Eggsnham said:
What do the fine people of the Escapist think of this?
As a teacher, I think they're a worthwhile program. I think the problem comes in establishing what "alternative" means exactly. For each place, it's different, and it can lead people to wonder whether one diploma is the same as another -- and there's the big problem. It's not a question of whether alternative education programs are helpful, but whether they are
equitable.
If the curriculum in an alternative program still has equivalent rigor to the "standard" program in the high school, it's serving its purpose in preparing learners with the basic skills they'll need for the working world. As such, awarding a full high school diploma is fair and just. If, however, the curriculum at such a school is being watered down, or any of the base expectations are being lowered, awarding such a student a full diploma causes the diploma itself to be meaningless (spoiler alert: We're basically there now).
The idea of such programs is good. The implementation varies from system to system, and person to person.
Khanht Cope said:
It's annoying to have spent well over a decade of studying traditional techniques and knowledge; most of which we'll never need or be able to use. In college I spent 2 more years studying traditional accounting skills and fractional time being familiarised with popular accounting software so that I'd go on to be suitably 'qualified' for a job in which all I really did was copy numbers from reports and enter them into boxes on a computer.
The justification for the extensive manual training is "in the event of a power cut. And to give understanding of under-lying principles." Which of course is valid; but weaksauce nonetheless.
However, I wouldn't look to the US for meaningful change in this field. The only educational reform they'd be ready to entertain in the next hundreds years is privatisation.
Regarding accounting (and similar software-oriented careers), the reason folks are trained in techniques rather than software applications isn't to be able to do the day-to-day job. Really, that would just amount to data entry, and you could hire anyone to do that. It's the analytic skills that we're after.
And not just in the event of a "power outage." If a mistake is made somewhere, you need an employee who understands the process enough to
identify the source of an error, and work backward to find and correct it. The training isn't for the days when the job goes right, but for dealing with the days when the job goes wrong -- fixing the mistake, and being able to explain that solution to your clients.
And as for privatization... yeah, both parties are pushing that pretty hard, but not because it would be
in any way good for education. They simply want to remove that item from the budget. If education is privatized, get ready for class warfare unlike the world has seen since Russia at the turn of the 20th century. I don't know what a modern proletariat revolt looks like, but we would soon find out.
Lilani said:
I think the public education system (in the US, anyway) needs a total ground-up overhaul. Our current system is inefficient, under-funded, outdated, and does not cater to the student's needs. We've learned so much about learning in the last century, yet the current system we have is not designed to change or grow. This video says pretty much everything else I have to say on the subject.
...
Everyone learns differently, and that needs to be addressed soon if education in the US is ever going to mean anything in the future.
We're trying. I'll say the biggest problem we have in education is that
educators are making 0% of the decisions on what instruction is delivered and how. It's all being run by the businessmen/politicians in charge. No system is in place that empowers teachers to make meaningful change.
We like to think that testing gives us data, and that data allows us to see what's working and what's not. This is true. However, the higher-ups do this through
one test per year, and make decisions for the whole next year based on that. That would be like a doctor giving someone a "check-up" by making sure they are breathing, and giving them a clean bill of health.
This cycle of "collect data - interpret data - implement changes - collect data" needs to occur more than once per year to be meaningful. The good news? We, as teachers, are completing this cycle
every few seconds in our classrooms. Yet no one asks us. Instead, they just latch on to the next big trend that pushes cute "21st century" verbage and sells the next technology upgrade.
MassiveGeek said:
I don't request a longer deadline for assignments or more time on tests to be a **** to everyone else and have an unfair advantage - I fucking need that extra time because it takes longer for me to complete assignments and tests. That's it. People who think it's anything other than what it is can go land face first on a dishwasher.
Wholeheartedly agreed. I will, however, offer a mildly-opposing viewpoint. The issue a lot of educators have with some of the alternative measures being taken isn't that we think the students don't need the extra help -- they clearly do, and they clearly benefit from it. It's how it is used.
If I break my leg, they put it in a cast and tell me not to walk on it. I'm given a crutch to help me get along in the meantime, which is necessary. Over time, however, the wise doctor will tell me to start putting more weight on that leg so that it does not atrophy or heal incorrectly -- because the eventual goal is to
minimize or eliminate the need for the crutch.
An important part of the education process is determining each student's strengths and weaknesses. And we of course want to help them make the most of their strengths. But too often we do this by ignoring or completely working around their weaknesses... which, as a result,
stay weaknesses.
A lot of alternative programs provide extra resources and structure to learners that need it. That's the short-term fix. The long-term fix, however, should be teaching these learners how to impose this structure and provide these resources
for themselves, so that they can "walk without the crutch" to enough of a degree to find independent work. Rather than covering up their weaknesses, students have to eventually be trained to confront and compensate for them on their own.
Not saying that's any sort of problem for you, but it's a reason that many people seem to be "against" the current implementation of many alternative programs.
