You know what the best part about this is? The article reports that our nation's youth is uneducated, as evidenced by the number of failed scores on the military entrance exam. Due to poor fiscal management, and a devastating recession, most states are now facing whopping deficits. So what are we cutting in Texas? Education.
It's a shame that modern education is still based around basically rote memorization, which (the knowledge) when not used for a long enough time, begins to fade. It also - in my opinion - fosters a negative attitude to learning and imbibes us with a feeling that studying must be boring. Plenty of people I knew at university did alright in exams but really didn't know how to *think* for themselves.
That's missing a step, yes you need to have graduated high school or and equivalent, but you also need to have an interest in enlisting. Keep in mind that joining the armed forces is a relatively full time occupation, the pool of people taking the ASVAB largely excludes the people who are applying for colleges or universities, are joining an apprenticeship program, or some other plan. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't those wishing to be officers also simply apply to their respective academy rather than taking the ASVAB? If so, exclude them as well. Granted you're just going off of a feeling, but a serious look at what percentage of the whole population could pass would require more data on those who aren't taking the test.
yeah there's a lot of peeps like that.. I mean it's good to keep yourself out of trouble but if your so blind you can't see wrongs in the poorer districts, there are a lot of troubled kids.. they can still make it but it's going to be a lot harder if dropped out.. the cuts in education are getting pretty bad here too also the internet is something this gen will grow up with.. there's cyber bullying and online dating.. you can even get a online degree in your pajamas.. not saying it's wrong but it does change people (not for the better) when you don't have to be there and deal with the instructors / lunchroom / scheduling classes around work.. if I ran a company, I would seriously take a online degree with a grain of salt far as where were headed.. china is building a high speed rail system through fresno.. we have china putting up something our state can't.. their money is 1 to 6 the dollar but they can afford to put up the money (I heard they keep their currency low to keep the people working) nothing has moved forward since 2001.. just racked up a bunch of debt and the scams in the housing market brought it all to a clusterfack.. it doesn't look good
+1 It's not what you know, it's how you think. As an upperclassman in college, I worked for about a year and a half doing review sessions for the freshmen physics classes. It shocked me how many of the students in that class had no understanding of the concepts, and simply memorized the correct equations. They would study for hours a day for the week leading up to the test, memorizing example problems and which equation to use for every possible problem, but never really comprehended the concepts. For instance, one of the tests had an Atwood machine problem (essentially, two blocks hanging from either side of a pulley with some rope). Just about everyone in class had memorized a specific formula for solving Atwood machine problems, but only a small portion could qualitatively explain why it behaves the way it does. Of course, that was because the emphasis was placed on spitting out the correct numerical solution, and not to explaining how it worked. Most of the class had no intuitive conception of physics, and could only solve basic problems that were set up in a very specific way so that there was an equation they could memorize for it.
In the US a lot of it is a response to Bush's "No Child Left Behind" law in which schools are only judged on standardized testing. Hence, with their funding, and possibly their jobs, on the line, they tend to teach to the test. I had someone on another forum try to tell me that you can't discover anything new until you know what has gone before. I countered, saying that every field has big areas that are unexplored and that if students were taught the process of research and discovery then even freshmen could be doing real research as well as learning what has been discovered over the past 1000 years. I recently read a news bit about a science project by a class of 10 year olds being accepted into a peer reviewed journal. They did original research on color perception in Bees. While the presentation was not in the normal format, the methodology was considered valid.
Not to resurrect a dead thread, but I'm resurrecting a dead thread with this very relevant bit of statistical knowledge: The ASVAB is normalized and scored by percentiles - a score of 25% doesn't mean you got three out of every four questions wrong, it means that you out-scored a quarter of the other test-takers. The minimum entry score for the Army on the ASVAB is 30% - they only want the top 70% of applicants. Ergo, the entire system is set up so that 30% of test-takers will fail, and that is very deliberate on the part of the military - suddenly, 1/4th of the test-takers (25%) falling into that 30% rejection range really isn't hugely shocking. (edit) In fact, that only 24% of the takers are failing suggests that they need to re-normalize the thing. They last did it in 2004, so their normalizations are getting old. (/edit)
Of course this is less applicable in heavily maths based subjects, where you do need to know the basics.
You're right about learning and studies, it's conducted in such a way that learning seems to be a negative thing. It's no wonder so many people are uneducated. Don't get me started on some US teachers, what they seem to care about is their pay cheque, nothing else.
A lot of people are bemoaning the way that education is structured, and I felt that this video was extremely interesting and very relevant to te thread. It certainly made me think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
