Geek love

Considering how the BBC Radio we hear in the DC area assumes an intelligent and cultivated audience makes me think again about education over there vs. in the U.S. My impression of the UK is that only the good students go to college, whereas here we have an ideal of everyone going to college, and in service of that ideal we have remedial college courses and worse. Professors at community colleges as well as at many state and private colleges/universities are handed students functioning as low as middle school level (ages 11-14) and are expected to try to give them extra help and to pass them, if possible. My guess is that this doesn't happen in the UK because everyone who graduates from high school has received a decent education and the ones who go on to college are capable of doing the work without much help. If high school graduates in the UK are reasonably well educated, then it would make sense for BBC Radio to pitch its presentation toward educated people, and those who can't understand it or don't find it interesting can listen to something else.

The American ideal that everyone should go to college results, for one thing, in scores, probably hundreds, of colleges comprised mostly of students that aren't that bright. Some respond to this by suggesting that American secondary education should be much more demanding while others say we should spoon feed some more so more students can pass their classes and keep paying tuition to schools that may not be endowed financially. Saying everyone can and should go to college is not so much egalitarianism as it is a devaluation of all the work of the world that doesn't require a higher education. What if someone wants to be an electrician? Obviously electricians are vitally important, but here, they might tell such kids they should aspire to college or at least community college instead of trade school. If people could learn to be proud of what they do, if it's something they like, perhaps they wouldn't feel demeaned by those who have more formal education and wish to lord it over them. College is overrated in that it's not for everyone and we should stop either saying that it is or dumbing it down to the point that even poor students can attend and get passing grades, which will enable them to "feel good about themselves."

Standardized tests have shown that American students possess the strange combination of mediocre skills and self-esteem so high that they significantly overrate their own skill levels.

Now that I have stepped off my soapbox, I will gripe a bit about what I see in the private after-school program in which I teach.

In the U.S., attitudes toward school and academic achievement are correlated significantly with culture generally and socioeconomic level in particular (among other factors). Even though most of the kids I teach are from affluent families, I see many kids, even very bright kids, who think school and books are for nerds and losers. Sometimes I respond to their stupid remarks, even though they are too young and foolish to listen to me. After a 10-year-old cheerfully told me that books are a "waste of time", I told him that he has a lot more reading ahead of him unless he wants to work at McDonald's or Walmart, so he might as well make his peace with it. But these kids, being both immature and sheltered, cannot possibly see any relationship between what they do in school and the sort of job they end up with. Right now I am working with a bright 12-year-old who is quite good at math but makes sure he never gets any better than a C in school. At first he said it was because he didn't want to raise his parents' expectations, but when I later told him he could easily get an A in math, he said he didn't want to do better than a C because it would mean he was a nerd. Today another friend of his said he hates reading and that people who like books are nerds. Bright Boy lied and said he doesn't like to read, either, although I know he likes reading and he likes his English class. If bright kids from affluent homes whose parents care enough about their academic achievement to send them to an after-school program think reading and math (especially math) are for nerds, then I can hardly imagine what school culture must be like for many children from less privileged backgrounds.

I hadn't meant to assume it was, although I admit I generalized based on what I know. Note that I was speaking of the BBC radio we get here. Also, in the radio thread, I asked what exactly Radio 1,2,3,4 mean so maybe my judgments, limited as they are, can become more accurate. Is there idiot radio over there, even on the BBC? We have a ton of idiot radio here, but it isn't found on National Public Radio. Most of our radio is (oops, this is slightly off-topic for this thread) commercial and, abundant as the stations are, run by only a few corporations.

Yes, that's common; they think what they're paying for is not just an opportunity but rather a particular outcome, which may not be an A but certainly it is a passing grade. I have a 12-year-old who is bright but never studies because she believes she will be passed even if she fails her exams (possibly true) and that, if she gets kicked out of her private school, she can just find another private school. And a job? She says she won't need one because there's a trust fund waiting for her. Ugh!

You remind me, Orwell, that our C-SPAN Radio is good in that it does a balanced job of covering, live, events relating to public affairs and sometimes books. Most of the time one can't know in advance what will be on C-SPAN Radio (C-SPAN TV is on cable, which we don't have) at any given time, so it isn't something you can count on in the same way you can count on NPR. And C-SPAN TV, I hear, has a reputation for spending [too] much time covering Congress, which is important but not always interesting if you're not a real politico.

Re Chomsky, I can imagine him being on C-SPAN, but he'd never be found anywhere else.

As to American thickness, people here are not dumb, but too many are poorly educated, often anti-intellectual, and too sold (consciously or not) on the values they absorb from such dubious sources as commercial television.

I am feeling a bit like a dinosaur tonight. I was given an algebra student who needed help graphing a certain kind of equation, and I knew how to graph the equations, but he said they had to do it using a graphing calculator. Me being a dinosaur, I thought, Isn't the point of a graphing calculator to help the student understand and maybe be able to do the graphing without a calculator? But it wasn't. The student had no idea how to use the graphing calculator and I didn't either, so he was taken from me (sniff!) and given to a 20-something teacher who was familiar with the graphing calculator. After moping briefly, I took the graphing calculator home and fooled around with it some until I at least understand what that student was supposed to be doing with it, and (surprise surprise) it turned out to be incredibly simple.

This is the first time a basic algebra student has needed to use a graphing calculator. Some of the kids in intermediate or advanced algebra have graphing calculators, but they know how to use them. And now I do, too.

Signed,
Ex-dinosaur in Bethesda

That is most kind of you, Orwell! However, I would never have expected that you are part dinosaur. Although I am an ex-scientist, I have a significant inner Luddite and am somewhat lacking in mechanical ability. But I did conquer the VCR a few years back. The key was motivation: I was addicted to an unedifying show and there was a meeting I needed to attend that night so I got the manual out and just fiddled with it until I figured out how it worked (it wasn't that hard). If all else fails, read the manual.