August 26, 2016
Meet Kevin, the boy who is excited about 4th grade.
(Via Reddit.)
ADDED: Did you notice the part where he said "I want to be a creator, like inventing stuff, and I need to learn a lot of math to do it"? He's absorbed that "creator" talk that has infected the discussion of business and technology. Everyone who's not getting left behind in the new economy is now in the "creative class." It has nothing to do with art anymore.
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46 comments:
At least she didn't ask if he was going to miss his parents. Remember that video of the kid who cried ... wow, was that a year ago already?
My youngest just got back from kindergarten orientation. He was excited too.
Class of 2030!
Talk to him 5 years from now. All the enthusiasm will have been crushed out of him at that time.
His teacher will love him. :-)
This kid probably knows how to ride a bike better than President Obama.
Every time I look at a piece of "Art" that is welded, I pull out my American Welding Society certified weld inspector vocabulary; inclusions, undercut, voids, spatter. I have plenty of occasions to used them. I wish that the so called creators would develop some real skill.
Anchor baby makes good.
It has nothing to do with art anymore.
That's because the dreck that's being passed off as art has nothing to do with creativity anymore.
"Talk to him 5 years from now. All the enthusiasm will have been crushed out of him at that time."
True. Unspoken truth about modern US education. The point of teaching "creativity" (yes, that's a thing) is to get rid of it.
"His teacher will love him. :-)"
Based on experience - not likely.
"His teacher will love him. :-)"
Based on experience - not likely.
Well, if I were his teacher, I would.
"Well, if I were his teacher, I would."
But you aren't his teacher, and I doubt most public school districts would let you be.
Long experience of US public school teachers here.
"I'm going to 4th grade and then after that I'm going to 5th grade then I'm going to college, or high school, I don't know. Or Pre-school."
The kid is cute but he's not going to make any waves in Silicon Valley.
"The kid is cute but he's not going to make any waves in Silicon Valley."
Silicon Valley has converged into a few big players, that have suppressed the sort of revolutionary innovation of previous decades. I don't know where the next Silicon Valley will be, but wherever it is it won't be anywhere near Silicon Valley.
He's absorbed that "creator" talk that has infected the discussion of business and technology. Everyone who's not getting left behind in the new economy is now in the "creative class." It has nothing to do with art anymore.
Nah, "creator" is the modern term for what used to be known as an "idea man". Sort of like how "entrepreneur" has replaced "aspiring rapper".
"Hello, STUDENTS!" The teacher will love the kid. I started to say that I hope recess is not lonely for him but he seems like the kind of kid who will do just fine in his own company. Do they still do recess? This kid has energy to burn. They all do.
I taught 4th grade for 4 years in the 90s. Afterwords, I worked as an educational consultant with school districts across the nation. Interestingly, while working with poor school districts located close to the Rio Grande, I noticed lots of kids were registered using Mexican birth certificates and a utility bill for a residence within the school district. When I asked if the kids actually lived in those houses I was told no, about half of them lived in Mexico. It was an open secret, school districts didn't have the time or resources to verify residency but everyone knew about it. Those jobs opened my eyes and changed my beliefs about a lot of things, mostly poverty, bureaucracies, the education industry, and corruption.
Generational poverty is extremely hard to overcome.
Corruption and nepotism are rampant in South Texas.
Paying millions of dollars into the current public education system isn't working.
Giant educational textbook and software companies hoover up obscene amounts of your federal tax dollars selling programs that don't work to school districts far too eager to spend their federal dollars looking for the golden bullet that will turn their schools around.
80% of the kids are great.
90% of teachers try their best with the tools they have.
100% of the educational industries' goals are to make as much money as possible.
Most wasteful school district, Los Angeles.
Most mind blowing, unexpected "Wow, this Is a great school!" Middle of Arkansas.
Scariest school I worked with, somewhere In Kansas City.
Most patriotic school, McAllen, Tx. Elementary school where they had a school parade on Veteran's Day, marching down the halls while singing "God Bless America" and waving the American flag.
Strangest school, somewhere in Nebraska. The school itself was OK, but it was 100% white. I'm not used to working with only white people, it just felt weird. The company I worked for targeted mostly poorer districts that got large federal grants, rich districts couldn't afford our products.
The child in the video is pretty articulate for a 4th grader, his personality reminds me of my granddaughter, I love his enthusiasm but most teachers like their kiddos a little more subdued. Imagine a classroom with 5 like him, 5 who are reading at a second grade level, 5 who are special needs children, and 10 who are average 4th graders. Hopefully he will qualify for a gifted or talented program where they allow a little more creativity.
buwaya said...
Silicon Valley
Take your point, tho I was kinda using it as an idea rather than a location. Apparently it won't be in the US, or S. America or Africa or Europe.
CA still state with the most patents, but decreasing
Companies with most patents: 2015 (largely the same for 2014 and 2013)
IBM, Armonk, New York
Samsung Electronics Co., Suwon, Korea
Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, Tokyo, Japan
QUALCOMM INC.
GOOGLE, INC.
Toshiba Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
Sony Corporation, Tokyo, Japan
LG ELECTRONICS INC., Seoul, Korea
Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, California
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington
Patent grants for the 'top 10 offices', 2013
1 Japan 340,364
2 United States 244,228
3 China 154,505
4 South Korea 123,817
5 European Patent Office NA [??]
6 Germany 81,788
7 France 43,163
8 Russia 23,507
9 United Kingdom 21,017
10 Switzerland 20,166
Patent applications per million population
1 South Korea 2,962
2 Japan 2,250
3 Switzerland 1,013
4 Germany 902
5 United States 856
6 Finland 665
Jim said...
Every time I look at a piece of "Art" that is welded, I pull out my American Welding Society certified weld inspector vocabulary; inclusions, undercut, voids, spatter. I have plenty of occasions to used them. I wish that the so called creators would develop some real skill.
LOL Well said.
Yancey Ward said...
Talk to him 5 years from now. All the enthusiasm will have been crushed out of him at that time.
The sad truth. Even if he's an exceptional kid he will be driven down to conform to the low average that is the norm today.
It is only by pure luck that my niece found a teacher in the third grade that recognized her abilities. She is working on her Phd in mathematics at Nebraska State University. She was 21 last April.
Math and science are highly creative endeavors. Anyone who thinks otherwise has done no work in them. Your memories of how boring math and science classes were are not indicators: you were not working in math and science, you were learning about the work of others. Math and science classes are to math and science what art history classes are to art and what music classes are to music and what watching sports on TV is to sports.
David53 said...
The child in the video is pretty articulate for a 4th grader, his personality ...
Lewis Terman observed that people tend to grossly over-estimate the intelligence of talkative, socially confident children. Just a guess, but I'd bet that the average 9 or 10 year-old knows which grade follows 5th grade.
@David53 school districts didn't have the time or resources to verify residency
I hear this crap all too often. If we have the 'time and resources' to educate illegals, we certainly have the 'time and resources' to find out who they are and stop educating them.
PS: This also applies to Medicare and Medicaid fraud, where tens of billions of dollars are misappropriated every year. The same lame argument: Not enough time or resources to investigate. Bullshit!
David53
As a graduate of KCPS, 1975, would love to hear more about your experience.
South Korea is an up and comer indeed, but limited by their small and aging population and their general inability to attract foreign talent (because of the limits of their linguistic and cultural particularism).
Japan - ditto, and on the down-swing, because their talent pool is shrinking fast.
China is a huge question mark. The potential is tremendous (and always has been to be fair).
They have the talent pool without a doubt.
Kevin?
The call center person I talked to was really named Mike, too.
@mockturtle,
I would love for the feds to get out of the education business which I think would solve a lot of these issues, but that's not going to happen.
Remember Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy? Here's a scaled down version.
In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy.....
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials......
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
Good luck on getting the education bureaucrats to change the way things are done. Less students mean less federal dollars. Most school districts will take every child they can get.
You are certainly right about that, David53! The Feds should never have gotten involved in education [or, more to the point, we should never have let them!] and it has been in a downward spiral ever since.
And the organizational theory certainly holds true. I have been involved in voluntary organizations whose goals were achieved but the 'organization' types didn't want to let go. I know our government is run like that--expand but never contract one's empire. Which is why EVERYONE should be thrown out, from the POTUS to SCOTUS to the lowliest office clerk every four or six years. It will never happen, though...
Fernandinande said...
David53 said...
The child in the video is pretty articulate for a 4th grader, his personality ...
Lewis Terman observed that people tend to grossly over-estimate the intelligence of talkative, socially confident children. Just a guess, but I'd bet that the average 9 or 10 year-old knows which grade follows 5th grade.
-------------------
I wonder what Lewis Terman's opinion might be for the intelligence of a talkative septuagenarian whose speech pattern averages in the 3rd to 4th grade range? Which brings us to the Trump effect on kindergartners:
A kindergarten teacher in Tennessee says that a Latino child asks every day, “Is the wall here yet?” He was told by classmates that he will be deported and blocked from returning home by the wall proposed by presidential candidate Donald Trump.
@Jim,
I spent one day at this particular KCPS school around 2004. It looked like a war zone around the school. Rubble, many vacant buildings, homeless or unemployed on almost every street corner. The teacher parking lot was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. The door I had to enter through was sold steel with a peep hole. Students had a different door.
Inside, the principal was a caring and firm leader. The teachers were trying their best as far as I could see. The kids were pretty typical inner city kids, not much different from those in East Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, I don't remember any barbed wire, only used syringes in a gutter near the school. It wasn't quite as scary even though I was told I needed to leave an hour before sundown because I was white.
Of course, there's good old Shakespeare on the proper attitude to school-
Then, the whining school-boy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
That was me, precisely, and my wife, and our kids. All "unwillingly to school".
The opposite case makes me suspicious.
"Kevin" will most certainly be a creator. Of Doritos Cheesy Gordia Crunches. Or whatever new meals the Bell has at the time.
Gadfly said... [hush][hide comment]
...
I wonder what Lewis Terman's opinion might be for the intelligence of a talkative septuagenarian whose speech pattern averages in the 3rd to 4th grade range? Which brings us to the Trump effect on kindergartners:
A kindergarten teacher in Tennessee says that a Latino child asks every day, “Is the wall here yet?” He was told by classmates that he will be deported and blocked from returning home by the wall proposed by presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Maybe the teacher really did say that. Probably a lie by a Hillary supporter. If true, unfortunate child's parents are not able to answer the question.
gadfly said...
Which brings us to the Trump effect on kindergartners:
Non sequitur, but I'd call that The Biden Effect, and in Mitt Romney is 'Going to Put Y'all Back in Chains.'.
David53 said...
The teacher parking lot was surrounded by a barbed wire fence.
On the Navajo Res teacher housing is behind a barbed wire fence.
@Althouse, when an artist can paint a picture of the Virgin Mary without resorting to dung then I'll concede that there are 21st century artists who are creative.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d3/08/84/d308840e1bb246726dd7db187ecb7507.jpg
This one isn't half bad. A bit of a different treatment- Mary-in-your-face sort of.
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note that Kevin looks Indian/Mexican, and has an Irish name. Aint America wonderful when people assimilate?
sdharms said...
note that Kevin looks Indian/Mexican, and has an Irish name. Aint America wonderful when people assimilate?
A lot of Mexicans have Irish names.Along with German , English and Scottish names. Anerica isn't the only melting pot.
What Gabriel @ 2:56 said.
I'm doing the first part of a two-part presentation on quantum mechanics with a group on Sunday afternoon. It's a mixed group, most with no particular background in physics, so part I is a quick sketch of the history of physics from Zeno's "proof" of the impossibility of motion to Newton's Principia. Turns out there's a new translation that just came out this year. Mine arrived on Thursday. It remains the most important scientific work ever published, precisely because it was so instrumental in establishing the scientific method, providing explanatory and predictive power that we still use today, and for inventing the mathematics necessary to do so and elaborating its philosophy. We don't use Newton's notation today, and if you're working in engineering or other applied physics fields you're almost certainly doing Lagrangian or Hamiltonian mechanics, not Newtonian. But these are elaborations and refinements that wouldn't exist if Newton had not existed.
And this is just mechanics, nevermind Faraday and Maxwell in electromagnetism, Dalton and Avogadro in chemistry, Russell and Whitehead in mathematics and logic, Keynes in economics, Turing and Church in what would later be called "computer science..."
Creativity is not primarily about what anyone would call "art," and never has been.
Creativity, unless ex nihilo, takes known media/data and arranges them into a new form/theory. Be it mathematics, music, painting or physics, it is all creative.
David53,
Thanks. In the early 90's I told a friend moving here that KCMO was fairly safe. Last year when I retired he reminded me of that at my party. I said," yeah, well things changed." I'm not sure what, though.
Sort of like how "entrepreneur" has replaced "aspiring rapper".
On that note, there's a rapper named Tyler the Creator.
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