Education Part ll

[cwes99_03]

Rocky's point is the old addage that you can teach a man to fish, or you can give him a fish.

 

You can give the kids the answers and beat it into them. But then when they hit the real world they are not capable of free thought. You've created a yes man, (i did however point out earlier that yes-men serve a purpose in our society).

 

Dont however rule out learning how to take tests. I can teach you how to find the answers to your own questions. But if I don't teach you how to read someone's question, so as to find the answer they are looking for, then I haven't made you well-rounded.

[cwes99_03]

I, for one, think that this is a terrible idea. While it may produce adults who know more, it will not produce more functional adults. It is more important for an adult to function well within society than to be knowledgable. The social aspect of schooling is a very important one, on par with the instructional time.

 

Yes, but let's take a look at what social activities kids are learning in school.

1) How to attend parties where you get as drunk as you can, have an orgy, then get behind a wheel and run from the cops when they arive.

2) How to bully, beat-up, degrade other people because of their differences.

3) How to be popular.

4) How to be fashionable.

5) How to pass your classes by sleeping with the teacher.

 

 

Ok, so there are some good things. I did learn a whole lot by being pushed around, and it did make me a stronger person. However, I don't think that one-on-one teaching is a bad thing. The best way is to make class sizes small, but not to eliminate them all together, and to do so in a very structured manner.

 

That is true to a degree, but a great teacher will reach the right students, I've seen it happen many times. Even when the parents don't care much for the educational system, and don't support it at home, if a teacher can connect with a student and get that student's respect, they can do an awful lot.

 

How do you know whether a kid is the "right" student? Aren't all kids the "right" student, waiting to be found by the right teacher? Don't all kids have the aptitude.

 

No. There should NOT be standardization, because students aren't standard, they're people. Standardization is a terrible, terrible idea because it reduces students to numbers, to grades, to pass/fail. Examples

 

1. My school used to allow students to stay after school for any reason, including just to hang out. We were always good and courteous, cleaned up after ourselves, never bothered anybody or broke school property. But New Jersey passed laws banning that, and (this really bothers me) forcing the school to install cameras in all the hallways. It makes the school much less friendly, and is not conducive to a good learning environment.

 

2. I had a friend who had to miss the High School Proficiency Assessment for math. Because of the standardization, she had to take remedial math. She is also enrolled in AP Calculus. Because of the standardization, the teachers' and administrators' hands were tied, even though she was obviously qualified in mathematics.

 

Sorry for focusing on you Dave, but you make a lot of strong points that I've heard before, so I wanted to address them. First let me thank you for making these points. I have a feeling a lot of other people thought of them but didn't post about their thoughts. They are persuasive, but not necessarily fully encompassing.

 

The standards would not be that every student be treated identically. The standard would be that every school adopt the same methods. Those methods may state how certain types of students be treated, but every school throughout the nation would have to do it that way. DONT jump to the conclusion that those standards will be bad. Your bad experience with standards does not mean that standardization is bad. It means that the standards created for those particular cases needed to be reviewed.

Might I ask why your friend had to miss the test? Might I ask why would it be a bad idea for all schools to adopt a standard like your school had of letting kids hang out at the school after class?

If you tell me that each school is different and that's why you can't have standards, you will be using cyclical reasoning. If you make the schools the same, then you can have standards, as is the definition of standardizing the schools (making them the same.)

[Turtle]

You can give the kids the answers and beat it into them. But then when they hit the real world they are not capable of free thought. You've created a yes man, (i did however point out earlier that yes-men serve a purpose in our society).

 

Dont however rule out learning how to take tests. I can teach you how to find the answers to your own questions. But if I don't teach you how to read someone's question, so as to find the answer they are looking for, then I haven't made you well-rounded.

 

___I bolded 'free thought' because I thought it needed clarification. I underlined the underlined passage because I think the scientific method is the penultimate 'how to find'. :hihi:

[cwes99_03]

always a pleasure turtle.

[pgrmdave]

Yes, but let's take a look at what social activities kids are learning in school.

1) How to attend parties where you get as drunk as you can, have an orgy, then get behind a wheel and run from the cops when they arive.

2) How to bully, beat-up, degrade other people because of their differences.

3) How to be popular.

4) How to be fashionable.

5) How to pass your classes by sleeping with the teacher.

 

 

Ok, so there are some good things. I did learn a whole lot by being pushed around, and it did make me a stronger person. However, I don't think that one-on-one teaching is a bad thing. The best way is to make class sizes small, but not to eliminate them all together, and to do so in a very structured manner.

 

 

Perhaps that is some people's experiance in school, but most school age people don't drink, don't have sex, don't commit any crimes, don't bully other people, aren't wildly popular, don't care about being fashionable, and don't sleep with teachers. Yes, that is a stereotype, but it's not true. The fact is that you need to deal with a lot of different people in the workplace, so you need to learn how to do that at some point, and school is the ideal place to learn it because you are younger and more able to learn social habits, and because the ages from 10 - 16 are times when socializing seems very important, so you are more likely to want to learn good social habits.

 

 

How do you know whether a kid is the "right" student? Aren't all kids the "right" student, waiting to be found by the right teacher? Don't all kids have the aptitude.

 

What I meant by this is that the students who need to be reached (the struggling ones) will be reached by the best teachers. There are basically three types of students - those who will learn regardless of the teacher, those who will not learn regardless of the teacher, and those who are in between. The best teachers are able to focus most of their attention on that last group to try and push them into the first group, they give the first group enough time and leeway to learn on their own, and they try to teach the second group the basics while not allowing them to drag down the class. I wasn't implying that only the smarter, or more able students be taught, although I see how it could be taken that way.

 

Might I ask why your friend had to miss the test? Might I ask why would it be a bad idea for all schools to adopt a standard like your school had of letting kids hang out at the school after class?

If you tell me that each school is different and that's why you can't have standards, you will be using cyclical reasoning. If you make the schools the same, then you can have standards, as is the definition of standardizing the schools (making them the same.)

 

My friend was quite ill, and it would have been detrimental to her health, and to those around her had she come in for the test. And I never said that all schools should adopt a standard like my school, in fact, I was trying to say the opposite. Just because something works in one school doesn't mean that it would work in another. Just because something doesn't work in one school doesn't mean that it won't work in another. Standardization doesn't work not because every school is different, but because a school is no more the building than Hypography is the server - a school is a community, made up of people, each of whom is an individual. You cannot standardize individuals, even if you try. Every person may be equal, but they are not all congruent.

[Fishteacher73]

There's been a lot of this thread going on, and I don't have the time at the moment to go through it all.

 

Having been as student and a teacher I have seen a great many of the facits of the US educational system (as well as studied in a European Gymnasium system as well).

 

The first and foremost problem with our educational system is lack of parental involvement. Not only in the accademic aspect, but in the personal lives of kids. Not only through the lack of any support for accademic education, the classroom has also become the place to to have to teach kids inter-personal and character skills. If you have to spend half the class teaching little johnny not to be a jack ***, its a bit hard to get a full lesson on the subject matter in.

 

Next the standardization of education is a massive failure. Schools are now factories in which it had been assigned the teach what facts must be taught and how they will be tested. The whole concept of crittical thinking and anylization has evaporated. We are producing a generation that can pass the standard test (if you go to a good school), yet have no ability to think on their own.

 

Well there's my two cents...maybe i'll get into the thread now.

[lindagarrette]

Schools are now factories in which it had been assigned the teach what facts must be taught and how they will be tested. The whole concept of crittical thinking and anylization has evaporated. We are producing a generation that can pass the standard test (if you go to a good school), yet have no ability to think on their own.

 

Well there's my two cents...maybe i'll get into the thread now.

Good points. Now, how can this situation be improved, realistically?

[questor]

the first step in solving a problem is arriving at a consensus concerning the nature of , and causes of the problem. if this is not done, many conflicting solutions will be proposed by people who may have no expertise in solving problems. this causes experimentation, constantly changing tried and true methods to try ''the latest '' fads promoted by behavioral scientists.

[questor]

an educational institution should be a meritocracy, geared to the highest acheivers rather than to the lowest. the reverse is true today, that is why the schools are failing.

[cwes99_03]

Next the standardization of education is a massive failure. Schools are now factories in which it had been assigned the teach what facts must be taught and how they will be tested. The whole concept of crittical thinking and anylization has evaporated. We are producing a generation that can pass the standard test (if you go to a good school), yet have no ability to think on their own.

 

I'd like to first comment on this part. You and pgrmdave are still making a false reasoning. You assume that things can't be the made the same because they are different, or you assume that critical thinking and analyzation can't be made part of the standard curriculum.

 

I too have been in various teaching/learning environments. I grew up in the smallest public schools in Illinois for elementary and high school kids. I'm talking 16 kids in my class. I've also taught in several public high schools(large and small), middle schools(large and small), grade schools(yes large and small), pre-k classes(well these weren't very large), and have seen the standards each different school had, as well as the behaviour and socialization skills kids develope in these different environs.

 

Develope a standpoint like Rousseau and Plato, that if your plan could be executed perfectly then the school system would be perfect. I think they strayed way out on the left and right sides of the issues, and I think they were doing so rhetorically. However, do so in a non-rhetorical way and ask yourself: what standards would you want to be taught to all school children? What standards would you want to be placed on all teachers, so that they could be qualified to teach? (I think i'm beginning to sound a bit socialistic, but i assure you I am apolitical in all ways, I'm instead a theorist) What standards do you think are necessary to make sure that all teachers are qualified and paid commensurately?

 

I proposed a Bar system for teachers. While I idealize that type of system, I know that even today lawyers abuse the bar (though i blame that on the bars management). Largely though, the bar has the right to disbar such lawyers for their bad conduct.

 

Perhaps that is some people's experiance in school, but most school age people don't drink, don't have sex, don't commit any crimes, don't bully other people, aren't wildly popular, don't care about being fashionable, and don't sleep with teachers. Yes, that is a stereotype, but it's not true. The fact is that you need to deal with a lot of different people in the workplace, so you need to learn how to do that at some point, and school is the ideal place to learn it because you are younger and more able to learn social habits, and because the ages from 10 - 16 are times when socializing seems very important, so you are more likely to want to learn good social habits.

 

I think from my explanation of my experience above you can safely say that my experience is not limited to some experience. The fact is that these things are true. I became priveledged to be aware of these things from working summer jobs with high school kids who came in every monday to talk about the latest parties. I also have the priveledge of knowing the history of classes from several different schools through the 1970s 80s and 90s. (I have quite the large family with over 40 cousins in several states and large municipalities.) While some of these things only happen to less than 5% of students, but other things happen to over 75% of students such as drinking, the truth is that 99% of students know it is happening and learn something from it. That is the type of social teaching occuring in the schools.

[cwes99_03]

an educational institution should be a meritocracy, geared to the highest acheivers rather than to the lowest. the reverse is true today, that is why the schools are failing.

 

You think that leaving 90% of children out of the loop because they didn't achieve some goal, means that they don't warrant merrit?

Again I pose the question, how does one decide whether a student is taught by a great teacher, or left in a class full of kids who don't care about learning because their teacher doesn't care about teaching?

It is like standing in front of a large crowd of people and swinging a gattling gun in front of them, so that only a few are left untouched and then saying those people get to live.

[pgrmdave]

While some of these things only happen to less than 5% of students, but other things happen to over 75% of students such as drinking, the truth is that 99% of students know it is happening and learn something from it.

 

Honestly, many of my friends only learned about using drugs and alcohol from school, very few people in high school use drugs, even if they are a vocal minority. Here are some statistics:

 

30-day use of any illicit drug decreased significantly among 8th-graders, from 9.7 percent in 2003 to 8.4 percent in 2004.

 

30-day use of marijuana was down significantly among 8th-graders, from 7.5 percent in 2003 to 6.4 percent in 2004. Some strengthening of attitudes against marijuana use also occurred among 8th- and 10th-graders.

 

Lifetime use of MDMA (ecstasy) decreased significantly for 10th-graders, from 5.4 percent in 2003 to 4.3 percent in 2004. Some strengthening of attitudes against use was seen among 10th- and 12th-graders. All grades had decreases in the perception of the availability of MDMA.

 

Use decreased significantly among 8th-graders, from 3.9 percent in 2003 to 2.5 percent in 2004 for lifetime use; from 2.5 percent in 2003 to 1.5 percent in 2004 for annual use; and from 1.2 percent in 2003 to 0.6 percent in 2004 for 30-day use.

 

Lifetime use of LSD decreased significantly among 12th-graders, from 5.9 percent in 2003 to 4.6 percent in 2004, continuing the pattern of decreases in LSD use noted in 2002 and 2003.

 

Use of steroids decreased significantly among 8th-graders, from 2.5 percent in 2003 to 1.9 percent in 2004 for lifetime use and from 1.4 percent in 2003 to 1.1 percent in 2004 for annual use. Among 10th-graders, lifetime use decreased significantly, from 3.0 percent in 2003 to 2.4 percent in 2004, continuing the decrease in use among 10th-graders seen in 2003. Steroid use among 12th-graders, however, remained stable at peak levels.

 

A significant increase in use of cocaine other than crack was seen among 10th-graders, from 1.1 percent in 2003 to 1.5 percent in 2004, for 30-day use. An increase in the perception of availability of all forms of cocaine was seen among 12th-graders.

 

Cigarette smoking decreased significantly among 10th-graders, from 43.0 percent in 2003 to 40.7 percent in 2004 for lifetime use and from 4.1 percent in 2003 to 3.3 percent in 2004 for those smoking one-half pack or more per day. The perception of harm from smoking one or more packs per day increased significantly among 8th- and 10th-graders from 2003 to 2004.

 

 

All statistics taken from http://www.nida.nih.gov/Infofacts/HSYouthtrends.html

[CraigD]

This thread appears to contain one consensus -

• Education in the US, and many if not all other countries, needs improvement
  

then split into 2 main camps on how to accomplish this

• Concentrate available educational resources (the best human teachers, facilities, money) on the most promising students (per Plato)
  
• Spread these resources as evenly as possible over all students (per most politicians seeking election, and people who honestly support this expression of the idea of equal opportunity)
  

There follows many detailed proposals for how to improve education, some directed toward one camp, some the other, some equally applicable to either.

 

I’d like to impeach an underlying assumption of both camps: that educational resources are inherently so limited that public policy must decide between these 2 positions.

 

Such an impeachment is closely related to the ideas I presented in ”The pros outweight the cons” in 3799, which are more eloquently described in the fiction and nonfiction of such authors as Charles Stross. Briefly, these “abundance economy” ideas suppose that economies based on scarcity, which historically and currently nearly all are, are not the only or the best, economies possible. It draws also from my personal experience with a “brief, shining moment” of optimism for the future of education, which I describe in post #26

 

Education, I think, is a prime candidate for an “abundance” approach, because the “product” it supplies is, essentially, information, and the cost of information has for more than a decade been decreasing dramatically, due in large to improvements in information technology, primarily electronic.

 

:hihi: Consider the chance of success if a major government or coalition of governments were to throw a substantial fraction of their available financial and human resources into a “Manhattan project” addressing the task of creating a computer-based, displaced education system to meet the requirement that it provide upper 1 percentile-quality education at all grade and higher education levels to effectively 100% of the public. Then, consider the payoff.

 

The analysis, I think, speaks for itself.

[cwes99_03]

What drives the individual student to take these computerized coarses? Will this not lead them to become individuals who don't know how to do anything without a computer? What happens when the lights go out again.

 

No, I think we've already seen the effect of teaching kids via computers. Look at this years high school graduates. Take away their cell-phones, watches, calculators, computers, tvs, and you'll see a bunch of kids literally go crazy. I'm not kidding about this either, I truly think they would go crazy and start riots. But then, I think their parents would be there beside them in those riots. Maybe it is too late to turn back from technology.

[Turtle]

This thread appears to contain one consensus -

• Education in the US, and many if not all other countries, needs improvement
  

then split into 2 main camps on how to accomplish this

[*]Concentrate available educational resources (the best human teachers, facilities, money) on the most promising students (per Plato)

 

___I think Plato is a bit misrepresented here. He believed everyone has value & that they deserve instruction individually tailored to their personal abilities so their highest potential is met. The division of Philospher Kings get to be Philosophe Kings by their merit to the task. They do not have some life of leisure as the title implies, rather they are charged with the responsibility to make the evaluations of persons' (childrens)abilities, then instruct those children accordingly & in every way do the work that others haven't the skill for.

___Plato believes there is no benefit, & in fact a deficet, for society to waste the natural talents & abilities all people have. Whether giving a 'smart' man 'lowly' work or the contrary, it is inefficient. :hihi:

[questor]

in this case a simple aphorism suits this discussion...'' you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. '' all of the advances you can think of will not help those who don't wish to help themselves. we have libraries full of books in almost every town in the USA. anyone who wishes to learn can do it for FREE. people are not now, have never, and never will be equal in their thirst for learning. the bright will learn by themselves, the dull will resist learning. why should we mix these extremes ? Platos classes were quite small and homogenous.

[Turtle]

in this case a simple aphorism suits this discussion...'' you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. '' all of the advances you can think of will not help those who don't wish to help themselves. we have libraries full of books in almost every town in the USA. anyone who wishes to learn can do it for FREE. people are not now, have never, and never will be equal in their thirst for learning. the bright will learn by themselves, the dull will resist learning. why should we mix these extremes ? Platos classes were quite small and homogenous.

 

___It is not the classes he actually conducted under discussion, but rather the system he proposed in the Republic. It is an 'ideal' as such, & as I earlier mentioned it is un-implementable in my opinion; I think Plato held the same opinion. He saw no way to implement it except by means of self-appointed Philospher Kings implementing it by force to start the cycle. Once going, the ideal system then self-perpetuates he believed. The problem then as now lies in choosing the first principle(s). :hihi: