Schooling system

[Jenadots]

Having been both teacher and student, I agree with Links.  No one can pour the knowledge or understanding into another person's head.

We are in an era of test madness, at least in the states.  When I was a teenager, the test scores meant what I had learned.  Today, it is taken as a measure of what the teachers have taught.  Just because a student sits in a classroom doesn't mean he or she is engaging in learning.  Yes, it is the teacher's job to grab their attention and interest.  However, a student must be in a teachable frame of mind.

Given some students circumstances or personal attitudes, that is often a problem.  

Its the horse to water problem: can you make the horse drink?  Can you make (force) the student to learn?  No, of course not.

So what is the answer?  A student must take responsibility for their own learning, their own knowledge and skills, their own interests in knowing something.  It is not enough to be in class for 50 minutes.  Time and effort has to be put towards the learning after class -- something I find many teenagers are unwilling to do.  They lack the diligence to become scholars.  They give up to easily.  If it is hard to learn, too many of them simply say it is too hard and give up.

Teaching anything -- really teaching -- is very difficult in our society of instant gratification and a desire for instant results.

We also have a tendency now, to want teachers and schools to guarantee outcomes.  I can't guarantee a student is going to be a better reader if they never pick up a book and do it.  Yet, as a teacher, I am told it is my vault if a student is a poor reader.  

Students who work at learning make great strides in their skills and knowlege.  Those who do little on their own end up just marking time.

Fortunately, my new group of World Lit students are quite interested in reading the books on my list and I think it will be a good year for me, and for them.  
 

[Links Shadow]

quote:Originally posted by timeless

When I use to solve problems at university I frequently solved differently than the teacher had.  This raised some eyebrows and one master's student who marked my lab assignments gave me zero three times in a row even though I had the correct answer.  I ended up having to go to the professor who then gave me bonus marks.

That sounds so much like my time in high school math courses.  I am sort of an "innovator" when it comes to math, I find my own ways to arrive at the answer, sometimes it is much longer others it is by far shorter than the methods commonly taught.  Up until my senior year, I would alway have my work marked incorrect despite the work that showed how I got to the correct answer.  Finally, senior year I had a teacher who absolutely loved math, she would use calculus in her everyday life to solve problems.  One example she gave us is she figured out how many christmas lights would be needed to completely cover the roof of her house one year, using derivatives and integrals.  I thought this was kind of funny being as how simple geometry would have been enough, but that is how much she loved math.  Anyway, back on to what I was saying.  When I started her class after a few assignments she started writing little notes on my work saying things like, "interesting" or "how did you come up with that?"  She would always give me high marks for giving her something fresh to grade, instead of the classic mundane methods that everyone used.  I have always been good with math but never really enjoyed doing it because all the methods are set in stone so to speak.  She was the first teacher I had who was willing to see unorthodox ways of doing things.  She taught me to love math because the rules are not as rigid as people like to think.

I realize this has little to do with my original post but I felt like saying that teachers have the capacity to affect great change, but the problem is that both the student and the teacher need to understand each other and have some leeway in what they teach and not conform to the demands of society so much.  In my opinion that is one of the biggest problems with society today, is that no one wants to let down anyone else.  We want to make everyone happy, but that just isn't possible.  I am going to close with a quote which I think fits nicely into this idea.

(When asked the question:  What is the key to success?)

"I don't know the key to success, but I do know that the key to failure is trying to please everyone."
-Bill Cosby, Comedian

Respectfully,
Link's Shadow

[Jenadots]

Dear Timeless, same thing is happening in the states with directed (scripted) instruction, no recess for the grade school kids, and test mania.  

Some of my favorite memories of grade school are of the games we played at recess.  It serves a good purpose.  At a time when the kids bodies are reved up for exercise, we expect then to sit still for hours on end.  My school district reduced HS gym classes from four years to 2 hours in a time when everyone is complaining about how fat our kids have gotten.  Yes, the old gym classes were awful -- they can design better ones -- anything to get the gets moving and get a rest from sitting behind a desk.  

Last year I had 2 classes of the school's "misfits" -- the students from hell.  Not one of them was stupid, they just didn't do well in the traditional learning situation.  Once they knew I understood that, they stopped kicking and screaming and fighting with me and each other long enough for me to actually teach them something, catch them up on their credits and get most of them into some kind of community college.  Only one of the 55 has had to return this fall to finish high school and only two are in jail, again.

To do it, I had to break every teaching rule, throw out the usual curriculum, learn new teaching tricks, and, at times, out-grump them all.  They were a stressful bunch to say the least.  Most teachers do not have principals that will give them that leeway or even can give them that leeway.  

3 of them stopped in for a visit yesterday.  One of them told me about how hard his summer job was -- moving old bricks and breaking them up for disposal. It was hot, sweaty, and dirty.  I said good - what did you learn from it?  He certainly learned he is not going to drop out of school again and earn only minimum wage for such hard work.  

He is quite a gifted cartoonist and a total misfit in the usual school situation.  Convincing him that he can do something with it was the hard part.  I think he will finish art school.  The other two have signed up for some classes and are working part time.

In our attempts to make our kids smarter, in many ways we have stifled the kids who need the most freedom to be eccentric and different.  The rest we are stressing out with all the standardized tests that determine which college they will get into.  

The days of leisurely teaching are long gone.  No time to talk with students, no time to be a creative teacher as we are told to get through the prescribed curriculum no matter what.  It is all high stakes testing in almost every school district in the USA.  

I am sure it makes some of them better students.  But not many.

These things do change and somewhere there is a middle ground that will eventually become the norm.  At least I hope so.  

Finally, I hope every parent here who has a kid in grade school fights for the "RIGHT TO RECESS" and summer vacations.  Kids need that as much as they need good books to read, science labs, and history lessons.

[Links Shadow]

I have to say that I am really irritated with people continually bashing the education systems around the world.  Granted I understand that there are problems with them but the blame for ignorance should not fall on the institution, instead in my opinion it should fall to those students that do not apply themselves any more than what is required.  Every student is capable of learning as much as they want with or without school.  The public education systems have been created to cater to the lowest level of students so that everyone has access to an education.  If you want to learn more, the responsibility comes to you.  I believe that this is a good way to have the system work as it teaches those willing to learn that you must take some initiative in order to better yourself instead of depending on someone else.  Basically what I am trying to get at is before you start placing blame on someone else or some other group of people for not teaching you.  Look at the amount of time and effort you have put into learning, odds are it is not all that much.  You are your greatest teacher, you know how you learn best and you have virtually unlimited resources in the world today.  Go out and teach yourself something instead of relying on others, that is a sad way to exist in my opinion.

Respectfully,
Link's Shadow