Our education system and methods suck

[Izawwlgood]

It is getting hard to have sympathy for you failure to read and understand this discussion. I'd hope this is a skill you would of learned by now, being a TA and graduate student. Or maybe being a graduate student, even in the sciences, doesn't actually make people good at logic and reading comprehension. Maybe that has to do with our educational system and methods being poor...

Or maybe the argument you're making is so detached from reality, as mentioned by a handful of people already, and so removed from the actual discussion being had, or even the complaints levied by the OP, that my queries went from patiently disagreeing with you to outright calling out your bullshit.

No one here is arguing, including the OP, that there is nothing to be gained introductory classes. So please stop with the fallacies, or do you really not understand what is being said?

Read the argument again. Read the OP's two comments again. You are having a very difficult time staying on topic here. And I never suggested that you or FP were claiming introductory classes were useless.

School shouldn't be about 'putting in the work' it should be about learning. Grades don't correlate very well to understanding of course concepts. Pretty much the only thing they do correlate well with is future grades. Some people get straight A's but cant apply what they are being taught and others skip by with D's but are great at applying those skills.

I asked you some pointed questions backing your claims. You have not answered them, so, I will ignore this above statement, which is, again, amusingly incorrect about even undergraduate level work, and let you answer the questions I have put forth to you to better understand why you are making these claims.

I also want to take a moment to point out that the OP has not returned to the discussion, and any further assumptions (which I made a few of myself) about their level of education are going to be somewhat circular. Zcorp, if you want to continue discussing short comings in grade and high schools, I strongly suspect this isn't the thread to do it in. If you want to discuss why you think college level introductory courses are failing students, you'll need to make a case that they serve no purpose. If you want to discuss why graduate level work is simply the equivalent to 5-7 years work in the field, you'll have to make a case. If you want to discuss learning methods in the sciences, make a point about it, instead of saying 'memorization is bad, and tests are bad'.

But as is, it appears as though you simply popped in to take a pot shot at me, and make a couple more hand wavy, unsubstanciated claims about your issues with the education system at large. So, either engage in the discussion like a mature adult, or knock off these adorable attacks on me for being a graduate student.

[gmalivuk]

I also want to take a moment to point out that the OP has not returned to the discussion, and any further assumptions (which I made a few of myself) about their level of education are going to be somewhat circular.

Actually, on that note, I'm going to go ahead and lock the thread again, on account of being annoyed in general by ranty initial posts which are followed by absolutely zero further contributions from the original poster.

Frenetic Pony can send me a PM to have it reopened. Zcorp can start a different thread to complain about American education. In which thread, incidentally, Zcorp will refrain from the kind of question-dodging insults and baseless declarations of other people's fallacies that have appeared so much in this thread.