Comments on: Stanford’s top engineer: Our K-12 problem is serious

By: Stanford Engineer Talks K-12 | MN Learning

Stanford Engineer Talks K-12 | MN Learning — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:10:49 +0000

[...] to share what are some of the issues being talked about outside of are normal area of discussion. Linked is an article and discussion that we found interesting on K-12 education and [...]

By: Nick Corcodilos

Nick Corcodilos — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:03:37 +0000

Don’t miss Dave Opton’s take on this topic: http://execunet.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-we-dont-learn-in-kindergarten.html

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:37:16 +0000

My son is interning in silicon valley as a software engineer.. Just got his offer letter… 110 k to start and Masters at Stanford will be paid for… We didnt wait for our K-12 school to get better ,. We enrolled him in a community college in 7th grade to supplement his education.. Honors and advanced placement courses are being destroyed becuase of budget cuts , yet the footabll teams have all the funding they need… Priorities all screwed up…. By the way, In the dept he interned in, he was the only American. His boss was Jordanian, he sat next to a few egyptians and the rest were Asians, Indians and I would assume quite a few people with H1_B visas…. His main project was work for the Bank of China… Sorry folks, the boat has left and it aint coming back.

By: Lucille

Lucille — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:36:08 +0000

I have a fifth grader. I’d like the children to have science lab where they actually grow something or blow something up or use the bunsen burner.

They have a computer curriculum that teaches them how to use word and search google. But I’d like them to learn a progamming language (any one, I don’t care – and I’m a programmer).

Next year they are starting a robotics lab. I haven’t seen the curriculum but hopefully it won’t be put together some prefab lego shapes around an already built motor.

And I think these fifth graders are old enough to learn this stuff and have reach enough maturity to do it relatively safely.

The children do get advanced math and reading. They are up to greater than sixth grade math already.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:04:27 +0000

A couple weeks ago I attended a luncheon; the speaker was Dr. Steven Halim (National University of Singapore), winner of a number of international programming competitions.

One point he made, that sums up the American mindset is the amount of time teams in other countries (Russia, China, et. al.). Teams from other countries practice daily for months (9+) for upcoming competitions. American teams do not. One Clemson professor said if he could get his team to meet half a dozen times before a competition, he was doing great.