/sci/ - Science & Math

You will live and die a loser -- never accomplishing anything and always blaming others for your failings.

There's no such thing as a difficult topic, only someone who is inept at explaining it.

I totally disagree. I have been in situations where I tried to teach someone something and they literally refused to think about it. The student is responsible for their learning. The teacher is a resource.

And at least the OP understand why I am becoming a high school biology teacher. When at the admission interview, one of the interviwers asked me why I wanted to become a teacher. I said "To teach better than those who taught me" He sort of gave me a grimace look as if it wasn't a valid answer. He was looking for some "to help our nations future and help black babies learn better" I still got in and am ignoring all this cultural diversity bullshit they're jamming down our throats this semester. My student teaching is next fall, I'm going to fucking blow the roof off of any school I go to by embarrassing every fucking science teacher there. CANT WAIT

>>2428228

And a terrible resource is of no value. OP didn't imply lethargy, just an inability to grasp a concept because it isn't well-presented.

not exactly true but i think less than half of teachers are any good, sad really

>>2428071
I agree. I used to think I was 'bad' at math. Because math in school was always only memorization, never explaining the rhyme or reason to things, and even then noone taught me any of the millions of great memorization tricks out there.

Nowadays I feel like I'm capable of understanding anything, if I just put the time and effort in. But I didn't feel that way when teachers were my only source of knowledge.

>>2428233

I'd probably love to be in your class, although the school system in general will likely kill off your willpower in a couple of years (or decades). Unless you're one of those with willpower that burns like an inferno.

I think that the entire modern education system is simply not made to educate its students. It's made to perpetuate class domination, instill capitalistic and not democratic ideals, etc. etc. but the main point is that a lot of the teachers really are terrible. I've had an absolutely shit terrible time at high school and it's nearly driven me to suicide.

The entire theory of education needs to be destroyed and replaced by something focused on actually measurably teaching learning skills and metacognition. It often is not your fault.

That said:
>>for not being inspiring

That's a load of crap. You have to find what the fuck you want to learn about man and learn about it. If you sit around not blaming yourself then you're not doing any better than blaming yourself. This is like saying our society sucks so I'm not going to participate. That's fine by me if that's what you want to do but you won't really contribute anything with this attitude. In our society, the pathways to intelligence may be almost completely obscured and impossible to find, but intelligence is still at its core a choice that you need to make.

>>2428233
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>>2428233
FUCK YEAH. i love you man. you are changing the world. internet brofist.

OP, I think the same thing except with books. If I can't understand a book that I am reading, instead of trying to slog through it, I just go find another book that is easier to read. I read a lot more now that I have adopted this attitude. I just have a queue of books, and if one of them sucks, I discard it and move on to the next one.

>>2428300
Are you still in high school? I have the book for you, bro. It's called "The Teenage Liberation Handbook: how to quit school and get a real life and education"

megaupload link:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EIOFYO7S

>I think that the entire modern education system is simply not made to educate its students. It's made to perpetuate class domination, instill capitalistic and not democratic ideals

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I don't think there was any massive conspiracy in the minds of the people who designed our education system. It's just that any time you have an organization, whether government or private, that has a monopoly on a product or service, expect incompetence to be the rampant in that organization. Students have no way to flee from teachers or schools who are terrible, so terribleness will become the norm.

younger teachers are more interesting and hold the attention of students more. its true.

>>2428426
and that's why private schools are on the rise. People are upset about the low standards of public education, and are willing to shell out even more money than is already taxed for edu so their kids can have a semi-decent learning experience. Even then....

It's not entirely the teacher's responsibility, as the students have to be willing to learn on some level. No teacher can force you to be interested, it's something that comes from within yourself. But it is true that it's not entirely the student's responsibility, as the teacher should be capable of elucidating the subject in a relatively interesting fashion.

I was considering becoming a teacher for a while, and the idea was pushed that learning in a school is an established "contract" between teacher and pupil, and that it's your responsibility as a teacher to hold up your end of the bargain, arguably greater as you've got to fit a slightly different mold for each and every student in all of your classes.

Needless to say, I lost my taste for teaching, but I salute those who've still got it. I still think I'd make a badass tutor though.

>>2428071
It's like you're walking into class expecting to be entertained, like a movie. You can buy tickets to such a show, It's called private school.

>>2428071

you should do some teaching or tutoring of younger students to test the validity of your statement

>>2428498
Correct

my chem teacher use to always say "it in the book" an older version of "go google it"

its there if u want to learn it.

if the books shit, its because u guys dont want to pay taxes for everybody to have better books. then the attitude becaomes, well my books were shit, so the next guys should be too.

sow and reap

If you want to read about the evil of the modern school system, look up John Taylor Gatto. Shit's fucked up.

>>2428539
Ugh, what a shit idea.

Government employees are generally not good employees, and writing books is fucking hard.

OP's both wrong and right.

He's wrong because the student must be willing. An unwilling student will always be at fault for their not learning.

Though a teacher's responsibility is everything after that.

>>2428252
>Because math in school was always only memorization, never explaining the rhyme or reason to things,

Indeed, I forgot most of the math I learned in school simply because it wasn't given any purpose. For me understanding the application = retention.

I have had many good teachers and many awful teachers.
While going through school, I resented many of my peers for being lazy asses.

Some teachers are horrible, and they confuse students, or do not give enough total explanation, or enough varied representations of the explanation for the majority of students to grasp the concept.
On the other hand, some of the responsibility still falls on the student. Even with bad teachers, some students still excel. Why is this? Are these students more self-directed learners?

And still, there are bad students. But I don't think those exist until people start becoming apathetic about learning. Which is why I am going to teach middle school; to keep them from becoming apathetic.

>>2428443
This is a really simple statement that actually says a lot.

>>2428252
>Nowadays I feel like I'm capable of understanding anything
When I first started taking calculus I remember thinking ".... that's it?" and it really got me thinking about what "difficulty" is. Anything is simply hard until it's not. And everything has paths leading to understanding it. Don't get calculus? Learn about functions. Don't get functions? Learn about algebra. Don't get algebra? Learn about arithmetic.... And that Don't get X? Learn about Y, applies for everything, especially if you take a slightly broader view of "learn about." So it really is the teacher (even if that teacher is "pop culture") allowing or stunting the progress of the student.

Here is a video another anon posted a couple weeks ago about the failure of the current school system.
It is a little long, so I can understand if you don't want to watch it immediately. But it is worth it when you get the chance.

I even brought up some of the points from it in a discussion in one of my teaching classes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

>>2428443

Not necessarily in a good way, though.
My AP chem teacher was 23 years old and teaching juniors and seniors (16-18).
There is not much of an age difference there, and her attractiveness combined with her lack of authoritative demeanor meant that we did dimensional analysis for the first 6 weeks of the school year.

>>2428071
Life, sucks. Honestly, it's your fault if you don't make the extra effort to make your incompetent brain comprehend easy concepts. Deal with it. You are a retard and a failure at life. Have fun serving burgers and fries the rest of your life.

It reminds me of a teacher, when the whole amphi was unable to answer one of his questions he became totally mad and started to cry and saying things like "oh god I'm such a dick, I'm not even able to teach this to ONE of you" or "Please forgive me, I'm the worst teacher ever, you should be able to understand but I can't teach you cause I'm just a pîece of shit"
He finished to kill himself before the end of the year :/

>>2428653
I was saying these things mostly from observing other people. I personally don't have any problems learning things that I want to learn, though I did when I was younger (and had shitty teachers.)

>>2428426
That's how I do it too, with teachers too. During the first week of classes I attend a few sections of the classes I'm in to see who I resonate with.

>>2428655

>>2428426
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>>2428426
thanks bro i'm a lot less of a whiny hipster/adbusters-obsessed/counterculturalist/emo faggot than what i said would lead you to believe i just have my moments

Today we're going to memorize stuff. Draw 30 graphs of y=x^2 and circle your best one. Why is 9 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9 yurk yurk yurk yurk

bump for justice