The future of U.S. public schools...
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Sunday, December 14, 2025 23:32
VIEWED: 8340
PAGE 2 of 4
Quote:
Originally posted by dc4bs:
Oh well. Beat me to it... I go with the octopus for the same reasons. Just can't see it being the bivalve, the exoskelital bug or the starfish (way to primitive structure). Besides, Hoodini the octopus rules! I'd way rather be related to him than any of the others in the list.
Things like the complex eyes and brains of cephalopods (squid, octopus, and their allies) are examples of convergent evolution. It's pretty cool that you can see a whole spectrum of complexity of eyes in mollusks (the group cephalopods belong to). And the devil is in the details. The cephalopod eye is actually more "intelligently designed" ;) in the way it's wired.
Starfish may seem primitive but they share a similar pathway of embryonic development (heck they're used as proxies for many embryology studies) and their aparrent "primitive" state belies the fact that they are actually quite derived.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Diego:
Easy, the starfish! Echinoderms are our fellow deuterostomes. I used to give essentially the same question to my students in a zoology laboratory course I taught.
Huh! Interesting. Wouldn't it be funny if dreamtrove used to be one of your students? That's probably not the case though.
Starfish would've been my first choice. After octopus and lobster. My main criteria were nervous system and eyes; I always forget to judge a species by those darn embryological traits.
Dreamtrove, maybe I'm missing something, but I really don't see how *everyone* could know that. I went to a fairly decent school, and maybe biology classes have changed in the 10 years since I had them, or maybe I forgot more than I thought I did, but I certainly didn't know that starfish are deuterostomes and the others in the list (apparently) aren't.
EDIT: But thanks for the question! I really enjoyed thinking about it and then reading Diego's answer to it.
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
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Well, starfish would have been my second choice. I think I might have known that anyway but the coolness factor of the octopus blinded me. 
Octopi rule. They are really hard to find but WAY cool to see when scuba diving.
Starfish tend to just sit there. Like people watching TV. Hmm... Maybe a closer relationship than I thought.
I didn't like biology. Cutting up worms and frogs and stuff was OK but the formaldehyde smell made me ill. Just couldn't take it.
The down side of having a highschool biology teacher who happens to be your scoutmaster and also the track coach: Getting railroaded onto the track team after making the mistake of running too fast on a camping trip one weekend... Doh! I didn't like that much either.
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dc4bs
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
"And I'd like to throw out this little gem - every billion dollars spent shooting people and building schools in Iraq that we blew up in the first place is a billion dollars that doesn't get spent in our own schools, where kids are shooting each other and some schools haven't seen a fresh coat of paint in a decade. They cut head start and programs for gifted and disabled kids to pay for this little field trip, so in 10, 15 years when everyone is complaining because the U.S. educational system is in a sorry state, I'd like them to remember stuff like this (and it isn't just GWB's fault either, but this is a topic for another thread)."
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I thought schools were in bad shape when I went through them as a kid. The bright spots for me were the teachers I had that wanted to teach; the system itself was a nightmare.
And if it's gonna be worse than that now....
SAT challenged Chrisisall
Interesting topic. Personally, I think institutionalized education should be abolished. Its primary function is the indoctrination of a compliant workforce.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Yah, NOW it is...
Go back in history.
The whole idea of schools originaly was to produce better educated warriors.
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dc4bs
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Diego is of course correct. The subtle point to the question was that you actually have to have studied the subject to know. The logical conclusion without knowing the evolution of each would be the octopus, which brings up the whole octopus' eye question which
is an internal evolution debate. But the three octopus, lobster and oyster are all of the trochophore branch of evolution which contains earthworms and insects, and the starfish is in the tonarian branch that includes us and fish.
I guess part of the point is the suckiness of the education system. It doesn't take being an expert in the field to know the answer to this question, but I was suspecting that our public education system, which as a home schooler myself I didn't attend, would have
taught people this. Our education system is very mechanical and does not involve a lot of research and thought. It wouldn't take much in the way of actual education to bring everyone to a solid enough understanding of evolution to answer the question.
I think one of the most innovative ideas for an educational environment is the Giles' Library dynamic. Subtly, Joss has given us a truly wonderful potential education concept. The gang in Buffy study very hard and learn much about demons through this mechanism of
mild supervision. Giles for the most part keeps them from spending too much time talking about boys or whatever, and then is there to help with the sticky parts of demonolgy they don't quite grasp, but mostly it's self motivated. And with pizza!
I was impressed that you had taught a lab and asked this question, or one like it. I used to write questions for standardized tests, but I never submitted one like this, that would only have been acceptable if it were preceded by a passage with all of the necessary
information in it. I suspect radical change in our system of education is needed. I agree with DC4BS that octopi rule. One of the most curious theories I read on the whole octopus' eye thing was that some parasitic micro-organism had copied the eye code from one
of our ancestors to one of theirs or vice versa. It's an interesting idea. Clearly this has happened in cases with shorter amounts of genetic sequence, it's not impossible, and I suppose given a billion years of evolution, which is about what separates us from an
octopus, just about anything could happen. Even if this were so, the starfish would still be by far the closer relative of man.
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... My brother home-schools his 3 kids, together with 3 other families (not sure how that came about, butthere are about 10 kids altogether, being taught by parents according to what those parents are best at).
... Don't know about the other kids, but my bro's kids have aced every test they've been made to take by the state. My sis-in law is a math wiz. No doubt that helps.
... Money is not the answer, however, in public schools. I have no links to offer, but I have read time and again about the disparity bewteen amounts spent per child in certain districts and the grades of the kids there.
... One thing is for sure - America is cranking out a herd of relative morons. Relative to their counterparts in Asia, anyway (don't know enough about Europe, Africa, etc.. to comment). Not ALL of Asia, but in China and in India kids are coming out of high school, having mastered physical sciences and advanced mathematics that university students in America never even encounter. As for Liberal Arts majors . . . well, poetry and all that is great, but science and tech "wins the war" ... and America is losing, quite badly.
... Here in Japan, the kids study at levels quite high when compared to Americans, but not quite on the same level as the Chinese and Indians.
... I met a HOMELESS Indian girl from Calcutta, about 13 years old (she was in Japan on some charity exchange or something). She could do her multiplication tables from 1x1 all the way to 99 x 99 !!! I have to tell you, I was very impressed.
... Politics and Idealism have invaded American schools. In my humble opinion, that might be the place to start looking should you wish to fix them. (to say nothing of of schools with zero dollars to work with, of course).
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My school banned pocket calculators and instead taught tricks in mental arithmatic (99x99 can be solved by doing 99X100 (easy) then subtracting 99) Kids actually set other kids math problems during breaks which was interesting.
As for Gile's library, well the likelyhood that what you are studying may be out to kill you is a great motivator. I am told that this is the way subjects were traditionally taught at Oxford and some of the better public (private) schools in the UK.
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Quote:
Originally posted by haolehaole:
One thing is for sure - America is cranking out a herd of relative morons.
This should win a medal. It cracked me up. I think it might be the truest thing ever said on this forum.
You're right, money won't help our public schools. Nothing will help the public schools. But there must be enough money for private schools to make the idea feasible.
Quote:
As for Gile's library, well the likelyhood that what you are studying may be out to kill you is a great motivator.
True. Maybe they can study global warming and terrorism. Or their own govt. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
You're right, money won't help our public schools. Nothing will help the public schools. But there must be enough money for private schools to make the idea feasible.
Actually, I wasn't going to comment on this thread, contrary to Chrisisall's invitation, if only because as an actual teacher I get worked up over this subject. The fact that the majority of people that complain about our teachers and our public school system have never taught nor know what it takes to teach usually turns my stomach before the dialogue ever starts.
There's a lot that will help the public schools, you just will never see it done in this country, and money is at the top of the list. The current system for funding the schools (local taxes)creates a system where inner city and impoverished schools are always fighting for revenue and not getting it. A wealthy school district has triple the revenue at a third of the tax base - which is why wealthy school districts produce better educated kids. But you will never - NEVER - see anyone in a wealthy district say, "you know what, share our money equally with that poor district, they need computers too."
Someone brought up calculators. Standardized tests nowadays allow students to use calculators - but what of the kids that can't afford them? They do worse on standardized tests because they're using scratch paper instead of a machine that does the work for them (and don't tell me this isn't true, I've seen it with my own eyes). The kids that can't afford them come from generally poorer districts, and low performance puts said district on a watch list for NCLB with a threat for funding cuts and federal takeover. It's lose/lose for the schools.
Teachers get classes of over 30 kids (one teacher I know had 40 kids in a room) and are expected to get them all on task as well as provide extra attention for IDEA or 504 (special needs stuff) kids. Why? Because the money isn't in the budget to hire more teachers. Contrary to popular opinion, by the way, teachers work very, very hard for very little pay. As much as 6 years of full time schooling on average just to do the job, into a career that people don't see the value in paying for (we spend more time with your children than you do - how much do you think your time is worth?) We don't get "summers off," we spend them in prep, teaching summer school, coaching, and seminars.
I hate to break you out of your laugh about how rotten the schools are Dreamtrove, and there's a lot more I could rant about, but I want to get back to what you said. You said no amount of money can fix it, and I say as someone who sees schools every day, you're flat wrong. If impoverished districts (namely anything not suburban 'white flight' districts) had the resources that some schools get, education in this country would be a different story. I stand by my original statement - the 300 billion spent in Iraq for no good reason pumped into our schools would make a HUGE difference.
**Addendum - Subjects I decided not to rant about:
- Lack of parental involvement
- Lawsuits against teachers by the religious right
- Lawsuits against teachers by the ignorant (notice yet why teachers and administrations play it safe?)
- Political pressure on classroom material
- etc.
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He looked bigger when I couldn't see him.
Anyone wanting to continue a discussion off board is welcome to email me - check bio for details.
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