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<p>Do you mean simply installing the spare tire, or dismounting the tire, plugging the hole from the inside*, and remounting (and rebalancing) the tire? The latter requires expensive specialized equipment that most people would not have in their home.</p>
<p>*Yes, it is possible to plug the hole from the outside without needing specialized equipment, but that is generally considered a less reliable fix.</p>
<p>^I know how to change a flat - you call AAA. They come around in about an hour. :)</p>
<p>I get it BCEagle.</p>
<p>Either skill would be useful. But the latter would require access to a tire shop.</p>
<p>I’ve had to call AAA when it was 5 degrees out; they could take two to three hours to arrive while you’re waiting and freezing your toes off.</p>
<p>They teach it wrong here. My child who homeschooled using a foreign program started behind her public schooled brother. By the time she went back to public school, five years later, she was so far ahead of her older brother and even the entire school that they could not teach her. She became exempt in math because she tested out of everything they had to offer.</p>
<p>The guy writing this article does not seem to know the difference between a proof and reducing an equation. Nor does he realize that high school math is standardized, and there are no proofs in a standard algebra course.</p>
<p>I do agree, though, that the US needs to have tracks available, like most other countries. Frankly, though, I am not a fan of the American school system. And the federal government needs to back off. Standardizing the entire country to all be exactly the same does not work. Each state has such different culture, heritage, markets, and so on. We will never be able to compete with any other countries as long as we continue to try to be one big giant oversized blob, rather that catering to the needs and differences of the people.</p>
<p>Also, I do think schools need to bring back in basic living skills to education. The kids spend so much of their day at school. Then they come out not capable of balancing a bank account, OR change a tire, or boil water, put on a button. </p>
<p>To add to it, in the brain, large parts of the brain start shutting down when sensory type activities are removed. The human is not meant to live in the void that we often try to raise our children in.</p>
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<p>What do you mean on the last sentence? One of the biggest issues with the US education system is that it’s so varied depending on the state, region, school district, and school that there’s no real standardized curriculum to speak of. </p>
<p>My Mississippi cousins have mention how in their area the standard HS curriculum the public and many local private schools are so far behind what exists in the regular NYC public school curriculum that the latter would be considered a paragon of academic excellence. Pretty sad considering the regular NYC public school curriculum isn’t really anything to write home about. </p>
<p>Incidentally, the situation in their local area is one major reason both got sent to private schools that they/their parents made sure were academically rigorous enough to ensure they’re prepared to attend and survive college…not flunk out after 3 or less semesters from the local directional public as was the case with local kids attending public or local private schools. </p>
<p>The perceived abysmal state of Hawaiian public education is also a reason why my older relatives there and practically all neighbors in their upper-middle class neighborhood send their kids to private schools like Punahou or Iolani.</p>
<p>Incidentally, many first world countries with topflight education systems tend to have much more centralized educational systems with standardized tracks. We’re one of the few first-world nations that decentralizes our educational system to the extent we do. </p>
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<p>Many of the skills above were considered the parents’ job among most parents of my generation and before.</p>
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<p>THere’s absolutely nothing wrong with what the author wrote. He presents a problem where a student is asked to manipulate an equation to “prove” the two sides are equal. The author’s statement is certainly reasonable. In fact, manipulating two sides of an equation until you arrive at a known axiom of algebra, for example the “reflexive” property of algebra, could certainly be considered “proving” something.</p>
<p>I suppose it could depend on your definition of “proof” but here’s a reasonable one I pulled off the web -
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I’ve never understood this line of thought. Aside from the fact that people who have the misfortune to move are put into huge difficulties by silly state requirements, why can’t we have a national agreement about what gets taught when? Math doesn’t magically change because I’m in Mississippi instead of NY. Shouldn’t all 3rd graders know their multiplication tables? Shouldn’t all third graders be reading to learn not learning to read? Aren’t there basic things in history everyone needs to know? Minimally a year of World History and a year of American history for example?</p>
<p>Taught improperly? Yes.</p>
<p>But hard? Not so much.</p>
<p>As far as tracking is concerned, I lived through a tracking system in high school although tracking started only by 10th grade. I was put along the highest of the 3 tracks, going all the way through pre-calculus by grade 11.</p>
<p>And then comes CEGEP, where people could enroll in programs that didn’t require extra math. But, as a physics-mathematics dual major-bound student, I had to do linear algebra and calculus (differential and integral; I’d say that it is about the same as AB and BC AP Calculus courses) before I could go on to university.</p>
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<p>K-12 education is predominantly run at the state and local level, resulting in considerable curricular variation. The main standardization for college-prep curricula comes not from government sources, but from standardized tests such as AP, which have “backed in” to the role of standardizing outcomes for high school learning in various subjects (not what they really started out to be, which is the much narrower task of measuring whether advanced high school students have learned college freshman level material).</p>
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<p>The problem is that most humanities and social studies subjects are politicized. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn may be considered one of the most important books in American literature by some, but too offensive to even be stocked in a school library by others. [The</a> role of Thomas Jefferson in early US history is also minimized by some.](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html]The”>Texas Conservatives Win Vote on Textbook Standards - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Even science subjects are subject to political pressures. Consider evolution in biology, for example.</p>
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<p>It is usually quicker to change it oneself than to wait for the AAA truck to come.</p>
<p>The AAA guy may just bring a pressure tank and add air to your tire so that you can get it to a garage.</p>
<p>Every time I’ve gotten a flat, I started to change it myself, when some knight in shining armor appeared and changed it for me. One of the small advantages of being a woman!</p>
<p>Math is really poorly taught here in the US (most of the time! I can’t speak for everyone, but I had a lot of really bad math teachers). </p>
<p>I agree with the ideas that 1) schools need to create higher thresholds for passing the class. I essentially got straight B’s in math, but always passed, even though I probably didn’t have that great a grasp on the material; and 2) that tracks are important. I felt that my school lacked enough options below a certain point, and they’ve cut that number back even further. </p>
<p>Everything was fine for me in math until I hit 8th grade Algebra. I managed to pull through with a B and maybe even an A? I don’t remember, but they sent me on to Geometry. Terrible idea! I barely understood Algebra, but I did my homework and managed to pass the tests. That doesn’t mean that I deserved to take Geometry. Things got much harder from there, and by the time I was a junior, I had to take something beyond Algebra II, so I took a Stats class. I actually got an A in there, but then we moved onto some non-statistics material and I began to do badly again. I gave up on math after junior year. If my school had more options for math, I probably would have taken math in senior year. </p>
<p>Also, sometimes, the options need to be more varied. I, for instance, would have loved a business class or something in the “practical math” vein once I finished Trigonometry. Let’s face it: at a certain point, you know if you’re capable of the heavy-duty math or not, and I am definitely not. But I still have plenty to learn about applying math to my day-to-day life, and I’m sorry my high school didn’t have those kinds of options. Instead, it was all about pushing as many people as possible into Calculus. :/</p>
<p>I think the point that lmkh70 might be attempting to make is that there are different cultures where “school learning” is emphasized differently. That being said, doing so severely disadvantages students from that states and hurts their prospects for the future.</p>
<p>That being said, I have a question: If the rest of the world can advance their children in math and do so successfully, why is that same level of learning “too hard” for US students? I highly doubt US kids are any less intelligent than those from other countries- though the cultural values are often different. (Unrelated to posts on CC, this is an opinion I’ve heard from people I know).</p>
<p>I grew up in Iowa. I felt like I received an excellent education. Now I am in Texas. Every time I turn around, all they care about is standardized testing. We did take the ITBS when I grew up, but it was not all we did. At the local schools here, they give practice tests all the time. By all the time, literally, one year, at one public school, they took 1-2 full days off each month from their schedules (it was high school) to spend the day testing, and then in the last month before the TAKs test, they took the entire month off to study for the TAKs tests. In addition to this, they took additional time in classes during the rest of the time to do practice mini tests. It was nuts.</p>
<p>The reason I was given by the school why kids cannot really go ahead of grade level is that they can only teach what is going to be on the state exams. So, for example, all 7th graders took general math and 8th graders took pre-algebra. Advanced kids could do algebra as early as 8th grade, but the school actually addressed during the orientation that they would still take time to do reviews and practice TAKs tests from that years exams. They claimed it was difficult for kids to go ahead of grade level because they might “forget” the material that would be on the test. SO…if they do average 8th grade level math in 7th grade, they feel that by the time they get to the 8th grade (when they would be taking 9th grade math) they might forget so much 7th grade math that they cannot pass the tests.</p>
<p>I think that is nuts. Teachers I know tell me they are constantly bombarded with testing and standardized regulations. I feel like educators are not left to educate, they are left to wade their way through excessive testing requirements and standardized curriculum requirements. There is no leeway for the advanced student, OR for the delayed student. There really is no room to actually teach or learn anymore really it seems. </p>
<p>Really, many areas did a fine job educating their students without the federal government stepping in and trying to micromanage each state.</p>
<p>Here is another example of the politicization of science:
[Rep</a>. Paul Broun: Evolution, Embryology, and the Big Bang Theory are ‘Lies Straight from the Pit of Hell’ | Video Cafe](<a href=“http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/rep-paul-broun-evolution-embryology-and-big]Rep”>Rep. Paul Broun: Evolution, Embryology, And The Big Bang Theory Are 'Lies Straight From The Pit Of Hell' | Crooks and Liars)
[U.S</a>. Rep Paul Broun calls evolution lie ‘from the pit of hell’ | The Augusta Chronicle](<a href=“http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2012-10-06/us-rep-paul-broun-calls-evolution-lie-pit-hell]U.S”>http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2012-10-06/us-rep-paul-broun-calls-evolution-lie-pit-hell)</p>