[Non-political] News that makes you Laugh/Cry/Both...

[RobbyPants]

I thought that looked familiar. Snopes lists it as false.

To be fair, if you read the Snopes discussion fully, Snopes doesn't say it's so much 'false' as 'unfair', students today know many more ways to be offended, for example, which isn't even a topic on that test.

That is true, and to be fair, I wasn't very clear. My disagreement wasn't that the test didn't exist, but rather that the email is extremely misleading. It was mostly in response to this:

I think someone in another thread mentioned an eighth grader. Well are you smart enough to be an 8th grader? Hoew about one from a few centuries ago? I just got this from a friend in the mail.

"Smart enough to be an 8th grader" has nothing to do with it.

[tzor]

I thought that looked familiar. Snopes lists it as false.

Snopes lists the claim that "An 1895 graduation examination for public school students demonstrates a shocking decline in educational standards" not that the exam is an 1895 graduation examination. (PS Fuck you Snopes for not allowing copy and paste I had to type the whole thing by hand.)

The only think I can think of as being radically different from today was the amount of math based on banking functions. They don't really teach banking in the schools today. Most students actually take optional courses in college to learn stuff they should have been taught in high school or eariler.

[Doom]

Actually, college today is basically what high school was 30ish years ago. The courses I teach are often comparable to what I took back then, and, being on the Gen Ed requirements review board, it's about the same across other disciplines.

[tzor]

I think someone in another thread mentioned an eighth grader. Well are you smart enough to be an 8th grader? Hoew about one from a few centuries ago? I just got this from a friend in the mail.

"Smart enough to be an 8th grader" has nothing to do with it.

The standard game show is "are you smarter than a 5th grader?" I wasn't trying to compare modern 8th graders to a century old 8th grader, only to show the questions that the century old 8th grader was being asked.

[sabs]

Except that nowhere does that thing say "8th grader, or even STUDENT"
And it uses the word "applicants"

So it sounds like an entrance exam, for a job, or a higher school education. Not for 8th grade.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Actually, college today is basically what high school was 30ish years ago. The courses I teach are often comparable to what I took back then, and, being on the Gen Ed requirements review board, it's about the same across other disciplines.

Yep. 30 years ago high school was all about synthetic biology, computational neuroscience, biophysics, "non-invasive" surgery, data mining, computer vision, and scientific visualization. These days people don't learn about that sort of stuff until college. What a travesty.

[Doom]

Wow, you must have gone to a different high school than me. Kudos!

[DSMatticus]

The Largest Diamond is ... an Entire Planet?

Dibs. That means it's mine now, right? I don't know how the whole space thing works.

students today know many more ways to be offended, for example, which isn't even a topic on that test.

They also apparently know many more things about algebra, geometry, trigometry, biology, chemistry, or physics. Or civics or world history or English literature or the arts or foreign language. Judging by that test, anyway.

Actually, college today is basically what high school was 30ish years ago. The courses I teach are often comparable to what I took back then, and, being on the Gen Ed requirements review board, it's about the same across other disciplines.

I think that says more about the courses you're teaching/school you're working at (in your defense, the first year of major courses was pretty introductory, and all my GEC courses are basically topics from highschool on steroids and covered in much higher detail in much less time). Here are some of the topics I took courses in last year (undergrad): formal languages, finite automata and turing machines, graph theory, numerical approximation, and analysis of algorithms. Sound like any highschool from 30 years ago?

[Doom]

Oh, at no point did I mean to imply that all courses at all colleges taught at all times everywhere are exactly identical to high school courses of 30 years ago. I'm sorry I wasn't perfectly and absolutely clear on this point. That's certainly not the case, and it's absolutely true that there do exist courses that have no high school equivalent 30 years ago.

Let me say that again because I know you won't get it the first time: yes, there are subjects that didn't exist in high school then that are in colleges now. But when it comes to topics like English, math, geography...basic knowledge, then, yes, college now is what high school was decades ago.

think that says more about the courses you're teaching/school you're working at (in your defense, the first year of major courses was pretty introductory, and all my GEC courses are basically topics from highschool on steroids and covered in much higher detail in much less time). Here are some of the topics I took courses in last year (undergrad): formal languages, finite automata and turing machines, graph theory, numerical approximation, and analysis of algorithms. Sound like any highschool from 30 years ago?

So, your GEC courses (2 years) and first year major courses were similar to high school--harder, perhaps, but that would probably be because of going to a weak high school...that's a good chunk of a 4 year degree, in my opinion, and, in my opinion, Tulane and LSU are sort of high end schools. Anyway, if you're in a crappy high school, a year of crappy high school work would be perhaps 3 week of college work, so when you say stuff like this, you're agreeing with my point.

Note that I took a graph theory course in my high school, and other courses addressed some of the topics you listed, although I'm hard pressed to say if they were exactly identical in all ways, as I didn't take them...in your defense, my high school had 3000 students, and probably had a wider curriculum than most.

I'm sorry I don't have God himself (about the only source that has even a slight chance of being accepted), but here's one article refencing a Zogby poll on the topic (it cites a CNS news article, which, regrettably, I can't find directly, and lists questions if you read the responses):

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/809153/posts

Again to emphasize, I'm certain there are exceptions. I'm merely speaking from direct observation of general trends and studies.

[DSMatticus]

That's certainly not the case, and it's absolutely true that there do exist courses that have no high school equivalent 30 years ago.

That's the entire point. Catharz and I just threw out a huge list of fields that were born/received massive development in the past thirty years. So any claim that college courses today are like highschool courses thirty years ago is pretty wrong. Because 30 years ago, Facebook was not a thing and today we have classes on datamining.

Now, what you seem to be saying is that "if you take today's students, and ignore all the things they know that people 30 years ago couldn't possibly have known, of the remaining things people 30 years ago knew more." And that's a pretty legitimate but worthless claim. If I spend 10 hours learning X and Y, and some other guy spends 10 hours learning X, and then you test us on X, I'm going to lose. But what part of that sounds like a fair test?

So, your GEC courses (2 years) and first year major courses were similar to high school

No, my first quarter (yes, quarter: we're weird) of GEC physics covered my two years of highschool physics in a few weeks, and then moved on to completely different things. My GEC chemistry did the same. I took a course on anthropology that would have been banned in Kansas. GEC sociology, psychology, foreign language, my mathematics courses: they all covered things I spent years on in highschool in the first few weeks of courses. I said 'on steroids' for a reason.

My first year of major courses was about the slowest thing I took, because it's computers and it's really hard to predict where incoming students are proficiency-wise. My highschool had pretty much nothing. The highschool a county over had enough that your last two years of electives could be nothing but computers.

[Maxus]

The Lunar Bukkake Theory is a thing. A creationist idea which attempts to explain the lunar craters.

[Blasted]

The Lunar Bukkake Theory is a thing. A creationist idea which attempts to explain the lunar craters.

That's hilarious. I think that the term could apply to many creation myths. Some more literally than others.

I may try and sneak this into an essay sometime. Maybe just into the footnotes to see how many academics I can get to look up "Bukkake" and have internet access revoked

[Koumei]

And on the college comparison things... apparently stuff in our (Australian) Grade 11 exams (as in, "the year before the final year of school assuming you don't leave early, repeat etc.) for Physics, Chem and Bio tend to be the kind of stuff that American students only get in their first or second year of college.

I only have the word of a Bio teacher for this, so it could be nationalist bullshit. Or it could just be that the American education system is pretty fucking terrible. I could honestly believe either of these, what with Australia being very "AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE! OI OI OI!" and the American education system being equal parts "The only way you can actually reduce bullying is via school shootings" and "Gravity is just a THEORY!"

[DSMatticus]

Nah, the numbers have been run and as far as the western world goes our highschools are about the shittiest things out there. But the particular claim "material on the grade 11 exams in Australia is covered in American colleges" is a little misleading. Highschool material frequently gets repeated in college (even from U.S. highschools to U.S. colleges), but as an introduction to something more complicated. A year's+ worth of highschool physics was something like three weeks of college physics for me. So it's really easy to find topics that show up in both places, and if you're not careful about it that might lead to conclusions like "you're covering that in college? But someone else did that in highschool! That's ridiculous!"

Though, there are probably things that do meet this criteria. I tried to find actual information about the grade 11 exams for examples, but my google-fu was weak. Maybe it had something to do with googling 'highschool' instead of 'secondary school,' like an ign'rant 'murikan.

[K]

And on the college comparison things... apparently stuff in our (Australian) Grade 11 exams (as in, "the year before the final year of school assuming you don't leave early, repeat etc.) for Physics, Chem and Bio tend to be the kind of stuff that American students only get in their first or second year of college.

I only have the word of a Bio teacher for this, so it could be nationalist bullshit. Or it could just be that the American education system is pretty fucking terrible. I could honestly believe either of these, what with Australia being very "AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE! OI OI OI!" and the American education system being equal parts "The only way you can actually reduce bullying is via school shootings" and "Gravity is just a THEORY!"

The American education system is extremely spotty.

For example, in California I went to a high school that was in many ways harder than my university because I was taking five college-level courses and trig my senior year. University was a breeze in terms of workload despite the work being more complex and more demanding.

That being said, the community college experience is a sad fucking joke. I mean, the fucking teachers try to teach anatomy with coloring books and construction paper projects at a level that made my elementary school anatomy lessons in my gifted classes look advanced and I've seen philosophy classes where peoples' final projects were not papers on philosophy but singing songs.

The difference between going to the right school and the wrong school in America is the difference between getting a great education and getting scammed.

[RobbyPants]

(PS Fuck you Snopes for not allowing copy and paste I had to type the whole thing by hand.)

That is annoying. Snopes does this via JavaScript. Depending on the browser you're using, you might be able to set site-specific preferences, including blocking scripts for that site. I started blocking Snope's scripts a year ago, or so, when I tried to copy-paste some text into an email.

The standard game show is "are you smarter than a 5th grader?" I wasn't trying to compare modern 8th graders to a century old 8th grader, only to show the questions that the century old 8th grader was being asked.

Gotcha. I think we were both reading each other with assumed context.

[tzor]

The Lunar Bukkake Theory is a thing. A creationist idea which attempts to explain the lunar craters.

OH my, you just made my day, whcih actually isn't easy as I just got my car washed and saw the town cleaning the streets from tree debris when I left for work. But really you just made my day. Those silly creationists.

You know, I wonder how they would explain how compared to the side that faces the earth, the side of the moon that doesn't face the earth is massively covered in craters. Then again, young earth creationists aren't actually biblical either. The Noah story makes it clear that it was the "waters above the earth" that caused the flood, not any waters below the earth. The concept of the universe at the time of the writers was that the earth was a covered bowl, with land in the middle of the bowl and the seas around it. On the dome was the stars and the sun/moon. Above the dome was a layer of water (where the rain came from) and above that the "heavens" where God resided. The notion that there was additional water under the land doesn't even square with the seven day creation story.

[Doom]

The American education system is extremely spotty.

The difference between going to the right school and the wrong school in America is the difference between getting a great education and getting scammed.

This is a perfectly fair assessment. It should be noted, though, that you can get a crap education even at a great school, especially schools with athletic programs (they often have 'special' classes for athletes that the other students can take, too). It ultimately is up to the student to get himself a good education, not that the system itself will necessarily help the student get that.

And my reference to 'special' classes isn't a slam on student athletes; one year I had the entire Tulane football team in my class, and they were exceptionally hardworking students (the same drive that makes one a superior athlete can make a good scholar, too). That said, Tulane didn't have all that great a football team on the field.

[CatharzGodfoot]

They could have just said "God covered the Moon in craters".

[RobbyPants]

They could have just said "God covered the Moon in craters".

Yeah. There's a lot less hoop-jumping that way, which probably makes it easier to swallow for most people.

This also reminds me of YEC claims about variable speed of light to account for light from stars more than 6,000 light years away.

[Meikle641]

The Largest Diamond is ... an Entire Planet?

Heh, wonder if DeBeers will be the first company to head there and destroy it, so as to keep their monopoly stable. /jk

[Maxus]

Then again, young earth creationists aren't actually biblical either. The Noah story makes it clear that it was the "waters above the earth" that caused the flood, not any waters below the earth.

Well, in fairness, it mentions something about the 'Fountains of the Deep' in passing. So this global layer of water is an attempt to reconcile that, and the LBT is an extension of the 'Layer of Water' idea.

But still. Dude.

They really would be better off going 'God did it' than trying to bring science into it.

[Koumei]

The Largest Diamond is ... an Entire Planet?

Heh, wonder if DeBeers will be the first company to head there and destroy it, so as to keep their monopoly stable. /jk

I was thinking that, but couldn't remember the company name. So, here's a tenner from me, saying they will.

[Draco_Argentum]

And on the college comparison things... apparently stuff in our (Australian) Grade 11 exams (as in, "the year before the final year of school assuming you don't leave early, repeat etc.) for Physics, Chem and Bio tend to be the kind of stuff that American students only get in their first or second year of college.

What I heard at University was that our four year course was three years in the US and wouldn't come close to getting you a job.

[K]

Building logic circuits in cells to kill cancer.

I don't really understand the science, but I was fascinated.