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."
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.
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.
I realize many parents arent able to do this, but home schooling is probably the best option.
-FL
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
It failed Cartman during the spelling test!!! Have you lernt noth'in?
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
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.
Teach the basics: reading, writing, history and math. Ditch the crap.
I'm sorry but I beg to differ. I say teach the basics ABSOLUTELY, yes, but I'm not sure what you call crap. A child's brain is like a sponge, it learns everything you put in it. If you wait till the child is older to introduce a child to other subjects, it's too late.
I think kids should take up 2 other foreign languages as early as possible. Propose them classical latin or greek too. No, they're not "useless in our modern world" as I sometimes hear, they are what differentiate a well-rounded education from a basic no-frills one. Get them to learn all kinds of sciences in fun ways. Get them to experiment. Teach them hard stuff early, but in fun ways... In short: take full advantage of a kid's ability to learn, the trick being not to bore him so he keeps on wanting to learn more.
The other thing is, for God's sake DITCH MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS! Exams aren't just to get grades, they're a test of a student's reasoning. A math teacher for example should grade a student's reasoning, not the final answer. Similarly, don't rate essays with machines, like it's been proposed recently. All that contributes to de-humanize studies, and only teach students to "work with the system", not to think.
Finally, ditch computers when kids are young. They don't need high tech to learn how to write and count, and school should spend their precious budgets on good teachers and on books.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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:
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.
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).
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
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.
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 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 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
> 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...
Some must be sacrificed is all are to be saved. You can't have it both ways. Authority MUST follow responsibility. If parents are going to be responsible for their children they must have the authority to actually carry out the responsibility. Or you believe children are the property of the State and we should just do like Cuba and yank all the kids into barracks as soon as they can walk and be done with it.
I agree that there are people with children who shouldn't be honored with the word 'parent' but short of removing them from the corrosive environment there probably isn't much to be done. If the parents are defective products of the modern welfare state & education system it is going to be very hard to get useful citizens. Must admit I don't have a good answer to the problem. Wish I did. But the answer isn't to make EVERYONE a ward of the state and breed yet another generation of helpless dependents.
Democrat delenda est
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.
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
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."
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
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.
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.
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
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
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!!
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.
Grade on a curve
To decide this, you have to decide on the purpose of your education. Is the purpose to rank students, or is it to learn? If the purpose is to learn (as I believe it is), then what is more important is that students reach the learning objectives. If all the students meet all the learning objectives and get great marks, then that should be considered the best case.
It may currently be the case that students who do not meet the learning objectives are getting good marks, but this does not mean that we should mark on a curve, rather that the assessment should match the objectives.
Pay teachers based on their students progress
This assumes that all classes are homogeneous and that teachers are universally skilled or unskilled. Classes are not homogeneous. Some classes are strong, some are weak. Some have higher numbers of special needs kids. Some have more strong learners. Some years are stronger than other years. There is a lot of variation. Should this be reflected in a teacher's salary? No!
Teachers are not universally skilled or unskilled. Some are good at math. Some are good at English. Some are good at encouraging interpersonal relationships. By going through 13 years of school, you are exposed to many different teachers, all with their strengths and weaknesses. How are you going to map this to salary?
Fewer objective assignments
What you really mean here is less low-level assessment. It is possible to create objective, but high level assessments. This, however, is difficult and therefore not often done. This does not mean that objective is bad. I would much rather be evaluated in an objective way rather than by the whims of the teacher.
THE PADDLE
Your approach to discipline shows are remarkable misunderstanding of the problem (and the psychology of education in general). Read "Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Matter" to get you going in the right vein. Fear and anxiety preclude learning. I agree that some degree of order is necessary, but not through the means you describe.
Same sex schools
Unfortunately, your stereotypes don't hold (welcome to the 21st century). Boys are active and girls are not? Give me a break. The truth is that people of all sexes have different learning styles. Some people require activity, some people require thoughtful reflection, some people require creative outlet, some people require order. No relation to sex.
Education is a tricky beast. Like anything else, the best procedure is to first sit down and figure out what your goals and objectives are. From there, figure out how you are going to best achieve them. The answers are often not as obvious as the ones you've presented.
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
This sounds exactly like the stuff that comes out of Utah (I live in Utah so I hear it day after day)
All that stuff is great, and I am sure it would have helped YOU. Tough tests would have prevented me from passing any classes. I do not do well on tests even if I know the material inside out. As an example, in a math class I took in Jr. High I walked away with 110% in the class due to large ammounts of bonus points I recieved for "wow"ing the teacher. Problem is that I got nothing but 60% or less on the tests.
I now play the bass but if I would have been forced to play in grade school I know for sure that I never would have been interested. I can not learn in groups at all. Its one of the reasons that I ended up being homeschooled. I need one on one interaction so I can leach knowledge from my instructor. I also need to know be held by self doubt created from perorming infront of others.
Manditory civil service? Ever research the draft? If people don't want to serve do not force them. The military clearly states that it doesn't want drafted people.
More PE?! I was nearly killed by the PE in my school. I am not kidding. Until I was 18 I was really under weight. (130lb and 6'3" tall at 17) I could not gain weight. Problem was that everybody thought that exercise is exactly what I needed. As soon as the super regiment of pushups and quarter mile runs went away I gained 40lb. My back doesn't give me grief anymore and I am at a much lower risk for screwing up my knees.
Paddle huh? Ever actually dealt with kids? Know how the paddle works at all? I grew up in a daycare (my mom ran one for 12 years) and I was a professionally trained babysitter. I can tell you that while it works for some kids all to often it it a short term cost and the kids know it. Yes, hold them accountable but the paddle is NOT the answer to this.
Same sex schools? I went to co-ed schools and was homeschooled. I am now in a program that is almost completly male. I never "chased tail" so to speak so that taints my view quite a bit but either program seems to have its fair share of distractions.
Pay teachers more? My neighbor swears against this. He is a high school level instructor that was awarded all sorts of teaching merits and awards. He thinks that if the pay is raised that it will only draw many people into the money, rather than the interest in actually educating children. I can not have an opinion on this one though because I am not a professional educator.
Notice that all these are ways your ideas would have hindered ME. Thats not to say that they do not work at all, just that using them as a blanket excuse is a really bad idea.
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.
Why is this a problem? Currently there is a great deal of time and money wasted in our schools and legal system fighting over what should be in the curriculum (evolution, intelligent design, sexual eduaction, etc.). Vouchers wouldn't eliminate this altogether, but would reduce it since people could more easily send their kids to a school with a curriculum they are happy with.
To me, this seems like separation of church and state at its best. Rather than having to take a secular stance (which many people will feel is anti-religious), the government gets to be neutral by giving people a choice.
I may twist orthodoxy to partly justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.
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.
If there is school choice, schools will be ACCOUNTABLE TO THE CHILD'S PARENTS! If the school sucks, the parents will yell at the school administration to fix things or they'll take their kids (and their voucher money) elsewhere.
This kind of accountability is REAL as opposed to the bogus teach to the test accountability of mass standardized testing. It is an utter fallacy to think that public schools will be transformed by mass standardized tests and complicated funding formulas from Washington.
School choice creates the kind of decentralized accountability that really works. Furthermore, as K-12 education becomes a truly competetive market, you will have the kinds of reviews and comparative literature you have with cars and universities. If people actually HAVE a choice, a market will develop to help them make an INFORMED choice. For cars you can read consumer reports, for universities you can read stuff by the Princeton Review, but for schools, there is currently a dearth of information because quite frankly, there's no market for it.
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.
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.
"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."
Maybe you should reevaluate the reading comprehension portions of your own education. He specifically cited a child that he is tutoring, noting their *involvement* on a nightly basis, actively working with their child to improve the situation. They were taking actions that included private tutoring. I find it highly unlikely that they've engaged private tutoring and haven't considered any sort of learning disability testing.
Further, you may want to review your own post. You are focusing entirely on everything but your last sentence. However, that single statement is what the parent poster was responding to. See, you made an absolute statement:
"You will not find a kid who is failing any subect who has parents who are interested and involved in his school work."
The respondant invalidated your absolute statement with all he needed to: a verifiable anecdote. Had you made a more reasonable assertion, along the lines of "most of the kids failing their schoolwork don't have parents who are involved". That would have set the required level of refutation a bit higher.
In the future, if you want people to focus on the rest of your statement, you probably want to drop the absolute judgements that are clearly invalidated by the experience of thousands.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
- 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
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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).
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.
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.