Home schooling

[Arrian]

know a lot of arts degree holders who never go pass ~40k a year

That's, um... rather low. We're talking full-time jobs here? Private sector?

I graduated in 1998. I'm well over that mark, and I've taken no additional courses, nor am I particularly ambitious w/regard to my career. Granted, I do live in an expensive state, so some of it may be adjustment for cost of living, but I'm also not done getting raises...

Never over 40k. I mean, maybe if you're a librarian...

-Arrian

[Mr. Harley]

Hi, folks. My doctor is happy my weight is down – I was told in no uncertain terms that I was rapidly developing tolerance to my medication, and that my choices due to other drug interaction problems were limited. So I can now make some time to post occasionally, but I still have to keep losing my 2 pounds a month.

As is happens my wife and I ARE considering home schooling. The social interaction thing isn’t that difficult. 4-H (they also have shooting programs), boy/girl scouts, church/temple groups, etc. provide abundant opportunities for socialization. We are in one, if not the best, counties Kentucky reference the school system (not by chance, our house was a bit pricey for what we didn’t get). The sarcastic mental responses from my fellow US posters reference Kentucky are exactly why we are considering home schooling.

Academically, home schooling easily produces superior results from public schools, with the caveats listed by many – involved parents with a network to teach those things that they cannot. For example, while I can do very well in math, grammar, and science I am terrible at languages. Trade grammar tutoring for let’s say Mandarin Chinese language lessons, and both children will get a better education than the average public school offers.

The more interesting comments in this thread come from the history of public education, and the indoctrination aspects of it. I started to begin to suspect the utter inadequacies of my texts when I wrote a 70+ page term paper, in high school, on WW2 in the Pacific. It started out as a twenty page paper on the war itself, and the rest ended up being about the causes, tracing them back into the 19th century. Note that I had to choose some sort of cutoff date. This was done on a typewriter, not a word processor.

We do not teach logic, nor philosophy, at any meaningful level in most universities in the US, let alone high schools. One can get a degree in science without ever taking any courses in logic. The lack of rigorous thinking is endemic in the USA, and IMHO is one of the reasons why media consultants make a bigger difference in politics today than actual issues. People don’t understand the techniques being used by the consultants and campaigns, and don’t appear to care.

You do need to know about science. Someone at work was about to buy into a multi-level marketing scheme that uses a “catalyst” to “molecularize” fuels and change their flash point, increasing mileage. I tried to explain that if you do this with diesel fuels (which it is supposed to work with) you will destroy the engine. Only one person at my workplace understood my argument, and he is the flight engineer on a military C130.

60% of Americans think a nuclear power plant can explode like an A-bomb, almost as many believe the world is five thousand or so years old, and our European friends think the most genetically engineered foods are unsafe. You have business and political leaders denying global warming is occurring, and then you have the those who cannot understand that there is legitimate disagreement over the fact that all we have are models concerning greenhouse gas emissions, and global warming may only have a minimal component caused by man.

Drudge recently made sarcastic comments about global warming and the record snowfall in New York. He is a moron. A cursory knowledge of weather, or the use of google, would have let him understand that it’s when the temperature is just below 32F (0C) combined with a wet air mass that you get huge amount of snow. You do not get over two feet of snow in under 24 hours when it is -20C outside.

Knowledge of chemistry will help one understand that the energy inputs to ethanol production are sufficiently high that it is not practical as fuels. It’s called distillation, and there is an engineer making the rounds trying to explain that too people. You are shifting the energy production, not reducing the total inputs. The electricity for an electric car can still produce a butt load of carbon if a coal-fired plant generates the electricity for it. A basic knowledge of chemistry helps prevent you from killing yourself by mixing bleach and methane in the toilet. After all both are excellent cleaners, so combining them….

A knowledge of history might have caused US leaders to examine the French-Algerian war before they tried meddling in the Muslim world. They also might have looked at what the French did in response to the terrorism used against both their troops and civilians, and prevented Abu Graib. The Bush administration might not have titled the invasion of Iraq “Operation Crusader.”

The Attorney General might not have put the bone-headed torture memo in writing. If history teaches anything, it’s that unless you are like the King of Belgium with respect to the scandals over the atrocities in the Belgium Congo (they burned everything – supposedly the fires in the palace burned for over a week), the info will come out. Just ask Richard Nixon about retaining records.

I haven’t even gone into the study of grammar, other languages, etc. The problem, identified by one poster, about people abandoning the system rather than trying to improve it, and the failure of the socio-political system, is quite valid. If you support the conservative “reformers,” you end up with a system that teaches intelligent design. If you support the liberals, it’s all about socialization. If you are a moderate, your vote is courted, and then you are ignored the remainder of the time (see previous comments about rigorous wholesale ethought and political campaigns). Thus the US has an exodus from the public school system by the parents who could actually help change it for the better. What’s really sad is that neither political party understands why it’s happening, and only a couple of posters here really understand the dynamics. Kismet.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
Hi, folks. My doctor is happy my weight is down – I was told in no uncertain terms that I was rapidly developing tolerance to my medication, and that my choices due to other drug interaction problems were limited. So I can now make some time to post occasionally, but I still have to keep losing my 2 pounds a month.

Hello, nice to see you around. Maybe you need to exercise more?

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
4-H (they also have shooting programs), boy/girl scouts, church/temple groups, etc. provide abundant opportunities for socialization.

Possibly, though it is hard to envision these actvities can supplant the many hours a day contacts with others that kids have at school.

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
We do not teach logic, nor philosophy, at any meaningful level in most universities in the US, let alone high schools. One can get a degree in science without ever taking any courses in logic.

Kinda hard to get a science degree without a handle on logic, at least implicitly, though.

Granted a lot of scientists are unaware of various tricks a (stage) magician can pull, thus they can be fooled easily.

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
60% of Americans think a nuclear power plant can explode like an A-bomb

Well, some designs theoretically could...

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
...and then you have the those who cannot understand that there is legitimate disagreement over the fact that all we have are models concerning greenhouse gas emissions, and global warming may only have a minimal component caused by man.

Then again, all scientific theories are models.

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
Knowledge of chemistry will help one understand that the energy inputs to ethanol production are sufficiently high that it is not practical as fuels. It’s called distillation, and there is an engineer making the rounds trying to explain that too people.

Yes, no, maybe. The thing is the energy for distillation does not have to come from fossil fuels.

Originally posted by Mr. Harley
A basic knowledge of chemistry helps prevent you from killing yourself by mixing bleach and methane in the toilet.

Isn't methane a gas? Just wondering...

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


I know a lot of arts degree holders who never go pass ~40k a year

so I think some very high payed people are arts... but that the median always stays way below engineering/math/physics type fields

JM

Not "in the arts"; he's talking about liberal arts degrees.

And Dan's right: a liberal arts degree will take you much, much farther, financially, than a science or engineering degree -- if that's what you want. Of course, lots of liberal arts grads opt out of financially rewarding careers, precisely because of the values instilled in them by their education (for example, my, wife, my sister and I could all be earning much more in the private sector, but we all believe public service is more important than private financial gain).

That's why the best measure is to look at the comparative success of liberal arts and non-liberal arts majors within the same environment. Corporate America is the only such environment where that's possible (in the US), and there the liberal arts majors win in a walk. The upper ranks of Fortune 500 companies are, overwhemingly, populated by liberal arts degree holders, and there have been all sorts of studies done showing that liberal arts grads have a far better chance of succeeding in middle management and beyond than do other types of degree holders. The reason? They're more adaptable, better communicators, and better at critical thinking -- all crucial skills if you want to move beyond being a worker bee with a pocket protector.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
The upper ranks of Fortune 500 companies are, overwhemingly, populated by liberal arts degree holders, and there have been all sorts of studies done showing that liberal arts grads have a far better chance of succeeding in middle management and beyond than do other types of degree holders.

Did these studies take into account that there are way more liberal arts degree holders than engineers and scientists?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Did these studies take into account that there are way more liberal arts degree holders than engineers and scientists?

Within the organizations, yes.

[General Ludd]

High-School

Home Schooling

Unschooling

I dropped out of high-school half-way through grade nine and turned out just fine. I took an equivelancy test recently (to appease the morons who think a high school diploma is actually an indicator of anything) and got post-secondary equivelancy in all the categories (well, ok, only a 12.8 equivelancy in number operations ) - but I even got a 99 percentile ranking in the science category, which just goes to show what passes for science these days. The test as much of a joke as high-school is, but atleast it only wasted 4 hours instead of 4 years.

[Jon Miller]

I am well aware that he is talking about Liberal Arts (in otherwords, a BA, which is what my degree is btw)

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
and better at critical thinking --

JM

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


Not "in the arts"; he's talking about liberal arts degrees.

And Dan's right: a liberal arts degree will take you much, much farther, financially, than a science or engineering degree -- if that's what you want. Of course, lots of liberal arts grads opt out of financially rewarding careers, precisely because of the values instilled in them by their education (for example, my, wife, my sister and I could all be earning much more in the private sector, but we all believe public service is more important than private financial gain).

A lot of liberal arts grads get jobs as secretaries (and hate it) because they can't get any better.

"opt out"

A lot of successful liberal arts majors only end up getting ~40k (at max), but at least they are doing what they want to (which is more important then making money, I think). But there are a lot of liberal arts grads who are not doing anthing they want, and are making very little...

There are many more liberal arts grads then science/engineering.

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

see

http://jobstar.org/tools/salary/sal-prof.php#Social

My point is that management is like any other field. Even for tech industries. They managers might not be scientists or engineers, but they never were scientists or engineers. That is a different job. And while being a manager pays pretty well, so does being a lawyer (both 'liberal arts' type jobs).

Science/Engineering/Math jobs pay more then liberal arts jobs. While it is true that sometimes (maybe even often) a liberal arts person is a manager of scientists/engineers/compsci/math people, that doesn't make them able to do the same sort of work anymore then the secretaries in the industry.

You are comparing apples an oranges. The fact that science/engineering/math people do management just shows that they are more versatile then the liberal arts people (who you wouldn't see doing engineering or science or math).

Jon Miller
(now there are exceptions to every rule, and I am liberal arts myself)
(and I value liberal arts.. but that is no reason to denigerate science/math and one shouldn't misrepresent reality to show that liberal arts people make more)

[Jon Miller]

One interesting thing I noticed from the above link, is that all of the following jobs have (median) salaries ~100k (+-20k)

Physics
Doctors
Psychologists
Management
Lawyers
Engineers
.... (I didn't look at them all)

Note that this is only a few Liberal Arts types.. but all of the Science/Engineering types.

Jon Miller

[Shi Huangdi]

It's very possible to succeed as a Liberal Arts major, but you have to put a lot of effort into it, or else as Jon mentioned you could well become a secretary. They don't really teach you directly marketable skills in Arts classes, so you have to go about that on your own. The key for liberal arts majors in make sure they are employable(or for boosting grad school applications) is doing internships in college, so that you can start up your job search with some professional experience. Doing really well academically is also very imporant- if your major isn't going to impress people, it becomes that much more important that your GPA does.

There are plenty of arts majors who may have alright but not stellar GPAs, and do not have any worthwhile internships upon graduation. These people can end up in trouble as Jon said....

Of course, while being an Arts major could be the right choice for any individual, I do think it is the scientific and technical positions that really drive our economy forward, and it would be a wise spending decision to focuse federal education on science majors.

[Jon Miller]

I value liberal art degrees, and think they are good. I just disagree that they pay more then science degrees. I am not doing science for the money... (and would get a more liberally art degree if I didn't like science)

And I agree with Shi, liberal art degrees are probably more dependent then others on what you do during college (internships and the like). I also think that most people are happier with liberal arts degrees and that they provide a valuable part of society. I just stand by the position that they pay less (in median).

Jon Miller

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sandman

I reckon most people who do science degrees end up in the same sort of anonymous, interchangeable service sector jobs as social science or art graduates.

Then you'd be reckoning wrong. Just about everyone I know, including myself, who got degrees in science or engineering are working in their field.

[Urban Ranger]

Most people who started the computer revolution and those who got involved in the early ages were either scientists and engineers

Alan Turning - mathematican
John von Neumann - mathematican
John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain - physicists
Hewlett and Packard - engineers (HP used to be the most admired company, at least in the US)
Founders of Fairchild (and Intel, and Zilog, etc.) - engineers
Dudes at the Homebrew Computer Club - mostly engineers and scientists
Steve 'Woz' Wozniak - engineer
Ed Roberts (MITS) - engineer
Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of HTML) - Computer Scientist