Texas Public Schools Now Majoraly Hispanic

[Strike For The South]

http://blogs.chron.com/texaspolitics/archives/2011/03/white_students.html

Granted white studnets and hispanic students probably remain about even due to high white in enrollment in private schools but still it's quite the sight to see the chicken little crown come out and bemoan the fact the reconquista is coming

What I find more troubiling is this


3 out of every 10 Texas workers will not have high school diplomas by 2040


I fear the education of the state will be hamstrung by the old "Alamo" debate

Oh ym

[Louis VI the Fat]

*massive demographic shift*


What I find more troubiling is


*massive drop in educational standards*You do not see a connection between your two points? The increase of Hispanic pupils and the dropping educational standards?


This also affects white pupils, whose standards as a result slip as well. Notably in their English, where for example the difference between majority and majorly can get lost.

[HoreTore]

So, the original population of Texas are finally winning their long battle against the anglo-saxon immigrants?

Anyway; the two classes I teach both have around 50% immigrants. I don't see the problem here.

Also, Norway's population was predicted in the 80's to be lower in 2000 than it was in 1980, and we were thought to be swarmed by east asian immigrants. Instead, have seen a population boom and immigration from eastern asia is almost nothing.

Random numbers people think up while snorting coke scarface-style isn't the ultimate truth. The world will progress. As it always has, and always will. It won't be the same, but it will be better.

[gaelic cowboy]

3 out of 10 so 70% will have diplomas, that's sounds normal to be honest we can assume that a big proportion of those 3 out of 10 will obtain apprenticeships in whatever trade they fancy like plumbing, carpentary etc etc apprenticeships start round 16/17 usually


Edit: checked wiki seems like apprenticeships start in America at 18 which is a bit strange if you ask me, which prob means you have to obtain a high school diploma, therefore 30% cannot even get a trade now that is bad.

[Crazed Rabbit]

So, the original population of Texas are finally winning their long battle against the anglo-saxon immigrants?

:inquisitive:

An interesting view. Do the American Indians not count?

And why view it as a battle? Seems to be a similar frame of mind to those bemoaning this statistic, just on the other side of the fence.

CR

[HoreTore]

:inquisitive:

An interesting view. Do the American Indians not count?

And why view it as a battle? Seems to be a similar frame of mind to those bemoaning this statistic, just on the other side of the fence.

CR

I have a couple of friends you'd love to meet, they're called Mr. Sarcasm and Mr. Irony....

[Centurion1]

3 out of 10 so 70% will have diplomas, that's sounds normal to be honest we can assume that a big proportion of those 3 out of 10 will obtain apprenticeships in whatever trade they fancy like plumbing, carpentary etc etc apprenticeships start round 16/17 usually


Edit: checked wiki seems like apprenticeships start in America at 18 which is a bit strange if you ask me, which prob means you have to obtain a high school diploma, therefore 30% cannot even get a trade now that is bad.

yeah blue collar trades dont work that way here. everyone is expected to achieve at least a high school diploma.

[Jaguara]

:inquisitive:
An interesting view. Do the American Indians not count?


How do you define the distinction between "American Indians" and "Mexican Hispanic (Indians)" and "Meso-American Indians". Mostly this destinction is a modern one influenced by political agendas and modern borders. Certainly the Hopi have more in common with other Natives an hour to the South than say the Lakota of the plains or the woodland/great lakes 6 nations.

I used to have a map which displayed the distribution of the seven Native root languages throughout the Americas. From an anthrological perspective, the distinction between North and South American Indians is rather meaningless.

[Rhyfelwyr]

yeah blue collar trades dont work that way here. everyone is expected to achieve at least a high school diploma.

I always wondered why in American films/TV shows you see people going to fancy graduation ceremonies with their academic robes on just for finishing school. You don't get to do that until you finish Uni here.

[gaelic cowboy]

I always wondered why in American films/TV shows you see people going to fancy graduation ceremonies with their academic robes on just for finishing school. You don't get to do that until you finish Uni here.

Yea you can leave in third year here which in America is I think grade ten or something, in fact it is entirely possible to go to Uni never having finished secondary school. You could leave and do a trade after the apprenticeship do a bridging course for first year of technical college later transfer to uni.

[PanzerJaeger]

The value of a private education cannot be overestimated, and that value will only increase in the future.

[gaelic cowboy]

The value of a private education cannot be overestimated, and that value will only increase in the future.

The value of the old boys network it gives you is far more valuable I would say.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Public schools used to be great. Most still are, but they are being bleed slowly it seems.

[Centurion1]

The value of the old boys network it gives you is far more valuable I would say.

trust me going to a private school in the states does not equal an old boys network. they are as prolific as cod. Many are catholic and there are thousands of those. Sure you have schools like Exeter prep in NH or Sidwell friends or Bullis down in northern virginia and DC but many aren't what i imagine you are thinking about.

[Tuuvi]

How do you define the distinction between "American Indians" and "Mexican Hispanic (Indians)" and "Meso-American Indians". Mostly this destinction is a modern one influenced by political agendas and modern borders. Certainly the Hopi have more in common with other Natives an hour to the South than say the Lakota of the plains or the woodland/great lakes 6 nations.

I used to have a map which displayed the distribution of the seven Native root languages throughout the Americas. From an anthrological perspective, the distinction between North and South American Indians is rather meaningless.

I think you have point, but even though Native American groups might share the same root language that doesn't mean they are the same culturally. For example the Paiutes, which are the group native to my region, belong to the Uto-Aztecan language group but were quite different from the Aztecs culturally.

Plus most Hispanic Mexicans are a mix of Spanish and Indian blood. So I'm guessing that the Mexicans that settled Texas didn't have much in common with the Indian tribes that were already there.

[Jaguara]

I think you have point, but even though Native American groups might share the same root language that doesn't mean they are the same culturally. For example the Paiutes, which are the group native to my region, belong to the Uto-Aztecan language group but were quite different from the Aztecs culturally.

Plus most Hispanic Mexicans are a mix of Spanish and Indian blood. So I'm guessing that the Mexicans that settled Texas didn't have much in common with the Indian tribes that were already there.


As to the migration of Hispanics into Texas, I certainly would not refer to it as reclaiming historic land or anything like that. I was just going off on a tangent myself regarding how we impose artificial divisions that have little to no meaning in a cultural sense (thread hijack). I have very little knowledge of the current social situation, I have no knowledge of the actual demographics of Mexican immigrants to Texas, and if they are more indigineous peoples or displaced urbanites, and have never been to Texas, so I would not dream to pontificate on the social situation there.

As to Mexicans...it grates on me how we tend to lump them all into the vague group "Hispanic", when one Mexican might basically be a Spaniard, another is of vague mixed blood and another may be an indigineous person. Overall, the degree of Spanish blood is smaller than most Americans would expect, and while many people in Mexico have certainly adopted Spanish as thier language, and have integrated into Modern culture, more than 5% of Mexican citizens still speak an indiginous language(though most of those are in the South and mountainous areas).

My main point was merely that just because we plopped a border which divided culturally linked groups, does not suddenly make them distinct. The establishment of the border between Mexico and the US, naturally had nothing to do with cultural divisions of indiginous peoples, and groups that had common heritage, way of life, and even frequent interactions found themselves on different sides of a border. In my experience, Indiginous peoples from all across the Americas share a great deal in common.

[Centurion1]

well i mean are all whie people identical? they are lumped together as european but i would argue that a western and eastern european are radically different.

[HoreTore]

well i mean are all whie people identical? they are lumped together as european but i would argue that a western and eastern european are radically different.

Of course we're all the same, that's why the EU is such a smashing success with support from practically everyone!!

[Husar]

Completely depends on the scale, a lot of the issues between EU members are more or less petty issues compared to the issues people have with eachother elsewhere.
It's just when you have no real issues, people tend to make a big deal out of the small ones that remain.

[Jaguara]

Completely depends on the scale, a lot of the issues between EU members are more or less petty issues compared to the issues people have with eachother elsewhere.
It's just when you have no real issues, people tend to make a big deal out of the small ones that remain.

QFT (First time I get to use that! Yay, I am almost 40 and I found a new "word")

Personally, I have always found remarks about "whites" to be just as ignorant. It is often used in a context to justify reverse-racism. "Whites did X to us"

Here in Canada, people are often very distinct about their European heritage -be it Enligh, French, Irish, Scottish, Ukrainian, Italian, German, Polish, Russian etc. Certain groups more than others. With the English/French thing, I think the conciousness is a bit stronger here than in the US, but to a lesser degree it is similar there - though again some are more vocal than others - Irish and Italians for example.

[PanzerJaeger]

The value of the old boys network it gives you is far more valuable I would say.

Possibly, but I was referring more the discipline it instills in children. I was educated by the meanest collection of old curmudgeon's I've ever encountered, Lasallian Brothers. They had no tolerance for indolence, rebelliousness, or failure; and they made sure my parents understood that before I was accepted into their school. It was their mission to educate their students, and everything else including sports, extracurricular activities, and personal freedom was secondary to that.

I wasn't much of a troublemaker, but I remember one particular example of their methods which would never fly in public school. In my sophomore year, I had a very high average in English - so high, in fact, that I calculated that I could skip the final paper and still come out of the class with a B. So, on the last day of before summer break, I was asked to stay after class to discuss my failure to turn in the paper. I casually explained my position and my contentment with a B in the class, expecting an expression of disappointment and to be let go. As Brother McLaren explained, however, the assignment wasn't about earning points towards a grade, but about me learning the material, and my school year wasn't over until I had learned it.

As all my friends were headed off to parties and freedom, I was accompanied to the library where I worked on that paper until just after midnight as Brother McLaren looked on. After that, as my paper wasn't in a format suitable to turn in, I was taken to the computer lab and forced to type it, which lasted until well after 1:00 AM. Finally, I had to wait around while he carefully read it over several times, grading first for content and then for grammar. His grade? A-, marked down to F for lateness.

I hated that place, but I'm so very glad my parents sent me there. It taught me life lessons that go far beyond grammar and arithmetic. College and work have been more than simple in comparison.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Possibly, but I was referring more the discipline it instills in children. I was educated by the meanest collection of old curmudgeon's I've ever encountered, Lasallian Brothers. They had no tolerance for indolence, rebelliousness, or failure; and they made sure my parents understood that before I was accepted into their school. It was their mission to educate their students, and everything else including sports, extracurricular activities, and personal freedom was secondary to that.

I wasn't much of a troublemaker, but I remember one particular example of their methods which would never fly in public school. In my sophomore year, I had a very high average in English - so high, in fact, that I calculated that I could skip the final paper and still come out of the class with a B. So, on the last day of before summer break, I was asked to stay after class to discuss my failure to turn in the paper. I casually explained my position and my contentment with a B in the class, expecting an expression of disappointment and to be let go. As Brother McLaren explained, however, the assignment wasn't about earning points towards a grade, but about me learning the material, and my school year wasn't over until I had learned it.

As all my friends were headed off to parties and freedom, I was accompanied to the library where I worked on that paper until just after midnight as Brother McLaren looked on. After that, as my paper wasn't in a format suitable to turn in, I was taken to the computer lab and forced to type it, which lasted until well after 1:00 AM. Finally, I had to wait around while he carefully read it over several times, grading first for content and then for grammar. His grade? A-, marked down to F for lateness.

I hated that place, but I'm so very glad my parents sent me there. It taught me life lessons that go far beyond grammar and arithmetic. College and work have been more than simple in comparison.

There are so many pluses and minuses there, I don't know where to begin.

[PanzerJaeger]

There are so many pluses and minuses there, I don't know where to begin.

At the end of the equation, however, was a kid who came into the school a spoiled brat and left with a healthy respect for education, hard work, and self discipline. ~:)

[LittleGrizzly]

Did it not occur to you that explaining you didn't need to do the assignment might go down badly*... I have done something like that only on a much smaller scale and I just pretended to forget the work... explaining to someone you decided not to do what they told you to is not going to go down well...

*Don't get me wrong I would have expected that, but even with lax teachers In a normal school I would have at least made up an excuse. I figure people are much more forgiving of stupidity than arrogance...

[lars573]

Possibly, but I was referring more the discipline it instills in children. I was educated by the meanest collection of old curmudgeon's I've ever encountered, Lasallian Brothers. They had no tolerance for indolence, rebelliousness, or failure; and they made sure my parents understood that before I was accepted into their school. It was their mission to educate their students, and everything else including sports, extracurricular activities, and personal freedom was secondary to that.

I wasn't much of a troublemaker, but I remember one particular example of their methods which would never fly in public school. In my sophomore year, I had a very high average in English - so high, in fact, that I calculated that I could skip the final paper and still come out of the class with a B. So, on the last day of before summer break, I was asked to stay after class to discuss my failure to turn in the paper. I casually explained my position and my contentment with a B in the class, expecting an expression of disappointment and to be let go. As Brother McLaren explained, however, the assignment wasn't about earning points towards a grade, but about me learning the material, and my school year wasn't over until I had learned it.

As all my friends were headed off to parties and freedom, I was accompanied to the library where I worked on that paper until just after midnight as Brother McLaren looked on. After that, as my paper wasn't in a format suitable to turn in, I was taken to the computer lab and forced to type it, which lasted until well after 1:00 AM. Finally, I had to wait around while he carefully read it over several times, grading first for content and then for grammar. His grade? A-, marked down to F for lateness.

I hated that place, but I'm so very glad my parents sent me there. It taught me life lessons that go far beyond grammar and arithmetic. College and work have been more than simple in comparison.
I wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes in that chamber of child abuse.

[Centurion1]

i cant imagine going up to my teachers and saying,

"i just didnt want to do it"

[lars573]

Umm I did do that, twice in the same class.

[a completely inoffensive name]

At the end of the equation, however, was a kid who came into the school a spoiled brat and left with a healthy respect for education, hard work, and self discipline. ~:)

That's only because you are above average in intelligence. Sooner or later, smart people realize that the benefits of hard work outweigh the tedium of actually working hard. If it wasn't for that stimulus, you would have learned it later on at some point in your life.

Discipline is all well and good but you have admitted that personality and freedom was squashed at the expense of "learning" as if the two are incompatible. The fact is, the reasoning of your teacher just doesn't hold up. You excelled at your class, and it is very clear that you were a very smart kid. You took the initiative to calculate the cost-benefit of the increased grade at the expensive of personal happiness. You choose personal happiness rather than reaching an arbitrary grade which is meaningless in the long run. Your teacher knew you knew the material. You knew you knew the material. Your work until that point shows you knew the material. No one gets an A from day 1 until day 179 and then flunks the final on day 180 (assuming that you had the same # of school days as I did in high school).

It really wasn't about him doing his job making sure you "knew the material". It was a check on independent thinking, specifically, the idea that your happiness comes above the authority of your boss. This is not surprising considering your description of your education.

If I was your teacher, I would have perhaps given you a bit more information you might have neglected to incorporate in your cost-benefit analysis, such as the long term consequences of your happiness if this B perhaps limits the choices of uni's you get accepted into. This dude decided to isolate you, force you to work, then punish you for insubordination under guise of making sure that the A student in his class was indeed an A student.

I'm glad you got a useful lesson about hard work out of it, I just hope you didn't lose some other characteristic that might perhaps be more valuable in the long run. Overall, I would say it was quite poor teaching, imo.

[PanzerJaeger]

ACIN, I owe you a proper, detailed, and point by point response. Ironically, my school work and work-work are keeping me unusually busy, so all I can offer is a condensed version.

In my completely amateur opinion on schooling, children, especially teenagers, first need discipline and structure before they can excel as independent, free-thinking adults. That same basic formula applies to virtually every acquired skill in life, be it arithmetic, reasoning, or fencing. You need to be disciplined in proper form before you can freestyle.

It is very true that plenty of kids make it through public schools ready for life's challenges, and indeed public schools vary widely in quality around the country and even around different areas of the same municipalities, but I would argue that they accomplish that largely in spite of their schooling and not because of it. As you noted, intelligent people will overcome a poor educational environment and push themselves to excel.

The most obvious example is the comparison between most Asian school systems and our own. They instill a level of discipline in their students that simply isn't found in our own public schools, and the results are reflected in our yearly embarrassment when the global standardized tests are published. (Of course, such discipline starts in the home - and that is a huge problem that our public schools don't have much control over.)

Anyway, the point to this now rambling post is to say that I went into the school spoiled, undisciplined, lazy, not particularly smart, and yes Centurion, a prick. Search for some of my earlier posts in here to see what I mean. The Brother's thousand big and small tortures (and my little story was nothing compared to some of their 'corrective measures') seemed intolerable at the time, but they changed me for the better in countless ways. I'm not sure I could have gotten the same results in a public school.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I don't think you would like the Dutch educational system very much then...

[HoreTore]

I tried to steer this thread into comedyland by trolling about Texas originally being spanish.... I return, and its a discussion about beating kids into obedience.

I'm not entering this hornets nest.....

All rght, we all know I can't stay away from such things, so I'm going to make one argument. People talk about how children should fear their teachers. A good fear, but fear nonetheless. Apparently, this instills disipline because they fear consequences etc etc. I dare say, that any person who enjoys standing in front of 20-30 kids who fear you for 6 hours a day should definitely not be around children.

Oh, and PJ, that schools grading system is old and retarded. The grade you get when you finish school represents what your ability is now. Not what it was 6 months ago, not what it mght be tomorrow. Tests you take over the year should never factor into that grade, those grades serve two other purposes. firstly, they allow the student to see where they stand and highlight areas they need to work on. Secondly, they provide a means for the teacher to see how well your classes have been, how much your students have learned. If they score high, you're probably on the right path. If they score low, you should start looking for alternative ways to teach. Sure, tests taken over the year can be a help when yiu set the final grade, but that final grade should still only represent the level the student is at right now.

[HoreTore]

Oh, and I might add that I currently work in primary school(or perhaps its the first year of junior high for you, they're 12/13), and I evaluate not just some monthly test or paper, but every single class. I evaluate my students and they evaluate me, themselves and each other. And not by a grade, mind you, because there's no research showing that has any effect, but by using a grade with comments and discussion, which research shows is what contributes moet to learning in schools.

[a completely inoffensive name]

ACIN, I owe you a proper, detailed, and point by point response. Ironically, my school work and work-work are keeping me unusually busy, so all I can offer is a condensed version.

In my completely amateur opinion on schooling, children, especially teenagers, first need discipline and structure before they can excel as independent, free-thinking adults. That same basic formula applies to virtually every acquired skill in life, be it arithmetic, reasoning, or fencing. You need to be disciplined in proper form before you can freestyle.

It is very true that plenty of kids make it through public schools ready for life's challenges, and indeed public schools vary widely in quality around the country and even around different areas of the same municipalities, but I would argue that they accomplish that largely in spite of their schooling and not because of it. As you noted, intelligent people will overcome a poor educational environment and push themselves to excel.

The most obvious example is the comparison between most Asian school systems and our own. They instill a level of discipline in their students that simply isn't found in our own public schools, and the results are reflected in our yearly embarrassment when the global standardized tests are published. (Of course, such discipline starts in the home - and that is a huge problem that our public schools don't have much control over.)

Anyway, the point to this now rambling post is to say that I went into the school spoiled, undisciplined, lazy, not particularly smart, and yes Centurion, a prick. Search for some of my earlier posts in here to see what I mean. The Brother's thousand big and small tortures (and my little story was nothing compared to some of their 'corrective measures') seemed intolerable at the time, but they changed me for the better in countless ways. I'm not sure I could have gotten the same results in a public school.

I also owe you a proper response and yet I am having the same uni work issue!

In my own amateur option on school I believe there is a big distinction between children and teenagers. Children need discipline and structure because for the most part, young minds are not coherent enough to understand any thing but bits and pieces of easy information to process. (They can pick up on complex emotional situations, but formal learning is not instinctual to humans.) It's why science classes are for the most part extremely simplistic and wrong up until uni. Are middle school children really going to "get" anything more complex about electron orbitals than the Bohr model? Maybe, idk. Middle school is very iffy. Elementary kids definitely won't get it. EDIT:From HoreTore's example I am extending my "maybe" to even the younglings.

Teenagers (which imo are those in high school) don't need that much in discipline or structure, they need motivation more than anything else. High school students do just fine in following along with the structure. They do the homework, half listen in class, and do the bare minimum it takes to get a C in the class. The not so proper term is to DGAF (look it up in urban dictionary if anyone doesn't know it) and that isn't a discipline problem, it is the result of a mind coming to the conclusion that with the information given to them, it is pointless to try and "excel" in the given scenario they are in. This is not that unreasonable considering we don't really give students the info they deserve to know. I mean, when you hear the whole "you can be anything you want, as long as you work hard" shtick when you are 13,14,15 and can clearly see that that isn't case from the social inequalities that are abundant, you get disillusioned. Imo, part of this also comes from the strains of anti-intellectualism that runs in American society which attempts to revoke pride in being an intellectual. But that is a whole different debate. And of course, people in general are just lazy, and that is also a big part of it. But these teenagers have been doing their work for 8 grades before reaching high school now, the discipline to do the work is there, now they are getting to the cognitive stage where they want reasons to do work. After all, how many adults would be working if there wasn't a clear financial motivation?

Of course you can always say that more rigorous discipline and punishment will solve all these problems, and of course that is exactly what your private school did. But this isn't really anything new, authoritarianism gets stuff done despite the internal objections of the individual. History has a list of those who were great at implementing it, we call them tyrants and dictators and sometimes monsters. But just as Stalin and the various Kremlin leaders got their country to run properly, was it really "functional"? Eventually, it all came crashing down in a wave of self-determinism and individualism. Now I am sure you have people (maybe AP if he was still around and not banned) who would argue that Russia is in a worse state with cronyism, organized crime and an overall kleptocracy than when the Communists had everything under control so they wouldn't lose face to the Americans.

Perhaps you might have not have noticed some things by being in a private school, but public schooling for all its flaws do not have people succeed "in spite" of the school. Let's be honest, the "intelligent" are not the majority. But the majority of students do graduate and go on to succeed in their own ways. In fact, high school drop out rates have been declining over the past decade if I remember correctly. If public schooling wasn't there, I don't think it would be a controversial statement to say that for most of the students, they would be worse off at that stage in their life than by having a place to go to every day to at least have the opportunity to learn and better themselves. I have seen a bunch of "winners" lets call them in freshman year, to continue "winning" at life only to find out in junior year that they have been living life wrong and that they want to go to community college and be the first in their family to have a college education. This one guy in my class got a scholarship for his rapid (and some said inspiring,) turnaround.

In regards to the Asian schooling system, I would have to say that the comparisons between nations in education are more complex then "Country A scored higher than Country B in math, therefor our math isn't as rigorous." Like I said earlier, there are social factors (do we pride intellectualism here?), and there are pluses and minuses that go along with education standards. Sometimes we have to also step back and look at the big picture when it comes to developing a fully functional person/citizen. Education and knowledge is only one aspect of having a proper citizen/person. By stepping it up to the point where students are pushed to the breaking point but not quite over it, we neglect other areas of development. No Child Left Behind has made every school and class a teach to the test kind of school/class where if it isn't on the test, than we will not bother teaching it to you (is that really what education is about)? As such, younglings are seeing recess (an important socialization event in their lives) removed and middle school students are growing up in an absence of proper physical education because they need more time to be taught tests, not to run miles.

In fact, many Asian countries such as Japan have much higher suicide rates among the student population than in Western countries if I remember correctly. Is this really worth the "advantage" they are getting in the global marketplace? Maybe, idk. Also at this point I have not even asked the question of what do standardized tests really mean? Does a 850 compared to a 650 on the SAT say definitively that one person "knows" more than another or is smarter? I have seen all too many times, the AP (Advanced Placement) students practice "regurgitation" studies. Cram it in your head, regurgitate on test for A+, then forget it all and make space for the next class, repeat until you have been accepted into college (then continue until you have your degree? god, I hope not).

I agree that you might not have gotten the same results in a public school, but that is life. The what if's are always there, but we cannot rely on anecdotal evidence to see us through the future. Your example is very inspiring, but it isn't statistically significant. In fact, it might even be an anomaly.

The education problem is much more complex than most of us will ever recognize or even understand.

[HoreTore]

You're wrong when you say that children cannot be taught "heavy" stuff, ACIN. Look up sugatra mitra, he's teached 9-year olds neurobiology to a level where they took the exam needed to teach neurobiology.

EDIT: and that, I might add, wasn't some group of little einsteins, it was the children of some random backwater village in India.

[a completely inoffensive name]

You're wrong when you say that children cannot be taught "heavy" stuff, ACIN. Look up sugatra mitra, he's teached 9-year olds neurobiology to a level where they took the exam needed to teach neurobiology.

EDIT: and that, I might add, wasn't some group of little einsteins, it was the children of some random backwater village in India.

I have not read up on him, but did they understand the neurobiology or did they know it?

EDIT: I personally think that children can be taught anything (even to betray their own parents to the Gestapo) but I am not knowledgeable in mental development and capacity of young children, so I left it with "idk, maybe". Now that you bring this up with 9 years olds, I will extend my "idk, maybe" to elementary children as well.

[HoreTore]

I have not read up on him, but did they understand the neurobiology or did they know it?

To pass the exam needed to be a neurobiologyteacher, do you think you have to understand or just know?

[a completely inoffensive name]

To pass the exam needed to be a neurobiologyteacher, do you think you have to understand or just know?

Pessimistic ACIN: No, I have had multiple teachers who did not know what they were talking about when it came to subjects they taught.

Optimistic ACIN: Yeah, I guess you have a good point.

EDIT: Also made an edit on my earlier post.

EDIT 2: Realistic ACIN: For a subject such as neurobiology, I think they would have to understand it. While other subjects are more lenient, most science teaching positions are probably not lenient at all.

[HoreTore]

Kids, in my opinion, are very capable of understanding once they are able to understand abstracts(Piaget's formal operational stage).

But what's holding them back, the thing that makes people think they're "dumb little kids", is a limited vocabulary.they don't know what our advanced terms, like "democracy" or "economy", mean. But if you discuss things using a simple language, or spend some time explaining all the difficult terms you're going to use, I have found little difference in the level of reflection in my class of 12-year olds and in adults.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Kids, in my opinion, are very capable of understanding once they are able to understand abstracts(Piaget's formal operational stage).

But what's holding them back, the thing that makes people think they're "dumb little kids", is a limited vocabulary.they don't know what our advanced terms, like "democracy" or "economy". But if you discuss things using a simple language, or spend some time explaining all the difficult terms you're going to use, I have found little difference in the level of reflection in my class of 12-year olds and in adults.

Hmm, I never thought about it like that. An incomplete mastery of the language is the main barrier in the level of contemplation from the children (or at least their ability to express it and thus show us their real level). I will have to think about that and look up some links that support that (including sugatra mitra).

[HoreTore]

Vygotsky talks a lot about language of the first and second order. Language of the first order is "our language", language of the second order needs translation for us to understand it.

Edit: and the aim is of course to make languages of the second order into the first order. I'll use my own english knowledge as an example:

When I started out learning english, I read it differently than now. I read the words, but in my mind, I translated it into norwegian. I had to translate it to make any sense, and the language in my mind as I read english was norwewgian. This has changed now that english is a language of the first order for me. As I write this, the words and thoughts in my mind are in english, not Norwegian, and in fact it's quite hard for me to think in norwegian right now. But not all english is first order for me. When I encounter unusual, "hard", words, like for example technical terms, the language in my mind changes back to norwegian, because technical english isn't a first order language to me.

This is the same for other fields, like maths or sociology. If the language of the field is of the second order for you, the translation part is vital for your understanding of what is presented, as well as your ability to express your opinions.

[Strike For The South]

I have not read up on him, but did they understand the neurobiology or did they know it?

EDIT: I personally think that children can be taught anything (even to betray their own parents to the Gestapo) but I am not knowledgeable in mental development and capacity of young children, so I left it with "idk, maybe". Now that you bring this up with 9 years olds, I will extend my "idk, maybe" to elementary children as well.

This is the rub

And this is also what seperates teachers and educators