Posts by Michael Nguyen2

Students are already hopping onto that high school enrollment website to pick between religion classes or ethics. If the administration doesn't group the classes based on those choices (for instance, if an entire class ends up being religious studies students), then during that period, half the class stays for religion while the other half heads off to ethics.

Larry Walker24 said:Getting just 20% on your high school math finals is all you need to scrape by with a passing grade

It’s honestly pathetic

Susan James said:I hear what you're saying, but there really needs to be some kind of baseline requirement for college admissions.
Even if there's a risk that nobody qualifies because they don't meet the standard, I still feel like elementary school teachers shouldn't be people who didn't pass advanced math in high school. These are the folks responsible for setting the mathematical foundation for a student's entire life 😕 over four years of intensive study 🥳)

Some of these degree programs just seem to exist for the sake of existing.

That isn't just sad; it's downright terrible.
Especially when you consider how much weight those test scores carry for getting into any university.

I agree with manchild, it’s pathetic. What’s horrific is that you can basically pass (at least the basic level) just by knowing which buttons to mash on a calculator. 🙄

I took my SATs less than five years ago, so... yeah...🤣

For the first 20 questions, the prompt even explicitly states: "Using a handheld calculator... calculate...", because they’re designed to eat up time and test your ability to navigate a scientific calculator—like figuring out how to input a mixed fraction with some random variable. If you tried to do them by hand, even the top students would run out of time, and they’d still have plenty of actual knowledge-based questions left to tackle.

The absolute worst part is that someone actually decided this was an acceptable way to pass.
By the way, a girl in my class failed because she couldn't figure out how to press the buttons. Not exaggerating. She just didn't care.

And the kicker is that some universities don't even look at certain mandatory subjects for admission; as long as you don't fail pro forma, you're in.
Oh, and what about the fact that the geography and chemistry exams are harder than these mandatory three? Is that considered extraterrestrial horror? 🙄 Honestly, the electives are more realistically constructed than these two SAT farces.

The SAT was originally intended—at least behind closed doors—to measure the success of high school education (or so I was told. If they’re lying to me, I’m lying too. Don't blame me.), and then colleges hijacked it.
So, the SAT essentially replaced entrance exams.
At Johns Hopkins, thank God, they only did it for one year before they realized how flawed it was😁.

Quincy already touched on this, but the SAT really serves no purpose.
Want to go from vocational school to a university? Take an entrance exam.
Why is it mandatory for prep school kids? Want to go to college? Take an entrance exam.
Because, as I mentioned earlier, a huge number of universities don't even weigh any of those three core subjects.

Based on current logic, it isn't even controversial within the system that a teacher wouldn't have taken advanced math. A student heading to MIT wouldn't need advanced English. In fact, MIT doesn't even care about English grades.

Therefore, an MIT student doesn't need to know philosophy, nor does a teacher need to know calculus.

And so, every generation will take these tests not to prove they learned anything, but just to pass. It's just one more link in a 12-year chain of nonsense before they finally reach college and deal with things they actually care about.

We really ought to implement a standardized high school equivalency level, just like people have been suggesting for a while now. It’s pretty simple: you either have the credentials, or you don't.

Richard Perez3 said:Ugh, I wish.
I literally just saw this half an hour ago and, honestly, it's enough to make me lose my mind.

Yeah, right. Like the system isn't already tearing people apart.
☕

But seriously, how are parents supposed to track their kid's progress without actual grades? If a student pulls a 4.0 GPA, everyone knows exactly where they stand, right? 🤣?
If we switched to just descriptive feedback, most parents wouldn't bother reading it anyway, and then they'd be right back to demanding numbers. 👏
Interesting read, though. You always have to know what the opposition is cooking up.😁

I stumbled upon this old proposal for the national curriculum (mind you, this was drafted back when Johnson’s crew was running things in 2014):
''Because school grades serve such specific roles in guiding the pedagogical process during mandatory schooling, we should avoid handing out top marks too frequently. If we do, we lose the actual educational purpose and weight behind the grading system.''

And here is how they envisioned it breaking down:

Passing
''It is assumed the student is capable of achieving more; additional effort is expected from them.''

Good
''The evaluator is satisfied with the student's achievement because the student met everything required by the subject's educational standards.''

Very Good
''Only if the student's work, or exam result, exceeds expectations is it described as 'very good.' This should signify that the examiner is satisfied beyond the standard requirements, meaning the student's performance warrants recognition for both quality and effort.''

Excellent
''The student stood out through originality, superior quality, and significant effort. Such students are rare, so this grade shouldn't be handed out too often; giving it to a huge number of students would dilute its true meaning.''

Johnson hasn't been around for ages, but honestly, the idea itself is pretty interesting.

"In India, they have this anti-natalist policy—if two people get sterilized, they get handed a rifle." S.M. 🤣

Man, geography... back in my day, it was treated like history, which some teachers taught based on whatever vague version of the past lived in their heads.
During freshman and sophomore year of high school, we had this one teacher where we didn't even bother using an atlas. We just gave up because her entire teaching style was basically "dictate and transcribe." Trying to answer all the exam questions in 45 minutes was a massive stretch, especially since she’d always throw in some random question she never actually mentioned in class. Even for the straight-A students, just scraping a C was a struggle. And honestly? It wasn't even about the grade being low... it was more that everyone was cheating so blatantly, and when you're stuck in a tiny class listening to a lecture that's soul-crushing, the last thing you want is to be "equal" to the kids who are absolute pros at sneaking answers.

Then junior year rolled around and we got a different teacher... boy... 👍
She actually expected us to, as someone else already pointed out, draw conclusions based on things like terrain or climate patterns. We even had—get this—blank maps. Since we were offered a third language in junior year, I actually sacrificed a few other subjects to focus on what I actually liked. So, by the end of junior year, I ended up with a B in geography. My teacher even asked if I wanted to try for an A at the end of the term. I told her, "Don't bother!"

Ah, reforms... from the glory days of HBO to the disastrous failure of LeBron James and now these current train wrecks... they're making Informatics mandatory for two years in middle school... great idea, guys. 👍
You can't run reforms without:
windows that don't fall out of the frame
curtains
air conditioning
functional internet
CD players
a 1:1 student-to-computer ratio
photocopy paper available on demand
renovated gymnasiums
toilet paper and soap whenever you need them
science labs for chem, physics, and bio where the equipment-to-student ratio is at least 1:3

Treating basic, prosaic milestones of civilization as the primary goal of education. Real visionary stuff.

Tech teachers will show you how to build a ship just as well as they show you how to build a robot, provided they actually have the tools—or if the publisher packs them in that little kit that comes with the textbook, assuming those kits even still exist.