Still not true. First of all, I have no idea what you mean when you say arts. If you are actually talking about the fine arts, there are still facts (who painted what) and theories (like color theory) that are pretty standard theories with one right answer. If you mean “arts” as a catch-all term for fields that are not the natural and physical sciences (in which case, sigh), that’s still not true. First of all, any scientist worth their salt will tell you that we don’t prove theory; we provide evidence for its truth by testing hypotheses. Even beyond that, there are testable theories in the social sciences that we can provide evidence for. Again, there’s only one correct answer for “are people’s memories affected by their perceptions?” (yes) or “is language influenced by culture?” (yes).
However, what about the question “How did our universe begin?” There’s no one correct answer to that. What about “Is Pluto a planet?” or “Do DNA and self-repilicating proteins like prions count as life?”
And there are a whole raft of reasons why schools in low-income neighborhoods (not only inner-city, but rural areas and working-class suburban enclaves) are lower-performing:
-The politicians in charge of funding their schools are often corrupt but always have to do a lot with a little bit of money, in part because
-Property taxes are usually lower, and fewer people own in these communities, and house values are lower anyway, so there’s less money to go around
-Parents are less well-educated so their students come to schools less well-prepared
-Parents often work harder and longer hours, so they have less time for helping students with homework and parent-teacher conferences and that kind of stuff
-Parents are poorer, so students often 1) can’t afford basic school supplies 2) are distracted by hunger and other issues related to being poor 3) can’t come to school because they don’t have other necessary things, like clothes or coats or shoes
-Families have more internal problems that come along with being poor so children deal with the fallout and miss school as a result - things like neglect and abuse, but also more invisible issues like having to work to help support the family or babysit younger siblings
-Untreated mental illness and/or learning disabilities, for lack of time on the part of the parent to seek treatment or lack of money or options. For that matter, untreated physical illness too.
-A sense of hopelessness - no one around you has ever gone to college, maybe few have finished high school, so maybe you don’t see the point or can’t even imagine anything bigger for yourself
-Academic disengagement as a defense mechanism: everything about well-educated, lucrative jobs seems to be earmarked for people from better backgrounds from you, so you psychologically disengage so you don’t damage your self-image by failing (and there’s research on this)
-Stereotype threat: people tell you that you’re going to do badly, so you do
This is before the teacher even steps foot in the classroom. For a long time my husband wanted to teach middle school math in an urban school with kids who he perceived needed compassion and help from teachers the most. He did an internship one summer in Philadelphia and encountered so many of these problems that he burned out in a couple of weeks. He said he couldn’t imagine teaching there long-term; not only was it so hard to teach these students because of the aforementioned problems (he said they regularly showed up without basic things like a pencil or paper to write on), the school district apparently made it so difficult for him to use the techniques he thought was best to reach them that it felt like fighting an uphill battle the whole way. And let me tell you, my husband has the patience and tenacity of a saint.
There is absolutely only one correct answer for how did our universe begin. We just don’t know it yet. As for the other two, it will depend on the criteria. Fix the criteria and then there will be only one answer.
Some people want to see everything as black or white with only one answer. And some people have the vision to see that there can be many answers to problems
All of which is true, but I was pointing out that in medicine, at least, which remains the principal focus of this thread, doctors are constantly operating under conditions of radical uncertainty. There may very well be one correct answer for how to treat a patient simultaneously for Parkinson’s Disease, blood clots, high cholesterol, and breast cancer, but no one knows it, no one is engaging in systematic, scientific research to figure it out, because of various constraints it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever engage in such research, and even if someone did. it would take years and years to reach a strong conclusion. Meanwhile, doctors have to do something today, tomorrow, next week. And they have to enlist the participation of their patients in whatever it is they decide to do. Understanding science, and understanding what we do know about organs and medicines, are important parts of that process, but “science,” itself, is only a comparatively minor element.
I suspect that at such type schools, the non-white (i.e., not only black) students who got into such colleges without any boost due to affirmative action have a higher rate of med school applicants. I think this is especially true for those students whose families are not as resourceful (in finance or connections.) So such students may croud themselves out in this round of (med school) admission due to the diversity goal (a worthy goal in itself) at many med schools (hard to tell whether it would be to a less extent or not.)
This actually points to a potential “theory” that, if a college happen to have too high concentration of non-white students, it could be more challenging to become a successful premed, at colleges at various levels of academic capability, e.g., Some UCs like Cal, UCLA, or Irvine could be “tougher” than some other state schools where the concentration of non-white premed-wannabes is not that high. I do not have a solid evidence though. (BTW, it could be true also that at a school where there are higher percentage of non-white students, the percentage of the students who apply to non-professional schools (esp. STEM majors) could be higher as well. But this is also my speculation only. Reason? They may have a harder time to land on a lucrative intern job opportunity at school and the similar pattern emerged after graduation. So they continue onto graduate school.)
California public medical schools do not have as many spaces relative to the state population compared to some other states like Texas. So while Texas pre-meds have many in-state public medical school spaces (at very low prices as well) to apply to, those in California are more likely to have to go to out-of-state or private medical schools (at higher prices). That by itself means that the chance of success as a pre-med in California is lower than it is in Texas, for a given level of achievement (GPA, MCAT, pre-med extracurriculars, etc.).
^^Add in the fact that three of California’s public med schools are in the top ~17, and have admissions requirements to match, the chances are even worse for those without national-caliber stats.
@ucbalumus, Because I had this intuitive understanding (or just feeling?) of what California public schools may be like (I used to be at a UC for my grad school after all when the dinosaurs still roamed the world – I still remember some students had to live at a motel for a couple of months!), I highly discouraged my child from applying to and attending any college in this state despite its nice weather. Too crowded at under-funded public colleges here in California, especially for its UG programs.
I think somemom once posted that if a California kid had to apply to OOS med schools, since more private med schools are on the east coast, many California students need to apply and/or attend med schools literally on the other coast. They fly all over the country for interview.
The common thread in all of these comments is that inner city public schools are awful. No amount of affirmative action, quotas, etc… can ever make up for the lack of rigor and dumbed-down curriculum. In Detroit, > 50% of kids go to public charter schools which have outcomes similar to suburban schools. Unionized Detroit public schools are still bad and haven’t improved despite all sorts of private money and state intervention. It’s not about the kids. It’s about the system. All of the Democratic blather about income inequality is just an excuse for poor performance. They couldn’t make the public schools in Newark or Kansas City work while spending $25K/student. That’s more than the price of most top prep schools, and twice that of most Catholic schools.
UMich has a summer program for low income freshman to help prepare them for the rigors of a Tier 1 college. They teach them the skills needed to succeed - basics like note taking , how to write academic papers, scheduling, and other soft skills plus how to navigate the university system. This just isn’t taught like in a prep school.
The best thing we as taxpayers can do is to support vouchers and let charter, catholic and private schools thrive and offer some real competition. All that competition works pretty well in the University system.
Methods for retaining underrepresented minorities in STEM have been a subject of research for a long time.
UMBC is a leader in this area.
Tufts Engineering has been measuring and attempting to improve overall retention rates since the early 1990’s, but underrepresented groups were particularly challenging.
The NSF subsidized an experimental program in 2004:
Overall attrition rate for Engineering at Tufts is currently slightly positive (more people switch from Liberal Arts to Engineering than switch from Engineering to Liberal Arts) and the four year graduation rate is 99% (I don’t have the numbers for underrepresented groups)
These attrition improvement programs don’t appear to be negatively impacting results as the median mid-career salary for Tufts Engineers is similar to MIT.
I never understood the logic of why public money (Pell, GI Bill) can be used at religious affiliated colleges, but it’s supposedly “unconstitutional” to give vouchers for parents to decide whether to apply them to religious-affiliated schools.
Unionization, public monopoly and Democratic control are not sufficient to explain the poor performance of inner city schools. Many of the best school districts in the country - like, say, Scarsdale, NY - are also unionized, and run by Democrats. They’re also public monopolies. They do fine. Something more is at work.
It all starts MUCH earlier than college, or high school for that matter, and has nothing to do with “Democrats”.
The “success path” shown to young black kids is almost never about being a doctor, scientist, academic. And it starts when they’re toddlers, before they’ve stepped into any school building, because that’s all many black families know or have faith in. For boys, it’s sports. For girls, add being a “star”; actress, singer, entertainer, etc. Talk to just about any young black boy and the idea of becoming an NFL star will seem more plausible than becoming a surgeon. It’s understandable since that boy has grown up not seeing many, if any, black doctors but watching black athletes on TV every day. You cannot reverse that reality with a few posters or low-profile school programs.
I’m an Asian mother who grew up in an academic family, both parents with PhD’s. I’m an engineer. I have a black son. I’ve watched how teachers, schools, other parents and relatives react to my son’s successes in school and elsewhere and have absolutely no doubts whatsoever that his skin color has influenced the paths he was encouraged to take. To be honest, I wouldn’t have believed it had I not witnessed it over and over again. Even his pediatrician, a black woman who gushes about him, seems to attribute his good grades to just being a “great kid” (i.e. not a trouble-maker) and spends more time asking about his sports activities. The message is very clear and really hard to steer against.
Maybe it takes a liberal education to understand income inequality. They dont teach that in a microbiology class. Fixing income inequality can solve alot more problems than having the ability to design a new phone app