Wikipedia defines statistics as the study of the collection, organization, analysis and interpretation of data. We have statistics for everything, such as the percentage of the population that is unhappy with Congress, the likelihood of a lightning strike versus a shark attack, versus a plane crash, versus all of those things happening at once. I personally don't think much of stats, first because they don't really say anything, yes they may predict the likelihood of something or express trends in a system, but stats don't say "this is absolutely true or untrue", they are that way by design, which I find frustrating. If I were to hear that I have an 85% that I will die in the next ninety years, what do I think? Am I going to die? Yes, I know that based on there has yet to be an immortal anything, and if say Jesus, save it. Will it be tomorrow? That stat gives me an 85% chance that it will be within ninety years, could be tomorrow, or the next day, or the day before today when I'm 106. It doesn't express any particular likelihood within any more specific window than ninety years. So, me, being a healthy youth, know that it's unlikely for me to die tomorrow or the next day, or even in the next ten years, based on things I know I can control. Things such as my activity level, my diet, my lack of drug abuse, etc. The statistic telling me I'm probably going to die is useless, and even when I do bother to think about it, what do I think, that I'm part of the 85% who die or the 15% who don't? Individuals don't care what the odds are, they will always put themselves on the attractive side, or focus on the scary side. You have to have surgery and I'm your surgeon. I tell you there is a 1% chance you will die and a 99% chance you will live. Which do you dwell on? Your tendency will be to focus on the 1% that you will die, because you probably value your life.
You may be wondering how stats relate to education. Well, how do we measure ourselves academically? How do we quantify a student's aptitude for learning something? In essence, how are we measuring intellect? With points, that's how. Points are what makes the world go round. Not passion, not courage, not unbridled strokes of genius, not fortunate coincidences, not intellect, but points. If you have more points than the person next to you you will make more money than him, you will drive a nicer car, you will have a hotter wife, and you will all around just be a more successful person in every endeavor ever and he will never be able to attain anything greater than what his accumulated points have determined. This is an exaggeration of what our current system is doing. We determine valedictorian by GPA, which is an average calculated by grades, grades come from points, points come from homework and tests, homework and tests are sheets of paper on which information from textbooks is transferred, bubbles are filled in, etc. This measures our intelligence. What are we thinking?!
Honestly people, this is appalling. Now, I don't mean to sound ignorant to the fact that the task of providing everyone (and that means absolutely everyone, because we live in America and all of our students must be held to same standard, which we say is a high standard, (but we're kidding ourselves) so Suzy doesn't get sued by Bill because Suzy's kid is smarter than Bill kid's, even though the administration knows it, the students know it, even those students' whose self-esteem we are suing over are aware of it) is next to impossible, because I'm not. I don't mean to sound ignorant to that behemoth task, which will probably never be attained, not to the level we're hoping anyway, because I know how hard it is to teach everyone the same thing and have them all retain it with the same severity, and make the same connections with the new information and things previously learned. I experience it every weekday. School being the predictable and fitting setting for such experiences. I go to school, I get good grades, I come home and bullshit my way through homework. I take the test, ace it. Come final time, I ace it. Do I study? Nope. I've never been a studyer. What do other kids do? They actually do their homework, probably get more points than me, study every night, actually read the book, they do the final reviews and generally just worry about tests. With all that energy used one would hope that that is reflected as something good in their grades, lots of times this is so. Why then, if these "better" students, I put better in quotes because that's based on our current systems evaluation of them, truly are smarter than say a person like me, who doesn't give a rip about points, about grades, about arbitrary awards given for things like behavior and citizenship. Nobody likes a teacher's pet, (which I am not) nobody likes a brown-noser (which is what I think of these people as) and no one likes you when you break down crying and screaming in front of everyone because you got an A-, and everyone is ready to kick you in the teeth if you walk around like your sh*t doesn't stink because you never been told any different. So, with that point/rant out of the way, what does that say about me as a person and what does it say about the pointlessness of measuring our academic achievement with numbers (but not just any numbers, pointless numbers)? First off it says that I don't care about grades I care about understanding and staying relaxed and fluid with other things in my life, such as things like work. I get enough stress from those around me, I don't need to make any more of my own. Second thing it says about me is that [I think] people who do stress about grades, who stress about getting all the points, about getting into college, make the lesser valuable contributions to discussion, have the less interesting and shallow conversations, are those who possess lesser character than others, those who are less fun, less agreeable and generally more boring. It's been proven that the three main areas valedictorians and other decathlon students go into are law, medicine or the physical sciences (and maths), they make a reasonable salary, get married at 26 years of age, have 2.4 children, use 5.6 vehicles in their lifetime, and then they die. Where's the excitement? Where's the pizazz?
Honestly people, this is appalling. Now, I don't mean to sound ignorant to the fact that the task of providing everyone (and that means absolutely everyone, because we live in America and all of our students must be held to same standard, which we say is a high standard, (but we're kidding ourselves) so Suzy doesn't get sued by Bill because Suzy's kid is smarter than Bill kid's, even though the administration knows it, the students know it, even those students' whose self-esteem we are suing over are aware of it) is next to impossible, because I'm not. I don't mean to sound ignorant to that behemoth task, which will probably never be attained, not to the level we're hoping anyway, because I know how hard it is to teach everyone the same thing and have them all retain it with the same severity, and make the same connections with the new information and things previously learned. I experience it every weekday. School being the predictable and fitting setting for such experiences. I go to school, I get good grades, I come home and bullshit my way through homework. I take the test, ace it. Come final time, I ace it. Do I study? Nope. I've never been a studyer. What do other kids do? They actually do their homework, probably get more points than me, study every night, actually read the book, they do the final reviews and generally just worry about tests. With all that energy used one would hope that that is reflected as something good in their grades, lots of times this is so. Why then, if these "better" students, I put better in quotes because that's based on our current systems evaluation of them, truly are smarter than say a person like me, who doesn't give a rip about points, about grades, about arbitrary awards given for things like behavior and citizenship. Nobody likes a teacher's pet, (which I am not) nobody likes a brown-noser (which is what I think of these people as) and no one likes you when you break down crying and screaming in front of everyone because you got an A-, and everyone is ready to kick you in the teeth if you walk around like your sh*t doesn't stink because you never been told any different. So, with that point/rant out of the way, what does that say about me as a person and what does it say about the pointlessness of measuring our academic achievement with numbers (but not just any numbers, pointless numbers)? First off it says that I don't care about grades I care about understanding and staying relaxed and fluid with other things in my life, such as things like work. I get enough stress from those around me, I don't need to make any more of my own. Second thing it says about me is that [I think] people who do stress about grades, who stress about getting all the points, about getting into college, make the lesser valuable contributions to discussion, have the less interesting and shallow conversations, are those who possess lesser character than others, those who are less fun, less agreeable and generally more boring. It's been proven that the three main areas valedictorians and other decathlon students go into are law, medicine or the physical sciences (and maths), they make a reasonable salary, get married at 26 years of age, have 2.4 children, use 5.6 vehicles in their lifetime, and then they die. Where's the excitement? Where's the pizazz?
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