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90% of everything is crap! Lots of stuff called sci-fi is junk. I did say there had to be selection.
Asimov made a very funny comment also. Lots of science fiction foreshadowed the Moon landing but no one predicted that millions of people would watch it on television.
Some kids don't want to waste more years sitting in a classroom with stuff they most likely won't use after high school. Plus they barely have any valuable skills when they enter the workforce. Why I think high school should offer college prep or vocational training on top of math and english. When was the last time anyone found the Pythagorean theorem useful?
Are you kidding? I bet I could have gotten a high school diploma at 16 if my grade school and high school were run competently. Why waste 2 years learning stuff of no use. Yeah, we can never have enough essays on Catcher in the Rye.
psik
First of all, it isn't a waste anymore than Heinlein is a waste or being a computer savant is a waste or knowing accounting is a waste. Different aspects of school spark interests in different students, who then go on to pursue careers in those different areas.
Second, there's a personal value, as well as a cultural value in a person having a broad-based education. So far, I've ONLY heard you talk about science fiction and computers and accounting. That's not very broad-based, although you may very well be into other fields, as well.
Third, most kids graduate from high school at about age 17. And most kids younger than that are simply not mature enough to enter the work world full time. They don't even know what they don't know. At age 17, they've got about 50 years (or more) to be in the work world.
Fourth, in regard to how bored you have said you were in high school (and that you mostly got by with C's), there is nothing more boring than doing nothing.
Third, most kids graduate from high school at about age 17. And most kids younger than that are simply not mature enough to enter the work world full time. They don't even know what they don't know. At age 17, they've got about 50 years (or more) to be in the work world.
So there is just school and work?
Computers are an application of electronics from my perspective. I worked on audio equipment before micro-computers showed up. So that involved other areas of physics. Imagine the pressure a stylus puts in a grove of an LP vibrating at 10,000 hertz. Didn't the music in 2001: A Space Odyssey help make it a great flick.
But automobiles are applied physics also. Ford's Model-T was introduced in 1908 at $850. 1912 was the year that the number of motor vehicles exceeded the number of horses in New York.
I find it very amusing that our history books do not emphasize this:
By not changing the design of the Model-T Ford brought the price down to $300 by the early 1920s. The physics would be the same but what does it mean for the depreciation. A consumer could not lose $500 in depreciation on a machine that only cost $300. So how much have Americans wasted on depreciation of cars since 1969 because we have kept the prices of cars high by changing them every year? Technology is integral to the economy and work and the use/waste of natural resources.
If we did not create useless work to have money to buy useless variations in junk then we could think of doing other things than work,
Oh yeah, economists talk about the depreciation of computers too.
Third, most kids graduate from high school at about age 17.
Really?
Quote:
United States. The twelfth grade is the twelfth school year after kindergarten. It is also the last year of compulsory secondary education, or "high school". Students often enter the grade as 17- and 18-year-olds and graduate as mostly 18-year-olds.Twelfth grade - Wikipedia
I was born in March so I graduated at 18 yrs 3 mo. My sister was born in September so she may have graduated at 17 yr 9 mo.
I think many in this thread are misguided in their views on school. It seems like many don't realize what is going on today. STEM is important, vocational tech (vo-tech) is a part of most schools or at least one in the district.
Why do people think that we need to speed up school? I get it, most of senior year is a waste. Besides AP classes (an opt-in) and duel enrollment courses, it's really just English and Economics/Government or Business classes and then two to five 40 mins/1 hour periods of filler elective classes. It's not like senior year at a college where courses are still VERY important. Most high school senior year courses are meaningless electives. So maybe one year of high school could be dropped, that or allow for options to take more duel enrollment (in school such as AP or out at a community college) or do vo-tech.
I find that the English classes will have issues engaging every kid with every book, every time. I enjoyed books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Great Expectations, even Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde and poetry in my various English courses, BUT I couldn't be bothered with others (I can't think of any off the top of my head but I know there are some out there.) I much rather read graphic novels and autobiographies myself.
Career tracking is a bit too over-rated. Especially grading by top X percent go to college tracking vs vo-tech. Vo-tech students need to be smart but it is a bit of a different kind of smarts. More practical perhaps?
First of all, it isn't a waste anymore than Heinlein is a waste or being a computer savant is a waste or knowing accounting is a waste. Different aspects of school spark interests in different students, who then go on to pursue careers in those different areas.
Second, there's a personal value, as well as a cultural value in a person having a broad-based education. So far, I've ONLY heard you talk about science fiction and computers and accounting. That's not very broad-based, although you may very well be into other fields, as well.
Third, most kids graduate from high school at about age 17. And most kids younger than that are simply not mature enough to enter the work world full time. They don't even know what they don't know. At age 17, they've got about 50 years (or more) to be in the work world.
Fourth, in regard to how bored you have said you were in high school (and that you mostly got by with C's), there is nothing more boring than doing nothing.
And yet somehow just 100 years ago people entered the work world at much younger ages and did just fine. It is implausible that in just 100 years the basics of human developmental biology would change so much that this would be impossible. I call bs.
And yet somehow just 100 years ago people entered the work world at much younger ages and did just fine. It is implausible that in just 100 years the basics of human developmental biology would change so much that this would be impossible. I call bs.
Could it be the nature of work has changed in 100 years? Nah! Not a chance!
And yet somehow just 100 years ago people entered the work world at much younger ages and did just fine. It is implausible that in just 100 years the basics of human developmental biology would change so much that this would be impossible. I call bs.
Did just fine? Defeating Polio, The Disease That Paralyzed America
100 years ago what percentage of homes in the US did not have electricity? What percentage of Americans could ride a horse?
I don't think I have seen a horse in the last year. This is not the country it was 100 years ago. You are talking World War I period.
This is one reason I encourage reading SF. It shifts the reader's thinking toward the future instead of the past. I believe we should have begun eliminating Planned Obsolescence in the 60s and had a 3-day work week by the 90s.
100 years ago what percentage of homes in the US did not have electricity? What percentage of Americans could ride a horse?
I don't think I have seen a horse in the last year. This is not the country it was 100 years ago. You are talking World War I period.
This is one reason I encourage reading SF. It shifts the reader's thinking toward the future instead of the past. I believe we should have begun eliminating Planned Obsolescence in the 60s and had a 3-day work week by the 90s.
psik
But there was no space odyssey in 2001! And where are our jetpacks?
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