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Amen to that. In the 50s, during the dawn of space exploration, there were hobby shops all over where you could buy powder, and engines for small rockets and building your own cannons, etc. My dad has great stories about accidentally blowing out the tires in his neighbor's car and breaking windows in experiments gone wrong. Even in the 90s my friends and I used to make bombs in the woods and blow up all sorts of shit. It was lots of fun, but I fear we would be put in juvenile detention these days.
Anyway, bombs aside, standardized tests are useless. What do the tests measure and why? I don't think either question has a clear answer, but they sure do waste a shit load of time and money.
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During the first Iraq war, a friend and I decided to build a model rocket SCUD missile. We filled the nose cone with gunpowder (scraped from the inside of model rocket engines), and had a launch fuse in the nose cone with its two wires sticking out. To ignite the warhead, we had a 9-volt battery in a chamber in the rocket that would slide forward on impact, and the contacts would touch the fuse.
Unfortunately, the 9-volt and the gunpowder really messed with the flight dynamics, and our SCUD went twirling out of control. We didn't make a SCUD2, but I bet by SCUD4 we would have had something. That microscope question is not only idiotic, it is almost soul-crushing. Microscopes are for looking at small things goddammit. That's why I use them. You learn how to use one properly when someone shows you, not out of a book. Garbage like that kills kids' interest in science.
thenewgreen · 4336 days ago · link ·
"Learning by doing", never ceases to be the best way to acquire knowledge and skills. I'm still learning every day by actually practicing my craft(s). I want my kid to get her hands dirty discovering things, making noise and getting her clothes dirty. I want her to have her own microscope at home and she had better be using one in the classroom. Standardized tests are a lazy way to measure success, we all know this. What's the best alternative? What should we be doing to ensure our education system is functioning in our future generations best interests?