Today's Education

[Stark]

If 'graduating' is desirable, how does making a graduation worthless by lowering the bar help? I guess this is a symptom of shallow oversight.

[Civil War Man]

That study only showed that firstborns tend to be skeptics who tend to oppose new ideas. I don't see what that has to do with inferior critical thinking skills; if anything, people with weak critical thinking skills are more likely to accept every new idea that comes along, not less.

True. I guess I'm too used to the people with low critical thinking skills being people like fundamentalists. The kind of lack of critical thinking that makes a person unable to question what they've been brought up to believe.

[Alan Bolte]

Yes, fine, we have this conversation every few months. Anyone have something implementable this time around, rather than just a bitchfest?

[CmdrWilkens]

Yes, fine, we have this conversation every few months. Anyone have something implementable this time around, rather than just a bitchfest?

Rework the Primary school education system to focus more teacher resources there on the theory that if you can motivate students early on you won't have to do as much work later. Moreover focusing resources on primary education means that you can start bringing back the concept of "flunking" to those grades. Get teachers in elementary schools the resources and the support neccessarry to start seperating the class into thsoe who can learn and those who need help then give help to those who need it. The concept is to reduce testing burdens (maybe a gateway test at the end of Elementary, Middle, and High schools just to make sure the teachers aren't passing along social promotions).

What there needs to definately be is some sort of shield for teachers when they do flunk students, a system which protects teachers from parents who think that their child should be moving on even when the facts don't support that idea. At the same time there needs to be a serious reconsideration of how teacher assignment works specifically in regards to getting teachers who actually understand subjects fully to teach in those areas. If neccessarry schools (paticualrly secondary schools) should look to people without traditional qualification but who, nonetheless, can teach classes that would free up full time educators for other subjects (I'm thinking in terms of maybe getting a local software company guy to teach three classes a week on Basic somewhat like how community colelges have a wholelot of part time professors who only do one or maybe two classes). Moreover I'd like to see high school classes structured more like colege classes in the MWF and TTh style. Start offering course catalogs that require students to actually think about what they want to learn, cripes when my high school went to a similair program I think it made me actually work my damn schedule to get what I wanted and in turn I think that made me happier with my classes because I had an investment in getting them AND it better prepares students for post-secondary education and the idea of setting up your courses there.

Also focus on alternatives to normal secondary education. In that I mean the official goal of every high school I've ever heard of is to prepare kids to go to college. However we all know or should know that not everyone is suited for college, the number of freshman who leave should be telling enough on that matter. So we need some alternative and I think we need to start telling people that if your skill set and tempermant isn't suited to colelge than its OK. We need to open up alternative fields of professional education outside of post-secondary goals. Yup vocational education, it ain't an evil word and we should encourage such programs to be adopted all over as an alternative to the traditional route of education because maybe just maybe we can still produce an educated class of working professionals in the traditional crafstman professions.

Would you like more proposals or are you done adding nothing to the thread?

[Darth Wong]

I feel I should expand on the "lazy teacher" comment. There are lazy people in every profession. There is no way to keep lazy people out of any profession because laziness is such a common human trait. However, in most professions laziness is limited by numerous corrective mechanisms, such as productivity assessment and the threat of firing. In the case of teaching, however, the unions have largely made it impossible to fire or discipline a teacher for not working hard (or at all, in some cases), and there is no such thing as productivity assessment; at best, they try to measure performance based on the kids' performance on standard tests, which is no substitute. Or worse yet, they look at pass/fail rates, thus encouraging teachers to pass marginal kids.

And it's not like a fruit-picking operation where an industrious person can make up for a lazy person; just one lazy teacher can seriously fuck up all of the kids who go through his or her class, for years. Especially in the early years, each year contains crucial learning steps, and a shitty teacher can essentially mean an almost totally wasted year: a year that the child will never really get back, and which can set him back substantially unless the parents take extraordinary corrective measures.

[Edi]

And it's not like a fruit-picking operation where an industrious person can make up for a lazy person; just one lazy teacher can seriously fuck up all of the kids who go through his or her class, for years. Especially in the early years, each year contains crucial learning steps, and a shitty teacher can essentially mean an almost totally wasted year: a year that the child will never really get back, and which can set him back substantially unless the parents take extraordinary corrective measures.

This is what's happening to the people in my class who chose the software development program for their studies. They've assigned a complete incompetent to teach the two courses that are the foundational building blocks of the whole damned program, and half the people have already fallen off the wagon or are hanging on by their fingernails. The only ones who haven't suffered much are those who already knew the stuff and are just sitting the course to get the grades. I'm getting by with what I learned from competent teachers years ago. I'm in the tech support branch anyway, so just dropping the software courses wouldn't really affect me at all, but the others (about 75% of the class) who opted for the software side instead of networks and support are fucked up the arse without lube and hard. Had a talk with the headmaster today, and she said she'll see what she can do to mitigate the disaster these classes are shaping out to be, but the options are limited.

Thing is, the guy who teaches it is a skilled programmer. He just doesn't have the first clue about anything related to teaching and is completely unable to understand any answers that are not verbatim quotes of his own thoughts. He also does not understand how and why some students can find some concepts difficult, never mind explain them.

Edi

[Zero]

If I were to make any reforms to education, I would begin primary education earlier. Children have a fantastic capacity for learning up to the age of 5 or so.. it's said we learn the majority of all things well ever know in those years. Why not take advantage of that? Teach children to read, write, do math, and perhaps even utilize critical thinking tools at very young ages, and they'll maintain these skills throughout their entire lives.

Of course, most people simply don't want this. We want our children to be having fun, not learning. Of course, it's not like these two are completely apart from each other. I just find it odd that we start our education system the year after we lose our greatest capacity for learning.

[Arrow]

Oh, lets not forget internal school politics, either. I had an excellent teacher for AP European History in high school. The AP test are graded 1 through 5, with 5 being the best, and usually worth two classes's worth of credits in college. This teacher prep us so well that half the class 5s and no one got less than a 3 (worth a couple of college credits). But, because he pissed off someone on the administrative staff, the AP class was yanked from him the next year and given to some new teacher. The new guy did so poorly at teaching that almost all the class failed the AP test.