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Education is hindering my education | ||
Tags: School Education | College/University | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| FireViN Diglot Senior Member Brazil missaoitaliano.wordpRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5229 days ago 196 posts - 292 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2 Studies: Italian | Message 57 of 70 18 May 2011 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Reading this thread made me feel stupid. I've been studying on brazilian public schools for my entire life and I'm an average student who's suffering to learn physics so I can finally enter college. I'm almost 19.
Just enjoy your intelligence and study if you have free time. I'm pretty sure high school there can't be THAT bad. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5433 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 58 of 70 18 May 2011 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Teachers are relatively free to tally grades as they like as long as it is fair and consistent. A simple case might be something like the following: attendance 10 points, homework 25, in-class quizzes/assignments 15, tests 50, for a total 100 points (or percent). With a test, a teacher might value the questions in a way that totals to more than 100 points, then apply points > 100 to points you missed on another test, or missing homework, etc. It might also take the form of an optional assignment, etc. rather than extra questions on a test. Many teachers I know do this sort of thing (my wife is a teacher and I have several teacher friends), ostensibly to help struggling students to achieve. Of course, often the students who actually should take advantage of these opportunities don't. But it also has the benefit that when a parent complains that their lazy kid got a bad grade, the teacher can say "well gee, I offered Johnny the chance to make up his work and he refused the opportunity." My wife spends a lot of time trying to "differentiate in the classroom," meaning simultaneously teach the material at different levels for students of different abilities in the same class. You can imagine how often that works out well for everyone. The sad fact is that teachers get much more hassle for not hand-holding a slower student than for failing to engage the smart kids. My wife is brilliant at doing this, but it is very hard to pull off and most teachers aren't my wife. Bored smart kids don't sue the school for discrimination.
Yes and no. Like most places it depends where in the US you live (which also correlates to your socio-economic status), etc. but the country is so big that the variance is greater. Probably a more apt comparison would be to compare the Irish system to one of our states. I think much of what's said on the topic is subjective opinion, but I have seen studies showing that the US spends more per student than many european countries, but the US students don't perform as well in standardized tests. I honestly don't know since I've never attended a non-US educational institution. My subjective experience is that non-Americans know more about the current world events and world history than Americans, but I think this is more a product of our insular society in general than the schools. The "social studies" equivalent of the native English speaker who is a lazy language learner, if you will.
No, it only seems that way when you are in it. :-) d. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 59 of 70 18 May 2011 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I recognize the feeling of urgency, and wanting to get through everything as quickly as possible. I did the three years of high school in one, started university at 17, and was the youngest ever in Norway to major in French at the age of 18.
Unlike you this was not because I was particularly bright, I just had the combination of luck and extreme determination. I do not know if I would have done the same thing again, and it is not something I encourage my daughters to do, however. The thing is that those other pupils may give you experiences you should not miss out on. There is a value in getting used to deal with people that are different from you, and it is a skill that you will need later in life. Dealing with people who bore you, and also dating is part of life itself. I saw an article recently about people who were members of MENSA, the association for the very bright, and lots of them turned out to be unable to turn their intelligence into a benefit when they started looking for a job, or even a relationship. There are many ways of being bright, but living in the real world and learning to tackle all sorts of people may turn out to be the most useful things to learn of all. Good luck! 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5336 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 60 of 70 19 May 2011 at 3:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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My parents don't allow dating. So that's out the window.
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| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 61 of 70 19 May 2011 at 3:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It just angers me a little, I wish I would have come to the realization I had in college much earlier in life, I wouldn't be relearning what I had "learned" previously.
I devoted nearly all of my time to math and physics, and less than ten hours to Spanish for the whole year. Even with all of that study I PASSED. C+ in Physics and a B in Calculus. I studied hours every single day. Was it worth the price? Of course. It's something I wouldn't have to do if my previous education was better though, and I hate doing something over again. HATE IT. I can't really blame anyone, I can't even blame myself. It's not too late to recover and relearn what I need to, to understand everything; it's just a pain in the........ It was the worst thing I've ever done, not learning to understand. Sure, I did my homework, I did well on quizzes, but I DIDN'T LEARN TO UNDERSTAND WHY IT WORKS. Which probably hindered my language learning as well. Kids look for the "formula" or secret just to get through something, rather than understand it. I've been out of school for a week, and I don't think I'll have a "summer" ever again. I'll be studying just to fill in the swiss-cheese type holes in my brain :/ I can't sit idle and just do nothing. I have to progress everyday, no matter how small, that's just the person I've become :/ Bottom line: Do it right the first time, and you won't be wasting time later. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 6124 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 62 of 70 19 May 2011 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Jordan, don't beat yourself up about things you can't change, maybe there's a life lesson in there that you wouldn't have learnt if things had gone smoothly. There's a handful of people seem to be born with innate wisdom, the rest of us have to acquire it one painful lesson at a time... And, for what it's worth, you seem to have a whole lot more wisdom and maturity than most people your age. I'm sure you'll do just fine. ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Delaunay Pentaglot Newbie Hungary Joined 4989 days ago 16 posts - 27 votes Speaks: German, Hungarian*, English, Japanese, Dutch Studies: Russian | Message 63 of 70 19 May 2011 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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You have mentioned you want to be a translator. Now, I'm no expert on American higher education, but the coursework doesn't differ that much from the European, and the fact is that translation and interpretation is a post graduate degree. The requirement to be accepted other than being capable of multitasking and so is to have achieved level C1 in two foreign languages. (Sometimes it's C1 and B2, sometimes C2 and C1. Depends on the university.) They also flunk half these students. (Fun fact: from those who got accepted into the EU Commission's course for conference interpreters usually more than 80 percent fail.)
So I would focus on learning languages. Many can attest here that you don't need university courses for that! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 64 of 70 19 May 2011 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That shows why intelligence is best defined in its etymological sense: to make good choices, to know what to choose, and not by mere IQs. Unfortunately, this definition shows intelligence is impossible to measure, so many people insist in equaling IQ and intelligence. One harsh joke we local geniuses here make about MENSA is to say that it's full of mensos anyway :) Unfortunately, education isn't the same as intelligence, either, or even the same as common sense, so pay attention to it because it is very important, and at the same time be aware that it's not the be-all, end-all of everything. I'd like to say a couple of things about socialization, finding 'intellectual equals', how fun school and college were or weren't, and such, but after re-reading Akao's post in the thread, it seems his only real concern is time, so I'll leave those for another, more appropriate occasion. @Akao, you're still very young and apparently bright, so you could try to learn from others' experience. I'll offer you a bit of mine: When I was 8 I was kept down one year because I was one year younger than the rest of my class. Not that I had to face super-hard stuff or anything but I had a habit of studying in the evenings back then. The year I had to spend over stuff I already knew completely destroyed my discipline. From then on I spent maybe a few days at the beginning of each course reading the text books, and then doing as I pleased --mainly 'studying other things'-- the rest of the course and getting by because of 'how brilliant I am'. When I eventually reached college this had become an ingrained, solid habit. Then they began to test me on things that I had to _know_ through study, things that I couldn't figure myself on the spot and I couldn't cram in a blink the week before, or merely absorb on the fly in class and I hit a wall. I loved my studies subject, though, so it took me years to accept that simple truth and do something useful about it (i.e. start studying for real again -- recover the habit of studying the things I was meant to study, and not just what/when I felt like). If you're as bright as you claim and you really know 95% of what you're being 'taught', you'll spend very little time and effort to get PERFECT grades (I won't take anything less), and you don't need to re-learn anything. Thus I sincerely doubt that it is really eating into any other 'studying' you may be doing, except for the time you're forced to spend there, which is beyond your control. So, my advice is: unless you devote to something menial, no matter how brilliant you are, sooner or later you'll reach a level where your brilliance alone won't cut it, and then you'll need to move some rump. Start cultivating that discipline now, and it'll pay when you need it. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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