[Woolie Wool]

Our disgraceful public school system makes people into idiots:

Clicky

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Meh, too much to read at this time of evening. I'll just nod and smile.

[neo_hermes]

 why woolie why  
public schools do have their problems but sooner or later...

[Hippo]

*adds site to list of reasons why school sucks*

[phreak]

i never really paid much attention in school. except in history and math.  my high school science department sucked balls.  we couldn't blow **** up.  thats how you learn chemistry, right?. the one exception is the crazy biology teacher who told us a bunch of  these conspiracy theories.  what really pissed me off is that my 10th grade english teacher told us about how she got so wasted, she broke her nose when she collapsed from drunkeness , now there is a real genius. oh wait its an english teacher!  I subscribe to the argument that i should have to take only need 8 years of english rather than 12

[Woolie Wool]

No, blowing things up is not how you learn chemistry.

[Kamikaze]

That's how I learned physics! (seriously, I got to blow a balloon with hydrogen in it in 7th grade)

[neo_hermes]

same with me

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Woolie Wool
No, blowing things up is not how you learn chemistry.

Yes it is. And I did a degree in it

[Rictor]

I'm learning more about history at my co-op placement (graphic design) than I did in school, so..yeah the schools really need to set higher standards, not for achievment, but for interest and general enthusiasm.

Like, I like learning history and such, but the stuff we learned was for the most part boring. I wanna learn about battles, and strategies and the movements of races over the years. I don't wanna learn about Martin Luther for 2 weeks straight.

[WMCoolmon]

I find myself agreeing with the article.

[Unknown Target]

Anyone put Pottasium Metal in water? That's what we get to do in chem

[phreak]

when we did that we had to put on goggles, stand on the other side of the room, and watch the teacher do that to a piece of sodium about the size of a fly

we also watched a video of this guy who threw a cinder-block size piece of sodium into a lake

[StratComm]

Ouch, did he live?

Good old catapult physics are always fun too, since you can actually get ahold of the stuff to build some really neat contraptions.  Anyone ever made a hovercraft out of a vaccuum cleaner?  No?  Been sanctioned to launch water balloons at your classmates?  How about building a pneumatic cannon?  Yay for good old high school science

[phreak]

Originally posted by StratComm
Ouch, did he live?

yea. he threw it off a 30 ft cliff or so

Good old catapult physics are always fun too, since you can actually get ahold of the stuff to build some really neat contraptions.  Anyone ever made a hovercraft out of a vaccuum cleaner?  No?  Been sanctioned to launch water balloons at your classmates?  How about building a pneumatic cannon?  Yay for good old high school science

*grumble*

[Knight Templar]

We do labs.. with goggles... and bunsen burners......

[phreak]

here's my bunsen burner:

[Knight Templar]

Cool Shadow.

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by PhReAk
here's my bunsen burner:

*snip*

:yes:

[Liberator]

Yeah, we did the sodium thing in Chem class.  The teacher broke us up into small groups, each with a beaker half-full of water.  He got his sodium from the supply cabinet and plopped a peice about the size of the first joint of your pinky finger into the beaker.  The sodium in our beaker danced all over the surface of the water and (here's the cool part) burst into flame.  So here we stand with this smallish fireball bouncing around a glass beaker the girls recoil and every guy in the class clustered around our table to watch, meanwhile the teacher explains how the sodium chemically separates the hydrogen from the water and the excess energy ignited the free hydrogen.  That was a cool day.

On the whole my school wasn't bad, just underfunded.  2 years after I graduated, it went to hell.  They went from having 9 classes a day to 4.  How can you learn anything with only 3 classes and a study hall?