Slashdot Mirror
Improving Education?
Shepherd Book asks: "Not long ago there was a spirited discussion, in the usual Slashdot style, about education, touched off by an article about the value of homework. Even more recently, there was a discussion about the value of grammar. This inspires the following Ask Slashdot question: What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible? I have no experience of education outside the US, but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks. And it may always suck. However, what can we do to make it suck less?"
"For the purpose of this question, the following are givens:
1. I know that there is a strong libertarian faction in this community, who might like to see public education disappear. Let's assume, though, that that isn't going to happen any time soon, and that there will be a public school system for the foreseeable future.
2. Similarly, many Slashdot readers are brilliant people who have educated themselves to a large extent. Let's further accept that most people are not capable of doing this, or at any rate need help reaching that sort of educational self-sufficiency.
Thanks in advance, folks."
1. I know that there is a strong libertarian faction in this community, who might like to see public education disappear. Let's assume, though, that that isn't going to happen any time soon, and that there will be a public school system for the foreseeable future.
2. Similarly, many Slashdot readers are brilliant people who have educated themselves to a large extent. Let's further accept that most people are not capable of doing this, or at any rate need help reaching that sort of educational self-sufficiency.
Thanks in advance, folks."
for every student.
Seriously, let's cut the wheat from the chaff at age 13 or so.
From the Ask Slashdot post:
There are probably more, but this might be a good start.
Simple. Hand out copies of Elements of Style to every single student. Had that book been given to me in High School I probably wouldn't have hated the class so much.
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
Post ;)
I think the big issue is allowing students more freedom to choose their courses. The rididness of todays education system leaves many kids unsatisfied because they don't have choice. Offering music, science, athletics or art focused programs could allow students to enjoy school because they get more courses in their field(s) of interest.
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This question reminded me of the classic Paul Graham essay "Why Nerds Are Unpopular". Despite the title, much of the essay is about how much high school sucks and what could be done to fix it.
-David
There. Now go play some cool javascript games!
Eliminate American Anti-intellectualism. Geeks and nerds, while sometimes socially inept, don't deserve to be bullied for good grades. Fostering environments where it's okay to tear kids down because they're doing well in school (we've all seen first hand how little teachers and parents actually do to stop this sort of thing).
Yeah. I'd say that's the biggest issue. Putting kids in an environment where success means social punishment.
No one gets fired and no parent has choices unless they have enough cash for private schools. Too much money goes into laptops and facilities and administration and not enough to the front-line soldiers. And there is not much that gets done to front-line soldiers who can't or won't do their jobs.
I realize many parents arent able to do this, but home schooling is probably the best option.
-FL
The biggest reason that education in the US is lacking is the teachers, in my opinion. An encouraging, INTELLIGENT teacher is the best motivation a child can have. All you need to become a teacher here (at least in Tennessee...) is a high school education and a teaching degree (you dont even have to really STUDY the subject you will be teaching). That's SERIOUSLY wrong.
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I think the system needs more teachers per class, right now with the cuts that happen, they are way too big.
is our children learning?
I think making efforts to demonstrate concepts and principles, as far as the sciences and mathematics go at least, would be best. Lecturing and making people read books doesn't cut it in my opinion. Showing students not only experiments, but ways to reason through phenomena they may encounter will give them valuable skills. This can be expensive, so perhaps simulations can be programmed and distributed to schools where they can be shown in computer labs.
"2. Similarly, many Slashdot readers are brilliant people who have educated themselves to a large extent. Let's further accept that most people are not capable of doing this, or at any rate need help reaching that sort of educational self-sufficiency."
Yes, the readers are absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately the posters are a different breed so you may not get the types of repsonses you were hoping for.
Yes I realize what group I've just put myself in by making this comment.
Make it more USSR/Warsaw Pact style. OK, not really serious here (although some idead from the model were good...), but...I'm from ex-Warsaw pact country. For some time education is brought "up to Western standards". Read: it worsened a lot. One has to wonder...
One that hath name thou can not otter
It is hard to improve education as a whole. You will always piss some people off. The most you can do, is become a teacher and take your job at heart. A really good teacher makes a difference in a person's life. I am from Canada therefore I do not know what is in your content for education, but I do know for a fact that whatever you are teaching, the way you present the content to the kids is the most important part of the process.
You can teach anyone anything if you just find the right way to relate to them. By having teachers that understand this and to their best to present in a fun and challenging way, will bring out the most in the students.
Now how you are going to breed a set of teachers like this? I have no clue.
Teach the basics: reading, writing, history and math. Ditch the crap. Two hours of athletic activity per day all through school. Encourage discovery and show them how to use libraries and the internet to delve deep into other topics if they are interrested. Right now schools cover so much crap that nothing sticks for a big chunk of the students. Gifted students will find their own way with a little nudging.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
After the six grade, I found school to be more of a social institution. What is taught and learned is diversified to meet our interests and strengths. I'm cool with that.
Where I would reform the U.S. education system is high school through college. Prepare people for jobs. If someone has no interest or struggles with advanced math like calculus or doesn't give a hoot to write a ten page essay, don't make them. As long as they proved they can read, write, add, subtract, multiply, and divide, don't keep piling on unnecessary skills they'll never use.
In short, make high school and college more useful by making them less attractive to everybody.
Despite the fact that education is basically the most important thing we do (aside from reproducing) it's amazing how rarely it's actually studied in a scientific way. And when it's studied by psychologists, their research is ignored. Crap like "No Child Left Behind" is just a collection of things people made up and thought might help, with no verification whatsoever, yet it's the law of the land.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The education in North America sucks compared to Europe sucks big time. NA needs to become a lot more stricter. More homework assigned, faster classes, less slack, then it'd be better and we wouldn't have 12 grades and have only 10 like everyone in Europe does.
The jokes write themselves.
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
Education starts at home. Parents need to be more involved in their child's education. We spend alot more than other countries on a per-student basis, but they get more bang for their buck becuase the students work hard and their parents instill on them the value of an education.
Do away with grade levels. No more of this fifth vs sixth grader crap. Students should be placed into classes that challenge their abilities at all times. For what is now grades 1 through 8 I would love to see 8 levels of math, 8 levels of english and so forth. That way students can be failed or promoted based on actual ability. Also schools need to start just failing students in general. I hate it when i hear people say that failing a child is bad for his self esteem and he should always be promoted to the next grade. Passing a child who is not capable is bad for society. Also, there needs to be more focus on sports in school. Not on the winning or losing but on participating, even if it is only a fun extra curricular league that plays a game a week or something. Too many kids don't know how to exercise and gym just isn't cutting it
Revert back to the old days. Hit the damn kids when they get out of line!!
You can't have a class-based society and good public education. An educated lower-class will ask why they are lower-class.
Idiot.
"I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks."
have all student's submit there home-work as slashdot comments and see if that helps much at all, non north americain countrys could outsouce the studens eductation to us. there has too be at least 300k out of work teachers and if they teach 10 students each thats like a millin people taugt really good. because we have very really good education here.
Do away with the "no child left behind" concept. It is a fact of life that some people are not going to "get it" and they need special help. It would be far better to have more children with learning disabilities (LD) in classes catering to LD kids than to have children passing classes just for conformity. If funding is not based on how many children "pass" a given level of classes but instead on standardized test averages the system would work better. There could be a fixed, per-student amount of funding for all public schools with extra funding for the schools that need it the most rather than extra funding for the schools that have the greatest number of high grades and high testing scores.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
The school system is, IMHO, fundamentally wrong. It rewards certain types of behaviour and learning which are simply not atypical. I know of many people who have grown up thinking they were stupid, and not until their 30's or 40's realised they were smart, but simply not adapted to the learning style of the mainstream school system.
Personally, I'm sending my kids to a montessori school. While montessori is certainly far from perfect, IMHO it has less problems than the main stream system.
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First you need to be open minded enough to stop excluding the best solution out of hand. If you have a sucking chest wound you don't say "What is the best thing I can do, except stop the bleeding?"
Public schools don't work, can't work and aren't even compatible with a Republican form of Government.
Step one: board up every public school and college of education.
Seriously. The damage is beyond repairing, it is systemic and inherent in the concept of forced government education as we currently understand it. Therefore any attempts at 'reform' only prolong a real solution and are a bad idea.
Private schools all the way. Even if someone wants to send their kids to an Islamic fundamentalist madrassas. The Right to be Wrong is the #1 basic right because the second thee or me presumes to sit in judgement of a parent's choice we presume to 1) be their master and 2) be wise enough to make their decisions for them. If parents are going to be empowered to truly make educational decisions for their children we must accept decisions we don't approve of.
The only place for the State to intervene is in cases which could rightly be called abuse/neglect.
Once that policy decision is made, everything else follows. The idea that a math major isn't qualified to teach mathamatics is one that only a union operation with a government mandated monopoly could think up so there go the 'colleges of education' to be replaced with majors in their subject matter perhaps supplementing with a couple of courses in pedagogy.
Here is the secret. Teaching isn't particularly hard. All it requires is a knowledgable and reasonably patient master and an apprentice motivated to learn. Note the ancient usages there, that was intentional and intended to remind just how far back learning goes. They didn't need billions of words of academic text telling them how to do it, they just did it.
Democrat delenda est
I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks.
/. folks will probably agree, but what makes you so certain that public school is so bad for the average student?
I know this is a popular sentiment in the media and many
I don't disagree, I'm just wondering what facts this is based on. I've been employing student assistants at a state university for 10 years and they certainly don't seem any less prepared today than they did when I started here. Obviously my experience is not statistically significant, but it makes me wonder.
After graduating from college, and seeing how useful certain classes are (and how useless others are), I'd like to propose a fundamental change in the way English is taught at the collegiate level. My system is comprised of a three-course sequence, which would only mean one extra class for most colleges. Before arriving at school (perhaps at orientation), each student will be forced to sit through an oral exam. A professor or proctor would recite sentences and phrases that use homophones (to/too/two, your/you're, their/there/they're, etc) and plurals. Students who fail to correctly write at least 85% (or something over 75% at least) would be forced to take a remedial class in homophones, apostrophes, and other basic essentials of the English language. After they pass that class (they'd be forced to take it over and over until they pass), they would join the students who passed the exam in a one semester intro to writing and literature class. Students would get the chance to learn to enjoy literature, write a basic research paper, and generally sharpen their writing skills. The second class would be a technical and professional writing class, so students can learn how to function in scientific, engineering, and office environments. It would cover such things as scientific proposals and research papers, business proposals, office memos, and good product documentation. The third and final class would be public speaking. Students would learn how to give effective presentations, how to tailor presentations to their audience, and how to control their posture and body language to maximize their message. Upper level classes in almost all subjects would put these skills to the test, and would be graded accordingly. This three-course sequence would successfully prepare students for both academia and the real world.
...until you have done all your homework.
Crunch!
The school system needs to remove its self distractions and become a school. Other activities sponsored by schools such as sports and music should be put under control of another agency such as the park service. If these activities were based on areas and no on school districts you would have less conflicts of interested such as a student being passed through simply because the teach enjoys that hobby. Schools need to expect more responsibility out of their students and expect the same performance out of all students no matter what their social and economic status is. We should push so that students who live in areas that have schools filled with misbehaving and unguided children and move to suburban schools. This will allow students with drive to get out of their current environment and in to a better one. Instead of segregating schools based on your class.
Parents become responsible.
If parents take interest in their children's education then things change drastically.
My daughter goes to many theatre plays, I expose her to other cultures regularly and encourage learning.
Many parents expect that schools do everything and ignore thier kids.
The fault with the crappy US education system starts and ends with the parents of those children.
IF they do not get in the face of the school by being at PTA meetings, calling teachers on the carpet, or even going to Parent teacher conferences let alone educate their kids themselves outside normal school (learning does not have a schedule people!) then they are causing the dearth of education in their community.
If the parents do not ask for better education and WORK for it, it will never exist.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The focus needs to be on the 3 R's. Reading, writing and arithmetic. These core areas will develop the students ability to think analytically and express themselves clearly.
The last thing we need are a bunch of silly special interest classes to allow the the students to "find themselves."
I went to public school in a small town, and I have no complaints about the education I received.
The school doesn't have a lot of money for things like "modern textbooks" or "above-poverty salaries," but they do have small class sizes and teachers that know you and your parents, and actually give a damn whether you succeed or not.
True story: my high school principal called our Mom one day and told her what my brother had done (distributed profane newspaper accusing band teacher of sodomy). She told him to beat him with the paddle (1988 or 1989).
Money can't solve everything, only violence can do that
Pay Teachers what people who get out of college make
Dissolve the Department of Education
Allow schools to fire incompetent teachers
Get rid of Tenure
Go back to rote, when kids can PROVE they can handle more move them into different learning situations
No social promotions ever
Harsh displine for problem kids
No technology until High School
Enforce Grammar with poor grades for misuse
Teach other languages early
Math, math, math
Teach Religion, all of them... even Satanism
This
Did anyone else read this as "Imsproving Evolution?"
It was a sersios Dr. Moreau moment....
2. Similarly, many Slashdot readers are brilliant people who have educated themselves to a large extent. Let's further accept that most people are not capable of doing this, or at any rate need help reaching that sort of educational self-sufficiency.
The goal of education is to teach students how to teach themselves.
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just my $0.02
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
1) More stuff that stimulates right brain activity.
2) Classes for different thinkers. There are kinetic learners, like get up and be active. There are those who learn out of books. And so on.
3) Balance history teaching. Instead of nothing but facts, start teaching lessons behind events and such.
4) Less homework, more class discussions.
My children are home schooled in a "Public Home School Program" That means that it is a home school program ran by the public schools. Its called K12 and most of it is based on book learning but some of it is internet based. The kids get 4-5 hours a day of special attention from a loving mother and teacher.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
Shuttleworth has been funding the The School Tool Project to create better educational infrastructure. This is something that has the potential to significantly decrease operational costs for public schools in a variety of countries.
One problem that has been identified is that a fairly scary percentage of students go to school hungry. Learning on an empty stomach is quite difficult. The solution is fairly simple: provide breakfast at school (similar to the way lunch is provided). But food costs money so this effort hasn't gotten very far.
The real sad cases are when the kids who come in w/o having had breakfast sometimes complain that they didn't get any dinner the night before either.
Obviously, the problem is more severe in poor/urban areas...so the rich white parents who vote and contribute to campaigns tend not to bring this up at PTA meetings so much.
"Similarly, many Slashdot readers are brilliant people"
You must be new here.
From the top of my hat, thats all i can come up with in a short time. I may post a reply to this post if something else occurs to me. I am aware that i mentioned a lot of sensitive issues.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Really, I could go off on a really long shpeel on this, but if you look at the condition of America now, you might see that there is a much bigger problem, that this education thing is just a small part of.
with the emphasis on teaching the facts. Too much time is spent these days on teach points of view and revisionist garbage. Give children the plain factually information, language, math, art, PE? and leave the propoganda to the evening news.
I'm one of those "libertarians" whould would like to see public education disappear. FYI, my parents sent me to a nice private school in CA, and FYI it cost them less to send me there than it did the state of CA to send a kid in LA to gettho high about 30 minutes north.
Also, I believe govt funded education will go away, they simply cant meet our kids needs for the future, and the govt spending is quickly approaching bankruptcy levels.
The fact that you learned a certain way doesn't mean it's the best way to learn. The drilling kids get on how to do long division and multiplication is a horribly inefficient way to learn how to do it, in fact most arithmetic can be done without paper (with a reasonable number of digits). Math (even without a calculator) is easy, but kids are taught the hard way, which causes them to lose interest in it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
One of the largest problems with education (at least American education) is the utter lack of critical thinking skills. American education is based in doctrines developed by Horace Mann at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We need to educate children on more than the repetition of rote facts, and teach them to logically process information in a rigorous manner.
There's a wonderful article that's been thankfully saved from extinction by the Internet Archive called http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.39/sesame_epist.html"> Sesame Street, Epistemology, and Freedom that does an excellent job of laying out the kind of critical thinking skills needed to make people capable of understanding the modern world.
Beyond that, education should no longer be used as a system that shelters kids from real life. Students need to be held to high standards, and parents along with them. If someone like Jaime Escalante can take a group of kids that the system assumed would fail and make them perform, then it's clear that the system is letting kids down.
Human capital is crucial to the success of a modern society, and keeping a system around that's powered by bureaucratic inertia and doesn't do the job hurts not only the kids trapped in the system, but the country at large.
American society has gotten pretty messed up. Short of a massive overhaul of American thoguht and media, I'm not sure if anything can happen. Because what good is having a set of really good and qualified teachers if the kids only want to go out and get drunk? Society and modern media tells the majority of kids that it makes you cool if you focus on sports, pick on the geeks, drink, have sex all while ditching school. So how do we fix all this? Get rid of all the crap that influences the youth today. But as you and I both know, that's impossible. All we can really do is sit back while we get dumber and dumber and hope they snap out of it sooner or later.
American parents expect their kids to do well in school without any parental involvement. Parental involvement is the foundation of a good education. A lot of people have lost sight of this.
How to solve the public education problems:
1. Public warehousing of young human animals is fine, don't rock the boat.
2. Pay teachers based on performance.
3. Apply corporal puni^H^Hencouragement to under-performing students.
4. In Soviet Russia, CowboyNeal's Korean grandma gets educated by YOU.
5. Print lessons over graphics of large firm breasts.
6. Scrap the entire system and start over from scratch.
Keep a good a(TT)itude!
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The reason education sucks is because, we as a society, don't fucking care.
Growing Up Dumber Than Anvils
If we really did, we'd do something effective about it.
"but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks."
You can? Really? Have you BEEN to every public school in America? I'm a product of FCPS and I can definately say they don't suck. It's one of the best school systems around. People come from many countries around the world to take a look at TJHSST, the local magnet school. Obviously some school systems in America don't suck if people from many diverse countries want to take a look at how we do things around here...
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According to Dr. Hans Mark, former NASA Interim Head and Aerospace Engineering professor at the University of Texas, the answer is: Roll back women's lib.
Back in the days before women's lib, and there were few jobs available to intelligent, educated women, the best and brightest women became teachers. As a result, the United States had an astonishingly good public education system, because we had the best teachers anywhere.
The idea of rolling back women's lib is obviously both abhorrent and unworkable, but there is a legitimate point: Good teachers leads to good education. If our best and brightest desire to become teachers, then our schools will become better whether we want them to or not.
Another problem is that in certain American sub-cultures, education is not considered a viable means to open up opportunities. It is, but these sub-cultures don't consider it to be. Consider Charles Schulz, who succeeded despite terrible failures in school; one year, he failed everything. His parents, who had never had any education, had no idea how to guide him; in an interview, when asked how he reacted to Schulz failing an entire year, his father replied: "I thought he did pretty well."(*) If the parents don't value or understand education, the children won't be successful.
And on that second topic, unfortunately the Religious Right's crowing about "Family Values" is right on target. (Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day.) The only way to solve it is to find a way to reinforce the structural and legal support for the family unit. In the past, this existed in the form of legalized punishments for unwed mothers. Nowadays, we have legalized punishments for married people (such as the "marriage tax penalty"). What we need are structural incentives for people to get married, stay married, and take care of children. Now that sounds pathetic -- doing these things is what you're supposed to do, after all -- but the legal climate today is such that you are punished for doing these things and rewarded for irresponsibility. Until that changes, these sub-cultures that formed won't change.
(*)Charles M. Schulz: Conversations, edited by M Thomas Inge
The answer is simple.
There are two ways to know something:
1) You are obliged to learn it.
2) You discover it, you like, and you throw yourself in that world.
The first sucks, and you'll soon forget everything about it.
The second it's a lot different because you really _want_ to learn it.
So the best way will be:
"What do you want to study today?"
Maybe showing a list of possibilities.
The difficulty of the subject doesn't really matter.
That will be a nice school
I think the biggest mistake in the educational system is that it uses passive learning instead of active learning as its model.
Nobody learns how to drive a car by just reading about it, watching movies about it and listening to the teacher talk about it.
We, i.e. humans, learn best by doing. Kids are no different. If you're going to teach math, make an activity out of it. Give kids a goal that requires math to achieve it. Math was invented/discovered out of a real world need. Kids would best be served by seeing the need early on and then experiencing math in order to achieve their goal.
I always swore that if I was ever in a position to teach a class (kids or adults) about how a computer works, that I would build a computer out of the people in the class. I'd have some of the class as memory, someone as the CPU, etc. I'd have an address bus and data bus that they'd have to follow. Then we'd execute a simple program to add 2 numbers.
I'd do this on the first day. Then all the book learning and lectures would be based on a common experience, viz. the human-computer made up of their classmates. This is active learning.
School computers should not have GUIs. I'm only 19, my first operating system was DOS, and I have been miles ahead of classmates in literacy tests since 2nd grade. If they have to deal with something archaic like DOS or even more advanced like Unix, it's still more difficult to execute most functions than using Windows or MacOS. It will require a little more thought, they'll have to spell their commands correctly and make sure their syntax is correct. The kids will complain about how their computer at home is so much better. Well let them. Maybe it might get them to actually appreciate the advances technology has made in the past 30 years. So here we have a rudimentary spelling and grammar (syntax) lesson, along with Technology History and Appreciation. A little like Mustic Appreciation, but maybe somewhat less useless.
Teachers spend so much time trying to teach the dumb students, that the brighter ones are somewhat forced to stay at their level. Its not politically correct to acknowledge that some students are smarter than others, so we're stuck with a system that treats everybody the same. They've already got some programs for the advanced students, but the dumb ones are grouped in with everybody else.
Allow the bright ones to move on quicker, and keep the not so bright ones held back. Its sick that some people who spend 13 years in school can't read past a 6th grade level. Thats not creating a workforce, thats preparing them for poverty, which the bright kids later have to fund.
The most important thing though would be to get the parents involved. Kids whose parents are involved usually do better in school. Who in their right mind lets their children go off for 6.5 hours a day to be watched over by a stranger? And then they do this for their entire youth?? Parental involvement is key.
As for pay, I think they get paid alright. I might be in the minority here, but starting pay is $35k or so, and you get two and a half months off during the year. If you were to assume they made that same money during those two months, thats more than $42 to start. Not to bad.
I found school to be child/teenager storage, and nothing more. "Here, go sit with these people who don't want you around." I was not allowed to take programming classes, so I went home and taught myself how to program without any books.
I have come to the realization that if I went to college right after 6th grade, I would have done just fine. I didn't learn anything at all from 7th-11th grades in school. Highest math I had was geometry. I got really pissed one day, and went and signed myself out, and got a GED.
Also, I was taught lots of lies about our society, science, religeon, etc. The education system here in America is a fucking waste. Like systems adminitrators, some teachers are good, and some are bad. In our kind of environment, it is easier for bad teachers to hold onto their jobs, than it is for the good teachers, and this sucks.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
- Teach things in an inventive way that graps people's attention rather than just deluging them with facts.
- Offer a wide selection of courses so that hopefully everyone can find something that appeals to their interests (Secondary school only)
If the schools that I attended during K-12 had done those 2 relatively simple things, my schooling experience would have been MUCH more enjoyable than it was.Unions...
Teacher Unions ensure all pay is based on seniority and education. They fight all attempts at merit-based pay which drives away a lot of talent.
Unions are great when the workers are more important than the product (ie. people are more important than TVs) but in education the product (students) are more important... so teachers should not be safe-guarded at their expense.
Then again, I could be wrong.
Give individual schools broad authority to set curriculums, hire and retain teachers, choose textbooks, decide how to allocate available funds, etc.
But conversely, make schools directly accountable. Not to politicians or a centralized bureacracy, but to individual parents. The question posits that public schooling will continue for the forseeable future, but at least let parents pull their kids out of one public school and put them in a different one.
A legparnasom tele van angolnaval.
The problems with public education are more symptoms of the problem with American society, not problems with the schools themselves. No amount of money, time, effort, etc. thrown at the schools will change it.
Learning by rote doesn't work. Taking tests that encourage information regurgitation doesn't help.
What helps is giving students the training they need to tap into the brain's potential. For the left brain, this means teaching the ability to reason, to use both inductive and deductive logic, and to learn about the doctrine of natural consequence; for the right brain, the freedom to engage in creative bursts of joy without insisting everyone color in between the lines, or always make the grass green and the sky blue.
Education today is all about moving the mobs through, teaching low-expectation behavior. However, there is no "right" to graduate, or "right" to an A. Grades and graduation should be a measure of earned merit, not classroom attendance.
We need to expect more from kids in school. Soft-pedaling education doesn't do anyone any favors.
Stop hiring Elementary Ed majors as teachers. Raise the standards for teachers and pay and you'll attract better teachers. I'd love to teach but there's no way I'll take a 60% pay cut to do it. I know a lot of bright people that are in the same situation. Well, that and they wouldn't put up with school administrators.
I think we need to start teaching kids foreign languages at an early age. Not in high school. They do this in nearly every country in the world except for ours. Not only is it easier to learn a language when you are young, but IMHO not doing this leads to racist sentiments such as "why don't they learn the language when they come to my country?".
This book/video has a very good analysis of what is wrong with American higher education. I caught a little bit of it on TV and thought that it was very informative. They have a website at:
http://www.decliningbydegrees.org/
You know, maybe my highschool, being in a collage with lots of children of professors, was warped, but there were lots of smart, popular people there.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
That condition is not one that is preexisting in human nature. Every child is a learning machine, mastering any and every activity that seems useful to it.
The problem with modern education is that it takes even useful activities and makes them seem useless. Children don't learn by sitting at a desk reciting things: they learn through a process of assisted exploration.
Everyone has their own natural inclinations: not every child is going to be an athlete, and not every one a philosopher. But by separating those categories completely in the academic setting rather than allowing them to interact and interrelate in an organic way, we ensure that the athlete will have little or no philosophical capability and vice-versa.
I highly recommend looking into the Montessori method.
Art Schools Dietzilla
Having just graduated from thirteen years of public education, I've learned there's something which many classes lack: forcing students to THINK critically and to use their brains.
So many times all students have to do is memorize this, memorize that, plug these values into a calculator program, that they're being cheated of a real education. Rote learning is rewarded; thinking is usually not, considering most teachers will hold a grudge against you for the rest of the year if you point out their mistakes or suggest a different way to solve a problem.
My younger sister just finished middle school, the usual residence of the most incompetent teachers. Her eighth grade Language Arts teacher thought that privilege was spelled with a d, among other things. My sister's writing skills far surpassed his, and since she is the type to be pushy and insistent about correcting mistakes, he hated her for it.
The only reason I learned ANYTHING about grammar, having had the same teachers my sister did, was because my mother, a former high school English teacher, taught me through helping me edit my papers.
We need more competent, intelligent teachers who are willing to accept their own mistakes. The best teachers I ever had were readily willing to admit their mistakes and to listen to different problem-solving approaches from students.
My name is John Perkins. I'm an actual, genuine education major, currently attending California Baptist University. I've got a survey where people comment about why their good teachers were good, their bad teachers were bad, classes were fun, classes sucked, etc.. I'd really appreciate it if any of you ladies and gentlemen would be willing to fill out my survey about your experiences in the classroom. I want to be able to say what makes a good and engaging teacher and what makes a boring teacher that no one listens to.
I appreciate anyone's help.
School Survey
I know it's a link to my own site and I apologize for that. I figured, what with Slashdot and all, it would be a unique opportunity to get some great anecdotal data. Thanks everyone.
The current curricullum should scrapped and replaced with teaching of basic skills. In addition to grammer and maybe math, each student should have a grounding in Philosophy, Economics, Political Science and History.
Specifically each student must understand what democracy is (in addition to the other forms of government), what capitalism and socialism are. They should learn about logic, how to engage in critical reasoning, why they should take an active part in their society and what happens when people are apathetic. All this must be drummed into their heads until every young kid knows that Freedom is not free, understands how society works (not just the simple minded "get a job" of the current era) and more importantly knows that we do not yet have all the answers.
Please this is not a advocation to a return to Classical training. I'm not talking poetry here, but what every active useful citizen should know. But, I must confess that when the students discuss Existensialism the sucide rate might go up.
Public schools were never meant to educate -- well, educate as in the normal /. expectation of the word. Public schools were meant to breed a newer, better, factory worker that could at least keep himself/herself company at cocktail parties. Give them enough knowledge that they are not easily bored, and teach them:
...too many individual needs get quashed for the greater good of the group. Couple that with california's rediculous standards (do kindergartners *REALLY* need to know their multiplication tables?), and teachers dont have time to cater to individual needs -- they are hurried just to get in all the content they are required to teach -- far beit if a child falls behind....he won't be "left behind"...he'll be dragged behind the cart....
1. To show up on time (school bells?)
2. Take instruction
3. Perform repetitive tasks without supiervsion
4. Don't ask questions
5. Don't question authority
There was no suprise that Henry Ford himself helped tailor the american public school system, and to this day it is doing its job; it is cranking out mindless automotons. If you need any proof of this, try ordering by number at a fast food restrraunt (65% of my orders are screwed up). The school system hasn't failed, the humans driving it have failed -- they have failed to shift the focus on public school from factory automoton, to a more "renesaunce man". Even then, do we want that? Do we want kids that can so easily do whatever they want. Or rather would we want kids that have to struggle to do what they want, bust their butt to get above and learn the value of hard work (or cheating -- but even in that there is hard work). Would we want a smart lazy society, or a society of mindless drones doing all the gruntwork while the few pundits wonder -- "how did the public school system fail?".... I believe that with a little bit of old fashion "parenting" and an early start at learning in the home -- with parents that actually care to be in their childrens lives -- kids can grow up with much more intelligence then they could ever grasp in the classroom.
You can't expect much "learning" to go on in a classroom with a student/teacher ration of 30:1...even 25 or 26:1
A good book on Public school historu (avail. free online) is John Gatto's Underground History of American Education.
: have them go to hischoools in a central/eastern european highschool/secondary school. By no means are they good or even perfect, still, IMO, lighyears better then some western european or US counterparts.
Only kids who want to be there (or parents who want their kids to be there) are allowed[1].
Everyone else -- go find a vocation and learn to live modestly since you don't give a damn about yourself anyway.[2]
[1] This means even learning disabilities are allowed as long as the child or their parent wants them the receive an education. As long as one or both of them care, then the system should bend over backwards to help them.
[2] Parents cannot FORCE their kids out of school either. If the kid wants to be there, again, bend over backwards to help them stay there even if it means separating them from some selfish parents who want their kids to go work in a factory instead.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
I have to say, the students who consistantly performed the best in my classes (jr. high and high school), were students who's parents were closely involved in holding their children accountable to their classroom performance; both scholastically and behavior wise.
The key is to show the value of education... I grew up in Austria and I never bothered studying my English vocabulary. In fact, once I argued with my teacher that I have no use for it - so why would I learn it... 10 years later, I surely do know the value of it - after all I'm now happily living in Florida.
My gf's daughter had a similar experience... She lived for a few years in Plant City, FL - redneck and pedophile heaven. Now that she lives in a more civilized part of the state and people often have a hard time following her grammer and pronounciation she's starting to learn the value of it. One day she got into a fight with one of her best friends over a misunderstanding caused by her language. Ever since she's trying really hard and is much easier to deal with when it comes to "making her study"..
So in the end - find a way to show the student why they needing and how they benefit and the studying is suddenly no issue at all anymore...
Peter.
Stop paying teachers 1/2 of what they would make in industry so you can get smart people to teach not just the ones that love teaching and would never do anything else? Or at least what a daycare worker makes?
Will never happen of course, so public education will always suck.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Teachers get paid okay if you consider they get 2 and half months off each year. I don't know what the starting pay is there, but divide that by 12, then multiple the answer by 2.5 In Orange County, Florida, you start here at about $35k. If you make that equal to a yearly salary, they start at $42. Ain't half bad.
"For the purpose of this question, the following are givens:
1. disregard accountability
2. disregard accountability
Thanks in advance, folks."
Well then, this should be an altogether pointless exercise. Have at it.
46 & 2
Actually, this is not true often enough to be a general rule - the best American high schools are really quite good, comparatively speaking. What makes the difference between a good school and a bad school is mostly the level of parental involvement. If the local culture is such that most parents don't really give a crap whether their kids are in school or how they're doing, the school will likely be a poorly performing school, regularly turning out semi-literate burger-flippers. If that. If the local culture is such that most parents are involved in their children's education, monitoring their progress and showing a good deal of concern for their education, the school will likely tend to be a good school, turning out better qualified graduates. Of course, the real secret is that good parents can overcome bad schools - it's harder that way, but it's definitely doable.
Anyway, you can't fix the schools by changing the schools themselves - they're broken by design. But it doesn't really matter in the end - the real difference is made at home, not in the schools. If you want to fix the schools, fix the culture and the schools will follow.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
The number one thing i think we do poorly is allocate money to school districts that accomplish nothing. The public likes to pass levies for public schools even though the schools waste the money away. Every school should be accountable for every dollar they get in taxpayer money. It should be detailed in writing and schools should have to keep the same kind of records as many industries (like insurance, banking) where they have to show where the money goes. I also agree with a previous poster that grade inflation does not help anything. The trophy for everyone mentality creates a sence that there are no clear successes and failures, and the concept of failing at something is as important to development as the concept of succeeding. Finally another money related issue, why can't schools use available resources better. I took an social economics class in college where one of the examples looked at school levies. I don't remember the exact statistics but it was a case study where one school used money to hire new teachers and another simply reallocated teachers across topics, and transfered different teachers in and out of schools. The simple change of location resulted in the school that didn't spend the money showing better results in proficiencies and better improvement in all areas of education.
Set some freaking standards!
Then stick to the standards, and if you adjust the standard, RAISE the bar!
It is absolutely ridiculous that a kid can pass the 1st grade without being able to read his own name, add 2+2 or spell 'cat'.
Make the teachers responsible for performance of the class. If a child can't or won't learn, drop them to the previous grade! (no penalty to the teachers)
Self Esteem be dammed!
Teach the kids that if you fail to do the work, YOU FAIL!
When the bed wetting parents scream that it's NOT FAIR, inform the parents that "Life isn't fair" and if the kid is going to succeed they need basic skills!
The failure in our schools is NOT the fault of teachers or administrators or school boards. It's our fault. We oen this one fair and square.
Schools need cash. Teachers buy supplies out of their own pockets and many schools are crumbling down around student's ears. Schools need to be funded - maybe even overfunded. Republicans need to be thrown out of office until they learn we want our tax money spent on something that doesn't killl people. We put them in office and approved of their miserly ways.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Coming from the US, where I studied education, and then moving to Central America, where the educational system makes ours look fantastic, I have to say that what we need to teach our kids is critical thinking skills. This touches on the OP's point number 2: a lot of us are, indeed, self-educated to some degree. The question is, why aren't others?
I think there are a number of answers. Teachers who teach to the tests (be they their own or state-mandated standardized tests). Students who think that cramming equals learning. Parents who don't take an interest in their kids' progress. Coaches who think that $SPORT is the most important thing in life. Legislators who think that education can be properly quantified with standardized testing. Administrators who won't take the time to listen to teachers. Taxpayers who shoot down bond proposals. And the list goes on.
Education should not be centered on teachers, administrators, sports, or computers. Education should be centered on students. And the most important thing we can teach them is how to think on their own, without asking their friends, looking in the back of the book, or copying out of MS Encarta. If kids can think on their own, their education will continue long after their schooling ends. If they can't, it will have stopped well before that.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
As simple as that. Most people are made to remember in class, not to think. The best two teachers I had made do just that. One was extremelly brilliant, and he usually made a quiz BEFORE class. And all he said was "make your best effort." Too bad he was fired. I guess making people think was outside the rules. The other wasn't ignorant, but probably lacked the adecuate knowledge to give the class, so tried to learn TOGETHER with us. He got down to our and said: "Ok, let's try to understand this." Right now I'm in university, I can write a paper in 2 hours and get 8 out of 10. I can get into any exam and get about 8 of 10. Without any studing, just going to class and paying a bit of attention. No need to put any effort into it, no incentive to do it either. So I guess I have two points of view: 1- Force everyone to think, to at least try to solve really complex problems, that are outside of their current capabilities. 2- Keep a mediocre class, and an AP class, those who want to put in extra effort can do so and get a better education. The choice between those two depends on cultural situations. I live in a mediocre country (Costa Rica) but have also studied in the US. And in general terms is depressing. But then I guess I'm just babbling anyhow.
please excuse my apathy
And look at that mispelling in the title. Eeesh. -_- Should be "from," obviously...
We should hold kids accountable for their actions or lack of action as the case may be. Further, and this would get me shot by my former teacher friends, we need to hold the schools, teachers and administators accountable for failing to produce graduates that are ready for the next steps in life.
Not everyone will be rocket scientist, or even go the college right away but as caddie shack would teach us "the world needs ditch diggers too." When kids are no longer entitled to a good education but accountable to make the most of opportunites given the system will improve dramaticly.
Anyone remember when getting a A actually took some work on the part of the student and not just showing up?
Saddly this is a move more in society than directly in the educational system itself.
education in the US sucks in a weird way. kids have so many things to do at school: sports, assorted libraries, extra curricular activities, and still they manage to be among the most average in the planet, while many other countries, even latin american, top the US in education without all these things to support students. I think it's just the people, not the school system. what would happen if we take a bunch of kids from other countries and teach them in a US school (isolated from american kids, of course)? I think they would be about the brightest kids in the world. It's always the same thing, taking everything for granted and not be grateful about what you have.
I believe the best we could do for the education system is to get rid of it.
It's not the government's job to control a childs training, it's the sole responsibility of the parents.
(Note that I did not say the parents must teach everything but be responsible for what their child is taught.)
Public education was invented by communism to control the minds of the people.
How about 1) First accepting that not everyone will be a rocket scientist, and guiding the non-intellectually elite into more vocational roles. 2) people who don't pass, don't pass 3) standardized tests that make rule #2 possible, and not use them for entrance exams, which they are not, in fact, used for. Example MCAT being used to judge for medical school admissions.
As a "Gifted" person on thing that I always had problems with is the lack of support for these kind of Children.
What this really means is that the school system needs to be in touch with all children's needs. Commonly public schools only support Special Needs kids at this level. While in reality almost all kids are special needs, how many times have you seen kids that are motivated self starters that love to sit learn.
If we had a system that tested all kids for their strengths, weaknesses, and best mode of learning we would have a system that works for everyone.
Kids don't need to be all in the same age (grade level) class to learn something, they need to be with like minded people.
The problem with this is you will end up with much more cost for evaluators and fragmented school curriculum.
...more emphasis on creativity and problem-solving skills.
what can we do to make it suck less?
Marry it?
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It may not help much with the other school subject, but it'll certainly give us people who are less ignorant about the rest of the world, because they can educate themselves, once they become adults, about other points of view...
then:
Most importantly: well trained and motivated teachers and also enough
teachers. To achieve this, the salaries have to be higher, teachers
should have the opportunity for their own development or be involved in
education research.
Second: a good infrastructure with relatively modern equipment: for
example large blackboards, enough space, a good library, public computers.
Safe surroundings, bike paths to school, enough administration to run
the school and security. Further, common rooms and maybe even a good
cafeteria for teachers and staff.
All this requires that more money is pumped into education. This is the
best long term investment into the economy.
Make schools performance, and project based.
It's ridiculous to base grades on effort, but this is what teachers in public school constantly do to avoid telling kids they need to get off their ass and do the work. Also, have teachers spend the class time teaching the subject, and then assign projects (NOT mundane homework) for students to do outside of class to reiterate the subject matter.
How about improving spelling?
How about improving grammer?
How about improving proof-reading?
How about...
What would help is to remove a lot of the technology from the classroom. Our science and math skills overall as a country are pathetic. Having gone through grad school myself and working as a TA in several departments I was astonished at how many students couldn't do simple math without their fancy calculators. Students in grade school should be exposed to calculators and computers but not given out in class to be used for homework. I'm not saying we should go to the extreme of only paper and pencil, a medium should be found. Afterall what do you do when the batteries are dead and it's nighttime (sorry no solar remarks). If you can't do algebra and calculus by hand your going to pay for it in the long run alone with the rest of the country
I can tell you that those students I've encountered that have been through even a couple of such courses (even those laden with idealogical bias in the teacher) benefit immensely. Specifically, they start to see the value (and nuances) in rhetoric, advertising, and other forms of communication. They also start to realize that clarity in symbolic thinking and in the communication that expresses it (even when they're IM-ing) makes them much more powerfully self-possesed. Alas, it also makes them realize what twits so many other people are, but that's better than being one of them.
Good critical thinking skills also develop better skills in reason-related areas like software engineering (really, any complex pursuit involving large systematic things that can overwhelm the more muddle-headed), finance, every scientific discipline, even languages. More importantly, though, it helps make kids into wiser participants in the economy. That raises the bar for sophisitcation in commercial communication, creative works (like movies), reduces the odds of making poor choices while under the influence of scary messages (about not owning a hybrid car, or about going to hell because Jesus says so, or about the inability to truly appreciate turn of the century French poetry).
Mostly, though, it's about realizing that most information reaches you in some context, and teaches you to ask, "why is this person saying this to me?" or "why is this person saying what they're saying about that other person/thing?"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I had my primary and secondary education outside of the US, so I can't speak for the "poster's country"... :) My own experience, however, is that much of basic education relies overly on rote learning.
I cannot but echo Feynman's concerns (when he visited Brazil - IANAB, but many cultures have the same problem) that students are not encouraged to be curious, but rather to accept whatever the book or the teacher tells them as fact. At the schools I attended our textbooks were treated almost as gospels and scientific findings were considered immutable facts discovered by others far more brilliant than ourselves.
http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/Gee/gee8.ht ml
First and foremost, cut class sizes by some large factor. Cutting them in half would be a good start, but to see dramatic results you'd need an average class size under about 10. To do this, you'll need the same large factor more teachers, and this will cost money.
The logistics of doing so would be particulary difficult, as most existing school buildings have rooms designed to hold 30 students or more.
Pay teachers more. It feels wrong that those chosen to spend 12+ formative years with our children have to get special loans to pay for housing in many areas, and I think we're losing many people who might otherwise make excellent teachers. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel to find people willing to work for the pittance they are paid.
Do away with grade levels (i.e. 1st grade, 12th grade) as we know them. There's too big a difference between learning rates to expect everyone to have progressed the exact same amount in one year. High schools typically are better, as they have "honors" level course, and you can (for example) take a math class typically only offered to those a year ahead of you, and the logistics still work out. But there just aren't enough areas where progression rates are allowed to differ over a long period of time.
Convince people to vote for taxes that pay directly for education. Those towns that have good public schools are the ones that have citizens voting for these levies. This causes them to be desirable places to live, raising the cost of living there even more. But if you are willing to put the money into your schools, the investment you've made on your house will grow in turn, often disproportionately, as the value of your house raises.
Education is never good enough, especially public education. No matter how well the class is prepared, how much we study, how well trained the teachers, or what is focused on it can always be done better. Refining and improving educational methods is a continuously ongoing process which needs to be updated and evaluated constantly.
Public schools are limited by overcrowding and gross underfunding. Before we start talking about overhauling the existing system we might want to give thought to funding it adequately first. Teachers need all the help they can get if the quality of education is to rise. Outated textbooks, old computers, limited supplies for labs, budgets redirected to cope with lawsuits, 40 children to a class and woefully underfunded , dramatically overworked, councilors who can no longer sustain the will to care about their charges. While the suggestions in the previous article make good sense they are only one part of the problem.
Furthermore, the lack of attention to special needs and learning disabled students (me included) is severely lacking in most public education systems. All children learn differently and for those way out on the ends of the spectrum learning in a traditional fashion is difficult, frustrating, and only serves to drain enthusiasm and energy from the assigned task. There are alternatives which can be effective for these students, however they fail to appear in most of the public (and some private) schools I have attended or visited.
Normality is now: overrated.
Not kidding. Too many leeches are sucking money out of middle management, school boards, labour relations, building maintenance, etc etc etc. There is HUGE money in education, most of it has nothing to do with actually teaching children. There's probably an average of at least three ancilary staff to every teacher in the system, I have a feeling that number is 'way low.
To improve the situation you must first kill the leeches. Cut the budget in half at the local, provincial (state) and national level When the blood suckers get the message that their sinecure is down the tube, they will move on to greener pastures.
Ending all programs other than core scholarship wouldn't hurt either. Sports is supposed to keep you strong so you can study, not the reverse.
The best they the could do for education today is to fail the students that don't learn or can't do the material. Give them the chance to try again if they wish or give them an alternative path (different discipline, trades, whatever) but the basic truth is not everybody can do everything equally well. Allow students to figure out what they can do well and what they have trouble with. Then they can either choose to work harder on their problem subjects or focus on what they do well.
Passing a poor student just to spare his feelings really just robs him of getting the education he deserves while reducing the quality of education for everyone else (keeping things simple so everyone can pass).
You are joking, right?
I grew up in a rural area and more than a few parents there would have been more than happy to apply a "it were good enough for me so it'd be good enough for them" set of standards on their children. If the government hadn't forced the basics on them in their public schools the poor kids would have barely had a chance to succeed later when they were old enough to start making their own decisions.
Many of the parents I see now have children for less than ideal reasons. ("More kids a get me more welfare.) Much as I despise the way public education is run in my country right now I'm loathe to give too much power to the parents...
In China and India parents rely on their successful children to support them in their old age. In this country children are looked at as a luxury, and a source of liability, worry, and trouble, not as an investment. If parents were counting on their children to provide for them in their old age, I am sure you would see a lot more pressure coming from the parents to make sure their children were academically successful.
Do me a favor.
Go to your local junior high school. Find out which kids are doing well.
Now, find out which parents attended the last OPTIONAL parent teacher conference.
The two lists will be almost identical, I guarantee it.
When I was doing my student teaching (before I realized there were other things I wanted to do more than deal with administration in a school), we sent out some "invitations" to certain parents to come in because we needed to see them about their kids. Everyone else was told about the conferences but not specifically asked to come in. Only one parent showed up that I asked to come in. I talked with 11 other sets of parents who asked all sorts of questions about their students. And my answers were basically, "Your kid is wonderful. Want to raise some of the others, too?"
What students need is to be tought "how to learn", rather than the common "shove as much as you can into the student" method. Independent thought is not cherished in primary schools. Why must we promote "right" and "wrong" ways of thinking?
I think a return to older methods is in order. Teaching language by phonics, well known to be superior to the repitition method, is imperitive. We need to stop changing methods that work for the sake of change alone.
Getting parents to be more active in their child's education is either overlooked or misinterpreted today. Colonial schools REQUIRED basic arithmatic and reading skills before admission. I don't consider that too harsh.
When the school is left responsible to teach morality, sex ed, and life lessons with the methods that they use, you get what you deserve and SHOULD expect.
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I think notes should be put online for more classes. I agree for some things like liberal arts based ones, notes should be written, because it helps remember. But for some others like Physics and Mathematics, quickly scribbling down what the teacher is going over and understanding it at the same time isn't always possible. Documentation of how to do the homework is also helpful, because then it doesn't have to be gone over in class, and it still shows students how to do things they may have gotten wrong.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
This will probably be anathema to most Slashdotters, but I'd suggest that we strongly limit the user of computers in primary education (K-6). Have a lab, sure, and let kids use it if they want. But computers should not be an integral part of early education, because they do not encourage the kind of thinking patterns that children should develop.
Example: at the school where my mother works (as the school librarian) they routinely teach second graders to create PowerPoint presentations. This is completely ridiculous. PowerPoint, by its very nature, encourages summary rather than analysis. It forces you to reduce your topic to three or four bullet points per slide, which makes it all too easy to summarize a few high points while remaining completely unfamiliar with the bulk of the topic at hand.
Similarly, PowerPoint (and word processors, and basically every document-oriented program) makes it easy to worry almost exclusively about formatting instead of content. A report that takes 12 hours to prepare can easily wind up including four hours of research and eight hours of tweaking the layout and putting together fancy graphics.
Lastly, computers are purely visual and auditory experiences that make hard stuff easy. Kids need to have lots of experiences that engage ALL of their sense. That includes touch, taste, and smell as well, folks. I'm thinking of things like math manipulatives, finger paints, food projects (home made root beer, maybe). In the process, they need to learn to do stuff the hard way so that they're not completely dependant on the machine. It's easy to use computers as a substitute for learning basic math skills, for example. And hey, who needs to know how to spell when you've got a word processor that puts a squiggly red line under the incorrect words, and will even fix it for you if you just click a button or two?
For these reasons, I believe we should remove computers from elementary school curricula. They're doing more harm than good at that point. Computers will play an important role in later education -- say, starting in seventh grade -- but for the very early years, they're neither necessary nor helpful.
speaking for the american school system, there are far to many fingers to point. you can look at the social issues of school. its not 'cool' to be smart. i went to a rather poor/ghetto highschool and if you wanted to blend in, C's and D's was the place to be :).
you can look at the teachers. not even looking at the teachers that dont care about their students, but here is a nice fact about my school.
history class: taught by the soccer coach.
biology class: taught by the baseball coach.
typing class: taught by the football coach.
PROGRAMMING CLASS: taught by the basketball coach.
think any of them knew anything about what they were teaching?? hell no. i taught the programming class, and watched movies in the other classes. you also get teachers who one semester teaches math, another semester would teach english, etc etc. some teachers at my highschool had nothing more than an AA degree.
then you can look at the parents. i couldnt begin to count how many parents wouldnt care if their kid got an A or an F. hell, they wouldnt even know if they got an A or an F. too many parents out there dont really care if their children are doing well because it takes 'too much work' to check up on them, then when they do fail, they go run and yell at the teacher.
so i suppose if you touch up on any of those subjects, you are definitely going to improve the current american school system.
1. Take the politics out of the debate. Pledge of Allegiance, NCLB, vouchers...all of these miss the main point of schools, which is to educate. 2. Emphasize basic math skills early. If the kids can't count, then of course they'll fail an algebra class. And putting them in a remedial course (particularly when it's the school's fault) just makes them fall farther behind, because the class moves slower. 3. If a kid can't read or write, he or she shouldn't be past the 5th grade (exceptions for ESOL, of course, but students should be making progress in those classes as well to be allowed to move on.) 4. Fire any teacher who lets their own problems interfere with the students' learning. No questions asked. Teachers will have issues in their lives, but they should never be able to jeopardize their students' futures because of it.
I hate the one hundred and twenty character limit for signatures with an all-enveloping, all-destroying, incredible pass
A friend of mine explained to me that in his country being a teacher has far more kudos than it does in, say, the UK or the US. There's an immense respect there for those that educate the adults of tomorrow, greater than that felt for someone who runs their own business.
This situation is almost entirely reversed in several other places, where doing the most banal job but being able to say you're a self-employed businessman seems, paradoxically, far more prestigious. Somehow the teaching profession needs to be made to seem an attractive option once more.
1. Better parents.
2. Smaller class sizes.
3. Smaller schools.
4. Better teachers.
5. Less high technology more low technology. Have kids make STUFF.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Stop making kids read Shakespear!!!
My favorite part of Black Adder Back and Forth is when Black Adder travels back in time and pops Shakespear in the mouth while saying "This is for every schoolchild for the next 300 years!"
Possible replacement reading material? I dunno, maybe something with some good values? The Bible worked well for our forefathers. If you don't like the Bible, the Anarchist's Cookbook would be a good second choice:)
Puts a whole new meaning to "these children are our future," eh?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I got my early schooling in Europe and the difference I observed between my home system and the one in the US is the degree that parents get involved in their kids education. Many parents in the US do not follow their kids schooling on a daily basis. The parents are not engaged in working with their student-kids to ensure proper homework completion, fulfilment of reading assignments etc. This is typical of a society that relies on the mentality of customer service, i.e., I send my kids to school, I pay through the nose for that school, let the teachers do all the work, I just want to play softball/videogames with the kids when they are home.
Parents need to be more involved with their kids' education during the formative years of K-12.
At the same time I believe that we have seriously underestimated the value of liberal education and its gift of critical thinking. Students who learn to think critically do well in the professions and with their lifes. Students who learn how to attack a multiple choice test or accomplish a mechanical (repeatitive task) will not do so well.
The US is too large and diverse country so we cannot reasonably suggest a national curriculum but some convergence is necessary. As is a more sustainable model for funding public education.
We cannot have good teachers if what we pay is $30k a year. Graduates from good colleges, with good academic background will opt for a better job. Graduates from underperforming colleges will take those teaching jobs and they'll propagate their ignorance and incompetence to the next generation.
The size of the US makes any educational reform extremely challenging. Ireland has a superb public education system because it's easier to manage a national curriculum in a country of 4 million people where it takes no more 7 hours to drive across any direction of the land. Perhaps instead of a national US curriculum we could hope for state curricula. Such an approach, coupled with a sustainable funding model might yield positive results in 10-20 years.
That's the other part of the equation. Any investment now will not pay off for at least 10 years. No politician worth the pork fat on his hands will go for something like this, unfortunately.
If parents were made to, once again, trully responsible for the education of thier children there would be a rise in the quality. People have ceded their children's education to the government. It is all part of the myth that children really do not exist. Or exist partially when we want to play ball or go pick up the baby sitter... That has been my favourite part the baby sitter - it is really the best reason for going out.
Indoctrination. School is not designed to generate intelligent, critical thinking adults. It is designed to indoctrinate them to operate in a 20th century manufacturing environment. It makes sense to include as many as possible in an indoctrination regime, as the net effect is well behaving workers.
i am so very tired....
A syllabus would be a good start. Throughout all of my primary education, the only way I knew what I would be learning the next day was to look a few pages ahead in my text books. That didn't communicate to me what I was expected to come away with though. Give the students a syllabus that explains what they should take away from each quarter's worth of teachings in each subject.
A couple of things here...
First, public schools are *not* that bad. As they say it takes a community to raise a child, and as such, it takes a community to educate them as well. Breaking the public education system into self serving private schools ruins that notion.
Second, remove distractions from learning. This breaks down into a couple of areas.
- There should be cell phone jammers school wide. There is zero reason to have them on during class (especially with the damn text messaging!).
- Remove the massive pressure to standardized test (*cough* Texas) - stop teaching for the tests.
Third, have parents involved! God knows how many parents my friends (who are teachers) have seen that treat school as a baby sitter. Conversely have the parents recognize their children have strengths and weaknesses and are not always super brilliant rock stars. If little Jimmy can not form complex sentences as a 9th grader, having the parents scream at the teacher for Jimmy's bad grades won't solve a thing.
Finally, reevaluate teaching credentials. As one poster mentioned, if the teacher cannot form a coherent note to the parents then one might want to prevent him from tainting the children. (yes I said taint, get over it).
This, unfortunately, is all to true. Fortunately for me, our school had a State-sponsered breakfast and lunch program. The meals were so-so, but when your hungry anything looks good.
The worst thing we teach our kids in the US is that it's not okay to fail. This keeps them from trying things in new ways... it stifles innovation. Instead of punishing them for "failure" (a bad grade on an assignment, for example) a new system that encourages them to think independently, to think "outside the box" as it were, is needed to progress. All we learn through high-school is how to repeat random facts and tell the teachers what they want to hear. Pass the class and move on until graduation... sad
1.) Your and you're are completely different.
2.) To, too, and two are completely different.
3.) There, their, and they're are completely different (easily the trifecta of poor grammar).
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
Don't give kids calculators. It serves no imaginable purpose. When my sister asked me for help with her math in high school, she had gotten to the point where she was using the calculator to figure percents out of a hundred. (Since the college she attends doesn't require anything more than a "problem solving" course for BA degrees, she's that's all the math she'll ever get.)
Take out the fucking soda machines. What sort of system winds kids up with pound after pound of refined sugars, then makes them sits still, and drugs them if they can't?
Make sure they can read. It's honestly not that hard to teach kids to read. They make it harder than it has to be. This is a goddamn criminal shame.
Honestly, I can't think of a way to make it a less terrible place in the social sense. Kids are horrible, beastly animals. At least, I remember them that way.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Big 3 - UNIONIZED - poor performance
Teachers - UNIONIZED - poor performance
see the trend?
I guess I largely disagree with your second assumption. My recommendation is to spend less energy teaching kids "what they should know", and spend more energy helping kids decide what is important to them. I find people who have clear goals naturally figure out ways to learn the necessary skills; likewise, people without goals accomplish nothing despite any amount of training.
My ideal school would consist of a graduated series of "earning the right to choose your own path": start out with standard formal classes that teach basic math, communications, computers, etc. But by succeeding in these classes you earn more flexibility and self direction. The constant thrust of the program would be to encourage and reward proactive control over your own education, while formal structured education is provided as a saftey net for those who cannot.
The role of the teacher in the self-directed classes is less about "teaching" and more as a mentor -- serving as a resource to help kids figure out what to do, and how to do it. "Failure" is redefined to mean "not trying trying to succeed" (though some more objective metrics will be required to some degree).
Basically, I would like our schools to create self-directed, self-teaching students.
-david
'nuff said
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
And it is getting tougher and tougher to find people who even know the basics.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Sounds like cleaning house would be a more effective solution. Get rid of the management, get rid of the money going to the ancilary staff and redirect it towards the teachers and valuble supplies. One kills leaches by sprinkling salt on them, not by cutting the leg off.
Normality is now: overrated.
Nothing will make more of a difference. Make sure your child is challenged by what (s)he is reading. Engaging topics with far-reaching concepts.
To make it stick, compare it with modern events (where applicable). Compare 1984 or Paradise Lost with current goverment activities (patriot act).
Keep it fun too. Or they will quickly bore.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
When I was in grade school, my parents moved back and forth between California and Spain about every year, so I experienced both educational systems. The differences were profound.
When I was in 3rd grade in Spain, school got out at 5pm. Every child learned English (that subject was easy for me) and French. There were arts and crafts and there was recess, but mostly it was hard work. And every evening I had lots of homework and there was usually some kind of quiz to study for.
Every year I came back to California was a joke for me. Simply by virtue of having had the previous year's training in Spain, I was years ahead of my American classmates in Math, History, Science... and even English. I was always at the head of the class and I even skipped a grade.
Despite all this, I've always felt American schools gave me something that the Spanish schools did not -- creativity and independence. American graduates are not the world-wide leaders in science and technology, but they sure do seem to end up inventing an awful lot of it. I don't mean to flame or troll here (I'm Spanish/American), but I don't see a lot of hi-tech gadgets that were invented in Spain. A lot of stuff gets made elsewhere, but a lot of it was invented in America. (Again, no jingoistic pride intended here -- just simple and general personal observations.)
Our educational system is very badly broken and needs to be fixed. But we are doing something right.
My school required a 2.5 GPA for anyone wanting to participate in sports, clubs, etc. Raise this to 3.0, actually enforce it, and you'll see grades increase. Obviously grades aren't necessarily reflective of what the student is learning, but it's a good start.
An alternative school in Milwaukee started paying students to attend class. Their attendance went up significantly. Many people will oppose this, saying you're bribing kids, but at least kids will be in class. I'd rather have my tax dollars go toward this type of program than raising teacher salaries (which doesn't lead to better students).
This includes creative spelling, among other things. Phonics is a proven method... stick with it. If kids can read and spell, they'll have a much better chance of being able to learn on their own outside of school. They'll also be more likely to take up positive hobbies like creative writing.
Also, stop trying to get rid of sports and music programs. I was in many sports in high school, and it was definitely something that helped my studies and social skills.
Finally, grow a pair and take on the teacher unions. I have seriously considered switching to teaching as a profession and still think the teacher unions are complete BS. They always talk about taking care of the kids when state budgets are being planned, but they have yet to say "Ok... we'll pay $20/month toward our insurance like most people do... use the money that's saved toward actually EDUCATING the kids." The teacher union is a greedy organization that really needs a big dose of reality.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Music and health (=sex education) should be taught in the primary grades. Music very young helps with math and health is avoided culturally around here (USA).
Reading should be taught in the primary grades at the expense of everything else (above included).
Overall kids should be taught that learning is a lifelong project, and to not go to college if you're just passing time but to wait until there is a passion for a subject.
Teachers have to be valued more (paid more) but the political will for that will probably be lacking at least near term.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
"I have no experience of education outside the US, but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks. And it may always suck. However, what can we do to make it suck less?"
;-)
Put Microsoft in charge of it. Then it would blow.
*******
Seriously, I don't know how much can be done about it given the following laws:
1. All students learn in different ways. Some kids are really good at learning through books, while others don't really learn until they can experiment, make mistakes, and do it in a hands-on environment. As for now, there's usually a token hands-on moment buried within hours of by-the-book learning, so changing this would make it suck less.
2. Motivation and curiosity. I didn't care about biology or any of the hard sciences in K-12 because the classes were quite boring, and the teachers did nothing to make them anything less than boring. Since I couldn't go my own way in class, and didn't have the money to do cool stuff on my own time because of my own curiosity (I grew up poor), the sciences sucked in K-12. Make student curiosity, even for normally taboo topics like drugs or explosives, the primary driver for education and the classes will suck less. Of course, that will never happen since the general public is so fucking retarded, and the media reinforces it.
There's more besides those two, but they cover most of why K-12 sucks. If my chemistry/organic chemistry teacher in grades 11 and 12 had made classes that sucked in at least a little of my curiosity, and then taught why the periodic table of elements and their values were important after I'd been interested, I might have done better. Instead, we did very boring, by-the-book lab experiments and were graded on how well we memorized the PT element values.
I wish there were more Bill Nye the Science Guy teachers, and fewer like the ones I had.
Things that aid learning:
Learning by looking at examples, applications and practical labs which enable you to learn.
Feedback from assignments and access to solutions.
Better access to instructors.
Things that do not work:
Overloading students with obscene amounts of information that make them memorize information rather than understand it.
Lack of feedback from instructors.
Learning out of date material.
Getting taught by instructors with an ego problem.
Gettting taughts by instructors who had no professional conduct skills.
One of the saddest things in most English classes is that when you write essays, the instructors mark you based very sad criteria. And that in return doesn't really help you write good material. When I was in first year university, I came across this book called 'Logic and Complete Rethoric' which basically shows you how to structure your sentences etc. Maybe if I was taught that in school, I would be able to write better essays on my provincials.
5 years in Primary. 5 years in Secondary. Graduate at 16, plus two optional years if you want to go on to Uni. (Its basically the same system in Harry Potter)
Our system had many of the same problems as the American system. Grades were basically ignored, so you'd get promoted no matter what, so to offset this they make you take a huge exam in your last year in Primary School (to determine which High School you get to go to) and Secondary (supposedly to determine which subjects you were profecient in). I and most of my friends basically spent five years in High School, slacking off, cutting class and smoking weed and then 3 weeks trying to cram or scam 5 years of knowledge for the big test.
Add to that Corporal punishment. getting beaten 3-5 times a week for 11 years doesn't do much. You pretty much get used to the pain quickly and it stops being a deterent. I don't think I learned all that much in school, but there are schools where kids learn so what different about them?
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Whatever it is that makes for a better education, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the time you spend in school. My wife is from Uzbekistan (former Soviet republic) and the quality of her education seems much higher than the one I received. Yet, she only went to school from 8am to noon 5 days a week from the age of 7 til age 17. That's quite a difference from the typical age 5 to 18, 7:30am to 3pm we go through in the U.S.
And yes (to those who were going to ask), the length of the school year is about the same.
There are a whole variety of pedagogic techniques that are interesting and worth looking at, and most are little more than arranging deckchairs on the Titanic when we routinely allow class sizes to get above 30 kids.
At those sizes it's just not functional. You are doing someting, it's not really education as we know it.
For dramatic results, student-teacher ratios need to change dramatically.
"How dramatic do you mean?"
How about setting a "man on the moon" type national project that gets us to 15 students to a teacher in 10 years?
Expensive? Sure as hell is. However, I can think of very few better investments... Being stupid is certainly costing us a lot of money. For instance, I have no idea why democrats are hammering on national healthcare in this midst of our monumental education crisis...
Now of course, you take take any single idea like this and "poke a bunch of holes" in it. No, class size is not a panacea. There are lots of problems to address. Teacher quality. Performance metrics in general. Performance grouping. Discipline. But I think class size is worth focusing on rhetorically because it is probably the most significantly out of whack in most public education scenarios.
I say public because, quality secular private schools do not generally have this problem. The keep their class sizes in the 10-20 range - and some schools tout class sizes in the 5-10 range. Of course, this runs all the way to tutors for the ultra-wealthy...
New York City (HS dropout rate: 50%+) is planning on spending hundreds of millions on a new sports stadium. So here is how I would Stop the Stupid: put up a giant tent instead. And how many teachers does half a billion dollars buy?
Now, which do you think is better for the economy?
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IANAT, but it seems like the attitudes of "Why should I learn to spell, that's what I have spellcheck for" and "Why should I learn math, that's what I have a calculator for" are becoming more and more commonplace because its so easy to find the answers. It just seems like as children are not taught the value of learning and are instead taught how to use technology shortcuts. Granted, I am not saying that removing technology is the answer or that there even is a simple answer to this, but are we not continuing down a path that most people educated (in the US system anyway) will be completely reliant on technology to even function?
A typical high school student is in their classroom by default. Contrast this with college, where people applied to college and worked hard to get in. Or the workplace, be it a Wall Street firm or a McDonalds, where they are there to get paid. If a student screws around in the latter environments, they will get kicked out or fired. In High School, you have to commit the equivalent of a felony before one gets expelled. Combine this with well intentioned but detrimental policies that provide schools with funding based on attendance; the purpose of school administrators becomes ensuring that attendance figures are up. Once kids are in the classroom, properly babysat, nothing else matters.
The result of this "default" is that you have people that are sixteen years old and are just screwing around, because they have never been in a situation where any more has been expected of them. This is a new phenomenon; a couple hundred years ago, the same person would probably be farming wheat or whatever so that their family doesn't starve. When you examine coming of age rituals in various cultures, they are typically at ages younger than most high school students. A good example is Jewish Bar Mitzvahs (sp?), done at the age of a middle schooler today.
I'm sure that teenagers hundreds of years ago have always been just as surly and brash as they are now, but the difference is that they have been in a sink or swim environment. Compare this with today, where unless you really screw up, you are going to end up with a high school diploma; the same diploma whether you were a braniac or a loser.
The sad result of this situation is that people screw around until they graduate from high school, and are suddenly thrust into a very unforgiving world and then wish that they didn't screw up. For such people, life becomes a choice between flipping burgers for the rest of their lives or joining the military. I personally know many such people; some are now in Iraq.
High schools in the USA need to jettison their current babysitting role and refocus on education. This can be done by doing the following.
- Stop bending over backwards to keep attendance figures high. If a student doesn't want to be in a classroom, then thats their problem.
- Make it easier for teachers to kick disruptive students out. It should be like college; the teacher should just have to say "Get out", and the people in question should have to leave.
- Make it easier for students to drop out, and come back. If a student doesn't feel like they get much from education, let them sample the life of a high school drop out. A few months of flipping burgers may change their mind, after which they can come back. I'd rather see a child do this at 15, and have a chance at coming back and going to college, than do make the realization at 19.
- Instead of having a year long class schedule, it should be a half year cycle. That shortens the above cycle, and allows the classes to be fewer in number while having more depth, like college.
Whenever I bring things like this up, people usually say "Kids don't know whats good for them, they cannot handle the responsibility". My counterargument is that kids need to learn responsibility, and they cannot from the current system.Gramer, spling and typink skilz are far overated intodays internet age. basicly if you cn reed what is typd then it iz gud enuf. Much better then wasteing our time lerning a bunch of stuf we dont need no more.
Even grate skolers have known this for yeers as u can see:
http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm
I attended catholic school, and in 8th grade (circa 1992), we were diagramming sentences. I haven't met a single other person under 50 that has even heard of such a thing.
r ams2.stm
The point is that most people have very poor grammar, even if they think they're just fine.
For the curious, here's the first link I found on Google.
http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/diagrams2/diag
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Eliminate private education. A bit radical (good luck getting it done). But I don't think that many people in power have their children in the public education system (granted, that is an assumption on my part, please correct me if I'm wrong). If you don't give them the option of "saving" their own flesh and blood from the terrors of public schooling, then I'm sure we'd see a dramatic increase of interest to improving it. I'm sure it would get done. I think this would help on many fronts.
in my opinion, the education system does need alot of help. as others have said, the 'everyone gets a medal' idea is a complete joke. its an education system, not a feel good system. alot more emphasis needs to be put on teaching people proper sentence structure and spelling. it should be about helping kids to get their ideas across clearly, not "ok little sally you need to put a capital letter there, and a semi colon there." having spent many times a day with a person who speaks, and you have to consicously try to unscramble their thoughts that made it too quickly to their mouth, i tend to lean away towards perfect written grammar. its all about the words you use, and making your point, not "hey i can use capital letters, use excess punctuation and big words." on the other hand, my perspective is a little skewed, im an ircop on a few small nets, and i dont mind peple not capitalizing everything (in fact i dont use them myself) but its a royal pain in the backside, and one of my personal annoyances when someone goes "zomg wtf can u hlp me plz" or something. lazyness is not the key to success.
If you're serious, I'll continue this thread.
I'm a third generation educator. I not only know what it is now, but by the stories handed down to me, I know what it was then.
There are three groups of people involved with educating children; Educators, Students, and Parents. All three have to be involved, one group cannot do it alone.
Trade schools have a place, after secondary education requirements have been met.
Parents that don't get involved with their childs education are only fooling themselves, and create a burden for the rest of us to support. Teachers that teach behind a podium, or a desk are not teaching, its not the students fault. Children that never apply their knowledge in the community in which they live in never get an intrinsic value of their knowledge, they need that chance to acquire constructive feedback of what they have learned.
I would suggest an elementry course in bio-statistics; It will help put your future results into perspective.
The first problem is the seniority (tenure) system. Smart, creative, energetic young teachers are being laid off due to budget cuts in favor of teachers whose sole qualification seem to be the depth of indentations their butt cheeks leave in the chair because they've been sitting there so long. As a result, there aren't many smart, creative, energetic young teachers who will stick around for another try; they'll put their talents to work elsewhere.
Second problem: the incredibly sorry level of education of the teachers themselves. Years ago, teachers were expected to be skilled in at least the subjects they were teaching; many were skilled in multiple disciplines. Today, my son has to argue with his high school English teacher that "disingenuous" and "disingenious" are two different words -- and she gets angry at him and flatly states he's wrong. But then, she also enjoys eating "watermellon" [sic] Jolly Ranchers candies.
That still doesn't stop her from flunking him out of English. And this is a kid who scored a 6 (very rare high score) on a state writing assessment test.
The problem, he says, is that the system is used to crank out individuals who are ideally situated to perform in the corporate world with minimal thought dedicated to the overall system and its implications, both to ourselves as well as to the general socioeconomic structure of the nation and the world.
I've had the benefit of taking courses in "traditional" settings. What do I mean by "traditional"? Well, the classes that I have taken have been centered on the knowledge itself, with no tests, no benchmarks, no attendance. Students are expected to take what they can and utilize it to further themselves.
The obvious complaint, of course, would be that unmotivated students would not be interested in this form of class and would actually do worse than in the present system. One must ask, however, how much of the current lack of motivation is driven by the absolute nonsense of school system.
Take, for example, the punishment system. Gatto speaks about an early 1900's book (prior to current method of schooling) that outlines the very structures of our current schooling method. In this book, punishment is used to whip children into unquestioning obedience that slowly drains the child of any inquisitiveness. Hall passes are used to isolate freedom of movement, random shifting of students and assigned seating keeps students from interacting in positive ways.
For those of you who are interested, I would recommend the discourses of JT Gatto, (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/). He doesn't necessarily provide answers, but does outline the problems quite well.
As for possible solutions, I feel that more independence needs to be given to children, so that they can succeed or fail with direct knowledge of the impact of such success or failure. Home-schooling goes a long way in providing this, by allowing a child to pursue areas of study that interest him and allow him to grow as much as possible.
Another aspect that needs to be reintroduced is the study of classical texts, which have carried a strong tradition of rhetoric and stylized writing. If you have every sat with someone skilled in these two fields, you will know why.
enough writing; back to studying, lol
Yes, you've correctly identified the primary problem in all of this. Once you get kids to think that being smart is cool then all other problems melt away. Kids would be sufficiently motivated to find ways around bureaucratic and financial roadblocks. There are many different ways to learn. But how you make being smart cool is not at all clear. One idea is to look at how the asian countries do it. In countries like China and Korea, being intelligent is considered very enviable. I think Japan used to be that way but I fear that American influence has caused them to lose sight of that fact.
Another idea is to encourage competitivism in the academic arena just like it is encouraged in sports. I think this approach has significant merit. When I was in high school, my calculus teacher used to post the scores for the tests on the wall. It motivated me to be at the top of the class and beat everyone else. But I suspect there is increasing pressure on teachers not to do such things for fear of alienating students who aren't among the top 5. Years later when I headed off to grad school in mathematics, I wrote my high school teacher a letter telling him how effective that approach was for me personally. I encouraged him to continue to the practice in spite of any objections he might face. And I'm sure in this day and age, any teacher that would do such a thing would get plenty of complaints. But why should that be? Sports heros regularly gloat when they score a touchdown. This seems tame compared to that.
A third approach is for the mass media as a whole to change. Several people here at slashdot have pointed out in past articles that TV and movies always feature a hero that solves problems largely with muscles or guns instead of brains. They may have a side-kick who can hack into a mainframe or search for clues, but in the end it's the bravery and testosterone of the hero that saves the day. The villains are usually the brainy ones and films play on the latent anti-intellectualism and fear of being outsmarted to get the audience to immediately hate the bad guy. Yes, I'm sure we can come up with exceptions to these rules and cite movies or TV shows where the hero can actually think, but by an large the media -- which has such an impression on the young -- is continuing to feed the anti-intellectualism of this country especially. If Hollywood were to turn things around and show being intelligent as something admirable, that might solve a lot of the problems right there.
These are just ideas and I don't claim that any of them are the answer. I agree wholeheartedly with the parent about the underlying cause. But it's been with us for several decades now. Finding a solution that can be implemented will not be easy.
GMD
watch this
The shucking of responsibility.
My suggestion is to bring back caning. Then everyone's solution wouldn't be that it's everyone else's problem.
What is music when you despise all sound?
You need to separate good students from the less intellecual ones, and not just by putting them in different classes (which usually does a great job at keeping the less intelligent students on the bottom).
/. readers can start working on a teaching A.I. around those ideas. Maybe computers ARE the future of education...
Start making classes adapted to the level of the students, if necessary by creating 'upgraded' and 'dumbed down' classes. Just because someone is less intelligent doesn't mean they have to suffer bad grades; school should instead attempt to find areas where those students are better, and insist teaching in those. This will both make career choosing easier and insure that everyone gets an education that is most adapted to their talent level.
School does not have to be boring - or too hard.
Maybe some of the
The primary problem with public education is that it is not designed to educate its citizens or encourage free-thinking - it is designed to socialize people and provide basic functional skills.
If you look at it from within this framework, public education does exactly as it is intended to do. Pointing out that it does not educate people well is besides the point - like stating that cars don't make good boats.
If you really wanted to educate people, you would look at places that train people to do specific functions (culinary schools, astronaut training, conservatories, special forces, etc.), research environments (Los Alamos, Bell Labs, etc.), pedagological approaches used for particular exceptional individuals (John Stuart Mill) or institutions (Army's After Action Review) and compare them to general environments that encourage critical thinking (graduate courses in a meaningful program with an interdisciplinary focus).
You would likely find commonalities such as: high standard for entry into the program, specialization (either in subject or methodology), small class size, hands on learning, exceptional teaching staff and support, adequete resources and so forth would be standard and then you would get more variability out from there.
However, all of this is a moot point if you are primarily interested in socialization. Independent, critical thinking on a mass scale is undesirable unless you build in ways for individuals to temper thinking with the ability to communicate well, ability to take criticism of ideas and even personal criticism, the ability to empathize with others, etc. Most people simple aren't to this kind of challenge.
So, it is easier just to socialize and let us all move along - those that can get educated despite their education can do so. Everyone else can point to their degrees and pat themselves on the back.
When we pay teachers as much as rock stars we will have our priorities correct.
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When people say our public schools suck, on what basis are they going on? Some BS standardized test? Their own view of it? What the media says? I'm yet to figure this out. Every student is offered the same curriculum in a school...it is up to the student to choose their own priorities. A great student can go to a low-end school and a crappy student can go to a great school. This holds true in elementary, high school, and college. You can't tell me there are no morons in the Ivy League (remember, W went to one of them) and there aren't great minds in community colleges. None of that matters to what the student gets from his or her education. This whole "public education sucks" thing is a joke.....sounds like a bunch of old folks saying how much better it was in their days. You know, I bet your parents thought they were better, their parents thought they were better, and so on. Schools are what they are. If you don't like it, home school your kids or move somewhere else. Or, how about this....pay some attention to your kids education, help them fill in the gaps that you see in their school, and get them away from the damned TV.
IMHO one difference between the American Public educational system and that of other countries like France (I'm a product of the French Public Education myself) is the way it is funded. As long as rich areas fund their public schools, and poor inner-city areas fund theirs, the chasm or disparity between school districts is enormous. This only tends to reinforce or magnify differences due to socio-economic factors. So making the funding available at a federal level should bring up public education in the US. Another improvement might take the form of better salaries to teachers. So instead of spending more money on computerising the classrooms, more money would be spent on keeping the best teachers in schools. And finally, a third possible improvement which would need the first two to succeed, would be to teach kids along the ways THEY understand best, and not the ways THEIR TEACHERS were taught. What I'm talking about is separating students based on their dominant sense: auditory (hearing), visual, or kinesthetic (physical, hands on). Disclaimer: the French (like any country's) public schools are not perfect but they are different. So copying the good aspects from them (or others) might just do the trick.
1. Pay teachers enough to get bright people to compete for teaching jobs. I'm not saying that today's teachers aren't bright, but for someone skilled and charismatic to go into teaching is an act of charity considering teachers' salaries.
n e-else's-children" fuck-ups fail to understand that well-educated children are a boon to the whole nation.
2. Smaller classes, with more mobility for students of varying degrees of ability. Get the problem kids into a class where they get more attention without detracting from the classroom experience of others.
Of course, this is all very expensive, and will never happen as long as these libertarian "why-should-I-spend-my-hard-earned-money-on-someo
http://www.schooloftomorrow.com/
/.ers will be offended becuase it is based on the Bible, but I've found the format to be the best of the various learning formats I've seen. Everyone works at their own pace and the system encourages students to learn to set goals and then work to acheive them.
I realize that many
Of course as others have said, there's a lot more to it, and unfortantly becuase of all the different bias's that are out there, there will never be a "perfect" education system.
Starting in about 7th or 8th grade, let students(I am in high school) study subjects we are interested in.
If I had been given to study computer programming with competent teachers(which I haven't had) from 7th or 8th grade, I think I could code some excellent stuff, and I would be interested in what I am doing in school. While core materials are important, I really don't give a shit about taking spanish, or learning so much about the mesopotamians.
Schedules should contain 2 classes in subjects which you have chosen and are interested in, and 4 other "core" classes, which would be shorter and assign less work.
Also, classes need to move at the pace of students, even if it makes some kids feel bad. Smart kids should go in faster classes, and stupid kids in slower classes. Three levels of difficulty is not enough, as in advanced programming, we spent an entire class on the structure of the for loop. Basic control structures, such as loops, if statements and other things ended up taking an entire week, when I had tought myself during the summer such things in one hour with a book.
Give kids material that they are interested in, and we will learn. But spare us the shit please. Oh, and get rid of gym class, its a waste of time.
Mod Wisely.
My sociology class was probably one of the best opportunities I've had to critically consider educational issues. I have private and public high school teachers among my friends, as well as professors at some good universities, and many of our conversations seem to involve several points:
- behind-or-so-wed-like-to.html
- community-war-on-poverty.html
* Lack of parent participation in the child's learning process
* Lack of learning resources for teachers to draw on
* Overburdened teachers
* Teacher's unions protecting bad teachers, and providing no incentives for good performance
* Emphasis on rote learning (especially with standardized testing, instead of taking the backgrounds of the students into consideration, and developing critical thinking abilities
Good books I read for this class:
Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
--Discussed about how a lack of funding, and perhaps more importantly, a lack of consideration for a multicultural classroom setting, is hampering the learning abilities of lower socioeconomic status students.
The Freedom Writers Diary
--An aggregation of diary entries from a teacher and students of mixed socioeconomic status, and how literature motivated all of them to rise to the challenge of varying personal problems and go beyond the expectations of parents and school administrators. Of note: an interesting mention of support for the Freedom Writers program by John Tu, one of the founders of Kingston Technology.
I'd be amiss not to mention John Dewey, an American educational reformer who was seen as quite the rebel in his day. Much of his work we take for granted as good educational practice now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey
I ended up writing two essays for this class:
Why the NCLB won't work:
http://petelee.blogspot.com/2005/02/no-child-left
Education & The War on Poverty
http://petelee.blogspot.com/2005/03/education-and
Have a highschool entrance exam. The top 75% of scorers gan attend a public high-school the other 25% should go get jobs or attend a private high-school. Every year there after you cut the bottom 25%. The top 75% of Highschool graduates get scholoarships to public universities.
Am I the only one that read that as "Improoving edukayshun ?"
No wonder kids have attention spans in the tenths of seconds. That's what they're getting fed.
what can we do to make it suck less?
Turn the entire school system over to Microsoft and tell them that it's a vacuum cleaner?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I taught an undergrad Astronomy discussion section at KU in 1989. The professor, Dr. Steven Shawl, set up the course structure to be one of Mastery Learning.
In the Mastery Learning method, the emphasis is on making sure the student has a completely solid understanding of a subject before moving on to the next subject. The point of this is to prevent the common situation (in my schooling, at least) of learning something and promptly forgetting it 10 minutes after the final exam.
In the mastery learning world, once you've mastered something, typically you've committed it to long term memory, understand the implications of things such that you can predict outcomes, etc.
Learning = Knowledge + Conceptual
There are two types of learning - concrete and theoretical. Concrete learning is memorizing facts; theoretical learning is understanding how those facts fit together. Different people learn differently; some naturally do one or the other more.
Montessori method focuses on inspiring people to learn the topics and subtopics that are the most interesting to them personally, tailoring the lesson plans to the individual student.
IIRC (from reading done on this and looking into it for my kids) Montessori students are, like home schooled students, often prone to difficulty adapting to highly structured learning environments. However, despite any adaptation problems, students tend to have much higher test scores.
I believe the mastery learning and Montessori teaching methods both touch on a common theme - avoiding the Open-brain-stuff-info-close-brain scenarios so common in American classrooms. The one-test-a-year methods of non-US school systems ironically provide more opportunity for mastery, because you can't "cram for the test" if you're cramming for 12 tests at the same time that demand a cumulative year's worth of knowledge. The downside to the once-a-year concept is the WAY HIGH pressure it places on students. I would wonder if the suicide rate in different countries correlates with testing standards...
Regardless, I'm a big fan of mastery learning because I saw what a great job it could do in helping our students have fun with the material and really gain confidence in themselves in the process.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Before I attract the flame wars of people telling me not everyone has a 'mom' and a 'dad' at home/they're busy working two jobs etc... ...I know...but if we want to improve education, parents must take ownership and internalize what is truly important.
If it is education, so be it. If it is playing the lotto every week, kids will pick up on that too.
My point is, kids are mostly the product of their parents. If parents value education AND internalize it...there will be likely outcomes that the child(ren) will be successful in education.
I'll use myself as an example. My father is a talented artist and my mother, in finances. I turned out to be interested in the arts (although not talented at all --but that's probably a different discussion) and a financial guru (by most standards).
Now, growing up, my parents realized a problem...I don't have a strong grounding of the language arts. I received poor grades in English and related subject areas; I fell behind in literature class.
My parents stressed that English is very important, just like math and the arts. BUT, they themselves, placed no personal value in reading or literature. Imagine saying to your kid that you should read a book, then promptly flicking on the TV. My folks never read a book in their life.
And I am pretty much the same. I read all the time. /. Trade journals for work. The NY Times and WSJ front-to-back everyday. But novels and literature. I average about 1 book per year. Seriously. And it isn't because I don't have the free time
Pay.
Teachers.
More.
Let me add one more word:
Duh.
-Tom
I love when all the idiots line up to tell me how badly I'm doing my job.
I would never walk into an operating room and critique the surgeon BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I'M TALKING ABOUT.
The major problem with education today is the assumption that non-educator school board members and groups of parents think they have useful input. This is rarely the case.
More often they simply criticise, demand results, and fail to provide resources to acheive the desired outcome.
As soon as I hear someone lucidly discuss the need for REAL expertise, from REAL educators, as opposed to ridiculous assumptions based on ignorance and arrogance, then I'll listen.
They definitely need it.../A
Teach your own children. Public education is one of the pillars of communism.
Now go ahead and mod me down for being conservative on slashdot, but if you look at many historical figures often associated with being intelligent, forward-thinking, and innovative, many of them were taught by their parents or self-taught.
Think about yourselves. How many of you that are programmers actually learned programming in school?
I just have to tell you, Shepherd Book, that that was an unusual good question for Ask Slashdot... most of them really suck. And not only did you ask a question that is interesting, but you pre-emptively got rid of a lot of the 'junk' answers we would have seen in the discussion at the same time. Kudos.
Too bad the editors don't post more content like this more often.
Comment of the year
Open Source it.
-Peter
... that you're full of bullocks.
The education system in this country, just like every other system in this country, has its high points and low points, its good members and its poor members. To make a blanket statement that ALL of it is poor quality is to only illustrate your own lack of qualification and necessary mental faculties to discuss the topic. Now, let's try to actually have a productive discussion...
There are good teachers out there and there are bad teachers out there, and while the good teachers should definitely be rewarded you also shouldn't allow a single whiny parent to ruin a teacher's career, or for a poor teacher to give away the good grades that will get them a promotion. Basically, the problem doesn't have an easy answer and any solution will require constant attention and updates. But the teachers are only a part of a larger system, and it too has similar problems. And the education system is part of an even larger system, and it too...
You get the idea. If you're convinced that the education system is so desperately in need of reform then I'd propose that the FIRST question to answer is what exactly do we want it to do? I frequently see knee-jerk reactions to what teachers are and aren't doing for the country's children, and more often then not I have to ask what happened to the parents? So much of what people criticize teachers for not teaching is something that should have been learned in the home long ago. In MY personal experience one of the biggest problems with the school system today are lazy students. Students who do their best to refuse the education that is being offered to them, if only they will take it.
To get back on topic, to say that everything about the education system sucks or is broken is to grossly misunderstand the solution, which I can confidently say having been educated by the public school system, being currently educated by the public university system, working in the public education system for 7 years, and having parents who have worked in the public education system for over a combined 40 years.
Just my pet peeve.
Unfortunately from what I'd seen just a short 4 years ago in highschool (years 9 through 12), the mindset wasn't to learn all you can amongst the students. The current 'thing to do' is to make as many friends as you can and become as 'cool' or 'popular' as you can in the short time that you are there. I have to absolutely agree with previous poster on paying teachers by performance. At the educating facility where I attended 4 years, even the teachers were so absorbed in this that some students would get passing grades just for showing up and giving the educators someone to talk to about topics way off of what should have been taught. Students choosing courses related to their interests and moving towards their goals would come around more quickly if there were a way to embed the realization that they only get 4 years to catch up to the rest of the world into their minds. If not this fact, then to somehow help them want to learn all they can. Give them the opportunities as was said by another poster to do things like shop class, music, art, automotive. And FFS, give them the chance to go through these classes if not for a whole year then for just long enough to see if it sparks their interest. Aside from what public education can do for you or your children, what can you do for public education? I can't believe how many students were given small businesses by their parents or given 30 thousand dollar vehicles by their parents for barely passing marks. To this day, I show up from time to time at the schools I graduated from and try to inspire those who have a passion for what they do because honestly, greatness comes from passion. When I think about it, I realise that if I don't help others learn now then who is going to be teaching to my children? Is it going to be someone who barely made it through school and the public school system picked them up because they needed a teacher? Not if I can help it. The world is advancing leaving generations upon generations to play 'catch-up'.
You can read the article here.
Since most of us wont bother, I take the liberty to cut_and_paste some of what I found relevant here.
When I moved to Queens, in New York City, at the age of 14, I found myself, for the first time in my life, considered good at math. In Bombay, math was my worst subject, and I regularly found my place near the bottom of the class rankings in that rigorous subject. But in my American school, so low were their standards that I was - to my parents' disbelief - near the top of the class. It was the same in English and, unexpectedly, in American history, for my school in Bombay included a detailed study of the American Revolution. My American school curriculum had, of course, almost nothing on the subcontinent's freedom struggle. I was mercilessly bullied during the 1979-80 hostage crisis, because my classmates couldn't tell the difference between Iran and India. If I were now to move with my family to India, my children - who go to one of the best private schools in New York - would have to take remedial math and science courses to get into a good school in Bombay.
I remember that a family friend of mine, a vicar who lived in CA for almost six years, had to send both of his daughters to private tuition when they reached India, because both of them struggled like hell to catch up with the rest of the class, despite being honor students here.
I am not suggesting that the education system here is crap. But they seriously need to start comparing with the rest of the world, if they want to compete with the rest of the world, especially when it comes to Jobs.
Rapid Nirvana
If teachers strike, replace them with some of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed IT workers who are (usually) self-taught and have at least some literacy (although Slashdot posters often show less rather than more of this).
Most IT folks have some idea of the disastrous consequences of what many teachers might consider an extremely minor mistake; say adding a / and a " " to the beginning of arguments of an rm -rf command.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Public schools need to teach what really matters: how to survive, thrive, and prosper in our civilization.
They need to teach how to think well.
They need to teach math at least up to calculus by graduation. They need to teach how to solve math problems without the aid of an electronic calculator.
They need to teach how to use a variety of computing devices: electronic calculators, slide rules, and the abacus. Batteries go dead a lot more often than slides or beads break.
They need to teach how to read: magazines, newspapers, Shakespeare, Twain, contracts, and most importantly their own diplomas.
They need to teach how to write: essays, reviews, stories, journals, proposals, critiques, complaints, and well-formed solutions.
It's amazing how frequently the skills of Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic need to be used: how transparent those skills are when applied well, and how obviously lacking they are when applied poorly.
They need to teach basic history. Our own state and federal governments are in danger of repeating the mistakes that drove us to rebel against the mightiest empire the world has ever seen and found this still-great nation of ours.
They need to teach basic geography. New Mexico is one of the Fifty, bordered by Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, and on the Four Corners by Utah. New Mexico is not a third-world country somewhere in South America.
They need to stop teaching that 2+2 may equal 5 if the answer 4 hurts anyone's feelings, poor insensitive clods.
They need to stop teaching that everything happening to the environment is bad, and that it's always Man's fault, even the things that happened before Man existed.
They need to stop teaching material that is impossible to apply in daily life and stop neglecting to teach material that will turn children into self-sufficient, well-to-do adults.
In short, public schools need to teach what most private schools have taught for the longest time, and what public schools used to teach before political correctness throttled our education system.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
Corrective measure: Eliminate public education, allowing parents to choose the schools to which their money goes, thereby permitting competiton in the educational market. If monopolies tend to provide poor value, why do we trust a government-mandated monopoly with the future of our children?
"The Underground History of Education" by John Gatoo is a great place to look. I don't agree with all the points it makes, but it does make them well.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
1: Year-round schooling The need for students to be off for the summer to help on the farms is long over. A tremendous amount of time is lost each year as the teachers have to re-teach the students everything they learned the previous year in the first couple of weeks of the new term. A greater sense of continuity would, I feel, foster a more positive attitude towards learning, since the cessation of learning for several months wouldn't be rewarded with good weather and largely unrestricted free play time.
2: Increased teacher pay This one always hits a nerve for fiscal conservatives, but let's take a quick look at the relative disparity of pay involved in the teaching world. According to salary.com, for my area the mean salary range for a high school teacher is between $39.6k and $58.8k (the median salary of $50k reflects about 15 years' experience). A similarly experienced training specialist, on the other hand, can expect to make between $68.2k and $87.3k, with the median salary (similar years of experience) running around $76.9k. Given these disparities and the exceedingly low entry-level pay for teachers (especially in economically distressed areas!), it's no wonder that all the good teachers decide to go into the private sector.
There are plenty of other things that can be done, from a shift in subject emphasis, to more extensive early-education, to the abolition of "age-based" or "social" graduation, to various funding and administration schemes (there's one that's being used in Seattle to good effect, from what I hear; personally I feel that funding should be determined state-wide and administered locally... dependence on local property taxes simply means that schools in already economically distressed areas are never funded sufficiently). I would posit, though, that the two issues I've put forth are fundamental problems that need to be addressed in the public school system before anything else can even be realistically addressed.
That green slime had it coming.
just a moment ago.
v es04Mar05-04.html
'Super kids' about Brian, Michael and Mendel. I recommend it highly.
http://www.cbc.ca/roughcuts/feature_110304.html
http://www.jewishbulletin.ca/archives/Mar04/archi
I wished I had recorded it. It had some good list between scenes. Like 'A kid is a gift to his parents but not all kids are gifted' '1\100 000 has iq over 120, 1\ 1000 000 has iq over 140' 'even talented kids need more support' etc. Has anyone written these down?
The saying goes,
"Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he can eat for a lifetime". Well, this analogy doesn't work if the man doesn't want to learn.
You cannot expect a person to learn, if they do not desire the knowledge. All the money, gimmicks and tricks will have no effect on grades, if the children don't want to learn.
Therefore, the FIRST item to improve education is to develop a fire inside them for learning... and to kick the children out of class that don't want to learn. Change legislation so they can get a minimum wage job... let them work that for a year or so... I believe that will change their attitude about education.
And concerning all the 'Grammar Nazi' folks out there, The English language is an EVOLVING language therefore the rules should be flexible NOT stagnant! Look at Latin... if you keep on in your fervered quest to make every speak/write like you... well, I believe that will be the end of the lanuage. I guess I'd just have to start speaking Common, Basic, or Klingon.
Look at all the creative authors you would have edited out of existance. ee cummings poetry anyone? Would you "revise" the works of Shakespeare to make them modern? I say you would destroy all modern written works if you do not turn from your folly.
So, don't focus on the grammar tree so much... instead see the Language Forest that it lives in.
1.) I was educated k-12 in a private school system and during one summer took a class at my local public school and was horrified at the lack of discipline. In a private school after you were disciplined 3 times for the same thing you were expelled. So perhaps its time we have 2 levels of public schools; one 'standard' school and one school for those who get expelled from the standard school. Send these few trouble making kids to a more strict school and let the rest who want to learn stay at the standard school.
:)
2.) The food in these public schools is awful! How can you start your day with pop and candy and be expected to concentrate? If you have ever seen the documentary Super Size Me, it gives a great example of a school whose students (supposed troubled students) were served only healthy food and they had a wonderful success rate with less discipline problems. And the cost of the healthy food was just about the same as a standard unhealthy public school lunch program.
3.) Stop letting these councilors drug up the kids. When my niece was about 8 the councilor told my sister my niece had A.D.D. and she was going to prescribe riddlin for her. My sister took her to 2 different doctors for opinions and was told that my niece in no way had A.D.D. She was told by one of doctors that many of the schools had begun pushing riddlin on parents to make the overcrowded classrooms easier to handle with overly passive kids.
**Even thought abolishing public schools isn't an option, there is something to be said for private schools. I was taking to a friend of mine from India and over there all most all the schools are private. The few that are public he said were terrible and only the troublemakers went there. Just a thought.
I've got a real issue with people who make statements like this.
My public education was great. I worked hard, learned everything I wanted to, went into college placement classes, finished a year early and then finished college in the major I wanted on scholarships and got the job I wanted.
If our system "sucks" so much, why are there SO many successful people who went through the system?
There's a simple answer. The system is only as good as the people using it. If parents want to throw their kids in daycare, both work full time, and don't take an interest in a childs education, it WILL suck.
Education in the US doesn't suck. Our culture sucks. Geeks and intelligent kids get mocked. Kids who skip grades and push ahead are ostracized not just by their peers but by their peers parents as well.
Parents at home don't push their kids to do their share of work. Parents don't take an active role in their kids education! Why aren't you trying to learn a langauge at home, for fun, with your children? Why aren't you meeting the teachers and getting their year long lesson plan? Why aren't you teaching them on the side?
Why can Indian, Mexican, Chinese, and other cultures come to our country and go through OUR schools, and come out on top?
It isn't the government's job to educate your children. It's yours. I'd wager you've checked your 401k on a more regular basis than you sit down and help your kid with their homework, or even thought about the pace of their learning.
I won't even go into divorce and dual custody, daycare, and parents both working after a kid turns 3 months old. Likewise I won't talk about IQ and breastfeeding, or any of the other issues that plague this country.
Stop being a victim and realize YOU are to blame. Not your kids, or your government.
What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible?
Clearly there are excellent schools, just as there are crappy schools. Since at least one excellent school exists, the solution to the problem is trivial, copy that school.
I choose to interpret the question thusly:
What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible for everyone?
Society cannot make great schools for everyone if the elite/policy makers can opt out of the system and send their children to private schools.
By abolishing private schools, parents who can make a difference in the public schools would make a difference in the public schools because that's where there kids would be.
I believe that teachers work longer than normal hours. Also, the burn out level is quite high. Thus the months off are required.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
They need to read books, litereature, histroy, etc.
What...the....hell? I could have sworn we were just having a conversation on literacy..
--- What
Precision Teaching is a method - or perhaps a metamethod - of teaching that is scientifically based and has been proven very effective repeatedly, including in federal studies. I also think it would appeal to many /.ers - it appeals to me as an engineer. It is basically about rewards, feedback loops and good measurement. I go into much more detail below, including a significant bibliography. PT is one area of Behavioral Psychology.
/.
/. Consider the following a draft (and a darned long post) The bottom is a large number of (possibly better written) links. These links include three functioning schools. To my knowledge all receive some public funding via students who transfer there when the public system can't help them.
I believe PT is the most definitively and scientifically successful system, but there are other highly successful systems (such as Direct Instruction) The differences in success between these systems are much smaller than the benefit of using any of them.
Unfortunately, the systemic problems with our education system are much bigger than this. When very successful teaching methods are demonstrated they are usually dismantled to be more "fair" - mostly more fair to other teachers, not students. Any very significant success like this is too much like proof that the current system is deficient, and anyone making those decisions has a lot invested in the current system - and a lot of blame for its failure.
Interestingly, it seems as though the rise of Austism is increasing the visibility of effective teaching methods. In very rough terms, "normal" children learn a lot of stuff even if you teach pretty badly, and children with some disorders have a very hard time learning in any method.
Roughly, children with moderate Austism disorders learn well if taught very well and learn very poorly if not taught very well. So the success of these children seems to provide a good measure of the capability of an educational system.
Note: the above paragraph paints some very, very broad strokes. It most certainly does not apply to all cases, etc. It's what I could fit in a paragraph. This is
In a "normal" population the highest correlated success factor is economic level of the neighboorhood - no matter WHAT goes on in the school. In a rich enough neighboorhood, the parents apparently get tutors.
Regardless, Precision Teaching based methods have been used to great effect in populations that have been marginalized by the "normal" system. That these marginalized "hard to teach" kids can quickly catch up and surpass their peers is a testament to how poor the mainstream system is. (A private center by me typically teaches a year of reading in 20 instructional hours.)
*****
The rest of this post is excerpted from an in-progress website about the topic. Since it's not done, I'm not posting it on
First and foremost PT is scientific measurement and the principle that "The Learner is always Right" - In PT we scientifically and numerically measure the behavior of the learner. Because we measure it consistently and numerically over time we are also measuring the change in this behavior. In general if the behavior is not meeting our goals and/or the change in behavior is not meeting our goals we alter the environment the learner is in somehow. We have established many details of how to take good data that is extremely sensitive at predicting changes in behavior.
The second pillar of PT is the Standard Celeration Chart. Beyond simply measuring in a scientific and numeric way we measure and display our data using a standard graphic display - the Standard Celeration Chart . This means that anyone familiar with Precision Teaching can immediately tell what is going on with someone else's chart at a glance often even without being familiar with that particular situation.
The third pillar of PT is interventions. Using our standard measurement and data sharing the Precision Teaching c
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
1. English only - This is America, we speak english, not spanish, spanglish, chinglish, or ebonics. The Pledge is to be recited in English only. 2. Administrative overhead cuts - Why do teachers and school programs get cut, yet the administration gets fancy buildings, increased salaries, and better benefits? 3. Stop throwing money at the problem - Did you know the poorest school districts get the MOST money yet are the worst academically? Do we not see there is NO correlation between money and academic success? Just a couple points to ponder.
I
I can anticipate an argument here. "But different countries have different cultures and emphasize different things!" Answer: public education's purpose, at least partially, is to brainwash children to follow a culture. So it doesn't matter what US culture is. Insourcing (ba-ding! +1 buzzword) the best practices will just result in our children getting the best education along with the culture that supports the best education.
At least, that's my nonprofessional opinion.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
I absolutly, 100% hated high school. Call me a nerd but i couldnt stand the little clicks of people, the pranks, fights, etc... And mind you, i graded high school in 98. My mother works there still and says the clicks exist, etc...
More on topic thow, due to these facts, I skipped college in an attempt to avoid the problems I saw in high school. And due to my ability to teach myself, I self taught myself programming and now, right on par with people who I would have graduated college with, I have a "respectable" job and make a decent amount as a network admin / web developer.
As much as I went to one of the best public high schools in NY, we were limited to what we could do in the computer lab. I have found that my ability to look up anything that came to mind on the internet, from programming to engineering while at home has taught me a great deal more than high school did.
I have also found that I retain more, and actually enjoy watching the Discovery Channel, History Channel, etc...
So, make it more fun. That, or hire teachers that can present the matter in a way that is appealing to the students. Not all of us are book people. Some of us are left handed, dont quite think the same way that the validictorian might, etc...
Perfect example - my brother who went to the exact same high school, exact same teachers, went to Niagara University and is now getting his MBA couldnt program a VCR to save his life or tell you the difference between the turquis E or the red fox on his desktop.
just a rant, or a chip that fell off...
I could go on and on replying to your message but I'll try to make it short. In summary, I agree with almost everything you wrote but I want to comment on one thing in particular:
We need to focus on fundamentlas, reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. They need to read more and write more, and be able to construct cogent arguments and analyses in both written and oral form. They need classes in rhetoric and philosophy.
This needs to be emphasized. I think having kids confront all the stuff they hold dear by having them learn Philosophy would be wonderful. I think a Senior-level course would do great things. Just before they go out the door into the so-called "real world", they get a glimpse of the fact that they are about to enter a period of their life where the answers aren't so easy. Where they really will have to think for themselves rather than review what was in Section 3.4 of their textbook. I would couple this with the need for critical thinking and analysis. If kids are so obsessed with how they are "going to use this", then present them with articles from the daily newspaper and have them examine the issues and think about what the story didn't mention or glossed over.
The problem is that parents wouldn't stand for any of this. Can you imagine trying to have a debate in a high school philosophy class about abortion? It might be a much-needed chance for kids to see the side of the issue that their parents haven't crammed down their throat but the parents certainly would never stand for such a thing. Alas, the critical thinking and analysis skills that kids need to develop would never be allowed in public schools.
GMD
watch this
I think the single greatest factor was coming from a community that values education. You know, it's the little things like parents who go to parent-teacher conferences, having nice buildings and books, living in a community that regularly votes to raise its taxes to pay for better schools, and having the majority of the parents making a living at a job they can't get without a college education. Yep, that's just one of the oddities of growing up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a one industry town and that industry is government research. I'd guess that at least half of the kids I went to school with had a PhD parent in the household. So, you see, these people understood the value of education.
Start Running Better Polls
More funding is exactly what will help many poorly-performing schools in lower economic areas. The question is, what type of funding? I would say
1) resources (books, facilities, etc.)
2) programs to improve the community's perception of education (especially in many poor communities, education is seen as pointless and "not worth it"; why bother studying when you can make more money faster selling drugs, etc. - sorry for the stereotype, just trying to make a basic point. Any sort of endeavor to highlight the importance of a good education, and make sure that people who feel they have no opportunity for escaping their lot in life are aware of the real opportunities they have, will go a long way towards increasing student and family participation, and therefore increase school performance)
3) teacher training (help teachers do their jobs better, instead of punishing those who don't)
4) teacher pay (note how I list this after all the others. once the others are in place, make sure the people who do these difficult jobs, especially those who work in the most run-down schools, are compensated appropriately. please, no comments about unions. if you feel teachers are already compensated appropriately, fine, then focus on previous 3 items)
Aside from funding, I would also start to ignore the increasing fetish for standardized testing. As far as I can tell, it seems that the more standardized testing they do, the less apt the students become. It makes teachers' jobs difficult, too, because they have to focus on making sure their students can pass all the tests in order to keep their jobs, rather than focusing on actually getting their students to learn.
One other issue: vouchers. Stupid idea. Where it's been done, it seems it just ups enrollment at religious schools, and little verification is done that the performance of the schools is any good.
If we truly believe that standardized testing is a good measure of school performance, then if my money is going to start paying for kids to go to private school, those schools had better be held to the same standards as other publicly funded schools.
Besides, it seems to me that private schools tend to be viewed as "better" because they get to cherry-pick their students, while public schools have to accept everyone. Once vouchers are in place, private schools will just become diluted and useless.
Everyone has their own idea of education. That is why education in our country sucks so badly (or is so great, depending on your worldview).
Instead of asking "How to improve education?", I would instead ask how to define it.
Do you want an education that is self-initiated or one where the cirriculum is planned well in advance, regardless of the student's interests or abilities? Alot of people, especially conservatives, bemoan how China, Malaysia, Singapore, etc. are churning out lots more well-qualified engineers than we do and propose making education paths stricter and well defined to correct this precieved problem.
As a continuation of that, do you believe that education is something to prepare you to fit into the marketplace, something to mold someone's vision of an "ideal citizen", or something that is not really defined by anyone and is just an oppritunity for young minds to become creative, develop their talents, focus their skills, and do something that they are really interested in?
Does education have to exist in the context as we know it? e.g. do we need 60 million dollar schoolhouses where we keep (force) students to exist and conform to an idealized educational vision for 12 years in a strict educational context? Could education become more community-oriented where the concept of education is decentralized and exists within the context of more community interaction where community leaders, businesses, churches (and other similar institutions - such as your mosque, synagogue, temple, etc.), and everyone else has a hand in helping the young become ready for the "real world"? After all, who better to do this than people and social institutions of the real world? Should students get their 12 year dose before being accepted by society? Why does this need to be? Why 12 years?
All of the "solutions" to education that I see out there address education within the context of the currently existing social structure. We as a society have never expressed the desire to tear this structure down and replace it because we are so accustomed to its very foundations. Of course, we got here very delibretly. As society became more industrialized and relied on more technology, sameness and predictability became expected to make this machine work smoothly and efficently. Thus was born the modern schoolhouse, standardized testing, and the boon of universities.
So, I would ask again, what is the problem, and do the proposed solutions really make it better?
Unless you think parental invovlment is what will make education in teh US as good as possable, then you are way off the mark.
Educational success is a three legged stool. Teacher, Student , and Parent.
the teacher is the strongest part of that stoll in education today, parents are teh weakest.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The single largest improvement in education would come from teaching students not what to think (or worse, to just recite back memorized facts or even theories), but rather how to think.
Once that is accomplished a teacher can just guide a student through learning various domains of knowledge at their own pace and in their own style.
We need to get rid of tests. Rather, you can keep the tests if you like, but get rid of the stupidly high emphasis they are given. Rather than for feel-good "don't hurt their feelings" reasons, though, here's my rationale:
It seems that the better part of education is "to prepare you for the test." Why do you study math? So you pass. Why read the book? There's a quiz on it. Learning is rarely about engaging the subject matter, but rather moving students from test to test.
I'm usually happier in a class where I don't care about the grade, and will end up doing better as a result. People should try it more.
Standardized tests are even worse. Aside from the "they don't mean squat" issues, there's the horrific amount of class time spent preparing for them.
Take the phrase, test-taking strategies. Why on earth would a person in a rational society need this?
We seem obsessed with giving people scores on things, and even more obsessed with maximizing our personal score, even when that score is for something completely arbitrary and meaningless (notice how much people will go through for an award certificate).
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
An even more relavant essay of his is What You Wish You'd Known.
Also be sure to check out The Muddle Machine by Tamim Ansary, a school textbook editor who describes the apalling state of textbook publication today.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Give the kids the skills to succed.
Demonstrate how education and knowledge will benefit them later in life.
Teach more life skills and reading comprehension.
Many people can't follow directions and can't pull the meaning from simple news articles.
It's embarassing to see people have trouble making a recipe because the directions are too complicated.
Motivate kids, give them something more interesting and appropriate.
And finally treat them like people.
Until late in high school we couldn't have drinks, even bottled water at our desk, but I can only think of a handful of teachers who didn't drink from their coffee (or other) cup while teaching.
Get rid of stupid rules for the point of having rules.
No hats? No coloured hair? No trench coats, don't wear all black? What are they trying to accomplish?
Get the unions out of school so you can actually fire the bad teachers, and pay competative wages to the good ones.
Reward the non athletic students too, reward participation and not just winning. Have fun teams along with competative teams.
(this is less then half my rant, but I should get back to work)
In Canada, education so focuses on reading, writing, and arithmetic (the 3r's)that it loses focus of the fact that kids should have a more balanced education, filled with many different experiences.
There is no doubt that learing to read and write, and understanding math and science is important, but it isn't ALL involved in education. Many art, drama, and music programs, along with many sports programs, are being dropped or greatly downscaled in favour of a more rigid academic program of math, science, and language.
While many may dismiss art, drama, and music as being superflous to educational needs, music is highly mathmatical, in fact, I learned fractions by taking music lessons long before they were introduced in math class, as the concept of whole, half, quarter, sixteenth, etc helped me to readly understand fractions in math. Art and drama both help a child learn more abtract thinking, and problem solving, outside of a purely 3R environment. Sports are important to overcome the obesity crisis our kids are facing, as well as additional problem solving and social skills such as when playing team sports.
Also, art, drama and music, and sports interupt the relative boredome the 3R's impose on our kids, and help to make education fun. A few hours of math and language cources, interrupted with the relative freedom or an art class, or music helps to encourage a child to keep in school, as they have something to look forward every day. If find it sad when someone says they found out how to make math or science fun. They might illicit some more concentrated focus from the students, but I am sure the kids would rather learn how to paint, play an insturment, act, or play some soccer.
Finally, I think that homework is overated, and should be left in the school. It compensates for an education system that is too ambitious to try and cram as much acedemia in a child before they hit the age of majority. If a school is highly centric in 3R education, after school is the time that parents should consider enrolling their child in music, dance, or sports programs for a more balanced and enriched education experience. If schools impose often 2 - 4 hours of homework a night on a child, then this will keep them away from developing other areas of their brains and discovering other talents which they could develop and help guide them to a more favourable career.University and college is for academia. Taking intense courses in math, science, etc. in post-secondary applies when people have decided on a path to take in life, and know they will need that education and skills to ultimately get started in their choosen career. Pre-secondary and secondary high school should offer a balance of academia and arts to help a developing child understand all their options in life so they can make an informed career choice, rather then being led by the nose by an academia program that purely focuses on getting grades by learning mostly useless information.
Think of all the calculus and algebra you use in your real life, along with all that important information about the Creb cycle, along with how to spell existentialism. If we could go back in time, and replaced all the time spent learning about information we DON'T use in the future and filled it with art,drama, music, or sports, as an adult wouldn't you really prefer to play the guitar, paint, or be skilled in a few sports as opposed to knowing how to differentiate?
Instead, as adults, we wish for some more time in our busy lives to try and learn these skills and regret not being offered a chance in our childhood to delite in these endeavours.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Less english. We speak english. Focus more on effective use of language rather than spending over a decade on things we already know or don't care to know. Spelling and grammar are almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
More high level math & science. Kids hate repetitive math, and need to understand calculus.
More economics.
Less US history. More world history.
The whole reason my wife and I chose to homeschool validates the rest of your list. In California, the government schools suck badly.
As for social isolation, have you ever spoken with any homeschoolers? There are numerous homeschool groups that meet regularly for activities, and of course don't forget just walking down the street to a friend's house.
Finally, almost any parent is capable of mastering enough information to provide their child with an education that is at least as good as the government schools provide. We're not talking about being a college professor, here, either, just teaching them to read, math concepts, history, and so on. Many companies provide curriculum and guides for the parents, so that, despite Mom and Dad's occasional thin spots, the kids still get an education.
You, sir, need to stop telling other perfectly competent people how to raise their children. I'll put my kids back in the government schools when they stop letting Johnny Football Hero get away with murder, and when they stop telling my kids to not answer any questions in class because they're making the stupid kids feel bad.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Civics damnit! Let's start with the one subject that no one who post to slashdot has any clue about but doesn't keep them posting any of their ill founded rants.
There's no shame in being a pariah. -Marge Simpson
Seriously. All of the serious problems with education stem from that fact that public schools don't have enough money. Or, if they *do*, they spend it on the wrong things. Sometimes they are *required* to spend it on the wrong things. The bureaucracy of the public education system is completely broken. But that's a different problem, and more money would alleviate a lot of the bureaucratic hijinks need to save a few bucks.
Good teachers, good textbooks, good facilities. All of which can be had for a price.
Blame the federal government, which is more than happy to ignore the education problem, because it's so easy to ignore.
Remove federal and state government UBER-sight from local communities, allowing public schools to serve their ORIGINAL purpose -- which is to educate the future workforce to keep the community going.
Throughout the history of our public schools, going back to the origins of our nation, pursuit of a college degree was pretty low on the priority list. More important was training our local kids how to live on their own with a core set of skills to do the jobs that would continue economic growth in the community. Farming communities had schools that turned out, as you'd expect, a lot of decent future farmers.
The times have changed, but what's clearly evident is that the top-down "managment" of public education is clearly not up to the challenges of a rapidly (and ever-) changing global marketplace. So we need to approach the problem with a variety of solutions, each contextually relevant to the communities our schools serve.
We're teaching our kids to tests that are created, maintained and constantly changed by politicians -- not by the teachers who are in the know. I'm not saying we have all-stars teaching in our schools, but I'd also point out that there's little point in stretching our resolve to achieve if the only employment we can offer our kids is, at best, a barista position at Starbucks.
If you really want to solve the problems of schools in the US, you're going to have to bite the bullet of actual socioeconomic change in our communities. Yes, it takes time, commitment and the involvement of ALL the stakeholders, but historically we've proven it has far more impact on the quality of a kid's education than any combination of school reforms. School reformists are all about changing the curriculum, or the teachers, or standards (enter an educational political buzzword).
It's easier to put a better stereo in the car than to fix the reason why the engine makes so much noise.
--- -a- "I'd love to change the world, but it'd be easier if the universe exposed its API."
Nothing like what they could make as longshoremen in LA, but on the other hand it's mostly air-conditioned.
By comparison, senior tech writers and electronic technicians are doing very well to get $30/hour.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Here are a couple points i came up with, with my experiance of an Israeli high-school.
- Use assignments and projects instead of tests.
Tests only indicate how well you will preform on tests.
if you do a project you will need to do some independat research, get some hands-on experiance.
- Teach students effective learning techniques.
Learning may seem like something intuitive, but i'm sure there are many way to improve the way people study.
- Don't abandon good students.
Teachers tend to concentrate on helping slow learners while ones who do well are ignored.
There should be programs to further the education of students that are above the avarage on a certain subject.
- Learning is not information storage.
There were a few subjects in highschool where teachers just wanted us to remember facts, like History and Literature.
If i remembered what my lit. teacher said about a certain poem i would pass the test.
There was absolutely no learning of the underlying processes.
- Young students should have a wide assortment of classes so they could later have a more informed oppinion of what they could study.
- Larger variety of physical activity.
We had two weekly classes in highschool where we would mostly run, do pushups, pullups, sometimes do a bunch of different jumps and play some soccer.
Physical education is mostly supposed to keep students in shape and doesn't really teach them about their body.
I'd include different kinds of martial arts.
Also, specialization in those areas as in the regular subjects would be nice.
I award you no points, and may God have mercy upon your soul.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Measure effectiveness of teachers by their students' performance. Fire ineffective teachers, pay good money for effective teachers. Repeat.
...and you'll see test scores go through the roof.
Seriously, as long as there are 1) teachers who are there because its a paying job and 2) children who either can't learn or don't want to learn, you will be disappointed with the education system.
Here's how you can really make the education system not suck: GET INVOLVED. Kids whose parents are involved with their educations have a much better shot. It's hard, but you signed up for it when you shot your load (or received one). Work with your kids instead of watching TV, volunteer at the school, go on field trips, take you kids to the zoo or a national park or the science museum or a (fun) concert. Work on the "patience" thing...kids take a lot of it - certainly more than you're born with.
I've found that most whiney parents are whiney because their children aren't turning out to be geniuses after being sent to school for 6 hours a day and then plopped in front of the TV for the next 6. If you don't motivate your children, how can you expect a stranger to do it?
Finally, everyone has to admit that there are stupid kids out there. They just won't or can't learn. Yes, they can be taught basic skills, and yes, some will perform better when placed with smart kids. But, really, not everyone has given birth to a genius - despite how precocious they think little Johnny is. To leave "no child behind" is akin to "ridding the world of terrorism". It sounds like a Really Good Idea (R), but quite frankly it isn't practical.
Lest I be targeted as an intellectual snob, I must point out that some kids aren't stupid, they're just not academically inclined. There's lots of talent that isn't measured by the number of correctly filled in bubbles on a piece of paper. Get them the basics and let them find their path - even it may not be what you would chose. There's always welfare while you write your multi-part childrens book blockbuster saga.
Or, just kill all the kids in the stupid or apparently stupid groups. At least it will improve the test scores.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I spent a lot of time this past school year tutoring 11th-grade New York City public school students on the SAT. These were bright kids who were genuinely interested in learning and very much wanted to attend college, and they attend the school system with the highest per-student expense in the entire USA, but their vocabulary was terrible, their writing was at about the level I'd expect to find from a middle-schooler, and they didn't even know how to use fractions. You can try to attribute this to low teacher salaries, bungled administration, or lack of funding, but when a smart kid can take a decade's worth of math classes and still not know how to work with fractions, I think the problem goes well beyond any of that.
The fundamental problem as I see it is free riders. Compulsory public education means that a sizable percentage of students in any public school will be uninterested in learning, with parents who are equally uninterested in their children's educations. These kids will contribute to a culture of disinterest and a lack of respect for education which can pervade the entire school. I'm sure a lot of Slashdotters can remember sitting through math classes where most of the time was wasted trying to get a few disagreeable kids to sit down, shut up and try to learn something.
Private schools work better because they cater to a self-selecting group: most of the parents who send their children to private schools are at least a little bit interested in making sure that their children get a good education and go to college, and will provide the reinforcement at home to make sure that they actually do study hard. Well-funded suburban private schools work similarly, because families move to areas with higher property taxes in large part because of their superior schools, and because (unfortunate but true) people with the money to live in those rich suburbs tend to have college degrees themselves and are more likely to appreciate the importance of getting their children well educated.
So in spite of being a Democrat, I think school vouchers are a good idea, not because private schools are intrinsically "better" (they're not) but because the extra effort and expense of sending children to a (voucher-subsidized) private school will weed out a lot of the less-devoted students and parents, while keeping private education within the means of moderate-income families. And even for bright but lower-income students, vouchers can help bridge the gap between merit scholarships and tuition fees.
At the same time, by shunting off a lot of the college-bound students to private schools, vouchers allow public schools to focus more on the needs of the remaining students. It may seem a bit radical in the face of American schools' constant focus on college prep, but there are some strong arguments to be made for adding more of a trade-school focus to public high schools; there are certain professions, nursing for example, that are badly in need of workers, and providing some of the training for those jobs in high school can fill the gaps and provide a much better career alternative than Wal-Mart.
This isn't about "giving up" on public education, it's about appreciating the reality that not everybody is going to college, and doing the best we can for them based on that.
Get rid of computers and calculators.
Until you're doing trig and calculus you don't need a calculator at all anyway.
You're saying get rid of the GUI to appreciate technology. Have you ever done maintenence on your car? Made plastic or metal? Used a punch card or even a tape drive?
Funny how you dismiss music appreciion as it actually has demonstrated value.
Understanding and appreciating the past is important, forcing people to relive it as some sort of right of passage is dumb.
- and the biggie -
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Why schools should use exclusively free software
e s/health/tobaccotrial/usa.htm.
by Richard Stallman
There are general reasons why all computer users should insist on free software. It gives users the freedom to control their own computers--with proprietary software, the computer does what the software owner wants it to do, not what you want it to do. Free software also gives users the freedom to cooperate with each other, to lead an upright life. These reasons apply to schools as they do to everyone.
But there are special reasons that apply to schools. They are the subject of this article.
First, free software can save the schools money. Even in the richest countries, schools are short of money. Free software gives schools, like other users, the freedom to copy and redistribute the software, so the school system can make copies for all the computers they have. In poor countries, this can help close the digital divide.
This obvious reason, while important, is rather shallow. And proprietary software developers can eliminate this disadvantage by donating copies to the schools. (Watch out!--a school that accepts this offer may have to pay for future upgrades.) So let's look at the deeper reasons.
School should teach students ways of life that will benefit society as a whole. They should promote the use of free software just as they promote recycling. If schools teach students free software, then the students will use free software after they graduate. This will help society as a whole escape from being dominated (and gouged) by megacorporations. Those corporations offer free samples to schools for the same reason tobacco companies distribute free cigarettes: to get children addicted (1). They will not give discounts to these students once they grow up and graduate.
Free software permits students to learn how software works. When students reach their teens, some of them want to learn everything there is to know about their computer system and its software. That is the age when people who will be good programmers should learn it. To learn to write software well, students need to read a lot of code and write a lot of code. They need to read and understand real programs that people really use. They will be intensely curious to read the source code of the programs that they use every day.
Proprietary software rejects their thirst for knowledge: it says, "The knowledge you want is a secret--learning is forbidden!" Free software encourages everyone to learn. The free software community rejects the "priesthood of technology", which keeps the general public in ignorance of how technology works; we encourage students of any age and situation to read the source code and learn as much as they want to know. Schools that use free software will enable gifted programming students to advance.
The next reason for using free software in schools is on an even deeper level. We expect schools to teach students basic facts, and useful skills, but that is not their whole job. The most fundamental mission of schools is to teach people to be good citizens and good neighbors--to cooperate with others who need their help. In the area of computers, this means teaching them to share software. Elementary schools, above all, should tell their pupils, "If you bring software to school, you must share it with the other children." Of course, the school must practice what it preaches: all the software installed by the school should be available for students to copy, take home, and redistribute further.
Teaching the students to use free software, and to participate in the free software community, is a hands-on civics lesson. It also teaches students the role model of public service rather than that of tycoons. All levels of school should use free software.
(1). RJ Reynolds tobacco company was fined $15m in 2002 for handing out free samples of cigarettes at events attended by children. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/featur
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
On another note, dumbing-down the curriculum is horribly counter-productive. I lived overseas for a bit as a child and was impressed by the British education system's level of rigor and detail. It may scare some kids away but it's necessary.
Offering a more varied approach to education would also help. Acknowledge that people have different interests and hook them with an angle. This would probably be best at the secondary education stage. To some extent we already have different "tracks" for high school students but there needs to be a greater number of options. It would be interesting to see classes in environmental science, archaeology and astronomy (to name a few) at the high school level.)
Finally, destroy education as an institution. It's a horrible beauracracy that scares away potential teachers, dulls bright minds and generally does little more than produce obedient consumers (but, then again, isn't that what The System is for?) Read this by John Gatto for a succinct summary of what is wrong. Here is some more of his writing: http://www.home-ed.vic.edu.au/Resources/Gatto.htm
harmonious design
Mechanical Engineers start in the 40's. So do many EE's with a Bachelors. Just how much should a teacher make? I'm sorry, I know quite a few good teachers who absolutely giggle over the money they make. Then, in their free time, they work as real estate agents, etc etc. Teaching is no more comparitively difficult than being a nurse, EMT, Firefighter, Policeman, etc. And you'll find a teacher makes a good bit more in most cases.
Perhaps I had a somewhat better than average experience, but I feel like I got an excellent education. After grade 6 (around age 10/12 in the US), I was enrolled in so-called "magnet schools", which are available in many school districts in the US. After leaving the public school system, I was much more well-prepared for university studies than many of my classmates.
Certainly, the US has some schools where it's a real challenge to absorb any learning, but it's certainly not representative of all US schools.
Your other ideas were OK. But honestly, no homeschooling?
No parent can be an expert on everything. But neither can teachers - that's where good textbooks and other educational materials are impoortant. But far more important than a textbook is interaction with the teacher. It's a given that with homeschooling, you are going to get a lot more interaction with the teacher.
Furthermore because homeschoolers have the freedom to tailor education on a per-student basis, you can get a lot more depth in subjects of interest than in public schools (where they simply cannot tailer education to a per-student basis).
I was homeschooled from the end of gradeschool until college. Where there were subjects my teachers were not as familiar with, ew leaned more heavily on the textbooks. But also we had study groups with other homeschoolers that would help, like chemistry labs. We also had team sports that played with other school leagues.
There simply is no basis to think that a parent can not do as good a job overall as the average teacher can do, and improved family relations are a pretty big benefit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
John Dewey studied education extensively. He ran "laboratory schools", he actually came up with theories and tested them. He wrote many books about education, including one short concise one after the laboratory school experiences called "Experience and Education".
He is one of the few educators who has recognized that children naturally want to learn. One of the most important goals we should have when reforming public education is to avoid beating that out of them.
He has a lot to say about connecting the education with the child's other experiences, so the subject matter feels immediately relevant to them. He says it all much better than I can, so go read some John Dewey.
The frustrating thing to me is that he did his research and published his books about 70 years ago, and his ideas STILL seem new and revolutionary. Makes me very pessimistic about public education being changed for the better, and makes me favor home-schooling.
2) Make it easier to be a teach, but weed out the bad teachers. We have a overwelming lack of good teachers and a overwelming number of bad ones, why? Cause right now it takes more work to become a teacher than to make good money in a related field of work, so that only the diehards who REALLY want to teach (who are few and far between), or the people who have nothing else to fall back on do it. Pay better money, make it easier but at the same time make sure you get rid of the bad ones before they get tenure.
3) End standardized testing. Its a joke, shows absolutely nothing but the person is a good test taker, and truthful give a false readout of if the students are doing well or not. I know great testakers who are total morons, and I know people who did horrable on the SATs yet could mentaly do the calculations for perfect satalite trajectories.
4) Stop comparing the US to other countries. Im sorry the fact that other contries are smarter or not is bullshit and anyone who actually reads the numbers will see that unlike other contries, the US is the only large country that requires attendance to high school. Most countries dont even send their children TO high school, they take tests and then are forcfully placed into what their job will be based on those tests.
5) Stop treating college as the end of school. High school should be where most of your life skills are learned, NOT college. Right now High schools teach as if kids are going to college, and not as if these students will be entering the workforce. In this buisnesses who refuse to higher qualified high school grads over a unqualified college grad based soley on a peice of paper are directly responsible and should be made to blame. College is ment to further your enducation, not complete it.
Kick out the bad seeds. Make them do labor and send them to special schools. 90% of most school problems can be directly atributed to less than 5% of the schools population. In the future if people start listening to suggestion one and actually parent their kids, this might be able to be removed. But at the moment there is just to many wasted humans who need to sadly be forced to stop being asshats thanks to their parents that schools just cant cope unless you have a special program for it.
START FUNDING EDUCATION! You want people to be smart start actually put money into the schools instead of saying it and then screwing the books so that schools actually get .5% of what you promised. No Child Left Behind was great at this as they promised money to support the program and have yet in 5 years to hand a cent out to anyone but the government buddys.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
1. provide public schooling free of charge through high school (and preferably through college), but don't require attendance beyond the eighth grade. most schools would be instantaneously more effective if the "students" who didn't want to be there were not there.
2. teach practical skills in high school. replace calculus with linear algebra. teach "how to file suit in small claims court", "how to buy a house", "how to deal with creditors who falsely claim you owe them money", "how to deal with creditors who truthfully claim you owe them money", "how to ensure your infant is getting proper nutrition"
any moron can see that what U.S. high schools teach is mostly useless for most of the students. teach things they need to know and they'll take history, literature, and science more seriously when it's presented in a context relevant to their lives.
Most of the problems come from the useless state and federal standards. Get rid of them; all they do is take up space that SHOULD be used to teach stuff that will actually help us one day.
Secondly, schools should not be saying 'our way is the only way'. If a student wants to take advanced courses, and is able, let them for christ's sake.
By shoving the ideal that everyone is intellectually equal down our throats, we lose a lot : the lazy bastards are still lazy bastards, but the ones who could have truly excelled have been brought down to the same level.
Schools really shouldn't be spending thousands of dollars on crappy technology, either. My school district just bought a bunch of HP Thin clients at around 460-480 dollars each. And I could build a similar computer for about 250. Instead of funneling my tax dollars to a computer company as crappy as HP, I think that the money should be put towards teacher's salaries, which, in my district, are supposedly the lowest in the state, but are at least well below the state average Have the a student organization to do the computer work; hell, half the time, me and my friends know more than the people who are getting paid, which is truly pitiful. But, you know, that's the price we pay for 'catching up with the rest of the state'.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Just provide a system where the students can anonymously evaluate their teacher (like some colleges do, where students fill course evaluation forms). After getting a large enough sample you will know, who the good teachers are.
Make the results public.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I had a theory that NCLB is really designed to take money out of the public school system. I'm just a teacher though and have little knowledge/decision making authority about education policy so I didn't put much weight in my theory. Last summer, though, I took a class in research methods and was surprised to hear the professor (a man of 40 years' standing in many levels of public education) advance the same theory as though it was pretty much common knowledge.
Do you know, for example, that students with severe special needs take the same tests as everyone else? How many specialists does that take, and how does that affect teacher-student ratios in the rest of the building? Staffing funds are not unlimited. Do you understand how much emphasis is placed on testing and Adequate Yearly Progress on high stakes tests? I've been reading some of the other posts about how to improve education and they all seem to rely on abandoning high stakes tests. There are many ways to evaluate progress and tell if someone should pass or fail a class, and if they fail I'm all for them having to repeat. It can be done without reliance on tests that determine (sometimes all by themselves) whether you pass or fail, and were created by people who haven't taught in years.
Many of the changes proposed are more like what happens in private schools which have less detailed oversight than public schools. Increase the federal and state government's role in schools to the point where education is impossible (we're not there yet) and people will get fed up and look to private schools (hello vouchers) as the answer. Maybe rightly so kids don't get 2 tries at their formative years.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
> hmmm ... can you point to some countries where it has been tried?
The United States prior to the introduction of mandatory state run education.
> was it successful?
Yes.
> what is the literacy rate in those countries?
Much higher than it is now. And people could actually think back then, a nice bonus.
Consider this. Go locate a copy of the Federalist Papers. Read a couple and then come back and reread what I am about to say:
All of those papers ran in mass circulation newspapers of the day, the average person was both literate enough but also knowledgable enough on the issues of the day to read them, understand the arguments and could and did discuss them with their friends, neighbors and co-workers.
Think about the implications of that statement. Assuming a newspaper actually ran a series of articles of such weighty content, could more than 10% of their readers (already diminished by TV) understand them, let alone find others able to intelligently discuss them? This is the bitter harvest of several generations of public education.
Yes, a lot of people stopped school after the sixth or eighth grade and went to work, but never make the mistake of confusing what passed for an eighth grade education back then with how little actually useful knowledge one needs to learn today to get a college degree.
Democrat delenda est
Many good suggestions here, but I'd like to note that using multiple choice as a primary testing method is a truly horrible idea. It gives students an easy way out - "hmmm, no clue how to solve this problem, so I'll just make a (somewhat) educated guess". This often reduces the education process to a guessing game. It makes everything result oriented - the tought process doesn't count. I understand multiple choice makes grading much easier but that comes at a huge expense. In Soviet Russia (yeah, yeah, that's where I came from a looong time ago), teachers took time to read and understand each answer. That made it possible to pinpoint and address exact location of student's misunderstanding. The thing is that you don't need 20 questions. 3 to 5 problems which require real undertanding of the material is usually enough.
Oh, and did I mention that multiple choice testing makes cheating trivial?
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
Easy; Let teachers throw out kids who don't want to learn; Let schools throw out teachers who don't want to teach.
Hard: Figuring out how to do that.
Basic question is... what public education always bad. If not, when did it become bad? And, of course, why?
If it's always been bad, then why are we discussing this anyway? We obviously have never known how to do it right.
I hear you man. Purchased the same text my freshmen year of college. I don't know about other professions, but primary/secondary schools (in the US) definitely don't cater to engineering writing. Perhaps this is a good place to start improvement of the system?
Christmas is the opposite of theft. See?
We need to begin by concentrating on the basics and by actually paying attention to study after study that correlates Art with a better thinking process. Here in the US we consistently neglect to think of the arts as a viable way to get those mental processes working in the right direction. Those who do good in the arts continuously do good in the basic subjects. Why then do we ignore the arts and just concentrate on reading and math? Not everyone is an artist, that is also a given, but the act of trying to create art gets kids to think differently and in a manner that helps their mental accuity to grow!
How many of us listen to classical music? How many of us enjoy a good painting or an especially well done musical? I have found that, amongst the friends I socialize with, we ALL enjoy some form of art! I cannot even dream of coding without having some rousing music in the background. I also cannot relax unless I get to paint on the weekends. All those basic subjects are super important, but without something creative to supplement them with all we will produce is a nation of drones who know how to spell and compute...sounds a lot like my laptop!
Texas is doing this as well. -l
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I deny that education in this country "sucks." I am 26 and I feel that I was well served by the public school system in my county. As with any governmental system, there is room for improvement.
1)Incresed funding. It bothers me to no end when a city builds a new stadium for a multi-billion dollar corporation while kids go to 100-year-old schools with no Heat or AC.
2)Get the kids that don't want to be there out of the system. College isn't right for everybody, and those not interested in it need to be prepared to move into the work force. Proposals have surfaced to reduce high school graduation age by two years. At graduation, students split up to go two more years in either college prep, study abroad, vo/tech school, work study, etc.
3)De-focus on computers. A laptop in every backpack is a monumental waste of resources and a detriment to learning. (becomes a crutch) Teach kids to add, not to use a calculator.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Why is it that at a university, where you're supposedly learning things significantly more advanced and in-depth than in K-12, it's perfectly reasonable to spend less than four hours on campus a day as a "full time" student? For 30 weeks of the year?
This "maximize time in the classroom" mantra that's going around is sickening. I remember darn well what I was doing 80% of the time in K-12. Reading a book. Playing with my calculator. Daydreaming. Doodling. With a 3.9 GPA.
If the school day were to end at noon, it would not only keep the kids sane, but also provide time for them to pursue more meaningful activities. Music. Art. Athletics. Science clubs. Playing tag. Interacting with other people in a non-structured environment (such scandalous madness!).
As an added bonus, they would be significantly less brain-fried due to less hours sitting still, and therefore more attentive. They might also be more active with this reduced mental exhaustion and increased time, helping to stem the "obesity epidemic."
My mom is from Argentina, where school was just like that. 8 to noon, five days a week, with electives available in the afternoon. When she moved here, speaking very little English, she was bumped up a grade. It can work.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
If you can make changes in the ecomomic situation so that families can afford to have one parent home for a good part of the day, student performance will improve. My good performance in school was in large part due to my parents'stressing that doing my best in school was my "profession" when I was there (note- effort was what was required, not high GPA). They kept up with whether homework and studies were done or not. Recreational activities were allowed as long as time was set aside for homework - being, at the time, intensely interested in some things on TV (like the original Star Trek), I did my schoolwork early to allot my recreation time to the evening - some of my brothers did the reverse. But the parental involvement without over-stressing it was key, and that will only happen reliably of both parents don't have to work like dogs to make ends meet.
Premise: School serves two purposes:
1) Give children a cultural education
2) Give children enough basic skills that if they fail to feed and shelter themselves it's either because they choose not to or because they are mentally or physically unable to.
What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible?
What are your goals? The real problem with education is that everyone has a different idea about what a "good" education is actually supposed to accomplish.
I have no experience of education outside the US, but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks.
Translation: I have no basis of comparison, but the one thing that I have doesn't meet my standards.
However, what can we do to make it suck less?
Better parenting skills. It's not strictly the fault of the schools, and the schools can only improve as much the parents allow.
Inflated grades? Blame Johnny's parents - they complain every time Johnny gets below a B.
Math skills are slipping around the country? Blame the parents who complain about their Suzy's homework load.
Many parents only send their kids to school in order to get them ready for college. Since the goal is college, then a good education is less important than good grades, and being able to do well on tests.
Many schools only teach enough to do well on the state and federally mandated tests to protect their funding. Since the goal is testing well, thinking skills are less important than regurgitation and test taking skills.
Many school boards are elected. Their goal is to be re-elected, so they focus on making the noisiest parents happy.
Many teachers aren't tenured. Their goal is to appear as though their students are successful at the goals the school and board sets for them. Good average class grade, and good tests are key.
The real problem? On the long term, everyone wants to have succesful, happy students that grow into productive, happy adults. However the day to day goals diverge greatly from that idealistic long term goal, and the system is held together by more sticks than carrots.
You can't please all of the people all of the time. Sometimes the best compromise is when everyone is unhappy. You have to teach to the lowest common denominator, since education is a right.
-Adam
The most serious problem in public (pre-college) education is the decline in public support for education itself. Attacks from the creationists are part of the problem, but without creationism public education would be at risk because more and more of the time spent in public school is devoted to things other than academics, e.g., sports. Here is one small step that would help: limit the participation in interscholastic sports to those in the top 25% of the class.
Well, having kids and seeing first hand, having myself passed my school days abroad:
1) whimpy 'potential' kind of junk: solid scores and solid knowledge cannot be replaced. Yes, it seems hard to tell a kid 'you did not make the grade', but hetter 'hard' now, than ruining an entire life due to a lack in proficiency in reading, writing, basic calculus (schook is not teaching 'math')
2) downgrading requirements in the face of lack of performance: entire school districts do that: minimize the number of bad grades at all cost, not by upgrading teaching, but by downgrading requirements:
My just recent example: my son had to do summer school to pass the grade.
Great, I thought.
This was just an eyewash of the local school district to have kids pass who would otherwise not. Don't get me wrong, he is bright and intelligent, but the teaching methods basically suck (sounding out instead of spelling! calculus they do in 5th and 6th grade, I had in 2nd grade, fractions and decimal fractions were done for me in 4th grade, because then I moved to 'gymnasium' for 5th).
3) lack of brain training: grow dendrites by learning stuff, like poems, musical pieces, etc. If it is not used, it atrophiates: that's true for the brain interconnectivity count. Sure, it does not seem to make sense to learn a 3 page poem and have to recite it. The goal is not the poem, the goal is brain gymnastics.
Compare to phys.ed. (here 'fayette', what a farce!): it does not make sense to lift weights, balance balls, or climb ropes. However, it strengthens skeletal muscles, which in turn helps improve posture, which in turn later on reduces health care cost!
4) Shortsighted 'immediate gratification' thinkimg amd meglect of attention span training. Most younger people I know here are unable to pay close attention for longer than 4 to 5 minutes. Reason: probably TV: every 3 to 4 minutes kids programs are interrupted for commercials. Bad training for a developing brain.
Result of this: if the reward does not come within the attention span or shortly thereafter, the individual is frustrated.
Learning to do good without immediate reward: very necessary!
5) fake 'good job' just to keep the kid happy: unhappiness is an integral part of our lives. If we don't teach this to our kids, they grow up under a false assumption: passive aggressive pouting adults are the result (see the workplaces here around, as a consultant I come around a lot!).
6) lack of a nationally imposed curriculum: every school district rolls their own. Mine just nixed German, French (yes, I know, they are evil people anyways, right? got that from your school district too...), not even ever thinking about Russian. Foreing languages are starting in Europe in 4th grade (English, mandatory when I was in school), the second mandatory language (choice between French, Latin) comes in 6th grade.
7) lack of real nationwide result testing guidelines and rules. The SAT is not a school/state/national thing. And get real, this is a mickymouse test!
8) power to the knitting ladies who run the school district: lack of global worls citizenship thinking, nationally centered geography and history (no wonder people here cannot place Belgium, Belarussia, Tibet on a globe, nor the Marianen Trench); same for technology: if it was not invented here, it is not mentioned, or it is 'redirected' to a national 'inventor'. The Russians did that too, basically everything invented was doen by a Popov guy, from the Diesel engine to the nuclear fission).
Overall, the over-emphasis on national, us, we, the evel others limits what kids really get.
This is especially true for history, as an example: this is a young nation here,
'tradition' reaches back 200, maybe 250 years. European history, world history is an integral part from where this nation emerged. Not teaching this leaves kids in a bubble, with the planted thought that 'this is the greatest here', forgetting the recent origins, which actually make the richess of this nation.
Looking
I see a number of responses arguing against homeschooling from the angle of socalization.
Yet day to day as and adult I do not deal with children. So why would it help to socalize with them?
I do think college is a good idea for most people as it helps you socalize with close to mature adults. But for gradeschool and middle school, greater socalization with other kids is not really the benefit people make it out to be.
I was homeschooled after gradeschool until college, and every one of my friends and aquantences turned out just fine. We all went very different paths, but are all doing pretty well. We did some things together like sports teams or field trips, but didn't hand around each other all the time - a litle was enough. I got plenty of other interaction from adults around me and find no problem relating to others. When I got to college I had no problems and frankly had more resistance to peer pressure and self assurance than a lot of people around me from public schools.
For the parents that have time, homeschooling is a great way to really help your child grow and explore what truly interests them rather than go through the meat grinder to turn out yet another person who needs to take three years of college to figure out what they really want to do. How can it be any other way in a system that does not really have many options for comprehensive exploration?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What if your parents are complete morons?
One of the great lies in American society is that schools are about education.
Bullshit, I say. Pure bullshit.
Schools have an educational component, but it by no means stops there. It is also about socialization. Bad you say? Well, remember that by definition nearly half of the people are of below average intelligence. Familial socialization is acceptable in farming societies, but how the hell do you train people to operate in an industrial society?
Then there is the retinence to tell kids that they're dumb as snot. We will only have an acceptable school system after we are willing to face the fact that most people will never be corporate leaders and that it is a GOOD thing. Someone must be the janitor, and that person DESERVES just as much respect as the CEO (I didn't say the same salary...I said the same RESPECT!). We try to push Advanced Algebra on the kid that can barely handle addition, and every YUPPY is scrambling to get their borderline retarded kids into 'college prep' classes so they can get into a good college where they can major in 'Business'. The upshot is that advanced programs are recreated every few years with different names. The entrance criteria are then repeatedly raped to let just a few more students in each year. In the end, the 'advanced class' is once again 'college prep' and the process has to be started over.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
If you understand addition, doing 100 problems is as easy as doing 10.
The same goes for subtraction, multiplication and division.
The PROBLEM is our attitude towards the classroom and students.
If the teacher assigns 100 addition problems to 100 students, and 80 students have no problems with them, what happens next?
Well, the next day another 100 problems are given to see if the 20 students who didn't get it right last time have managed to catch up.
And so on until you have kids who are bored because they spend a month repeating something they understood the first day and kids who still can't grasp it but cannot be left behind, re-assigned and their parents won't put in the effort to educate their darling angels.
You will not find a kid who is failing any subect who has parents who are interested and involved in his school work.
I've taught in the military and now I work at the UW here in Seattle.
IMHO the major problems are:
1. We teach to test. This sounds great, and can be useful, but we spend far far far too much time teaching to take tests, and not to learn.
2. We teach to the lowest common denominator. When I went to middle and high school in BC, we taught to the highest denominator - we were pushed to do even better and just getting by was NOT acceptable. This doesn't mean ignoring those who don't get it, but assigning peers to assist them in getting it. This reinforces the peer students really knowing the material, it allows someone closer to the student falling behind to help translate, it keeps the student who is ahead from getting bored, and it's just plain effective.
Oh, and if you don't have enough textbooks and desks, stop whining about how expensive they are and make sure the school gets them - no matter what it takes.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I really do not think that the answer is to reward the slackers by giving up on them. All that will do is dissuade the general populace to learn about the world around them. Encouraging a populace to never try to educate themselves is essentially death to democracy.
Furthermore, what kid really understands what's best for them in the long term (i.e. the next 50 years of their life) while in high school? Make them learn. Life isn't all about what you feel like doing at the time. I get to hear enough about the end results of people who only learned what they paid attention to when I look at the inner city and the trailer parks back home. Vocational training is not the answer.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
-Get rid of grade inflation: Bring back the bell curve. I've seen people get A's in high-school level American History who can't tell you who can't name 5 presidents...including recent ones. How can you tell if kids are learning if ALL of them get A's? This is worse than social promotion...at least if you pass the kid with a D he knows he's not performing...if you pass him through with a B he thinks he's "above average" (according to most schools' grade scales).
-Scale back athletics and (somewhat) the arts. Sports are great, but gyms are for athletics, schools are for learning. When every teacher is a coach, that's just that much less time being spent making sure kids are learning. Personally, I'd like to see organized sports out of public schools entirely, but I realize that's probably extreme to most people...and that it would never, ever, happen. As for theatre and band, they aren't nearly as bad as athletics, because they have some educational quality...but they still take away a little too much focus from academics, which is bad for the kids who aren't going to go into acting or music.
-Teach the darn teachers: First off, my wife is a teacher, and I respect almost anybody who chooses to go into the profession. That said, the teaching program at her university (and I've heard this is not the exception, but rather the rule) is a -joke-. I've seen the classes she had to take for a primary education degree, and seen some of her fellow students. It frightens me. How can you teach what you don't know? Now I realize why I sometimes felt smarter than my teachers (especially in late elementary/junior high)...I think in some cases I WAS. And high-school teachers should be required to have a major in their field of focus, and a minor in education, not the other way around.
-Tracking: I'm a believer in it...simply having AP classes and normal classes isn't good enough. I went to two high schools, one that did it and one that didn't. Face it, some kids are smarter than others, and when the whole class has to go at the pace of the slowest student, everybody loses. The only requirement, in my mind, is that parents should be able to move their kids to a higher track on request, but perhaps have to sign a waiver saying the school is not responsible if their child fails...since nowadays failing a student can actually bring legal action, or so I hear.
The school I attended that used tracking had 3 different groups for each core class. One for honors, one for general college prep, and one regular (though really it was usually remedial) class. The idea being that not everybody is college material...and this district had a pretty decent vo-tech program to go with it. So you had 3 different American History classes, 3 different algebra classes, etc. Granted, this is only feasible in larger schools.
Bring back the basics: Okay, I love multicultural education. I love finger painting. But the first several years our kids spend in school have one (academic) purpose...teach them to read and do basic math. There's a reason it used to be called grammar school. Most of the problem isn't at the high-school level...you can't build on a crappy foundation. Kids are getting there without basic reading and math skills, partly due to social promotion and partly because they aren't a focus anymore. How can you read your history textbook if you can hardly read? So now you're failing English AND history. Great. By 8th/9th grade it's far too late...might as well just let them drop out.
Focus on Vo-Tech: Not everybody is college material. Especially university material. As soon as we realize this, and as soon as universities stop accepting damn near everybody (ever look at the freshman dropout rate for state universities?), we will be better off. We can start focusing on giving those that aren't going to get a bachelor's some usable job skills, or prepare them for some form of trade school. There is nothing wrong with being a mechanic...we need them, and
As a libertarian I certainly don't think public education should disappear - I think the Federal Government should simply dissolve the "Department of Education" and let the states sort it out. If the voters of a given district want public education, good for them.
1) Hire better teachers. This is helped by #2 and #3 below.
2) Allocate more funding to teacher's salaries. They have a huge impact on our children's lives (perhaps more than parents are) yet we cannot afford to hire the kinds of teachers which will make the best impact.
3) Masters degrees for teachers are required, or at least must get MS w/in X years of completion of Bachelors. Offer tuition loan/assistance which is forgivable over time (so teachers can't get a free/cheap MS then quit/move to a different area).
4) Hire better/smarter staff members. Presumably, this is done over time (smarter kids grow up to be better people, etc.)
5) Choose better textbooks, see: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
6) Staff/administrators/teachers/coaches/etc. etc. should be fired (zero tolerance) for coercing another teacher to give favors to students/star athletes/etc.
7) Remove athletic scholarships for post-secondary education, or somehow strongly correlate academic performance to scholarship retention (while employing #6 above). Although this doesn't directly impact public education it reduces the "Oh I can go to college only to play basketball and then go to the NBA all while remaining ignorant and lacking critical thinking skills" mentality that encourages students to coast through
8) Stop grade inflation. A "C" is should not be an unmentionable grade but representative of the "average." There are plenty of problems with "curving" to a normal (Gaussian) distribution, but is there a better way?
9) Require "Government" class which explains the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, etc. and the reasons/motivations/fundamentals for each. Reading of the entire Federalist Papers is a requirement the summer before their senior year (the reading is something a high school senior should be able to tackle).
10) Require elements of logic courses which ensure students are prepared to question statements via critical thinking.
11) Require a "Daily Show" type course EVERY QUARTER/SEMESTER/whatever where teachers and students analyze, pick apart, and ultimately decide the veracity of public figures' claims - be it Tom Cruse's insane rantings or a politican's doublespeak.
12) Require summer reading programs. This is a tricky one because inevitably you wind up with books which either are not challenging or are politically motivated/biased. However, the goal should be to ensure that students are continually reading even when there are no "structured" classes to take.
13) Don't listen to the parents of the students for curriculum decisions. Well, this is not quite what I mean, but parents are emotionally involved in their child's life (as well they should). If something is hard for the kids, the parents want to fix it to make it easier - be it meddling in legal affairs (see kids getting away with murder) to dumbing-down the curriculum to "improve self esteem." Although parent feedback is vital - engaged parents provably produce better children (see Freakanomics) - provide structured ways to receive feedback/criticism and then appropriately deal with it. As parents get "better" education (via their own childhood) then presumably they will be more likely to demand high quality education for their own children.
I'm sure someone may have already posted this, but... It's the parents job to educate children, not anybody elses. The public school system is a tool a parent can use to educate their kids, but if the tool is broken, fix it, or use a different one. That is why we home school. My kids can learn as much in 2 hours (and retain it) as publicly educated kids can learn in a day.
The purpose of the public school system is to educate the greatest number of people possible to the highest degree possible. If you have a class of 30, and little Johnny is in the back disrupting the learning process for everybody else, throw him out. Or better, test him to find what his interests are and put him in a trade school so that he can stop being in the way and start contributing.
I wish I could think of something witty for my sig.
I believe that there are a group of kids who would do better learning a trade skill then sitting through the hell that is modern day high school.
Up through middle school the basics should be emphasized and sports / team building activities encouraged.
After that those who want to go on to collage go through a prep school. Those that do not want to go to collage can become an apprentice to learn a craft.
America is loosing its skilled craftsman just as fast as it is loosing its intellectual edge.
RTFM? FTFM!!
Get rid of organized sports in school.
There is too much focus on what Johnny Football Hero did last night in the game rather than what they should be focused on. You'll sooner see an article in the news on a kid who won some game, rather than the kid that had the determination and focus do well on last weeks calculus test.
Organized sports have thier place in a child/teenagers life - but that place is outside of the school.
Just to cover the inevitable responses, I ran varsity track and cross country, was good at it, and enjoyed it. My opinion remains the same.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem with the education system isn't that we have a fear of being branded as Einstein, rather, it is the pragmatic system that we've instilled that was thought up by Dewey. Everyone is different, and they learn in different ways. We can not apply the same method of teaching to a pile of kids, and expect that they all learn the same stuff.
...and autonomy for teachers. Plus, school and district administration need to back teachers instead of placating noisy parents.
However, there is one other even more important factor and that is parental involvement. From the first day of Kindegarten through the last day of High School (or whatever system you use where you are), parent(s) must be involved -- intimately, constantly, unceasingly. Know who your kid's teachers are, get to know the school principal, involve yourself in running whatever school support system you have.
If your kids are in a school system that uses a long Summer break, fine, send your kids to the closest library. Buy books -- used books, new books, paperback books, hardback books -- and let your kids swap books with their friends. I remember that my friends and I would spend hours reading. Yeah, the pickup baseball and basketball games were important, too, but we would just chill and read after a hard day's play -- and that was just in my elementary school days. It set the tone for the rest of my learning career.
I think part of the problem is a serious lack of competition. Unless you're willing to pay a few thousand dollars a year for private school, you're stuck with what the government provides you. That eliminates a lot of pressure on the public schools to improve- it's hard for people to take their business elsewhere. It's the basic problem with a lot of government-run programs: the school doesn't get rewarded for success, and there's limited accountability when it fails.
As you can gather from all the comments, the problem is culturally ingrained in the US psyche. There seems to be a convergence o attitudes that lead to this such as: 1. A distrust and disdain for those who are "smarter than the average bear". This leads to smart kids playing dumb in order to not get a pounding. 2. An almost fanatical opposition to the government spending money on anything that does not provide an immediate financial return (except ironically for weapons). This leads to underfunded schools. 3. A catering to kids that teaches them that they will be rewarded regardless of their accomplishments (or lack thereof). This leads to an overweening sense of entitlement. 4. A watering down of curriculum to satisfy parents who feel that their kid's poor performance is a personal reflection of themselves. This leads to a sub-par education even if you do succeed in the system. 5. Politics invading the school system and boards to the point where debates are over who's ideological agenda will be followed as opposed to what is in the best interest of the students. This leads to fatigued administrators who give up because things get personal and ugly. 6. Lack of involvement in kid's lives by the parents which fosters a "nobody gives a crap" attitude in so many kids. There are more reasons, but you get the idea.
If our system "sucks" so much, why are there SO many successful people who went through the system?
Sometimes people come are successful in spite of things, or because it was so bad that it motivated them to educate themselves.
Also, it very much depends on your definition of successful. Sometimes, people can makes lots of money and be "successful" yet be illiterate.
Most important should be the ability to think. Too many schools teach students how to take a test. That is readily observable under NCLB rules.
Critical reasoning skills generally don't get taught until college and by then it is usually far too late.
I feel fortunate that the Catholic schools I attended from grades one through twelve taught me thinking skills that would carry me far in life. Not only did it teach me to think, it also gave me a healthy dose of scepticism about organized religion.
The problem IMO, is quite complex.
Parents, in order to keep up their own self-esteem, sue schools that try to hold their children back because they didn't pass. That needs to stop.
State Boards of Education use increasingly vague and neutral terminology concerning Student Objectives. Requirements changed to Goals. Goals became Expectations. Some States call them Guidelines.
The quality of K-12 Education is heavily influenced by: a Student Culture where failing is cool, inconsistencies in teacher evaluations and methodologies of obtaining and retaining certification, and the deification of the student athlete.
There are States in the USA where the average education of a McDonald's employee is a Bachelor's Degree. We graduate high school students that can't read past the 5th grade level or balance a check book.
The cure is not to simply throw money at the problem. That's been done for years. School systems can always find places for the money to go. They will always want more money. They need protection from parents who are angry that their child is failing. They need protection from overly sensitive politicians who push "political correctness" agendas. There are gifted kids, kids with learning disabilities, and those who are in-between. Yes, the lines between those three groups can and will vary. But, to pretend they don't exist is sticking your head in the sand.
Educational Requirements should be concrete. If you pass, you pass. If you fail, you fail. Especially for athletes.
I further believe that if any professional sports team drafts/recruits a player from a University (before he has graduated) who attended on an Athletic Scholarship, that team should be required to reimburse that University for his scholarship. Call it a fee for using an educational institution as a farm team.
Didn't realize I was standing on a Soapbox. Sorry.
What the @*$#@%? Pay them more money? Until we can create a system where you can quantify what a "good teacher" is, why would you give them all an across the board raise? America spends more money per student than any other country and where has that got us? Barely in the top ten for academics in industrialized nations? Every year when you get a raise do you start working harder? If not then why would a union teacher? Everyone talks about accountablility, but no one I've seen has determined what exactly that means.
Getting rid of their union would be a great first step. In Maine for the 2002-2003 school year, spending amounted to $10,145 per student, ranking Maine eighth in the nation. The average per-student expense nationally was $8,248. Also, public school teachers in Maine earned an average of $39,864 for the 2003-2004 school year, ranking it 35th of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. Note: the national average teacher's salary was $46,752. In Maine this means that four students pay one teacher's salary. Also the average personal income in Maine is only $28,00. Not a lot of tears are spent on their "money issues." As a side note I would like to offer this. For all this spending, Maine is near the bottom in sending children on to higher education. Paying more for teachers isn't the band-aid some people would have you believe. At least not in Maine, a blue state.
I bet teachers would be much more motivated if their good teaching for each day was rewarded by a line of coke.
I found that learning Latin helped me understand more about how English works. Others I know who took Spanish, German, Russian, etc. have said the same.
So, I'd say that anecdotally at least, it appears to help other areas of learning.
-l
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You show me the IT director that is going to recommend free software to a school board when it means he/she is the final one to answer to if anything goes wrong. Easier to just push it off on a company who will usually try to help you out.
That has got to be the funniest oxymoron I have heard in a long time.
Have you read any of the feedback? Like this one, for example?
Self-educated?
Anyone who considers browsing the internet an education is a crackpot.
heh heh
wake up and hold your nose
First, teachers have fewer and fewer tools to do their jobs.
How should I go about making a child learn? What if their parent isn't helpful, and in fact, as most do, blames the teacher?
How do I MAKE a child learn, who simply DOES NOT want to be in school. Expelling them is useless, there is no way to force them, and if parents don't help, then the teacher is the bad guy.
Why is it MY fault YOU aren't doing what YOU are supposed to? I'M NOT YOUR MOMMA.
I did the math, and by the time my 3 year old son enters school, 20% of the salary and benefits paid out by the school will go to the retirement benefits of employees who are long gone and will never teach him a thing.
Since most kids will not finish school for 9 years (average 0-18) or more, making those cuts now can improve their education dramatically, even after increasing salaries by 5% as a bonus to cover the shortfall.
More money buys better education. Spend today's money on today's kids, and stop taking from toddlers.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
I'm in the same boat.
Yes, but without unions, the teachers would barely be paid a living wage. In fact, most are already just barely scraping by. To increase the quality of teachers, we should increase the pay and thereby make teaching a competitive position. That way the schools will have a large talent pool attracted by wages which can compete with IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft, and the school districts can hire some nice employees.
Above results not typical.
The biggest problem with our schools is that it forces everybody through the same track. While it may not be PC to suggest that some kids are just smarted than others, and capable of much more, this is indeed the case. Forcing both the intelligent kids and the less so to take the exact same path throughout all of k-12 (a path which is optimal for neither of them) is detrimental to nearly everybody. For instance, in a middle school English class (a time during which I was many grades above my own in reading level) I was put in a class of which about half were Latino, and spoke little English (I live in California.) The result was that I, and the other five or so good readers in the class had to slog through a year of junk way below our level, and most of the Latinos failed anyways.
In many other countries (look as the Swiss education system) kids who are not intellectual are allowed to at a certain age, instead of continuing with their studies, become apprentices, and thus learn a trade. Instead, in America everybody is forced to go to college, even those who would be much better suited to a trade; many of which will pay as much as jobs learned a university. Another effect of this is that our universities have turned into vocational schools; it is felt that the classes must point directly to a job, instead of solely for the sake of learning.
The solution, therefore, is to reduce the pressure of going to college, to assign classes based on ability as opposed to age, and allow kids to attend more vocationally-oriented schools in high-school.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
For starters:
-implement uniform dresscode
-ban cellphones/video games/calculators
-improve student:teacher ratio
That should set the tone... and once you have their attention, start improving core curriculum.
Focus most on math, science and english. Make algebra a prerequisite for highschool. Give more importance to good penmanship. Stop handing out letter grades - use percentages instead.. they're simple, standard and precise.
The US educational system is so far behind, most people would consider just the aforementioned changes 'too rigid'. For those people, please take note: on a global scale, we're getting our asses kicked.
smattawichu
Read his acceptance speech for the Teacher of the Year award in 1991 here. Really, he hits the issue square-on.
harmonious design
There's a reason why schools end up with 47 Validictorians, and it's because they stupidly have anyone who attains above a 4.0 be a validictorian. Doesn't work anymore because of so many AP/IB classes that need to count more than the regular ones.
For example, my IB Physics class was a block period(2 periods instead of one) and we go through Mechanics, Electromagnetism, Waves, Relativity, Astrophysics, and Thermodynamics. Obviously we didn't do them to the depth one would get from a college class about the particular area of physics, but the regular class only got through Mechanics and Electromagnetism, and from what I saw from my friends in the regular class they didn't do anything beyond what we did in those topics.
Valedictorians should be the highest GPA, not everyone above 4.0. Weighted grades help to differentiate between the people taking hard classes and getting B's because they're hard classes and those getting straight B's in the easy classes.
But the other thing is that we need teachers that can realize when a kid is beyond what they're teaching, and be secure enough to let that kid do independant study. Make sure they keep doing work, but let them go at their own pace.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Its about basic skills and then I think, very much, teaching people how to learn from books and so on. Don't laugh, but for me a pivotal moment was reading "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" by Robert A. Heinlein because it has a reasonable account of it. It was completely new thinking to me at the time, learning was just what you did in school and the teacher told you to do...
The other thing is to foster the right atmosphere. Almost impossible but the main thing I think. I'm not from the US but I understand that there is a reasonable streak of anti-intellectualism (or whatever you might call it) in US public schools. I encountered the same thing myself at my UK state (read USian 'public' but not UKian "Public") school. I've no idea how to crack this problem but it seems to be by far the most ruinous thing to our children's self-esteem and educational development (virtually, you can have one but not the other). From what I know of the US school system though (2nd hand, true) I think maybe sport could be deemphasised a little. Or at any rate elite sport anyway. It seems it has way to much knock-on effect on things. I'm not saying no sport but perhaps a system more like Australia where they are the most skilled sportspeople on the planet man for man but have more of a culture of sport being something you do outside schools with clubs etc that have close relations with your school. Being an athelete is neither here nor there with regard to school. I know in the US the terms "scholastics" is used. Funnily enough you don't hear the equivalent much elsewhere...why? Because elsewhere thats all schools are supposed to be about, nothing else. Being good at a sport is nice but its for your own time really.
On a final note, being in the education game myself, I'd say its time to stop making school teachers social engineers and social workers. Their job is to teach, and teach well. Not the other metric tonne of shit they are supposed to deal with because nobody else in society will. Get that off their desks and you might see some general improvement.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Bring back Art and Music in our schools. Period. When i was in Europe I was astounded as to how much the Teenage population knew.
Make them do work. Homework, math (no calculators, etc)
some stuff is just common sense.
I actually am in school currently for Education, I'd like to teach a public school. I just wish that teachers got paid according to performance.
I had some crummy teachers.
Ok, I'm system administrator. I work everyday on the computer, and this is not the thing to be saying on Slashdot.
But get the computer out, or at least make it so they are not doing everything on the computer. I believe in taking an active roll in my children's education. I have two boys and we home school them. I have noticed in my own life how the computer makes you rely on the spell checker (rather than a dictionary) and rely on the grammar checker, rely on the calculator for simple math. Computers have their place but lets just simply realize that real intelligence is understanding how to do it with minimal outside help (self reliance the American way.)
I think a recent post on SD taughted that a school had no textbooks, just laptops (I expect those test scores to go down.)
Oh, an money is not the cure either, we are throwing more money at schools now then ever and getting less of a return, if the public school were a business we'd be bankrupt in a year. Back to the basics. Remember the three R's. Reading, Writing, and Arithmatic? Not sex education, or the other dumb classes that are offered.
This space available for rent.
Unless you answered "yes", most of that time you spent "learning" a foreign language was wasted. I support the goal of foreign language fluency but it's pretty obvious that the methods used in most US schools are not achieving much.
There are better ways to learn foreign languages. Schools should be using them.
There is one such way which, surprisingly, isn't much of a departure from the way it's done right now but produces far better results: teach one year of Esperanto first, and then procede with the so-called "natural" languages. In one study, French secondary-school (highschool) students had one year of Esperanto and then three years of either English or German. At the end of the four year program, they were more advanced than the students who had gone through four contiguous years of English or German, and they could read and write fluently in Esperanto as well!
There are theories about why it turns out this way but the important point is that it works. Not only do the students progress further toward the original goal but they also gain another language to a point where they can use it for real-life correspondence. Even if the current system isn't ready to handle more efficient language-learning techniques (used by language schools and them military, for example), this system of teaching Esperanto as a "foreign language primer" could be implemented just as quickly as some teachers could learn it... which is to say, in only a couple years.
Just so you know I'm not pulling this out of my ear, consider that I've been teaching myself Esperanto for only two years now. Starting from a great web site called Lernu.net, I can already comprehend and participate in Esperanto-language meetings, read unabridged literature in Esperanto, and instant-message chat with girls, er, people all over the world in Esperanto. Some of my Esperantist net-pals use Skype and PalTalk a lot too, though I don't have that much time for that myself.
Much like sports, it's all about fundamentals. I know much of what I'm about to say has been said multiple times by many other posters here.
Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.
One of the phrases I've found quite useful in quite a number of areas is, "You have to know the rules before you can break them." One extension of this is into computer and calculator use in school. Students and faculty alike are becoming too dependent on a machine to give them the right answer instead of being able to figure it out. If the machine is broken, or more likely, improperly inputted, they will swallow the result and fall flat on their faces with little to no recourse. "The problem with computers is they do exactly what you tell them."
Language skill also rely on rules, even when those rules are broken. Strategically breaking rules can bring powerful results. And these results can come in both writing and reading. As well, you can recognize instances where you may be manipulated by seemingly correct but deliberately broken rules. One example is propaganda, or more generically referred to as the persuasive argument.
Another topic I wish to touch on is the value of memorization. Many here probably decry the practise of memorization. I'm partially one of them, but I know there can be tremendous value to it. Through AP Chemistry and college level chemistry courses I came to have quite a bit of the information on the periodic table memorized. I was never forced to have it memorized but that information became quite useful during tests in that I was able to focus more on the overarching problem rather than the particulars of atomic number, weight, etc. I didn't have to break concentration or a train of thought to look something up. To try and make a computer analogy, it's like hard-wiring commonly used functions to speed up processors. As far as knowing how to think I believe that's a given. I've met too many people that were "book smart" that have a hard time making it in the real world of adults.
To summarize my point, you have to give children a foundation and the tools to build upon it. Giving them pieces of the supposed finished product do not yield a successful result in the long run. Fundamentals plus thinking abilities are the only way to be able to learn.
WHY?
I'm now an engineer and was discouraged through most of my education from asking this and it was when I actually got answers to this that my fact memorization actually became useful knowledge.
Students are frowned on asking this question and when they do they never get a real answer. They only hear this is what we're learning so learn it.
why are we learning this/why do I need to learn this? why do I need to understand how these numbers relate? why can't we leave during lunch? why are we reading this 75 yr old book that has nothing to do with us?
Getting kids to ask these questions and then actually giving them real answers entices them to learn more, or atleast gives them a reason to care.
you cant leave during lunch because we have 600 students who drive to school and the school is responsible for you from 8am to 3pm and we just dont have the manpower to keep up with everyone once they leave campus.
you're reading the book because it is an example of the culture during this period and it was that culture which shaped our current culture.
as for history, it relates to current events, science is how the world works, and math is the logic behind science
If a student can ask the question relating to the material, they should get a response, and if the teacher doesnt know it, they should be willing to find out or atleast point the student in the direction so they can find out
2) Focus heavily on math and English from an early age. In high school there were a lot of people who were unable to handle basic algebra or still butchered the English language. Don't allow the children to use calculators or computers as this just encourages them to be lazy when it comes to math and grammar.
3) Start teaching them a foreign language in grade school. It seems like a majority of the world is bilingual or better, while a majority of children in the United States only speak English (and generally poorly at that). Personally, I'd suggest Spanish as it's becoming more widely used in parts of the United States. Spanish can easily be transitioned to other languages like French, Italian, etc. later if that person would rather learn a different language. And don't just teach them words either! Teach them how the language workds and give them a better understanding of the mechanics.
4) Don't be afraid to fail or promote a student. When I was young I went to a really small grade school for a while. I was really good with math and went through the second and third grade maths in one year. On the flip side, some students will struggle with certain subjects (me I suck at spelling) and need to be held back. Everything can be more flexible if grade schools would have a specialized teacher for each subject rather than having a teacher for each grade.
5) Discipline, discipline, discipline. I have thought about getting an education degree a few times, but I absolutely refuse to teach elementary education. My girlfriend's mother teaches third grade and tells me all kinds of horror stories about what the children can do. My parents would tell me stories about how they would be paddled in school if they misbehaved. I don't know if it would be such a good idea to reinstate something like that, but children lack discipline. They get in trouble in school and at worst sit in an office for a while. It's especially bad if the parents don't care or do anything. If you can't paddle them, ten hours of detention instead of one hour might help get the message across a little better.
6) Encourage education. Right now, it seems that there is more focus on athletics in high school than on educational things. My old highschool just raised over $100,000 to put lights on the football field, so we can have one home night game a year, and a new floor on the basketball court. Our 9-12 enrollment is probably around 100 students. We have to co-op with another town for a 9-man football team if that tells you anything. Just think what that money could have done if it had been spent on things like drama, speech, music, and other programs that are often ignored in favor of the sports teams.
7) Just because I don't think money should be spent on sports teams doesn't mean I don't think physical education is important. Obesity is becoming a serious problem in this country. In addition to serving more nutritious food (or at least not so much junk food), the kids should get in a good work out at school. Overweight kids should not be told it's "ok" or have excuses made. They should get into shape. Maybe 40 laps around the gym every morning would get rid of all that energy some of them seem to have.
8) Increase the requirements for a person to graduate. To me it seems pathetic that someone can graduate with the poor English, math, and general skills that they can today. I know a few people who graduated from my school that spent a lot of their senior year taking shop classes. Let's all quit pretending that school is/was difficult and expect a little more from t
So far, most of the responses here are about "teach this, teach that, don't waste time on such and such, spend more time on the other thing." I have a different approach to suggest.
I spent half of my pre-college years at a private school which I credit with teaching me more stuff and more useful stuff than I learned in class to get my college degree.
Besides having a campus that looks like a country-club, the two main things that private school has going for it are class sizes of 16 or less students, many in the 6-8 range, and teachers that are passionate -- both fresh-out-of-college that I'm sure have burned out by now, and "lifers" who really knew their stuff and for whom teaching was still more than just another job and from whose ranks best English/Math/Science/Coach/etc of the year for the state were regularly chosen.
It was, and continues to be common for this school to graduate the occasional national merit scholar and a handful of finalists each year out of a class size of 60-80 kids.
So, while I don't pretend that simply reducing the student/teacher ratio and booting the unmotivated teachers would be sufficient, I think it would go a long way to improving the situation. Probably cost a boatload or two as well - although teacher salaries, at that and most private schools, are notably less than their public school counter-parts'.
Like Ali G... Respect!
Damn right they're not typical. When the divorce rate reaches 55%, most kids aren't breast fed past 3 months, and parents spend more time worrying about their retirement than a kids education, what do you expect? Of COURSE they're not typical! We've got a bunch of parents who are more interested in their house's landscaping and whether they're going to be able to get a round of golf in before they "HAVE" to pick up the kids from daycare than we have of the parents who WANT their children to learn. We have parents who sigh with relief when they drop their kids off in the morning and shudder in fear at the idea of picking them up after work! We have parents who can't put aside their differences and act like adults and make a DECISION to have children in a rational way. We have people getting married after 3 months of dating and we publicize it and call it "fairytale" and tell everyone they should aspire to it. We show "the bachelor" on TV where ever episode is about who is screwing who - until the end when they get married then divorced a week later. Hello? Culture? Anyone? Has anyone seen my culture? I seem to have left it at the statue of liberty.
That's all very true, but we do set the bar way too low for students. None of the above is required to pass with good scores, so most students, being immature and shortsighted, don't do any more than required.
Complicating the matter is that a large number of parents are shortsighted as well, so they just look at the kids' grades and say "they're doing well, i don't need to be involved." Had the bar been placed higher to begin with, more of these shortsighted people would realize that they're screwing up.
How do we improve education? We must simply work for it. We must work on encouraging the youth to want a good education, and to work toward getting one. It is absolutely impossible to simply walk up to the counter and order, "One good education, please." Education is an interactive process, and the student must work at least as hard as the educator.
Personally, I also feel that the responsibility for providing this encouragement falls squarely on the parents' shoulders. However, it does take a community to raise a child, and it would be easier to convince the child if everyone in the community (parents, teachers, movie makers, writers, community officials, neighbors, convenience store clerks, everyone) worked toward that goal.
I also had a great public school education. My teachers taught me the basics and then taught me to think for myself. I can't believe that the only good public schools in the country are in my hometown, which leads me to believe that the problem isn't necessarily the schools themselves (except in the case of extremely poor areas that have trouble attracting qualified teachers).
... a good public education can be had, and it doesn't have to cost a fortune. It does, however, require parental involvement, high expectations, and hard work.
What makes the schools I went to successful? It's not the amount of money spent per student (on the high end of average, and property taxes remain relatively low). It also isn't any sort of technology being used as a stand-in for good teaching. The important things are that the schools: 1) pay a fair salary and attract bright and interested teachers, and 2) are populated by children from highly intellectual families (probably one of the things that initially attracted the qualified teachers). My hometown is about 25 min outside Boston, and is largely composed of Boston professionals and university professors--groups that place a very high premium on scholastic success. Parents take a real interest in how their kids do in school and, in my experience, expect learning and schoolwork to happen inside *and* outside the classroom.
Don't be so damn quick to blame American schools and schoolteachers
Others have already said it - education begins at home.
Encourage parents to read to kids, especially in lower-class neighborhoods where parents may not have been raised by parents who read to them every day as kids. Pediatricians should give age-appropriate books to kids with every checkup, and "order" the parents to read with the kids daily if possible. Teachers should assign PARENTS the homework of reading to or with their kids a few hours a week.
Second, encourage community involvement. Have centers in neighborhoods with a low degree of reading-at-home where parents can bring their preschool and elementary kids to read to or with community volunteers. If the parents don't read well, use these same centers to teach them how to read at no cost to them. These can be located at schools and churches.
Sure, this costs money including taxpayer money and more importantly, requires community involvement and a willingness for parents to trust their kids with "total strangers" even if they have been through a background check, something many parents fear in today's child-kidnapper-of-the-week-on-CNN environment.
Good places for volunteers:
Teenagers, young adults without kids, and retirees.
Also, raise my taxes:
If 99% of people actually DO read at the level they are intellectually capable of reaching by high school graduation and 99% of those capabile of college stay in school until they reach their mental limit or finish a Ph.D., that's money well spent. It means a stronger work force, which makes for a more robust and efficient economy, more tax revenue, and possibly a return to lower tax rates in the long run.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And with any monopoly, you get a poor product at a high price.
We at Slashdot love the competition AMD is giving Intel and what this is doing for the processor market. Competition should be embraced at the grade school level as well.
Look at our country's university system, which is universally acknowledged as the best in the world. We have a combination of state and private schools, but they all compete.
I understand what you're saying, but that's a shortsighted view in itself. The education system cannot tailor itself to push students to their own level of accomplishment. That has to be up to the parents. Let's face it, when one teacher has 30 students each hour, the one on one time is about 1 minute per student. Not only do you not get to know them on an individual basis, you certainly never get a chance to push them to their potential. It has to be the parents. School simply can't do it - not because their not trying but because education is a HUGE job.
*sits up, takes notice*
What's wrong with my 401k?!
*goes to check*
we could remove the people in school who dont want to be in school, and give parents a choice as to where to send their kids. here is a review of an excellent book about it. http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/market.htm
The introduction mentions value of homework, value of grammar. The problem is that little value is placed on actual education in the US. Education is not a priority. For the most part people want to be lazy and not exert themselves. These people are convinced that this is their right, they are entitled to a high standard of living which basically means having it easy with little or no work.
In my opinion, to improve education you need parents who care, parents who value education, parents who have the right set of priorities.
You don't need $50 million dollar schools, you don't need computers in the school. You need good parents and good teachers.
My wife and I were going to home school our children but instead are sending our kids to catholic school. It would be easier, and a lot less expensive for our kids to attend the local public school but we think this is the best option for our family.
Education is far too important to be left to the whims of a government monopoly, and the whims of union bosses. Yes, there are good teachers (and I had more than my share), but they are successful in spite of the system, not because of it.
But if we take it as given that we're stuck with this wallowing behemoth, the big thing to change, IMHO, is the reliance on a single learning style. The current classroom sees students as machines that assimilate input and regurgitate the right answer. If your dominate learning paradigm fits the teacher, great; if not, you'll sort of get the idea, but you'll never excel. The teaching methods need to handle the different modes of learning -- visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.
Also, the vast majority of us don't work on an assembly line, so why are public schools modeled on one?
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
I see a lot about ditching computers. I agree with that except that there is still a need for computer classes. I was talking to a teacher the other day who said their middle and high schools had eliminated computer classes altogether. The result was that English teachers had to become Word Processor and Typing instructors instead of English teachers. Why is that?
Just because little Johnny can pop in a cdrom, click "Install", and be up and running on the latest "gawt-danged vidya game" in 10 minutes doesn't mean he knows anything about typing, using a word processor or a spreadsheet, programming, -- you know, all that crap they expect you to know before you get to college.
So, in summary,
+ Computer Classes
- Fancy computer-based "instruction"
feh,
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
"1. I know that there is a strong libertarian faction in this community, who might like to see public education disappear. Let's assume, though, that that isn't going to happen any time soon, and that there will be a public school system for the foreseeable future."
The problem is fundamentally that we have socialized education. Furthermore, the students and their parents have little or no say in the education provided. That's the problem, and that's where the solution has to be. If someone can come up with a solution that doesn't involve true school choice, then I'm all ears. And by true school choice, I mean that parents/students are give a stipend (regardless of income, need, or the government's perception of whether or not their designated public school is failing) that they can take to the school of their choice. All the efforts in the world to increase parental involvement or introduce standardized testing won't change a thing until the government quits hindering education.
bance.net
You want to improve public education? Then you need to get rid of the notion that every kid is entitled to the same degree of education. Sorry, life doesn't work this way. We need more tiers of education for the elite and the more mentally challenged. Of course there should be opportunity to be promoted/demoted.
In Japan, every student does not get the same education.
RIGHT! As a teacher I was offended by that statement. *Most* teachers do a great job - and students that want to learn, DO learn. I agree with your comment completely.
Higher Education:
It doesn't need to be so expensive and so lengthy. We don't need fancy gyms and other resort-like facilities. Semesters should give way to quarters or more frequent exams so that people stop spending most of their undergrad playing around and cramming at the end of the semester.
Self Study:
I have a college degree and a graduate degree, but most of what I know is from my own reading. Sure, it may take some people 1/3 of a year to learn about basic American government institutions, but those that learn it on their own should be able to pass out and not waste the time for that. Yes, there are APs but they are only for basic subjects and they aren't always recognized by all schools.
Anyway, someone should be able to theoretically learn math by themselves and simply be granted a degree if they pass the requisite tests, no matter if they go to class or not. After all, a lot of great minds in the past were self-taught.
Primary education:
It should prepare people to be able to self-teach. What basic knowledge do you need to teach yourself? Mostly reading (good writers usually read a lot) and logic (including math). Every highschool graduate should be able to recognze a logical fallacy when they see one. If you have logic and an understanding of language, you can learn the rest yourself.
A great start would be forcing people to hand in something written every month. It only has to be 1 peice a month but make sure it's judged on the hand writing (back in my day a good 10 years a go now at junior school we had whole lessons JUST on spelling and hand writing 2-3 times a week for an hour a lesson).
A few years back I stopped writing for a good six months, I had no reason to and just typed everything up. My hand writing went to hell to the point where I almost forgot how to hold a freaking pencil. I don't see how other kids would be any different.
We used to use PCs to play games on in the lunch break in my day, we had a handful of basic games and that was about it. 1 PC for a class of 30.. now they have a PC each and seem to think they're needed.
I like muppets.
You will always have a reflection of those people in the program. So the better the board members the better the program will be.
The divorce rate, breast feeding, college money saving, busy parents, and television are post hoc fallacies. We don't have good public schools because there is no value. They are "free". Americans will value education when they have to pay for it themselves without the government holding the pursestrings.
...but in the UK, the education system has gone right down the drain. In higher education, the courses are often underfunded (i.e, my sister recently started at Uni on a Biology course, they threatened to cancel the course weeks after she began, and now half the labs are shut with a skeleton faculty staff left. this should have happened BEFORE taking on new students), and the cost of living is far high than student loans realistically allow for. Only those with money can realistically come out the other side debt free. Those with money always seem to take "waste of space" courses, art, psychology, photography, plus many others. Someone I know recently went to study "World Peace"??!!?? these courses should be taken later on, as it is they are seen as a way to get a loan, and waste three years. more emphasis really should be placed on practical courses like sciences and math, IT, agriculture and law enforcement. Arts, history and courses with limited career path (and I don't count teaching in same subject a career path, a job should not exist only to feed itself) should be done for students own enjoyment later.
In primary and secondary education, the Chav, pikey or townie's that now overrun the country, with their burberry hats, bling and gratuitous violence are in school but don't want to learn. Even when I was at school, one bad kid could bring an entire lesson to a standstill, and things are now worse. Kids aren't afraid of anything anymore, and this fearlessness makes them unruly.
...that is the single biggest failure I see in our school system, and I'm quite sure it is the same in the US. I saw some of it during my own time in school. And the standard is highly geared against requiring performance, and "hard" subjects with right and wrong answers.
...engineering?)
Let me take an example, from a college survey I know. I was asked to look into it because they were ranked last. In short, they are an engineering-heavy college.
Cons:
Bad grades (many flunk math and other hard subjects)
Failed classes (let's count that twice, shall we)
Blackboard classes (well, it's no sociology groupwork class)
Few female teachers (hey it's engineering)
Few international students (wow let's go abroad and have fun studying
Basicly, nobody cares that the study is actually quite fine academically, the facilities, the community and all that. Just lower your standard, educate people who don't actually know anything, and it will be ranked much higher. WTF is that.
Or take another example I know, about intake requirements for the university. When I went there, the line required three years of math in what you might call high school, with bonus points for high grades. Now, they have to accept every student who has "general study competence", which means they could have barely passed the first year basic math class. What did they have to do? Lower the bar. A LOT. They basicly spend the first year just getting them up to the point where they used to be when they started.
I don't care how much the school pampers you, if you get told all the time you're doing fine *regardless* of what you actually perform, you will end up dumb as a brick because everyone lowers their effort to match expected performance. And if there's no floor on the expectations, there's no floor on the effort either. Just breeze through and meet work life like a fist in the face.
It has been said straight out there that on some lines, the intake requirements are so low, the competence so low, that even with an MSc in engineering, expect them to be an in-house trainee for several years. They simply aren't qualified to do the job they're supposed to be qualified for.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The fact that the parent has been modded up gives me hope. I would have expected that anyone saying such things that hit too close to home would be attacked. Parents need to be involved. Basically parents need to parent, and not shirk their collective responsibility onto schools or day cares. Parents need to talk with their kids teachers, and get as involved as possible. Kids will realize what the parents value, and if the parents only give lip service to school the kids won't take it seriously. Having children is a tremendous responsibility, and I can't think of anything more important that ensuring that they grow up as educated ethical individuals.
I am 1. A successful product of public schools 2. A public school teacher
The educational system we have in place was designed to create a "classed" society: We need owners, we need management and we need factory workers. Most of the country was rural, so folks not working factories got basics to help them through life.
The system worked well: we had graduates ready to go on to college or report to work. (think about it bells told you when to start and stop, lunch was a defined timeframe - no flexing) Society has changed rapidly and schools today are on the verge of being antiquated.
The emphasis on standardized testing has not helped students. Teachers often focus on getting the child to pass the test without getting them to understand and manipulate the knowledge they gain. I have seen many students who can pass a test but ask them to do something different with the material like apply it in a new way, and they look like deer in headlights. The tests also have created "achievement gaps" between races and even the sexes.
I struggle with the idea of standardized testing: I know it has become a necessary evil, but there are students who miss incredible amount of class time because they have to take this test or that test to enable them to graduate.
I do not have the solution to save everything. If I did, I sure as hell would be sharing it with the country.
With that said, there is one over-riding factor that would help: PARENT INVOLVEMENT. If parents made an effort to stress the importance of education, grammar, math, spelling, DISCIPLINE etc. you would have a new generation of literate and educated students. They would also have the skills to adapt and learn.
Too often parents expect the schools to do their job. If they don't get directives at home, they sure as hell won't get them from people they see a couple hours a day.
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
The level of generalization I'm reading here about US schools being awful is a tad extreme. The whole question of education is complex and contrary to what many may believe, there is no ONE way that would satisfy and work for everyone.
I attended public school in NYC until 7th grade. I then moved to New Jersey and attended public school until graduating from high school. I can honestly say I think I received an excellent education. I went on to college and got a BS in Mechanical Engineering.
I think several people have already mentioned the following:
Self awareness - try it!
To quote: We once had a "discussion" with our daughter's teacher because he said he wasn't so much interested in her spelling correctly and applying grammatical principles correctly as he was in what she was saying. While we agreed what she was trying to say was important, we felt it equally important (for a fifth grader) to be grounded in grammatical and spelling fundamentals.
The problem is that our universities are giving most elementary teachers a "postmodern" perspective because most who are entering into teaching avoided science and math like the plague, and with it the concrete nature of truth and absolutes. The students in history, english, humanities, languages, and the arts in general meanwhile are taught from a postmodern perspective by the arts professors at such universities. Postmodernism is an understanding of this world where there is no one truth - truth is relative to the person. Thus while for you '4 + 3 = 5' is wrong and 'The dog are gooder...' is gramatically incorrect, for me they are right and correct because that is my truth (if I were a postmodernist).
Or to give another examle: Little Jimmy's story about the stick and the frog (in the view of the postmodern teacher) isn't a poorly developed story, but a literary masterpiece in its metaphoric description of race relations in the United States! Perhaps little Jimmy should even have it published in Social Text ! When the only rules that apply to one are one's own rules, there is no possibility of education. Education needs definite and absolute standards. So either there is a need to de-program all of those arts-major grade school teachers or to force future teachers to have a better education, i.e. in subjects where definite rules are still taught, such as the sciences, computers, or Latin grammar.
All of our schools have a mandatory attendance policy, but none have a mandatory learning policy.
My proposal is this: you get out of school when you learn everything you need to know to graduate, which includes reading, writing, social science, math, at least one foreign language, music, and art (of which the last of these I am woefully ignorant FWIW).
Ask any high-schooler what he thinks of school. Well over 90% will give you the same answer: "boring". Why is that? It's because they're "forced" to be there doing something they don't want to do, in order to reach a goal (the diploma), which they don't really see as a goal for any other reason than they've been told "it's a good thing" and their parents told them they need to do so. There is no tangible benefit to them for learning.
In the current system, if you get done with your project early, or have already learned the material, what is your reward? You get "busy work" to keep you occupied until the rest of the class catches up. Now that's some reward that really models the "real world." You want kids to learn, give them a reason to learn. The sooner they learn, the sooner they can start making some spending cash elsewhere.
Oh, and one more thing. Oral exams when appropriate. Too many students cheat. An oral exam makes it very difficult to fake your way out.
There was a survey a few years ago where teachers were asked to describe their perfect classroom. Nearly universally, they described their current class with better students (and usually more teaching aids). If we're going make a real change we need to think outside the box (Bingo!) and make some REAL change.
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
Unfortunately, due to wage pressures and the inability of Congress to enact more progressive tax laws, a lot of families need both parents to work in order for them to put food on the table, leaving less time to spend with their kids. If you want more involvement of the parents, you need livable wages and an economy that puts more emphasis on family life.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
The worst moments of my public education stemmed from incompetent old teachers who were next-to-imposible to get rid of because they had tenure. Some of the best teachers I had lost their jobs during budget cuts because they were young, and the teacher's union protected the old failures who had tenure and thus were unnacountable for their incompetence.
Not that homework is necessarily bad, but at my high school it was upwards of 60% of your (pre-final) grade. Basically, homework was the cushion allowed students to recieve B's and A's regardless of whether they actually learned anything.
Homework then becomes like a job. You punch the clock, you do the work, you get the grade. That's a super system...for a factory. But what does this factory produce? End of chapter questions? Book reports? Filled-out worksheets? This certainly doesn't help out our economy any (the prices of these products are pretty low), and I've yet to see proof that it actually helps the students learn anything (other than how to copy a friend's homework, if you didn't have time to do yours)...and that is the purpose of school, right? Or has that changed?
In college nearly all of my classes take a different view...routine, daily homework is practice. It's warm-up. Do it if you need it. If you can step right into the exam, or churn out the paper, without doing the homework, more power to you...you obviously already know what we're trying to teach you. If only they'd return the money you spent on the class. I've had classes where I could skim the textbook and land easy A's all the way through...I've had classes where I actually needed the daily homework to help me figure out what the hell I was doing and squeak by. But the point is, it's my choice. There is no mythical homework store that needs to stock it's homework shelves with my merchandise. If I need to do it, great, if not, also great.
The couple of classes where routine, daily homework WAS graded so far in my college career it still didn't account for 50-60 percent of my grade...it was more like 10-20. It was not a crutch to build an A on, it was the icing on the B cake that would get you an A.
Maybe it was just because I was an underachiever in high school, though. Because I didn't like doing homework. And generally, I didn't. I'll come out with it...I came out of high school with a 1.1 GPA. I generally walked into the final with an F, needing a solid A to pass the class, and scored it...without studying, without reading the text, half the time without attending class regularly. Why? Because when you ace all the tests and quizzes, ace the projects, and ace the final, and don't do the homework, you generally end up with a D. People would be amazed that I could even pass a class with a 10-15% score on my homework average. "But you'd have to get nearly 100% on everything else!" Yeah, I know.
A high score on the SAT got me into college, and now I'm holding a 3.7 in EE. I'm not sure my high school was measuring the right attributes. Though part of it is that getting A's in high school just isn't worth it...unless you're going for scholarships. Since it wouldn't have helped me stand out from the other complete morons who got A's, what's the point. That makes the game pointless when everybody gets to win. And it's not really losing if you don't play, right?
And for those that say the point of it is to teach a strong work ethic, I see where you're coming from. That is somewhat important. But teaching some form of academic content is MORE important, and measuring the success of that is important as well. This is impossible if the "grind" allows kids that take no knowledge away from the class to get an A anyway. We have our entire careers to learn about the importance of work...getting fired once or twice is a good motivator. School is for learning actual...well, stuff.
The point behind teaching sports is not to teach kids who can become professional atheletes. It is to teach everyone the values of physical exercise, teamwork, fairness, and competition. Physical exercise has been shown to have a host of benefits, including a greater resistance to disease, and increased ability to concentrate. Children in North America are showing increasing tendencies towards obesity. We should be including their exercise in their education. Running is fine, in and of itself, but it is a solitary pursuit.
I think that the idea of moving kids along in lockstep, one grade at a time, may not be the best method. When I was in grade 5 or 6, we had a reading program in our school. There were a whole series of booklets, each set with it's own color. Each child would progress through the booklets at their own pace. The idea of a two month summer vacation, a concession to the days when the bulk of the student body was involved in harvesting, should probably be re-evaluated.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I think the problem in the United States is cultural. We are brought up to believe that we deserve the best of everything and we shouldn't have to work to get it. Our free enterprise system bombards us with "how can you possibly live without our product?" and "why wait? You deserve this". This leads to a generation of children thinking that they deserve good grades because we're all "winners". When I taught (physics) at a private University many of the students were agast that I would give out C's and D's. Even worse, parents would call and compain to me that junior received a failing grade!!
grrr....
Tenure laws *do not* keep bad teachers in their jobs!
I am a teacher. I know of what I speak.
Tenure laws provide *due process* so that teachers cannot be fired because somebody's daddy didn't like their kid's test grade. Especially if that kid happens to be the Superintendent's son.
Tenured teachers *can*be fired for being ineffectual. The law simply requires proper documentation. In effect, it has the same effect on our profession as the threat of a "wrongful termination" suit has on the business world.
Before you rant about laws you don't understand, get your own education!
And anyone with half a brain will note that I committed a logical fallacy as well. Mea Culpa. Please insert the words "I believe" before the last two sentences.
I've moved more than once a year in the first 20 years of my life and visited 5 different school systems alltogether. I've seen many education systems as a first hand experience. Top-Level ultra expensive private schools, reformistic primary school, integrated high school (with school uniform, corporal punishment and the whole sheebang), etc. ... errrm ... was considered one of the better ones.
The last school I attended was a waldorf school (wikipedia info not very detailed but feasable). I was there for the last few years of my school time.
In my first hand experience the anthroposophical waldorf education system beats any other hands down. It had concepts one hundred years ago that are considered "brand new stuff" (such as early second language education) by others today.
The Epochal system makes learning fun and the results just stick. I rember our classes with tremendous detail. And, rumors to the contrary, their scientific education is top notch, often due to the pratical and experimental orientation of classes. Art is a core component (not just a nice extra) training social skills from the first day. Teachers usually are hard working idealists doing their best to aknowledge each individual pupil and supporting their talents. I mentioned their math classes in another comment the other day, which gives a clear picture of the general compentence of the waldorf system.
My daugther attends waldorf school and the extra money it costs is more than worth it. And I live in germany where the education system is
The truth is:
Every improvement regular western school education has gone through within the last century allways was a step towards the waldorf way of doing things.
It is my first hand experience that they are the bar for everything else.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I totally agree.
The bit I quoted above reminded me of a Poli/Sci professor I had in junior college. One day, as he's going over the finer points of Constitutional law, one of the slackers at the back of the class raised his hand and asked, dead seriously, "Yeah, but do I really need to know any of this stuff?"
Without missing a beat, the prof responded, "Maybe, maybe not. The world will always need fry cooks."
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Of course. I didn't quite mean it that way. The system has to set the bar, but it's still the students' & parents' responsibility to meet it.
All i want to see is for it to be ok for a teacher to fail a student. As long as it's possible for the student to recover and get back on track, it's a perfect way to raise expectations without the school assuming any additional burden.
How would you improve the current educational system? What expertise do you see lacking, and what qualifies one as a "REAL educator"?
What metrics would you use to evaluate the progress of students and staff?
I'm guessing your response will include several items, how would you prioritize them to obtain the most "bang-for-the-buck"?
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
- Move the class pace with the top 33% of the class, leave the stragglers behind.
- Don't allow parents to bully teachers
- Make grades public knowledge, a little pride or embarassment goes a long way
- Make social privillages based on performance (ie, very poor gardes then no High School)
- Give tax and other benefits to teachers
- Only keep the good teachers, because the job is in demand and the system can be picky
- Pay teachers a living wage
- Extend the school day from six to nine hours
- Teach kids from day one that life is not a free ride and that only by working hard (and I mean hard) can you make anything of yourself
That should be a good start.- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
or the Tennessee Value Added Assessment System seems to be a good idea for testing progress rather than just accomplishment. The nice thing about it is that you can group kids by rate of learning (less holding smart kids back and leaving slow kids behind), plus you can discover the really effective teachers.
You can also discover the incompetant ones, which is why many teacher unions are opposed.
Too many schools don't teach a lot of basic PC skills, such as word processing, spreadsheets and simple database theory. If they do, without sufficient depth. This should be taught at the high school level at least.
As an alternative to French and Spanish, students could have the option to learn HTML, VB, Jscript, XML?
Also, economics and basic investing should be taught at the high school level. Investing is a fact of life nowadays, and if you can't tell me the difference between a stock and a bond by high school graduation, you are at a serious disadvantage.
Started in 1980 with 100 employees; now with 4500 employees and a 71 billion dollar budget. Let's return control to states and localities.
Look at the way your local school is run and where the money is spent. Ask yourself - If it were yours to run, would you spend your money in the same way?
The easiest and most expensive way to make something bloated and inefficient is to make it run by the government.
We need trade schools. While you don't need virtually _any_ training to work minimum wage at McDonalds, there are many positions out there that don't require a college education, but do require some about a year or so of training to become good at it. Do you really care if your plumber or your mechanic has a college degree, as long as they are good at their field?
I say that at age 16, kids have the option of joining a trade program where they work for part of the day, and learn the other part. They would get to choose their work field, and would study that field, along with the basic living skills (home ec, money management, computer skills, cooking, civics) instead of what they would be "studying" (Chemistry, Literature, Algebra). Their paycheck from the half-day job would be dependant on their grades from the other classes.
After two years, they will recieve a high school diploma upon being hired by a company in the field that they chose. Bam! You've got 18 year olds who know how to manage their money, how to keep a home, how to be an effective member of society, and are well-versed in a trade that they can perform throughout their lives.
remove standardized text books: They cost too much, they're horribly written, and they teach next to nothing. Giving each teacher the choice of their text will mean that religious wackjobs and textbook publisher bribes will be contained in a couple classes.
remove composition from the literature course: I like reading, I like writing, I hate writing about fiction. This is what most people abhor about writing, and why students don't practice it. They know they'll never have to write an essay on shakespeare when on the job, so they think writing is immaterial to their life.
put composition into its own course: Each grade should have minimum standards for writing, math, science, rhetoric, history, and literature. You go to the next grade when you master all of those. If you're held back, you spend extra periods in that one level.
put rhetoric back into the curriculum: the "problem" with this is, students will see through their parents and teachers bullshit. This suggestion would be rough for the first batch of teachers having to deal with rhetorically trained students. I'm not just talking logic, I'm talking all the rhetoric, dirty and high and mighty.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
1. Stop trying to do everything for everyone. Some kids work well with intensive academic work. Some don't. Some prefer vocational study. Don't be afraid to be selective. 2. Teach kids the whys before the hows. Make sure they are motivated to learn what they are learning. Lay down the philosophy of science before teaching science. 3. Fewer exams. Focus on teacher assessments instead. 4. Better teachers. More enthusiastic teachers. 5. If you have to do exams, ban revision. Schedule exams at random times. A last minute crash course to burn things into short-term memory defeats the whole point.
K-4: The Foundation. This should be where you learn to speak, write and basic math, and include a lot of social activities. Teach them to interact with others. This should also be a moral grounding period. Teach them what's right and wrong, you'll have a _far_ easier time teaching them now than when they hit their teens. There isn't a need to have a ton of work involved in these years.
5-9: Mandatory Classes. This is where the majority of their "book" learning should be. It's also a time where you should be able to see who is falling behind, and be able to give more help where it's needed. You should be able to do algebra, read novels, etc.
10-12: Choices. Let them make their own choices. If they screw up now, it's not as bad as if they do it in college, or later. Explore new things, and figure out what you want to spend $nK of your parents money on for college. There shouldn't be a whole lot of hand holding going on. The students should be eased into doing things for themselves, and not always relying on an instructor to point out each step. These years are a prep for college and the working world more than anything.
Note that not a lot of that was actual book learning, but focused more on developing as a person. Being able to memorize facts and pass a test is good, but where will that get you in life? If you can't interact with others, make your own informed decisions, how far up the ladder do you really think you're going to get?
The system breaks down when instructors guide struggling students through the entire grade, or when students are trained to ace any test given but still can't think for themselves. If you want specific, in-depth knowledge of something, go to college, that's what they're for.
Personally, I don't see public, or private schools really excelling lately. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and in the end it's up to the parents to decide what they want for their child(ren). Best thing to do is get involved, know your child's teachers, and watch them. It's easier said than done, but it's the best thing you can do. If you don't have children and you care that much about the quality of education in your area, try volunteering some of your time to help out.
Just my $0.02...
I'd have to respectfully disagree, except I'm so full of spite right now that it's very difficult to be respectful.
Your thinking is exactly the kind of heads-down gristmill crap that just about killed all of the intellectual curiosity out of me by the time I'd finished my third year of high school.
I'm still trying to piece together how this happened in my normally peace-loving mind, but when the stories came out about Columbine, I couldn't figure out how it hadn't happened sooner. Then I thought about it some more, and figured it was really unfair to the students, and probably some of the teachers. They should have gone shooting in the admin buildings during institute days. That might have sent the right message. It was the institution they hated, they just blamed the sock puppets.
Yes, we need reform, but if it's your way we might as well just put the shock collars on the sheep and whenever they express an errant thought just give them a good jolt. After all, this country was founded on shutting up an obeying.
How about getting parents to work with their kids on things like the ABC's, Numbers, and some of the basics so that when they get into the schools to begin with teachers don't have to waste time on things that Mom and Dad should have been able to provide themselves.
Then maybe you can start trying to figure out how to teach calculus to 5th graders...
There is nothing wrong with the education Americans get in school.
Yes, there are a few areas where Education in the US can be improved, namely: Funding.
But the problem is not the material that is being taught. The problem is with the audience! Most kids today don't WANT an education, they are exactly what many posters have said: anti-intellectual. They would rather hang out with friends, play video games, work on their OWN projects instead of learning real world skills and applying them in their lives.
I think the majority end up in 1 of 3 categories:
1. You do average/well all throughout high school, go on to college, earn your degree and enjoy moderate to high success.
2. You earn your high school diploma or equivalent. You might attend a year of college or earn a trade certificate. Most of your knowledge is earned on your own through personal hands on repetitive practice. (True of a lot of IT workers) You enjoy low, moderate or high success partially based on your skill set and partially based on luck.
3. You might pass high school, or perhaps you dropped out. You have no skills to speak of. Your life sucks. You enjoy almost no success, or only earn your success after a long hard life of climbing up the ladder. You might eventually make manager at a chain retail store or locally owned business. You enjoy low to moderate success only after A LOT of hard work.
While we're at it, let's abolish Harvard, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, Princeton etc... so we can improve our local community colleges.
This means, as many other posters are saying, that you have to create school environments where the children themselves value education.
A few ways to do this...
(1) Remove disruptive kids for the sake of the class, rather than forcing the class to endure disruption for the sake of the disrupter. http://bear.cba.ufl.edu/figlio/sue.pdf
(2) Stop holding kids back. Doing so means the slow and disruptive become the older and larger role models for the grade behind them. If a kid can't cut it in a regular school with kids his own age, that kid needs to be sent elsewhere.
(3) Don't tolerate racial stereotyping. The surest way to churn out dumb black kids is to teach them that black kids are dumb. (And no, that doesn't mean blowing smoke up their ass in an indulgent attempts to boost their self-esteem).
The best learning years are from 0-5, when most public education is not yet begun (most, Head Start, pre-school are exceptions, not the rule). Better parenting would be a start, but how to jump-start that now that we live in a society full of non-learners? Small, community-based, learning groups, with parents given time off work to participate, from birth. Make play a learning tool.
Most of our schools are minor mods on a system designed to educate the inbred, sickly, sons of European kings. When we want to improve it, we start with the existing system as a "given." What if we started with how a child's brain actually works?
Well, it's been done. Maria Montessori was an M.D. + 4 or 5 Ph.D's, including child development.
Sister (or Mother?) Maria looked at the purpose fun serves in the brain: it's a pointer to the correct next task! Oddly, this actually makes the method unpopular with both conservatives and liberals due to a polarized view of school. The strict conservative view (work hard, school should NEVER be fun) and the typical loose liberal view (never tell a child waht to do as along as they're non-violent) both give a very different classroom look-and-feel than Montessori gives. How many adults have the fortutitude to practice walking, or running, or splashing in the sink, for hours and hours on end on a routine basis? None, or very few. As my sister put it "Funny how you never have to tell your kids 'Don't forget to practice climbing all over things all day!'"
And another important point: My children learned MUCH MORE without parental involvement in Montessori school than they did WITH parental involvement in public school.
I can't seem to get non-geeks to "get" this but...
Given: there are many poor children whose parents cannot or will never get involved (3 jobs, or drugs or alcohol, or whatever.)
Then: our generally-announced committment to solve our educational issues via parental involvement amounts to an engineering spec that says "We will keep those kids in an uneducated state."
(CAVEAT: Just because a school SAYS it is a Montessori school, at least in the U.S., does not mean it is truly either quality or Montessori. I'm referring to the design an implementation, not the name.)
According to latest PISA studies, Finnish education system is one of the best. There's some interesting posts from the American point of view about Finnish schools in Robert Kaiser's Finland Diary in Washington Post. One should also read Kaiser's answers to readers questions, many of those are related to education.
American society must change and motivate in mass, a la the US educational system during the 60's space race with the Soviet Union. Our society is too focused on celebrity and wealth. Observe the American Idol phenomena and you'll know everything you need to know about our society's values today. Stop coddling our children, kids in Taiwan and Japan are committing suicide because of the amount of pressure the educational systems and society places on academic performance. We can afford to ratchet things up a little. Require discipline and effort while still emphasizing creativity and individuality (don't ask me how). Allow the gifted to be treated as such- give them more challenging assignments.
The problems with the education system go far beyond the education system itself, and goes as far as the economic state, the cost of living, and the income of the household.
I don't know the solution to all of these problems, but I found one that worked for me: A Community College Pel Grant, which bought me my pc, and a part time job, to pay for my braodband net connection, which let me spend 4 years in my closet teaching myself various programming languages and other (what used to be) marketable skills.the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
What absolute rubbish. The US system is pretty much the same as the system in nearly every other western nation and most asian nations. I challenge you to name one western country that doesn't have compulsory education (to around age 15), or a single country where people are forced into jobs based on testing.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Bull. My wife and I have three children with one on the way. My wife stays home with the children. My salary is okay, but nothing to brag over. We definitely don't have anything left over at the end of the month, we pretty much never go out to eat, go to the movies, etc. But that's okay. We have fun just spending time together. I think just about anyone could easily get by on just one income if they are willing to live within their means. It's basically greed for possessions and luxuries that drives the dual-income society. Be happy with what you have.
I've been working closely with the schools and school board in my area because I want to see them succeed. I have to say that you are working from the wrong assumptions:
(1) It is perfectly libertarian to have a community establish a school for the good of the community. In fact, the entire purpose of public schools is to educate the uneducated. Those who have parents who have an education don't need public schools and will succeed anyway. We are targetting the poor, ignorant masses, and there our focus must remain. All education institutions are charities, and we must remember this. If we fail in educating the lower class of students, we have failed altogether, and should close the schools.
(2) The ability of even the weaker minds to get educated is astonishing. I used to think I am pretty smart. I still do. But compared to those around me who I see in the grocery store, at my church, in my community, I am not much smarter and to a large extent not as smart as them. Humans in general are very, very intelligent and are quite capable of obtaining a very advanced education when they commit themselves to it. I understand there are those with physical disabilities that have the side-effect of limiting the education level that individual can obtain. The percentage of people with these limitations is much, much lower than you think, and society is already well-prepared to handle them appropriately. (Hint: public schools are not the place for them. They need a special education and attention completely different from what public schools can provide.)
So, with those two observations, let's begin analyzing what schools should be doing.
(1) We should EXPECT A LOT from our students. Humans, the vast majority of them, meet the extraordinary demands placed upon them. (Look at history for examples.) Yes, it is hard work. Yes it is stressful. However, this is a good kind of stress that everyone should feel - the stress of trying to be the best you can be. And it's the kind of stress you need to learn how to handle at a young age. Those children who are faced with this stress at an early age go on to a wonderful life filled with challenges and extraordinary success. Those without this stress never amount to much.
(2) Schools should INVOLVE PARENTS at every level. Elementary and middle schools that succeed have a parent assistant or two in the classroom every hour of instruction. These parents are there to observe and set examples for the children. If you consider there are roughly 30 children in a classroom, and 6 hours of instruction a day, that works out to each student needing their parents to put in about 1 hour of attendance in class a week. If each parent only put in a full 6 hours one day out of every 6 weeks, there would be a parent there all the time. Consider that you only really go to school for about 30 weeks of the year (discounting holidays and breaks), each parent would have to commit to only 5 6-hour days for each school year.
Parents must be seen as the primary educator, and teachers should be seen as a supporting member of the cast. If parents don't provide the proper motivation and enthusiasm for education, there is nothing the teacher can do. (If a teacher doesn't show the proper enthusiasm, the parent can get a new teacher.) Involving them in the classroom will help put them in the proper role.
(3) Parents need to understand the importance of an education and demand that the school provide it. Teachers often feel alone and even discouraged from challenging the children to succeed. When parents put the challenge to the teachers to teach, they will be much more willing to do the best they can. You should see your child's teacher often and ask, "How are you challenging my child and the other children? Are they stretching their abilities or are they getting a free ride? I don't care if my student isn't able to achieve 100% in the classroom. In fact, if he were I would demand more." When teachers see that you demand excellence, when they see your commitment to excel
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I'm living in Denmark,
where the vast majority of the education system is public (even the universities are free of charge). That means that a very high percentage of the population gets an education. While many of the schools aren't as fancy as their US counterparts (the money is divided between the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy areas), everybody is given the same opportunities. Where you live and who your parents are doesn't matter.
I think the biggest problem with the US system is that education has become an expense for the citizens. Not only do they have less or no time to work, they actually have to pay for being educated (bare in mind that the education of citizens makes a great, positive impact on a country in more ways than one). Here in Denmark (and Norway and Sweden too, I think) we actually *pay* people to study (SU).
1) Eliminate voucher programs and funding based on "performance" on standardized testing. Schools should be funded based on the current size of the student body. Nothing more. The more students you have, the more money you get to support those students. Accountability should come into play by laying off teachers and staff that aren't pulling their weight, not by cowering to Teachers Unions. (Though unions absolutely have their place)
2) Many many many teachers need to be laid off and pulled out of the pool. There are so many hack job teachers out there that at this point that I would never send my child to a public school. We need much tougher standards for new teachers. If you are going to teach math, get a full B.A. in Mathematics with a 1 year program in Education. Same with history, Music, Literature, Language, etc. No more of these "phoney baloney" Education degrees (with the exception of Elementary ed). I don't know how many times I've heard Math Ed majors rag on doing proofs, saying "this isn't math... why do I have to do this to teach Algebra?"... Many (not all) ride on the coat-tails of actual Math majors who, painfully so, must take classes with these people.
3) Pass a bill banning the currently accepted practice of parents suing Schools and Teachers for failing their precious little brats. 99% of these suits are frivilous at best. All of these cases should be taken to the School Board for review, not a civil court. If the School Board finds signs of wrong doing on the part of their staff, then and only then can action be taken to rectify the situation. Otherwise, your special little child gets held back.
4) Mathematics needs to become an absolute cornerstone to one's education. It seems that all I hear these days are these children whining about how they hate math and they see no point to it. The truth is, Mathematics is not taught in primary school. It is arithmetic that is forced into the brains of our youth. Algebra needs to be taught with basic proofs as with Geometry. Younger children are more capable of understanding this than those of us who are older. In trigonometry, students must be taught WHY Cosine/Sine/Tangent/arc*/hyp* produce the results that they do, not what buttons to mash on a $100 calculator. Hell, most High School graduates that have gone through trig or pre-calc couldn't tell Transcendental functions from Algebraic functions although they "got an A in that class".
5) Language skills are absolutely necessary. Summer reading programs as they are now, are a complete joke. Most of the time, teachers give students an extra MONTH to read the books they should have been reading over the summer. On top of that, most of the examinations barely cover what the actual premise of the book is let alone prompt any serious thought into deeper meaning. As well, more emphasis needs to be placed on foreign languages. Most every other country in the world has a fairly multi-lingual population except, you guessed it, the USA and her westernized cabal of cookie-cutter "free market" states. (sorry for the political rant... its been one of those... few years if you know what I mean)
6) There needs to be created a mandatory "Discussion" course where students learn to talk about Current and Historical Events. They must also learn how to adequately structure their statements and form logical arguments (some good philosophy courses could remedy this). I'm tired of hearing how people need to "express themselves". Most people still need to learn how to express themselves before anyone with a sound, rational mind will even want to hear anything of them.
But yeah, school sucks.
As somebody who been on either end of the school system
How about this: encourage reading and diversity, and get off the pills and freud:
In the early grades I was diagnosed as dyslexic with learning problems. In about gr2 I had two excellent teachers (husband/wife who both taught in my elementary). The introduced me to various books that caught my interest, and were there to teach rather than collect their $x/hour. My reading/literacy skills are now better than most... and I had mostly A's/B's throughout the rest of school.
On the freud and pills angle, stop the fucking syndrome-of-the-day diagnosis. I swear we're turning kids into guinea pigs for doctors to test mood-correcting drugs. Ritalin put me to sleep, and the only reason I was wandering around etc in the first place is because I had finished my work ahead of time and was bored
With the above again, not everyone learns at the same level... don't put 8th-grade level math students with the 5th grade students. My school wasn't too bad for that, though I know some would have been better up grades, and some would have been better below as all they did was disrupt everyone else's learning.
And continuing that line of thought, how about we don't put "Billy, who spent the summer stealing cars and selling dope" in with all the other nice elementary kids. Yes, I have seen this happen... and no you don't need to give Billy another chance, he had his, he blew it, if he wants another he can do correspondence rather than selling dope to the other students in gr7.
Lastly, literacy is important. Maybe some teachers are better at math, etc... but all should have a good level of grammar/spelling. When Mr. Smith spells worse than most of the 8th-grade students then it sends a bad message to kids that reading/writing/communication skills aren't important. Also, just because somebody is a brainchild at science or whatever doesn't mean he/she can teach... and just because they can teach doesn't mean they can teach everything. My best prof in college was a former programmer... we got lucky as he was an excellent teacher as well (despite the fact that I believe he didn't have much for teaching certs).
I've seen both teachers that are put into roles teaching stuff that they themselves don't understand, and people who understand material but don't have any concept of how to convey knowledge to others.
Anyhow, that's my rant, feel free to add to it.
I'm 29 graduated in '94 after attending high schools in NM,WY,KS, and AK. I saw it all and have to give my small sample set a B in educating me. Mainly, they were all short on money and human resources.
Blaming technology like computers or calculators is a misguided attachment to the device. The problem seems to be modern educators (parents included) approach to technology. I'm sure the pencil-and-paper camp opposed the slide rule. Plus, why is is device use always mutually exclusive? I have a yellow pad next to my pc amd a calculator in the drawer.
Seriously, most problems come down to parenting and community. It takes a village...
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Divide schools into 2 categories.
Red Schools would be for liberal arts types. They wouldn't have marshalled time, tests, or stringent repetition. They would aprecciate meaning over syntax.
Blue Schools would be for hard science t ypes. They would have structured classes, ranked exams, and plenty of drill. They would be sticklers for syntax. They would learn alternate and emerging technologies.
Then at the end of the year.... You know it! Red vs. Blue. You'd host mental (math olympics, literature-athon), physical (sports and baseball), and spiritual (figure skating, fasting, cooking) contests between school categories. Commencement could be so much more fun!
Then, just like the stock market's indicators of bear and bull, education could be rated by red or blue. One could say, "These high tech times are bluing education trends," or, "its been a red decade for educators."
I think you are half-right, but also half-wrong on the whole issue of esteem.
I would agree that it often seems taken to rediculous proportions. I would agree that students need to be responsible for the quality of their work, hence fail them (or have some other significant consequence, like shunt them off to a remedial level program or something, so they can at least still be with other failing students their own age), etc.
But self-esteem is definitely important. Being put in a positive mood and feeling optimistic about yourself and your prospects has been demonstrated to increase performance in and of itself. Forgive me for not citing any references other than I just finished reading a book called Exuberance which made the idea quite clear.
I think this hypothesis (that feeling better about yourself and having more self-esteem in general affects performance on a number of mental levels) is actually quite self-evident. I know I tend to do better work when I am happier and more enthusiastic about life, and worse work when I am in the doldrums.
The problem is that people tend to take it the wrong way and say, "well, we can't fail people then because it'll make them feel bad." You can't simultaneousl posit that people hold themselves in low esteem because they fail and that they fail because they hold themselves in low esteem. Sure, failing isn't going to help, but I think the proper approach would be to try to diagnose the various reasons why different students tend to think they're not worth anything or that they have little opportunities or prospects in life, and try to address those root causes. Try to address why some children just don't see education as worth it to them. Things like that.
I agree with your unrelated (to esteem) comments in the same paragraph about the silly acquiescence to meaning. You're here learning history because learning history is important, now sit down and read what you've been told to read.
Although perhaps if there were a simple way of explaining why history was important, that would be better than simply saying "because it is", etc... I mean, like, that the way the world is today affects you even if you just work at a cash register, because it affects laws about how you get paid and whether you can be drafted to fight a war, etc. The reasons behind why the world is the way it is are called history, so in order to have an understanding of things that will happen to you in life as an adult, you need to learn history.
Well, there's my poor attempt. I also know, as an aspiring science teacher (planning to quit my job in a year or so and switch careers), that many kids just aren't going to comprehend to listen to any explanation, because that's not what they really want, they just want to not have to do the work. Some kids are just unreachable and it has to be accepted.
Until June 11th, I was a high school math teacher at a public charter school in North Carolina. When I decided to not renew by contact for next year, it had nothing to do with money. It had everything to do with culture.
As a whole, our culture (or at least North Cakalaki's) does not value education. I don't need books, I don't need computers, I don't even need chairs. Give me some kids who come from families that value learning and education, and I'll help build an educated student. Give me a kid who won't even put in the effort to cheat on a a test or homework assignment, and there's jack shit I can do.
While culture may not be easy to change, it is the root of all our school's problems. Our schools are stupid enough, however, that, generally speaking, they don't attempt to either fix nor solve the problem. An essential clue that our systems are lacking is the shortage of math and science teachers. These people are, ideally, logical and rational people. Personally, the irrationality and lack of logic at the NC Department of Public Instruction was more than enough to cause me to leave the system. My only other alternative, would have been to sacrifice my standards and the quality of education.
What most of you missed is the parents. It is the parents responsibility to make sure their children are learning in school. It is the parents responsibilty to fill in the gaps they feel their children are missing at school. If your children are failing you need to look no further than yourself for the problem. We expect the schools to be doing our job. I feel the school system will give my children a base to learn on and I will expand on that base.
;-) )
Also, I think kids today are getting WAY TOO MUCH HOMEWORK. Just because my son learned algebra in 5th grade does not mean he will be a success in life. They also need to have fun, make friends, and most of all know how to play.
FYI I know my spelling and grammer suck, live with it, I do. (I code good
The best way to fix the educational system in the US is to shut it down. Then let parents band together in their communities to create their own local schools free of the bureaucracy and government intervention that has destroyed the current system. This would allow funding to go directly where it is needed most, THE TEACHERS AND THE STUDENTS! This funding would not use taxation to support the local schools, as this is the reason why parents lost control in the first place. The government will never "give" you anything without strings attached.
I think that if we made American kids decide on high school or a trade school the education level of our students would go up. Have high school for kids that want to go to College or an University and trade school options for the rest. This would solve the problems of kids that don't want to learn ruin the education of those that do. Give those that don't like school a way to get training to work.
Why do all that, when you can just read slashdot, where everyone is a teacher.
The major problem with education today is the assumption that non-educator school board members and groups of parents think they have useful input. This is rarely the case.
Okay, but not having useful input does not mean parents' criticisms are not valid. I don't have useful input when I return my car to my mechanic (after he "fixed" it) and tell him "the fucking thing broke again". I'm entitled to do that. He needs to fix it. Likewise, dducators are there to serve the parents who, today, can't generally give their children the full education they need and deserve at home. Parents must give kids the basics, and after that, they outsource (paid with tax dollars) to the educators. When the output of the system the educators run starts to look crappy (as it does now, with the lowest literacy levels of "graduates" in history), it is absolutely appropriate for parents to criticize the system for not producing the desired outcome.
First: Does US public education "suck"? Looking at international tests such as the TIMSS, it is certainly true that many countries score above the US. Still, in 8:th grade maths for instance (a "hard" dicipline), the US beats out my native Sweden slightly. (504 vs. 499)
:P
In any case, while I am certain many excellent suggestions will be voiced in this thread, here are some less conventional and more controversial ways of improving public education:
1.) Cut all non-skilled immigration (illegal and legal) drastically. (This step mostly applies to high-immigration regions in the US, mainly California)
Having a massive influx of uneducated people who do not speak the national language is hardly conduitive to creating good schools.
2.) Focus on minorities. (I.e: Blacks and latinos.) While the average US TIMSS score for grade 8 is 504, white US students on average score 525. White american 8:th graders taken as a (fictional) nation thus score in the international top 10. Blacks score 448 and latinos 465, more in line with various middle-eastern countries.
Suggested remedy: Martial law + immidiate jailing of every single gangsta rapper should be a good start.
3.) Sorting. Making high-IQ high-achievers with low levels of assertiveness outcasts is a poor way of going about business. Thus, aggressive and relatively early sorting can boost performance. It will, however, reduce social cohesiveness. Thus, this is an optimization problem - apply your preferences at will.
Any other outside-the box suggestions?
...the students from the small town schools in my region have to attend remedial education classes if they plan on attending university. Why? A "basic education" is all those districts can afford to teach and it is not enough to get them through today's college.
The state board of education and the state legislature has some funny ideas as to what university entrance requirements are and what the state will fund K-12 wise.
My own experience in a public high school, currently entering my senior year (after this summer), is a really good one.
I have learned so much. My teachers were great, encouraging, and knowledgable. My classes were very challenging (mostly AP and honors classes). Besides stupid things like PE and health ed, I have probably had three classes I would consider sub-excellent. My peers are all geeks, and none of us are persecuted or looked down on. And in my classes (AP and honors), probably 90% of the class is there actively wanting to learn---none of this parents-pushing-kids-to-achieve crap.
Why? What makes it so great? I'd say the socioeconomic situation. The entire town is very upper class and upper-middle class. The school then gets commensurate money. The teachers are also thus pretty much all guaranteed to be well-educated, and many are returning to their childhood hometown to teach---because it's such a pleasant place. We have great facilities---nice library, good computer systems, excellent buildings. We have the funds to offer AP and honors classes.
But in the end, it's the teachers. I believe that's probably influenced by socioeconomics, which is why that came first. But really, the teachers make the classes. They all love to teach and love what they're teaching; they know how to handle kids---at least, the kids that want to learn. Most of them are really neat people too; our Chemistry teacher invited us to a party at his house after the AP test, and everyone had a blast (he actually ended up playing DDR with us).
Teachers make the school, for the students that are there to learn.
For those students who aren't---the freeloaders, if you will---nothing can save them. In the same school, we have a large population of drug users who don't care about their grades. They don't take AP and honors classes, in many cases not because they're stupid, but because they'd rather have little homework and thus more time for their substances. That may be a parental problem, or just a problem with the kids. But I don't think it's the school systems' job to fix it.
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
Short answer: you can't. Educators answer to politicos, and politicos answer to fat cats.
What do fat cats want? They want lots of insecure
people who feel like they "have to" work for
someone else. They want children who feel like
they need a paternalistic guiding hand instead of
adults able to make their own decisions. They
want people who will sit on their asses 8 hours a
day doing dumb, boring shit.
How does public education accomodate fat cats?
Emphasizing rote memorization. This in itself
makes people stupid. Where do Islamic terrorists
get their suicide bombers? How do the upper castes
of India (10% of the population) retain political
control and keep all the good jobs in India to
themselves?
Promoting learning to please someone else, ie
passing tests, rather than learning to please
oneself. Where in the real world do people
behave as they do in academic settings? Do we
take tests to qualify for promotions and raises
in the normal course of working for a business?
Allowing the state to extend childhood, the time
in life when people aren't responsibile for their
own survival past the point where they can easily
make the transition into adult behavior patterns
(drunken frat boys in MBA programs come to mind).
Theres a tone more, but IMO sending your kid to
public school is negligent parenting, pure and
simple.
Ok. I guess I'm done then. I struggle to believe anyone who can say that parental involvement, divorce, and culture doesn't have a direct affect on education. Tell me, do the countries that have higher test scores force their parents to pay for elementary and middle school education?
Competition works. US universities compete for students and they are the best in the world. AMD competes with Intel and we get faster, cheaper processors.
Furthermore, our country HAD competition at grades K-12 in the past. Back when school districts were smaller, people could move a small distance and get into a new school district. With large unified school districts, the monopoly is inescapable unless you are rich enough to afford private school. What we in essence have now is school choice (and quality schools) for the rich, and normal public monopoly school for everyone else.
There are tons of arguments for the government to pay to educate every child, but there are no good arguments why the government should itself be the teacher. The government should give vouchers to parents who can use the money to pay for their childs education. At the very least, the government should pay for various charter schools, districts should be made smaller, and other action should be taken to inject choice and competition into the system.
You don't even have to call it failing. Call it not fully understanding the topic. The only true failure is not trying. I agree. I think that it would do many kids a world of good to have someone tell them that they aren't trying hard enough and they can do far better. Then force them to do better.
That's just nonsense.
I volunteer as a math tutor in a sixth-grade classroom, one hour a week. One kid has parents who are right there with him every evening, but he doesn't learn the material. I have spent many hours teaching him a particular algorithm (e.g., dividing two fractions), drilling him over and over, and then asking him to apply it. He can't do it.
This kid will go through life using a calculator to add two-digit numbers, just as another kid I know will always ride a wheelchair. Thank heavens that we have calculators and wheelchairs.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/
the simple FACT is that forced government education was intended to create a dumbed down slave class. period.
it doesnt take some pot smoking republican (aka libertarian) to understand that government is the problem with education.
Stop using "quotes" whenever you want to "emphasize" something! Seriously, was it a note or a "note?"
Side 1: You guys are complete idiots, and would not have a clue if a clue factory dropped on your house, and spilled clues all over you.
Side 2: Fuck you, dumbass. You're just another Bush-licking neocon who marches to the orders of KKKArl Rove.
Side 1: Oh, blow me, liberal fuck. I'm not even conservative. You suck!
Side 2: No, *you* suck, fucking red stater!
Side 3: You both suck! Anarchy forever. Ban RFID and RIAA and WMF and UCLA and BVDs.
All sides in unison: NAZI!
Quiet Desperation: (posts stupid joke response)
Works for me. Now we just have to take over the country.
Get the following two messages across to parents:
1. Only a very, very small percentage of teachers are bad. The large majority are caring, hard-working, underpaid professionals that do an excellent job teaching your kids. To put it bluntly: if you think your child's teacher is bad, you are probably wrong.
2. Your child will never do well in school unless you help them. That means quiet time for homework, help on homework, and an environment that encourages education. My stepmom can probably name every single sports coach that her kids have had. I'll bet she can't name more than one of their current high school teachers. That's just wrong.
that has been forgotton in many education circles.
Secondly, there is no point forcing a kid to learn something until they can read, write and do arithmetic. Everything else is built on these. If little Johny still can't read he is doomed to a lousy low paid job no matter how nice he is or how clever he is.
Finally, not everybody is ready to learn beyond the basics when they are young. Make sure that adult education is free, widespread, easy to access and NOT viewed as a poor second rate option for dummies.
Well, let's be completely truthful here. If you expect a completely unskilled person to be able to get a job and support a wife and a couple children, your expectations are completely unreasonable. The problem isn't society or wages - it's that the unskilled person decided to make a series of of very poor decisions and dug themselves a pretty damn big hole. You can't create a social safety net for stupid people. This goes back to the exact same theory many of the posters mentioned - people who are never allowed to fail will continue to underachieve. Let the unskilled person who continues to make poor decisions fail. It's not my, nor societies responsibility, to continually provide an escape route to someone who continues to make bad decisions. I know, that goes against the grain of many people. But rewarding underachievement and stupidity are counterproductive and completely worthless. Afirmative action is a perfect example.
In the United States, we don't have state-run farms to produce food for poor people. We don't have state-run factories to produce clothing for them. We do have a few state-run housing "projects" which are usually considered a disaster.
If the concern with public education is making sure that all kids have access to good education, instead of forcing them into a local school based on geography, give them the money to purchase an education at a school of their choice. This is what we do with food, clothing, rent, and other nessiceties when people are on public assistance.
If you can decide where your child goes to school, you don't have to worry about forcing a huge beurocracy to conform to your wishes. Simply find the best school for your child, and the problem is solved. Bad schools will eventually have to imitate the popular schools, or go out of buisness.
It also solves other problems. Want prayer in schools: send your kids to a religious school. Don't want prayer in schools, send your kid to a secular school. Is your child interested in art and music, send them to a school specializing in that. Is your child interested in math and technology, well send your child to a school specializing in that. All this arguing about what is the "superior system" doesn't matter when every person is free to choose their system.
No-one likes this idea, however, because it means schools can't be a place to universaly force ideas on people. Everyone believes that their view is right, and no-one is going to give up the state-run apperatus for forcing those views on other people's children.
We used to have a system where, in high school somewhere, you either settled into a "vocational" training program that would prepare you for a basic job, or you got into the "college prep" courses if that's where you were headed. The mechanics of how that decision got made were far from perfect, but let's set that aside for now.
We're at a point now where politicians, employers, and students all want everyone to have a 2-year degree in something, anything, just something. If everyone has it, doesn't it become the new baseline, just like a high school diploma? That, in turn, further dillutes the subject matter taught in high school, because whatever we miss, they'll just catch up in remedial "101" classes, right?
What all this accomplishes is that it stretches out the schooling timeline, from 13 years to 15, delaying the point at which the workforce gains a productive worker. The education itself is no more complete or useful. It's just more costly.
Use open source textbooks
use the money saved to pay teachers more
Pay teachers on a percentage of the amount the school district pays per student and how many students the teacher has (i.e., profit sharing and not the insane amount of overhead the school district now has).
The customer of the school district is the student and not the employees of the school district. Somehow, we forgot that in the 1970s onward.
When I worked in a factory, parts came in that were made to a fairly precise standard, then the exact same process was applied to every single part, and in the end, all the final products were supposed to work within specified limits. Most people expect schools to work the exact same way. The problem is, no two human beings are exactly the same, and most are widely different.
I'm supposed to teach kids who don't want to be there, some who are worried about their parents going to jail, some worried about where their next meal will come from, some who just want to go out and smoke or get laid, and just a few who are actually willing to listen and learn.
The arguement against this is usually, "Well if you were a good enough teacher, you'd reach those kids.". I can reach most of my students on most days. But I've never heard of a method that makes it possible to be rigorous, teach all that needs to be taught, and put on the most wonderful dog and pony show to get the pot heads to stay awake.
There is also the element of personal choice, and natural selection. Some kids will have to expirence failure from their choice not to work before they decide that education is worth their while. I see so many who wish they had paid attention in school when they were young and had no responsibilities. Instead, they have to work on their degrees or even GED while working, tending to children, paying bills, etc.
My answer has two approaches. Make smaller class sizes where a teacher's style and speed are matched up with the students learning ability. This could include providing a proctor for those who can learn better on their own. And secondly, stop trying to force those who think they know better, and let them go. If they have any sense at all, they'll be back, otherwise, this country is always in need of cheap, uneducated labor.
The number 1 reason for the horrible education system in the US is the lack of accountability on the parents or the students. Being a teacher, I see this every day. If the child is not doing well academically or has behavior problems, its the teachers fault. Take that same child and ask the parents how much time they spend helping their kid with homework, or ask what discipline methods they use at home, and things become clear. I childs education happens at home just as much as at school, and if the parents are not involved, the child is going to fall behind. My solution: This may sound extreme, but I honestly believe that children who are constantly having behavior problems, or who are having trouble keeping up academically should be kicked out of school. The code of conduct in practically every school district is way too lenient. This will put the responsibility on the parents. Once parents are in a position where the child is their problem for the whole day, I feel they will take the time to do what is necessary to get their child back on track. I think parents will start to see what they force the teachers to go through. One last thing. ADD/ADHD is a joke. This diagnosis is overused by doctors. Yes, some children are, but the majority that have this label are not. If a child can sit through a 2 hour movie or play a video game all day they are NOT ADD. A more accurate diagnosis would be "child that lacks discipline" Ben Fox Kathleen Elementary Lakeland Florida
absolutely right! I dont know how many kids in my hometown went to college when they had no right doing it and should have been obtaining a GED and learning a trade. instead they went to a community college because their GPAs in HS were inflated and they barely made a qualifying SAT score, then failed out of college. and all this because society has pushed that you should go to college, when there are some people who should not but should instead go to a trade school.
Until the end of the year, my wife homeschooled my son. He was above grade level in everything, to some extent, and in some subjects was years ahead of grade level. I'm sure this is a familiar situation for many reading this. My wife skipped her senior year of high school to go to Davidson College and major in Latin. Due to an interesting turn of events, she was offered a job as a Latin teacher for a classical, christian school. As a part of this job, my son was able to go to the school.
I was immediately impressed with the school. My son's performance improved beyond what we had already seen, due to several factors. There are several important things I've seen that make me believe that education can be improved elsewhere, similarly.
For one, there is a concentration on excellence. Since he started in the middle of the school year, my son wasn't quite on the same page in mathematics. We decided to hold him back a year, and catch up during the Summer in homeschool. As it turned out, the school was operating a year ahead in math, so that his 4th grade class was actually learning 5th grade math. Math was a subject he had been slightly above grade level in before, but was a few weeks behind in the process. That they were teaching above level showed me their commitment to quality.
Likewise, this school begins Latin in 3rd grade. Every student is required to take Latin. This is something that public schools have long since forgotten. Latin isn't just a dead language that can be dropped because some kids might not take to it. Latin is a vital element that helps the student learn language skills better, including English skills.
Another important thing at the school is respect. Students are expected to behave well. If an adult reprimands them, they are expected to say "Yes Ma'am" and accept the reprimand, instead of talking back. If an adult walks into the room, the entire class stands and says, "Hello Mr. Smith" (or whatever the person's name is) to the person. Should the class begin to get rowdy, the teacher bangs a gavel and the class shuts up IMMEDIATELY.
Parents are expected to be active in their child's education. We've met with the teachers, the principal, and the board of directors as regarded our son's transition into the school.
My major advice to parents is simple. If you care about your child's education, keep them out of public school altogether. Either homeschool or send them to private school. There is no acceptable excuse for not doing so except that your child's education isn't important enough. If it's important enough, FIND the time. Find the money. Find the resources.
Seek out educational options. Weigh the options available. Choose the best one for your child. Do what it takes to make sure that your child gets the best education. Chances are, if public school is what is best for your child, your priorities may not be in order.
Bad attitude? Yes. I was "educated" in public schools. Eventually, I was bored with their games. I got tired of being held back from learning by their processes. I got tired of being expected to learn from teachers who were my intellectual inferiors. My wife is a freakish super-genius. My son is following in our footsteps in many ways. I don't wish the heartache of a bad educational environment on him.
We homeschooled when I was the only paycheck coming in, and making almost no money. We lived below the "poverty level" much of the time while I ran a used bookstore. It was worth it. Now, we're back to two incomes, and my son gets an exclusive private education with my wife there all day, involved in the process. We're seeing the payoffs of our sacrifices.
Unfortunately, public education will never be what it should be. It simply cannot happen, because the thoughts are all wrong on how education should be handled.
Right now, we have made a 12 year education universal. We're expanding earlier than 1st grade, and trying to expand the guaranteed education thro
Visit Lockjaw's Lair. He won't bite.
I think that the schools need to let the kids who don't want to be in school out. I almost failed out of high school because I slept through all of my classes. Now that I'm in college, I have a 3.7 GPA in electrical engineering. If the kids don't want to be there, they aren't going to learn anything anyway. The schools should just let them out and quit babysitting them.
The grading systems in public schooling systems are the definately one of the biggest problems in the classroom. In most schools the grading is left up to the teachers, and most teachers don't put enough effort into their grading policy. This allows grades to defer the focus of the classroom from learning(Its ideal purpose).
There are three different areas of grading that teachers use:
1. How well the student follows their instructions
2. How well the student knows the material
3. How much effort the student the student gives
(The reason why I put them in this order is because this tends to be their order of relavence in the majority of classrooms I have attended.)
Each of these are at least somewhat important to how successful a student is but they are not at all similar in any way. Yet, teachers lump them together with a set "Grading Rubrik" which they will follow to hell and high water.
Exapmle 1:(true scenerio) I am a high school student taking an honors chemistry class. To most of the students in this class, the concepts that we are learning are very difficult and the teacher is incapable of teaching them withen the class period (this is partially because the teacher is also very bad at teaching). I spend hours afterschool tutoring my classmates and helping them with their homework. However, I do not complete the homework myself. I pass with a B- even though it is evident that A. I know the material better than any other student(my average quiz grade is 40 points higher than the class average), and B. The reason why half the class even passed was me. Yet the grading rubrik stated that 33% of each student's grade was the busywork homework.
Example 2:(ture scenerio) Digital Electronics class (aka boolean logic 101). For my year project I'm designing and building a microcontroller driven LCD etch-a-sketch. No part of this project is being taught in class but it might actually be useful later in life. 1 month later the teacher says that we must provide a digital simulation of your final project using the simulation software provided in class. Me: not a single part of my project can be simulated using that outdated software or any software available to me. Teacher: then you get -10points on your project grade.
Example 3:(true scenerio - not me) DE class again. A classmate designes a calculator to preform the basic +- functions of a calculator as efficiently as possible using 40+ 74series chips. He efectively simulates the circuit and builds a prototype. He however, unable to get the prototype to work in spite of the countless hours of effort he put into it. He recieves -30points on his final project grade.
Example 4:(me again) Honors math class. I get better grades on all the quizzes and tests than any other studen in class(Math Team captain). The teacher says that I am one of the best math students that he has ever had. I dont take notes in class and I do a minimal amount of the "practice" homework. I get a lower year grade than the students who get 70s on tests.
Most teachers arn't flexable enough when it comes to grading. They trust their rubriks because they get an assortment of grades at the end of the year with a greater number of Bs, Cs, and As.
Knowledge and effort should be graded seperately. Someone who understands the material shouldn't have to do extra work just to get a good grade to get into college, and someone who puts a lot of effort into their work should be given a second chance. Playing to the teacher shouldn't work buecause in most cases it isn;t actually about learning, but doing what the teacher wants.
Our Skoolez are fine Job. Wutz Big the Problm?
They were for me, and quite a few of my friends and classmates.
Don't be so quick to assume that just because your education sucked, all of the schools in the US must; the trick isn't to rip out the roots, but to look at the healthy stems and ask "What are we doing differently here? What can we take from these and apply to that diseased dying one over there?"
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I wasn't schooled in Ontario, but I'm attending university here. The recent changes they've made to the school system seem absolutely terrible to me. (do let me know if you disagree)
changes:
1. Students can not fail. You are asked to re-write the final exam (not a different version of the exam, the exact same one) until you obtain a passing grade.
The basic concept seems alright. If the student didn't learn what he needs to know, go home for a week to fill in the gaps and try again. But talk about bad implementation. You can't keep pushing kids into harder and harder classes when they didn't understand the first one.
2.All classes challenge multiple skills. Again, a great idea. But some of the results are rediculous.
The 12th grade math class. Can be passed without writing a single equation, because there is a 'math journal' which accounts for 50% of the grades and is marked on completion.
3.No skipped grades. Students who do exceptionally well are expected to learn to help their peers.
Again, sounds wonderful. But think of all the wasted tallent. Futhermore, does anyone have any idea how much trouble un unchallenged genius becomes?
undeveloped morals + nothing else to do + brains = random explosions around the city.
I hate to say it, but I see school as it is designed right now as a holding tank for children. We isolate them like prisoners until they become useful to society.
Abolish public schools!
The only real solutions.
What good is a "one size fits all" education.
No, but I don't think they're as honest as we are either.
Also, I believe that forcing parents to actually pay their own money for their children's education will force them to care. If they don't care, then they're wasting their money.
As it stands now, everyone in the country is expected to pay into the system, whether we agree with it or not. We force the parents who actually care about their kids to pay double! (Once for taxes and again for private school or home schooling) For those who remain with the public school system it is Someone Else's Problem, and you don't need to worry about it; you just send the kids off, and they're magically edumacated.
Schools need to be run like businesses (and when I say that, I mean an ideal business. Not some mega-corp that recieves corporate welfare and legislates its competition away)
NOTHING the schools can do will solve the problem of deadbeat parents who don't look at their kids' homework, don't discuss with them what they're studying, don't teach them anything at home either, and, in general, don't bother to raise their kids. Sure, a small handful of kids, maybe 1%, are so self-motivated that they will do well even though their parents don't give a lick. But most kids, if their parents don't care, will flunk out if you let them or, if you inflate their grades so that they can't flunk, coast.
You want to fix the schools? Fix the *people*, fix *society*, fix our *culture*, and the schools will get better.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I spent years in school robotically parroting the pledge of allegiance every day. It wasnt until I had joined the Army that I even thought about what it meant.
I know! Every time I hear someone nominally knowledgeable about our system of government talk about rights being granted by the government, it sets my teeth on edge. You can read them That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, but it just doesn't seem to stick. The idea that we already have our rights, and government exists to preserve them---well, I didn't learn about that until after I left high school.
These are not small things. These are great big important issues, and they get lost in the minutiae used to keep us busy.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I can't be certain about yourself, but personally, I succeed in school despite their best efforts, not because of them. I was constantly bored, I learned the contents of the lesson in a matter of minutes instead of a matter of days, and so on. I was often caught unawares when it was my turn to read from the text or story because I was usually several pages ahead. In high school I finished the book (To Kill a Mockingbird, not a hard read) when everyone else was on chapter two. In grade four, I was lending novels to my teacher, and was surprised at how long it took her to bring them back.
That being said, I feel that the school system has failed me. I always burned through the knowledge that was given, then had to wait around for more. As the years dragged on, this gap because that much more pronounced, and eventually, I just stopped paying attention entirely. My grades plummeted from an A+ average to a C, I started failing courses because I didn't even bother to learn the material anymore, and my choice of university was based on prerequisites (the university I went to let just about anyone in).
If I were allowed to learn at my own pace, I could have finished the vast majority of my schooling by the age of 12. I could have been in university at 16, and graduated at 20. As it is, I didn't even graduate high school until I was 19, because of the hoops they made me jump through (had to get x hours in 'work experience' in my chosen field), with the result that I had moved across the country, worked for months, and travelled around the world, all on my own dime, before I'd even graduated high school.
Compare this with the experiences of my stepsiblings. When my stepbrother, probably about 14 or 15 at the time, came to stay with us for a summer (as he often did), we discovered, one day, that he was incapable of reading in any practical sense. He gave it a good try, but he just wasn't any good at reading, punctuation, grammar, spelling, or comprehension. I first noticed this, in fact, when he was unable to properly read aloud the title of a song. He was reading at what I would approximate as a second- or third-grade level, and he was about to enter high school! How is it possible that he has succeeded six grades beyond his capability? More amazingly, how is it possible that in the two months he was staying with us, he made more strides in his reading ability than in the previous six years of 'school'?
Another example is my stepsister. You and I probably don't even think about libraries. They're just libraries, right? Well when she was about the same age, 14 or 15 (and I was younger than her) she was staying with us for the summer, and my mother and I discovered that she didn't know what a library was, or rather, how it worked. She knew they kept books there, but that was it, and it was a great surprise to her to learn the mechanics. You don't have to pay for the books! You can keep them for two weeks, and then renew them if you're not done! Your card is free (your district may vary)! This was all a complete shock to her. How is it possible to get to your teen years without learning the mechanics of a library?
A lot of these examples, it's true, can be chalked up to parents. Her parents never took her to the library, his parents never got him into reading, and my mother routinely had a stack of six or eight novels books before we even thought about leaving the library. Regardless, isn't this something that schools are supposed to pick up on? Shouldn't a school notice that kids can't read? Or that kids can read faster and more avidly than any other student in their grade? Yet somehow, they don't. There's nothing in place for situations like this, and those rare teachers that do take the time and effort to help kids are never rewarded by the school system, and rarely rewarded by the parents.
Parents are fucked up, society is fucked up, those are both true, but the school system is no less fucked up, and it needs fixing just as well.
I'm told that, hundreds of years ago, people were highly literate. Even kids could read Shakespeare, apparently; at least Sam Johnson seemed fine with it at the age of 9. I understand that twelve-year-old Abraham Cowley was reading Spenser. And I've been told repeatedly that colonial American farmers were able to digest the Federalist Papers without much trouble at all. How is it that America's founders were able to defy the world's foremost superpower, and fashion a remarkable democracy that lasted almost until mid-twentieth century? Those were young men then. Have you seen todays' college rabble? Those people ought to be out doing great things, not spending drunk time in some dormitory. What happened?
I have a novel idea: Why don't we do what they did in colonial times? You know, schools of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. Liberal education. The Classics. Mentors. How about that? Teach people how to think as soveriegn individuals. Let's shut down the state factory schools, with the state curricula and the private interests that shape them. Why not consider the things that Brownson once said: "[A]ccording to our theory the people are wiser than the government. Here the people do not look to the government for light, for instruction, but the government looks to the people. The people give law to the government [...] to entrust government with the power of determining education which our children shall receive is entrusting our servant with the power of the master."
Why don't we do this? Because it would spell the end of our managed utopias, with their closely regulated, mass-production economies. Henry Ford, for one, needed people who were satisfied with stuff that came off of an assembly line; stuff that looked strikingly similar to what everyone else had. He needed people who would be satisfied with simple, repetitive jobs. It's more efficient to build things by robot than to rely on a specialist. We don't need more smart people, we have plenty already. We need robots, that's what Utopia is all about. And that's what public schools are good at. They are just fine for what they do; they don't need to be fixed. Kids go to school so that they can "get a good job" (even if it's a sinecure), not to enrich their mind or soul.
I tried actually learning at school a few times. I soon realized that, in school, learning has a deadline. It's managed by bells and by psychology. It only really matters that you learn to answer the right way on the final exam - then you are educated. Then you will be successful. Private and state quotas are met whether we learn to read or not.
If we want better students than anyone else in the global competition, all we have to do is tweak the machine a bit. Fiddle with it. But if our goal is truly educated people, then we need to scrap the current system and start over. My guess is that it won't happen.
Remember when the news appeared that self-esteem isn't necessarily good for you? That bullies and bad people have high self-esteem? Yeah.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Right now, schools are slanted heavily towards those who underperform, at the expense especially of the smarter kids. The reasons for this are:
So schools are forced to protect themselves by shifting a disproportionate share of resources to the underperformers, leaving smart kids to doodle in their textbooks. Meanwhile, the bad teachers end up threatening the whole school rather than just their own careers.
Fix this by getting rid of NCLB and hiring enough teachers that kids can get instruction appropriate to their needs. (Doing this would go a long way toward dismantling the culture of persecuting intelligent kids.) Return more local control to schools and their communities, including the ability to implement performance assessment for teachers if they feel the need to do so.
In case anyone's still stuck on the title, I'm not saying that we should abandon the dumb ones in the tundra. Just stop giving them more than the rest of the kids, especially the smart ones, who are arguably the best investments in the bunch.
6. Audible Alarm (not shown)
-from a Cuisinart product owner's manual.
I have to take issue with the second "given" in the original post. Most people are more than capable of educating themselves; frankly, it's not that hard to do. Humans have a natural impulse to learn. The real problem with our education system is that it does everything in its power to stifle that natural impulse.
Prior to the advent of compulsory schooling in the United States, we had a literacy rate of 98%. At the time, education was partially obtained informally from the family. The rest was picked up on the fly through self-directed reading or interaction with the community (e.g., apprenticeships.) Education was not something that happened because the government willed it so, it happened because the people wanted to learn.
When compulsory schooling was enacted in 1852, our literacy rate rapidly dropped. Since then, it has never risen above 91% or so. No surprise, really, since our government-mandated schooling is based on the Prussian education system, which was scientifically designed to ensure that students didn't learn enough to think independently; the better to become obedient soldiers in the Prussian armies-for-hire. Or, in our case, the army of poorly-educated public school graduates that staff your local Burger King.
Think about some of the standard conceits that are an accepted part of the normal American school day. Each subject gets a little less than an hour a day -- barely enough time to just get up a head up steam about any particular topic -- after which students are rudely interrupted and shepherded to their next tiny slice of learning. Lessons tend to be taught totally removed from the context of why they are important or useful, leading students, quite rightly, to not give a damn. Students are isolated from those in different age groups, neither allowed to learn from older students nor to pass their own knowledge along to younger students. Students are taken away from the home and the community -- and removed from the myriad lessons freely available from both -- for the better part of the day. The remains of the day are eaten up by an ever-growing mountain of homework, leaving precious little time to absorb anything outside of the disjointed mishmash of concepts that make up the state-approved lesson plan.
Now consider this: If you were to start totally from scratch and design a means of teaching our youth, would any of the above be on your short list of good ideas?
It's a pity that we can't throw out the first assumption -- that there won't be a wholesale uprooting of the American education system any time soon -- as well. But that one, sadly, is all too accurate. The massive bureaucracy of the educational institution itself, and the school-related businesses that have risen up around it, are far too powerful and politically saavy to allow that to happen in this or the next generation.
-- Bum
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
I would love for the curriculum to be more rigorous, but you also have to understand that there are some kids who will NEVER be able to learn algebra, there are some kids who will never have more than a 1000 word vocabulary, much less learn a different language. Along with these, you'll have a large amount of lazy kids who claim they can't learn as well.
I was always at the top of the percentile in grades and on tests. I used to think everyone ought to be able to do what I do if they tried. Having a special ed teacher for a wife has shown me differently.
I do like your concept of spreading out the same material over more years has made it less rigorous.
I'm glad your family has made your son's education its focus. If most families did that, public education would be much more like you think it should.
I spend the equivalent of a new mercedes every year to send my 3 girls to a private prep school. The number one advantage to this, by far, is the small classroom - the max class size is 15, in all grades 1 - 12. This has been great for the girls academically, but the real improvement for them has been in personality. When they were in 33 kid public school rooms, they needed no special academic help, and they were well-behaved. The over-extended teacher therefore, justifiably, paid no attention to them. The girls became quiet, invisible, and pathologically shy. What a fantastic change I have seen in them. Polite, outgoing, eagerly and voluntarily participating in classroom discourse. Money well-spent, and unlike right wing nuts, I don't expect the government to endow me with tax vouchers. Uber
Dissolve the U.S. Department of Education & repeal all Federal education laws/mandates Create a standard nationwide school voucher program Require that every student in a school take the same courses and allow them to move up only when they can pass those courses special-ed expenditure/student ~= total expenditure/student Remove computers from all K-[5|6|7|8] classrooms Classes only for English-speaking students. Get rid of the NEA(wishful thinking)
I'm amazed that we still have the concept of 'failing grades.' Why not just not give a student credit for the course. If someone going for the honor role wants to take an art class, why should they worry if they might be terrible at it. They'll learn more by taking it than not taking it. At the worst, they should simply not get credit for learning the material. It'd be like they never signed up.
If you really need to separate students into grades like eggs, you can still ask what grade level they're at in math, science etc.
I think teachers would be more likely to use this form of punishment.
Of course, we also have to keep in mind that if we totally do away with social promotion and have 11th graders in 8th grade class, the incidence of teen pregnancy is likely to go up even more.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I thought it was "Those who fail history are doomed to repeat it."
Bob: I can't believe you don't want to go to your own son's graduation.
Bob: It's not a graduation. He's moving from the 4th grade to the 5th grade.
Helen: It's a ceremony!
Bob: It's psychotic! They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional...
anyone proclaiming to be a libertarian should be hunted down and destroyed. Their assets should be siezed by those who killed them. After all, it's what they want, isn't it?
That is, non-compulsory. And make parents responsible for making them want to go, rather than making the people who are trying to do the educating also make them WANT to be educated.
If the parents won't teach them to want to go, don't make them stay. We'll need a new generation of convenience store clerks etc. Many of the ones we have now are far more educated than you'd think, and they'd love the chance to compete for the better jobs.
As for the educating itself, Montessori has the right idea.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
Before someone corrects me, yes, it's suppoed ot be "honor roll."
And no, I did quite well in English, thanks.
Textbooks are one of the worst investments the public school system makes. Its beyond time now that schools acquired the text books online and printed out the portions of the books that were actually being used by the classes. There would be some sort of revenue share, but obviously much less money involved than acquiring physical books. Plus, most of the cost of the books involve manufacturing/printing, which would be eliminated in this process.
The other good point is, if the child loses a section, no sweat. No longer will parents be forced to pay $70 (or more) to replace some ancient text book.
The other great thing about this is less stress on a child's back tugging heavy books over their shoulder. Not to mention the fact that schools across the nation have removed lockers in the desperate (or pathetic) attempt to combat drug abuse.
Notice, I did not mention anything about school districts buying laptops for the students.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I'm a high school student going into my Senior year. My opinion is that teachers (or those reponsible for hiring them) are the problem with U.S. public education. What public education needs are teachers who aren't lazy. In my lifetime, I've only had 5 teachers that I can call "good" with a clear conscience. (Meaning: they challenged their students and didn't cripple the entire class for students that refused to work/think/learn.) Interestingly, all of those were English or History teachers.
Most of my teachers have just been lazy. Sheerly and utterly lazy. Some have been unqualified. One such teacher was a football coach who taught Spanish I. He did not actually speak Spanish. Through the entire course, he gave out 3 assignments, none of which were graded. At the end of the course, our grade reports showed well over 30 made-up assignments with random grades attached. Some days, the man wouldn't even talk to us. He would get on his cell phone and walk outside while we chatted amongst ourselves inside. These are the sorts of people who keep their jobs in public high schools. It's disgusting and disgraceful.
I'll quit typing before this becomes an angry, incoherent tirade...
My wife, my father, my step-mother and my sister are all teachers in the public school system. I've had many chances to observe, question and learn about the challenges facing the public schools and most of the conclusions I've drawn run counter to what many believe.
1. 90% of teacher are amazing, intelligent, well trained professionals; 10% suck. This runs counter to the argument that because of pay, benefits, etc. that teaching has had difficulties attracting and retaining talented individuals. Actually, I can attest that not only does my wife make a decent salary, but her benefits package is amazing. The same for the rest of the teachers I know. Teaching is one of the few professions where one can actually give themselves a pay raise -- add more college units, a masters or phD and viola! Instant pay raise. You'll be hard pressed to find a teacher who is not dedicated to their job -- its too demanding a profession and there are simply too many eyes evaluating one's performance. Yes, they exist, but they are not the majority.
2. We need better/more social workers. The biggest challenge facing our students is parental support. There are many children in the public school system who were born to teenage mothers or drug addicts or 2nd or 3rd generation welfare recipients who are not getting the support they need at home. They are coming to school dirty, undernorished (not necessarily underfed -- see point 3), undisciplined, and ill-mannered. With a 30 to 1 class ratio, teachers cannot be parents nor can they give adequate support to parents -- it's not their job. We need more social workers to go into these children's homes and train these parents to perform their duties.
3. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Our children are overweight but undernourished. PE departments sell Gatorade to fundraise, schools put vending machines on campus to buy text books, cafeteria's serve Lucky Charms for breakfast and frence fries for lunch. We're filling our kids with sugars and carbohydrates and we wonder why they can't concentrate or sit still. Here's an experiment you can try at home: Eat Hot Cheetos covered in nacho sauce for breakfast every morning, McDonalds for lunch and cookies or chips for dinner (or skip it). Thirsty? Drink Gatorade or Coke. No water. No vegetables, fruits, whole grains, etc. -- report back in a week. How's your ability to concentrate?
My wife sees this every day. I did not make up that menu -- that really is what these children are eating. It's what's being sold in the schools.
Children will model good behaviors just as easily as bad ones. Put garbage in front of them, they'll eat it. Put healthy food (they may complain), they'll still eat it. I've seen it.
4. Put administrators in service to teachers instead of in charge of teachers. Decrease administrator pay to make the positions less desirable. There are many who get in the teaching profession only to become administrators. It pays almost twice as much even though they have no direct impact on the learning that occurs in the classroom. They make arbitrary decisions without consulting those that they impact (the teachers) and often create more busy work and obsticals for the teachers than they eleviate. This needs to be turned around.
Visceral reaction, sorry. I get seriously bent at people deciding what's best for my children. I'm smart enough to make those decisions in consultation with my wife, and I don't need nanny-state busy-bodies deciding what's best for me or my children. It's call personal responsibility and I highly advocate it.
Yes. I am a product of publik edyookayshun, particularly the "alpha male vs. geek who just wants to get to computer class without any broken bones" facet of government schools. The very idea of a teacher telling children to stop answering questions because it makes "less gifted" kids feel bad, or getting beat up for acing a chemistry test when Johnny Football Hero flunks it, are some of the main drivers behind our decision to homeschool.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
I stole this, but it's too good not to put in here. Some homeschoolers, when people bring up "socialization", say: "Whenever we worry that the kids aren't getting socialized, we pull them into the bathroom and beat them up for their lunch money."
Yeah, they aren't getting "socialized" the Public School Way. Is that a bad thing? NO! Public school socialization teaches them to be incredibly susceptible to peer pressure, to be superficial and shallow, to be TV viewers and consumers... to completely waste their potential as human beings. It also exposes them to bullying and violence.
Public school socialization is a big part of the problem. Home schoolers don't get that socialization? That's one of the best arguments for home schooling you will ever make.
The best way to make schools more effective is to remove the mind-numbing disciplinarian structure and make school an environment where kids actually enjoy learning instead of having regimented work set out for them that they must complete in a drone-like manner.
Sudbury Valley School is a place where people decide for themselves how to spend their days. Here, students of all ages determine what they will do, as well as when, how, and where they will do it. This freedom is at the heart of the school; it belongs to the students as their right, not to be violated.
The fundamental premises of the school are simple: that all people are curious by nature; that the most efficient, long-lasting, and profound learning takes place when started and pursued by the learner; that all people are creative if they are allowed to develop their unique talents; that age-mixing among students promotes growth in all members of the group; and that freedom is essential to the development of personal responsibility.
In practice this means that students initiate all their own activities and create their own environments. The physical plant, the staff, and the equipment are there for the students to use as the need arises.
The school provides a setting in which students are independent, are trusted, and are treated as responsible people; and a community in which students are exposed to the complexities of life in the framework of a participatory democracy.
"At Sudbury Valley School, students learn to think for themselves, and learn to use Information Age tools to unearth the knowledge they need from multiple sources. They develop the ability to make clear logical arguments, and deal with complex ethical issues. Through self-initiated activities, they pick up the basics; as they direct their lives, they take responsibility for outcomes, set priorities, allocate resources, and work with others in a vibrant community. Children ages 4-19 explore the world freely, at their own pace and in their own unique ways."
Sudbury valley school http://www.sudval.org/ is a school that teaches kids to think for themselves while making sure they are well educated and have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. Their studies show that 80% of their graduates go on to post-secondary school and more often get into the first school they apply to.
So getting people to think for themselves AND having a better overall education. It's what you guys all say you want without the regimented authoritarian classrom. You should encourage your school system to take on this kind of model.
And in your case, if your parents had been involved, they would have been pushing the administration to move you into more challenging classes. Shame on them if they didn't.
When my school ran out of classes, they agreed to give me credit for community college courses.
The dereanged idea that it has to have meaning, relevance, etc., or it is worthless is ruining schools
While I imagine that you are probably supporting the (pretty good) idea that instilling a certain amount of discipline in students is good because of their limited vision of what is relevant, I still have to object to your statement.
Relevance is fundamental to attention, and attention is fundamental to learning. With so much more to learn and so little time, relevance is more important than ever as both a filter for curriculum developers and an incentive for students.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
people need to feel good about themselves. not everyone has a 120+ IQ. there are pleanty of people in high school with a 95-100 IQ.
is it fair that one person has to spend 10 minutes doing their math homework and they understand it, and another person suffers for 60 minutes and does not understand it?
if grades were based on effort, that nerd would have an F and the 90 IQ jock would have an A. i find it amazing that the 120 IQ kids sit back and take such delight in how "dumb" everyone else is. if they can understand it in 10 minutes and are done, why not spend 20 minutes with someone less fortunate and help them??
think of it from the opposite end. there are some kids that are more muscular, flexible, and have higher endurance. remember pe class, say tennis or softball. the guy who finished his math in 10 minutes now can't coordinate hitting a softball even after 60 minutes. how many jocks would take the time to say "okay, lets try and fix your swing, lets start with your stance, your legs should be like this, you should swing from the hips and not arms, you should do x, y, and z. let me help you"???
is huamn nature so currupt that anyone wants to exploit any advantage they have over the less fortunate??
i think it is a fantastic idea to give grades not based on work produced, but effort too. more can be learned by teaching someone not to give up. unless the purpose of highschool is to find ways to break people, and then socialize them into conformity.
more emphasis on (mathematics) basics.
this is a horrible idea!! 90% of people never need more math than algebra. highschool is not competition ground in math and science to see who gets selected to MIT.
i would say to reduce the amount of math taught in highschool. why? because more can be gained by teaching history and english and foriegn languages than by teaching math. if the goal of life is happiness, then teaching something about what happiness is, how it is gained, problems others have suffered and how they overcame will go a lot further to fostering a sense of well being, more than being able to do multi-variable calculus.
highschool should be a fun time. it should be filled with parties and learning about people, how to get along, how to have fun together. highschool should not be the place where people start seperating and getting classified. the nerds in preperation of the ivy schools, the dumb jocks in preperation for low paying jobs, the cheerleaders taught to be second citizens and use sex as a tool.
you could learn something from watching "the breakfast club". people are not different from each other. we learn that from assholes who say everyone needs to know trig, and those who struggle are worth less.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
What do we need to do to improve education in our society is remove the job training aspect of education. It encourages the just-in-time-am-I-ever-going-to-need-to-know-this- because-if-I-can't-measure-it-it-must-not-be-impor tant attitude which kills intellectual curiosity. Our education system is failing us is it was developed to produce workers for an industrialized society. In assembly line fashion we send our children to school where they are trained to move from subject to subject not based upon the natural curiosity all humans have but in response to the ticking of a clock. For most of us the real world doesn't work that way and children are saavy enough to know it's unnatural. Is it really so surprising that by the time they are adults their interest in learning has been stunted?
Or that I was wrong for saying that he should be re-assigned so the rest of the class can move on?So you're comparing the kid to someone with a recognized handicap?
But that kid was in school and his parents didn't have him evaluated to see if he had a handicap?Again, should the class be held back for him or should he be advanced with the rest of the class?
If neither, then you are in agreement with my previous post. Having the rest of the kids do the same problems, day after day after day does NOTHING for them or for him.
The best situation for that kid would be for his parents to get interested and involved in his school work and get him evaluated to see if there is some reason that he cannot grasp basic concepts.
Either way, he should not be in the same class as the others.
You are half right. For the poorest school districts, public education does indeed suck. For the richest ones, our public schools are rated #1 in the world. I suggest you dig a little deeper for reasons and cures; all those posts claiming to have the answers are offering possibly useful suggestions, but ya'll are missing the real picture. By the way, I am a public school product with a Ph.D. in education...
I wouldn't walk into an operating room and criticize the surgeon. But I wouldn't let that surgeon operate on me without knowing something about what he was doing and having confidence that he is good.
I learn about the education system because one day I would like to have kids. I also learn about it because I have to work with the results of the system. If the education system gets better, it benefits me in the long run. Therefore I learn something about it.
Professional means only that you get paid to do something. It does not imply anything about you being good.
The best way to make schools more effective is to remove the mind-numbing disciplinarian structure and make school an environment where kids actually enjoy learning instead of having regimented work set out for them that they must complete in a drone-like manner. Sudbury valley school http://www.sudval.org/ is a school that teaches kids to think for themselves while making sure they are well educated and have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. Their studies show that 80% of their graduates go on to post-secondary school and more often get into the first school they apply to. Sudbury Valley School is a place where people decide for themselves how to spend their days. Here, students of all ages determine what they will do, as well as when, how, and where they will do it. This freedom is at the heart of the school; it belongs to the students as their right, not to be violated. The fundamental premises of the school are simple: that all people are curious by nature; that the most efficient, long-lasting, and profound learning takes place when started and pursued by the learner; that all people are creative if they are allowed to develop their unique talents; that age-mixing among students promotes growth in all members of the group; and that freedom is essential to the development of personal responsibility. In practice this means that students initiate all their own activities and create their own environments. The physical plant, the staff, and the equipment are there for the students to use as the need arises. The school provides a setting in which students are independent, are trusted, and are treated as responsible people; and a community in which students are exposed to the complexities of life in the framework of a participatory democracy. "At Sudbury Valley School, students learn to think for themselves, and learn to use Information Age tools to unearth the knowledge they need from multiple sources. They develop the ability to make clear logical arguments, and deal with complex ethical issues. Through self-initiated activities, they pick up the basics; as they direct their lives, they take responsibility for outcomes, set priorities, allocate resources, and work with others in a vibrant community. Children ages 4-19 explore the world freely, at their own pace and in their own unique ways." So getting people to think for themselves AND having a better overall education. It's what you guys all say you want without the regimented authoritarian classrom. You should encourage your school system to take on this kind of model.
Hold on right there. Most teachers suck. Don't take this as an insult, I've had enough great teachers to know that they are out there and you may well be one of them. They are, however, not in the majority.
Most teachers fall into one of three categories.
students that want to learn, DO learn
Whenever people say that to defend a teacher's work it just boggles my mind. Demonstrating that some students in your class have learned the material doesn't say anything about you as a teacher. Of course those who want to learn will learn. They don't need a teacher for that, they need a book. If they're motivated, they'll search out the information and do whatever they have to in order to learn it. It isn't the teacher's job to recite information: the challenge is in finding out why the students who don't get it aren't getting it and rephrase the information or provide examples in such a way that they do get it. If you're teaching children, it's also your job to present the information in such a way that will stimulate their curiosity so that they will want to learn.
I'm not saying every child will become interested and learn with a good teacher, but with good teachers most of them do. If you have more than 2 or 3 problem students in a class of 30, you need to find someone else to blame other than the children.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
There are two things operating in the education business. First, just because something costs twice as much doesn't make it twice as good.
Second, where there is a big pile of money lying around there will always be people with sticky fingers.
Put another way, the educational system today is a bloated, horrific bureacracy whose primary mission is to increase its own funding. There is no external agency capable of chopping up that bureaucracy, nor will it decrease its own size voluntarily.
Therefore the only reasonable, available method is to cut the budget. The level of education delivered to the children will not change, just the cost of it.
If this sounds heartless, consider the fact that the current system is bankrupting the nation, but the kids can't read when they come out of grade 12. It should be possible to perpetrate illiteracy upon the country's youth at half the price, don't you think?
Relax, watch TV, play a video game, drink beer. The government will tell you what to think, feel, and do.
paid for by the US Army
Does anyone else here have any training in linguistics? By the time someone's in the fifth grade, his grammar is utterly perfect. This prescriptivism has got to end; if it was for you people we'd all still be speaking old French. Nothing could possibly be less important than teaching kids when you think they should use "which" and when "that," etc. There is nothing wrong with language change, and the way it happens is that kids start speaking differently than their parents.
Spelling is only marginally more important, in so far as unconventional spelling loses information. But please, teach kids how to write in English class, not grammar "rules" that someone made up centuries ago.
Whenever I hear this argument I always think back to an article I read in a Reader's Digest about a year ago(maybe longer). It was about a school teacher(biology IIRC) who told her students that they will have a term paper due at the end of the class. She also informed them that cheating would not be tolerated and anyone caught would get a zero on the paper. It was worth about 25%-30% of their entire grade.
End of the semester rolls around and everyone turns in the paper. Using an online application the teacher decides to check to see if anyone cheated. I think the number was 25% did cheat. Holding to her word, she gives them all zeros thus failing several of them. Well, the parents of the failing kids won't accept this and go to the school board and threaten lawsuits. In the end, the kids pass the class thanks to the school board.
What kind of message to do we send when we accept cheaters and solve all our problems through lawsuits.
As a side rant...I am tired of all the PC crap that's been going around. I think that it was best said on the Incredible, "Honey, everyone's special. That saying that no one is."(err something along those lines) We live in a society that punishes creativity, hard work and effort but promote mediocrity, conforming and aiming for the lowest common denominator. Arg, the worst thing that anyone has ever said to me was, "Slow down, your working too hard! You're making the rest of us look bad." BAH!!! Everyone is not equal!!! Examples: Lance Armstrong, Einstein, Newton.
GGP: The divorce rate, breast feeding, college money saving, busy parents, and television are post hoc fallacies. We don't have good public schools because there is no value. They are "free". Americans will value education when they have to pay for it themselves without the government holding the pursestrings.
d =13046623
:)
And also: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155413&ci
What both of these prove is that it's not "schools suck because of culture" (if that really is your argument). Like it has been said elsewhere, schools suck because culture doesn't value intellect and education.
(Maybe you could argue that culture sucks because schools suck because generally Americans don't value intellect. You could also argue with the GGP that charging tuition for primary education may not induce Americans to value education. E.g., China, and by extension Japan, have years of Confucian meritocracy to thank for their value of intellect, yet they both have public education systems; Our culture of intellect, Greek, early Roman, and by extension the European Renaissance, have somehow been divorced from America, perhaps by puritanism? It's ironic, because it seems to me that by virtue public education reflects a core belief in the value of intellect. I guess to most Americans, especially privatizers, that seems anachronistic. Anyway, getting off this tangent...
In each success story, even in your foreign country examples, the groups involved value education. Arguing against the symptoms is fallacious. You can be a single parent and value education. You can not be terribly involved with their school-work and still value education and instill that value in your child. A child that has been taught the value of education by a good-for-nothing-else parent is still better off than one that hasn't. What it seems a majority of voting Americans don't value is education; Our policies reflect a culture that doesn't.
As you and others have pointed out - children and parents who value education, despite the unfriendly environment, can and do succeed.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
This is one spelling error that drives me absolutely crazy. "Wallah"-- the word is French, it is spelled "voilà," and it means "here (it is)."
Please make a note of it.
Give the power back to the teachers.
The teachers need the power to fail a student or give them bad marks with out the fear of the repercussions from the parent so school/school board.
It seems to me that schools (or school boards) demand that the grade average is 65% and the teacher must find a way to make the class hit that average. Or School requires teachers to have their students achieve a desired grade to obtain funding.
The worst I have heard is that no student can fail with out the consent of the teacher, social worker (or guidance councilor), AND both parents.
I think you need to pay the teachers a bit more and get some good teacher that you can trust to have this level of power. The key is then to trust them... they often deal and are more in touch with your child than you are!
This is, of course, patent bullshit. A school is supposed to have a valedictorian not (as someone said) 47. Only public schools are subject to this nonsense, though (I believe), as only people who can't (no offense) or won't send their kids to private school usually complain about how, you know, they don't have any other option, and their kids are doing their best, and the school can't tell them they aren't insanely brilliant, it might hurt their self-esteem.
My opinion on how to fix public schools? Institute a voucher system. Make it so people who can't normally get the better education from a private school because they can't afford it, able to afford it. Give the public school system some competition. Oh, and don't say the government can't afford it - make them equivalent worth to an education in a public school. The Seattle School District, I understand, spends about $10,000 a year on each student. My (private) high school did it on less than $6,000. Not that they couldn't use that other four grand, but they didn't need it to give us students a better education.
Nothing about the 1st amendment, either. Vouchers neither promote or inhibit any one religion, or group thereof. They assist all equally, which is not prohibited by the bill of rights. And they do so better than public schools - such institutions can't even teach an impersonal, godless, religion-free "Intelligent Design" theory, or even say that evolution is only a theory! So Pythagoras, who, by the way, has always been right so far (in Euclidian geometry), has only a theory, but Darwin, with evolution, has (un)proven, scientific fact?! (don't argue, there really is no way to prove evolution without a time machine)
And if some private academy costs more that $10,000 a year? Make the vouchers worth that $10,000 or whatever, and the folks who want that academy for their kids can pay the difference.
</RANT>
One last thing: quiz time.
Q: Why do some countries (I'm thinking of Japan, but I'm sure there are others) suddenly jump past the US's 229 years of free intelligence in only 60 years?
The real fix? Teach everyone in this country that it's okay not to be the smartest, the fastest, or the best in any other way. Then maybe it would be okay to tell them they're not the best. Maybe then they would try harder.
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
I support a family of five on less then $46,752 per year. That's good money.
Good for you. Remember, this is the average - across ALL ages of teachers and ALL regions of the U.S.
Where do you live?
- If you're on the East Coast (north of D.C.) or in California, I applaud you. You must have a fantastic budget to make it work.
Does your spouse work? Is their income included in that number above? If they couldn't work, would you still be able to support your family?
Do you have student loans to pay off?
- This is the big one for my husband and me. Our student loan debt roughly equals our combined income for one full year. It will take roughly 7 years to pay them off if we are able to keep paying at the same rate we are now. This assumes that both of us will be working and we will not have children during that time period. If anything changes to lower our income, we will be in debt for a much longer period of time, and we may not even be able to make our minimum payments. This does not take into account car loans or a mortgage.
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
In particular not everyone should be getting scholarships and going to university. They should be entering the labour market at the bottom rung and getting experience or going to a relevant trade school. I've taught in an American university with a reasonably good reputation, half the kids there shouldn't have been (but were catered to, spoonfed and intellectually mollycoddled to drag them through) and I believe thats another symptom of the problem. All parents seem to think their kids are gifted or something, common sense should tell you otherwise. Part of the perceived problem with school is the unrealistic expectations parents have and a general sense of entitlement without earning that pervades even as far as grading.
Back when i was in elementry school, i was expected to hand in everything handwritten. My handwriting is terrible and no matter how much i work on it it does NOT improve.
When we began writing on the computer, my grades rose because the teachers could read what i wrote.
To this day almost nobody can read my handwriting, but thanks to a computer i am able to comunicate with people over the entire world.
Freedom or George Bush
The system is only as good as the people using it.
That includes the teachers. It's wonderful that you had a good experience with public schools, but not everyone does, and it's not always the fault of the children and their parents. The problem is that often children are stuck with bad teachers who don't really care about their students.
The solution is so simple it hurts: stop relying on the government to teach our children. Get rid of public schools, and replace them with education subsidies directly to families, i.e. vouchers. Then if a school sucks, you choose a better one; and this competition forces schools to improve or die.
Kids don't read, period. They need to read books, litereature, histroy, etc. The nonsense that they need to read what interests them is ruining kids. They don't like it, hah, they don't read it, and we give them the perfect excuse.
In my opinion that does not belong in school. Reading literature is just like looking at paintings or going to the cinema. It will probably make them more interesting people if they do, but it's not the responsibility of the school to make kids more interesting people!
What kids need to learn in school are practical things such as math, geography, sciences, languages, arguably politics and some world history. Everything else you can do in your own time.
You want a public school to be like a classics major at university. Prepare for lots of drop-outs if you get your way.
Literature, rhetoric and philosophy have no value whatsoever if you have to cram it down someone's throat.
in the U.S. the primary problem is funding. There's TOO much of it. More specifically, it's backwards. More funding is at the top than the bottom. Think of the education beauracracy as an upside down triangle. It's wider at the top and more money goes there. We've pumped ever-increasing dollars into education but performance has gotten worse. This isn't a clue, this is someone screaming at the top of their lungs, "Don't give me more money, I'll blow it on booze!" Yet, what do we always hear? "We need more money spent on education." Meanwhile, some backwoods kid from some poor school in BFE winds up taking top honors in acedemia and we wonder how. Easy, his school had less money for "growth programs" and had to actually TEACH!
Walking into a pre-school (while researching for my 3 yo), I noticed one side of the wall pasted with a whole bunch of unfamiliar flags.. Thinking it was my short-sightedness, I walked closer and realised they were the flags of the 50+ US States. I barely recognized a couple.. There was no world-map or the individual country maps anywhere.. Stop 'americanizing' education, and we will fare better in the world!
I'm a bit biased in this response as I am currently a High School AP Chem teacher, who has taught in the US and UK - but in a former life was a ceramic engineer (Yeah, we make superconducting, bullet proof toliets - but hey - every one needs a toliet!).
:)
I will summarize here in bits and pieces of whats been posted before, and also add in what I have experienced. These suggestions of change are more evolutionary than revolutionary - as change that is required on that the revolutionary level will require a generation or 1.5 generations to complete - and there simply is not the monetary or political will currently present in the USA to make that happen.
1) Parents - get them involved, period. Let them see the good, bad and ugly. Call them when their kids do well. Call them when their kids do badly. Call them when their kids do nothing. Get them excited about what their kids are learning, and show them how what they are doing relates to school!
2) Discipline - these kids that don't behave and are just being plain disruptive - get them *OUT* of the schools. Have *MANDATORY* road clean up, public service, SOMETHING - that they have to do. Too many of these 'kids' know that they can get around all this 'learning' if they can be disruptive, and then eventually drop out anyway. Stop wasting the time of the students that want to learn, the teachers that WANT to teach and have them do something positive for society. These are also the same folks that slow down the pace of classes so that we (as teachers) are forced to dumb down things!
[As a side bar here - why did the military finally have a nice recruitment numbers in June? Well, let's see - some of these kids are now graduated and have nothing to do! Guess what? Uncle Sam provides a place for you to get paid and get trained. Of course they're going to make their numbers!]
3) Pound the fundamental skills into these kids early and often. Stop doing circular teaching tracks from the elementary (primary) level on. By circular teaching track - most of you reading this that went through public schools in the US will understand what I mean better. You learn the general concept in elementary school. Then you re-learn it again in middle school, but with more detail. And then rinse and repeat at the high school level. Start pounding the math and basic skills of reading in early. If they don't make it? Tough - they need to repeat until they get it. There are simply too many kids who pass through the system who have not learned the fundamental skills. It is these folks who then make the system looks bad.
4) Finally, stop the expectation that EVERYONE is going to college. You are cheapening the value of it. Not everyone is going to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer or accountant. We need people who have competent skills to fix things like cars, roads and people (nurses, anyone?)! We need people to do things that other people are not willing to do. This is why that, they too, get the big bucks. I mean, how many people WANT to go collect trash?
There's more, but I'll stop here. It is the summer, after all
I live in Texas and the school system down here has got to be one of the worst. We have poor minority school who are low performing and the solution that the people come up with down here is to give them a choice to remain at that school or transfer to a new one. The problem with this is that there is a school called Westlake that is an almost all white school and they a freakin jumbotron on their football field. Obviously the system is flawed but the people down here dont notice it, or dont want to notice it.
How much do you pay someone to invest your money?
How much is your child worth compared to your investments?
How much time and investment do you put into your car?
Think about it.... you pay top dollar to get a good investor and yet you want to spend the lowest possible amount to educate and guide your most valuable assets - you children. (The time you spend researching buying a house, car, or investing would also be classified as a cost towards it.)
Pay teachers more and you will slowly get better teachers. I have friends that are amazing teachers and kids love them but they refuse to teach at schools. They would rather host company sponsored learning seminars where they get paid a livable amount.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
I believe that educators are more concerned with giving our children virtual blow jobs then actually teaching. This society has become a cock-less, pussy filled lard sac.
If little Jimmy can't hack it, and he's slowing the rest of the kids down, then we need to have a special place where retards are placed. Oh wait, we do. Nigeria - Nike Sweet Shops. Unfortunately, telling Jimmy that he is a smacktard would hurt his feelings.
There are too many people who are down right rife with down's syndrome that are allowed to have political say in our education system that the system itself has, over time, morphed into a steaming smeared mess of dung. For crying out loud, sports are still integrated in schools! What the hell? Sports?! I love basketball, I play basketball almost everyday, but now I'm jobless because my school was more focused on my game then improving my ability to learn!
How to fix things? Kill/Get rid of (preferably kill) idiots who are making bad education policy. School shouldn't be about friends, sports, having sex and drinking beer. NO NO NO. School is about learning. Later in life, when you have earned the privileges of scoring and throwing back a cold one is when you should partake in these sacred things. Worthless people are drinking my beer and having sex with my women!
We need to segregate. However, previous generations got it all wrong. Don't segregate on race, color, ethnicity. NO NO NO. Segregate on one word: dumbass. We need to genocide the dumbass's of this country. Idiots are using my oil/air/food so they can smoke reefer with their gang friends while they plan to rob me of my belongs and rape my dog. I for one say - "LEAVE MITTENS ALONE". Grow some balls, if Jimmy ain't cuttin it, well...cut him. (Preferably with a knife)
I'm sure you're thinking - 'This guys a violent crazy maniac'. Well of course I am, I'm a product of the system!
-blastnsmash
The key to improving education is to get it out of the government school buildings. There is nothing magical about learning that requires government certified teachers and industrial cinder block buildings lacking in windows. Education can, and should happen everywhere.
1. Eliminate all mandatory attendance laws. The kids that don't want to be in school are just getting in the way of those that do. Let them go.
2. Eliminate teacher certification. Anybody with something of value to teach should be allowed to do it without jumping through a myriad of government hoops.
3. Eliminate the government monopoly on education. Let anybody open a school teaching pretty much anything they want.
4. Mandate nothing. Turn tens of millions of young minds free to learn what they want, where they want, when they want, and let them all bloom. The entire community becomes one big educational factory, with kids moving in and out of classes at the local government school, home based education, community based education, private classes, and options that we haven't even thought of yet because they aren't possible under of centralized control and command system.
Education needs to be as decentralized as possible, so that each individual can get the education they want and deserve. That can't happen when the force of law sticks them in a room with 35 other disinterested parties for 6 hours a day.
1)Get rid of standardized tests as mandated by G.W. Bush administration. Here in Tx, it has created a teaching culture based on teaching for the test. 2)Reintroduce the Socratic method. Thinking skills are not inherant, they're learned. 3)Emphasize communication skills. If you can't communicate, you're sunk 4)Emphasize learning through experimentation. Discovery is always better than learning by rote. 5)Have very high standards for teacher's skills and knowledge. If they don't know it, they can't teach it. 6)Pay teachers enough to attract intelligent and ambitious people. 7)Stop teaching to the lowest common denominator. Expecting great things from people inspires. 8)Provide tutoring for people who need a little extra help 9)Accept the fact that not everyone is going to be a rocket scientist, physicist, or doctor and that's OK 10)Get the parents involved. Kids with parents who care do better in school.
Swisssushi - When the going gets tough, get some tenderizer
I realize this has been said before, but I think it deserves reiterating. The youth of America need heroes in the academic world to look up to. Instead of the often disgustingly overblown and overrated stars of pop culture, let's make achievers in math and science the people whom our children look up to. The sense that what one learns in the classroom is useless is probably one of the main reasons kids aren't motivated to learn. If they saw firsthand what academic excellence and intellectual ability can provide in the future, I think a lot of the supposed apathy of American students could be resolved. Also, as a musician in my spare time, I would dearly love to see music and the arts in general in the classroom. Learning to play an instrument can change one's life (it changed mine), by opening up an entire world of language and expression. Not to mention the obvious ties that the arts have in other fields, such as history and literature. Ironically, by emphasizing music in the classroom, it would be interesting to see a waning of interest in a large proportion of commercial music, simply because of an improvement in the musical literacy of the nation's youth.
School sports is a way to unite the student body. It promotes (this may sound corny) school spirit where you have a sense of belonging and pride. This is crucial to any school to mark its place!
Mindless, zealous worship of an institution for the mere reason that you belong to it is the root of all authoritarian rule. I think that tribal chest-thumping, irrational us vs. them feelings, and devotion to a name and a name alone are the LAST things we need to be encouraging in our kids.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I went to a private ("faith-based," in modern lingo) school for grades 1-12, so my personal experience with public schools is a little limited, but my school was in the same town as a public school that routinely turned out kids with 1600s on the SAT. (I got a comparatively paltry 1450.)
Newsweek magazine publishes a periodic list of the "best" high schools, measured by how many Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests are given at the school each year, divided by the number of graduating seniors. The theory is that schools administering those tests are exposing their students to a more rigorous academic experience that will better prepare them for university.
The top schools in any given year have ratios of something like 6-10 AP/IB tests per graduate. That's a lot... and I doubt they suck.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
The education system needs to be completely redesigned in a modular format.
The current method of children automatically graduating at the end of the year (with a minimal amount of study required) worked fine -- several hundred years ago.
Now that the majority of children have direct access to information when they need it (libraries, internet, study-books, etc), this method is completely obsolete.
If schooling was broken up into "modules" that each child had to pass before they could graduate for the next, then it'd promote self-learning, and give students something to strive for.
Imagine if the age/time restrictions were removed completely, and a child could "move up" the second they'd passed a particular module, or got stuck in elementary classes until they learnt the basics, such as multiplication tables or what adjectives/verbs/nouns et cetera are.
Most people I know disliked school, either because:
a) It was too easy/boring (or catered to the lowest common denominator)
or
b) It was too hard/boring (or not taught correctly)
By allowing kids to graduate a module as soon as they passed it (also required to pass revision/follow-up modules in the future), kids would:
- Be able to study at their own pace
- Have to learn 'things' if they ever wanted to leave school
- Meet other children/friends who moved at the same pace as them
- Be given more time away from school, if there was a short break after each module you passed
This way, you'd have those who are more intelligent being in classes where they're constantly learning something, and those people consider "dumb" (who aren't interested in school), being required to learn these things if they ever wanted to leave permanently.
You could also get kids into the habit of writing their own original thesis on each subject they're taught, which would be reviewed by teachers at the end of each module. Who then discussed it with the childs parents, to decide whether the child has actually learnt the module they've passed.
Obviously this is just a short draft of an idea that spontaneously came to me, but it seems logical, and may even make learning "fun" again.
- K
In high school even the crap students can learn if a good teacher is there to give them what they need. The only way to get good teachers is to the follow basic economics. The current supply of teachers is low and of low quality because the job pays crap and in many cases it is a fallback career for people who don't know what they want to do. There are good people who want to teach, but you have to make it worth thier while. Make teachers salaries start low, have a strict system of tenure that includes re-evaluations, then pay teachers a good salary once the prove they are in fact GOOD teachers. This weeds out the bad teachers and attracts good people to the profession. The end result is a higher supply of good teachers becuase the system has increased the demand for good teachers. I feel this is key, among other things, but i'm sure nobodies going to pay for it.
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
I've been studying this problem for years, and it really comes down to teaching good thinking habits. Most schools today just focus on more efficient ways to pack information into children's heads, and learning skills are left for the children to figure out on their own or learn from their parents. Specifically, given some input into an educational curriculum, I would insert teaching of the following skills at a very early age:
1. Meta-skills. It's been demonstrated again and again that the people who are most likely to be bad at something are the ones who don't know that they're bad at it. In order for people to learn anything of even meager complexity, they first have to realize that they don't already know it.
2. Cognitive Dissonance training. I probably lost half of my audience with those words so, for the rest of you, I'll define them. When we get new information that doesn't quite jive with what we already know, many people are in the habit of reacting to it by discarding the new information, killing the messenger, or going into denial. This is obviously counter-productive to the creation of a realistic world-view. I suggest training people at a young age how to effectively and objectively compare new and old information to determine which is more valid. This goes along with my next point...
3. Critical Analysis. Most of us are incapable of identifying which pieces of information we receive are good and which ones are bad. We usually fall back to just believing anything that X authority figure says, and don't really think about what they said too much. Learning critical analysis is like brushing your teeth. If you learn how to do it at a young age, it comes naturally when your older. If you don't learn it when you're young then learning good "information hygene" is very difficult at an older age.
There ya go. Probably not what you were looking for, but I don't believe that packing one form of information into kid's heads over another form of information is going to make as significant an improvement in that person's quality of life as these three would.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
This is the problem with public schools: if you assume that parents' cannot help themselves, then they won't bother which means they'll think "let the pros do it" and not be involved! Uninvolved parenting is what produces bored and eventually dumb-downed children. "If my parents don't care about studying, why should I care?"
By eliminating public schools, people will be shocked into caring about their children's education and be a bit more active about it. And their children will realize: "hey my parents are concerned about my education -- who would have thunk it?" And then they'll get busy with their studies again (or maybe even for the first time)....
"Don't let school get in the way of your education" -- a wise friend.
Seriously, this post is the best argument that I've ever heard for homeschooling. I think I'm going to remember that bathroom quip for the rest of my life.
The second paragraph, though, clinched it for me. The argument is pure gold.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I recently came across another anti-living-wage poster: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=153727&cid =12897608, but back on topic...
Do you make anywhere near the minimum wage? Probably not considering you explicitly mention you are salaried. Many families in America are not salaried and do make somewhere near the minimum wage. Further, what's the sq. footage of your house and your mortgage? A two bedroom flat will house a family of four until the kids are too old to be in the same room (by [retarded] law boys and girls can't share a bedroom past a certain age, I think it's five-years when social services will start harassing you), sadly most folks on minimum wage cant afford a mortgage, so they rent a place like this at around $500 a month. Does $500 a month sound like nothing to you? That's close to what you make on minimum wage. One income pays the rent, the other income pays for the food, clothing, and medicine. Now you see why some people need two incomes. Yay! Congrats on the anecdotal dismissal of a real problem, though.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
If only we could all focus on the real issue. It's learning not teaching. Learning should drive teaching not the reverse. That, unfortunately, is most often not the case.
As some in this long list of posts have noted, children and most adults are motivated, strongly motivated, to learn. They DO learn. They learn by the means that best fit their own talents and shortcomings when they are left to learn on their own.
School is a different matter. 'Sit down. Stop talking. Watch this. Listen to this. Stop moving your feet. Don't fiddle with that pencil. Write this. Recite that.' This atmosphere only fits a small percent of the population comfortably.
If a child or an adult learns better by singing numbers aloud to do times tables, he or she has a problem in school.
Somebody wrote that paddling should be brought back. I'm sure the singing math student would soon stop singing or feel the paddle. Hitting children is no solution to anything. A long time ago when I was a teacher in a middle school, I arrived thinking paddling was ok. I was called upon to be a "paddling witness" on a few occasions. I learned from that and many other experiences that hitting people to achieve order is not an effective solution, particularly when the punishment and the crime are distant in time and location. As a practical matter corporal punishment is a failure as a method of discipline and control. That is my experience.
There are levels of improvement worth discussing. Are we talking local improvements? Regional improvements? National improvements? Global improvements? Each of these have a different answer. The first improvement that would affect all these domains would be to have learning drive teaching.
Local improvements would be best served by focusing on better learning evironments and opportunities in reading, communications, and math. This triumvirate, properly structured, would provide the basis for focusing on common sense reasoning skills as well as a little formal reasoning.
Regional improvements would best be served by improving the learning environment and learning opportunities related to the regional community, citizenship, local history, basic economics, local ecology, and the job market. Once the job market is seriously part of the curriculum, opportunities to focus on specific learning specialties should be available. The sciences, math, technology, and trade or career opportunities should emerge as choices.
National opportunities would follow the regional model but expand to include opportunities to learn government, law, regulation and enforcement, economics and more.
Global opportunities would also follow the regional and national models, expanding the previous opportunities to learn about international implications of the matters already learned.
Finally, somewhere in the mix from local to regional would be the learning opportunities for those human endeavors that transcend (or at least ignore) practicality, dance, music, athletics, visual arts such as painting, photography, cinematography, and games such as checkers, chess, poker, backgammon, Zoombinis, Red Alert, Myst and lots more.
Learn about it. Read Mel Levine's books. Read about Summerhill. Read about the successes AND failures in home schooling. Home schooling has yet to show itself to be any better than other schooling when looked at with a broader view than just the outstanding successes. There are outstanding successes in public schooling too. Clearly, we are not pointing at those outstanding successes and saying everything is ok. We shouldn't do it with home schooling either. Youngsters deserve better than that.
Learning not teaching.
Learning makes us human.
I really do not think that the answer is to reward the slackers by giving up on them.
You don't get to decide who the "slackers" are, or what constitutes - in your mind - this obviously deficient human being. Time to rid yourself of the delusion that you know better what these folks should learn than they themselves do.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The problem with the education system today is that it attempts to teach the middle. By this I mean that exceptional students, those on both ends of the bell curve, are pulled toward the center. Consequently the gifted are hobbled and the challenged disenfranchised. The easiest way to counter this is to have a more segregated class situation where subjects are taught in disparate, but skill-level appropriate, groups.
I'm constantly amazed that we allow athletes to gloat, allow celebrities to gloat, but frown on gloating by the intelligencia of this country. If you're smart, you should be allowed to shake your booty and do a victory dance when you get the top score in class.
Society really has a strongly vested interest in producing well educated people for the next generation, but the meaning of "well educated" is the point of manipulation. I think it includes educated in the knowledge needed to be free and responsible people. Our current elite leaders think it means the mass of people should be educated to follow orders and work efficiently for their own children, who will of course be educated to own the factories and run the government. In other words, "leaders" like Dubya want to use the education system to perpetuate and even increase their own political and economic superiority.
I believe the magnet schools program is the most damaging tool being used for these purposes, because it affects the largest number of students. A Texas "innovation", by the way. This gives many members of the power elite a cheap back door through the public schools, with their own children getting superior educations. More importantly, it destroys the motivation to improve the entire public school system, because the people who actually do care about good education can just channel their own children into the elite magnet schools. Meanwhile, the bulk of the students (and future voters) are practically in jail, and not really expected to learn anything except for how to behave and how to pass the current test.
There are are problems, but they are smaller. For example, there are many elitists who are so selfish and short-sighted that they simply don't want to pay any taxes for education that benefits the entire society. There are also people who want to control their children's education to perpetuate their own beliefs, usually bizarre religious beliefs that can't stand the light of reason. However, these are relatively minor problems compared to the effective destruction of the mainstream education system.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Well, almost.
First, stop catering to the lowest common denominator. While I understand that no parent wants to believe they have a dumb kid, the not-dumb kids have to suffer.
Stop repeating the previous grade as a primer to the next. Teach kids to learn instead of how to cram facts into their short term memory.
It should be obvious by now that kids don't respond well to an environment that, except for construction paper decorations, closely resembles a correctional facility, in appearance, methods, and overall environment.
Actually spend money on education. Teachers tend to stop caring after 10 years of $27k.
Make learning fun, or at least not as boring as it is.
The British have used it effectively for years. 5 swats of a can across your palm will get your attention.
My point would be why would I have to pay taxes at all if some people can opt out of paying for public education? Or why should I have to pay even once for someone's child's education? The answer is because we all have to. Parochial/charter schools are a luxury, not a necessity. Who else gets to dictate where there tax money is being spent? No one because it goes into a general fund and everyone (representative government) decides how it is spent. If individuals get to tailor their spending, do you think public roads would be paved? As if I want to be the sucker that doesn't dictate where my tax money is going to be spent.
Besides, where is the evidence that says schools are failing? People mimic this sentiment, but I have yet to understand how they think things could be better juxtaposed against reality, not utopia. What criteria are you using to decide schools have failed? Can your criteria singularly isolate public schools as the problem? How much money has been spent on public education; I doubt "no matter how much money"? And what does it mean for public education to have a chance; is it going somewhere? Where is the data that charter schools can save the day or parochial schools are better? I graduated from a parochial school I went to for a year and a half; I was a public school kid through my junior year. You would think I might have been an inferior student compared to my privately educated peers. Well, I graduated fifth in my class. So much for your inferior public school education.
My last point is that if we take a look at America as evidence of a country with failed public education, it doesn't seem to be failing (maybe its leadership is). So, if schools are failing and have been failing as conservatives may have you believe, then why is it that America is so dominant in the world? It must be because we are all illiterate from our public school education.
Actually it was called:
"Association of Television Viewing During Childhood With Poor Educational Achievement"
BTW, I write tongue-in-cheek. See my commentary on these studies....
"Don't let school get in the way of your education" -- a wise friend.
I'm posting as AC since I've already modded some comments here--however, Anonymous Cowards don't have much credibility, so for any skeptics, direct your incredulity towards me.
I'm not a native speaker of English, still, I notice so many really blaring errors of that kind (their/there etc), that I almost get scared of losing my own firmly rooted knowledge of English...
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Now time to go back make more comments . . .
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
I agree 100%!
So when will public schools get shut down? Dept. of education is not even part of the U.S. Constitution. It is illegal and should not have been approved and we can't get rid of it soon enough! (sames goes for local public schools and their pesky taxes.)
"Don't let school get in the way of your education" -- a wise friend.
Sure many people do succeed in our society. But that number pales in comparison to those who are bogged down by debt, are unemployable, can't keep a steady jog, etc. Just because some people manage to succeed in spite of the system doesn't mean it's a good system.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
- 50% based on classroom performance improvement over the year. The second test of the kids should take place months before summer break, to prevent the pure teach-the-test problem.
- 30% based on school performance improvement over the year (to encourage sharing of lesson plans and cooperation). May be further subdivided into improvement relative to other schools in district, state, or nationwide. Lack of cooperation is one of the whining complaints always given as a reason for not having merit pay, and this is an easy solution.
- 20% based on parent and student feedback. This needs to be on a curve, probably within the district, since there will always be that percentage of crazy parents that dislike any teacher their kids have or who are upset when their kids don't always get the undeserved A.
For administrators:
- Replace the portion based classroom improvement with relative ratio of money under their control to money that makes it to the classroom, relative to other schools in the district/state/nation. Until you start measuring and negatively impacting administrator pay for a lack of efficiency, the current bloated eduocracy will continue to burn money inefficiently.
Other things:
- Stop this crazy extra long summer break thing. Yes, kids need a break to be kids. No, it doesn't have to be three months long, with the resultant loss of retention.
- Keep teachers with the same class longer (i.e., follow a class through grades 1, 2, and 3). Increases the accuracy of any measurement of improvement.
- Admit that some students learn differently than others, and put the students in classes/tracks based on that. Get those that learn visually together, etc.
- School vouchers. It's one sure-fire way of getting parents more involved, and one great measurement of parental feedback. If all the kids move to another school, you can bet you kinda suck. I have not heard one cogent argument against this (the typical one is that it takes money away from the schools, which is bull, because no voucher program ever had the voucher value anywhere near what the schools got per student - only if the administrative overhead is so ridiculously high that it's greater than the difference between per-student funding and voucher value is there any damage, and the solution then isn't to not use vouchers, but to fix the overhead!).
- Long or no tenure period. It's ridiculous that after just 3 years in some places, poor teachers can have a lock on their job. If you don't have the ability to get rid of the bottom 5% of performers, guess what you end up with?
As an "educational libertarian" (I believe that we should fund education through college - but only when a system is in place that creates efficient spending) I'm disgusted at the morons who think that we can solve the problem by throwing money at it. Guess what? Per-student funding in the U.S. is quite high. Efficiency of that money is extraordinarily low. And the "teachers" unions (esp. the CTA) is made up of mostly administrators! Their grab for additional funding is all about self-preserving their bloated bureaucracy (as an aggregate behavior in the face of no measurement of efficiency).
Until we start measuring what we want to see - improvement, efficiency - we will never see those things and we will continue to throw good money after bad.
> cat ~/.signature | grep -v bullshit
>
The point is that we have a system that allows people to suck.
Instead of forcing them to learn the material, we simply push them through the system on to the next grade to become someone else's problem.
Fail them. If they don't catch on, fail them again. Once they've mastered the material (and they *WILL* eventually master the material) then you're free to pass them on.
As a result, you'll have people that are truly at the same level and on the same page in each classroom...homogenaity makes teaching said children effectively much more likely. You can focus on those who don't understand TODAY's lesson, rather than trying to focus on teaching them what they should have learned LAST YEAR.
I had an auto-mechanics teacher that taught this way. He gave us the basics and then when we got into a situation he would guide us into figuring it out for ourselves. He really did teach us how to think and use the basics to do much more advanced things, creative engineering or how to fix anything without the right parts or tools and get by until you can get them. He also taught obsolete things like citizenship and what being a man really means (he had very few students end up in jail, most were quite successful).
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
improvements
1) Keep the same 9 month school terms, but eliminate summer vacations. The result would be high school grads at 14 or 15 years old, then on to college. The younger you are the easier it is to learn, very generally speaking.
2) Rescind the "easy grades" notion that has been foisted on the US grade school populations. A and B grades are too easily gotten now. Near illiterates are allowed to "pass" and get moved up a grade.
3) Get control of the borders and end this ridiculous and highly illegal Balkanazation of the US, where it is most seen in the schools and in the local property taxes. You have a system now designed for x- number of children trying to accomodate 2x and with widely diverse languages and cultures that act more as a distraction than anything else. The crime statistics bear this out. A little multiculturalism goes a long way there. By all means some immigration is acceptable and desirable, as it has always been,what should be the legal lawful amount, rampant uncontrolled immigration is third worlding the US just so that petit bourgeois elitists can have maids and gardeners and other forms of cheap labor, all at the community's expense.
I realise the last is contentious, but if you live in an area that has seen primary education costs double in just a few years, along with ancillary higher "other" costs like police, local community hospitals going bankrupt, etc, you would see what I am talking about. The infrastructure, tax base and social base is just not designed for such rapid changes, it just doesn't work.
Making a class difficult does not make students smarter. I had a college physics course that exemplifies this method of instruction. It was a travesty. Very bright, hard working students scored 40s on their tests. These were the As! We were demoralized, as as much as I can remember, no one pursued another physics class the rest of their collegiate careers. I agree that students fare well when challenged, but grading on a curve is for teaching what Cliff's Notes are for students of literature, i.e. unrepresentative of the body as a whole. Goddamn curves to hell.
2. Teacher pay based on student progress.
Again, this isn't something that scales well. Sounds good in theory, but making pay scale punitive isn't going to attract the right people to the teaching profession. You want grade inflation? Implement pay based on performance. This will not work.
3. Two year mandatory civil service.
Buddy, I'm on board with you regarding civil service of some sort. I think before a kid gets to enroll for college he/she should go out into the world first. Really firm up what it is you want from life and what you can offer in return. That said, two years is too long. People will tire of this after twelve months, and those services will suffer. Keep it brisk, keep it to one year. We only get eighty to begin with.
4. The paddle.
That is the domain of parents. I'm not married, nor do I have kids. But I don't see a scenario where I want someone else striking my kid when I should.
5. Same sex schools
Highly overrated. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. If anything, having girls around made me want to improve myself. In grade school and college, if I were out of line or just being a jerkoff, girls often told me when boys wouldn't. Being told you're a jerk or acting stupid by a girl is a very effective way to get your attention.
Things I agree on:
1. Kids teaching kids
Cannot be overstated. Builds leadership skills, raises self-esteem in younger students, underscores the whole point of learning.
2. Recess.
Yes, and then some. I would like to see school districts engage entire families to take up physical activities. Too often, sports are thought of as the domain of particular jocks. Shouldn't be that way. Sure, they'll take up those stick-n-ball scoreboard games. I'm talking about activities that promote fitness. Running and cycling come to mind. Sports where you can readily track personal progress while enjoying the actitity with others.
I personally think 1 hour is too much but I allow my Japanese wife to do so since she's already out of her comfort zone (she is used to the Japanese way so she had to become unschooled at many levels to get to the current state).
When I asked them if they want to go to school, the youngest told me "no, because then the (short) recess is all that we would look forward to" (since they get on the average of 6+ hours of recess every day instead of 1 or 2 at a typical school and with no homeworks, they get even more recess time).
"Don't let school get in the way of your education" -- a wise friend.
I went to school in the third world and then came to the Ivy League. I could not believe the fact that the most powerful nation in history could have such an unimpressive public education system. I strongly believe that the US should benchmark and then emulate the most successful educational programs from around the world.
Then what do you do after you de-prioritize them? I think its easy to say, but you're not thinking about the consequences... what happens NEXT? where do those kids go? What is their role in their school when they are deprioritized in favor of the minority of high performing students?
Boy, if you think a high performing kid has issues when he's "persecuted", what do you think an underperformer is going to do? I can tell you he's not going to hole himself up in his bedroom and write open source software.
I recall at my highly stratified high school the exchange students from Europe told me how startling the cliques and power structures were to them. Not having been to school in Germany or the Netherlands, I don't know if they were exaggerating or not. Regardless, the stereotypes of jocks, nerds, socialites and so on doesn't just exist in the movies. It's real in American schools.
It seems to me that any attempt to clean up the American education system must be based first and foremost on changing the emphasis of the system from socialization to education. Teaching young people in a way that provides them critical thinking and learning tools that will last a lifetime is vastly different than presenting students a standard package of information they merely have to regurgitate.
The current system provides good opportunities for those students who for whatever reason (internal motivation, excellent teachers, involved parents, an upper-class school district) are fired up to succeed. But the vast majority of students are in the middle, and they are justifiably unengaged by a system that doesn't expect and require true intellectual engagement.
There are of course other factors, such as parental involvement, the larger social attitude towards intellectual achievement, the manner in which schools are funded locally, poor teacher pay, and the deadly grip of teachers' unions. Perhaps they all need to be attacked simultaneously.
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However, I completely agree that grammar is both important and misunderstood by most people. But you know what? I never learned much grammar from English classes. I never truly understood direct and indirect objects until taking Spanish classes.
So that's my counter-proposal: mandate lots of foreign language classes, preferrably a language the kids can speak and practice. Dead and obscure languages have their place, but not for younger kids. A dead language is just tedium unless you can apply the knowledge to a living language. I've gotten much more interested in Latin and etymology after learning Spanish and Portuguese, and finding linguistic patterns in the vocabulary and grammar. For example, I know that in Spanish the word for child is hijo, in Portuguese it's filho, in Italians figlio, in Latin filius. Those changes are pretty consistent for most words, and help me predict words I don't know in one language based on words I do know in another.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
"English as a Second Language." Now before everyone mods this "racist" or "flamebait" please take the time to read it and think about it.
I went to a high school in Yokohama, Japan. The student body was made up of dozens of cultures and their respective languages. One of the major rules was "English ONLY" during classes. Materials were all in English. Lessons were in English.
Back here in the US, I learned from several teacher friends that things were different. Kids that spoke NO english were being tossed into classes with native speakers. And guess what? It brought the pace of the class to a crawl because those that already knew the language had to often wait for the non-native speakers to catch up. These kids didn't learn English at home because the parents didn't know English either. Why should they when businesses everywhere are putting up signage in Spanish & advertising "Se habla espanol?" These kids had nowhere outside of the normal classroom routine to learn English skills because the ESL programs were axed due to budget cuts.
if everyone speaks English, cultures integrate better. I'm sure that many will say "Well, just learn Spanish!" but it's not only the Spanish speakers - sometimes it's the Asian kids. This is the United States. Our language is English. So why aren't we doing a better job of teaching it to those that want to make a life here?
Here is an excellent article to reinforce my point. Before I moved to Japan, I lived near that school. I spent every summer back in that area and I personally watched the area change to what it is now. It also illustrates what a disaster "No Child Left Behind" has turned out to be.
Our educational system is damaged.
I had a college physics class that graded on a bell curve. A typical sophomore year "weed-out" class. Those who got 40s on the exams got an A. Nobody pursued another physics class for the rest of their collegiate career. Many fellow students including myself moved on to different colleges and left the chemistry, physics, and engineering schools behind. And some wonder why law is a popular destination instead of graduate degrees in the sciences.
The problem in our educational system is not that we don't spend enough on it, it's not that we're teaching the wrong way or the wrong subjects in our schools, it's a fundamental problem of how our society treats an "education".
It's a cultural, rather than a structural problem. In the US of A, academic excellence is simply *not* the goal our society has when sending kids to school. We send our children to school for the following reasons:
- to keep them occupied while Mom and Dad are at work.
- because it's the law that they have to go to some school, and if we were to home-school them, we would run afoul of reason#1.
- so they can develop socially -- and we put 100% of the responsibility for that on the school, which is exactly where it DOES NOT belong.
So far as I can see, the greatest motivation people (kids) have to attend school is to participate in the social interactions -- which at an institutional level are most prominently displayed in their athletic programs, not in their academic programs.The only reason many poor inner-city kids (yes, I know I'm stereotyping, bear with me a moment) have to attend school is to be part of the sports team (football, basketball, etc) and set foot upon that path up the economic staircase, regardless of the fact that it has the worst success rate of any path they could choose. And in the suburban schools, the motivation is no different, although the goals are typically greater social standing rather than a career in the pro ball teams. The rarity is the kid who buckles down and studies to attain scholarships or simply to LEARN.
If we look at poor rural areas of India, or at the successes of the Asian countries in promoting education, do we see athletics as having any significant role in a school? I think not (some knowledgeable soul can step in right now and correct me if I'm way off base in this).
While there is a pressing need for an athletic program in our schools, it should not be about competition, but about healthy exercise. There is simply no need to have competitive athletics in our primary or secondary school systems.
Obviously, these recommendations are never going to fly in the land of Ignorance. There is too much money and power invested in the status quo. So what can you, as a parent, REALLY DO?
For the record, I took option 3 with my kids. They turned out OK, and I spent a fortune in out-of-state college education, after spending another fortune for 12 years of private schooling for each of them -- I might have made a mistake there, but they went to good schools and had the opportunity to learn from the best. At a rough guess (as the song says, don't do the math), about a half million, all told.
I've known a large number of homeschoolers (having been one myself) and frankly they all turned out really well.
The only really dysfunctional people I've met in life have been schooled publically. I'm not saying public schools make them that way, I think some people will turn out anti-social no matter what. I do think though that having kids interact more with adults than other kids leads to earlier displays of maturity and self-control, that from observation of lots of high school friends along with homeschoolers.
If you want to read the result of the ultimate "socalization" experiment that is a public school, you might want to try "Lord of the Flies"!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From my experience learning styles are very important. I've been doing my teacher traing this year and have noticed how I learn. For me a picture or diagram on the board really helps me understand a concept. Another chap on the course was also a visual thinker and he'd come out of class completly blank, not having been able to absorb the large amount of spoken words.
There is a very good case to make is that the very high number of kids who fail at school is due to not paying attention to the way they learn. Are the kids looking board in class? Change the style of deliveray and see what happens.
I think this issues is of particular relavance to the slashdot crowd. There is probably a higher than average number of visual and tactile learners here. Probably also a good number of dyslexics and aspergics who do learn in very diferent ways.
Have a go at some of the online assesments for learing styles say http://www.csupomona.edu/~jekarayan/brain/brain/ or http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=quest ionnaire.
It would be fun to pool results. Do slashdotters learn in a different way?
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
Homeschoolers exceed national average for 2003 ACT.
Sorry, couldn't find data for last year. Not sure how often this stuff is compiled.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've been thinking about this for years, as I grew up in the ridiculously underfunded California system, so have heard all sorts of arguments about this.
But I've pretty much boiled them all down to one thing: funding. Teachers have so many ideas, so many things they want to do that would make the class interesting, but they can't afford them. And of course the education budget has done nothing but shrink, when you're facing a budget crisis it's easy to lop 1% off education, you don't feel the effects for years, and since you leave it to the schools to make the cuts, you're not a bad guy for firing teachers or cutting their wages.
The benefits go on: the less educated are less likely to question you, not going to realize you're repeating the same mistakes of 20 years ago, and don't understand the numbers when you say we're really not deeply in debt. So there really is no political incentive to improve education - although that does mirror the average American's attitude of expecting something immediately without regard for the future cost.
But as to why I say funding: not only would funding bring in better talent (the private sector pays easily 2x as much here in CA), so it's not just the everything-for-the-kids types, but then schools could afford the basics like books, desks, classroom space, maybe even the soft touches like paint and teacher's assistants. You know, make them respectable places that kids might actually want to spend their time. My high school was built by a jail designer, so it was all bare cinderblock, stainless steel and a single barred window in each room. And this was in the middle of Silicon Valley, not some inner-city!
And btw, if anyone thinks they have some creative ideas of how teachers can be more efficient with the money they have, feel free to share, because I don't know a single teacher who doesn't spend at least part every single day trying to figure out what they can squeeze in their budget. It's not like they're asking for much, unfortunately people want to save that extra 0.1% in taxes more.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
What is it with all these lists of "Things You Should Do To Fix Schools"?
Take a wide enough look at schools in the United States, and you will realize that the word "school" is very loose term. Judging the effectiveness of schools is still just as vague.
Though it has no money behind it, No Child Left Behind was an attempt to quantifiably measure a school's performance, and dole out economic rewards or punishments based on that performance.
Instead of flying off on rants about terrible parenting, take a look at your local land-use patterns. Before declaring that teachers are lazy, examine how your local school board, and the teacher's union, structure pay and pensions. Instead of screaming that schools are all falling apart, take a look at the management of schools that are, actually, falling apart - What sorts of contracts are janitorial staff under? What sort of state is a school that is "falling apart" supposed to be in when it is fixed?
I could go on, and on. The reality is that the schools near you can sometimes have that unique blend of unknowns that lead to successful education of their students, while others (despite tons of $, parental involvement, etc.) can totally fail.
The notion of measuring a schools success or failure through testing, etc., the way No Child Left Behind does, is a (unfunded) start to fixing "the problem". Yet, with schools, the problems are almost always extremely local, sometimes being contained to one school in a large district.
There are many policies (as an example, take a look at the Federal program that provides low-cost lunches to kids by subsidizing American farms - sounds great until you see what kids actually get to eat for lunch) that affect the way our local schools are run - and they never get touched on in the rant-offs about The Parents vs. The Bullies vs. MONEY!!! vs. Poor People Are Just Stupider, etc.
Please, just chill out, thin of the children.
Its a trivial point but one that always causes confusion. I was in two minds about mentioning it, hence my rather lazy ambivalence. In full for any passers by who might like to consider this a footnote, British Public Schools are private schools. They are called this because when they were built the only alternative was religious schooling which wasn't available to everyone for obvious reasons. Education provided by the government through taxation are called State Schools. Actually, there are some people who object to both "British" (what about Northern Ireland - rather politically charged to ignore them - ... but do I really want to type out Great British every time, its sounds stupid) and "American" (should one nation lay claim to be the entire continent?) as rather lazy by the same token.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Hiya. Being an Australian highschool student, I'm quite interested in this discussion, and - from what it seems - the American highschool system seems to be in a state of chaos. I have one friend who can back that up...she moved from our school to Texas, and told us that everything was especially easy - especially the Maths. I find that worrying, especially because I believe knowing hard maths is the key to gaining a solid understanding of daily maths. As with computers - I as lucky to be in one of the very last years before computers became mainstream in our school. Now I look at the 'computer literacy' program and find that it involves a ridiculous amount of Flash animating, Powerpoint, and other 'worthless' techniques, compared to...hmm...maybe, elegant coding? I find this reflected in the other subjects too, such as English (where many students don't understand the inherent beauty of an eloquently written and logically clear essay) and Music (If you know anything about music, DO study, read the score of, or just listen to Die Kunst Der Fuge by J.S. Bach, which, in my opinion, is one of the most elegantly written works of counterpoint. I don't have a problem with 'electric noise', but it made me cringe when the guitarist from another band asked me before a performance to tune their guitar.) Away from my rant, I was troubled by the descriptions of the American highschool system that everyone commented. Over here (At least with the IB), all marks are externally and internationally moderated (meaning that if the teachers mark easy it'll be worse for the students), and you can -fail- Year 12 (Senior year), at which point you have to do a half/one year repeat. Also, is the picking on of academically oriented students (aka nerds), and the emphasis on sport seriously bad in the USA? In my school, I'm up there as a nerd, and I find absolutely nothing wrong with it. Don't get locked in a locker or bitched about or anything much. I suppose, that our school being only slightly more oriented in Sport, but recognising importance in Music, Dance, and the Arts in general, it's quite different to your average school...(It's a private school). If someone could do a comparison of schooling in the USA, Australia, England, Europe, etc, it would be awesome. elynnia (I'm 16, by the way.)
Ah, but you can't have all your heroes be white males. That would be bad. You need to have a sufficiently diverse collection of heroes, and NASA can't provide that at this time.
Sports and entertainment, however, can.
I've always thought that a teacher who explains everything perfectly is not really good for the students. Let me clarify. In my 8th grade we were introduced to Geometry. This involved calculating the areas of various figures using PI. This teacher taught us how to do so.
She taught us the steps to all calculations perfectly. After that class, the dumbest kids could calculate the areas of figures. However, noone knew what PI actually was. All I kept thinking was why did I have to use this PI and where did its value come from ? I failed the next exam based on that.
Because the teacher taught the class step by step, the students knew exactly what to do. They didn't have to think Sometimes, a not so good teacher will leave out holes in a student's knowledge. This will force the student to think. I had another teacher in Algebra who was really absent minded and forgot quite a few of the steps. This meant I had to fill in those gaps in my knowledge by thinking. I found I learnt a lot more problem solving in Algebra than in Geometry.
So what I really want to say is that from the student's perspective the teacher who seems to teach very well may not be the best one.
I work for a University outreach department and it's my job to go into low-performing communities to teach subject matter in the areas their teachers fall short. I interact and build relationships with both student and teacher.
I've seen people of all walks of life teach. Rich, poor, smart, blatently stupid, respected, feared, etc. and THE MOST effective teacher I've ever seen has been the younger one who knows the humor, music, fashion, and entertainment of the culture they are trying to educate.
When someone like this gets to teach, the kids don't see him/her as an oppositional force that's there to criticize. Instead, they begin to see such a teacher as one of their peers... but the coolest of them all. The untouchable one. They often have students develop crushes on them because they seem attainable. And because these teachers are so revered, the students actually
1) want to emulate the teacher through the teacher's education
and
2) respect the teacher enough to feel guilty when they don't do their homework.
Yea, the curriculum needs to change to a subject matter that isn't so 1950s (you know, no more super-patriot double speak and maybe give the kids some truth.. it's more interesting anyway) and maximum classroom occupancy has a grand influence on the appeal of a teacher's teachings, but a charasmatic person whose goal is to engage students on THEIR level and in THEIR culture ALWAYS wins.
How do we solve this problem? Stop lying to college students about the big money that is to be made in industry en masse. The kids graduating with BAs right now were told they'd be making 60k out of college. Yeah, right. They wish. Some make that much within 5 years.
Start advertising the truth about the future of the US economy in that the future is no longer in production or R&D for most pf us, but instead - the service sector. If we start preparing kids to become teachers EN MASSE, then maybe we won't have such ogd-awful people "fall-back" into teaching when their hopes and dreams of being a high-power stock-trader fall through.
The first tier is what is currently elementary grades, K-6. This is the foundation. This is where we have to pound on kids to embrace reading, writing, and arithmetic. I excelled in these grades when I had teachers who challenged me and my parents refused to let me slack off. I believe a kid leaving the 6th grade should have the skills to hold down a simple job if age weren't an issue.
The second tier is much more focused on individual interests and strengths. This comes in the years that are currently filled with grades 7-12. Somewhere between the first and second tiers, we need a means to evaluate which subjects students excel in. More often than not, they are subjects he/she enjoys. Push them toward specialized curricula that concentrate on their interests and incorporate skills that are used in the workforce.
The point about the second tier is that we don't waste students' and teachers' time (and money in the students' case) going over subjects those students are not interested in or have little aptitude for. Everyone should know fundamentals like vocabulary, phonics, spelling, and algebra. Should they all have to know how to write a proper bibliography, debate the effectiveness of the Marshall Plan, or understand calculus derivatives? Of course not. I've never once used calculus since college. Hell, I haven't even used the Pythagorean theorem, and that's basic geometry.
Yes, lean on kids through the first tier so they know the fundamentals. However, in the second tier, we need to stop wasting time teaching subjects that have only a peripheral impact on students. I assert that students are less inclined to read for, study, and excel in subjects these days because the curricula we now offer them is too bloated.
I blame school administrations and institutions with a "big umbrella" philosophy towards education. I would rather see smaller schools with smaller, more focused curricula that are better prepared to teach subjects that will truly inspire students of those fields. I dare to think that if I had gone to a school dedicated to programming and computer science, I might have developed something profound that others can benefit from instead of limping job to job for a paycheck.
As for college, if we started preparing students for the workforce sooner, college wouldn't be today what high school was forty years ago. If undergraduate admission and attendance declined, it wouldn't be a bad thing. Universities exist more to conduct research and win research grants, so maybe they become research and grad student institutions only. Never happen, I know, but perhaps it should.
The problem with school as we know it? It crushes the natural curiosity of every child nearly without exception.
Contrast the passionate learning and exploration of a child before kindergarten with the stereotypical apathy of a student in high school. Three guesses what happened between point A and B.
Public schools are not public. Our public libraries and public roads are for our convenience --- to be used as they help use pursue our goals. They don't need a truancy officer.
It's helpful, but not necessary to lead a horse to water, and it's wrong to take away recess when she won't drink. Horses will go to extreme lengths to reach the water with or without help because water is fundamental to their existence.
So-called "student government" is a sham. Democracy is empowerment. Student goverment is bureaucracy. Our schools are Un-American.
Introducing the solution: http://www.sudval.org/
"At Sudbury Valley School, students learn to think for themselves, and learn to use Information Age tools to unearth the knowledge they need from multiple sources. They develop the ability to make clear logical arguments, and deal with complex ethical issues. Through self-initiated activities, they pick up the basics; as they direct their lives, they take responsibility for outcomes, set priorities, allocate resources, and work with others in a vibrant community. Children ages 4-19 explore the world freely, at their own pace and in their own unique ways."
Just be careful not to apply your indignation to the wrong kids.
I dropped out of high school after getting thrown out of my history class for knowing too much, along with several other students. Today I am a history editor at a major publisher, no help from the public education system. At the time, I was part of a reading group and would meet in the library most weeknights to read. We knew more about Vichy France or Mesoamerican achaeology than our history instructor and routinely had to correct his bizarre formulations and factual mistakes in class. To compound the problem, most of our assignments (this is 10th grade honors history) were lists of fill-in-the-blank questions like:
"On page 346 of your textbook, who is listed as being 'as inquisitive a mind as Franklin?'"
Our exams were very similar:
"Which three western figures are mentioned most prominently in Chapter 12, 'The Modern era?'"
These weren't history questions, these were textbook questions, for which we were given one line about three inches long for our answers. Hooray for history, eh? And we didn't read the textbook anyway; if the class was studying a topic with which we felt unfamiliar, we'd read (and in many case come to class with) primary sources and relevant monographs, because the textbook was almost always frustratingly thin. For it we were labeled disruptions and poor students and dismissed from class, meaning that we'd be unable to graduate unless we a) made it up later or b) switched schools. And you'd be right if you said that we weren't "following the program" and were thus disruptive. But so what? Why do so many insist on making the public education system the end in and of itself? The public education system is supposed to be there to serve the inquisitive student in his or her attempt to learn. And if it isn't, who needs it and what is it good for, beyond feeding civil service workers?
So instead of going and repeating the same idiocy at summer school, or at another public school, I simply said about ten rude words in a row and got my parents' permission to leave high school and apply for early admission at my state university, where I enrolled at 15, matriculated in the humanities and social sciences as a double major, and never looked back... because at university, they actually encouraged me to learn and to think not merely to behave or to conform.
I honestly think our high school educators are ill-equipped and perhaps even just a little bit intellectually short to cope with the sorts of unexpected problems and deviations that arise when dealing with any body of youths. We certainly don't pay enough to get the cream of the crop.
But I certainly feel as though the number one problem in my own public education was simply that instead of being rewarded for being ahead of the curve, I was constantly pushed down by my instructors. I could go on all day, but instead I'll just go on for another half-page or so:
In 4th grade I was moved from an advanced Algebra class in which I was thriving alongside a small group of advanced 6th graders back to the standard 4th grade class because, according to what my parents were told, both the dozen-odd 6th graders and their teacher were embarrassed to have such a young student in the class. It wasn't age-appropriate. My parents ended up having me tutored privately in algebra, trig, and the calculus after school since the school system refused to supply it until I was in high school or later.
In 5th grade I read Don Quixote (in translation to English, of course) for a book report, but failed the assignment, at first because my teacher refused to believe that I'd read it, and then when my parents assured her that I had read it and enjoyed it as well, because it wasn't (you guessed it) age appropriate.
In 7th grade I enrolled in pull-out computer science and physics classes at the aforementioned state U, only to be told by the high school that I'd have to make
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Teaching is a grueling but rewarding profession. I think overall teachers aren't paid enough, and if they were paid more the quality of teachers would go up. In some Canadian provinces (like Manitoba) teachers now need five full years of university (a 3 year B.A. or a B.S., plus a 2 year B.Ed. before being licensed). Yet after that a teacher gets paid approx 40k (Cdn) for the first year, which maxes out at around 67k (Cdn) after nine years. Frankly, I don't think that is enough for what the best teachers do, although it is plenty for those who do the minimum required. I also think tenure is a bit of a problem in some cases... it is too hard to fire a teacher in some cases when it is desirable.
Also, why should a person have to go to college to be able to get out of the working poor bracket, not to mention raise a family? The US has one of the highest percentages of college degrees per capita, yet also the highest disparity between the upper and lower income deciles and lowest class mobility (upwards) in the industrialized world.
You should have made that teacher rue the day that he thought he could be a teacher without a proper education
And that is what's wrong with education as well as everything else. No accountability, and in the lack of formal accountability, the lack of willingness to instill a sense of regret in the person who fails to fulfil what should be their duty.
they went to a community college because their GPAs in HS were inflated and they barely made a qualifying SAT score, then failed out of college How the hell do you fail out of college. You just show up for class and they spoon feed you a degree. Open wide, here comes the degree train!
Alright, I attend one of the best schools for Math/Science/Engineering. I feel like I managed OK in the public school system. Why just ok? Because everything was a battle with the school: I wanted to (God forbid) take an AP science class, an AP language class, and an AP math class and they were all only offered the same two periods. Our school district wanted to ban every club that wasn't strictly academic (and did for a while). I, eventually, took the highest classes that my high school had to offer, despite conselors recommending the more standard courses. Did high school prepare me to college? No. Did it even try? Not at all.
I can ask anyone around here about the condition of our public school system and unless they were home schooled, went to a magnet school, or are from some other country they always say that something serious should be improved. Ask some people from overseas about their education system, you'll get interesting answers. I've talked to a lot of very succesful students here, and I think you are the outlier. You should realize that just because you're happy with your education, doesn't mean that most other people are too and that the vocal people you hear are in the minority.
My parents learned the lesson and are sending my younger brothers to magnet schools (which are not nearby mind you) to get a decent education. I succeeded because of my parents and in spite of the public school system, and I know a number of people who say the same thing. Now I wonder how successful I would be if I could say that I succeeded because of my parents AND my public school education.
We know the free market is more efficient, responsive and innovative than Soviet-style centralized planning. So why do we allow political bureaucracy to educate our children? Besides that the bureaucracy likes being our sole source?
Education is a basic need that should be met the same way we meet people's medical needs. Government writes a check and each eligible citizen decides where to spend it. As George Will wrote 20-some years ago, government is good at writing checks. It is not good at providing goods and services.
I'm a hard-core Democrat, but I don't sacrifice my kids to teachers' unions. I visited all the schools in my area before I picked a kindergarten, and the public schools here may have good teachers but the administrators I met were lazy bureaucrats. Private-school staff tries to sell you on their schools.
The weirdest argument against using public funds for private education is that it benefits the rich. The rich are in private schools because, today, it's mainly the rich who can afford them. A lot of middle-class parents kill themselves to pay for private education, and a few poor families do it with financial aid from the schools. Subsidies would bring the most benefit to families who have the most trouble affording private school now.
In my area, public school systems spend more than $10,000 per student per year, and more than half of that is spent on central administration. You can buy a lot of private education for that kind of money.
Another weird argument against public payments to private schools is that private schools may turn some students away. One of the benefits of privatization is diversification. Kids find their matches: the arts school, the academic school, the athletic school, the single-sex school, or maybe the school for kids who have behavior problems. School choice wouldn't mean much if every choice were the same, so let's allow schools to be different, and a big source of difference is how they recruit and select their students.
Being in a school that is well suited for a student is far healthier, to my mind, than putting them in big, government-run warehouses and hoping they find a healthy niche. It's an abomination that, in so many schools, the future prospects, self-esteem, and social relations of young people are determined at an early age by whether the system tracks them as gifted-and-talented or not-gifted-and-talented. That bureaucratic, depersonalized system is absolutely contrary to the way I want my children to see themselves and others.
It's a sacrifice - our car is old and we've never been to Disney World - but my kids go to private school. It's just a little galling that I pay so much in taxes for dysfunctional schools, and receive no help from the government in educating my children.
One of the best ways to bring back quality education is to stop trying to achieve equality of results among the various races in U.S. schools. There should be no resources diverted to trying to make Blacks & Mexicans as smart as Whites and Asians.
It will just never happen. THAT'S diversity.
While some of my points will just belabor those that have already been made I'll make them anyway:
That is just the start of what I would do; I would also introduce foreign language classes in Kindergarten, incorporate excercises in the classroom that reflect real world situations, encourage not just written but verbal communciation, bring back "penmanship methods" such as the palmer method that my parents used and which led to MUCH better penmanship than the last few generations have seen.
How do you make room for new subjects?
Some other ideas:
Why don't we wait one year on when children start school? Let people graduate at age 19 instead of 18. Kids will be generally more mature by that age. Yes, I know there's a precious window of when the child can learn the most and their brain is like a sponge. But if we put them in a daycare/education type of environment such as a preschool setting for an extra year I feel it would do a lot of good. The only thing that would be wrong with this in today's culture is that parenting a child while still in school will become a bigger issue. . . but it already is in my opinion. Also with this, go with the rankings instead of grades as many of you have suggested. Promote people, but don't let them graduate until a certain age. I am currently in college and I hate seeing a very young kid in my classes... such as fourteen (in my engineering chemesty class none the less). I am not jelious of him at all. I feel bad for him because he's missing out on a childhood. Those are just my suggestions.. o, besides up teacher pay so that there could be a market for schools to select from, but ranking a teacher is a whole different subject.
I dropped out of school at a young age and laughed my ass off at anybody who told me I had done wrong by myself. I set out to pursue my own studies, and have reached middle age without stopping. Funny, I always ended up working elbow to elbow with the college graduates, getting paid in the same scale as they, and more likely than not I was training them. The only difference was, my paycheck went into the savings account while theirs went to pay off student loan debt.
At least in the US, the damage is done and set in concrete. The trend will only get worse. A nation bent on being a totalitarian global empire can only spare the money from the bombs-and-missile fund to "waste" on "education" that which is only sufficient to produce a semi-civilized human being. Sixteen years of school, even with straight A's, gets you to the point where you can work a cash register or fire an AK-47...that's *all* the government needs (it believes!) 95% of the people to do, so that's all it provides.
Change it? Who you gonna convince? We have people dying of old age who grew up in this system, now, and if you've been locked in a prison cell your whole life, then, baby, that's the whole world to you!
My advice: Steal what's valuable. No, not money! Money is just trading stamps for gasoline, groceries, housing, and the rest buys you pride; It's primary purpose is to keep you focused on the wrong thing. Steal time. Steal knowledge. Steal information. Not to say take it away from other people - I can give you all my information and still have as much as when I started. But if I'm a professor, I have to shut up and only give it to the people who pay for the piece of paper - otherwise, who would pay for what they could get for free? Steal your own mind back from the people who want to deprive you of it!
I'm totally with you on this one. The system is garbage, take it out to the curb. Unfortunately at the moment no one seems to be making this happen. I can't figure out what to do with the 50% or so of students who would just stop their education, and their parents (WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY FREE DAYCARE FOR MY 16 YEAR OLD?!?!) But you have to admit, the current system isn't working for them anyway, teachers are basically disciniplinary robots who talk a lot on the side.
It would work marvellously for the other half though, because they'd get to go to private schools where they would get bothered any more. If money is a problem the government can give credits or something.
Everything in moderation, even moderation.
No, especially moderation.
It is a sad truth that the Libertarian party is nuttier than the Democratic party. The Libertarian party is made up of those who think EVERYTHING should be privatized. They deny the existence of a public good. These are the cretins who want to do away with public roads (do you have enough change for the toll booth?), as well as public education. The left sees government as a sort of pancea, a good solution to any problem. Not only is this foolish, but it is foolishness on such a high level that it is easily confused with calculated malice. The Libertarian party represents the exact opposite. They don't see the government as a possible source of ANY solutions to ANY problems. This too is easily confused with calculated malic. The truth is that there are problems which are best solved through public efforts, and problems that are best solved through private enterprise. A few responds well to both. Which approach is better depends upon the problem at hand.
Education is a problem that responds well to both private and public efforts, with a mixture of the two providing the most ideal solution.
The problem with education in America is not that it is paid for with tax dollars. The problem is that education has fallen victim to leftist politics. This is a problem because leftist educators attempt to apply the same twisted interpretation of equality to education as their socio-political counterparts attempt to apply to financial wealth. They consider the best method of education to be that which creates the most uniform results. In other words, the one where all the student perform on the same level. The real world meaning of this is that all of the students perform on the level of the least capable students. Who would have thought that they would be able to extend the bitter fruits of socialism into the classroom.
This loony-tunes nonsense has got to go. Schools should be set up in such a way that our best and brightest are not being intellectually stunted by a curriculum designed for our average and not-too-bright. The truth of this is obvious, but like many other unpleasant truths, it is also "politically incorrect." The public has been conned into believing that providing a student with an education befitting their intellectual abiltiy is somehow unfair to other students whose ability differs. Well I ask you, who is being treated unfairly otherwise? The average students for whom the curriculum is challenging and whose intellectual development is nurtured and extended by it, or the bright students for whom the curriculum is a joke and whose intellectual development is hindered as a result? The only reason why this is even a subject of debate is because of a misapplication of one of our culture's most cherished ideals: equality.
When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and proclaimed it to be self evident that all men are created equal, he was referring to political and social equality, not equality of ability or nature. Some people are smarter than others. Some are taller, or shorter. Some are more attractive, others less. All of us are unique creatures with a unique compliment of abilities and characteristics. The term equality has many levels of meaning, not all of which apply to human beings. The interpretation of equality that our educational system attempts to enforce is not only contrary to reality but damaging to those it is applied to.
That is not to say that equality is not a high ideal that should be strived for in education, as in any other part of life. Equality in education means equality of opportunity to a good education, one that helps each and every student reach his or her potential. A bright student is not going to benefit equally from an education intended for the average student. He or she will be shortchanged.
What needs to happen is that multiple curriculums need to be designed to address the education needs of all the students. Politics need to be removed from the equation by removing the ability of politican
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
13th Amendment, Section 1:
It's also a very silly bumper-sticker solution that doesn't address any problem in particular -- except the lack of slaves (a.k.a. civil servants).
America would be less fat if they designed the cities to accomodate walking. The last time I was in San Fransisco I was so terrified of walking in downtown during rush hour that I called a friend to drive me to the caltrain station. I find the ranking of San Fran as one of the top Walking Cities of 2005 a sign that we are expected to walk in smoggy traffic while dodging cars. A little research on Google shows that San Fran has over half of all of its traffic deaths as pedestrians much higher than any of the other bay cities yet it is winning awards, bizarre.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I am now finishing my second year of training for a teaching license in Israel, and things are HOT here in the education sector. To cut a long and boring story short, a very big reform is on its way and everyone is fighting everyone over what should or should not be in it (imagine the discussion here, only with very large budgets to support whoever comes out on top).
Anyway, I'd just like to make 2 comments:
1) I'm training to be a highschool math teacher and I have some reservations regarding your belief that we need to concentrate more on the basics of math. True, math is a hirerchic system - You can't learn B until you've learned A. But, and this is a big but, before you can make the argument basics are everything, you have to consider why we teach math in the first place. Most people will never use math in a level higher than what they were taught on the 6th grade, and that's a very generous estimate. So why DO we teach math? For the mental skillset it provides. Math is pure logic - It is a system of If-->Then statements which fountains from certain conditions we accept to be true (Axioms). Using the Axioms and the rules of deduction and induction, we create more complex staements (theorems). That process of creation, the ability to methodicaly use logic to create new knwloedge from old Data is what we wish the student to absorb. Yes, I agree fundementals of math are very important, because teaching higher level math is impossible without them, but I would also like to see a lot more emphasis on the meaning and interrelations behind the basic concepts (multiplication = repeated addition, division = the number of times you can substract x from y).
A persons pay should be based on factors that in the end they have no control over.
+++
My last.fm page
Hey, it's no accident that home schooling works for so many people. Parent participation and parental responsibility make all the difference in the world
When I was a kid, forty years ago, and when public education was esteemed, before the "new this" and "programmed that," my mother was president of the PTA. When we had a monthly PTA meeting, it had to be held in the gym, and it was wall-to-wall people. Nowadays, a school is lucky to get five people to come to a PTA meeting. As far as I can tell, it's the same situation in rich neighborhoods as it is in poor ones.
Educating a child is no more the teacher's responsibility than it's the doctor's responsibility to make sure that the patient takes their daily medicine on time.
Parents make the difference, even if they have no idea of the details of pedagogy. Parents make the difference. Parents in the school. Parents volunteering for those endless bake sales and carnivals, parents monitoring their kids' homework, parents just taking an interest in what goes on at school and will sit with their kid from time to time to see what their homework is.
And what a difference between our culture and Asian culture. I had a Japanese tenant once who ended his job six months early so the next Japanese guy to take that position could finish a whole assignment so that the guy's kid could start kindergarten on time with his class back in Japan. Who in America sacrifices their job, not just for their own kid's enducation, but for their colleague's kid's schooling? Japanese parents value education.
I met a young woman at a university in China whose father was only semi-literate, but still, when she was a child, had stayed with her whenever she did her homework, if only for the moral support. Chinese parents value education.
Parents make the difference
Kids do read, don't doubt that for a minute. But they read garbage. Garbage such as the postings at the forums at GameFAQs.com. Please, take a look for yourself. See the sub-standard level of English used there, often by children in elementary school.
They are reading the garbage put out by other youth like them, who are degenerate in the simple skills of reading and writing. Then those youth make their own posts, containing the same stupidity.
I am very happy that my children grew up in a world without the GameFAQs.com forums there to destroy their reading and writing skills. But it saddens me to know that my grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, will most likely be exposed to such educational shittery.
Thankfully my son knows that GameFAQs.com is not a place where a child should learn their basic life skills, and that is why he limits his son's usage of the forums there. And frankly, having conversed with my grandson via email, it was a good decision. My grandson is capable of correct spelling, correct grammar, and intelligent thought, all due to him being kept away from the idiocy of the GameFAQs.com forums.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Great Article From Townhall.com: Charter schools & choice: What is all the fuss about? by Debra England May 1, 2005 May 1-7, 2005 is National Charter Schools week. At a recent conference on education held at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a panel of MBA alumni working in the field of education were asked by their moderator what each one thought was the single most important innovation or reform necessary to improve the K-12 public education system. Answers varied widely from "better governance" to "more highly qualified teachers" to "improved reimbursements for charter schools". The panel included the principal of a charter school, the founder of a web-based teacher professional development site, a boutique Wall Streeter who invests in for-profit educational companies, and a senior-level administrator brought in by the State of California to turn around a failed school district. Each offered a sensible and eminently reasonable tactical suggestion based on his or her personal professional experience in the field. What the panel respondents did not provide, however, was a strategic overview of the field. It would have been illuminating had they stepped back from the tactical level to respond to that question. The overarching strategic driver of substantive educational gains visible in the public school system today is the mechanism of free market-based competitive pressure exerted through parental choice options. The introduction of competition is the single most important innovation necessary to improve the K-12 public education system. In The Road to Serfdom, a brilliant treatise on the dangers of collectivist ideologies, Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek demonstrated the contradictions inherent between command economies and personal liberty. Hayek deftly illustrated how attempts to control entire economies - or even significant portions of an economy - result inevitably in the growth of totalitarianism and a commensurate loss of personal freedom. Where better to apply Hayek's analysis today than to the $400 billion anachronistic government monopoly that is our public K-12 educational system? Despite wave upon wave of touted educational "reforms" over the past several decades, this failed government monopoly has succeeded in producing a sclerotic bureaucracy that has flatlined American K-12 academic achievement for the past 35 years. Interestingly, this same timeframe has seen the birth and rapid growth of modern teachers' unions and a nationwide explosion in average annual per pupil spending, which has more than doubled since 1970 - from $4,700 to roughly $10,100 today in constant dollars. Basic economics tells us that when expenditures increase by more than 100% while outputs remain unchanged, we are witnessing a huge productivity decline in the public education sector. Money is clearly not the problem. Enter the Charter School. Charter schools are free public schools whose existence is largely dependant upon their ability to achieve good enough student academic growth - as measured by their transparent performance on all required state testing - to attract parents and students and to justify renewed chartering by their authorizing agents. In exchange for operating in this high-accountability environment with lower government reimbursements, charter schools are freed from much of the onerous bureaucratic and union regulations burdening regular public schools. This permits them to allocate resources more flexibly and efficiently to achieve greater academic gains for their students. Most charter schools target the lowest-end socio-economic demographics where the most at-risk children are likely to be trapped in wretched urban public schools which augur poorly for their futures. Not surprisingly, parental demand outstrips supply and most charter schools must utilize a lottery system to allocate available student positions. Given the sturm und drang which has accompanied the arrival of charter schools on the public education scene, one might be surprised to discover that charter schools enr
"I've got a real issue with people who make statements like this."
Sounds like a great start to a very opinionated post.
"The system is only as good as the people using it."
There is a limit to how well a badly functioning tool can be used.
"Education in the US doesn't suck. Our culture sucks."
Can you be any more obvious about your opinions? And so general. Our culture sucks? As in the entire culture? Everything about it? or just certain parts? Your not that negative a person all around are you?
"Kids who skip grades and push ahead are ostracized not just by their peers but by their peers parents as well."
Oh now I see. A small percentage of kids doing really well are the big problem. Somehow we are not paying enough attention to these so called prodigys, right?
In general, your entire post is about blaming every individual that does not fit into the current system of education. A majority of students never make it through college, and a very large percentage never even graduate high school. Yet somehow you would like to convince us all that we are to blame every individual student that does poorly? Which would be a very large majority of the student population. And still, the education system in the U.S. does not suck? Then please do tell, what would you decribe as a school system that does suck?
Your entire argument goes off into blaming the individual for a system that is obviously a disaster in terms of what most people would consider a decent institution for education.
Your worst statement of all is:
"If our system "sucks" so much, why are there SO many successful people who went through the system?"
You do realize how many "SO many" is right? Also, you do realize how many successful people did NOT go through the system right? I rest my case.
There are many reasons why the system is not good. You have only pointed out a very narrow view of what you see as the problem. But it goes farther and deeper than that. The only way of solving it is one step at a time. Simply blaming anyone and everyone is just a way out of the discussion. What about YOU! Because YOU are the one most in control of YOU! Then again, one person alone can not solve such a huge problem. So we must all work together to solve it. And trust me, there are many problems in our system of education.
Question everything.
My public education was great.
Good for you. What about everyone else? Is it OK if 100 kids' lives are ruined just because yours turned out OK?
If our system "sucks" so much, why are there SO many successful people who went through the system?
If water is so good for you, why did all the water-drinkers born before the year 1850 die?
Our culture sucks. Geeks and intelligent kids get mocked. Kids who skip grades and push ahead are ostracized not just by their peers but by their peers parents as well.
You're right about the culture, but can you think of a basis to fix it? If someone wants to hurt a kid's feelings and be nasty to them, why shouldn't they?
It isn't the government's job to educate your children.
Thanks. Please send all my tax money back.
All the talk about parents doesn't address the problem. I have no say in "fixing" parents. Shifting the blame to parents is a time-honored tactic of the government-school apologists. "We don't have to try to do anything better, it's the parents' fault. Give us more money."
Let's say that 99% of the problems in education are the fault of the parents. Should the schools be let off the hook for causing the other 1%?
And if parents really are the problem, then does it really make sense to take resources away from the parents in taxes and give those reasources to the government schools? Didn't you just say it wasn't the goverment's job to educate? They're sure taking a lot of money to fail to do a job that isn't even their job to begin with.
Stop being a victim and realize YOU are to blame. Not your kids, or your government.
The government isn't to blame for poorly educated kids. The government IS to blame for promising an education and failing to deliver one. The government IS to blame for stealing money that a family could otherwise use to buy a good education. The government IS to blame for encouraging people to be dependant. The government IS to blame for encouraging mediocrity and punishing success. The government rewards victim-status handsomely.
And our form of government allows us to fix the government. So we should.
I don't know what you're complaining about. Education works great.
Teachers and administrators get their paychecks like clockwork every 2 weeks. They have great benefits too. How is this not working?
It works for education bureaucrats too. They get their checks and they get to make sure all children are taught their beliefs. What could be better?
Oh, you wanted it to work for the students? Sorry, it's not setup that way. Student learning isn't an important part of the process and doesn't affect spending or compensation in any way.
I believe that our society plays a big part in this problem. Society tells us that learning is a means to an end. There is no end to learning. When I am interviewing potential teachers one thing that I (and many other interviewers) look for is a "life-long learner."
I also believe that these standards that we must all "teach to" are ridiculous. The good teachers have been using them for years without even thinking about them. Those that are taught to teach to the standards are only limiting themselves and their students. Once a standard is met too many teachers stop there and work on completing another standard when many students are ready to explore an idea futher. This I believe sends the message that "even though there is more to learn, there are more important things to be doing." Eventually, students recognize that the "more important things" really don't exist.
Currently the majority of public school funding comes from property tax. The problem with this is that schools in rich areas get plenty of money, while schools in poorer areas ... don't.
To some extent a school's funding does need to reflect the property values around that school, since it costs more for teachers/administrators to more expensive areas, but the current system skews things way too far in favor of rich schools. As long as parents with money can afford to move to the "good" districts, nothing will ever change in the rest of the districts. But when soccer moms have to put up with inner city quality public schools, then the world will hear a clamor like never before (and we will finally see meaningful public education improvements).
I have no experience of education outside the US, but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks.
I _do_ have a foreign degree. One thing that blows people's minds at admission offices in other countries is the lack of standards in U.S. primary and secondary education. How do they evaluate your qualifications for tertiary education when, for all they can tell, you may have gone to "Creationist County Sports School" in some state that funds education only slightly more than crop subsidies?
In that sense I'm not against the principle of No Child Left Behind. How can achievement be quantified except by nationally standardized testing? Works for much of the civilized world.
But No Child Left Behind is both an unfunded mandate and a program that seems to have some "one size fits all" generalizations. Local schools appear to respond to it by finding ways to get the kids who are blowing the curve out of their school. Which sort of defeats the purpose.
I guess I would first look at the national standards of the most successful countries and revamp No Child Left Behind after that. Second, I would try to wrestle more control away from local school boards, which probably means less local funding and more state and federal funding. Third, I would initiate a national "Sputnik" program to scare the crap out of America that the rest of the world is ready to eat our lunch.
> I can't figure out what to do with the 50% or so of students who would
> just stop their education,
You solved this yourself.
> But you have to admit, the current system isn't working for them anyway,
> teachers are basically disciniplinary robots who talk a lot on the side.
Exactly. So write them the hell off for now if we have to, but we can and should save the other half. That bad half wouldn't have graduated literate anyway so they would only be out a useless diploma. But the other half can and should be saved from ignorance and illiteracy.
Ideas for saving the defective half isn't a problem with the education system though, so is really out of scope for this thread. But starting with the whole welfare state and the destruction of the family unit would be a a good starting point.
Democrat delenda est
- Don't kill curiosity.
- Pay teachers well enough to attract well educated and intelligent people into the job.
- Don't penalize older people, who have a lot to contribute, from joining the teaching work force.
- Provide a way for tired, worn out, or simply incompetent teachers to retire gracefully.
- Bring back streaming so that bright kids don't have to suffer the indignity of being forced to sit through hours and hours of nothing while the slow pupils plod through the work.
- Teach full literacy. The whole of the English speaking world seems to have chucked that in the too hard basket.
- Teach mental numeracy. Everybody should, as a minimum, be able to check their change after buying something. You'd be surprised how many cashiers make errors and 'mistakes'.
Actually, provided you readI am from India and I did all my schooling and UG back there, and am doing my masters over here in the US. Its kind off funny coz I dont see too many white ppl doing masters in engg. at all. Infact in my school for evey white student, there are 50-60 indian/chinese students in grad school.
I dont know if its coz of the problems in school education or if everybody who finished highschool/UG just goes out n gets a job for whatever salary they get.
In India, not much emphasis is given to alternative education or anything. High school students are not asked to create any powerpoint presentaions or write essays on history or anything too creative. Its just plain and simple classroom education where the teachers keep doing the same old job (not much creativity required), n students depends on the textbooks + notes the teachers gives during class for the exams (plain old system of paper and pen where many kids vomit out the stuff they memorized).
Kids are taught computer programming like BASIC since 3rd grade, and on high school level in C, C++/Java (these were all lastest additions).
I dunno when a country like india with a population of a billion and a huge rate of umemployment (atleast 10 times that of US), doesnt have too much worries about its education system with parents not making much complaints, when a well developed country like US worries abt it, especially when as far as I know students who graduate from high school/UG seem to be satisfied with whatever job they get ?
We have a school in India called IIT (Indian institute of technology), where students get admitted after they gradute out of highschool n then pass a entrance examination conductued specially for that school (only 2500 admitted out of 250,000 applicants). The funniest part is rich kids who cannot get into IIT, get admits into IVY league school in US.
China/India keep churning out 1000s of engineers for jobs in US.
Its just abt the students mindset, the teachers efforts to bring out the best in him and the efforts of parents at home that matters and has got nothing to do with the education system.
learning isn't fun. no matter how hard teachers try to make kids enjoy studying, they will never enjoy it. kids realize that, teachers don't. kids don't learn much from those 'education games'. they don't learn much making posters and they don't learn much from making dioramas.
This is an example of a person(in Australia) who has doing work to try and make things a little better for people who had a bleak future. Dealing with insane levels of absenteeism and illiteracy.
5 3.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2004/s12127
A lot of classes have students memorizing facts, but they never teach any methods to improve your memory. I discovered this website http://www.vlaardingen.net/~tom/ recently, and I swear I'd have gotten straight As if I'd have known about it at the start of high school.
Well, if the browser will remember who I am, I'll post this! :-)
I like your thoughts, and understand all except #2, standardized testing - How would you assess #5, Merit Pay, without some quantitative measure?
BTW, I'm very much in favor of abolishing the "tenure" concept and moving to a merit pay situation. Oh, and you're exactly the type of person I would want on the change committee!
My two cents on standardized testing: When I did standardized testing, most students in the class took it as a joke. There was no penalty for marking all answers "C". I actually took the tests and wound up blowing the top off of every standardized test I ever took, including the ACT and SAT. Later, those same skills have served well with testing for the MCSE and several Cisco certifications.
On another note, what subject(s) do you teach?
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
Those who lack natural social ability should be required to take some socializing classes. Offshore outsourcing has made brains almost a cheap commodity. What is left is more social-oriented. You cannot as easily find jobs being a dark-corner nerd anymore.
Table-ized A.I.
The subject of school improvement and generating smarter offspring and the like will probably be debated on for as long as schooling is ever available, anywhere at all. I personally do not think that anything can be done to improve schooling that much. Children that are interested in learning will learn and excel, and the ones that aren't interested will fall behind, fail, and become a burden of society that the smart kids will ultimatly buy food for. I suppose the dividing line can be skewed and faint sometimes, and there are often students that can be inbetween. I think there will always be nerds, geeks, jocks, bullys, and all around dumb kids. If some thing that different teaching practices can change this then that is something they can wish for. I, personally, see nothing wrong with the schools because the smart kids will always come up on top in the end and there cannot be help for the others sometimes.
I guess I'm just trying to say.. NERDS ROCK!
Hee hee! *SNORT*
Oh, and I'm sorry if your kid is a dumbass, but we'll always need someone to cook us burgers and dig ditches.
Do you have any idea what kind of time commitment is required to homeschool?
The argument that the parents do not have enough metaskills is rediculous! It assumes that even if there are only two parents, there will be no interactions with other teachers - which simply is not so.
My mother works for an origanization whose sole purpose is putting together sound curriculum for homeschooling families (yes she has an educational degree and research background). it is just one of many ways and resources homeschoolers use to have a far vaster "metaskills" working for a chils than a public school could ever dream of.
Parents taking the time to actually teach children can not help but have a better impact than the half-caring drones that you call pillars of metaskills. If you lump them all together, how meta are they really? It sure didn't seem like there was a lot of variety in highschool from what my friends said, and I now there was absolutley none in gradeschool. I had good teachers but I never really had a proper appreciation for deep learning until I was homeschooled. And when you come down to it that is the best metsaskill you can aquire.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Keep that up every year as mandatory courses along with the other mandatory courses, and there won't be educational problems.
= 9J =
Another corrosive problem is that far too many teachers have not mastered the subjects they teach. It is difficult to correctly teach what you do not know or understand, whatever the teachers' colleges may claim. Those unfortunately ignorant instructors are incompetent, and should be removed. But do we have the mechanisms to identify them, much less remove them? No.
Here are a few anecdotes, to concretely illustrate the problems with the factory system:
I know a 10-year old who can spell and write better than most college students, read difficult texts like Seamus Haney's translation of Beowulf, but is struggling with 4th grade math. How can someone like that get appropriately challenged in English and Math in the one-size-fits-all world of the American public school?
One high school student missed most of fractions in the earlier grades, as a result of illness. Although she attended one of the better public school systems in the Bay Area, the system had no mechanism for filling in the missed knowledge. For that reason, she struggled through geometry and algebra, making mistakes because of her poor understanding of basic fractions. (I taught SAT prep part time; it has given me a very jaundiced view of even the best public and private schools.) This is a very common story, unfortunately.
Some teachers pass on their own misconceptions; one teacher taught their poor students a confused muddle of the methods for adding and subtracting fractions, so that they learned to do fractional arithmetic like multiplication and vice versa. Of course, the system never caught and fixed the error, everyone had to move on, in lockstep, and muddle through somehow.
These are problems in the design of the education system, and are unlikely to be fixed by adding more money, adding accountability, or anything short of revolutionary upheaval and a lot of teacher reeducation. The private schools in the U.S. share the same design and philosophy, so privatization and/or vouchers would likewise make little difference. One exception are (some) Montessori schools, where childern learn at a pace tailored to their individual needs, at varying levels for each subject.
Finally, the education system has pretty much abandoned the teaching of logic and classical rhetoric, though they were common subjects for schoolchildren a century or more ago. Both were once considered necessary for someone to consider themselves well-educated, but as the feeble level of public debate shows (in politics and on the internet), that has not been true for many, many decades. Most people wouldn't know an ad hominem attack if it bit them on the nose, and fewer still think about tailoring their argument to their audience, or organizing it to best effect.
Some people, in despair, disgust, or religious fervor, have taken to home-schooling their children. It speaks volumes about the inadequacies of public schooling that home-schooled children generally do much better than publicly-schooled counterparts, even though many of those home-schooled students are taught an archaic mixture of basic 3Rs and anti-scientific Christianity. Some are even using history texts from the 19th century (available online)!
Although the public school as an institution has wide support (note Cal. Gov. Schwartzenegger's political problems), it needs radical reform if it's to adequately serve a post-industrial society. The factory system, perhaps appropriate for the clock-punching mid-20th century, does not train students to be the self-motivated, creative people that information age society needs.
Your post suggests that you don't understand what a metaskill is. Metaskills are the skills that allow us to aquire and rate other skills.
Also, your experiences are just a few dots that are drowned in a swarm of other evidence. No matter how many conscientious home schoolers you can point out, there are still more home schoolers who seriously overrate their own ability to perform that function.
I'm not suggesting that teachers have better metaskills, but teachers do have a system in place for telling them when they're incompetent. Or at least they should. Parents have no such thing.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Your post suggests that you don't understand what a metaskill is. Metaskills are the skills that allow us to aquire and rate other skills.
Which is what I noted at the end of my post. I don't see where 100 teachers are going to be necessarily as good at that as one good parent who lets a child explore topics in depth. It is learning how to swim at depth, so to speak, that really gives one the metaskills you speak of.
Also, your experiences are just a few dots that are drowned in a swarm of other evidence. No matter how many conscientious home schoolers you can point out, there are still more home schoolers who seriously overrate their own ability to perform that function.
I am sorry to offer only actual experience with the matter as opposed to wild theories with no references. And I am not just speaking of my own experience which was somewhat long ago, but also as I said experiences through my mother who has helped hundreds of families assemble and work through tailored curriculum.
I'm not suggesting that teachers have better metaskills, but teachers do have a system in place for telling them when they're incompetent. Or at least they should. Parents have no such thing.
Have you even been in a school? Teachers have no such mechanism!
What I was really trying to get at in my last post (which I admit I really got sidetracked on properly explaining) is that the people who take the time to homeschool, and who care enough about their kids to do so - these are generally also people smart enough to know when they don't know something. That is why, as I said, there are so many resources to help parents when they enter a subject they do not know very well. But at least they can (and do) do something if a child is struggling in an area through hiring tutors or changing curriculum.
In my experience parents who have homeschooled understand they cannot know everything, and know to turn to help when needed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I heard on Euronews that scientists have discovered
that Virtual Reality improves IQ and Education...
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
Any decent history teacher will emphasise WHY things led up rather than at what date they happaned. Understand the chain of events is much more important than memorizing the exact date they happaned.
Of course, this requires you to have some understanding of the relation of events on the time line. But still that doesn't require the memorization of the dates. It just requires you to understand roughly when it happaned, and when other events happened around that event.
At least, that's what I've learned from some incredibly amazing teachers in my past.
The education system in America has many goals but education is not actually one of them. First you hold off a a portion of the working age population from full time employment. Second, you replace teaching with instruction and learning with skill acquisition so that the end product is a consenting worker bee. This results in a population that is satisfied with the most absurd explanations for their masters' decisions and yet able to function within a complex economy. People capable of high level functions but unable to reason their way out of a paper bag outside of their speciality.
Resulting pliability has the added benefit of making the populace avid consumers and prone to distraction from their own self interest by flickering lights on a CRT or what have you.
Naturally, you can only bypass this system if you have the required wealth to do so. The system itself is not 100% effective and so you may have fallen through the cracks and actually learned something. Likewise, private schooling does not guarantee a way out either. Nothing in society is digital, but the yields are high enough to achieve the desired results.
There isn't any shame in a trade school. At least there didn't used to be, and the sooner these babysitting prisons known as schools stop trying to cram everybody in to college it would make the entire system function to the benefit of all.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
He's a teacher, and he knows the problems with the school system, and has some solutions. Have a look.
[1] Sit down
[2] Shut up, and
[3] Pay attention
If you learn those three things, I will be satisfied." They did. Both of them now have bachelor's degrees, thanks to the three things they learned in kindergarten.
Heres some material you might find espcially releviant.
It should be noted that Orwell actually was a teacher for a number of years; So when he says things like -
There are, by the way, vast numbers of private schools in England. Second-rate, third-rate, and fourth-rate (Ringwood House was a specimen of the fourth-rate school), they exist by the dozen and the score in every London suburb and every provincial town. At any given moment there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten thousand of them, of which less than a thousand are subject to Government inspection. And though some of them are better than others, and a certain number, probably, are better than the council schools with which they compete, there is the same fundamental evil in all of them; that is, that they have ultimately no purpose except to make money. Often, except that there is nothing illegal about them, they are started in exactly the same spirit as one would start a brothel or a bucket shop. Some snuffy little man of business (it is quite usual for these schools to be owned by people who don't teach themselves) says one morning to his wife:
'Emma, I got a notion! What you say to us two keeping school, eh? There's plenty of cash in a school, you know, and there ain't the same work in it as what there is in a shop or a pub. Besides, you don't risk nothing; no over'ead to worry about, 'cept jest your rent and few desks and a blackboard. But we'll do it in style. Get in one of these Oxford and Cambridge chaps as is out of a job and'll come cheap, and dress 'im up in a gown and--what do they call them little square 'ats with tassels on top? That 'ud fetch the parents, eh? You jest keep your eyes open and see if you can't pick on a good district where there's not too many on the same game already.'
He knows what he's talking about! And it gets worst from there.
I know this is anathema in the public school system, but ignoring the fact does not make it go away.
Second: acknowledge that some kids are very bright.
Third: allocate limited school resources accordingly.
There are two desirable results:
1) The very bright kids will be able to advance as quickly and as far as they feel comfortable.
2) These same kids can then pursue higher education and go on to perform useful and interesting functions in society.
Public schools in general seem to spend a disproportionate amount of money dragging Johnny Dunderhead and Susie Slacker along while programs for gifted+talented kids are cut drastically (or simply discontinued). Schools should provide a basic education to the less-bright students and offer increased opportunities for the students with more potential. Is this elitist? Probably, but there is much to be said for meritocracy.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Instead of "Graduating from high school" at grade level 12, have students leave high school with:
Grammer - level 7
math - level 10
history - level 12
science - level 11
etc.
Some basic level of each subject should be presented at the lower (K - 6) levels, but high school should more accurately reflect what the student has learned. This information can then be used as either a starting point to craft a college education or an indication of compentency in future endevors and career choices.
Make P.E. like boot camp. Period
If smart kids get advanced (and this is considered a normal thing) then they get to hang around with the big kids whilst their peers get stuck hanging with the little kids. Should help to associate academic achievement with adulthood.
I add the caveat about normality cos if it's just one kid being moved up they're gonna feel somewhat out of place.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
My wife is an elementary teacher, so I get a lot of stories. The biggest thing is that parents need to take some responsibility for their childrens' education.
She was tutoring one student in reading after school. Basically they'd only read a half dozen pages and talk about them, but it's the only progress the kid made in the book because he doesn't read at home because his parents don't make him. I wonder why he needs tutoring?
There are other kids who never do homework because their parents don't make them and don't care. They think it's not their problem.
Once early on during a unit on the metric system she assigned some homework and one of the problems covered something they hadn't talked about yet, but it was in the book and, while I don't remember the specific example, it was something that I considered fairly general knowlege... but one student's mother sent in an annoyed note with the homework saying that teachers shouldn't assign homework problems with concepts that haven't been covered in class and that her child didn't know how to do it and neither did she.
Parents don't want to be involved and don't want to admit it when their child is anything less than perfect. Apparently it's better to deny there's a problem than to get some extra help.
An Interesting Article on what's happening in education in my neck of the woods.
I D=/20050713/NEWS04/507130411
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A
wifeofgeek
- An easy way to force child to read is to only install Lynx as web-browaser.
- The school only test for verbal linguistic skills. Lets start by measuring every single kind of intelligence and development of the child. Any kind of intelligence can help the lack of other.
How many kids could pass the tests I took, in the sixties? Stop dumbing down our education - that's why the US is no longer the best in the world.
a rd/edu01.html>
Mainstreaming is one part of this - forcing really slow kids to try to keep up, and really fast kids to sit there, bored out of their mind (yes, that was me).
Oh, and NO CLASS OVER 24 KIDS under college. Ever. If they're our future, then spend some of those damn billions wasted on the Pentagon on education.
mark
For more on mainstreaming, check out http:http://home.cfl.rr.com/diehardanddragon/dieh
Just a year of Latin significantly improves your language skills since so many English words have Latin roots. In addition have less "cultural" days and more actual learning days! Last year our local elementary school had a "African American awareness week", a "cross-cultural week", a "women's week", etc... No school work was done during these weeks - instead, "awareness" projects were the goal... Teachers need to be competent. Mandatory competency tests should be given to all new teachers and periodically to current teachers. Anyone who fails would be put on probation and tested in the next year. Fail again and you're out.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
for math 2nd grade on there was a regular and honors class
same thing for languages 6 grade on up
then again i went to private school
highschool had 3 tracks as well (with a forth for ap classes), it was common for some students to be multitracked in different subjects. for computing class rankings, your track had a factor, for example b/c track had 1.0, a (honors) 1.1 and AP 1.2
it worked great because if you were skilled in math and science but a lousy writer your needs were met appropriately
again this was a private school
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Maybe our culture shouldn't try to put evolutionary ideas into everything, including public education.
It seems like we are testing public education as a testbed of 'survival of the fittest': Let the students fight it out by themselves, and whoever can learn on their own will go through the program with success, and the rest will pass through without effort.
To the culture where mass-production industry praises maximum return from minimum spending, this fits quite well: Spend less on education, see who masters how to learn on their own, then easily pick the winner through standardized test (fitness function of evolution), and discard the rest (who cares if they can't read or write, they are the 'unfit').
The problem with this scenario is that humans are not created to be part of the grand scheme of 'survival of the fittest' game.
People inherently choose the easy way out, and if they have a choice between hard work and easy work, they will choose the easy one (the smartest are the worst, since they figure out much faster which one is easier). The only way they get motivated is through external influence, such as envy after seeing someone excel, fear of losing or rejection, curious about the environment, boredom, rewards, etc.
This means really smart kids who figure out public education doesn't help them and there is no incentive, will actually perform worse, and the evolutionary method will weed them out as 'unfit'.
Education should be thought of as a long term investment, not short term return of investment for the culture.
Humans are created to assimilate information and knowledge and transfer them through generations, like a vessel of information. No other living thing can amass and transfer this amount of knowledge that is not built directly into the physical structure (like DNA.)
This means that public education has a responsibility to train every human being possible with basic mechanisms to assimilate and transfer knowledge, which needs well-paid educators and challenges and incentives that fit each individual.
Public education shouldn't be used solely as a minimum spending maximum return of the 'winners' for the industry.
A dyslexic child does much better reading on a computer. They can adjust the Fonts. Books don't work for them.
Please don't misunderstand, I'm not suggesting any more schoolwork. I would propose that all schoolwork - including homework - be done at school.
Before you dismiss the idea, consider these points:
1) A good student should do about six hours of school, two hours of extracurricular activities, and two hours of homework - that adds up to ten hours anyway.
2) A ten hour school day would keep kids off the streets, and out of trouble, in those two hours (roughly: 3:30 to 5:30) between the time that school is out, and the time parents get home.
3) A ten hour school day would be a god-send for lower income families with very young children. It would free them from very expensive day-care.
4) The present six hour school day is based on an agrarian economy that is out of date by centuries. Way back when, the kids had to slop the hogs in the morning, and pick peas in the afternoon. Even rural kids don't do that anymore.
5) What do school age kids have to do that is more important than their school work? Video games? Web surfing? TV?
6) It would cost more, but not that much. For example, a two hour study hall, would not need a licensed teacher to oversee it.
7) Students would not have to carry books, or anything else, between home and school. All school work would be done at school.
8) Students would not need computers, or internet connections, at their homes. That would be provided by the schools.
Any thoughts?
This is so FULL of geek BS an FUD. Who kept the scholarship of the greeks and romans alive during the dark ages? The Catholic church. Much of our modern discoveries have come from religous people. Despite your myopic focus on the expections, european christianity invented the ideas of "tollerance" and "diversity" and the "liberal arts".
Honestly, we aren't anti-intellectual; we just don't think it's the number one priority you think it should be. We americans value people who can get things DONE, people who can LEAD and the con people... er... UNITE people towards acomplishing goals society favors. Those are good things. The above virtues are good virtues but become evil in the current short-term culture. Thus since the 60's, we have given up the idea of being "well rounded" in order to obtain quarterly profits.
The 60's were a point where a society, that benifited from being inculcated in the christian-influnced* culture and history, derived a maximum benift from destroying that culture. That can not happen again as we no longer raise children in that same manner and in the same numbers. We surrendered our long term vision for short term gains. History isn't kind to empires that have done that.
* There has never really been a fully christian culture. As someone much brighter than I put it: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried." - GK Chesterton
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
There are several problems with the educational system in the US. To many for me to try to address all of them here. They range from incompetent parents, to unreasonable expectations, to the perpetuation of every kind of "ism" known to the human species. But, there is one key problem that can be addressed.
The simple fact is that our k-12 educators are by and large incompetent. As an early poster pointed out, the bell curve has a left end. If you look at SAT and ACT scores you find that the majority of education majors have the lowest scores of any group that manages to graduate from college. Of course, they all graduate with very high GPAs due to grade inflation. (The university I went to, the University of Utah, changed the way they grant honors. It is not based on raw GPA, but on on the difference between your grade in a class and the average grade in the class. The did this because of the rampant grade inflation in the college of education. )
There is a simple way to solve this problem. Double the salaries of everyone working in education. That's correct. Double the salaries of the incompetents. Why? If you double their salaries then the best (or at least not the worst) students will go into education. Over 5 to 10 years the good will push out the bad and our education system will have a chance to begin to work properly.
Oh yeah, one other thing that could help right now, don't let the coaches of the schools competitive sports teams teach real students. The real students don't deserve to be abused that way. It is bad enough to have to take classes from incompetents. It is cruel to subject students to people who are not only incompetent, but stupid, arrogant, and really don't care at all about anything but their teams.
Most people are quite capable of educating themselves; in many ways the school system is designed to prevent that skill from developing.
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/7lesson.htm
The Seven-lesson Schoolteacher.
Most of us have this elitist view that the majority of posters produce something just above white noise. Compounded by "the fact" that most of what's written is so full of spelling and grammar errors as to be dismissed.
That most cretins who post here are linguistically inept.
Then it hit me: speaking strictly of the language use errors, the volume is easily explained by the sheer number of disparate posters.
It's not that "most" Slashdotters are morons. We all make mistakes! (I shudder to think at how many I've already made, and the future ones made below. ;)
It's that there're a higher number of innocent errors getting through.
I spill chuck. I prof reed. but still, errors will sleep thru, despot ma beast affords.
(The above was for dramatic effect... :)
Sure, there -are- those writings by folks you want to slap upside the head and go, "English, muthafucka - DO YOU SPEAK IT!?!?"
But the rest are just honest mistakes.
What's my point? To err on the side of optimism and cut -most- of us some slack: we -do- try to spell correctly and use correct wordage. For the rest, take that grain of salt (or the whole damned block if you need), see -if- they have anything useful/interesting to say behind those faux pas, and move on.
Using correct spelling -is- important. As is using correct grammar. DO try to maintain high standards in your writings. (At least if you wish to be taken seriously.)
But, as for Grammar Nazis: just say NO!
Some ramblings, -Larry
"To err is human, to totally fsck things up requires an election." - L.W. Hale
i for one can say that i have learned a lot in the i.t. industry not because of going to school and getting spoon fed but by doing self research and experimentation. if i just relied on learning, probably i will get a no brainer job and be bored for the rest of my life.
it's a good thing my parents bought a computer when i was a young boy. it's also good that they did not stop me from tinkering stuff (probably all the toys that i got was disassembled.) good thing the computer kept running after my experiments!
it's not about the grades. it's total crap that until now, schools try to quantify the intelligence of a person by assinging a number from 1-100. this does more harm than good and only measures a particular intelligence. kids get discouraged when they get low grades in a particular subject even though they are good in other aspects such as music, sports, etc. instead their talents get repressed on the way.
lastly, maybe the system of getting titles should be abolished. i don't think highly of people by their grades and status. there are lots of people who think that getting a engr., ph.d., m.d., et. al. or high grades that they become god. this is total bs - they can't even improve the lives of people around them.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
One of the things that struck me about these discussions is that many students become bored in school. I know I certainly did, but that seems antithetical to the concept of school. Someone earlier nailed it in their post when they said, look, once you've got this down, if you have to sit there for another week, and keep doing this, you're gonna get bored. So it seems to me that the problem is that students are TRAPPED in a particular classroom, based on an artificial schedule, not knowledge, and their own internal learning rate. Now, what if teachers taught less, and if students cycled through teachers faster? For example, what if a teacher only taught addition and subtraction? And when you understand Addition and Subtraction, and you pass the test, you stand up, and walk down the hall, and go into the next classroom which is division and multiplication? So each time you get something, you're rewarded. You're moved on to the next level. Which creates an INCENTIVE to learn, because it gets you out of being in any one class, and having to listen to the same thing over and over again. It also means that if there's a crappy teacher, you're going to spend less concentrated time with that teacher. And it ALSO means that if there's a crappy teacher, that teacher will more easily be pegged by the administration, because suddenly students who are learning at a particular rate will hit "speedbumps" in their learning, and it will be easier to target them, and replace them. (In the current system, you would have less feedback to make conclusions from - only getting scores and grades a few times a year.) But most importantly, by not BORING the students, you would create a LOVE OF LEARNING, and teach students the value of teaching themselves - ie, they progress at their own rate, not the rate the teacher sets out for them, so they are responsible for their own education, not the teacher. I can see that this might be a scheduling nightmare for a school, but I think it's an interesting idea. Anyone ever heard of anything like this before? -Peter
Public schools are run by the states. Some do well, some do poorly.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Its a real shame what is happening to public school education and it must be fixed. The problems run all the way from school boards to the current federal administration. The digital age is the first opportunity since the beginning of humanity for people to educate themselves, for teachers to learn from each others experience, and all types of new and unexpected ways and means to inspire kids to venture outside their comfort zone to be excited about learning more. The education process SHOULD suck less. In every country.
Deborah MacPherson Projects Director,Accuracy&Aesthetics On a Quest for Original Context
I always had trouble with that myself, I used to have to try use mnumonics about my hands "left hand makes the L" untill I learned to drive, now it's easy for me to think "left hand turn" or "right hand turn".
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Not every classroom is eactly the same. The teacher can give diffrent drills to diffrent students, based on their ability, for example. I attended an elementary school in texas for a couple weeks once, and they did drills like you described. In Iowa, we didn't see anything like that. Texas's education system has been in the bottom 4 for 50 years. Iowa's is in the top four for 50 years.
If this kid can do all the other things that kids his age can do, like with reading and language there's no reason to hold him back and isolate him from his peers. Not being able to add and subtract is not really much of an impediment, he'll always be able to use a calculator in "real life". As long as he dosn't go into engineering or something, he should be fine.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Homeschooling kids are not really sheltered. Do you think they just stay in the house day and night?
They still play with kids from local schools, and other homeschoolers. In fact they gain a braoder variety of expereince since instead of going to the same school with the same people day in and day out, they are free to go on a lot more field trips to learn things. Would you rather learn history by sitting in the same classroom you learned math in, or would you rather visit a living history park?
It's school kids that are sheltered, in the same way food in a pressure cooker is "sheltered" from the outside world. Personally I found it a lot better to live my life in the real world than in the made-up one of highschool.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They do, and recognizing the good ones is a must. Implying that they don't is pretty disrespectful.
> cat ~/.signature | grep -v bullshit
>
About four years ago I moved from a public school in the US to an international school in Tanzania. I found students learned a lot more and worked a lot harder at the international school than they had where I lived in the US. While this was partially due to self-selection, the main factor was the rigorous, externally-graded exams (IGCSE and IB) taken every few years in the international system. Exams covered everything one learned in the years leading up to the exam, in every subject (there were even art and music composition exams). This kept students and teachers accountable and required them to cover a full range of material, or face being held back or fired.
In the US, I observed very little accountability, with students graduating who could hardly read and teachers never assigning or grading any homework. Aside from the easy and poorly written SAT tests and the slightly better but rarely used AP tests, there was no externally assessment of students, and teachers could therefore inflate grades enormously with no negative consequences. Universities are apparenlty forced to judge students on ridiculous things like extracurriculars due to lack of accurate academic measurements. It seems to me that the system could be greatly improved by requiring all students to take difficult, comprehensive, externally-graded exams.
Start with The Schools Our Children Deserve : Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards", and Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. After you have read these you will be much better prepared to speak of improving our children's education.
These are just two books from a vast library that shows alternatives to society's choice for education. Suffice to say that I do not believe society has always chosen wisely.
But it goes deeper than that. Read The Natural Child if you are a parent and wish to make a real difference.
The problem with education is that the students done care. With a growing competition between modern day media and school projects, there is actually no competition over to which students will dedicate themselves. There needs to be a new philosophy.
Students are taught procedures, which are limited to the examples they encounter in course work. Students are not taught concepts, which is where most application is founded. The solution would involve integrating benefits, entertainment and ambition. This doesn't mean teach kids with videogames, but rather give them projects that require research and application.
Projects would consist of real-world problems that are interesting to solve. Imagine being in high school and being asked to implement a full Java application. Not only would you get to use your own product, but knowing that you can control just how awesome it is, you will work harder. That might be a poor example. Imagine if a company was willing to give money to schools and students who complete research. This has already happened in the past!
Along the same line, have instructors show how things really work and explain why. Nothing is more influential than a science course where the teacher explains why hydrogen is explosive (BOOM). You don't learn to read and write by reading grammar books (you can't read anyway)! When better to learn to read than when researching! You won't try to learn unless you are motivated.
The problem is that there are so many children with so many different skills; wait, that is not a problem... that is the solution! Why do we assume that high school students aren't capable of doing intensive projects? I remember being bored in high school; so why not give them something to do with their time (they sure aren't doing their homework). If we want to motivate them, we need to free them from daily lectures and fruitless homework.
This is a philosophy that would have an interesting impact on the roles of students and teachers. I think this would actually save money in a lot of cases because students wouldn't need books and the awesome of amount of paper that is wasted. Teachers wouldn't be bored with their lesson plans because they would have new projects for different students. They would be more like group leaders. Students would be more likely to participate knowing that they will gain from the experience.
It will take a lot to drag students away from televisions and computers. But, it has to be a decision they make, and they won't make it if they are not motivated. Give students more responsibility and show them that they can impact others. Teach real-life skills and team work. Show them how to do research and then let them discover what they need.
I believe there is a strong difference between college and high school. Unfortunately, I am seeing this line deteriorate in the wrong direction. I believe most colleges are taking the approach of procedure over practice and it is killing our education system. If we are training people to become workers, why are we making schooling less and less like the real world? You have a problem, you find a solution and apply it; you don't have someone give you the solution, do thirty problems and then never apply it.
So, what about motivation? I never wanted to work hard in high school. I realized that grades didn't mean much of anything. I could study the night before a test and get an A, forgetting everything I learned later on. If everyone else does the same thing, grades become inflated and no one learns anything! How would you like it if you went to school and graduated when you finally did something deserving recognition? Imagine being in 8th grade and graduating because you helped increase performance in an engine. You knew from the day you entered high school that you could graduate at any time because A) a company liked your work and hires you or B) because you are recognized for some effort. That would have motivated me to learn as much as I could (I would have done anything to g
You invalidate your position by assuming "facts" that have not be presented.
My position still stands, children with involved parents do not fail classes.
I purposefully did awful on any and all standardized tests. How does a teacher influence that?
+++
My last.fm page
I don't believe that this plan has the merits you believe it does. It attempts to force the current education system while completely ignoring issues with the teaching style an curriculum in use. It is an attempt to improve an already broken system by forcing more of the same down teacher's and student's throats.
I was homeschooled all through highschool (the things you mention really do not matter for gradeschool education where the topics are more general). Honestly textbooks (and especially online resources) can carry you pretty far even without a teacher who knows the subject on-hand. But also homeschooling groups in areas can arrange for further things like group chem labs and things of that sort. As I said my mother is part of a group that provides specialized curriculm for students and I believe also has staff that can answer questions on harder topics. Even homework helplines can work for homeschoolers as well.
Seeking out expert help online is pretty easy now, to get answers your parents cannot provide. But I was homeschooled twenty years ago without any such resources and things worked out fine. I did go on to college (Rice University) and was just fine there, I never felt like I was behind my peers at all (and frankly was far ahead in a number of ways). Lots of field trips to places like natural history musuems and so on are also helpful. About the only background I feel it would be important for a parent to have would be whatever math was to be taught.
You are right that one parent does have to stay at home to help guide and teach. You could get by without doing so, but it's not really practical and I don't think would work as well. That is exactly why parents that make such a choice I feel are the ones that really care about the children, because as you say they are giving up several years of thier life to be a teacher. But really I think the rewards are worth it in the end, I would homeschool a child in a heartbeat (if I had any which I do not yet).
Frankly your Russian teacher situation sounds much better than U.S. public education where the people you mentioned would actually not be able to teach without spending a year or so getting an "education" degree as well. Some well-qualified people would like to teach but cannot do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think that in the UK the main issues that the school systems needs to address are non-academic in nature (though some of them may be standing in the way of academic achievements for some kids).
The idea by the government to have schools open early and close late so that (a) parents have somewhere for the'r kids to go and (b) they can get involved in other activities seems a good one. Though funding may be tricky.
More "citizenship" (bad word) needs to be taught, as well as more reponsibility and more about the consequences of ones actions. Maybe a few ideas from the japanese system of having kids look after their own classrooms? Cleaning Rotas, etc? Would work well with the new extended hours system.
Also, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that both bad behaviour and lack of attention (leading to bad grades) have a lot to do with diet. So giving kids (especially poor kids) decent, nutritious food would be a good step forward. (and lead to less of them dying infront of their PS2s)
Finally, one thing I would have appreciated at school would have been some indication of THE POINT of a lot of what we were doing. Some discussion of what i would like to do with my life and how to get there. As it was I just took the subjects i found least work, then found my subjects locked me into a degree, and that locked me into a career... all based on the choices i made to have less homework when i was 14!!!
But hey, it's not a perfect system - there will be issues. They'll be fairly minor, but they will be there.
Holding up merit pay to a standard of perfection is a straw-man with no value. Currently, we don't measure performance, so that's what we get - no performance (not really, there is some altruism involved - but altruism only goes so far). Even an imperfect measurement of performance is much, much better than no measurement at all.
You reap what you measure.
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Well, until you do, then you can fucking wait until my kids are 18 before taking away my free daycare.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
How the hell do you fail out of college. You just show up for class and they spoon feed you a degree. Open wide, here comes the degree train!
That is his point. The people who are stupid enough to flunk college shouldn't be going, but they still do.
Yeah, I got his point. I guess I should have made my point more clear. I am skeptical that inflated grades, poor grades or any type of grade received in high school has any bearing on the level of success one has in college.
Aside from engineering, simply being capable of breathing will get you a degree. The problem isn't a matter of grades, it's a matter of trying. So, point being, I disagree that inflated grades are a problem. If one can pass algebra 1, one has what it takes to be a comm major.
Take a wild guess if the special-ed students are ever assigned to a grade level that gets tested.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
The problem is not lousy teachers, although there are many. I had an art teacher whose room always reeked of cheap booze. Daily, in a drunken stupor, she'd bark at students that they were "acting like Aborigines". Perfect example of a personnel problem. Why was she not fired like she would have been in industry? I have no idea. If I walked into an operating room and the surgeon was obviously inebriated, you're goddamn right I would offer up some criticism; I bet you would, as well.
The problem is with the schools themselves.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I really hope you see the hypocrisy of you, ifwm, calling someone else "arrogant".
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Sorry, couldn't resist that. At any rate, my wife and I are expecting our first in December, and it turns out children do not come with instruction manuals. I wish they did.
You know, I never found standardized tests to be high-pressure situations. I'm not sure why others do. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree less.Children are not little robots just waiting to be trained. They are human beings and should be given the opportunity to screw up, but not too badly. Do you really think your chronically-failing students would respond well to genuine consequences that stick, whatever those might be? Do you have any idea how hard I laughed as a child when a teacher said such-and-such "would go on my permanent record?"
People make mistakes, and I believe they should be given the opportunity to change, especially children.
I find myself doubting that you are good at what you do. I can only hope that any child of mine does not have such an arrogant, foul-mouthed, cynical, and unintelligent teacher as you. Perhaps a little more experience will teach you some humility and give you a little more expertise."Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
In grade four, I was lending novels to my teacher, and was surprised at how long it took her to bring them back.
Perhaps that's because a grownup woman has a lot more that needs to get done in a day than an eight-year-old boy.
-Colin
Maybe we need to go back to the one room schoolhouse style of teaching. This would provide many benefits:
- For students who excel, they could be learning things at the higher levels aimed at the older kids. There would be no real grade level exactly, more just a decision by the teacher of when to move on.
- Students who need review of prior teachings, would automatically get that when it was taught to the younger students.
- The mixed age levels would help students gain skills in working with people older or younger than they are. This is important in the job world. This and having no real grade levels could possibly break down some of the 6th graders are better than 5th graders attitudes.
- The classes should have a significant amount of time when content is not taught by the teacher, but by other students. While they shouldn't be expected to learn something this hour, and teach it the next, students who are further along could help those who are not. This would provide a sense of responsibility and respect among their peers. It would develop valuable teaching skills, something you will need no matter what the field you go into. Being able to teach something, often requires the ability to put it into different terms based on your audience, this requires advanced thought and a deeper understanding of the subject. Both would benefit from this. Additionally, a fellow student might be able to present it in a way that another student might understand better, possibly by relating it to something more relevant to the age-group.
You could have maybe 2 levels.. grades 1-6 and 7-12... You could advance through both levels in the time it takes you... more or less than the rest, it doesn't really matter. In fact, since your "class" would effectively encompass 6 years worth of students, you could graduate with a portion of those students at any given time so the idea that being held back (not that it would be the case in this scenario) preventing them from graduating with their friends, would be less of an issue.
Michael