NewYork_Comedian said:
I think you would appreciate this lecture.
OT: I personally love history (see the hours Ive clocked into the Total War/Civilization series), and I would definitively like to try out this game if I ever get the chance.
Oh, I definitely agree with a lot of what he has said here. The odds of us getting a ground-up reform of education are pretty slim, but it could be a huge help. For one, I'm a huge proponent of
gutting the curriculum.
Now, I do believe there is a certain amount of basic knowledge that should be common to everyone who finishes school. (Those that do not believe so are simply taking a lot of that knowledge for granted, because they don't remember what it feels like not to have it.) The world isn't full of tutorials, so there's a certain amount of basic capability within certain subject areas that each person should have.
I just happen to believe it's about 25% of what we currently try to cram in there. As a for instance: The quadratic formula is very useful in Algebra... but can you think of any instance in which 95% of the world would use this? I can't. And knowing that formula didn't make me any "smarter" or more "productive" as a worker, either. Cut it.
The notion of "literary classics" is another tricky one. What makes
Romeo and Juliet interesting is its cultural impact... but do students have to read the entire play to understand that? Do they need to grasp the finer points of iambic pentameter in order to find modern, familiar stories based on the same basic plotline as this "classic?" No. Cut it (partially).
See, there are two big problems with our current curriculum model:
1. We decided kids needed to know X facts by the time they leave high school, where X is about three to five times the actual number.
2. We decided that the 13 year curriculum is best paced by teaching "X / 13" facts per year, resulting in some concepts getting shortchanged, while others are being taught at developmentally inappropriate stages.
We could cut out 75% of the
facts we try to teach kids. And instead, teachers like me could spend all of that newly-found time teaching
skills instead. We could spend more time in math class making sure Timmy understands
why 5 X 4 = 20, rather than just knowing it as a discrete fact. And by doing that, we're laying a framework in Timmy's mind so that, if he so chooses, he can learn more advanced math
much faster later on.
Now, where I disagree with some of the suggestions being made are when they start to buck the system
too much. For instance, the lecturer wonders why kids are group by age, insisting that it's just a convenient mathematical sorting device. Perhaps a bit, yes, but one also has to consider that kids of different ages are
developmentally different, separate from their academic performance. You might have a kid who's sixteen, six feet tall, and ridiculously immature -- do you want him in the same room as your four-year-old?
(This is especially true given the huge push in the lecture for "group learning.")
School is about teaching kids how to learn -- that is, how to seek and acquire knowledge for themselves. Right now, we're in "give a man a fish" mode, when we need to be in "teach a man to fish" mode. On that, I can wholeheartedly agree.
HOWEVER.
The other extreme is this misconception that kids will always "enjoy learning." Fact is, they can't and they won't. Learning is an uncomfortable process. It will have its ups and downs. There will be things kids don't want to do, and there will always be things they would rather be doing. We can't fall into the trap of trying to "make learning fun" all the time, because it doesn't work
and it's not good for them.
Real work and real life aren't always fun, and kids need to learn how to maintain focus and responsibility in not-fun environments. And they
will learn that... either the easy way (in school) or the hard way (when the world mercilessly beats them with that fact). I'd prefer to spare them that by making sure they get started early on.
It is a
child that bases the value of a thing based on how fun it is or isn't. And
adult bases the value of a thing on how
useful or
effective it is. Our job is to turn children
into adults. So that means we need to wean kids off of the "fun-only" diet and gradually onto a more realistic "work first, play later" model.
As for me? I teach band. One of the arts. However, it's not the carefree, freewheeling "exploration" that people seem to think it is. People misunderstand how it works. It's not like "coloring time." It's more like "flight lessons":
Flying a plane can be very liberating, a feeling of complete freedom. However, there are some necessary skills a person needs to correctly and safely use an aircraft... and these skills aren't open to interpretation and individual taste. Now, once you
have those skills, choosing
where and
when to fly are up to you... but the process of acquiring those skills is not as free and open.
People have trouble understanding that this is how teaching an instrument works. You can't just read a pamphlet and know how to play trumpet. There are muscles that need developed, listening skills that are important, and reading/understanding musical notation is a
must. Why?
So that the child can then choose music for themselves, and actually be able to use their freedom. At first, though? Not free.
That kind of encapsulates the current problem in education for me. We don't collectively understand what we
should be teaching (HINT: Teachers do.), and so we don't recognize that we're building the wrong machine for the job that needs done (and for the "fuel" that we have -- the kids). Instead of changing the machine, we're adding bits and bobs on that alter the "fuel" to fit the machine, and we change the goal so that the result is what we want.
Let the teachers run things for once, and you'll see that change. We're
experts on teaching and learning, and we're
aching to use all that knowledge.
