Education

[BadMonkey]

I meant it as in she has always been there if I needed her. But in contrast I have spent months at a time with my father, who at one point claimed I wasn't even his son. They have had no effect on my education.

I think you're right about your schooling comment. I made the same point you did.

[Pie]

Might i say this again... Albert eynstin got F'S! and he still created the thery of relativity.

[BadMonkey]

Might i say this again... Albert eynstin got F'S! and he still created the thery of relativity.

He was also incredibly gifted. But he didn't have my foresight. The trick is to perform well below that which is expected, but do just enough to do better than everyone else.

[The Industriallist]

Okay...it's certainly possible for a smart student to learn anything they want to, in any first-world school system. They may have to go around the school altoghether to do it in some cases, but it can be done.

I blame the school system for making it a pain, at best, for many students to get the learning they actually want.

It's also certainly possible for parents to screw up children to the point that it's barely, if at all, possible to get them to learn anything. Not that they need to go to the trouble, since most people in schools have little or no desire to learn what they are being taught.

I blame the school system here, with copious help from society in general, for failing to either interest their less-engaged students in the material or force them to learn in self-defense.

So...the smart, interested students are made to work to get access to the learning they want. At the same time, the mediocre students aren't being made to learn much at all. Presumably at some level in between, things work perfectly, but that's not great feat.

I suppose your 'hopelessly damaged' students don't have much problem either, since there wasn't any hope of teaching them anyway...

And I'm not saying the school system is bad because of funding issues...though it does have those, obviously. The US school system is in many, many cases badly administrated and abysmally taught. Maybe that's because of salaries (very poor, by US standards), maybe it's institutional culture, maybe it's entrenched dolts in bureacracy. I truely don't know.

[Pie]

all right... lets just end this by saying that the school system is mest up.

[El_Skwidd]

Something I've noticed...

Our English teacher ironically pointed out something he was very guilty of and gave us an article to read about it. It was called "rote learning." It's basically when the teacher spits out some information, the students memorize it, spit it back on the test, and forget it. Now that I think about it, the only class where I haven't experienced that is mathematics and the literature half of my English classes.

Now, I don't know how much rote teaching and rote learning are contributing to the problem. But I think that if more critical thinking questions were implemented across the curriculum, students would be forced to know and understand the material and the motives behind it rather than just memorize the facts. Then maybe they wouldn't forget it after they turn in their test and retain it through adulthood, making an adult with a high school education actually have the knowledge of someone that's been through high school.

[Pie]

my point exactly.

[El_Skwidd]

Goes for spelling too

Sure, each word has its own unique spelling, but there are rules and patterns that you can learn and make a better guess on how to spell a word that you've just heard for the first time.

[mortaine]

Now, I don't know how much rote teaching and rote learning are contributing to the problem. But I think that if more critical thinking questions were implemented across the curriculum, students would be forced to know and understand the material and the motives behind it rather than just memorize the facts. Then maybe they wouldn't forget it after they turn in their test and retain it through adulthood, making an adult with a high school education actually have the knowledge of someone that's been through high school.

Well, GWB and his completely underfunded "no child left behind" debacle has effectively made that impossible. We can no longer train critical thinkers in Bush's America.

Rote learning is great for younger children. Elementary school aged children excel at rote learning-- repetition builds and strengthens certain pathways in the developing brain and reinforces "the core basics." This is why it's crucial (and easiest) to teach spelling early-- not to harp again on Pie-- because spelling is best learned through memorization, and doing that early on is how you get kids to inherently recognize when a word is spelled incorrectly and fix it.

However, after a certain age, it is no longer valuable to try to get students to learn and retain information. Humans are not databases, that's why we build machines. Students need to learn how to think, they need to learn the ideas that are behind the information. I was a history minor who could only remember one significant date (numbers are my blind spot), but I got A's in history because I could synergize ideas together and understand how an era's history and culture were shaped by the events within it. Student who grow up learning how to think about situations critically and how to problem-solve grow up to be better and smarter members of our society. They also make more informed decisions at the voting booth, which is, essentially, the purpose of a publicly-funded education system.

I won't get too much into "why are schools messed up" except to say flat-out that the problem is money. Schools are underfunded. Period. Administrators are forced by law to conform to a set of standards that are absurd, and because they have no funding for it and are limited in the number of hours they may teach, they must sacrifice *something* in favor of teaching to the test. I come from a whole family of teachers-- the problem is money, I assure you. It's not "crappy teachers"-- if you had to do the babysitting, disciplining, paperwork, grant-begging, and policing that they do, you'd be crappy as a teacher, too.

If schools had more money, they would be able to get out of the rut of teaching the same old subjects with the same old outdated materials in the same temporary buildings (trailers) that they've been doing for thirty years. If they had more money, they could hire enough teachers so that each teacher could spend more attention on each student, and then Pie wouldn't have the excuse that he needs individual attention to learn how to spell. If they had more money, they could ensure that every child goes to kindergarten-- one *single* formative year that drastically reduces the chances of winding up in jail as an adult.

I have a dream that for one year, all of the tax money that is currently spent on defense would be spent on education. Just one year is all it would take to make a huge difference. I'll bet we'd have an American Renaissance if that happened.

[Pie]

Well.. I'm just wered. i spell it how it sounds. Like.. Insigna..it has no tricy parts. but somthing like Antidisistableshmentarianism.. same thing. Its the triky things like... well.. triky. And I'm. And oh.

[west]

Rote learning is great for younger children. Elementary school aged children excel at rote learning-- repetition builds and strengthens certain pathways in the developing brain and reinforces "the core basics." This is why it's crucial (and easiest) to teach spelling early-- not to harp again on Pie-- because spelling is best learned through memorization, and doing that early on is how you get kids to inherently recognize when a word is spelled incorrectly and fix it.

However, after a certain age, it is no longer valuable to try to get students to learn and retain information. Humans are not databases, that's why we build machines. Students need to learn how to think, they need to learn the ideas that are behind the information. I was a history minor who could only remember one significant date (numbers are my blind spot), but I got A's in history because I could synergize ideas together and understand how an era's history and culture were shaped by the events within it. Student who grow up learning how to think about situations critically and how to problem-solve grow up to be better and smarter members of our society. They also make more informed decisions at the voting booth, which is, essentially, the purpose of a publicly-funded education system.

Wow. I learned a lot.

Excellent post, mortaine.

[Surly]

> Mortaine

No students need to think. Maybe after the first year of university... but on the last essay when I tried to be original, I got told I couldn't possibly have come up with it. Anything that is examined ends up being reduced to retaining information, and reproducing it when asked. Only when you reach a point where you can pursue an area where few people go (say a point in history with few experts), that is where thinking actually helps.

The terms 'thinking critically' and 'problem-solving' are just buzzwords... everyone should do that, not just students.

By the way, that's not a rant at you. I agree with what you say. That's a shot at the education system which has still failed to stretch me... and here I was thinking uni would be different...

[Pie]

that is exactly what is rong with this school system.

[wichita]

Rote learning is indeed the death of the school system. Bubble sheet multiple choice tests are worthless in assessing capability. Standardized testing fails because there is really no such thing as a standard human being (though I believe it should be possible to come close to achieving this with the proper research).

I think Kinvoya's point about parenting and placing the responsibility on the shoulders of the student is the truest statement in this new discussion (which, by the way, needs to be in a new thread when someone can get around to it ). Kids who don't have the self discipline or desire to learn won't. It is as simple to that. And it takes a good parent to raise a kid that wants to be responsible. Raising a good responsible kid does not require micromanaged involvement in every single aspect of a child's life. It involves instilling self discipline. It involves kicking his ass when he screws up and giving him a pat on the back when he excels.

My parents never gave me candy for As on my report card, nagged at the teacher about my progress, or asked me about my homework - because they didn't have to. They had raised a six year old capable of doing his own homework because that was the job that needed to be done. My little brother on the other hand...

As for funding, yes it helps, but it is not the single most important thing that makes or breaks a school. One of the best classes I had in all of my education came when I was 17 years old in Bio Joe Johnson's Advanced Biology class. The class was an experimental exploration of the world of biology. Every two or three weeks we were assigned a question to research and a litle bit of background reading. From there we had to work in groups of four, performing library searches, forming a hypothesis, designing an appropriate experiment, conducting it, and writing up a report complete with proper statistical analysis. Prior to the experimental portion of each project we would sit as a class and discuss the problem and the logical quality of our experimental design. We would also discuss the results after all analysis and reports were complete. Sound like fun?

From this single class I developed and improved several important skills. I learned critical thinking, library research, logic, teamwork, self-dicipline, and independence. Most of these attributes have importance outside of science, especially in any part of life where I do not have a specific set of protocols in front of me to follow. I also have such fine problem solving skills, because fortunately unlike many other people, my math teachers forced to do story problems.

In college calculus every problem I worked was either a story problem or a mathematical proof. I believe that this is the single curricular problem that is killing math in the US, and it does not require a lot of funding to fix it. It also does not require massive amounts of funding to implement experimentation in science classes. It just takes good teachers who are able and willing to instill the interest in their students and a culture that doesn't discourage intelligence and education. The US has a long way to go in this department, that is for sure.

[BadMonkey]

I say bring back the cane. Give a child a good caning and solve the problem.

The English system is just as screwed up. In maths they give you a set of basic questions, for example, and then story questions. This means that only the more able children do the story questions. This gives those who understand the math a greater understanding, and creates a large gap in ability when the exams come around, especially as they are often based on story problems and proofs.