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Why Kids Should Be Building Rockets Instead of Taking Tests
An anonymous reader writes "MAKE Magazine founder Dale Dougherty has an article in Slate about how educators are missing the punchline when it comes to getting kids interested in learning. He describes a recent visit he made to a middle school: 'The science lab was empty, as were the library and the playground. It was not a school holiday: It was a state-mandated STAR testing day. The school was in an academic lockdown. This is what the American public school looks like in 2012, driven by obsessive adherence to standardized testing. The fate of children, their schools, and their teachers are based on these school test scores.' Dougherty's preference would be to more tightly integrate basic engineering projects into the science curriculum. 'I see the power of engaging kids in science and technology through the practices of making and hands-on experiences, through tinkering and taking things apart. Schools seem to have forgotten that students learn best when they are engaged; in fact, the biggest problem in schools is boredom. Students sit passively, expected to absorb all the content that is thrown at them without much context. The context that's missing is the real world."
Is a tad bit safer to take a test than to build rockets.
Teaching the test beats teaching nothing at all. Parents are the problem, but given a political unwillingness to fix the problem, having teachers teach the test beats having them teach nothing at all. By the way, if the test is reflective of what we want the students to learn, than teaching the test is not actually a "bad thing". It's a bad thing to teach only the test, but again, it beats teaching nothing.
They're doing exactly what they've been told to do by the system that politics has created. To fix our schools, you need to keep congress's nose out of the process, return responsibility to the individual states and local boards of education.
However, middle-aged "kids" produce some neat stuff.
Useful rocket science is hard.
I was fascinated by all things science as a little kid. Doing, enjoying, fantasizing. I craved books for kids about science, electronics kits and chemistry sets - these were what I enjoyed. And toy robots. Then I got to junior high school and started formal science classes. Awful. Hated chemistry. Math was painful. Only physics became vaguely interesting. I did a BS, but school nearly ruined that path.
You can't reduce education to numbers. Everything starts locally, with parents first then teachers and classmates, then administrators. If these local influences are good, no amount of bad decision-making from above will ruin your school. The opposite is true as well.
Blaming tests doesn't solve any problems. Why don't we have kids build rockets AND take tests?
There are good teachers that don't teach to the test. Unfortunately, because of the high-stakes testing which can determine pay raises and personnel decisions, this is typically on non-core subjects. My physics (which does have a STARR test now) teacher was great. We rarely used the textbook but we measured the speed of sound and used a lot of hands on physics demonstrations. This is a good article. I'm hoping to begin teaching science, math or computer science next year. Maybe I can be part of the change.
If the teachers them self would be able to actually make stuff in the real world would they be teaching?
My third grader informed me one day that "science is boring". You could have hit my in the nuts with a hammer and it would have hurt me less. I inquired more and found out that he is reading a lot of stuff and he just doesn't find it exciting.
First, I got ahold of a few interesting science videos dealing with astronomy and robotics. He was intrigued. On a trip to Disney I took him on a behind the scenes tour at their greenhouses where he got to talk to a Botanist and learn more. And I"ve found a few other opportunities to get him involved in some hands on science.
I'll be damned if I let school choke out his love for learning. He's border-line gifted if not gifted (I'm Triple Nine) and it would be a shame if he limited his options because of school...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Home School not for religious reasons, but for educational. My kids have to engage, they have no choice. I know what they need to know and where they need to go with what they are learning.
Prob is it is soooo expensive to home school. Try living on 1/2 your household income and buy the tools to educate them properly it is very difficult.
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled."
Wikipedia on Plutarch
I always hated all the hands-on lab days in school. The experiments never worked like they were supposed to,and then I had to write some kind of boring ass report. I've always enjoyed people talking about theory and history and stuff then actually DOING IT. No sarcasm. Seriously.
I'm in complete agreement that kids should be engaged and care about what they're learning, and be actively learning it. But at the same time, not all kids are going to love making rockets. Some would love working with animals, or arguing about literature. Making those kids build rockets isn't much better than making them study 17th century geography or cram for a stupid standardized test.
Ideally we'd figure out what kids want to learn, and help them learn those things, with some encouragement for them to learn things that benefit society as a whole. A problem is we don't all agree on what benefits society as a whole. Standardized testing is a reaction to a widespread perception that kids were learning stuff that wasn't useful (by some scrupulously unspecified definition of useful.) So, trying to get all, or even most, kids interested in subject Y is going to involve lots of bored kids, and trying to facilitate kids' interest is going to get big chunks of the community at large upset that Kids These Days Are Just Wasting Time In School Learning About whatever this week's bogeyman is, be it vocational education, renaissance literature, sculpture, or evolutionary biology.
Which is to say: he's totally right, but he's not addressing the root cause of the problem he's trying to solve.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
The context that's missing is the real world.
Arguably, real world context should be provided in post-secondary education... when middle school and high school have enough trouble laying theoretical ground work for that. Of course in reality university education is purely theoretical, with graduates being absolutely clueless when it comes to being employed in the real world... if anything, technical colleges is where the real world context is provided.
I guess my point is - Dale Dougherty is an idiot who obviously haven't tried teaching algebra to teenager, so he/she can get into a post-secondary institution later. Or he thinks they could launch some rockets during their entrance exams...
Bow before me, for I am root.
Because building anything is experience gained in many aspects.
Regurgitating answers of questions on a piece of paper is simply what I just said, "writing on paper, answers that you regurgitated from a book."
F*ck You Corrupted American Leaders and your LACK of push towards innovation and acceptance to implement better for the world.
It's no wonder why our previous generations of fathers are still whacking off to john wayne, dreaming about being a cowboy, because they are all a bunch of idiots.
Only now it's no longer cowboys, since, thug gangster pete has taken over that image, so now we have people in 2012 still repeating a lifestyle that was broad casted by in 1995.
China banned a lot of things for a good reason, so people would let go of the past and move on to the future...
Right. Give fucking Homeland Security something else to go after...
I'm simply happy that the schools have the paper to actually print the tests. Here, the budget is so out of whack that most school systems require that parents to supplement their classrooms with much more than notebooks, pencils, and tissues. The budgetary issues aside, it comes down to the parents (who elect the folks in charge of the school systems) to decide how their children are taught. I do believe that children who are engaged are more apt to learn than those who are bored to tears. Go beyond engineering projects, teach kids that math can be fun, how to have fun with the English and/or foreign languages, or demonstrate how historical events can be fun to learn about. These things are important as well.
And if you feel like you child isn't getting enough education at school, try bolstering their education outside of normal school hours. Get involved with the education of your kids and find out exactly what it is that they're learning. Only then, can you as a parent determine where their education is lacking.
If you're looking here for something insightful or thought provoking, you're probably looking in the wrong place.
The more educrats yell about standardized testing the more convinced I am the policy is optimal.
Against state's rights? Then this article explains lays out what you asked for.
When the public got an ear full of "Johnny cant read", No Child Left Behind and the STAR test is EXACTLY what a large faceless federal bureaucracy (aka, President / Department of Education) is going to have for a solution. To expect anything else is living in fantasy land.
Therefore, give back education requirements to a per state basis and get rid of not only No Child Left Behind, but also the Department of Education. If you feel a state's electorate isn't qualified to determine what's good for their kids, tough.
If you expect education to be run by a federal executive branch with no input, you will continue to get these solutions. And for those who love this, don't complain when that same bureaucracy is run by a president you didn't elect.
This is Defective By Design brought into the Western education system. Standardised tests cater for the "average" or below; they do not challenge the intelligent, who are later deemed to be mentally ill(!). Normality these days is shuffling fries and frying burgers. When Joe 170 stands up and says "I'm going to do something different", he's ridiculed by those who scored Cs across the board because they do not know any better - because none of them were taught to challenge.
I pity those Average Joes because as a 170, I see the world from outside the box and often see better ways of doing things. Following several years of having my self esteem floored by the knuckledraggers around me, I'm at the point of "fuck it, you know what, I don't care anymore. Enough of trying to do good for others, I'm doing this for *me* and the rest of the world can go fuck itself."
The rest of the world can go fuck itself. I won't even gloat when the oil runs out and you're all sitting there bemoaning the fact that you all didn't listen. I'll just fire up my solar powered car and leave you in the shit of your own making.;
Flame away, Joe Average, let us know who you are so we can avoid you.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Virtually useless, until someone invents a standardized student.
Education will suffer until the Powers-That-Be realize not every person learns the same way.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Do not let a good mind go to waste. It takes a lot of effort, but homeschooling will ensure your child can grow up creative and free-willed.
At least you are doing what you can, but the power of the public school to crush minds is strong. That s what they are designed to do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No child left behind: lower the bar far enough, and nobody can slip underneath.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
They're doing exactly what they've been told to do by the system that politics has created. To fix our schools, you need to keep congress's nose out of the process, return responsibility to the individual states and local boards of education.
If that were to happen where I live, our school's science textbook would be the Bible and the "controversy" about Evolution would be taught and Intelligent Design would be the standard.
I do not have to resources to sue the school board and the ACLU has limited resource too. So what would happen is my local school board would get their way.
Instead of bitching, I think the scientific community need to use their brains and come up with a way to make science interesting to young people. The love of a subject can be very infectious and I would suggest they start there.
The next year they shot off rockets, one hit a car at a local dealership and damaged it, and that was the end of rockets in school.
In these times, I'm afraid the lawyers won't let them...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Some would love working with animals, or arguing about literature
Ok, then YES.
Standardized testing is a reaction to a widespread perception that kids were learning stuff that wasn't useful
What makes you think that? It was wholly a response to the fear that kids were not learning enough. It was designed so that teachers could demonstrate we should not fire the lot of them and start public schools over from scratch.
he's totally right, but he's not addressing the root cause of the problem he's trying to solve.
Sure he is. It's right there in the summary - give kids the real world experiences that provide context to learning. That works for any and every subject.
By giving kids the context they automatically spend less time doing stupid things, so it does help address the root problem.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Blame the teachers unions.
You do what you're told - nothing more and nothing less.
False. My sister has consistently been doing more, and as a reward they are paying her for the additional education requested to make her an Assistant Principal, where they want to keep her for a year before making her a full-on Principal of a whole school.
The problem here is that the members of the teacher's unions behave as if the guideline is exactly what you want to do, and not just the minimum.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The Make guy talking about "science", but he judges all of science education based on one day when they happened to be having tests? Nothing scientific about his methods.
If this testing complaint had any merit, then universities would also abandon their endless testing with real life activities. With mature and motivated students, it would be a no question win for everyone. Tests are valuable for many reasons. Like anything, they can be misused, but don't blame the tool for how it is used.
That's what an elementary school teacher calls timed tests for math (give students 10 minutes to finish arithmetic test). She promoted math is more than just doing calculations (add, subtract, multiply, divide), she liked to have students do hands-on stuff like filling different shaped containers with beans (not cooked of course) to illustrate proportions. However, hands-on kinds of stuff is hard to measure with a number saying how well (or poor) student performance. So the admins always want timed-tests ("drill and kill!").
mfwright@batnet.com
If they had come to my school in the 70s they would have seen us kids hunkered down the same way for SRA tests. Remember the SRA test? They were just an evaluation, AFAIK. I don't know what they did with them, other than call you in for a parent-teacher-child conference to let you know how you did and what you could do to fix problems.
Standardized testing came about in the first place because of declining quality of graduates. When reasons for that decline were examined, one of the things we found was that the previous methods for ensuring quality... reliance on teachers and local schools to police themselves and give tough tests... was failing because new ideas about education stressed that such demands were detrimental at times to the child. One of the first practical applications of this thinking was that things like class discipline, rote learning, and traditional English instruction had to go. The sixties and seventies then brought us such fads as "new math", whole language instruction, and "open classrooms", where some schools actually brought in workmen to knock down walls joining several classrooms into one large, cubical-farm like space. The 80's and 90's brought us the "self-esteem" craze. Meanwhile, real knowledge and understanding of curriculum declined, but for various reasons, many kids were passed and promoted to the next grade anyway. In other words, standardized testing came about to ensure that kids really did have the basics, because we could no longer trust the classroom process to produce those results.
It says everything that there was truly a time where an A could be trusted to really be an A... a mark of excellence in classroom work... and now it can't be.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Or he thinks they could launch some rockets during their entrance exams...
On an application for MIT a video showing someone building and then flying a custom rocket would actually be quite compelling.
Waiting until after 18 (!) for real world context is insane. Kids can handle context starting around two years old, we don't need to spend a decade or more trying to hammer that ability out of them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hands on, meaningful critical thinking and hands on learning (applied science vs book learning) will teach kids and grab their attention far more than 500 math problems that have no relation to their lives.
I can remember many times peers asking "what does this have to do with my life" -- well, if we can build a catapult and show physics and geometry and other sciences applied, people may start to get their gears turning and think of how can I use this /somewhere else/ instead of "i dont get why i need to learn this"
Kids should stop using numbers and just have some sort of directed play-time, all the time.
Maybe instead of having to read Chaucer they can just watch the Lord of the Ring movies?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I've watched the American school system degrade into the pathetic excuse for an education system that it is. The whole issue is not as much as getting children interested in this stuff as much as the parents focused on standards of learning.
Since no child is able to be left behind you have not just 1 child who is behind instead you now have 34 other students suffering academically due to the one. At what point do you admit something is a failure? Is it when future generations are so dumb they make Frito Pendejo from Idiocracy look like Einstein?
The system is a failure, admit it and move on. Smarter kids should be moved to the head of the class the slower ones should not drag the rest down.
Parent of a child in a public school.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
No day in physics class was more fun than the lab involving calculating the angle of trajectory of toy cars and them smashing them into stuff. If you did the math just right, your car would fly across the track in a perfect arc and then knock over a tennis ball propped up on a paper cup. (Or, more likely, knock the entire cup and tennis ball assembly clean off the table.)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
We had a similar discussion with my son's middle school science teacher. We asked why there wasn't more hands on activities. He said that he would like to do more but that getting the materials can be expensive; preparing a lab takes a lot more time than preparing a lecture, and a great deal of time is spent policing the kids to make sure they are doing what they are supposed to do. Further, he was limited to things that could be started and completed within an hour.
The previous science teacher was much better about preparing hands on stuff, but she got burnt out and quit after a few years.
If you really want to teach science in a manor that would engage kids, you need some exceptional teachers. Short of that, building some flexibility into the schedule might help. Give science teachers more prep time. Instead of having science 5 days a week for 50 minutes at a shot, make it four days with one of the days being longer for lab time.
To fix our schools, you need to keep congress's nose out of the process, return responsibility to the individual states and local boards of education.
Would you also eliminate federal funding and let states and localities pay for their own schools? Unless you do, the feds are going to put conditions on what they're paying for, and justifiably so. Personally I'd like to see the feds out of many areas, including education, since their participation comes with a lot of strings.
Teachers Unions don't have say in the curriculum. That's set at the State and Federal levels by the government; taking away the unions will just let teachers be paid even less then they are now.
Dale is confused. He's mis-framed his argument, based on the presumption that (American) public schools are intended to spawn entrepreneurs, inventors, and creators. Unfortunately, that's not true, and never was. They're designed to create a competent workforce and serve a lowest common denominator, nothing more. Now, we can argue all week long about whether a "conspiracy" brought about this particular evolution, but it doesn't change the design. The emergence of those entrepreneurs, inventors, and creators is simply left to chance, assuming that the inherent ambition and drive such people possess will speed them along to success in those endeavors, as opposed to nine-to-five employment. That in fact is also substantially true, though there are undoubtedly edge cases of the sort that Dale is fretting about here.
It brings to mind the lyrics of an old Rush song from the Eighties, Mission.
So, the reward for being a great teacher is that they get you out of a classroom and into an office?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Schools were going downhill long before standardized tests sprang into existence. Once the tests were mandated, educators pointed at the tests as the source of failure. Do you suppose that students be allowed to advance without any real scrutiny over their progress? Maybe you think your cardiologist or the pilot of your aircraft don't need tests either.
Tests are fine. I expect that college educated education professionals can produce a testing regimen that is sufficiently rigorous that it becomes quite impossible to "teach to the test."
You went to school on what happened to be a testing day and were shocked that all the kids were taking a test? Go back on a more normal day and get back to us.
Editors: Seriously?
What you think that the Teacher's Unions don't give campaign contributions to State and Federal office holders so that they get a say as to who is appointed to the groups that make the curriculum decisions.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
At least here in California (your state may be different) the CTA (California Teachers Association which is the largest teachers union in California) is *very* powerful in state politics. Per wikipedia:
"The CTA is the most influential spender in California politics, spending more money on politicians and to influence California voters than Chevron, AT&T, Philip Morris and Western States Petroleum Association combined"
So yeah, if you don't think teacher unions don't influence politics here you're not paying attention.
Students sit passively, expected to absorb all the content that is thrown at them without much context. The context that's missing is the real world."
Right. So what is Calculus good for again?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
You can't possibly provide students with hands-on experience. Hands-on experience in anything may lead to:
* Possible risk of injury (sue-happy paranoid America) .00000000000000001 kiloton incindiary device. We can't risk that. Won't someone think of the children?
* Possible smuggling of drug manufacturing materials (again, sue-happy paranoid America)
* Only ter'rists would want to build a rocket
* Only ter-rists work with chemistry kits
* The noise from a rocket might "offend" someone somewhere (sue-happy pussified America)
* The rocket is a dual-purpose vehicle. Sure, it may have academic and even fun value, but it might also be used to deliver a
* It is important to teach children that it is better to be safe than to have an interesting life with some element of risk involved.
Let's reference a chain email that I'm sure everyone has seen by now (and I never checked Snopes to see if it is really originated from Jay Leno), but it is well worth repeating anyhow:
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Because the schools are too afraid the parents will sue them if someone breaks an arm horsing around or gets a splinter on the jungle gym.
I agree whole heartedly that our school's lack of hands on learning is screwing our kids education. But the system also won't let them be kids for fear of some helicopter parent suing when little Joey something childish and gets himself hurt. It wouldn't surprise me if some teachers are too afraid to do experiments in class for fear of a child doing something lawsuit worthy.
Lastly: exercise helps people think and be happy and lets the children vent some much needed energy in order to be able to concentrate. In my opinion, the school system sets children up for failure.
Yes.
Where /. pretends it knows anything about education.
Home schooling is for parents who's religious views are so extreme that they cannot integrate with normal society.
What a shame such bigotry and ignorance has become so prevalent, and appears at all on Slashdot...
There is a whole wing of homschooling entirely unrelated to religion. Look up "John Holt".
When I was home schooled (up until college) I also went to many group events with a number of kids who were home schooled by parents who were very religious. That did not stop them from learning anything at all. They all grew up normal and well educated - better educated and more self-confident than the kids who went to public school.
Frankly from what I saw how religious your parents are has no relation at all to how religious the kids are. Some of the kids from non-relgious parents ended up being very religious, some of the kids from religious parents eventually dropped religion altogether.
Every person finds their own path.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My wife isn't really cut out for it, and I'm cut out for making a nice income.
That is a problem, it takes a lot of commitment and work and as you say some parents may simply not be able to do it.
It sounds like you have as good an arrangement for your kids as you can, hopefully you find the public schools where you are going decent... I know there are some (although simply being in a higher income city is no guarantee).
Good luck and I hope your kid maintains his interest in science.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Please revert to what ever was being done in the 30s 40s and 50s as it clearly worked. Every thing since has been BS, including the article mentioned here. Every attempt to "improve" in the name of "doing something" has only served to lessen the abilities of students. Please stop breaking things.
Testing is about verifing the method you chose is teaching children. It is about verifing that children have learned what you tought them. It is about seperating ignorant children from educated children. It is basic scientific method stuff. The summary of this article is stupid. Of course no learning is going on test day. But even if we switch to have children build rockets we still need to test them. If we don't test them we don't know if we are making progress or waisting time and money.
in asia it's all about the test and tech the test.
Look, learning is doing something you haven't done before, which takes a great deal of effort. If the new information is in conflict with what the person knows, the mind resists. On top of that, schools by and large impose an organization structure that tell kids what to do and regardless of what you do, there is no immediate pay off in lessons learned in language, arithmetic or science for quite some time.
No one really finds being told what to for 8 hours a day fun, especially when there is no immediate pay off in the end. Stop trying to make school fun. You are doing it wrong.
Go fix the family structure, get kids to obey their parents and make sure they understand kids are taught at home and in school, consistently, that doing well in school is a moral obligation to the family. Let that hang over their heads. Shame and guilt work.
I'm not sure why more people don't look into the Montessorri method. My wife actually got me interested enough to read about it, and it sounds like a much better method. The lessons may be specifically what the OP was mentioning, but the sense of "doing, not memorizing" seems to be the same!
no thank you. kids today don't need to learn how to shoot or how to blow shit up. they need to learn hygiene, nutrition, cooking, basic math skills so they don't get screwed at the store, and sex ed so they'll stop making so many goddamned babies. it wouldn't hurt them to understand how using credit cards is a great way to join the lower classes by indenturing yourself to debt, and maybe some history and civics lessons to understand how your vote doesn't count and won't be counted by electronic voting machines, but that's ok, they were probably going to vote for the GOP anyway because it's just so easy to listen to the pablum from Fox News and consider that the extent of all they need to know about domestic and foreign affairs.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I would have to agree with the context thing. I have lately been going through universities' research programs to find something to apply to. I look at the available projects and they don't seem to intrigue me, they all seem to be about the solutions and not the problems. But just two weeks ago I wanted to do something and I am still coding on it frantically. And the problem has been turned into something much more boring than the research that I have been looking at, but I still want to do it.
It says everything that there was truly a time where an A could be trusted to really be an A
It was always about teaching blind obedience to authority. Finland has a much better education system.
One of the first lessons in your first year of science in high school (aged 13 at the time I think?) - What happens when you light a balloon filled with pure H2 vs a balloon with a 2H2 to O2 mix. The balloons are lit by volunteer students (which due to peer pressure are almost always the most squeamish or easily frightened girls) using a candle taped onto a meter ruler, taped onto another meter ruler.
From anywhere in the school you can hear a very quiet "poof" as the H2 goes... wait one minute.. hear the 2H2+O2 "BOOM" followed by excited screams. It's like listening to interest in science being born.
Some very brilliant and creative people do not test well. To tailor teaching to test results will be a huge disservice to such people. However, it does allow some really poor teachers to continue in that profession.
The theory is that you are put into a position where you can influence the policies of the teachers below you. So long as you don't fall victim to the Peter Principle and can actually do the job (see the other guy's reply for a link) this is supposed to be optimum.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This is today's news, released as "Popular senior denied diploma because of too much cheering"
http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/popular-senior-denied-diploma-because-of-too-much-cheering
The sad part is the kid of color can hardly read the reason for his denial.
This kid's apparently a football star, the very example used in the 80's to better the education system.
Whatever is being done now isn't working. Learning by making is sure worth a try in some areas.
We tested elastic collisions and momentum using steel pucks hovering on air cushions that would periodically spark down through the base and leave marks on a piece of paper. Fun stuff. Also ballistics with launch ramps and ball bearings, powered wave table machines, lots of good stuff.
That is absolutely what is missing from today's education: hands-on, fun, engaging application of principles to reality. Want to teach hydrodynamics? Build a miniature dam. Teach them the knowledge while you're doing something real with it.
But I'll go one farther than this guy: throw entrepreneurship into the mix. Teach kids how to start businesses and do things on their own, with no starting capital. Teach them how to scrounge and improvise and. solve. problems. Nobody, nowhere, now, teaches that. If you've ever been to a Maker's Faire, you know how much brilliance and creativity are out there in America still, and if we could spread that culture to our schools our economy and society would take a quantum leap in the next ten years.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Public charter school in Las Vegas (not usually known for education!) that is all about experiential learning.
http://www.ekacademy.org/
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Yet another article about how all standardized tests are evil, written by someone who knows nothing about testing. He saw a test question he didn't like and now he is an expert on tests. Furthermore he exaggerates by acting as though every day is spent on tests and they never get any hands-on learning.
The fact that the guy couldn't get the example test answer shows he doesn't have the reading comprehension to write for a major magazine like Slate. The correct answer (C) is almost *word-for-word* part of the instructions for the test question! Furthermore, if you have ever used a microscope, you should already know the answer.
Now, with that said, let me grant him this one point: the example question actually doesn't belong on a science test. It is a reading comprehension question, not a science question. It gives someone instructions, then asks them a question about the instructions in order to tell if they can comprehend what they read. These are good questions, but not science questions. If it was a science question, then they shouldn't even include the microscope instructions - this is something you should just know before using one. Don't let someone use your microscope unless they know this. They either learn it the hard way by breaking a slide, or the easy way by following the instructions. They probably added the instructions because people like him complained it was impossible to answer the question without them.
The author doesn't know anything about testing:
Nearly 60 percent of kids do not give the correct response. This is what test designers want. As an educator once told me, if the question was such that everyone got the right answer, then it wouldn’t be a good question
That educator knows what he is talking about. Would the author prefer questions that everyone gets right? Or questions that everyone gets wrong? Neither is useful in a test. One of the key attributes of a test question is the discrimination. A question with high discrimination is one where people who know the material tend to get it right, and people who do not know the material tend to get it wrong. That means the question is not easily guessable, and is not confusing. A question with low discrimination is one that is easily guessable, and everyone gets it right. You don't want those.
Kids should be learning and building. That's great, no one disagrees. Once they are done their learning, how will you know which ones actually learned the principals of rocketry and which ones didn't? Who learned how to use a microscope and who didn't? You have to give them a test. A subjective judgement of their rocket project is not sufficient.
Standardized tests tell you which students are learning, which teachers are doing well, which schools, which districts. This information is what determines if a student needs help, or if a school needs help, or if a teacher is cheating. Some standardized tests are better than others. I wish I could go to work and just build fun things. But sometimes I need to write a document, and sometimes I have to make a project schedule, and sometimes I need to attend a review. Those things are a necessary part of life. I wonder if the author has children. If so, I hope he pays attention to his children's tests and report cards. Home buyers who have children look at the local standardized test scores when buying a house.
But there are a lot of scientific jobs that use it fairly regularly.
My favorite were the rate-of-change questions:
You have a ladder leaning up against a house, the bottom starts to slide out away from the house. Assuming a certain amount of resistance due to friction, and a man halfway up the ladder, give a formula for the position of the man with time.
Every so often we get articles on Slashdot where some Engineer/IT guy/Progammer thinks he knows best and recommends adding more "nerd stuff" like LInux or model rockets or RPG's in education. Then all of Slashdot hops on the "Wow, I loved model rockets....this is a great idea" bandwagon.
Most kids, aren't nerds. And while we might love to see our pet hobbies in schools. a la "All kids should learn Python!", this is no different from a concert Pianist saying "all kids should study piano because it makes them smarter"
And lets not forget class differences...model rockets is one of those usual upper middle class son of an engineer" hobbies we see so many Slashdotters have. It's like all those articles where Slashdotters reminisce about their C64's and they don't even realize that most people "didn't" have a home computer in the 80's. Even the consoles of that time had less household penetration of today.
So no, turning every school into a Slashdotters affluent suburban school with rocketry and computer clubs, isn't the solution, even if they mean well.
Yeah, I love this.
Sit in school for 13 years, learn lots of stuff so you could potentially do / expand into many jobs out there, use none of it.
Let people get hands on experience on the stuff they love, so they can expand into. Have your basic academics in school and allow students to
pick one advanced academic that provides hands on training on the things they love. Be it rockets and physics, or chemistry and so on.
Plus it could be practical too. Like having students who have been taught how to repair computers be allowed to volunteer for experience with the local school boards or city itself, lessons the need on paid trades, gives students training / hands on experience.
It would be great for carpenters, metal workers, anyone interested in mechanics, and so on.
I became a computer tech. I work in IT. I don't care about poetry. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be available and encouraged, but let kids do what they love, they'll learn better.
All this infighting about local or federal control or teaching to the test or teaching hands on is missing the point. The problem of education is a cultural one. We spend more money per student then any other country but we don't have the highest of anything expect number of Teachers we pump out. Make education important and attractive and win the culture war and you will start seeing better educated people start coming out the far end of the education system in a few years.
Maybe they need to spend a lil more on Reading Comprehension, based on your update it seems you got a pretty substandard education in that area.
Did I or OP mention politics? NO
BY and large though they have little input into what gets included in the curriculum. They do advocate for less, so they can have more time to help boost test scores, but the specific subject matter? Nope
If you build enough rockets, eventually the lawyers learn to keep away...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The "test" especially college entrance has become all important in Japan, China and Korea. The US school system has started down this slippery slope, especially since No Child Left Behind. Asian industries do not create as much intellectual capital as the US, even though they are good and producing goods.
The STAR tests are my poster child for how testing should not be done. I have looked at the 5th grade STAR test. It has questions where not of the answer choices are correct. It has answers where the correct answer is listed as a distractor and graded as an *incorrect* response, because "fifth graders shouldn't know that" -- the simplistic answer is graded correct. $DEITY help the child that actually *knows* some science -- they will not be a top scorer.
That's the theory.
Can't say as I recall any principal at any school I was ever interested in (either the ones I went to, or the ones my children went to) every having any real influence on their teachers.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm a firm believer in hands-on learning. I believe it provides essential context and motivation. I believe creative context is sorely lacking in our schools, and I believe testing dogma is part of the problem. Having said that, the example in the article does not illustrate the problem.
The test question in the article was meant to test reading comprehension, not microscope use. Test takers were meant to answer the question based on the reading sample. A closer look at the reading sample and the available answers reveals a clear answer based on fundamental reading comprehension, regardless of prior experience with a microscope. That's the beauty of reading! We can comprehend things outside our personal experience.
From the text: "To avoid crushing the glass slide when focusing, begin with the lens close to the specimen and gradually back off to focus."
From the answers: "C. To avoid breaking the glass slide when adjusting focus."
I would contend that reading comprehension is important in its own right, and can be just as critical to creative endeavor as hands-on experience. In addition to the majority of students failing to comprehend the reading sample, the author of the article also either skimmed or failed to comprehened the material. The author not only had difficulty selecting the "correct" answer, but also had difficulty grasping the nature of the question.
I absolutely agree with the spirit of the article. Abstract criticial thinking, literacy, and numeracy can be learned much more effectively when balanced by and integrated with a practical curriculum focused on creativity.
Sometimes, though, we need to be able to step beyond our personal experience, and reading comprehension is a huge part of that. If you need an example of hands-on stupidity, look no further than Congress. Chances are many of them would miss the microscope question too, with the answer right there all along on the page in front of them.
But the OTHER home schooling wing is definitely about not teaching and is anti-educational.
I already mentioned in my previous message that is incorrect. The people who are teaching for religious reasons produced just as good an education in all of the kids I saw, and that was much better than the kids at the local school had. It's simply false to think that because someone disagrees with morals prevalent in schools that they cannot deliver as good an education.
The real thing you are not realizing here is, the public schools have FAR more a doctrine they are teaching to than any religious homeschooler.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
study-experiment-test-learn applies to the way we teach just as much as it applies to the way we learn. Fully agree, it's not very accurate, but imperfect does not mean useless and it's the only practical measure we have. Of course people who failed to commit the scientific method to memory through rote learning may disagree.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Launches at Moffett Field are limited to G engines with a max altitude of 1000 feet with a limit of 350 people on the field at a time. That's not even one single high school grade level worth of students for most San Jose/Bay Area high schools. If they want to get away from those limits (M class, 15,000 foot ceiling), then they have to go all the way out to Snow Ranch, which is East of Stockton, about 130 miles out of town and only in the fall.
There's basically no other place you can launch in the Bay Area.
I do think, however, that the author of the article drank the Fleming VARK model kinesthetic learning koolaide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Fleming.27s_VAK.2FVARK_model, and maybe needs to back up a bit.
-- Terry
Leonardo da Vinci defended his own lack of formal education by saying "They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their masters."
This is why we are educating our children using "The Da Vinci Road: Observation and the Art of Learning" method, which is based on experience. Everything that we really know is from observation - not dogmas. But most modern day education has been reduced to just that: dogma.
Who fucking cares. They won't get a job when they're older than 28.
A lot of the "boring science" is politically correct trash that is conclusory, untested and non-factual in nature like CAGW rather than fundamental discipline sciences like biology, chemistry and physics. Garbage in...
Whereas visual demos and labs can be exciting, to create a sense of participation and wonder that propels a hunger to learn more.
Sometimes homeschooling is for parents whose views are so extreme that they want their kids to stay alive. Drive-by shootings by druggie-dealer kids was a deadly reality during my kid's public high school years. I remember when some after school events were disrupted in the days following a 9th grade girl getting whacked.
Oh wait I graduated yesterday. Fucking shit, thank you life.
Provided those kids know where their dicks are, which most of the rest of the world thinks that it requires studying and taking tests rather than growing up with a sense of self entitlement.
Students sit passively, expected to absorb all the content that is thrown at them without much context. The context that's missing is the real world.
This is such bullshit. If students get bored, why not teach them something basic, like adding fractions? None know how to do this when they graduate high school anyway.
Mr. Dougherty clings to the belief that the purpose of government starter prisons is to teach children to think. This is not, and has never been their purpose. They do not reward knowledge or thought, let alone creativity. They reward docility, encourage bullying, and seek above all to quell every child's desire to learn. Once this desire has been destroyed, they either become productive drones or parasites, but as long as they don't challenge the power of the jailers, they're not a problem.
"Schools seem to have forgotten that students learn best when they are engaged;"
Schools have not forgotten, the administration has.
Well. Initially I thought that this article is about Palestinian kids which are expected to construct rockets instead of attending the school.
Playing angry birds is very boring too, seems kids do not have problem with that.
I'm all for this because I was never a good test-taker. Fortunately, I was encouraged by my high-school physics teacher (who ironically had a PhD in nuclear chemistry) to be an "experimentalist". The real world rarely operates like a two-hour, make-or-break, regurgitate everything from memory test. You almost always have access to reference material. And the real world is and should be interested in practical results. That being said, the team environment enables slackers to get credit for other people's work. A colleague was recently an adviser for a FIRST robotics competition. He confirmed that there were two or three kids who did all the work and the rest just farted around. So, my question is, how do you ensure that the kids who really accomplish stuff get the grades, accolades, and scholarships that they deserve and the coattail riders don't?
Schools seem to have forgotten that students learn best when they are engaged
No, they haven't but they're mandated by law to administer these tests and the law then uses the results of these tests to justify firings and closings. If you put a piece of cheese into a maze and deposit a very hungry mouse at the start of the maze, are you surprised when they get through it as fast as possible to get to the food? Same goes for underfunded, even adequately funded schools whose staff knows their future rests upon the test.
Every time you hear a politician demanding new types of accountability and more evidence of outcome in schools, colleges and universities, know that what they're really saying is that they're putting yet another unfunded or underfunded mandate upon the education system. Good educators, and there are plenty out there, Aren't seeking to hide their achievements but every time you agree with the schemes of politicians that give us stuff like "No Child Left Behind" you add a new standardized test (created and assessed by a for-profit institute that'll also sell your schools the needed textbooks and prep materials to ensure student success).
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
Two things are big drivers behind the disappearance of any kind of hands-on learning experiences.
(1) School district budgets are often squeezed and when they are the "expensive" programs are dropped. Expensive meaning anything that requires more infrastructure than desks and chalkboards. Once a program is dropped it is much harder to reinstate in the fat times. The exception is usually athletics, but that is a politically driven decision.
(2) The other issue is fear of lawsuits. Rocket building would give the worried district superintendent a coronary. There are so many hazards when kids are allowed to use real tools and instruments. It only takes one or two scared members of a decision making body to scare the rest of the group with visions of evil lawyers and an image of a kid with a screwdriver in his eye, plus see (1).
Of course there are the other thousand tiny (and large) cuts that keep anything fun out of the curriculum.
My local school board is a long way past this. I think it's mostly that they just don't value education, much less knowledge. They are closing schools and firing teachers.
I wish I had more solutions. I'd like to hear more solutions.
I mean this is a serious question.
For one, those kinds f people are threatening to about half of the population even before they open their open . mouths. Just their demeanor pisses people off.
Then there's the threat people feel when the new generation "gets away" from them. There are whole ethnic segments of society that specifically HATE the idea of their kids being smarter , more accomplished, more knowledgeable than they are.
Three, this is a PITA to the existing educational structure . It's not like hands on learning and experimentation are somehow new ideas in education. It's that education , at least beyond high school is primarily a business with a business model it's not going to willingly disrupt.
The only revolution in education that's going to occur is the revolution of defection. Too many players with too much to lose are in charge of what education is. We need students and their parents to defect from the system and create alternative educational environments . Never mind reforming the existing ones.
I agree with this completely, I think the board of education should take note of this thread, does anyone know anyone in the system who can take action?