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Grass in shade
In article , Charlie wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 14:01:48 +0000 (UTC), enigma wrote: i enjoy having a child that feels competent & helpful. NCLB is about the stupidest thing to ever hit education. school board meetings here make me ill, & feel so sad for the poor kids in the local school. those are the next generation, folks. why are we teaching them so poorly? lee Joe Bageant hits upon this in a recent series of lectures. This article, I believe, explains why the system of education has become as it is. It is by design, imnsho. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture...et_corporation s_and_media_rob_our_souls_--_it%27s_time_to_do_something_meaningful/ Charlie 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. -- - 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 |
#2
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Grass in shade
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 |
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