The real problem with education

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-02-01 10:02am

Much lamenting has gone on here over the apparent success of grossly anti-scientific propaganda campaigns like the "intelligent design" campaign, the push for "abstinence-only" sex education, etc. And RedImperator has spoken many times of the basic educational mentality of our society, which is to turn out millions of worker drones and hundreds of thousands of skilled workers. We know that the "populist" movement which has been going on in the world and particularly America for a long time has been diluting the respect that highly educated people once held. And we know that one of the side-effects of social liberal thinking has been a prohibition on "elitism", particularly the tendency of better-educated people to look down on lower-educated people.

Taking these trends together, could it be argued that the spread of ideas like ID and the general contempt for science is not so much a problem with public attitudes toward science in particular, but rather, a direct result of this "empowerment" of the lower class? Science simply takes the brunt of it because it is so difficult for the average person to learn, so it is a very "elitist" thing to understand.

Is there any way to reverse this trend? The idea that every layperson should decide for himself whether evolution or creationism makes sense is unfortunately preposterous; the majority of laypeople struggled through science and math in high school, and never went farther in either discipline. Ultimately, the best solution is precisely that which people say is such a bad idea: the lower-educated members of society should just learn to accept that they're too stupid to understand, and they should simply trust scientists to know better. It would help if a measure of elitism, scorn, and contempt for lower-performing students was re-introduced into the classroom, like the old "dunce cap" method of shaming the slow students. But is this really a palatable solution? What alternative is there, considering the fact that the average person may literally be too stupid to grasp science?

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-02-01 10:13am

While the trends continue, there is also a growing public backlash against their results: i.e., a bad educational system; America (for example) lagging behind the rest of the civilized world in terms of competition; the merciless lambasting of the growing population of stupid people (e.g., a mock SAT questionnaire having a student diagram "Would you like fries with that?"). If it could be conclusively demonstrated, to the general populace, that the demise of elitism and the growth of populism have caused these problems, then there may be a chance of using the general disgust directed at the educational system to impel changes. I'm not sure how large that chance is, though.

Post by **Edi** » 2006-02-01 10:18am

The first thing to do is strip the overly PC crap from the classroom and bring back the graded report cards. If a kid is wrong, he or she is to be told she is wrong. If it's in front of the class, too bad. And if the report card show's a line of straight Fs or 4s or whatever the lowest marks are, it clearly demonstrates that something is wrong and needs to be acted on. Get rid of the extreme coddling.

My mother was teacher until she retired in October. She taught English and Swedish for grades 3-6 in the Finnish elementary school, and was considered very much the terror of the school as far as teachers went. Her students complained about how she demanded too much of them, didn't take shitty excuses and never buckled. She was very amused when quite a few of these same students later came to visit the school and told her that they wished they had a teacher like her in junior high (grades 7-9) because their new teachers sucked and didn't know shit. much less how to teach anything. And it wasn't once or twice that this happened, but several times. Just goes to show that there is a lot to be said for the old school discipline methods you're suggesting. Requiring teachers to have an actual degree in the subject they are teaching (be it languages, math, biology, geography orwhatever) as is the case here would also go a long way toward solving a lot of problems.

Edi

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2006-02-01 10:20am

Well, I'm not sure that the "dunce cap" method works. It's been my observation that kids who are mocked by their teacher in such a way usually shut themselves off from the subject in general. It's certainly not something that always happens, but if you were to reinstate that particular method now, it would probably just cause children to shy away from the subject, especially in high schools where the student's schedule is determined these days is determined by the student's choice of courses. Even if they're not nesscecarily intelligent enough to get the more advanced subjects of science and math, you'll never hear me contend that some versing in the subject is a bad thing.

Of course, there are also intelligences that aren't well suited to the fields of science and math. Potentially brilliant writers and philosophers surely won't benefit from having a hostile environment in classes they're less able in. I don't mind teachers doing their jobs rather than sugar coating everything, but that's a far cry from the more malicious humiliation methods.

Feel free to pick that apart.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-02-01 10:31am

Edi wrote:The first thing to do is strip the overly PC crap from the classroom and bring back the graded report cards. If a kid is wrong, he or she is to be told she is wrong. If it's in front of the class, too bad. And if the report card show's a line of straight Fs or 4s or whatever the lowest marks are, it clearly demonstrates that something is wrong and needs to be acted on. Get rid of the extreme coddling.

My mother was teacher until she retired in October. She taught English and Swedish for grades 3-6 in the Finnish elementary school, and was considered very much the terror of the school as far as teachers went. Her students complained about how she demanded too much of them, didn't take shitty excuses and never buckled. She was very amused when quite a few of these same students later came to visit the school and told her that they wished they had a teacher like her in junior high (grades 7-9) because their new teachers sucked and didn't know shit. much less how to teach anything. And it wasn't once or twice that this happened, but several times. Just goes to show that there is a lot to be said for the old school discipline methods you're suggesting. Requiring teachers to have an actual degree in the subject they are teaching (be it languages, math, biology, geography orwhatever) as is the case here would also go a long way toward solving a lot of problems.

Edi

My question regarding teachers with degrees is, today, education is handed out freely to all kids, however, requiring teachers to hold a degree in their subject will lead to a massive loss of teacher numbers. This will lead to issues with class sizes, which are allready fairly large in most of the world. I'm not saying its a bad idea, but I don't see how something like that is workable atleast initally.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-02-01 11:05am

Qwerty 42 wrote:Well, I'm not sure that the "dunce cap" method works. It's been my observation that kids who are mocked by their teacher in such a way usually shut themselves off from the subject in general. It's certainly not something that always happens, but if you were to reinstate that particular method now, it would probably just cause children to shy away from the subject, especially in high schools where the student's schedule is determined these days is determined by the student's choice of courses. Even if they're not nesscecarily intelligent enough to get the more advanced subjects of science and math, you'll never hear me contend that some versing in the subject is a bad thing.

And what about the kids who aren't even trying? Why do we coddle them? I would never advocate public humiliation of a kid who's genuinely trying and who just has trouble, but what about the kids who cop an attitude, who think that the subject material isn't worth studying, etc? Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying we literally bring back the dunce cap; just allow teachers to single out the kids who deserve to be singled out.

Of course, there are also intelligences that aren't well suited to the fields of science and math. Potentially brilliant writers and philosophers surely won't benefit from having a hostile environment in classes they're less able in.

And society doesn't benefit from letting these people think they're proficient in such matters by coddling them. Someone who can't handle math and science should never be allowed to graduate high school with the delusion that he's actually proficient.

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2006-02-01 11:26am

Darth Wong wrote: And what about the kids who aren't even trying? Why do we coddle them? I would never advocate public humiliation of a kid who's genuinely trying and who just has trouble, but what about the kids who cop an attitude, who think that the subject material isn't worth studying, etc? Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying we literally bring back the dunce cap; just allow teachers to single out the kids who deserve to be singled out.

Okay, I thought you were just referring to those who demonstrated a lower proficency in general. I don't think that publically singling those kids out would work either, since it would probably just drive them further away from the material, which accomplishes nothing. It's also difficult to determine where to do draw the line for the kids who don't care. My father, for instance, once had 4 points deducted from his final grade for eating M & Ms in his high school chemistry class. He told the teacher that these were peanut M & Ms, so they're worth at least six. Fair enough, says the teacher.

My father is one of the most intelligent people I know, with a large treasure trove of information on a number of sciences. He says he still laments screwing up in that class.

I'm not saying there aren't kids who don't care, just that they're more difficult to identify than they might appear.

I'm personally partial to the methods my old chemistry teacher used. She gave a brief instructional and then cut the class loose on an assignment that would take up the overwhelming majority of the period. She would sit at the back of the room and offer assistance to any student that approached her. That way, the kids who don't care are left to their own devices, the kids that honestly grasp the material aren't bored by repitition, and the kids that want help are offered it. Of course, it's not flawless, since her actual teaching methods were a bit imperceptable, and kids don't like to be made the fool of for asking the teacher for help. I think she intended that the bulk of the class would be asking for help, it just didn't work that way.

And society doesn't benefit from letting these people think they're proficient in such matters by coddling them. Someone who can't handle math and science should never be allowed to graduate high school with the delusion that he's actually proficient.

I see your point and concede mine.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2006-02-01 12:05pm

The problem I have with schools is that parents want to have their cake and eat it too: They refuse to allow kids to be segregated from their peers into different classes for fear that they will be socially alienated, but they also refuse to discourage their kids or suggest they've failed. Both of which guarantee that the average kid is going to be in a class with delinquents AND that they won't feel as encouraged because they only got one or two grades higher than the dregs. I would personally prefer that kids were segregated into classes where they could receive the kind of education they need, be they advanced, average, or need a leg up, OR that they implement a harsher system where failure is the reward for poor performance. Pick one 'evil' and defend it as necessary.

Come to think about it, a system I would enjoy is one where every measure is taken to ensure the quality of delivery of education remains high, and then that parents are made to bear the burden of the failure of their children to meet those standards, rather than expect the government, educators, or a students' peers to accept that responsibility. If you can demonstrate that the delivery mechanism for a child's education is optimal to help them meet acceptable standards, that potential learning disorders are properly identified and accounted for, and that every reasonable avenue of support is available to help them if they need a leg up, then the only remaining options are that the parents didn't do their job.

That said, I know that most parents aren't qualified to deliver education themselves, but I believe it is in every responsible parent to make sure they have both eyes on their child's progress, step in whenever they can,and make sure that their child has the correct attitude to be a good student.

Turin · Post by **Turin** » 2006-02-01 12:05pm

I think that singling out trouble makers might make some reject the class entirely, but, and this may sound harsh, you're not going to "save" every kid. There are inevitably going to be a small percentage of kids who are going to be total fuck-ups no matter what you do. But if you do single out the trouble makers and kids who aren't trying, it will provide an incentive for those kids who aren't total and complete fuck-ups but who can be taught to focus and try harder.

And I'm not sure, as DW states at the end of his OP, that the average person is too stupid to understand science. I've spent a good bit of time working as a tutor for remedial college freshmen in math and science, most of them art students and others who had shitty math/science skills coming into college but got in because they're going into an arts program, not a hard sciences program.

Most of these kids can be taught by someone who really whips them into shape. I'm not saying that your average person is ever going to be smart enough to handle an engineering degree program, but they can be taught to be smart enough in math and science to be able to make good decisions in their daily life. How? Fuck if I know... the work I was doing was painstaking one-on-one work and small group sessions. That's not going to work for the population at large unless we seriously increase the number of skilled teachers out there.

Post by **Edi** » 2006-02-01 01:15pm

The one lament that my mother always expressed was the doing away with skill level tests and segregation based on that, which happened at about the time I went to the 3rd grade. Having everyone in the same mix just means that the teaching happens to the lowest (or almost lowest) common denominator, which fucks things up for the long term. It was also easy to see when I was in school.

Edi

The Dude · Post by **The Dude** » 2006-02-01 01:19pm

The general public already defers to experts when it comes to almost all areas of science and engineering. The only areas they don't are those (like evolution or sex) where they there are emotional investments and/or religious beliefs at stake. In these areas interested parties are very adept at presenting all sorts of reasons why the experts aren't to be trusted (appeals to motive, false "controversies", etc.). You need a certain level of knowledge to tell the genuine experts from the more sophisticated snake-oil peddlers.

I doubt that singling out weaker students will help much: it would probably reinforce anti-elitist sentiment, and most teachers are little better than the general public and can't be trusted to enforce a pro-science culture. Basically, it's not going to make those kids any smarter and it's not going to make them any more respectful of genuine expertise.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-02-01 02:03pm

The best solution would be to raise teacher pay, make it easier to fire them, and have on the whole more teachers with smaller class sizes. The ideal would be one on one tutoring, but obviously that's infeasible. Either way, having larger classes certainly wouldn't hurt teacher-student interactions. The less personal a class is, the less able a teacher will be to tailor the curriculum to suit more individual needs.

Kids should obviously be separated based on ability, with stupider classes having smaller sizes. After all, the smarter ones will be able to engage in self-directed learning.

Also, let's remember that it isn't imperative that people grasp science, just the scientific method. A basic understanding of that should allow people to distinguish between homeopathy and legitimate medicine. That's why some sort of logic class should be mandated for at least 2 semesters in highschool.

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2006-02-01 02:15pm

Edi wrote:The one lament that my mother always expressed was the doing away with skill level tests and segregation based on that, which happened at about the time I went to the 3rd grade. Having everyone in the same mix just means that the teaching happens to the lowest (or almost lowest) common denominator, which fucks things up for the long term. It was also easy to see when I was in school.

Edi

That's one of the things I never understood. When I was thirteen they started doing away with "problem solving" classes for the most intelligent students in my district. All those students were missing out on was a Microsoft Office course, and you need to take one of those for high school graduation anyway, so where's the loss?

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2006-02-01 02:20pm

Turin wrote:I think that singling out trouble makers might make some reject the class entirely, but, and this may sound harsh, you're not going to "save" every kid. There are inevitably going to be a small percentage of kids who are going to be total fuck-ups no matter what you do. But if you do single out the trouble makers and kids who aren't trying, it will provide an incentive for those kids who aren't total and complete fuck-ups but who can be taught to focus and try harder.

And I'm not sure, as DW states at the end of his OP, that the average person is too stupid to understand science. I've spent a good bit of time working as a tutor for remedial college freshmen in math and science, most of them art students and others who had shitty math/science skills coming into college but got in because they're going into an arts program, not a hard sciences program.

Most of these kids can be taught by someone who really whips them into shape. I'm not saying that your average person is ever going to be smart enough to handle an engineering degree program, but they can be taught to be smart enough in math and science to be able to make good decisions in their daily life. How? Fuck if I know... the work I was doing was painstaking one-on-one work and small group sessions. That's not going to work for the population at large unless we seriously increase the number of skilled teachers out there.

My question to you, since you've obviously more experienced in this sort of thing than I, is should students who are hostile towards learning be deferred to a more personal one on one tutor, perhaps after school or in place of a study hall type class? Would that solve the problem? I know it's not entirely feasible since teachers are so hard to come by without digging into personal tutors, but would it work? It spares most of the humiliation while still helping them learn the material.

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2006-02-01 02:24pm

I was bored in class. VERY bored in class. Until we hit material I didn't know. Then I was interested, until we got to the third time through it, and then I was bored again.

And that was with segregation by ability.

::sigh::

Post by **Simplicius** » 2006-02-01 02:29pm

(I offer apologies in advance for my wordiness.)

The problems I have seen seem to be as follows:

1. Quantity over quality - IOW, it's easier to make sure graduation numbers stay as high as possible by lowering the bar than by causing more students to learn. That this is done is mere laziness on the part of administrative officials who want to make their school/district/state looks good, and is inexcusable as far as I am concerned.

2. Absence of personal responsibility. As others in this thread have pointed out, some parents seem to want to both have and eat their cake. They expect their students to perform, but refuse to accept that it could possibly be their own or their child's fault when this does not happen.

3. Lack of interest. My schooling took place in a small, poor district, and my high school graduating class shrank by approximately one-fifth over four years due to drop-outs. Given that my schools were loath to fail anyone if they could avoid it, most of the students who performed poorly and left early simply didn't care. And, honestly, why should they have? They were unable to see the benefits of education, and chose to make a living for themselves as fishermen.

If the PC-oriented 'loose ship' fashion in which some schools are run is abandoned, if administrators care more about the quality of their students and teachers than they do, if parents and students see the need to take personal responsibility for academic success, and if more money can be devoted to schooling, perhaps the situation will take a turn for the better. But it requires the kind of concerted long-term effort that I see so rarely, at least in the US.

As an aside, I wonder if there is a connection between "Equality of condition, not equality of opportunity" and part of the poor performance of so many students today. It does seem like some expect to be handed an education on a silver platter without having to work for it.

Turin · Post by **Turin** » 2006-02-01 02:47pm

Qwerty 42 wrote:My question to you, since you've obviously more experienced in this sort of thing than I, is should students who are hostile towards learning be deferred to a more personal one on one tutor, perhaps after school or in place of a study hall type class? Would that solve the problem?

(Let me qualify my statements here and my earlier ones by making it clear that I'm not a professional teacher but that I was employed as a part-time tutor while going through college. I wouldn't want to accidentally claim credentials I don't have by being vague.)

@ Qwerty: Making it compulsory is tricky... most of the students I worked with were ones whom had already decided "hey, I'm really turning into a fuck-up here / I better do something about my learning disabilities" and as a result were more willing to work harder to change their lot in life.

But a couple of the students were being told by their parents that they had to do the tutoring ("no spending/drinking money from home unless you bring up your grades"), and these students were considerably more difficult to work with because they expected me to wave my magic Tutoring Wand and all of a sudden they were going to be A students. My success rate was obviously considerably lower with this group of students... when you tell the student "okay, I think you've got it, now do five more problems like these between now and next week so we can review it" and the student just doesn't fucking do it, you've got a real problem and I still don't know what to do about it.

So I guess what I'm saying in a roundabout way (for which I apologize) is that motivation is the key factor in what students are going to get out of their education. Motivated students will do well whether they have large classes or individualized tutoring, because they'll seek out the help they need if they have problems (of course, we as a society have to make sure that help is available in the form of tutors and teachers).

Which pretty much leads us back to the issue of culture... if education isn't seen as valuable culturally, any positive changes you make in the educational system are muted. If the educational culture is one of teaching the test and not teaching students to value critical thinking, well, that's what you're going to get.

I'm not sure how to change the culture, though. To use a personal example, my fiance and I are making sure that we instill an atitude that education and critical thinking are valuable in our daughter (who's only 3 so far)... but that doesn't do much to change the culture by itself. I can be a tutor on the weekends for neighborhood kids (like I used to before I moved to my current neighborhood full of assholes), but that's not going to change the overarching policies of the public school system of Philadelphia or the prevailing attitudes of the gigantic percentage of the parents in Philaldelphia who've probably never even bothered to talk to their kid's teachers,

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2006-02-01 03:11pm

Well, maybe we could also work on it by making some of the stuff we teach more useful.

I mean, I'm in a highly technical discipline, an ACADEMIC discipline. I've done general relativity, relativistic quantum mechanics, complicated mechanics problems...

... and never have I had to recall any but the most basic elements of analytic geometry I had to go through in high school before I was allowed to witness the ultimate simplicity of calculus.

I mean, you want these kids to find the bottom or top of a parabola? Take the fucking derivative already!

Where's the other focus of this hyperbola? In the extremely unlikely event that this knowledge will ever help them in any way, it's very likely that they'll be able to figure it out once they get to that level of skill. Now stop getting in the way of the stuff that changes how everyone who groks it looks at the universe (i.e. calculus)!!!!

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2006-02-01 03:28pm

Turin wrote:So I guess what I'm saying in a roundabout way (for which I apologize) is that motivation is the key factor in what students are going to get out of their education. Motivated students will do well whether they have large classes or individualized tutoring, because they'll seek out the help they need if they have problems (of course, we as a society have to make sure that help is available in the form of tutors and teachers).

Of course. I didn't say it was anything but motivation, I just wanted to know if compulsory tutoring would help alleviate the problem. I suppose I was expecting the tutors to work miracles and get the kids to become motivated.

As has been mentioned several times in the thread, perhaps segregation by ability would be a good thing to bring back?

In addition, of course, to taking the sugar-coating off of grades.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2006-02-01 03:35pm

I'm still not seeing anyone considering the option of making parents more directly responsible for the performance of their children, presuming excellent delivery mechanisms for education and no medical reason why they should be behind. Say, by waiving fees or offering tax benefits to parents of children meeting or exceeding the national standards. Is it that bad an idea?

Turin · Post by **Turin** » 2006-02-01 04:05pm

Lagmonster wrote:I'm still not seeing anyone considering the option of making parents more directly responsible for the performance of their children, presuming excellent delivery mechanisms for education and no medical reason why they should be behind. Say, by waiving fees or offering tax benefits to parents of children meeting or exceeding the national standards. Is it that bad an idea?

Say, you know that could be a good idea. Most of the time whenever I hear anyone say "Well, the parents have to step up to the plate," it's just an excuse to not change anything in the school system and shift blame. But actually proposing a mechanism by which to encourage parents to be more responsible for their kids education? That's something new! If you've got parents by the wallet, so to speak, they're going to get more involved... even if that involvement consists merely of pressuring their politicians to put more funding into the education system in the first place, it's a start.

Post by **Simplicius** » 2006-02-01 04:22pm

Lagmonster wrote:I'm still not seeing anyone considering the option of making parents more directly responsible for the performance of their children, presuming excellent delivery mechanisms for education and no medical reason why they should be behind. Say, by waiving fees or offering tax benefits to parents of children meeting or exceeding the national standards. Is it that bad an idea?

I do like the idea of incentive for responsibility - after all, one's own best interests are an excellent motivator. There is the problem of setting the right standards, as this must accompany the incentive - and my own experience with educational standards (admittedly confined to Maine) has been that they are disappointingly low. Would there be popular support for raising them if it meant that suddenly students, schools, and so forth no longer appear to be succeeding? If everything looks fine, and parents can say "Well, my kid's doing fine," the problem is easier to ignore on an individual level and the impetus for change is decreased.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-02-01 04:26pm

The really sad thing is that while you can't single out kids for poor academic performance, you can single them out for poor athletic performance. Any kid who isn't athletically inclined will be publicly humiliated in every gym class until he learns to hate all team sports. And of course, no one has any problem with that kind of treatment because sports, apparently, is more important than learning.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2006-02-01 04:29pm

Some thoughts:

1. Every school is going to have a few fuckheads who don't want to learn, don't want to be there, at best are going to go to sleep on you and at worst disrupt your class. The problem is identifying them isn't as easy as it seems. Is little Jimmy asleep because he doesn't give a fuck, or because he worked an 8 hour shift last night so his family can pay the rent? Is little Suzy constantly mouthing off because she's a bitch, or because her dad beats the shit out of her when she gets home?

2. I'm not convinced the majority of people aren't smart enough to pick up at least the fundamentals of math and science. I've seen the results (in myself, among others) when a kid gets intensive instruction in a difficult subject. There's no way I should have gotten a B in chemistry or an A in Algebra II if my dismal performance in Geometry and Algebra I indicated I was just too dumb for math and math-based science. The problem is getting individualized instruction to the kids who need it.

3. Be careful what you wish for with tracking (ability grouping students). Tracking can be a useful tool for getting kids the right instruction for their ability level. It can also be a way to dump the majority of your kids in a "general" track that doesn't teach them anything. You can't ability group your students and then only focus on the upper tracks. Just as much effort, if not more, needs to be spent on getting the lower tracks up to speed. And I take a pretty dim view of standardized tests for determining tracking--millions of kids have gotten shut out of a good education thanks to a single (usually biased) test they took in 7th grade. I've seen nothing to indicate standardized tests have gotten any better.

4. On quantity over quality: yeah, it might be taking the easy way out to ram unprepared kids through the system in order to keep your graduation numbers up. I don't condone it. But schools are under enormous pressure to get graduation numbers up thanks to No Child Left Behind, which slaps schools and districts with major penalties if graduation numbers slip, but says nothing about whether those graduates are qualified to do anything, including read. People's jobs are on the line, and I have a hard time blaming them for doing whatever they can to massage the numbers. B.F. Skinner was an asshole, but he got one thing right: negative reinforcement will only teach someone to avoid punishment.

5. I think The Dude has a point: nobody's arguing for faith-based bridge building or teaching "intelligent reactions" alongside chemistry. It's only the subjects in which people have an emotional and religous investment, like human origins, that you have this anti-science backlash. I think to a certain extent that's a problem unique to America in the west, because America has a strong evangelical Protestant tradition that's either died out or never really existed elsewhere. In that case, you're looking at a need for a more fundamental social change than just improving the education system, much as the system needs improvement.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-02-01 04:36pm

On the aspect of positive reinforcement, perhaps schools need to have more competitions that are non-athletic. Actually, I think schools would ideally ban all "school pride" events that have anything to do with athletics; the obsessive focus on athletics is destroying the purpose of schooling in America.

When I was in university, we engaged yearly in the solar car competition, among other kinds of competitions. Even people who did not participate in these competitions took pride in The Team: the guys and girls who participated and worked hard to try and compete. And unlike something geeky like, for example, the science fair, the solar car competition is a multi-disciplinary real-world hands-on project. It's not enough to have a guy who knows math or chemistry; you also need guys from the shop class who know how to machine things, people who know how to put on a good media presentation, etc. It's like a microcosm of a product design cycle at a real manufacturer, and it's far more uplifting and meaningful IMO than these fucking "oooh, my football team has more giant steroid-laden assholes than your football team!" competitions. When people look up to that sort of student instead of the roid-filled moron, we'll be making some progress in school.

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