parents' money and wasting their children's prime years inside a blank classroom before they have to go off to their dead-end jobs. Unless you like wasting your life, college sucks.

Become self-taught, kids- or you'll die wishing you had... and travel, fer chrissakes.

[BeyondTheGrave]

As a college student I have seen answers like this. I agree with Just Plain Horse college does suck. Some teachers do push your thinking to the limit most teach you nothing.

[trekgeezer]

Instilling the joy of learning is the parents job. If the parents enjoy learning and can nuture that feeling in their kids they'll be alright.

As one electronics instructor told us once, " I can't teach you anything if you are not willing to learn it."

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of bad teachers out there, but most of the problems with public schools is the lack of involvement by parents. You need to know what's going on where your kids go to school.

[Scottie]

Being good at college allows me to feel self important while I whup up on little kids in Literati during my free time.

I was pondering the quandry that is college earlier today. To some people, college is a blessing. Imagine coming from a poor family where both your parents worked their butts off so they could send you to a place where you have the opportunity to better your status in life. A BA in college can mean job opportunities and a means to an end for some. To others, it represents a network of contacts that can be used to further their station in life; not to just get a job, but to get a better job. To others, it's a place to screw around and waste your mommy and daddy's money.

To me, college represents an opportunity. I am being given four years to hone and exercise my talents by training myself to be a cinematographer. I am participating in several on campus projects that are film and video related that are teaching me to perform the necessary skills for film and video. With the guidance and support of enthusiastic teachers, I am accomplishing amazing things. I am helping run a film festival, The Open Apperture Short FIlm Festival www.appfilmfest.org on campus that is extremely popular in North Carolina. This is more of an exercise in time management and fund raising than filmmaking. Before this year, I was scared out of my mind to go to different businesses and ask them for money. But now that I've done it under the umbrella of a sanctioned event, I feel more comfortable doing it on my own for my own purposes. I am the director of photography for a feature length student film being shot this year. This is helping me decide how to compose shots, set up lighting, and once again, time manage. I shoot my own projects both on film and video, and I have a job that affords me the time to edit and screw around on digital computer technology. These are opportunities to do my own work and perfect my own ideas.

When I leave this school, I'll likely use the people I've met to recommend me to another school where I'll undertake a master's program in film and video. There, I'll do the same thing I'm doing here: get better at what I do. All of this is in preparation to jettison out into the real world where I'll be able to do the things people who hire me want me to do better than anyone else. And I'll do it. It's idealistic, yes, but it's what I've been doing so far, and I've been pretty successful.

So, to wrap things up, college is about what you make it. As Trek Geezer’s electronics’ instructor loosely put it, “you get what you put into it.�

[ulthar]

Well, here are several just to get started, and I'll get to some more later.

The first is simple.  I had more than one student, college chemistry now, that could not spell their own names correctly on any written assignment.  The names were not all that difficult, and did not represent English as a Second Language situations.  It was just pure laziness.

The second comes from when I was in 4th grade, and is offered here for the humor value.  For some reason, I've just never forgotten this one.  You know how if you hold a penny on the table with your index finger while it is in contact with another penny, then you slide a third forcibly into the one under your finger, the other one will slide away?  This is like a poor man's set of Newton Spheres.

Anyway, a classmate and I were playing around with this one day, and I asked him "how do you think it works?"  He replied, "It irritates through the penny you are holding.  That means there is a small hole in that penny, and that's what makes the other one move."  

Now, this was not a dumb kid, top 3rd of the class (maybe top 1/5th or better) and he's gone on to complete college and be successful.  It's just one of those things kids say when they are talking out of their hind-end.  I still laugh about that, though, because it is just silly sounding.

As for 'dumb answers' on real tests, I have plenty.  Mostly, they fall into one of two categories: one, they have no clue how to respond and were trying to BS me or two, they anthopomorphized inanimate things which is also known as committing a pathetic fallacy.

The first is easy to spot, especially with the short-answer or essay type questions that I favored.  For instance, I've seen explanations of Rutherford's gold foil experiment that had to do with aliens.  An example of the second is "sodium likes to lose an electron and will be happy with a chlorine that wants to get one."  

I also once had a student, who failed to attend class except for test day, turn in a paper covered with violent drawings, poetry and REDRUM and stuff like that.  Maybe it would have been cool for an art assignment, but as a chemistry test, it was not a good performance.  I turned that one over to the department chair.  That girl's father called the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences complaining about his daughter failing her chemistry test (that blankety blank blank teacher is just out to get women, or some such is what he said); the Dean called up the dept. head to see what's what.  They then had a conversation about how she needed psychological assistance more than she needed Freshman Chemsitry at that point in time.

Finally, this 'dumb stuff' does not get limited to just students.  I've seen it in teachers, too.

Conversation overheard between chemistry professor (a lady highly touted as the next best thing since sliced bread, a real mover and shaker in the field of chemical education) and student:

Student: why did you mark off -20 on the problem.
Prof: Because you got it wrong.  But here, let me give you half credit anyway.

I later asked her why in the world she did that.  Her response was so the student would not feel upset about getting a low grade.

Here are two conversations between me and another chemistry professor who I was told by the Dept. Chair I should emulate:

First One - we were both teaching the same class....he had one section and I had another.  Though we gave tests at about the same time covering the same material, I gave my own test and he gave his own test.

[Looking at the paper of one of his students that clearly misdefined density.  Density is defined as mass divided by volume; the student wrote a bunch of nonsense, but received 3/4 credit].

Me: Is that correct, at all?
Him: No.  But I gave him partial credit.
Me: Why?
Him: So he [the student] would not get discouraged.
Me: What favor are you doing him by telling him he knows something that he does not know?  How is that teaching?
Him: It is our job to not make the students feel bad, even if it means coddling their feelings.

Second One - we were discussing a Senior chemistry student who was about to graduate with a degree in chemistry.  He had scored 20/100 on the final exam, yet this prof passed him for the class (this was in a situation where that student needed to do well on the final to pass, by the way).

Me:  Why on earth would you pass someone who makes a 20% on the Final?
Him: Well, if I failed him, he'd just take my class again next year.  This way, he's gone.


All these stories are true.  And I could go on all day.  I'll try to remember some of the more fun student answers on specific tests, but I gave you the gist above.

Sleep well tonight, knowing that this illuminates the next generation of those who in our society are responsible for handling some of the most dangerous material known to man.  And those who teach them how to do so.

(It is because of too many situations like I described in the last half of this post that I am not teaching anymore - people like those that I described have the power in higher education).

[dean]

Hey Scottie, do you have one of those cool eyeglass things that all cinematographers always seem to have?

What about a cool looking lightmeter so you can jump around set with a funky gadget?


Anyways, edumacation, like said earlier, is either useful or not, depending on the person.  I really enjoyed my uni life, but have so far been unable to translate my course into a solid job [though I haven't really tried yet].

Maybe it's something to do with it being the 'Bachelor of Attendance' where it is a common joke that you just have to show up to pass.  That is, of course, not true [I did a Bachelor of Arts] and it challenged me, and I learnt a heap from it.  Of course now I just need to make what I learnt into actual skills that can help me in the professional world.  But to me it was worth it.

But you see all sorts of people doing their courses for the wrong reasons: people who got good marks in High School doing law because they could, not because they liked it, and then getting fails because they have no passion for what they do.  Some people like that are just idiots and you see them all the time.

As for your experiences, Ulthar, letting someone pass when they clearly didn't deserve it, just to protect their feelings, is not doing them any favours at all.  If I was terrible at my subjects and didn't do any work at all, whilst I might say 'cool I passed' in the long run it's just going to teach me that I can get away with doing bugger all.  Ah well...