From: radinsky@spot.Colorado.EDU (Wayne Radinsky)
Subject: Re: D O E S   A M E R I C A   S A Y   Y E S   T O   J A P A N ?
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 16:00:51 GMT

I hope this thread hasn't died; I just started reading this group, and I'd
like to say something:

y41@aix320c.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (Jeffrey Hazelwood) writes:
> The problem with the U.S. educational system is that everyone is afraid
> to put the blame where it lies.  The students are the fucking problem.
> Lazy, don't-give-a-shit-attitudes are present among the majority of 
> students.  It's not the teachers (maybe a few) or pay or system!  Bullshit!
> How come a poor farm boy from Cambodia (example from my school in U.S.)
> can come to America, learn to read, write perfect english, learn, math,
> science, etc. and graduate at the top of his class and go on to Harvard,
> Yale, Stanford, MIT, etc.  Because he worked hard IN THE SAME SYSTEM AS
> EVERYONE ELSE!  Most American students would rather hang out, watch TV, 
> listen to music than study. Those are the facts!

Personally, I find it hard to get emotionally involved in my studies.
I go into a class that I'm interested in, but within a few weeks I'm
bored out of my skull and find it very hard to, as you put it, give a
shit.  For example, I took a geometry course in high school, but
because I was constantly forced to do boring homework, I started to
feel like, "Hey, I signed up for this class because =I= was interested
in geometry, why am I getting punished for it?"

The same thing has happened to me in college.  I took a compiler
course, and within a few weeks I was bored to death.  I told the
teacher I was bored and asked for more challenging work to do, but he
regarded it as an affront to his authority and got extremely rude and
defensive.

I took a literture class this semester (this shouldn't happen with
literature, it's one of those "soft" subjects, right?).  We read these
books and wrote papers on them.  I worked very hard to write a paper I
thought was meaningful, and came to some sort of definite conclusion.
And I wrote a paper I felt very proud of.  The teacher didn't like it,
and railed at me for 45 minutes in his office about what a bad paper it
was.  For the 2nd paper, I decided to try an experiment: I simply wrote
down what he said in class, which was a lot of meandering philosophical
babble that had no meaning as far as I could tell, and regurgitated it
back as "my" paper.  In addition, I took extra pains to use big words,
convolute the sentence structure, and make the paper sound impersonal.
To my surprise, I got an "A" with the words, "A fine paper" written at
the top.  I was furious -- I should've failed that paper.  It was
meaningless bullshit (I know, because I was writing meaningless
bullshit on purpose!).

Now a "good student" would've just said, "ha, ha, I've figured out how
to play this game, now I can get an A in this class!".  But I was
pissed.  I suppose I should've confronted the teacher with my
"experiment" but I was intimidated by his railing at me, so I took the
passive-aggressive approach: I stopped going to class and failed.
Why not?  Call me lazy, but the class was absolutely meaningless to me.

My general experience with the school system is like this -- it's got
less to do with learning and more to do with this senseless power
struggle -- are you going to obey and do your fucking homework -- but
I've found few such clear-cut examples.

> Jeffrey T. Hazelwood                    Universitdt Heidelberg
> EMAIL: y41@ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de       Heidelberg, Germany 

Maybe it's different in Germany...

y41@aix320a.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (Jeffrey Hazelwood) writes:
>> Moreover, the simplistic answers that they present are seldom of any
>> use in finding the real answers.
>>
>> smittie
>
> Smittie, you missed the point of the argument.  Everyone says the
> system is bad, the teachers are terrible.  Yet, when I went to school
> in the states, I constantly witnessed foreign students doing VERY well
> in those so called shitty American school systems.  (and a few studious
> Americans!)  The problem is that the politicians, etc. always make a
> simple problem into one of such complex proportions that they then
> become perplexed as to what the solution could possibly be!  Whether or
> not a student learns is up to the student.  How much time does the
> average American student spend outside of class reading, studying,
> etc.?  Very little! Because that's not COOL! God forbid that Americans
> aren't cool.  Tell an American how much the average Japanese studies
> and the response will likely be, "What a bunch of nerds...". That's why
> a very large proportion of the research done in America is done by
> foreigners.  The question ought to be, How can we make the average
> American student study more efficiently and devote more time to studies
> in general?  Instead of....how much more money can we spend? Why are
> are teachers lousy?.....$$$$$$

You are right, there is an "anti-intellectual" attitude in America.
Possibly this is because Americans during the Space Race expected
science and technology to solve all our problems.  Scientists have done
pretty well at solving scientific problems, but not social problems.
Social problems are much harder to solve than scientific problems.

Another thing worth noting, the book =Megatrends= claims that America
is moving towards a more decentralized economy, more emphasis on
individuals, and more emphasis on self-help rather than institutional
help (and even now, a lot of people say having a college degree doesn't
tell you anything about a person).  Perhaps our children are more aware
of these changes than we give them credit.  I've noticed children tend
to pick up on society's value changes faster than adults.  If this is
the direction our society is really going, much of what is taught in
school is irrelevent, and they know it.  Why would American kids want
to learn science and engineering, if America is not going to be a
manufacturing nation (which it probably isn't -- even now, I'd bet you
of America's economy is not based on manufacturing industries)?  That
would be a waste of time.

Wayne, the anxious puppy

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