Education Part ll

[rockytriton]

I guess we are completely autonomous until religion comes along and gives us thoughts, feelings and morals.

[questor]

do you mean you were raised in a vacumn with no human contact?

[pgrmdave]

Education will not be fixed until a few things happen.

 

We need to acknowledge that not everybody learns the same way, nor at the same speed - I shouldn't be forced to learn slower than I can any more than someone should be forced to learn faster than they can.

 

We need to acknowledge that teachers are more important than administrators - teachers have the most contact with the students and know them better than legislators can ever understand.

 

We need to acknowledge that testing means less than a teacher's recommendation - I am not a number, I am a person, and my teachers can better tell you what I am capable of than my IOWA test scores.

 

We need to acknowledge that different people require different education - my car mechanic doesn't need to speak French nor does a programmer need to know Chinese history, these subjects, while they should be availible, should not be required.

 

However, more than anything else, education hinges on one basic thing - teachers. Nothing else will ever have more of a positive or negative effect than a teacher. Until the we can reliably produce well-educated, engaging, and dedicated teachers, our educational system will lag behind what it should be.

[Turtle]

___Here is an idea not without merit but unimplementable. Stop grouping students together during instruction. One teacher, one student. No peer socializing or peer contact at all. We mean to educate a child for adult life, so any time teahing them to socialize with children or otherwise accommodating that socialism is a waste at least & counterproductive at worst. No class rooms; instruction cubilcles. No two children allowed ever together other than in passing. Teach to live & live to teach. :confused:

[questor]

the most important factor in education is not the teacher, it is the culture . if the culture denigrates the teacher or education itself, it negates any influence the teacher may have. the culture starts with the parent and the society. without discipline, parent participation

and good community support, the teacher has no chance.

[lindagarrette]

___Here is an idea not without merit but unimplementable. Stop grouping students together during instruction. One teacher, one student. No peer socializing or peer contact at all. We mean to educate a child for adult life, so any time teahing them to socialize with children or otherwise accommodating that socialism is a waste at least & counterproductive at worst. No class rooms; instruction cubilcles. No two children allowed ever together other than in passing. Teach to live & live to teach. :confused:

A very effective and trendy technique is to educate the genders separately. It's not very efficient to teach and learn one on one and it is somewhat stifling to both the teacher and student because there is limited interchange of ideas. The next best approach, separating the sexes, gives the teacher an opportunity to concentrate on the interests of one gender and removes the distractions that naturally occur when there's a mix.

[HydrogenBond]

When the US was at the top of the heap in eduation, back in the 50's and 60's, the cirriculum was very fundamental. These basic skills allows students to evolve in any direction. There was also student capital punishment to keep the distractions down to a minimum. In the late 70's through the present many new things were added, including what was (is) called moderm math and the loss of disclipline with teeth. With the change, US education has slowly declined from being at the top of the heap.

 

The modern system is there to create jobs rather than teach students. There are now more admin jobs, more specialization training at an early age, too many electives away from the important fundamentals, too much prosthetic equipment that weakens the logical mind, and too much protection for the disruptive influences. If one went back to basics it would help the students, but could mean a lot of perimenter edu jobs lost.

[questor]

merit should be rewarded. whether for students, teachers or schools, recognize and reward merit. in order to do this, political correctness must be eliminated. this train of thought is antithetical to good education. follow the paths laid out by successful schools. their success all comes from the same roots...merit, personal responsibility, parental participation and discipline. the failure of the NEA makes FEMA look good. this is a liberal teachers union which is constantly trying to reinvent the wheel and does not have proper leadership to run the huge business of our schools.

[CraigD]

___Here is an idea not without merit but unimplementable. Stop grouping students together during instruction. One teacher, one student. No peer socializing or peer contact at all. …

I don’t think the system you propose is unimplementable. In fact, for several years, I worked in a lab where the practicality of this was essential dogma – a Computer Assisted Instruction lab.

 

In the early ‘80s, practically everyone working in CAI was reasonable certain that, by 2000 if not earlier, everyone would be receiving unprecedentedly superb K-PhD instruction via their personal computer, under the tutelage of an expert system/AI dedicated to detecting and cultivating each student’s strengths, and remediating their weaknesses. Brick and mortar schools were sure to be a historical oddity in the industrialized world by century’s end. Oh, and these computers would almost certainly be Apples, not IBM PCs.

 

What went wrong (or right, depending on one’s point of view), is a long and controversial story, told many times by better talesmiths than me, but one thing is certain – our expected timeline was way off. I remain faithful that the fundamental idea of CAI remains valid, but that it is just further off and subject to more complicated technical and social barriers than we once believed.

[cwes99_03]

There is no simple answer to the problems with education. One cannot simply blame the parent or the teacher. Nor can one fix the problems by overhauling the entire institution as is presented in the first post.

 

1) Back in the old days, a majority of parents still raised their children with stricter discipline at home too. It was not just that teachers taught more fundamentals or were able to discipline more within the school system.

2) Technology can be seen both as help and hinderance toward the education of a child. One can use technology in so many fruitful ways for sharing information. It is a varitable library at your fingertips. However, that same library is full of horribly written, uncensored crap. Technology also puts for the ability to reduce the amount of hard work that taught most of us who didn't have computers or calculators how to learn and work hard to get ahead.

3) Overhauling the system as suggested would require a change in hiring practices. However, these changes to hiring practices would have to be phased in. The upheaval would take nearly 15 years to complete. In that time, many students that grow up during this change will not receive adequate teaching to become any type of functional citizen. Unemployment will spike to incredible levels, followed by increased crime and violence.

 

Privatizing school isn't the answer in my opinion. Instead, national standards for all students, teachers, schools, and administrators (such as hours of school, extracurricular activities, salaries, class sizes) need to be enforced. Pre-requisites for entering school need to be met by parents. Children not meeting prerequisites should be (here's the good part where I get to throw out a new idea that will be hated my millions, but could possibly be a viable solution) removed from the care of their parents and placed into the care of foster families who will home school them until they meet the prerequisites. Identical standaradized tests and curriculum should be enforced in all schools across the nation. Private schools should be outlawed. A flat tax for education should be imposed on all income, and net business profits. Teachers should be required to pass a bar exam such as lawyers. etc etc etc

 

Any of these ideas seem offensive, and yet at the same time viable?

[Turtle]

Children not meeting prerequisites should be (here's the good part where I get to throw out a new idea that will be hated my millions, but could possibly be a viable solution) removed from the care of their parents and placed into the care of foster families who will home school them until they meet the prerequisites.

Any of these ideas seem offensive, and yet at the same time viable?

___I have to say that Plato layed that out in the Republic, & again took it even further. He proposed all children get evaluated for their potential & removed from the parents by age 10 if I recall. Low potential children get trained in a trade while high potential children receive the training of a Philospher King, who in turn do the evaluating & teaching. :confused:

[rockytriton]

maybe we should just make public schools into boarding schools. You take their kids away from them at age 5, let them see them on x-mas and thanksgiving, give them back when they turn 18 so the parents can pay to send them to college. This gets rid of the "I'm a single parent and I can't afford daycare and don't have the time to help with homework" compalints!

[pgrmdave]

Stop grouping students together during instruction. One teacher, one student. No peer socializing or peer contact at all.

 

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.

 

the culture starts with the parent and the society. without discipline, parent participation and good community support, the teacher has no chance.

 

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.

 

When the US was at the top of the heap in eduation, back in the 50's and 60's, the cirriculum was very fundamental. These basic skills allows students to evolve in any direction. There was also student capital punishment to keep the distractions down to a minimum. In the late 70's through the present many new things were added, including what was (is) called moderm math and the loss of disclipline with teeth. With the change, US education has slowly declined from being at the top of the heap.

 

The modern system is there to create jobs rather than teach students. There are now more admin jobs, more specialization training at an early age, too many electives away from the important fundamentals, too much prosthetic equipment that weakens the logical mind, and too much protection for the disruptive influences. If one went back to basics it would help the students, but could mean a lot of perimenter edu jobs lost.

 

Education HAS to be different today, look how many advances have been made - computer instruction alone can account for nearly 1/4 of the school day. It sounds great to say that we need to get 'back to the basics', but it simply isn't true. The 'basics' are so broad in this day and age, that there isn't much we could cut out of the programs. In high school, I was required to take four years of english, four years of physical education(gym), three years of math, three years of history, three years of science, one year of a fine arts, and one year of a computer course. What would you suggest adding in or cutting out?

 

Brick and mortar schools were sure to be a historical oddity in the industrialized world by century’s end.

 

The problem with this, more than anything else, is that there are people who cannot afford a computer/interenet access/electricity. Schoolbuildings are still necessary, and will be unless we end poverty completely.

 

Privatizing school isn't the answer in my opinion. Instead, national standards for all students, teachers, schools, and administrators (such as hours of school, extracurricular activities, salaries, class sizes) need to be enforced...... Identical standaradized tests and curriculum should be enforced in all schools across the nation.

 

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.

 

And the worst thing about the tests is that students WASTE time learning how to take them, and taking them. I had to waste many hours of instructional time to learn how to pass some tests, time that would have been better spent learning.

[rockytriton]

And the worst thing about the tests is that students WASTE time learning how to take them, and taking them. I had to waste many hours of instructional time to learn how to pass some tests, time that would have been better spent learning.

 

I really hate how most schools, even colleges just teach kids the answers to questions. They should focus more on teaching them to understand the material. But then how do you measure their understanding of the material? You ask them questions they have to think about, then they complain that "they never taught us the answer to this question", then the test gets labled "biased" or some junk like that.

[lindagarrette]

The reality is that in real life being able to take tests is what it's all about. The trick is to get a head start, then be able to find the answers quickly. It's more important to make a decision immediately based on the odds (estimated cost/benefit) than to work out the details. Taking tests makes you think fast.

[Turtle]

The reality is that in real life being able to take tests is what it's all about. The trick is to get a head start, then be able to find the answers quickly. It's more important to make a decision immediately based on the odds (estimated cost/benefit) than to work out the details. Taking tests makes you think fast.

Making them a poor measure of we slow thinkers. Is not the test of knowledge the truth in it & not the time required to aquire it? :hihi:

[rockytriton]

Teaching how to take tests trains people to do things that a computer can do. Teaching someone to understand a concept teaches people to do something that a computer will probably never be able to do.