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Decius comments on Problems in Education - Less Wrong Discussion

65 Post author: ThinkOfTheChildren 08 April 2013 09:29PM

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Comment author: Decius 11 April 2013 04:37:57AM 4 points [-]

Quotes from the .pdf, with my corrections:

With request to the Boulder Valley School District Science Content Standards, Nederland Middle Senior High School is highly motivated to reform their Science Department.

respect, regard, or reference.

Teachers will attend training sessions to become proficient with the technology and learn ho to integrate this technology into their classroom.

how

In order to meet the Science Content Standards set forth by Boulder Valley School District, our Science Department requires hardware. software, training and curriculum.

hardware, software

With a Microcomputer Based Laboratory (MBL) students can perform sophisticated experiments, collect and manipulate data, share their findings with classmates and do in depth analysis of natural phenomena.

in–depth

Productivity in the laboratory will be increased due to computers performing the data manipulation, enabling students more time to concentrate on scientific principals and concepts.

principles

With a more hands-on approach to science, many students who lose interest in science past the graduation requirements could find science to be more relevant to their day to day lives.

day–to–day

This science lab will be in place alter the grant period is over.

after

Team Labs will receive $30,175 for science curriculum, software and probeware. In addition, they will receive $2.250 for teacher training.

$2,250

Consistently 'moneys' is used where 'money' or 'monies' seems correct to me; I did not count this as an error despite not following a strict style guide. Most other 'errors' are very reasonably scanning errors rather than writing errors; the only error that couldn't plausibly be a scanner error would be 'principal' for 'principle'.

Overall, the writing was simplistic, sentences were short and simple, and would pass a technical writing test. Presented as a model for what complexity and intelligence level of grants are approved, that is very informative. Grant proposals (apparently) should be simple, repetitive, and full of Capitalized Buzzwords that are Important to the Right People.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 11 April 2013 07:43:59PM 2 points [-]

I actually counted the really short sentences heavily against them mentally, probably too much. Owing to the way I parse sentences, reading the grant was like listening to William Shatner at his... not quite hammiest, but pretty close.

As far as the 2.250 thing, that's actually not that uncommon outside English-speaking nations; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_point#Countries_using_Arabic_numerals_with_decimal_comma which lists countries which use decimals as thousands separators and commas as decimal marks. (That may actually help to explain the short sentences, come to think of it.)

An alternative explanation is offered here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h5z/problems_in_education/8qqj (Specifically, that the document may have been electronically scanned; this could also account for other apparent spelling mistakes. Handwriting recognition is getting better, but is still far from perfect.)

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