In article
,
Billy wrote:

We are trying to do a cheap fix to a problem that doesn't exist. Even if
our students can't figure out an answer on a standardized exam, they
will have it memorized. Regurgitating the standardized answers on a
standardized exam will make them look smart. Problem is, nobody wants to
memorize. We will go to extremes to avoid the boredom of the rote
memorization of disembodied facts. Upon graduation, most students will
avoid taking another class. If they read, it will mostly be fiction.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...8/21/AR2007082
101045.html

Look, most of us go to work, and we slide through the day on information
that we already know. Students are always confronting the unknown at
least six hours a day, five days a week. A students job is very much
tougher than ours. We expect them to do it even though they are maturing
at different rates and function in different environments.

We should be encouraging kids to study what interests them, because that
is their motivation. It doesn't matter what it is (French doorknobs of
the 16th century, water colors, baking, or kung fu) because once you
learn to learn, you can learn anything. Everything connects to
everything. About a month ago, this newsgroup went through all the
different disciplines that relate to gardening. The list included
algebra, geometry, geology, chemistry, botany, physiology, zoology,
ecology, poetry, planning, tools, ergonomics, . . . The list goes on and
on.

Problem is, they may not have questions about those subjects a
particular student finds interesting on the standardized exams. There is
nothing wrong with our students but there is a whole lot wrong with the
system that they are in.

When those students who haven't been discouraged by our primary and
secondary schools enter college as adults, they face a 60 hour week if
they carry 15 units/semester (3 hours out of class for every hour in
class), and by and large, they do a damn fine job of it, if American
Nobel Prize winners are any indication.

Get off their backs and let them grow up, before we put the screws to
them.
--

I'm sorry. The above is only the pro argument for less structured
learning. Obviously, reports still must be written, read, and critiqued
in a timely manner, so that school isn't just daycare.

I find that time may, again, have passed me by, but as I remember it, at
the age of 12 in France, students took an exam that determined whether
they would be placed on a vocational track or college preparation. As
you might see, this placed an incredible amount of stress on immature
minds and lead to higher levels of suicide among adolescents than in the
U.S. I believe that is true for other European countries as well as
Japan. I don't have the time to dig up the cites that I need for this
argument. Perhaps, someone more knowledgeable in this area than I, can
support or refute my assertions.
--

- Billy
"For the first time in the history of the world, every human being
is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the
moment of conception until death." - Rachel Carson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI29wVQN8Go

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072040.html