One feature of the internet that one runs across over and over is the large number of "trolls". Internet trolls are people who delight in creating havoc and destruction. Although they might sometimes be hackers, they do not have to be hackers. Trolls manipulate people and create disputes, often for their own amusement, or just because they can. Perhaps they feel some sense of power at being able to control people and make them believe whatever the troll tells them.
It can take very little to create havoc and trouble. Here is an example of what a troll can do to create a problem. Sitting in a discussion group, one woman named Y hears X talking to another woman, asks X if he has been "cheating on her" to flirt with X. The troll overhears this and asks what Y meant by that. X points out that the flirting woman Y flirts with everyone in the room. A few weeks later, X is explaining that he had left the venue but had been persuaded to return by the flirting woman Y who was having a health crisis, and was "desperate", meaning desperate about her health problems. These two conversations are saved away by the troll for a week or two, and then reappeared as a rumor, passed on "in confidence" to the flirting woman Y. The troll repackaged these two stories as, "X said that Y is a desperate old hag who cannot get a man and has to flirt with old men". Of course, Y is upset by this, and trouble is created between X and Y.
Another example of trolling I have observed revolved around a quote from a newspaper article. The newspaper article includes a given statement. The statement is quoted exactly, but the troll maintains that this quote is inaccurate. When the troll is shown that the quote is accurate, which takes a huge amount of effort, he claims that the quote is still inaccurate becdause the newspaper got it incorrect. When the author of the article is contacted and it is shown that the newspaper did not make a mistake from other sources, then the troll claims that the newspaper quote is unfair. And this continues on, for weeks and months, with the troll recruiting hundreds of people to come to his aid to correct this "injustice". As each of these who are recruited eventually learn the truth, they lose interest, and are therefore called "unethical" and "sociopaths". The troll stays calm and adopts the position that everyone else, even if the others number in the hundreds or thousands, are in the wrong. To an outside observer who sees people getting upset with the troll, the troll seems perfectly reasonable and the others seem to be behaving outrageously because they are frustrated with the troll. The troll manipulates others and gets a platform and a lot of attention. And this continues until finally someone in a position of power removes the troll from the internet forum.
During trolling, facts are altered, and repackaged, just enough to cause a problem. However, histories are not distorted so far that this can be chalked up to more than an "honest" mistake. Trolls are incredibly sincere when they present their versions of events, so it is difficult to fault them; they seem so honest and believable and earnest. Often, trolls cause other internet participants to get into huge fights with each other. They are incredibly brilliant at creating fights and disruption.
This is very similar to the behavior one observes of thsoe suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). BPD, soon to be probably officially reclassified as a type of Dissociative Identity Disorder, was controversial until functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) showed that the brains of those with BPD operate differently than the brains of normal people. Borderlines use many of the same techniques as trolls, and have many other characteristics similar to trolls. Borderlines also create many of the same effects that trolls do; people that interact with them become very frustrated, and might lash out. Fights are caused by those who have to deal with trolls on a regular basis, because of how the borderlines have manipulated them.
Given the similarities, it makes one wonder if there is any connection between internet trolling and borderline personality disorder.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Education in the United States
This morning I listened to a short discussion with a representative of the National Foundation on American Policy on CSPAN radio. One question that rose over and over dealt with the alleged inadequacies of the US education system.
I have given a lot of thought to the problems of the US education system, particularly in the sciences and engineering. It is amazing to me that there is any confusion or misunderstanding about the state of the US education system. In international exams, American students routinely rank someplace between 30th - 40th place, compared to students of the same age from other countries. US graduate schools in the sciences, mathematics and engineering are largely populated by foreigners, because American students are less capable and less interested. The same is true of working technical professionals in US universities and industrial and government research laboratories. So clearly there is something strange about US technical education; particularly pre-college education. This is amazing for such a technologically advanced country.
NSF surveys of public knowledge of science produce shocking results, with almost no Americans able to define evolution, or describe the scientific method, or explain why the sun appears to move across the sky. This situation is not unique to science, unfortunately; surveys show that a large fraction of American adults cannot identify the United States on a map of the world, even when the countries are labeled by name. I am stunned constantly in discussions with Americans. For example, I have observed several times that even graduates of Ivy League colleges do not know that each English sentence should usually contain at least one verb. Recently a young American stidently lectured me that Japan had surrendered before Pearl Harbor to the Allies, and that the US had just declared war on Japan anyway after having faked the Pearl Harbor attack. Even with 19 percent of the adults in Washington DC holding post-graduate degrees, the average adult in Washington DC reads at a grade 3 level according to recent studies. This situation is unacceptable.
The first thing I have noticed about US pre-college education is that American students spend very little time in class, compared to what I was familiar with. Most American students I have seen go to school around 8 am, take an hour for lunch and then get out at about 2 pm or 2:30 pm. They leave school for the summer at the end of May or so and go back to school the first week of September (although recently some schools start in the last week of August in the US). American schools will take off at least 2 or 3 weeks around Christmas, and a week or two at Easter. American schools sometimes have a separate spring break, and a few days of cancelled classes each year so that teachers can attend to administrative duties and attend conferences, etc. In addition, American schools often close for several days each year because of inclement weather. Recently I have heard proposals to shorten the school week to 4 days.
My own school day in public school in a foreign country went from 8 am to 5 pm, 5 days a week, with 3/4 of an hour for lunch. Some years our school day started at 7:30 am or 7:45 am, and let out at 4:30 pm. Sometimes we had an hour for lunch. Our Christmas break was about 8-11 days long. Easter was associated with a 1 or 2 day break. There was an administrative "spring break" of 2 days every year. School let out at the end of June and went back in at the start of September. Lately school there has been starting in the last week of August, or even the 3rd week of August. Rough estimates show that children in the US spend much less time in class than their foreign counterparts; as much as 50-70% less time.
In addition, students in other countries often are "tracked" into different programs, all in the same school. For example, students in my high school had a choice of 4 separate mathematics tracks and 3 separate physics tracks, 3 separate chemistry tracks and 3 separate biology tracks. Noncollege-bound students had a couple of separate general science tracks to choose from. Students who were less capable or who had behavior difficulties were sent to separate schools to avoid disturbing others. Students could transfer from one track to another with some effort. In college, there continued to be separate tracks for science and mathematics. For example, one could get a 4 year honors BSc degree in mathematics, a four year specialization BSc in mathematics, a 3 year general BSc in mathematics, a science BSc with a major in mathematics or a minor in mathematics, or "arts" BAs of various types with a major or minor in mathematics. All of these degrees had different requirements, with different classes and different textbooks, with minimal overlap between courses of study. Again, students could transfer from one program to another, but with some difficulty.
In addition, in science and mathematics, American students get exposed to much less material. For example, a college-bound American student might get only one year of physics in his high school education (which can be the 3 years from 10th to 12th grade, or the 4 years from 9th through 12th grade). A minority of American students can take advantage of the "AP" ("advanced placement") courses. However, all these AP courses do is supposedly replace the first year of college classes in that subject, so the student can jump ahead. They do not contribute to the depth of study of a given subject before the bachelor's level. For example, an American student who was going to study 4 years of chemistry in college and who took an AP chemistry class would have 5 years of chemistry study with or without the AP class. A few very American students get access to more material at magnet schools like the Bronx High School for Science, of course, but there are not nearly enough of these schools available.
Where I went to school, a college-bound student wanting to study chemistry would have 7 years of chemistry from high school through the bachelor's level. Also, in college, the American student often takes 1 chemistry class and 4 other "liberal arts" classes each year. NonAmerican students might take 4-6 or even 7 chemistry classes each year, and no more than 1 or 2 "liberal arts" classes over their entire undergraduate program.
Therefore, the average American student entering graduate school in chemistry might have had 5 one year courses in chemistry, while many foreign students will have had 21-29 one year courses in chemistry. This is obviously a substantial difference and puts American students at a tremendous disadvantage. To make things even worse, many foreign countries have instituted International Baccalaureat programs, magnet schools and other enhanced courses of study in recent years, putting Americans even further behind.
In addition, there is an immense "no homework" movement in the US that seems to be growing, with numerous books and websites, and lobbying groups. The "no homework" movement proponents complain that homework gets in the way of sports participation and family activities. Although homework is a very unpleasant for everyone, and there are many complaints worldwide about homework, I find it difficult to believe that one can do away with all homework and not hurt learning. With no practice in mathematics and science outside of class, American students obviously will not do as well as students who have considerably more practice at solving problems and doing research and writing.
One US school district I lived in forbid teaching "word problems" in mathematics, from kindergarden through 12th grade, because the real estate agents and car dealers and housewives on the schoolboard felt that "word problems" are too difficult for students to understand and too difficult for teachers to teach. Arithmetic is just a boring sequence of meaningless operations if applications are left out, and "word problems" are about applications. "Word problems" make mathematics come alive, and make it interesting and relevant. Computers and calculators can easily perform the mechanical computations, but the unique contribution that humans can make is to connect difficulties in the real world with mathematical problems and calculations. Until computers get far more capable, which might never happen, humans will have to perform this task.
Another problem I have observed in the US education system is that huge amounts of money are thrown at education problems, with little or no result. A lot of the money is consumed in administration or other waste. A study I read about in Forbes Magazine a couple of decades ago was presented for a master's degree by someone who had previously worked for the New York City Public School System. Although at that time the New York City Public Schools were spending more money per student than almost any other school system in the world, they were obtaining very poor results. This master's student had access to the budget figures, so he divided the spending into areas that directly affected students, like school building maintenance, school buses, teachers, books, school security, etc, and spending that did not directly affect students, like administration and systemwide planning. It turned out that about 2/3 of the money being spent did not contribute directly to anything that had a direct effect on the students. Since most of the money did not impact students directly, so effectively New York City was not spending huge amounts of money per student, compared to other school systems in the US and around the world.
I had direct experience with this as well. The little town I lived in the New York City suburbs was just a regular middle class town, with less than 2000 students in the entire school system. At a time when the average teacher was paid 35,000 dollars a year, it was declared that it was imperative to pay top-dollar for the head of the school system, who was being compensated at 250,000 dollars per year!
I also notice that Americans feel that unless students get a new book every year, they are disadvantaged. Huge amounts of money is spent in buying increasingly expensive new books every year. However, even in fast-moving areas like the sciences, foreign students make do with books that are a few years old, and are able to take tremendous advantage of them. The information in these books can be supplemented by access to libraries and other shared resources. This is even more true now with the large volume of current information that is available online. Somehow, Americans seem to be locked into the idea that better educations must cost more, when counter-examples around the world are easily available.
Another disturbing situation in American education that I have noticed is that many of the teachers are inadequate. In some US states, apparently more than half of the teachers are functionally illiterate (i.e., they cannot read at an 8th grade level). In almost all US states, there is a shortage of well-trained teachers in the sciences and mathematics. However, a student with a bachelor's degree in chemistry is not welcome to teach high school chemistry in the US, and there are huge barriers erected, but not in many other countries. Some US states are experimenting with reducing these barriers, but it is not clear if these efforts will be successful or if they will be blocked.
The US education system was not always this weak. A useful exercise is to pick up a US schoolbook from 100 years ago or so. Of course, science has advanced tremendously in the last century, so looking at a science book is less helpful. However, an eighth grade mathematics textbook from 1909 or 1859 would shock most Americans. The material that was presented to 13 year old American students of mathematics decades ago was about the same sort of material that the average American college student might be exposed to today, sometimes even at the sophomore level of above. The mathematics exercises are even more telling, requiring skills that would challenge many current beginning graduate students in mathematics. I have seen modern "dumbed down" American mathematics college textbooks that focus on teaching multiplication and addition of fractions to American college juniors; of course, knowledge of fractions is usually expected of 12 year olds in many other countries. An inspection of American English textbooks and reading lists from 100 years ago will reveal a similar situation. The complexity of the required reading selections and the assumed vocabularies in these old textbooks far exceeds what modern American students are expected to master. Obviously, American education was not always in its current condition.
Clearly, there are problems in the US education system. However, after years of observation, I have noticed that these problems get little serious attention. Instead, people propose "quick fixes" that are supposed to solve the difficulties, without really understanding how other countries are able to do so much better and thinking carefully about how US education money is spent. I have seen pushes for school vouchers, magnet schools, more testing, and programs like "no child left behind" come and go. Nothing seems to work, and no one seems to care, or to pay attention to the danger signals that have existed for many many years. To me, this is a source of amazement.
I have given a lot of thought to the problems of the US education system, particularly in the sciences and engineering. It is amazing to me that there is any confusion or misunderstanding about the state of the US education system. In international exams, American students routinely rank someplace between 30th - 40th place, compared to students of the same age from other countries. US graduate schools in the sciences, mathematics and engineering are largely populated by foreigners, because American students are less capable and less interested. The same is true of working technical professionals in US universities and industrial and government research laboratories. So clearly there is something strange about US technical education; particularly pre-college education. This is amazing for such a technologically advanced country.
NSF surveys of public knowledge of science produce shocking results, with almost no Americans able to define evolution, or describe the scientific method, or explain why the sun appears to move across the sky. This situation is not unique to science, unfortunately; surveys show that a large fraction of American adults cannot identify the United States on a map of the world, even when the countries are labeled by name. I am stunned constantly in discussions with Americans. For example, I have observed several times that even graduates of Ivy League colleges do not know that each English sentence should usually contain at least one verb. Recently a young American stidently lectured me that Japan had surrendered before Pearl Harbor to the Allies, and that the US had just declared war on Japan anyway after having faked the Pearl Harbor attack. Even with 19 percent of the adults in Washington DC holding post-graduate degrees, the average adult in Washington DC reads at a grade 3 level according to recent studies. This situation is unacceptable.
The first thing I have noticed about US pre-college education is that American students spend very little time in class, compared to what I was familiar with. Most American students I have seen go to school around 8 am, take an hour for lunch and then get out at about 2 pm or 2:30 pm. They leave school for the summer at the end of May or so and go back to school the first week of September (although recently some schools start in the last week of August in the US). American schools will take off at least 2 or 3 weeks around Christmas, and a week or two at Easter. American schools sometimes have a separate spring break, and a few days of cancelled classes each year so that teachers can attend to administrative duties and attend conferences, etc. In addition, American schools often close for several days each year because of inclement weather. Recently I have heard proposals to shorten the school week to 4 days.
My own school day in public school in a foreign country went from 8 am to 5 pm, 5 days a week, with 3/4 of an hour for lunch. Some years our school day started at 7:30 am or 7:45 am, and let out at 4:30 pm. Sometimes we had an hour for lunch. Our Christmas break was about 8-11 days long. Easter was associated with a 1 or 2 day break. There was an administrative "spring break" of 2 days every year. School let out at the end of June and went back in at the start of September. Lately school there has been starting in the last week of August, or even the 3rd week of August. Rough estimates show that children in the US spend much less time in class than their foreign counterparts; as much as 50-70% less time.
In addition, students in other countries often are "tracked" into different programs, all in the same school. For example, students in my high school had a choice of 4 separate mathematics tracks and 3 separate physics tracks, 3 separate chemistry tracks and 3 separate biology tracks. Noncollege-bound students had a couple of separate general science tracks to choose from. Students who were less capable or who had behavior difficulties were sent to separate schools to avoid disturbing others. Students could transfer from one track to another with some effort. In college, there continued to be separate tracks for science and mathematics. For example, one could get a 4 year honors BSc degree in mathematics, a four year specialization BSc in mathematics, a 3 year general BSc in mathematics, a science BSc with a major in mathematics or a minor in mathematics, or "arts" BAs of various types with a major or minor in mathematics. All of these degrees had different requirements, with different classes and different textbooks, with minimal overlap between courses of study. Again, students could transfer from one program to another, but with some difficulty.
In addition, in science and mathematics, American students get exposed to much less material. For example, a college-bound American student might get only one year of physics in his high school education (which can be the 3 years from 10th to 12th grade, or the 4 years from 9th through 12th grade). A minority of American students can take advantage of the "AP" ("advanced placement") courses. However, all these AP courses do is supposedly replace the first year of college classes in that subject, so the student can jump ahead. They do not contribute to the depth of study of a given subject before the bachelor's level. For example, an American student who was going to study 4 years of chemistry in college and who took an AP chemistry class would have 5 years of chemistry study with or without the AP class. A few very American students get access to more material at magnet schools like the Bronx High School for Science, of course, but there are not nearly enough of these schools available.
Where I went to school, a college-bound student wanting to study chemistry would have 7 years of chemistry from high school through the bachelor's level. Also, in college, the American student often takes 1 chemistry class and 4 other "liberal arts" classes each year. NonAmerican students might take 4-6 or even 7 chemistry classes each year, and no more than 1 or 2 "liberal arts" classes over their entire undergraduate program.
Therefore, the average American student entering graduate school in chemistry might have had 5 one year courses in chemistry, while many foreign students will have had 21-29 one year courses in chemistry. This is obviously a substantial difference and puts American students at a tremendous disadvantage. To make things even worse, many foreign countries have instituted International Baccalaureat programs, magnet schools and other enhanced courses of study in recent years, putting Americans even further behind.
In addition, there is an immense "no homework" movement in the US that seems to be growing, with numerous books and websites, and lobbying groups. The "no homework" movement proponents complain that homework gets in the way of sports participation and family activities. Although homework is a very unpleasant for everyone, and there are many complaints worldwide about homework, I find it difficult to believe that one can do away with all homework and not hurt learning. With no practice in mathematics and science outside of class, American students obviously will not do as well as students who have considerably more practice at solving problems and doing research and writing.
One US school district I lived in forbid teaching "word problems" in mathematics, from kindergarden through 12th grade, because the real estate agents and car dealers and housewives on the schoolboard felt that "word problems" are too difficult for students to understand and too difficult for teachers to teach. Arithmetic is just a boring sequence of meaningless operations if applications are left out, and "word problems" are about applications. "Word problems" make mathematics come alive, and make it interesting and relevant. Computers and calculators can easily perform the mechanical computations, but the unique contribution that humans can make is to connect difficulties in the real world with mathematical problems and calculations. Until computers get far more capable, which might never happen, humans will have to perform this task.
Another problem I have observed in the US education system is that huge amounts of money are thrown at education problems, with little or no result. A lot of the money is consumed in administration or other waste. A study I read about in Forbes Magazine a couple of decades ago was presented for a master's degree by someone who had previously worked for the New York City Public School System. Although at that time the New York City Public Schools were spending more money per student than almost any other school system in the world, they were obtaining very poor results. This master's student had access to the budget figures, so he divided the spending into areas that directly affected students, like school building maintenance, school buses, teachers, books, school security, etc, and spending that did not directly affect students, like administration and systemwide planning. It turned out that about 2/3 of the money being spent did not contribute directly to anything that had a direct effect on the students. Since most of the money did not impact students directly, so effectively New York City was not spending huge amounts of money per student, compared to other school systems in the US and around the world.
I had direct experience with this as well. The little town I lived in the New York City suburbs was just a regular middle class town, with less than 2000 students in the entire school system. At a time when the average teacher was paid 35,000 dollars a year, it was declared that it was imperative to pay top-dollar for the head of the school system, who was being compensated at 250,000 dollars per year!
I also notice that Americans feel that unless students get a new book every year, they are disadvantaged. Huge amounts of money is spent in buying increasingly expensive new books every year. However, even in fast-moving areas like the sciences, foreign students make do with books that are a few years old, and are able to take tremendous advantage of them. The information in these books can be supplemented by access to libraries and other shared resources. This is even more true now with the large volume of current information that is available online. Somehow, Americans seem to be locked into the idea that better educations must cost more, when counter-examples around the world are easily available.
Another disturbing situation in American education that I have noticed is that many of the teachers are inadequate. In some US states, apparently more than half of the teachers are functionally illiterate (i.e., they cannot read at an 8th grade level). In almost all US states, there is a shortage of well-trained teachers in the sciences and mathematics. However, a student with a bachelor's degree in chemistry is not welcome to teach high school chemistry in the US, and there are huge barriers erected, but not in many other countries. Some US states are experimenting with reducing these barriers, but it is not clear if these efforts will be successful or if they will be blocked.
The US education system was not always this weak. A useful exercise is to pick up a US schoolbook from 100 years ago or so. Of course, science has advanced tremendously in the last century, so looking at a science book is less helpful. However, an eighth grade mathematics textbook from 1909 or 1859 would shock most Americans. The material that was presented to 13 year old American students of mathematics decades ago was about the same sort of material that the average American college student might be exposed to today, sometimes even at the sophomore level of above. The mathematics exercises are even more telling, requiring skills that would challenge many current beginning graduate students in mathematics. I have seen modern "dumbed down" American mathematics college textbooks that focus on teaching multiplication and addition of fractions to American college juniors; of course, knowledge of fractions is usually expected of 12 year olds in many other countries. An inspection of American English textbooks and reading lists from 100 years ago will reveal a similar situation. The complexity of the required reading selections and the assumed vocabularies in these old textbooks far exceeds what modern American students are expected to master. Obviously, American education was not always in its current condition.
Clearly, there are problems in the US education system. However, after years of observation, I have noticed that these problems get little serious attention. Instead, people propose "quick fixes" that are supposed to solve the difficulties, without really understanding how other countries are able to do so much better and thinking carefully about how US education money is spent. I have seen pushes for school vouchers, magnet schools, more testing, and programs like "no child left behind" come and go. Nothing seems to work, and no one seems to care, or to pay attention to the danger signals that have existed for many many years. To me, this is a source of amazement.
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