Poll: 80% of what you learn in school is useless?

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I kinda meant an actual cone in the context of reality =P

Ah, that's even easier. How much icecream can I shovel into a cone before it leaks over the side.

yes, cause you totally measure your ice cream down to the mm squared xD

If it's my good icecream, it'd be down to the nm cubed.

You mean the mm cubed =P

Not milli-, nano.

 

[ghostrider409895]

Some of school is useful. When it comes to being able to read or write, and basic knowledge of things are very improtant to life, which if figure falls in the 20 percent that you figure is useful. Now, whether the other 80 percent is useless or not, really depends on what you do. There are things that you may learn from school, which are not absolutly needed but may be helpful here and there. Also, if you were to go into a certain career or specialized trade somethings you need to know and somethings you don't. If you go into a career dealing with chemicals or engineering, mathematics and science classes will come in handy, while knowing how to write use elements of wrighting and or the history of the War of 1812 will only come in handy from time to time. Some information is just required, you have to know it to have an okay life, but as for the rest of it, it depends on what you want to know or what you want to apply yourself to.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Pretty much yeah, depends on your career field you will be going into.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Customize your learning, and almost everything you learn is useful.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Mostly useless in day to day life, but you need it to get qualifications that yout hen need to get a job which may be specialised in a certain subject.

 

[Unesh52]

People love to talk about how America's schools are so far behind Country X or Nation Y. They fail to realize that even a perfect engine can't run on bad fuel. Other countries don't have to put up with the same stuff--they can just put the kid out, and now his low performance doesn't show up on the composite. They handpick who they will and won't test, whereas we have to test EVERY kid---even that 13-year-old boy who can't put his pants on right, but is still somehow in the 7th grade taking a test on persuasive writing. We're not allowed to tell him he can't be an astronaut ninja quarterback, so his test scores get to pull down the average.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say that makes perfect sense and I agree with you totally. From now on, I'm ignoring any claim based on such statistics. And obviously that means it's no longer a part of my argument. (Off topic though, seriously, da fuck? That's so unfair, other countries. I'm calling bullshit.)

By the time a kid is 18, he has spent around 12% of his life in school. That's it. And it's not like all 12% is with the same teacher, either. It includes time at lunch, recess, bathroom, and locker, even. Each teacher is getting a fraction of a percent of the kid's life... and yet as teachers, they are somehow held responsible for 100% of the child's learning.

...

Public SCHOOL SYSTEM? Doing the best it damn well can.
Public AT LARGE? Complete failure to parent.

That is true to some extent. How a kid turns out, and his attitude toward education, is not completely dependent on the actions of the teacher. I would say you're making too little of what the actual effect of teacher action is, however; in other words, it's certainly worth more than "12%." The personal impact of a thing is not proportional to how much time is spent with it. Nonetheless, as I say, you're right to some extent. It's definitely unfair to place the blame for apathy and incompetence in public school kids squarely on teachers. I just think it's also unfair to make it's solely the parent's prerogative to instill a love of learning in their children.

A parent can goad and bargain with their child all day, but their influence basically stops at the door. It's the teacher's responsibility to show the kids the intrinsic worth of their education. Instead, they try to get them out that door as soon as possible. See my earlier arguing. Almost all teaching practices I've been acquainted with are tedious and glib, designed specifically to make things easier on the teachers and the administration, unintentionally at the expense of the students. This leads to a jaded, resentful student body.

Don't get me wrong, there are good teachers, and they do do a wonderful job. There are also bad parents that skull fuck any attempt at opening someone's mind. Let's not forget the complexity of the situation here. In fact, let's take a step back for a minute. We agree that too many kids turned out of the public school system are... fuckwits? I'll go with fuckwits. I think we can also both agree that the actions of parents and teachers both create this phenomena (in large part). What we need to realize here is that both of these entities are part of some very pervasive systems that effectively controls their actions, perspectives, and needs. This isn't just the public school system, but certain social constructs and even the national economy. It's impossible to change one thing and get the result we want, or say one thing is specifically the problem. For that reason, I've decided to stop at claiming to know the exact problem, or a probable solution. I have plenty of hypotheses on the former, and a few on the latter, but I'll put that on the side for a second. I just want to make sure we can agree that (1) there is a problem (that too many public school veterans are fuckwits), and (2) it's no one group's fault.

 

[Dastardly]

People love to talk about how America's schools are so far behind Country X or Nation Y. They fail to realize that even a perfect engine can't run on bad fuel. Other countries don't have to put up with the same stuff--they can just put the kid out, and now his low performance doesn't show up on the composite. They handpick who they will and won't test, whereas we have to test EVERY kid---even that 13-year-old boy who can't put his pants on right, but is still somehow in the 7th grade taking a test on persuasive writing. We're not allowed to tell him he can't be an astronaut ninja quarterback, so his test scores get to pull down the average.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say that makes perfect sense and I agree with you totally. From now on, I'm ignoring any claim based on such statistics. And obviously that means it's no longer a part of my argument. (Off topic though, seriously, da fuck? That's so unfair, other countries. I'm calling bullshit.)

By the time a kid is 18, he has spent around 12% of his life in school. That's it. And it's not like all 12% is with the same teacher, either. It includes time at lunch, recess, bathroom, and locker, even. Each teacher is getting a fraction of a percent of the kid's life... and yet as teachers, they are somehow held responsible for 100% of the child's learning.

...

Public SCHOOL SYSTEM? Doing the best it damn well can.
Public AT LARGE? Complete failure to parent.

That is true to some extent. How a kid turns out, and his attitude toward education, is not completely dependent on the actions of the teacher. I would say you're making too little of what the actual effect of teacher action is, however; in other words, it's certainly worth more than "12%." The personal impact of a thing is not proportional to how much time is spent with it. Nonetheless, as I say, you're right to some extent. It's definitely unfair to place the blame for apathy and incompetence in public school kids squarely on teachers. I just think it's also unfair to make it's solely the parent's prerogative to instill a love of learning in their children.

A parent can goad and bargain with their child all day, but their influence basically stops at the door. It's the teacher's responsibility to show the kids the intrinsic worth of their education. Instead, they try to get them out that door as soon as possible. See my earlier arguing. Almost all teaching practices I've been acquainted with are tedious and glib, designed specifically to make things easier on the teachers and the administration, unintentionally at the expense of the students. This leads to a jaded, resentful student body.

Don't get me wrong, there are good teachers, and they do do a wonderful job. There are also bad parents that skull fuck any attempt at opening someone's mind. Let's not forget the complexity of the situation here. In fact, let's take a step back for a minute. We agree that too many kids turned out of the public school system are... fuckwits? I'll go with fuckwits. I think we can also both agree that the actions of parents and teachers both create this phenomena (in large part). What we need to realize here is that both of these entities are part of some very pervasive systems that effectively controls their actions, perspectives, and needs. This isn't just the public school system, but certain social constructs and even the national economy. It's impossible to change one thing and get the result we want, or say one thing is specifically the problem. For that reason, I've decided to stop at claiming to know the exact problem, or a probable solution. I have plenty of hypotheses on the former, and a few on the latter, but I'll put that on the side for a second. I just want to make sure we can agree that (1) there is a problem (that too many public school veterans are fuckwits), and (2) it's no one group's fault.

To a large extent, the reason that some of these kids get shuffled through the system is simply because what schools are doing amounts to educational triage. When you've got overloaded classrooms and overworked teachers (and even the WORST teachers are still working hard, if not particularly well) in underfunded and undersupported classrooms, they're making it work as best they can.

Other countries with the "better" systems nearly always have higher taxes in one form or another, resulting in more funding for the schools. Notice that I'm not saying more pay for teachers, but more funding for schools. People here want the free public education system, low taxes, and still top-quality everything... and yet still they don't want to teach their children basic hygiene and manners.

Yeah, I know, a ton of parents themselves never learned that stuff. Okay. They shouldn't be having kids, then. If you have no experience, training, or intelligence, you'll bomb the job interview and they won't hire you... but who interviews potential parents--the most important teachers on the planet? No one.

To be a teacher, I had to be tops of my high school, get a four-year degree, get advanced certificaton on TOP of that to allow me to teach, interview, go through mentoring and close observation for my first three years, all while receiving substandard pay as compared to every other bachelor's degree out there (though my tuition and loans were quite the same).

To be a parent, you don't even have to read a pamphlet. All you have to do is figure out the dinkus goes in the hoohah, and nine months later, ta-da.

 

[Unesh52]

To be a teacher, I had to be tops of my high school, get a four-year degree, get advanced certificaton on TOP of that to allow me to teach, interview, go through mentoring and close observation for my first three years, all while receiving substandard pay as compared to every other bachelor's degree out there (though my tuition and loans were quite the same).

...dude, are you a teacher?

To a large extent, the reason that some of these kids get shuffled through the system is simply because what schools are doing amounts to educational triage. When you've got overloaded classrooms and overworked teachers (and even the WORST teachers are still working hard, if not particularly well) in underfunded and undersupported classrooms, they're making it work as best they can.

So they think. Funding is rarely the big problem -- I assert a man could teach perfectly well drawing with a stick in the sand and nothing else. In fact, I think that would be better in many cases (literature class would be kinda boned without books, but the point is simplicity works better). Teachers are (in part, see below) overworked because they assign too much useless shit and insist on grading it all, and then they have to go to meeting after meeting about how they're spending too much money on paper to print the useless shit ("oh, and grades are falling, so pile on some more useless shit so it'll look to parents like we're doing something"). See what I'm getting at here? We should cut down on paper work and let kids take responsibility for their education (it works in college); it's better for them and easier on the teacher.

Now then, I agree with what you say about "educational triage" and overcrowding. In your class of 40, about 10 still aren't getting it, so you have to hold back the whole room and bring them up to speed, especially because with that many, it's hard to get a hold on who exactly is behind. Or even who's who. To fix this would require a lot more teachers of much higher quality, or much fewer students. Since it'd be really quite difficult to accomplish the latter save for exclusion or a controlled birth rate, we need more, better teachers. Shame, because that's still really damn hard to pull off. I've heard stuff about government incentive programs though, targeting grad students I think. We'd need to find some way to make teaching lucrative enough to attract experts away from other fields. Personally? I think making schools private, thereby subjecting them to market forces, would bring in a lot more money for paying teachers.

People here want the free public education system, low taxes, and still top-quality everything... and yet still they don't want to teach their children basic hygiene and manners.

...

If you have no experience, training, or intelligence, you'll bomb the job interview and they won't hire you... but who interviews potential parents--the most important teachers on the planet? No one.

To be a parent, you don't even have to read a pamphlet. All you have to do is figure out the dinkus goes in the hoohah, and nine months later, ta-da.

Wow, you really hate parents. I can see why; the most vocal and visible ones are usually the biggest cock ends.

Objectively, I agree that it's kind of odd that there are almost no standards regarding who is allowed to become a parent, and such lax standards regarding who is allowed to remain a parent (do the kids not bleed on a regular basis? Alright, just make sure you don't lock them in a car with the windows up for too long and you're all set); I think that many parents neglect some basic stuff that leaves their kids socially deformed and fucking insufferable to upstanding members of society. However, a lot of times when I hear teachers going on about their students, it's either because they suck, or their student's other teachers suck. Allow me to elaborate...

Students are conditioned to be placid and thoughtless; they're almost never introduced to independent thought and are given tedious exercises. As I've been banging on about for a while now, students don't like that -- it's tiring and frustrating -- and that's part of why they act up all the time. It doesn't help that there are racist, stupid, and otherwise incompetent teachers running around, their ineptitudes compounded by the issues we were talking about earlier, giving everyone a bad name. And then there's the behavioral code common to most public schools. It's needlessly restrictive and patronizing, and completely out of the power of those it governs to control. One of the most confusing things is the demand that students "respect" their teachers (an elastic clause that has caused many unfair and inconsistent punishments), even the batshit insane ones I was just talking about. Teachers and schools themselves are teaching kids to hate teachers and school. Why should they respect a teacher or a system that they hate, and has done nothing but demand subservience and respect? It's not so much about manners when you're presented with the image these "suits" give themselves. They're rambunctiousness and disrespect almost seems justified.

*[small]Bold for new suggestions.[/small]​

 

[Jumplion]

It depends on your personal definition of "useless".

If the subject doesn't interest you in the slightest, or indeed if school itself doesn't interest you, then I suppose 80% of what you learn is useless.

But if it's in a subject you really enjoy, or a field that you want to expand on for a possible future, then every moment is invaluable.

[/$0.02]

 

[ace_of_something]

Knowledge is valuable; every piece has a use. You just haven't found it yet.

 

[Mr. Strange]

I talk about this subject all the time when I mentor students who want to design video games. I tell them that every class they take matters - everything they can digest in school is essential. Not because those facts or specific skills are going to be called on later - but because practicing learning is an invaluable skill.

If you are training for a marathon, you might run all over the place in your traning runs. And maybe you don't care about those streets, and you might never travel down them again. But that's not the point! You are training so that whatever street you might run down during a race, you'll be prepared.

Your life isn't about specific acts or individual moments - it's about the pattern of behavior you establish for yourself. And being a good student is a critical part of that pattern. You never know when waxing a car might just turn out to have taught you awesome Karate skills at the same time.

--Mr. Strange

 

[Broderick]

From what I believe, school teaches you 2 very important things. 1. How to think; Meaning problem solving, how to articulate your thoughts and thought process onto paper and in "the field". 2. Your possible career path. I think that we have so many subjects in school because not only does it give us a wide range of basic knowledge, but it also helps us figure out what subjects we are interested in, and therefor, a possible career.

I think a lot of what we learn is not going to be used, but a wide range of knowledge never hindered anyone. Better to know more than you need to then be completely ignorant I suppose.

 

[Dastardly]

...dude, are you a teacher?

Yup.

[quote}So they think. Funding is rarely the big problem -- I assert a man could teach perfectly well drawing with a stick in the sand and nothing else. In fact, I think that would be better in many cases (literature class would be kinda boned without books, but the point is simplicity works better). Teachers are (in part, see below) overworked because they assign too much useless shit and insist on grading it all, and then they have to go to meeting after meeting about how they're spending too much money on paper to print the useless shit ("oh, and grades are falling, so pile on some more useless shit so it'll look to parents like we're doing something"). See what I'm getting at here? We should cut down on paper work and let kids take responsibility for their education (it works in college); it's better for them and easier on the teacher.[/quote]

Not quite. This is one of several issues that is really not possible to completely understand the cause-effect unless you're right in the chain. Yes, you COULD teach perfectly well with just a stick in the sand... if you're teaching pretty basic elementary school stuff, and you're only teaching it to the children of aristocrats, so you're not having to deal with a full-public education system. But that's beside the point.

Teachers assign and grade "useless shit" because it's NOT useless. Yes, some assign it incorrectly, but the assignment itself is quite useful. You can use it to diagnose not just how many questions is Billy getting wrong, but a well-designed quiz/test/worksheet will reveal WHY he's missing it--you'll have a variety of questions such that if he's missing 1, 5, and 9, you know it's because he doesn't understand concept X, but he's cool with concept Y.

But then, there's why "there's too much." Agreed. But the pressure from on high--that is, the local businessmen that populate school boards, who know little to nothing about working in the classroom--insist that effective classrooms generate "artifacts" to demonstrate progress. That means they require the teacher to show X number of practice and assessment papers for each student, to prove the teacher is doing his/her job. That's right--they introduce a policy by which your job is interrupted by having to prove you're doing it, by something that in no way proves you're doing it.

We don't choose to have all of those assignments. We need them to cover our asses, in case little Johnny fails a test, and his parents (one on the school board) come for our jobs out of spite. We then have a paper trail to say, "See? I've been keeping everyone informed all along that he doesn't know his times tables, and no one has brought him for the after school help I've offered. I'm trying to do my job, and here's the proof."

Now then, I agree with what you say about "educational triage" and overcrowding. In your class of 40, about 10 still aren't getting it, so you have to hold back the whole room and bring them up to speed, especially because with that many, it's hard to get a hold on who exactly is behind. Or even who's who. To fix this would require a lot more teachers of much higher quality, or much fewer students. Since it'd be really quite difficult to accomplish the latter save for exclusion or a controlled birth rate, we need more, better teachers. Shame, because that's still really damn hard to pull off.

The problem isn't that we don't have tons of great teachers already in the classroom. We could use more, sure, but MOST of the teachers that are out there working are capable, intelligent, and motivated. The problem is they don't get to do things their way. If you come through a teacher-education program, you don't just take classes on your content area (math, music, PE, etc)--you take a ton of courses and do a ton of work on the psychology of learning and motivation.

And then you get out into the field, and try to implement that stuff... and they won't let you. Why do we use multiple-choice tests for the biggest and most important tests? Because they work and are good methods of assessment? No. They are "cued recognition" tests, not true tests of what a student KNOWS. It's just choosing the right-LOOKING answer out of a tiny line-up. We use them because they are cheap and easy to grade.

And then we insist that teachers practice with this style of test, so our students are "ready" for the big tests. And we insist that we should have the "trainable mentally handicapped" student in the same room as the "mathematically gifted" student, and the teacher should be constantly differentiating instruction so that each student is working at his/her level... but they'll still be taking the same test at the end of the year.

Oh, and discipline. If a kid is misbehaving, you have to deal with it. Principals don't want to, because it all has to be documented, and the more misbehavior a school has, the more the SCHOOL gets graded down. So you usually have to keep the disruptive child in your class, and spend your planning time calling home and meeting with parents.

Basically, these people know how to do the job. But the people who JUDGE whether or not they're "doing a good job" don't know how to do the job. They're being graded by a standard that conflicts with the best methods of doing the job well.

The bottom line is that we need more EDUCATORS in the leadership positions in EDUCATION. Right now, nearly every school board is populated by local business owners--you know, the people who have the time and money to campaign, and really want this as a stepping stone to county commissioner or something. I suggest a bicameral school board for every school system:

1) A section of elected folks that receive minimal compensation, just like the standard school board now. This shouldn't change, as it helps to represent community interest.

2) A section of currently-working classroom teachers who also receive a small stipend, each elected by the faculty of their schools.

As educators are made part of the decision-making process, there will be more checks-and-balances in place, so we can focus our efforts where they ought to be.

I've heard stuff about government incentive programs though, targeting grad students I think. We'd need to find some way to make teaching lucrative enough to attract experts away from other fields. Personally? I think making schools private, thereby subjecting them to market forces, would bring in a lot more money for paying teachers.

For the most part, teachers aren't complaining about pay. It's true that the pay is not equivalent to the job we're expected to do. We would much rather have more staff spreading out that workload and take our pay just as it is. Privatizing schools will NOT fix the problem, because the problem is still that we have a flawed perception of what makes a school "successful" and how to measure that in a valid way.

Before that could ever possibly work, other changes need to be made first:

1) Putting more educators in leadership positions.
2) Gutting the core curriculum so that teachers can focus on basic concepts to the point of FLUENCY, rather than just FAMILIARITY.
3) Increasing parent accountability for student attendance and behavior, as these are the two BIGGEST factors affecting a child's performance, and they are firmly in the parental ballpark.

Wow, you really hate parents. I can see why; the most vocal and visible ones are usually the biggest cock ends.

I don't hate parents. I hate bad or absentee parents. I hate parents who think that they are experts on child behavior and learning SIMPLY BECAUSE they have a child and I don't. I hate parents who just continually make excuses for why their child isn't behaving or participating, rather than putting that energy into making solutions.

Students are conditioned to be placid and thoughtless; they're almost never introduced to independent thought and are given tedious exercises. As I've been banging on about for a while now, students don't like that -- it's tiring and frustrating -- and that's part of why they act up all the time.

Not true. As teachers, we DO encourage students to listen FIRST. It's the nature of the immature middle- and high-schooler to want to "do things differently" right out of the gate, re-invent the wheel, stick it to the man, pick your metaphor. They want to find the short cut from the word go.

We just insist that they do it the "long way" first. One, because WE have been through it and can see where the short cut leads. Two, because the student needs to learn how to do things "someone else's way," because the world will not bow to them forever.

The tedium of the exercises is the most often misunderstood feature. While I agree that some of it goes beyond reasonable drilling, most of it does not. You do not simply practice something until you get it right. You practice it until you ALWAYS get it right, and you CAN'T get it wrong. You drill on your multiplication tables to the point of hatred and bleeding eyes, because someday you'll be solving complex problems and you want to be able to focus your mind on the COMPLEX PROBLEM, not on the multiplication you have to do along the way.

It's like walking. You don't have to concentrate to walk anymore. This allows you to do other things while walking. The only reason this is the case is because you have practiced walking for THOUSANDS OF HOURS.

Different parts of the brain learn things differently, and some (many) tasks require two different parts of the brain to work together. The consciously-aware portion of the brain is extremely impatient in most folks until about the age of 25 (when the prefrontal cortex is fully developed). Yes, TWENTY-FIVE. The problem is that this part of the brain wants to move on before all the "behind the scenes" parts of the brain have really grasped THEIR roles in the task. Our job as teachers is to tell the student "No, you're not ready to move on just yet," because they don't know enough to tell themselves that yet.

We trust that they'll understand it looking back. Or that they never will, but at least they'll be able to do the thing we're drilling them about.

And then there's the behavioral code common to most public schools. It's needlessly restrictive and patronizing, and completely out of the power of those it governs to control. One of the most confusing things is the demand that students "respect" their teachers (an elastic clause that has caused many unfair and inconsistent punishments), even the batshit insane ones I was just talking about. Teachers and schools themselves are teaching kids to hate teachers and school. Why should they respect a teacher or a system that they hate, and has done nothing but demand subservience and respect? It's not so much about manners when you're presented with the image these "suits" give themselves. They're rambunctiousness and disrespect almost seems justified.

To put it simply, they should respect the teachers because:

1) The teacher is a grown-ass adult, and is not answerable to a child. Most teachers will, if asked in a respectful way outside of class, explain their reasoning. But they should never be OBLIGATED to explain every decision on-the-spot. We would be flooded with stall tactics from students trying to avoid the issue of "I don't know my state capitals."

2) There is, as mentioned, not enough time for each student to assert his/her own independence in a class of 30+ kids when you only have 1.5 hours. That's 3 minutes per kid, total. There's not enough time for each kid to challenge the same thing every kid will challenge every single day. Kids will always be asking "Why do I have to eat my vegetables?" Sometimes, it's okay for them to learn how to deal with, "Because I said so." They can be shown the reasoning and brought to understand it when they are ready and more mature, but the behavior has to be followed NOW.

3) Learning is an uncomfortable process. If students ARE comfortable, they're not growing. No one WANTS to be uncomfortable, so this means that students often (at least at first) have to be forced to do something new and unfamiliar. Especially in middle and high school, where our social egos are first really developing and we're so wary about taking any risks that might lead to mistakes (because we believe everyone is staring at OUR zit, instead of worrying about their own).

If we allow students to stall and argue at every single step that makes them uncomfortable, we would never get anywhere. We can't always bait them with candy and treats and trips, because this destroys even the POSSIBILITY of intrinsic motivation--and there are many studies backing that up. That means sometimes we have to be able to just say, "Do it because that's the way we're doing it. You'll understand later." And that needs to be good enough for now.

First, you follow the request of the teacher. Then, if you still don't understand, you ask about it in private--not when other people have a rightful claim to that teacher's time. If the teacher is unwilling to explain it to you at THAT point, you have your PARENTS talk to the teacher. Very rarely does it truly get to that point if the student is a) following the directions even when they disagree for now, and b) asking respectfully and in private later on.

Example:

TEACHER: Class, we're going to be writing a persuasive essay on whether we feel the new version of Book/Movie X is better/worse/equal to the old version of Book/Movie X. This assignment will follow these steps:

1) You will write an outline of your main and supporting points for whichever side you choose.
2) You will write a first draft that builds on that outline.
3) We'll go over that draft and refine it into the final paper.
4) You'll do steps 1, 2, and 3 for the OPPOSITE of the side that you originally chose.

You are going to have students that object to #1 because they tend to be impulsive and want to "shortcut" to the end. If they ask later, you can explain to them that doing an outline helps them to better frame their thoughts beforehand AND make sure it's in a good order, so that their first draft goes better. This will save them work overall.

You are going to have students that object to #2 because they think that doing more than one draft is admitting they can't do it perfectly the first time. Well, they can't. No one does. Even if it's "good," there's always "better." If the first draft earns a 96, they can still get those 4 points. And they should try, whether they want to or not.

You are going to have students that object to #3 because they'll say, "Why does it matter what order I put these points in?" or any of the other style and structure items you ask them to fix. This isn't because they ACTUALLY disagree, it's because their young egos take offense if you tell them something they did could be done better. They need to get that pride out of the way and just work to improve--there's nothing wrong with being wrong or "less right." The problem is STAYING that way because of stubbornness and an unwillingness to accept criticism.

You are definitely going to have students that object to #4. But this is an important learning tool that helps students separate how WELL they write from how much they LIKE or AGREE with what they're writing about. It also ensures that they work to understand WHY they do or don't agree with something by actually considering the opposing point of view. The goal here is to separate a student's EFFORT from how they FEEL about the job--I don't "like" doing the dishes, but I do a good job at it because it needs done.

If you have a class of 30 kids, each disagreeing with different steps, it can be chaos. The teacher has good, clear reasons for asking for each of those steps. That doesn't mean the teacher should have to spend the entire class period addressing each individual argument against one or the other. Students need to just follow the steps, and later on in their academic careers they'll start to understand the importance.

Learning can only be UNDERSTOOD backwards, but it must be PERFORMED forwards. The teacher's job is to do that, even when the student doesn't want to.

 

[Shock and Awe]

Probably, but you will probably end up using a lot of one or two subjects depending on what you do.

 

[Jack and Calumon]

Oh no. Only about 15%. I don't see how most Algebra is going to help me or anyone, but I must say that the rest of it is fine. Knowing not to put Potassium in water is key as well as learning to play Football (That was my high school P.E.) which is why I did awfully in P.E. because I still don't understand the offside rule. To me, it just sounds arbitrary, stupid and totally exploitable.

Calumon: If it was 80% then why is Jack so happy when he gets back?

 

[Unesh52]

Long post is looooooooooooooooooooooong. This is extremely difficult to respond to. Uh... let's try to organize:

[HEADING=2]Funding[/HEADING]

I think making schools private, thereby subjecting them to market forces, would bring in a lot more money for paying teachers.

For the most part, teachers aren't complaining about pay. It's true that the pay is not equivalent to the job we're expected to do. We would much rather have more staff spreading out that workload and take our pay just as it is.

I'm not saying we need to pay teachers more (though that would be nice), I'm saying we need more teachers, like you seem to say at the end there. Schools are flooded with kids these days, yeah? Private schools would make more money I think, (though I can base that on nothing but intuition -- a bit of a weak point) and that could bring in more staff. And actually, raising teacher wages would bring more people to the field in the first place, which also helps solve the problem.

Not quite. This is one of several issues that is really not possible to completely understand the cause-effect unless you're right in the chain. Yes, you COULD teach perfectly well with just a stick in the sand... if you're teaching pretty basic elementary school stuff, and you're only teaching it to the children of aristocrats, so you're not having to deal with a full-public education system. But that's beside the point.

Aristocrats? The income of the children's parents makes no difference. And I fail to see how higher concepts require more costly teaching methods. I'm doing fine in Calc II with a white board, a black and white "stick in the sand."

[HEADING=2]Who's in charge here?[/HEADING]

Privatizing schools will NOT fix the problem, because the problem is still that we have a flawed perception of what makes a school "successful" and how to measure that in a valid way.

In private industry, the owners can make their own decisions about what to do, and consumers can make their own decisions about where to send their kids (mostly). The parents then, would be assessing school "success," and private owners in direct and immediate control (as opposed to far removed politicians) could make changes to accommodate that.

If you come through a teacher-education program, you don't just take classes on your content area (math, music, PE, etc)--you take a ton of courses and do a ton of work on the psychology of learning and motivation.

And then you get out into the field, and try to implement that stuff... and they won't let you.

...

Basically, these people know how to do the job. But the people who JUDGE whether or not they're "doing a good job" don't know how to do the job. They're being graded by a standard that conflicts with the best methods of doing the job well.

...

I suggest a bicameral school board for every school system:

I agree with all of this. Businessmen aren't teachers; they shouldn't tell teachers what to do.

[HEADING=2]Teaching methodology and student involvement[/HEADING]

Why do we use multiple-choice tests for the biggest and most important tests? Because they work and are good methods of assessment? No. They are "cued recognition" tests, not true tests of what a student KNOWS. It's just choosing the right-LOOKING answer out of a tiny line-up. We use them because they are cheap and easy to grade.

A teacher finally corroborates this! I've been trying to convince everyone of this for years! Seriously!

Teachers assign and grade "useless shit" because it's NOT useless.

...

Students are conditioned to be placid and thoughtless; they're almost never introduced to independent thought and are given tedious exercises.

Not true. As teachers, we DO encourage students to listen FIRST.

...

The tedium of the exercises is the most often misunderstood feature... You practice it until you ALWAYS get it right, and you CAN'T get it wrong.

...

Different parts of the brain learn things differently, and some (many) tasks require two different parts of the brain to work together. The consciously-aware portion of the brain is extremely impatient in most folks until about the age of 25 (when the prefrontal cortex is fully developed). Yes, TWENTY-FIVE. The problem is that this part of the brain wants to move on before all the "behind the scenes" parts of the brain have really grasped THEIR roles in the task. Our job as teachers is to tell the student "No, you're not ready to move on just yet," because they don't know enough to tell themselves that yet.

...

[Everything after you say "they should respect teachers because" is off the mark on what I was talking about, which I'm getting to, but it's relevant to my point below.]

You seem almost like you're walking back over on yourself. You defend to the death that teachers are doing the best they can by showing how effective classrooms are, and say the guys in charge are idiots by showing how ineffective classrooms are. I get what you're saying though (I think). Still, I think you give too much credit to teachers and not enough to students.

Not all teachers know what they're doing, or even what they're teaching -- this is a huge problem brought on my the shortage of teachers and the ridiculous power of the teachers union to keep people hired regardless of competency. (Maybe it's not so bad wherever you are, but I shit you not I had a 60 yo web design teacher who didn't realize she could access her school e-mail from her home computer. She wasn't the only incompetent there either.)

Just as well, not all teenagers are self-righteous or lazy, and I myself am perfectly capable of understanding the importance of drilling and practice a full 7 years before my "prefrontal cortex" is fully developed. I can understand the reasoning -- and it wouldn't take long to explain it as you've just proven in your post -- and other kids can too, if they were ever shown it. What I don't understand are multiple choice tests, irrelevant extra credit, "pretty" points, attendance and participation grades, busy work, graded homework -- these things, many of which I'm sure we agree are bad, that I have questioned in class. These are things things I was ignored about, given a token answer for, usually to the effect of "I'm the teacher, deal." There's a difference between complaining about things you don't like and making a rational objection to a practice you find woefully ineffective. And they fall on deaf ears -- I've never been heard, even with my mother standing beside me in support. Teachers should do what's best for their students, but they don't always, and students have no power to check them. I mean sure, some of the objections are due to board action outside the teacher's control, but when it comes to some things, excessive extra credit, for example, where is the power of the student to stand and call bullshit? This is a bit of an aside, but it's a good point, I think.

By the way, you're full of shit saying teachers "encourage students to listen FIRST." Most of the time I had to dive into my book -- or even take to the internet, to find the basest explanation for the topics covered in class. The way it's structured, we're encouraged to memorize memorize memorize and nuts to what it "means." Total, straight faced lie, with just a handful of exceptions in my experience.


[HEADING=2]Discipline[/HEADING]

1) The teacher is a grown-ass adult, and is not answerable to a child.

That's just looking to piss me off. Ethos alone doesn't make for a good argument. Adults are perfectly capable of fallacious reasoning and unfair demands. Why should children bow to them if their arguments are better? If they're interests are the important ones in the situation?

Oh, and discipline. If a kid is misbehaving, you have to deal with it. Principals don't want to, because it all has to be documented, and the more misbehavior a school has, the more the SCHOOL gets graded down. So you usually have to keep the disruptive child in your class, and spend your planning time calling home and meeting with parents.

...

[A whole bunch of words irrelevant to my point]

When I'm talking about discipline, I don't mean dealing with disagreement over classroom procedure, I mean deciding who is "behaving appropriately" and what to do about it. The dress code makes a good example. In my time, there was a big move to have all the guys tuck their shirts in. The whole school disagreed with it -- it was fruitless, uncomfortable, and usually stupid looking. What are we gonna do about it? We had no authority to say no, and hundreds were sent home for non-compliance. Why can't we come to school in pj pants? Why can't we wear hats or let our pants sag? Wear shirts with profanity on it? What difference does it really make? But in fact it doesn't matter -- the administration thought it was a good idea, so that's how it is. There's no forum for student discussion of it, no way for us to force the administration to get over itself. Needlessly restrictive and out of our control.

And about respect, yes people should respect others, but it's not the school's prerogative to teach students manners. Disrespect in itself, though it is often accompanied by disruption, is not disruption, it's just rudeness. Also, it's garbage to add "disrespect" onto a write up for something else, that's redundant and just stacks the penalty arbitrarily. Students should be allowed to tell their teachers what they think of them and their ways. I can tell a cop to eat a dick and shout that cops are pigs on the street, and no one arrests me because it's just sentiment. Why do teachers enjoy this protection? Why shouldn't they have to give good cause for our respect like everyone else everywhere?

[small]Sorry if I left stuff out, but I blame you. That took me in the order of 3 hours over 2 sittings to muscle through. You need to condense or organize your points better. I hope you're not an English composition teacher, geeze.[/small]

 

[Dastardly]

Private schools would make more money I think, (though I can base that on nothing but intuition -- a bit of a weak point) and that could bring in more staff. And actually, raising teacher wages would bring more people to the field in the first place, which also helps solve the problem.

Actually, current private and charter schools have much smaller faculties and make very little money. Teachers take pay cuts to work there, and why? Because they are made more integral to the decision-making process. But the problem is that people see private schools as "great" for the wrong reason.

It's not because they have to "compete" to be good. It's because they can turn away undesirable kids without any explanation. "No, we don't want your kid here." And that's that. Public schools exist because someone has to teach everyone else.

Not quite. This is one of several issues that is really not possible to completely understand the cause-effect unless you're right in the chain. Yes, you COULD teach perfectly well with just a stick in the sand... if you're teaching pretty basic elementary school stuff, and you're only teaching it to the children of aristocrats, so you're not having to deal with a full-public education system. But that's beside the point.

Aristocrats? The income of the children's parents makes no difference. And I fail to see how higher concepts require more costly teaching methods. I'm doing fine in Calc II with a white board, a black and white "stick in the sand."

The "aristocrats" crack was because you're obviously trying to conjure some Socratic image of the philosopher-teacher out in a field teaching with a stick in the sand. That kind of thing worked way back in the day because (just like private schools today) these teachers could be selective, and they could be sure that every child's material needs were being met at home*

*That is to say, yes, a kid's parents' income DOES matter. You can't teach a hungry, tired child with no emotional center at home. At least not as easily as you can teach the kid who THINKS he has it bad, but is just the standard angst-ridden teen. If you'd ever had to teach in a school where MOST of your students are below the poverty line, you'd know the difference instantly. Read up on Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs for more...

In private industry, the owners can make their own decisions about what to do, and consumers can make their own decisions about where to send their kids (mostly). The parents then, would be assessing school "success," and private owners in direct and immediate control (as opposed to far removed politicians) could make changes to accommodate that.

And still not a single teacher is put anywhere in any leadership position. You might not realize this, but at least in the American public education system, the very REASON it's broken is because it's being run into the ground by businessmen, rather than being guided by educators. Our SECRETARY OF EDUCATION hasn't been a teacher.

You seem almost like you're walking back over on yourself. You defend to the death that teachers are doing the best they can by showing how effective classrooms are, and say the guys in charge are idiots by showing how ineffective classrooms are. I get what you're saying though (I think). Still, I think you give too much credit to teachers and not enough to students.

No, I'm not defending how effective CLASSROOMS are. I'm defending how effective TEACHERS are, and I'm defending some of the decisions they are forced to make in the classroom. The classroom is forced to follow awful policy, and the teacher does the best he/she can to make lemonade out of dog shit. I'm saying there is a schism between "the school" and "the teacher," and that the teacher is by-and-large doing their damnedest.

Just as well, not all teenagers are self-righteous or lazy, and I myself am perfectly capable of understanding the importance of drilling and practice a full 7 years before my "prefrontal cortex" is fully developed. I can understand the reasoning -- and it wouldn't take long to explain it as you've just proven in your post -- and other kids can too, if they were ever shown it. What I don't understand are multiple choice tests, irrelevant extra credit, "pretty" points, attendance and participation grades, busy work, graded homework -- these things, many of which I'm sure we agree are bad, that I have questioned in class. These are things things I was ignored about, given a token answer for, usually to the effect of "I'm the teacher, deal." There's a difference between complaining about things you don't like and making a rational objection to a practice you find woefully ineffective. And they fall on deaf ears -- I've never been heard, even with my mother standing beside me in support. Teachers should do what's best for their students, but they don't always, and students have no power to check them. I mean sure, some of the objections are due to board action outside the teacher's control, but when it comes to some things, excessive extra credit, for example, where is the power of the student to stand and call bullshit? This is a bit of an aside, but it's a good point, I think.

By the way, you're full of shit saying teachers "encourage students to listen FIRST." Most of the time I had to dive into my book -- or even take to the internet, to find the basest explanation for the topics covered in class. The way it's structured, we're encouraged to memorize memorize memorize and nuts to what it "means." Total, straight faced lie, with just a handful of exceptions in my experience.

Memorization is an unfortunate side-effect of a bloated curriculum. Too much to cover, too little time to cover it beyond an inch deep. This is because our curriculum is being written by testing companies, who cater to the bottom line (thus explaining the use of multiple-guess mentioned earlier).

You're confusing the methods teachers TRY to use with the compromises they are FORCED to make. And I'm sorry, but there just never will be time for the teacher to explain every ounce of his/her methodology to the class. The student is not their to assess the teacher. It's the opposite. You might think, "Oh, it was just one simple question." And you make the classic egocentric mistake of forgetting there are 29 other individuals in the classroom that will each have DIFFERENT questions. Fair is fair--if you get to ask/challenge, so do they. And then (as is the nature of the human) they'll start using these to stall and filibuster the class period. (Kids do this with misbehavior all the time already, at home and school.)

Incidentally, the teacher has enough people "grading" them all the time, and your folks are lucky to be in a union state--we don't have one, and teachers get fired for petty parental complaints all the time. Why? Because you can fire the teacher, but you can't get rid of the parent (at least not in the public schools).

[HEADING=2]Discipline[/HEADING]

1) The teacher is a grown-ass adult, and is not answerable to a child.

That's just looking to piss me off. Ethos alone doesn't make for a good argument. Adults are perfectly capable of fallacious reasoning and unfair demands. Why should children bow to them if their arguments are better? If they're interests are the important ones in the situation?

See above. Sorry, but it's a fact of life that people are allowed to pull rank. The teacher doesn't have the burden of proof here. They've done the work, gotten the credentials, interviewed for the job, and undergone a (whether you agree or not) rigorous evaluation process just to arrive at this point.

There are plenty of kids who "think" their ideas are better because they have a super-narrow scope of experience and are oversimplifying the situation. This is an extremely common problem. It's like the folks sitting at home that think they could have prevented War X or Famine Y with some simple one-off solution. They have no concept, and it's just because they haven't experienced enough yet.

When I'm talking about discipline, I don't mean dealing with disagreement over classroom procedure, I mean deciding who is "behaving appropriately" and what to do about it. The dress code makes a good example. In my time, there was a big move to have all the guys tuck their shirts in. The whole school disagreed with it -- it was fruitless, uncomfortable, and usually stupid looking. What are we gonna do about it? We had no authority to say no, and hundreds were sent home for non-compliance. Why can't we come to school in pj pants? Why can't we wear hats or let our pants sag? Wear shirts with profanity on it? What difference does it really make? But in fact it doesn't matter -- the administration thought it was a good idea, so that's how it is. There's no forum for student discussion of it, no way for us to force the administration to get over itself. Needlessly restrictive and out of our control.

This is a non-argument. This is just a "why do we have rules" gripe, and that's all. Work in the education system for awhile, and you'll start to see why these things do, in fact, matter. Just because you happened to be in the top 50% of your class, and thus these "petty" rules didn't speak to a particular need of yours doesn't mean the rest of the folks didn't provide enough reason to have them. There's simply not time to explain why each of these rules matters, but know that in every school they are the subject of constant internal debate.

We don't WANT more rules to enforce, because it makes more rules for us. But there are large sub-sections of the student population that require these rules, and that means they need to be in place for everyone. I'm sorry that you don't understand the intricacies of the behind-the-scenes that even the newest teacher in a school has to understand, but there's more to it than you think.

And about respect, yes people should respect others, but it's not the school's prerogative to teach students manners. Disrespect in itself, though it is often accompanied by disruption, is not disruption, it's just rudeness. Also, it's garbage to add "disrespect" onto a write up for something else, that's redundant and just stacks the penalty arbitrarily. Students should be allowed to tell their teachers what they think of them and their ways. I can tell a cop to eat a dick and shout that cops are pigs on the street, and no one arrests me because it's just sentiment. Why do teachers enjoy this protection? Why shouldn't they have to give good cause for our respect like everyone else everywhere?

Because you and the cop are out in public, and others could even choose to walk away from you if they wanted. In school? Different ball game. No, you don't get to just voice-off whenever you want, because there are other people there. It's not like mouthing off to a cop, it's more like shouting in an ICU at the hospital--try it, and you WILL be forcibly removed.

Your problem here is you're thinking about the experience through the eyes of an individual student. We're thinking from the point of view that for each "individual" student, there are hundreds of "other" students who will have to deal with that student's exercise of freedom. We have to follow the age-old test of, "What if EVERYONE did it?" If we can't have every single student doing it, none can. Sorry.

[small]Sorry if I left stuff out, but I blame you. That took me in the order of 3 hours over 2 sittings to muscle through. You need to condense or organize your points better. I hope you're not an English composition teacher, geeze.[/small]

You're hardly qualified to judge a bit of it, the way you structure and frame your arguments. Let's discontinue discussing the finer points of structure and style, and just stick to the issue. I appreciate you taking the time to respond, but not if you're just going to use it as a reason to ***** some more.

 

[zombiesinc]

It's more about how you learn to function within the environment, and less about the actual material.

 

[Jerious1154]

Just because your career does not require you to know about Shakespeare doesn't mean that the knowledge is useless. Personally, I think that education is important for its own sake. I think it's important that a person have at least a basic understanding of as many fields of human knowledge as possible. Mainly because I think that it's necessary in order to have an educated society, but also because people who only know about one thing are just plain boring.

 

[antipunt]

Mm..probably more like 10-40%. There's quite of lot of things you've learned in school that you end up attributing to 'common sense'. Also, there are things you learn outside of textbooks.