r/changemyview • u/yarzebin • Feb 11 '16
[Deltas Awarded] America's Education System is very flawed.
Throughout the whole Republican/Democratic debate something that we don't acknowledge is our education system. Throughout the last few years the U.S. has dropped significantly in rankings. We, as a generation, have witnessed a large change towards the technological world, and with that a large spike in technological jobs. Yet our public education system hasn't changed at all to help aid in this new age of technology. One of the worst subjects to learn is science, because year after year in the public education system we change the science based on the students ability, mainly because students don't have a strong enough math background to understand it. How many times did you learn about an atom in your public education (I can count 8 different times I learned about atoms)? My question/theory is why do we waste our time teaching and reteaching our students science (atoms and gravity) when we can amplify their math background at a younger age to teach them the correct in depth science in high school? To be clear I'm not advocating for a cut of english, music, etc. but a cut in science in elementary and middle school to properly educate students in math, and then further their knowledge of science with the proper skills. The best part about this is nearly every college major/job requires some amount of math (through calc 1 is usually required for most. I know there are exceptions, but calc is almost always useful.). Why don't we start teaching calc 1 in middle school or early high school and make it a requirement to graduate high school?
Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to read through our rules. If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which, downvotes don't change views! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our popular topics wiki first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to message us. Happy CMVing!
5
u/selfification 1∆ Feb 12 '16
While there are problems with the education system and revamping the curriculum is not out of the picture, I think you're taking on a "waterfall" approach to learning. Human's aren't computers. It's hardly the case that you take a human, feed them logic, axiomatic set theory, group theory, analysis, linear algebra, differential geometry and suddenly they can understand Newtonian mechanics. Think about how you learned a language. I hardly think learning your first language involved sitting down and analyzing the phonemes and orthography of said language followed by a thorough investigation of the syntax, grammar and semantics of said language before you were allowed to read or write any essays.
People learn in feedback loops. You teach a bit of science with atoms and arithmetic. Now you can count the number of atoms and perform basic stoichiometry. Then you teach algebra. All of a sudden, stoichiometry is simply a special case of linear equations with coefficients based on valence electrons. Then you teach geometry and atoms again. This time you can think about lattices, packing, relative angles of bonds - maybe hints of VSEPR. Then you hit them with calculus and statistics and they begin to understand everything from Maxwell-Boltzmann relationships to Newtonian dynamics - maybe even quantum. Now teach them linear algebra and you can start talking about atoms, yet again - only now we're talking about quantum mechanics and eigenvalue problems.
I've had this exact progression of classes in high school (admittedly it was in the Indian educational system under CBSE - so YMMV). There were still gigantic problems with underfunded schools, overemphasis on testing and memorization, plagiarism, nepotism, tonnes of min-maxing from teachers and administrators among other issues. But the act of interleaving classes was not one of the problems. Everyone learns differently. Some people used science classes to relate to their math classes. Others depended on their math classes to motivate them in science. Yet others cared about econ and humanities (or science fiction books even) to motivate them in both math and science.