Wanna take a test.... just because..?

You'd be surprised to find out how many people graduated from high school that don't know the most basic things about stuff. While I was a TA for college physics, I had trouble trying to make people to understand that stars are not the size of golf balls. An honest to god college student asked me "if stars are like the sun, how come they appear so small?" I wanted to bang my head into the wall and pass out for the rest of the day right then.That's not to mention the quizzes and tests I had to grade.

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Nope. I had to actually climb up a ladder and drop a bowling ball and a tennis ball to demonstrate that all "stuff" fall at the same rate (I couldn't use the word acceleration for fear of more stupid questions) for some people to believe me. One time, someone asked what would happen to a bullet if you shoot it completely horizontal to the ground. Even after I did all the calculations on the board, there were still some people unwilling to believe that a bullet if shot completely parallel to the ground would hit the ground at the same time as the gun if I were to just drop it from the same height.That was all just basic kinematics. When we got to the chapter on cosmology, I almost pulled all my hair out trying to make them understand parallax. I didn't believe it then and I still don't believe that relativity should be taught in basic college physics... or any level of physics below the level where you actually learn the mathematics behind the theory. Professors don't know what kind of pain the TA's go through with trying to help the english and history majors.Ok, may be I shouldn't blame them that much. These were english majors who had to take the most basic of all science classes. Still, the level of ignorance was astounding.On the other hand, though, you should have seen all the points I took off for bad grammar and spelling on their papers. Heck, you should have seen the stuff on their papers.On a different note, here is a funny but sad story. One time another TA started laughing while grading a paper. We were in the TA office. We asked him what and he started reading the section of the paper that made him laugh. Can't remember the specifics, but it had something to do with stuff falling. It was the stupidest thing I ever heard. Worse, the grammar sounded like someone just came straight from China. We all had a laugh about it. Suddenly, he stopped laughing and it looked almost like he was embarrassed. Later on, he told us that the girl that wrote that paper was sitting there being tutored by one of the TA's. Man, did we feel bad.Anyway, my experiences as a college TA were mostly responsible for why I almost always avoid talking about science to people. Never know when it's one of those that still thinks the world is flat.

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Actually, that's only part of the truth. Much of the rest of the world use the english ed system. In it, you pick from very early on which field you go into and then you don't learn anything else. This is one reason why some international students have trouble with simple english or math classes in the states. They've been made to specialize in a certain area while american students continue to take the general courses well into their college years.This is the main reason why comparasons of test scores between american students and other students don't really tell the whole story. Test scores in math are compared between american students who have been taking general courses all their lives and hong kong students who have taken nothing but math since 5th grade. It's simply not fair.While I was in college, I met a few students from hong kong. There was one in particular who couldn't even compose a simple paper for his world lit class. He told me that he had been in math and science classes all his life. There was another student who had trouble with basic trig and calc. He could crank out a very well written paper in a couple hours, though.So, on that note, I don't think american students are that far behind internationally. I think the only problem we have is there are too many fundamentalist parents and communities who want their children exposed to dangerous ideas (aka science) as late as possible. I just thought it's such a strange coincidence that most of the people who had trouble believing basic concepts in physics like kinematics and such were also the ones that tried to save people's souls from eternal damnation.

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Don't you just love stoichiometry?

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I remember one time I actually told them to "trust me on it" and went on with other materials.My biggest complaint was the kind of grammar I encountered. Papers I graded that were supposed to be written by english majors looked like stuff from high school. Some were very good, but some were terrible. I remember one time I saw the word "nowindays" instead of "nowadays". I circled it in red and took a point off. The next day, that little red circle with the -1 point turned into a 10-20 minute debate about whether "nowindays" or "nowadays" was correct. Being soft-hearted, I finally told her I'd give her back the point and in return she'd have to go to her english prof and ask him if it was one or the other. She never got back to me on that.

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Again, I don't think it's that at all. I think it's because there are too many religious parents and communities who want their children exposed to dangerous ideas as late as possible. By dangerous ideas, I mean ideas that the parents or elders either didn't know or didn't want to know.A while back while I was doing one of those 4 hour run thing, I stopped at a rest area to rest and eat a snack. There, I met a couple who were also resting. They had a little daughter with them. In no time, they began to tell me about how they've decided that there was a lot of flaws in our education system and that they wanted the best for their daughter. I knew where this was going so I just acted dumb and listened. They told me how they decided to home school their daughter and teach her creation theory and all of that. I lied to them that I didn't know much about the issue so they began to explain the flaws of evolution. Didn't take long before I could tell just how little, if anything, they knew about evolution. They seemed like perfectly nice people until you talk to them. Which, by the way, I still consider such home schooling as a form of child abuse. It's intellectually handicapping your children, for crying out loud!Sadly, I was one of those deprived children. Not financially deprived, but intellectually deprived. I spent the better part of my college years resisting ideas I was there to learn. Some of those included non-literalist interpretations of the bible and tolerance of my fellow men/women. I am still thankful my eyes finally openned.Beside tutoring and grading their homeworks, I also on occasion went out to lunch and dinner with some of the students. Some were fine, but some was like me when I was their age, intolerant of those different than them. It's sort of sad that we are in the 21st century and most people finally learn tolerance by being miles and miles away from home. By tolerance, I don't just mean social tolerance. I also mean tolerance of new academic ideas. We as a society still have a ways to go if our families and communities can't provide the sort of positive environment for learning and social acceptance of those different than us. We shouldn't have to wait till our college years to stop hating!That, phat, is why I am beginning to question people's right to breed... but that's a different story.Added by edit.Heck, we liscence people to drive. We even do at least some background check on people before we give them a gun, a radar gun, and a badge. Why can't we liscence people to breed?Edited by gasby, : No reason given.

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That's not true. My battery cells don't have anything remotely close to ribosomes.

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