The promise of college for our generation

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Education is failing. Nobody wants to stare at a board full of greek letters and complicated equations all day. Nobody want to labor through a 1000 page math book solving hundreds of integrals. It isn't working. We aren't learning.

Education needs to become more applied.

I know how that goes. I'm a senior in high school, and one of my favorite classes this year is AP Phsyics. Yes, it's a hard class, but the teacher makes it engaging with good, hands-on projects.

First we learn about air drag, center of mass and center of pressure, and then we design and build model rockets. We measure their coefficent of drag, the thrust curve of an engine and write excel programs to calculate the predicted height. Put an altimeter in the payload bay, launch and record. This is one of many projects we do. It's fun and it gives context for all the equations, as well as ensuring that we know how to apply them.

That's how school should be taught. Knowing the equations is one thing, but being able to give them context in the real world is entirely different. This is one of the reasons FIRST is so successful at inspiring students. If the education system was able to tap into that, the results could be incredible.