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So if London is 51.5074° N and Boston is 42.3601° N, meaning London is further north, why is Boston colder? After all, Boston is almost the same latitude of Rome 41.9028° N.
I know the answer, but do you?
Anyone who passes geography knows.
The shallow answer is, London has a temperate maritime climate, while Boston has a humid temperate continental climate. London is influenced by the westerlies from the Atlantic year round, as well as the North Atlantic Current. Boston, on the other hand, is often influenced by cold high pressure from Canada in winters, and sometimes the polar votex. Westerlies have a weaker influence.
A deeper answer lies in the fact that the rotation of the earth generates the Coriolis Force. In the northern hemisphere, the currents (air and water) have the tendency to "turn right". That is how westerlies form.
In winter, the atmosphere above the continent usually has a higher pressure than above the ocean. On the east side of the continent, airflow from the north is common.
That smaller percent 70 years ago were the "smart" kids. The ones that dropped out today stick it out and get a diploma, that's what's changed. Those dropouts 70 years ago could kick around for a couple years, get drafted, spend a couple years in the Army and then come back and work in the factory. Those jobs are gone.
Almost 45 years ago when I started working in the factory had that 1950 high school student. I'm going to estimate that at least half the people working at either facility I worked at didn't graduate from high school. When I switched to the railroad it was 3/4 (now, it was a small RR so a very small sample).
You and I are roughly the same age (I think), so we were in that cohort where college was for the "elite" (not meant as a negative) student. There were no such things as community colleges where you went to get yourself academically better for a four year school, CCs were vocation focused (except maybe in a couple states like California).
There were no school wide SAT Word of the Day exercises, that vast majority of high school kids never even heard of the SAT.
What hasn't changed is that the marginal student liable to dropout (if you want to say the less academically inclined/lower cognitive ability go ahead) is still there. The percentage of them hasn't changed. What has changed is that now there are few jobs for them and we keep them in school.
When we did leveling in high school (both when I was a student and my first few years teaching) there were always more sections of General than College Prep. There was a reason for that.
Can't really disagree with what you said. My dad didn't finish high school. When I grew up CCs didn't exist as today's model; they were Vo-Tec focused. The biggest thing I saw in my high school is the difference between college track and work track was primarily Math, Science, and English. In Science, the only difference was the college track had two years biology, but otherwise, it was the same for both tracks. In English the first two years were the same, with the difference being Business English, which focused on a lot of secretarial skills for the non college track and lit for the college track. The only real significant difference was Math where the college track was Algebra & Trig focused while the general track had general math and business math. Both had geometry. Overall about 25=30% went to college; another 30% to Vo_Tec or military; 30% right to the factory as you mentioned. And a small handful failed to graduate.
History and geography were the same for both tracks. I have to say Mr F, my history teacher, was one of the best teachers I had. He was great at inspiring students to go beyond the textbook to sources. We didn't have AP classes but everyone had the equivalent of an AP history. Where I'm going with all this is, when my kids were in high school, they did have more math than I did, but less biology, less chemistry, less Lit, and History/Geography was less thorough even though it was AP. But they had a lot of other courses, so basically a smattering of a lot of things, but no depth in anything other than math.
That's my concern. It doesn't seem like the courses are going into as much depth, resulting in high school graduates who've not learned as much as 40 years ago.
I guess part of it depends on how you define "intellectuals." If we consider intellectual to mean someone who thinks in deeper term with more rigor, rather than percent of population with a degree, then we've probably had two or three "Golden Ages." Certainly the time of the Revolution brought out some very deep intellectuals for example.
If we want to talk about percent educated (call it a high school diploma), then we have to consider the quality of that diploma. For example in this thread we're using the fact that a large percent were illiterate (noting that illiterate does not mean unintelligent) and using that to say that an equally large number of high school graduates don't know any more than the illiterate of the past, that's really a condemnation of the quality of the high school education.
I would consider that while a smaller percent completed high school in the past, that smaller percent were better educated than the larger percent today. This whole discussion is really about comparing the quality of a high school education today vs, say, 70 years ago, and deciding that the overall quality was higher then because people who should not have a diploma, still get one. If we educate greater masses of people, it's either bring them up or dilute the quality down.
I graduated from the same high school as my dad, 40 years later - 1961 vs. 2001, and now some of my classmates are teachers at that same high school. I've looked at my dad's stuff that my grandmother kept. It's interesting what was more advanced in their day and what was not.
In the old days they were quite a bit more advanced in the humanities. The college-bound students had to take Latin. They had philosophy class where they read stuff like Hobbes. In English Lit they read things like Chaucer in the original translation. Their social studies was more in-depth; history, geography, physics much more focused on specific knowledge mastery. English grammar and usage was far more strictly graded for formality. French was the go-to foreign language.
Pretty much all their social science and humanities curricula were at a level of rigor that I associate with an average-tier college class today.
However, in math & science they were behind. My dad's 12th grade math was a lot like what I did in 9th or 10th grade math; more simplistic even. Only the most advanced students went beyond what today would be 9th grade algebra, 10th grade geometry. Similar in science. His high school biology work reminded me of what I did in middle school. It seemed quite easy. he didn't even come close to the kind of work I had to do in 11th grade chemistry, for example.
I just looked up the latest student handbook that's been in use since 2015. They require even fewer humanities courses than they did when I was there in 1998-2001. They've reduced the number of social studies and arts & humanities courses needed to graduate by 1 each since I was there, so you could get your diploma with an endorsement and only take one of history, geography, or government in the whole 4 years. No wonder they don't know where countries are!
They've increased the math & science requirements to graduate and added a technology requirement. They now offer all kinds of advanced STEM courses for the AP students like Microbiology and Principles of Engineering. So much for those staying that they don't focus on STEM! From what I can tell, they have become obsessed with STEM. Of course I don't know how rigorous these classes are, but they didn't offer those when I was there.
This is a public high school in a town of 65k in Texas.
Last edited by redguard57; 12-15-2020 at 09:28 PM..
I graduated from the same high school as my dad, 40 years later - 1961 vs. 2001, and now some of my classmates are teachers at that same high school. I've looked at my dad's stuff that my grandmother kept. It's interesting what was more advanced in their day and what was not.
In the old days they were quite a bit more advanced in the humanities. The college-bound students had to take Latin. They had philosophy class where they read stuff like Hobbes. In English Lit they read things like Chaucer in the original translation. Their social studies was more in-depth; history, geography, physics much more focused on specific knowledge mastery. English grammar and usage was far more strictly graded for formality. French was the go-to foreign language.
Pretty much all their social science and humanities curricula were at a level of rigor that I associate with an average-tier college class today.
However, in math & science they were behind. My dad's 12th grade math was a lot like what I did in 9th or 10th grade math; more simplistic even. Only the most advanced students went beyond what today would be 9th grade algebra, 10th grade geometry. Similar in science. His high school biology work reminded me of what I did in middle school. It seemed quite easy. he didn't even come close to the kind of work I had to do in 11th grade chemistry, for example.
I just looked up the latest student handbook that's been in use since 2015. They require even fewer humanities courses than they did when I was there in 1998-2001. They've reduced the number of social studies and arts & humanities courses needed to graduate by 1 each since I was there, so you could get your diploma with an endorsement and only take one of history, geography, or government in the whole 4 years. No wonder they don't know where countries are!
They've increased the math & science requirements to graduate and added a technology requirement. They now offer all kinds of advanced STEM courses for the AP students like Microbiology and Principles of Engineering. So much for those staying that they don't focus on STEM! From what I can tell, they have become obsessed with STEM. Of course I don't know how rigorous these classes are, but they didn't offer those when I was there.
This is a public high school in a town of 65k in Texas.
Very good points. As you can probably tell from my other posts I'm a strong STEM advocate. But that's with the assumption it's built upon a solid foundation. I'm also a big advocate that at the high school level that foundation needs to be well rounded in math, science, history, geography, shop, home ec (I know a lot of people don't include them but basic repair and cooking skills, budgeting, etc are fundamental life skills). What I fear with so many advanced STEM classes is the quality is poor. Students will take them and AP out of XYZ101 in college only to run headlong into XYZ201 and discover they were insufficiently prepared. I know from the teachers around here, they simply aren't qualified to be teaching a rigorous course in things like physics, micro, etc. They seem to be able to find math teachers, but not science teachers who've had that level of rigor. I've talked to many whose college training made them qualified for middle school general science, but not high school AP physics or bio or chem. They didn't want to teach those courses but they were assigned to it anyway.
The shallow answer is, London has a temperate maritime climate, while Boston has a humid temperate continental climate. London is influenced by the westerlies from the Atlantic year round, as well as the North Atlantic Current. Boston, on the other hand, is often influenced by cold high pressure from Canada in winters, and sometimes the polar votex. Westerlies have a weaker influence.
A deeper answer lies in the fact that the rotation of the earth generates the Coriolis Force. In the northern hemisphere, the currents (air and water) have the tendency to "turn right". That is how westerlies form.
In winter, the atmosphere above the continent usually has a higher pressure than above the ocean. On the east side of the continent, airflow from the north is common.
What a "woke" answer by google.
The conventional answer is trade winds (a term from evil colonialism). Warm air from the equator moves towards England. Walled gardens in England can grow lemons and figs.
The conventional answer is trade winds (a term from evil colonialism). Warm air from the equator moves towards England. Walled gardens in England can grow lemons and figs.
Boston has cold air from and Alaska and Canada.
Google never gives you my answer. Otherwise show me the link.
The conventional answer is trade winds (a term from evil colonialism). Warm air from the equator moves towards England. Walled gardens in England can grow lemons and figs.
Basically the east coast is always more "continental" than the west coast.
Beijing is located at 39.9 N but it's colder than Boston in January, due to the larger landmass of Eurasia.
Basically the east coast is always more "continental" than the west coast.
Beijing is located at 39.9 N but it's colder than Boston in January, due to the larger landmass of Eurasia.
The, "Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation" is a nice tangential topic.....set to enter a cold phase or so they say.
The Earth Science nerd in me loves the trend of this thread. Talking about Gulf Streams, Maritime, Coriolis Force/Effect and all of that good stuff.
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