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."
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!
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
Hand out copies of Elements of Style to every single student.
You know what? I had to throw out almost every f***** thing I learned in high school english when they handed me the manual on how I now need to write.
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.
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
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.
Eliminate American Anti-intellectualism.
This is problem number one, and I firmly point the finger at pop culture in America. Success in school is not rewarded with prestige in our pop culture. In our TV programs, you don't ever see the stock character of "the popular kid that's good at everything." Popular kids in American pop culture are very rarely acadmeic success stories, while good students are always unpopular.
It didn't start with our entertainment though, and so it can't end there. Politics and religion in America has long had an anti-intellectual tendency dating back to the Dark Ages in Europe through the lineage of Puritanism and our down-to-business focused work ethic. An intellectual was seen as an idle person and often was a person who defied the Will of God by questioning dogma. While this attitude has weakened over the past few centuries, it has still left its stain on the philosophy of blue collar America.
Asian countries have been fortunate to have had Confuscian philosophy as an influence. A virtuous man is a studious man in Confuscian philosophy. Asian religions also have rarely held onto a dogmatic streak in their worship -- though they have been just as capable of putting believers of other religions to the sword. They have been more encouraging of questioning and seeking which has overall led to a culture that prized education more than the West.
Even so, many European nations have shaken off the past and gained a far better attitude towards education. The problem runs deep in our culture, and until the public attitude towards intellectuals and education changes, no amount of shuffling about the cirriculum will help. However, I think we've been sliding backwards on this since the 60s. I don't forsee any significant improvements in my lifetime unless a major political and philosophical land change occurs.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Think about some of the dumbest people you remember. The ones that partied all of the time, and could barely handle college. You'll remember the girls the got trashed and danced on tables at parties. The guys that couldn't remember what the captial of the US is.
What major are a lot of them?
Education
Fixing education starts with getting teachers that actually know how to teach, and didn't pick Education because it was the easiest way to get above a 2.0. Not many intelligent people are going to work towards a job with a starting salary of 20k. Most of us here are programmers, and we would laugh at any offer that low. I know that we can't afford to pay all teachers $50,000 out of college, but unless we can find an incentive to get smart people to teach, education is screwed.
The number 1 reason for idiots isn't actually the education system, as bad as it is. It is the amount of quality time the kids get at home and the investment the parents make into their child's education. There is a reason that class issues are extremely prevalent in education. If a low income mother is working 3 jobs, she doesn't have time to teach her kid to read or make sure he is studying instead of surfing porn. Add in that many of those households have single parents. Then add in that the population is too dense to provide enough teachers and the schools are horrible and you have real problems. Individual kids get passed through the system and the parents can't or won't pick up the slack.
Private schools are far from the answer. Most private schools are worse than public ones around me. Some are better, but those are the ones that cost more than your average college. Throwing money at education won't fix it. Unfunded mandates basically derailed it. No Child Left Behind sounds nice, until you see that children are being left behind on purpose to keep them out of the statistics that cause the school to lose funding.
/. ++
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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.
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
Putting kids in an environment where success means social punishment
I contend that the biggest challenge kids in public school face is homogeneity. Rich white kids go to rich white schools, and poor black kids go to poor black schools. This happens because crime and poor schools drive anyone who can afford it out to the suburbs. But the crime is a result of the perverse economic incentives our government has created through the war on drugs and free trade policies that are unburdened by ethical concerns.
When you concentrate students in a building with practically no role models, it becomes nearly impossible for the teachers to do their job. We need to integrate our schools so that our diverse population can learn diverse lessons from each other. That, more than any school-centered issues, is the key to educating our youth.
Education is not the only problem caused by the physical separation of the social classes. It screws up our economy and society in plenty of other ways. The best way to attack the problem is to change the zoning policies that prevail in the suburbs. Please see my essay that I wrote last semester, and send me your feedback.
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."
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."
-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
First, could you please explain how public schools aren't compatibile with a republican (small 'r' -- let's not get all political part here) form of government? Or do you mean that the Republican Party doesn't want any kind of educated electorate?
Okay, sorry. I'll shut off my political yappings for now. I am still interested in your reasoning behind that statement, however, so please satisfy my curiosity.
Second, your idea of replacing all public schools with private schools is inherently flawed, and not just because of the potential to send students to Islamic fundamentalist madrassas. See my other post in this thread for my detailed reasons why a purely private system is flawed.
Third, don't say teaching isn't particularly hard unless you've actually tried it. In your idealized situation with an apprentice motivated to learn, sure, teaching can be pretty easy if you have the right skills and knowledge to teach the subject matter at hand. However, when dealing with the beaurocracy of any school system, public or private, parents who either don't care about their child's performance, parents who complain when you rightfully say that their child is performing badly, etc., the life of a modern school teacher isn't an easy one. Trust me, I am speaking from experience as a substitute teacher who has tried to actually teach and not just babysit a class.
I guess his point around sports matches how I feel about this. It's not that exercise (true "physical education") should be eliminated. It's the absurd emphasis on sports such as football, driven more about the money it generates than any intrinsic value. The local [high] school cut both the arts and the band programs due to budget shortfalls but the football team got new lights for the field that cost 10 times what the art and band programs required.
That's why the children of the elite go to expensive private schools.
Remember those are the people you are supposed to be working for. If you are too successful then, horrors, those people might end up working for you! Imagine Chad Thistlewaite's embarrasment if after finishing years and years of expensive private school and graduating from Harvard, he had to work for some nobody who went to... sniff... public school.
People don't believe this, but it's true. Public school is about beating the independent streak out of students and turning them into "useful" drones. I remember the "bell" at my old High School, it sounded like an air raid siren! Tons of stuff like that. There were some teachers who seemed to care about helping their students learn things, but the system wasn't about that. It was about breaking their spirits.
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
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
This is what drove my crazy this year. It was my first year as a substitute k-6 teacher, and I hated going to a class and seeing some kids that could barely recognize letters in a grade 1 class vs others who could complete math designed for Grade 3 children. I wish the education system was more fluid, particularly in the younger grades, so that children with the same abilities could be in the same classes. Nothing is more difficult than trying to teach kids on a topic when everyone is not on the same page. I mean why the hell do they need to stay in the same class just because they are the same age? In almost any other activity you partake in you are assigned a group based purely on your achievement level, not based on your age. Groups created that way are more fair to those learning, and to those teaching.
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.
Third, don't say teaching isn't particularly hard unless you've actually tried it. In your idealized situation with an apprentice motivated to learn, sure, teaching can be pretty easy if you have the right skills and knowledge to teach the subject matter at hand. However, when dealing with the beaurocracy of any school system, public or private, parents who either don't care about their child's performance, parents who complain when you rightfully say that their child is performing badly, etc., the life of a modern school teacher isn't an easy one. Trust me, I am speaking from experience as a substitute teacher who has tried to actually teach and not just babysit a class.
Thank you for pointing this out. I usually don't read slashdot stories on education because it's usually just a public school/teacher bashfest. The ones that pass themselves off as experts on what it's like to teach usually are the ones who haven't lifted a finger to try to teach anyone.
Teaching is a huge job. Like you said, if it were just a matter of imparting information to bright, motivated students, it wouldn't be that hard (although it requires a knack for teaching - a lot of very smart people are unable to teach). But we don't just get those ideal students. We get kids with behavioral problems. Kids who live in poverty. Kids with learning disorders. Kids in 10th grade who read at a 4th grade level. Parents who want to sue you for failing their kid. Parents who won't cooperate. It is not easy. A third of teachers quit the profession within 3 years. They quit because the job's a lot harder than they expected. A large number of such teachers, when surveyed, said they were surprised at how physically demanding the job was. It's a strange job. You end up doing a zillion things you wouldn't expect unless you had experience teaching.
Good teachers do more than just transfer information. They inspire, they motivate, they make their students *think*. They make them apply knowledge and extend it. They're out there, in public schools, and I've seen them. (Yes, I've seen bad teachers as well. As in any profession, some practitioners suck.)
Unfortunately, if anyone reads this, I'll probably get flamed for defending teachers. It's just too easy to bash teachers as a group rather than try to look at it from their perspective. I knew I'd be on the receiving end of it when I decided to become a teacher, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
At my (public, non-magnet) high school, we had a class called "Contemporary Issues" which dealt specifically with such topics. The class split into groups and was given 4 days out of each week (90 minute classes) to form a cohesive argument, and a fifth day to debate it. We tackled issues such as abortion, the role of religion in modern society, libertarianism in a post-9/11 world, etc. It was easily the most enlightening class I had in school.
I wasn't exactly in the most enlightened school district in the country -- Northeast Tennessee isn't typically considered a bastion of liberal thought -- and the enrollment was fairly small (25 kids was a small class for my school, and it was the only section). Still, a good class.
Damn straight. Not everyone is the same. Things that are easy for some people are damn hard for others. I have a twin sister. She cannot read a map. Period. You won't be able to teach her - for some reason the whole idea never worked.
Now my sister isn't dumb by any means, in many respects she is frighteningly bright. You would be lucky to read as fast as she does, or retain even a quarter what she does from what she reads, for example.
You can tell my sister a 30 digit number once, and mention that she should remember it. Don't mention it again for a month. Ask her what the number is and she will have it dead accurate 9/10 times.
But for some reason graphical representations of data leave her completely unable to comprehend the material.
She almost failed statistics entirely because the course was so reliant on graphs. Her professor for that course was completely unable to understand the source of the problem until we discussed it with him in a special meeting, and demonstrated literature showing the problem isn't unique to my sister.
At that point he allowed her to complete her exam without a time limit. That gave her the time to translate the charts into tables she could actually work with.
It took a long time for me to believe my sister was not faking it. I would have said that understanding graphs is intuitive - but here is a case of a very specific learning disability that proves me wrong.
So is it suprising that some students are better at math that others? Not to me.
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
Not at all.
Getting rid of public education isn't accountability; it pretty much ensures that, in fact, the status quo will continue -- that rich kids who now go to well funded schools and have parents that can provide them with time, attention, books, and tutoring will do better than poor kids whose schools tend to be poorly funded and whose parents are often too busy working, and lack education themselves, to provide a nurturing educational environment at home. Only without public education, the poor won't stand a chance. With the possible exception of a few charities here and there, the only kind of school I can see filling in for public school for the poor would be religious schools, which is fine for families who want that kind of environment, but no so hot for those who don't. And don't forget that kids taught in a religious school just might not be as informed about evolution.
So, yeah, arguing that the way to improve education is by eliminating public education is out.
And self education really has nothing to do with accountability. Each person absorbs information differently. Some people are excellent at teaching themselves things; other people need to be guided in it. And it often tends to be different for different people. I need little to no handholding when facing something new and unfamiliar on a computer, but heaven help me (and anyone within my immediate vicinity) if I tried to do much more than add a quart of oil to my car.
Once I learned how to read, I read up a storm and could read probably at high school level in elementary school (and perhaps the college level in middle school). But I had to be taught how to read. I didn't learn it on my own. There are some geniuses who somehow manage to teach themselves to read. If I'd been left in a room with a bunch of books but never taught to read, I'd probably still be playing with fingerpaint.
I think that there are a lot of useful answers beyond getting rid of public education or forcing people to teach themselves.
Here are some ideas:
1) Value teachers, and give them support. From what I understand, teaching is not an easy job, and many teachers get hell from students, and hell from the student's parents. Although people keep saying that teachers are heroes, they sure aren't treated like them. This may be why teacher burnout is so common.
In my opinion, the number one way to improve education is to prevent teacher burnout.
As long as there's teacher burnout, a lot of teachers who are great at teaching, but not great at dealing with administrative politics, angry parents and unruly students will leave. In their wake will be people who either love teaching so much that they're willing to stay in their position (although they tend to be consistently haggard), or people who are great at all the other stuff -- politics, sucking up to the administration/parents, discipline. Now, in high school I was lucky enough to be mostly in AP/Honors level classes, which meant that the students were more likely to behave, tended to care about learning, and the teacher was generally a better teacher than most. But my teacher for PE was another story -- agressive, disciplinarian, and about as mentally flexible as a cinderblock. I'm not an idiot and I tend to do well in most of my classes, but I got a C in health because the focus was exclusively on rote memorization (I remember that I got three questions on a quick marked as incorrect because we were supposed to list three items in order of relevance or something -- like I remember anything from health class -- and all three were marked wrong because I had one out of order).
Okay, I'm getting a little off track here, but my main point is that teachers aren't really valued or respected, kids aren't taught to value or respect their teacher, and in many cases teachers are seen as the obstacle that's keeping Timmy from getting in Harvard, rather than as someone trying desperately to give him the intellectual tools that would be needed
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
"The homeschooling movement has been expanding incredibly rapidly: from approximately 50,000 children in 1985 to about 1,000,000 children in 2000 (Scheller; Bielick, 5; Basham, 6)."
Based on those numbers, it's pretty unlikely I interact with homeschooled people on a regular basis. I'm not trying to condemn homeschooling, but I have observed that homeschooled people have terrible social skills.
Two individuals in particular I spent some time with over the course of several years. They were very different. These 16-18 year olds acted like children socially: talking too loudly and often over people, not paying attention to or responding to the interest of the people around them. They had trouble apologizing and compromising. One time I passed one of them unexpectedly in a public setting and said "hi", she reacted with a frozen expression and completely ignored me. It probably didn't help that they were both only childen.
Music teachers I chatted with who sometimes gave lessons to homeschooled children had the same experience. The one exception they mentioned was a group of about 10 kids that were shuffled between the parents for schooling -- monday would be math from one particular parent who was good at it for example.
The lesson seems to be that there is something critical about peer interaction in our culture which homeschooling usually fails to provide.
Doesn't everybody understand that the only question a student has to learn, and the one that they've been born with but get's beaten down every chance society gets, is 'WHY'???
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 think you've hit on something here.
I taught for several years, and the reality is that teachers have a required amount of material to cover. If I didn't cover it, then I've in effect cheated my students.
The problem arises when you have students of widely varying abilities in the same class. If I teach to the middle-of-the-road students, then I can cover everything with little or no time left over. That works fine for them, but the faster students get bored. They could easily cover more material, but I can't hurry the rest of the class.
It's even worse for the slower students. Even going at a moderate pace is too fast for them. Many times they're left behind, frustrated that they're moved along before getting a chance to master anything.
Yes, teachers could do more to keep students occupied and to help those who struggle, but there is only so much time in the day, for teachers and students.
I think the ideal solution would be to break the classes by ability, not by age. I know that's not a popular idea, but it makes sense to put students together based on how quickly they can cover the material. As students master it, they can move on, regardless of their age or what time of the year it is.
Yes, it's a radical change to how we look at education, but isn't the idea for students to actually learn what's being taught?
Visit my serial fiction site at www.cornerscribe.com
> First, could you please explain how public schools aren't compatibile
> with a republican form of government?
I already replied once, forgot to answer this part after getting sidetracked on the big vs small R part.
Simply that our government, especially considering the Bill of Rights, is based on the idea that folks should be free from government control to the greatest extent possible, no government mandated religion, no official government press, etc. How can you reconcile this principle with forcing every parent to subject their children to years of government mandated propaganda? Forget establishing a State religion! Hell, church only gets the little buggers a couple of hours on Sunday if they want to go. The schools get em five days a week and can send the cops over to pick em up if they don't wanna go.
The power to mandate what will and will not be taught to the next generation is far too much power to entrust to an instituition as corruptable as any Government. There are ample signs this power has already been much abused, who here believes any check could ever be placed on a government that won't obey it's own written Constituition?
No, the answer is to cut every responsibility that can be cut, leaving the remainder at the lowest level of the government possible. Education is a function that can be placed outside the government so it should be.
Democrat delenda est
1. Keep politics out of it. Teachers should be allowed to teach establshed facts, not just what's currently "politically correct".
2. Keep religion out of it. Teachers should be allowed to teach established facts, not religious dogma. If certain people object, kindly inform them that there are nice private religious schools out there that teach their beliefs.
3. Keep the courts out of it. Teachers should be allowed to teach established facts. I don't want my son being taught that the world is flat simply because someone got "offended" over the geography curriculum and acquired a court order supressing teaching the fact that the world is NOT flat.
4. Don't advance students to the next grade level unless they understand everything required by their current grade. Telling students that they are "special" and "its ok to fail" actually does them a disservice. That kind of mentality certainly does not cut it in the business world and it shouldn't in school either. Students need to be taught that failure has consequences.
5. Use your education budget wisely, actually hire enough teachers and updated books to go around. Keep administrators and overhead to a bare minimum.
6. Use computers and calculators in moderation. Students should not be allowed to use calculators until they understand how to do math longhand. A computer is a tool, students definitely need to be taught computers as almost everything today is touched by them. But save it for the higher grades, I'm tired of schools using technology as a pacifier.
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.
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!!!