The real problem with education

[RedImperator]

The really sad thing is that while you can't single out kids for poor academic performance, you can single them out for poor athletic performance. Any kid who isn't athletically inclined will be publicly humiliated in every gym class until he learns to hate all team sports. And of course, no one has any problem with that kind of treatment because sports, apparently, is more important than learning.

I don't see how that follows. If a kid swears off team sports forever, well, so what? The emotional cruelty is wrong, of course, but if we lose a potential weekend softball league shortstop, it's no big loss. You make a kid hate learning by humiliating him in class, you've got a real big problem. It seems to me that by allowing kids to be humiliated in gym but not in math class, we're tacitly acknowleding math is more important.

I don't see how public ridicule of the fuckups is going to fix anything. I have some in my classes, and humiliating them in front of their peers isn't going to make them see the error of their ways. Meanwhile, if I pick on a kid who I think is a lazy asshole but in reality is trying to deal with a shit homelife or a learning disability or what have you, not only have I lost any hope of turning that kid around, but I'm a world class piece of shit. Not to mention, come down too hard on a few kids, and get a reputation as a sadist--not just a tough teacher, but someone who out and out enjoys humiliating people--and I could lose the entire class. There's a good reason the dunce cap was retired.

[AlphaOmega]

The problem I have with schools is that parents want to have their cake and eat it too: They refuse to allow kids to be segregated from their peers into different classes [...] I would personally prefer that kids were segregated into classes where they could receive the kind of education they need, be they advanced, average, or need a leg up...

The first thing to do is strip the overly PC crap from the classroom and bring back the graded report cards.

I am twenty years removed from the elementary level of school so I guess this comes as a surprise. I remember graded report cards and segregation based on ability. To be specific, four different sections: AP/Honor students, Above Average, Average, and Below Average students all in a single class. They did not mix and mash 'skill' level of students.

We collectively gone down the pisser this far since then?

[Darth Wong]

I don't see how that follows. If a kid swears off team sports forever, well, so what? The emotional cruelty is wrong, of course, but if we lose a potential weekend softball league shortstop, it's no big loss. You make a kid hate learning by humiliating him in class, you've got a real big problem. It seems to me that by allowing kids to be humiliated in gym but not in math class, we're tacitly acknowleding math is more important.

If you want a competitive sports team, you must be able to either humiliate weak performers off the team or simply kick them out against their will, no matter how good they or their parents think they are. That's why the emotional cruelty you speak of is permitted in sports. But apparently, no one gives a shit if America turns out kids who are competitive in math and science.

And quite frankly, why should we worry so much about salvaging kids who are weak at math and science rather than cutting them loose and making sure the stronger performers get a quality education? Why this Quixotic approach to educational priorities?

[RedImperator]

On the aspect of positive reinforcement, perhaps schools need to have more competitions that are non-athletic. Actually, I think schools would ideally ban all "school pride" events that have anything to do with athletics; the obsessive focus on athletics is destroying the purpose of schooling in America.

When I was in university, we engaged yearly in the solar car competition, among other kinds of competitions. Even people who did not participate in these competitions took pride in The Team: the guys and girls who participated and worked hard to try and compete. And unlike something geeky like, for example, the science fair, the solar car competition is a multi-disciplinary real-world hands-on project. It's not enough to have a guy who knows math or chemistry; you also need guys from the shop class who know how to machine things, people who know how to put on a good media presentation, etc. It's like a microcosm of a product design cycle at a real manufacturer, and it's far more uplifting and meaningful IMO than these fucking "oooh, my football team has more giant steroid-laden assholes than your football team!" competitions. When people look up to that sort of student instead of the roid-filled moron, we'll be making some progress in school.

We've already got something like that at my job--the state champion mock trial team. Twice we've not only kicked the shit out of all the city's fancy charter schools, but we've gone on to clean the clocks of a bunch of rich prep schools from all over the state. Guess how much a poor all-black school in the ghetto celebrated humiliating a bunch of rich white preppies from the suburbs. It's the first thing the principal told us about when we first met her.

On the other hand, I do see a positive value in athletic competition, so long as it doesn't take away too many resources from other programs. It's a unifying force, and that matters in a school where we've already had one kid shot this year over a dispute between two neighborhood gangs. When we beat this one (mostly white) school we hadn't beaten since the 1950s in football earlier this year, the sense of everyone being a part of the school, and not just passing time like prisoners, was palpable.

[Turin]

And quite frankly, why should we worry so much about salvaging kids who are weak at math and science rather than cutting them loose and making sure the stronger performers get a quality education? Why this Quixotic approach to educational priorities?

Because then we end up with a lower class of total idiots who can't make decent decisions related to science but whom hold just as many votes apiece in the democratic system as everyone else. Let's not kid ourselves about how many issues have (or at least should have) a scientific content to them.

At the same time, I think we're making a false dilemma between "cut the weak kids loose" and "make everyone equally bad." It's not so much a matter of cutting the kids who in weaker in math and science loose as it is recognizing that they can be educated to a certain level that will enable them to be good citizens (note that this should apply to history and social sciences too, not just math & physics), while at the same time allowing those who can do better to do better. This requires both a tracked system of some sort (although one that recognizes the problems that RedImperator mentions), incentive for responsibility by both the parents, student, and teacher, and the funding for the schools to make all those pieces come together.

[Edi]

3. Be careful what you wish for with tracking (ability grouping students). Tracking can be a useful tool for getting kids the right instruction for their ability level. It can also be a way to dump the majority of your kids in a "general" track that doesn't teach them anything. You can't ability group your students and then only focus on the upper tracks. Just as much effort, if not more, needs to be spent on getting the lower tracks up to speed. And I take a pretty dim view of standardized tests for determining tracking--millions of kids have gotten shut out of a good education thanks to a single (usually biased) test they took in 7th grade. I've seen nothing to indicate standardized tests have gotten any better.

I'm not advocating what you are talking about here. Here all students have the same curriculum through elementary school and junior high (grades 1-9), but what the different ability groups would mean is that the more skilled students would get to do more work or perhaps get a bit of extra instruction in something beyond the normal scope of the curriculum for their level. Enough to keep their interest up and to keep them from getting bored out of their skulls in class. Because if that happens, they'll be in a world of shit later on because they learn the bad habit that they don't need to do much at all to get through. It'll bite them in the ass bigtime later.

Segregating people to a preordered track aimed at something speciifc is fucking stupid, which I guess is what they do in this system you talk about. Based on that 7th grade test, I assume they'll have some subjects dropped entirely or as good as.

My high school had a certain minimum requirement for courses in each separate subject, as well as the overall course load requirement, so if you dropped some subject after the mandatory courses, you needed to do more of some others. That approach allowed people to see how much of what they could stomach taking. Math was required of everyone, but you could take basic (short) or advanced (long) math starting from the third course forward. Short math had seven courses total, long math had eleven. You could switch from long to short later on if it became too difficult, but not the other way around. A similar system is inplace in most high schools here.

I do agree with you about standardized tests, and I think it would be a better idea to let individual schools organize the level groupings on their own, with perhaps a duty to report the results to a distrcit supervisor or whatever you have in place.

Do you think these ideas are worth considering, or am I talking out of my ass?

Edi

[RedImperator]

I don't see how that follows. If a kid swears off team sports forever, well, so what? The emotional cruelty is wrong, of course, but if we lose a potential weekend softball league shortstop, it's no big loss. You make a kid hate learning by humiliating him in class, you've got a real big problem. It seems to me that by allowing kids to be humiliated in gym but not in math class, we're tacitly acknowleding math is more important.

If you want a competitive sports team, you must be able to either humiliate weak performers off the team or simply kick them out against their will, no matter how good they or their parents think they are. That's why the emotional cruelty you speak of is permitted in sports. But apparently, no one gives a shit if America turns out kids who are competitive in math and science.

And quite frankly, why should we worry so much about salvaging kids who are weak at math and science rather than cutting them loose and making sure the stronger performers get a quality education? Why this Quixotic approach to educational priorities?

Because their parents pay into the system just as much as the strong performers' parents do. Because society needs as many people as possible with a basic grounding in math and science. Because cutting the poor performers loose is basically what we've been doing for the last 100 years anyway (you can call it cutting them loose, or you can call it sending them to "general science" and "business math", but it's the same thing), and you see what that's bought us.

I'm not saying we need to teach every kid the exact same way, or that kids have identical aptitude or desires. Nor am I saying there aren't unteachable fuckups who just don't care. But the majority of kids don't fall into that category, and you're denying them their birthright if you take the easy way and only give a quality education to the strongest performers.

Identify your strongest performers and challenge them--give them the strongest possible math and science education you can in preparation for a math-intensive college major. Definitely the best, the ones who are most likely to actually use advanced math and science professionally, should be getting a more intensive education in the subject. The rest of them, they need a strong foundation in the fundamentals, so they can calculate compound interest and see through flim-flam artists and whatever other basic skills adults should have. Doing that's going to take a lot more resources than we're currently putting into math and science education, and it's going to take applying them differently than we are now ("Teach to the test or we'll lose our funding!"), but if you want to make the education system in this country actually worth a damn, that's what needs to be done.

As for the total fuckups, they tend to take care of themselves. In the City of Philadelphia district, the worst of them drop out after 9th grade.

[Edi]

(I offer apologies in advance for my wordiness.)

You call that wordy?

*looks at own posts*

Uh, oh...

Look, nobody's going to care one whit about your posts being lengthy ones as long as they are on topic and have worthwhile content. You should see what windbags like myself and some others can rustle up on very short notice on some topics. So don't worry and post away. You've already made a favorable impression with a postcount of less than ten, so anybody who gives you trouble on account of post length when you're on topic is likely to have the equivalent of an electric cattleprod shoved up their virtual rectum.



Edi

[RedImperator]

3. Be careful what you wish for with tracking (ability grouping students). Tracking can be a useful tool for getting kids the right instruction for their ability level. It can also be a way to dump the majority of your kids in a "general" track that doesn't teach them anything. You can't ability group your students and then only focus on the upper tracks. Just as much effort, if not more, needs to be spent on getting the lower tracks up to speed. And I take a pretty dim view of standardized tests for determining tracking--millions of kids have gotten shut out of a good education thanks to a single (usually biased) test they took in 7th grade. I've seen nothing to indicate standardized tests have gotten any better.

I'm not advocating what you are talking about here. Here all students have the same curriculum through elementary school and junior high (grades 1-9), but what the different ability groups would mean is that the more skilled students would get to do more work or perhaps get a bit of extra instruction in something beyond the normal scope of the curriculum for their level. Enough to keep their interest up and to keep them from getting bored out of their skulls in class. Because if that happens, they'll be in a world of shit later on because they learn the bad habit that they don't need to do much at all to get through. It'll bite them in the ass bigtime later.

Segregating people to a preordered track aimed at something speciifc is fucking stupid, which I guess is what they do in this system you talk about. Based on that 7th grade test, I assume they'll have some subjects dropped entirely or as good as.

My high school had a certain minimum requirement for courses in each separate subject, as well as the overall course load requirement, so if you dropped some subject after the mandatory courses, you needed to do more of some others. That approach allowed people to see how much of what they could stomach taking. Math was required of everyone, but you could take basic (short) or advanced (long) math starting from the third course forward. Short math had seven courses total, long math had eleven. You could switch from long to short later on if it became too difficult, but not the other way around. A similar system is inplace in most high schools here.

I do agree with you about standardized tests, and I think it would be a better idea to let individual schools organize the level groupings on their own, with perhaps a duty to report the results to a distrcit supervisor or whatever you have in place.

Do you think these ideas are worth considering, or am I talking out of my ass?

Edi

That seems like a reasonable system (much better than the way tracking was traditionally implemented here), but I wonder about something. The system doesn't let you move from short math to long math--well, what if you took the short track because you were lazy or shortsighted or some asshole teacher talked you into believing you were too stupid for long math, and then you realize you actually like it and should have taken the long track. Is there an option for those kids?

[Darth Wong]

We've already got something like that at my job--the state champion mock trial team. Twice we've not only kicked the shit out of all the city's fancy charter schools, but we've gone on to clean the clocks of a bunch of rich prep schools from all over the state. Guess how much a poor all-black school in the ghetto celebrated humiliating a bunch of rich white preppies from the suburbs. It's the first thing the principal told us about when we first met her.

Trial law is a fairly narrow outlook. A team which has to create some kind of product and then make a plausible corporate presentation for that product has to incorporate real teamwork, between groups of people who might ordinarily not work together in school (artsies for the media presentations, shop guys to build it, the techies to design it). And the kids involved would get real school credit for this work, because it is actual learning.

[Edi]

That seems like a reasonable system (much better than the way tracking was traditionally implemented here), but I wonder about something. The system doesn't let you move from short math to long math--well, what if you took the short track because you were lazy or shortsighted or some asshole teacher talked you into believing you were too stupid for long math, and then you realize you actually like it and should have taken the long track. Is there an option for those kids?

I'm not sure. There could be, and especially if the curriculum is not rigidly structured (it isn't in most schools these days) the student can go back and take the courses later. There is also the option of doing things as evening courses in high school, which is a popular way for people who took the vocational path after 9th grade to get a high school diploma later.

It's not impossible, but it is very difficult after the fourth or fifth course.

Edi

[RedImperator]

We've already got something like that at my job--the state champion mock trial team. Twice we've not only kicked the shit out of all the city's fancy charter schools, but we've gone on to clean the clocks of a bunch of rich prep schools from all over the state. Guess how much a poor all-black school in the ghetto celebrated humiliating a bunch of rich white preppies from the suburbs. It's the first thing the principal told us about when we first met her.

Trial law is a fairly narrow outlook. A team which has to create some kind of product and then make a plausible corporate presentation for that product has to incorporate real teamwork, between groups of people who might ordinarily not work together in school (artsies for the media presentations, shop guys to build it, the techies to design it). And the kids involved would get real school credit for this work, because it is actual learning.

Frankly, I don't think we have the resources for something like that. We don't even have a music or industrial arts program anymore, and the art program (formerly one of the best in the district) has been gutted. We don't even have the shop equipment anymore--it all got sent somewhere else in the district (or sold for scrap). As cool as a competition like that sounds, I'd be stunned if we have the money, material, or facilities for that.

But hey, all the 9th graders now get TWO English and TWO math courses--a regular class and a PSSA Prep class. Hooray for No Child Left Behind! Hooray for teaching to the test just so you can stay in operation!

[drachefly]

Also, getting the smart kids some more advanced education might not be so much a case of having to do more FOR them, but sometimes having to do less TO them.

In sixth and seventh grade, we had one math class split into advanced and normal. The teacher spent about 80% of her time on the normal class, and the other three of us learned about twice as much, because she let us alone for the most part and didn't make us pay attention listening to things we knew already.

[Simplicius]

Frankly, I don't think we have the resources for something like that. We don't even have a music or industrial arts program anymore, and the art program (formerly one of the best in the district) has been gutted. We don't even have the shop equipment anymore--it all got sent somewhere else in the district (or sold for scrap). As cool as a competition like that sounds, I'd be stunned if we have the money, material, or facilities for that.

Indeed. The district where I went to school has faced the prospect of cutting arts programs to tighten its belt (which I, as a band geek, find disheartening), but as if that wasn't enough, suddenly shop and home economics are over the chopping block and regular departments are being squeezed for as much as they can possibly take. It's gotten to the point where the choice is between consolidation (with the attendant problems of one school serving a much larger pool of students), or having an insufficient tax base to function effectively.

If nothing else, funding should be increased to keep schools like RedImperator's and the ones I've studied at afloat. Then problems with standards or student interest can be addressed, but god damn it as long as public education still exists, there should be a financial committment to keeping the system healthy. If towns can't pay, and if states can't pay, then the federal government should bloody well do it.

Wherever a motivated student body exists, the school should be healthy enough to provide. And if a school is healthy, it makes the job of motivating students who need it that much easier.

[Evil Bob]

One thing that makes little sense to me is how many, at least in my area, care more about sports then they do about what actually goes on in the class room. In quite a few schools a rather large partion of money is put towards new sports equipment, facilities for night games, etc. Whenever districts fail to pass their first budget, they make a few academic cuts then threaten to make cuts to sports teams and all of the parents vote to pass it because they need thier almighty sports. Then there are those who feel that they can get college scholarships simply because they are half way decent at whatever sport and fail to realize that having an average-above average grades help a hell of a lot more in comparison to lower grades and sports.

[Vaporous]

Because then we end up with a lower class of total idiots who can't make decent decisions related to science but whom hold just as many votes apiece in the democratic system as everyone else.

You mean like now?

Can we really manage to give people an "adequate" education? And with the generalized curriculums we have, how much are we really teaching people? Science, for instance, is a heavily specialized field. What do you designate as the basics, the stuff that'll "Let people get by.", and understand whatever debates may arise? Most people go into high school seeking to do well just so they can get into a college. And then you have another situation with the majority of people seek a higher/college level education whether they really have the ability (or even the desire) to benefit from it or not.

Kant had an intresting teaching method. He always focused on the mediocre students;"The Dunces are beyond help, and the geniuses will learn to help themselves."

I don't know what kind of regimented system we could come up withto fix this issue, compounded as it is with cultural programming. The trick might not be in the education itself, but in cultivating a society in which critical thinking and the accumulation of knowledge aren't things the majority of people leave to scholars and intellectuals, especially important as the fear/anger at the supposed "intellectual elitism" tends to be the creative force behind the disdain these "lords of academia" have for the "masses."
But institutions make men, and men make instituions...so we're nailed with a paradox.

[Darth Wong]

We don't even have the shop equipment anymore--it all got sent somewhere else in the district (or sold for scrap).

Why the fuck do people do this? Don't they realize that the traditional route of class advancement for underprivileged people has always been in the skilled trades? Historically, poor people don't become doctors and lawyers, nor do they somehow make a generous income with knowledge of history and English. They learn how to fix plumbing or cars, they get a decent middle-class income with some sort of trade, and then maybe their kids take the next step to become doctors or lawyers.

[Stark]

In AU at least the trades pay extremely well, and many of my friends who joined the year 11-12 construction/milling program are making six figures now. If my school had had no shop program, these guys would've been stuck with nothing, since even the Army here has high standards.

[RedImperator]

We don't even have the shop equipment anymore--it all got sent somewhere else in the district (or sold for scrap).

Why the fuck do people do this? Don't they realize that the traditional route of class advancement for underprivileged people has always been in the skilled trades? Historically, poor people don't become doctors and lawyers, nor do they somehow make a generous income with knowledge of history and English. They learn how to fix plumbing or cars, they get a decent middle-class income with some sort of trade, and then maybe their kids take the next step to become doctors or lawyers.

Vocational education has been gutted nationwide in favor of the "everybody goes to college" model. Which is profoundly stupid, of course, and it hurts kids who don't have the ability, inclination, or money to graduate from college, but that's the way it's been for at least 20 years. So industrial arts is perpetually on the chopping block. NCLB has made it worse. You don't make Adequate Yearly Progress with a great industrial arts program, even if you're training underprivleged children for a real career in a stable business that will pay good money and let them make a better life for their kids and contribute to the community. You DO make AYP by endlessly drilling your freshmen in the specific knowledge tested on the PSSA exam, knowledge they will immediately forget as soon as the exam is over and which would serve no pratical purpose even if they did remember.

[Yogi]

The problem is getting people motivated to learn about math and science. In order for that to happen, there has to be very REAL consequences for underperforming, such as not being considered a legal adult. Otherwise, no one is going to learn about biology or algebra if they plan on becoming a mechanic.

Getting good teachers is another issue. They should increase the teacher's salaries, but extend their working hours. Several months worth of paid vacation is a bit much. Working with the academically interested over the summer benefits the students, and helps justify the higher salaries.

OR, one can do what the army does. Offer to pay for college, but require X number of years as a teacher in return.

[RedImperator]

The problem is getting people motivated to learn about math and science. In order for that to happen, there has to be very REAL consequences for underperforming, such as not being considered a legal adult. Otherwise, no one is going to learn about biology or algebra if they plan on becoming a mechanic.

That's asinine. Just make algebra and biology requirements for graduation and make sure they're not Mickey Mouse classes.

Getting good teachers is another issue. They should increase the teacher's salaries, but extend their working hours. Several months worth of paid vacation is a bit much. Working with the academically interested over the summer benefits the students, and helps justify the higher salaries.

Paid vacation? Try again. If you want to get paid over the summer, you have to have money docked from your paycheck every cycle--essentially, give the school district an interest free short-term loan that they pay back over the summer so you don't, you know, starve. As for justifying higher salaries, how about the fact that teachers are supposedly master's holding professionals charged with shaping the next generation...who start at $30,000 a year.

Besides that, teaching is already a profession where the average time to burnout is five years. Take away the summers and the turnover will be even worse.

OR, one can do what the army does. Offer to pay for college, but require X number of years as a teacher in return.

There are already some programs along these lines. AmeriCorps, for example, will pay off a considerable percentage of your student loans if you teach in the inner city for three years.

[Akhlut]

Because if that happens, they'll be in a world of shit later on because they learn the bad habit that they don't need to do much at all to get through. It'll bite them in the ass bigtime later.

I know how that goes. I went to decent enough schools for my whole academic career, but I never had classes that challenged me enough. And now I'm paying because I have a very difficult time going out and getting my ass a job AND doing things like research papers, presentations, etc. While my ability to recall facts makes tests and quizzes easy enough, it, combined with not being challenged to do work in my younger years has led to a giant motivation problem for me. It also may or may not have given me an aversion to grunt work. Now I'm kicking myself, trying to get a skill that I haven't needed in my life that I'm, frankly, not that fond of. I intellectually realize I need the skill, but I want to do things the easy way, namely, sitting around and being smart.

So, because of that, I do think we need some sort of segregation based on ability. Several of my friends with roughly the same intelligence and mentality are finding it difficult to motivate ourselves and get work. Had there been some sort of way to get us into high-ability classes that challenged us and forced us to work hard to get good grades in elementary school, then I think we'd be better prepared to do what is necessary in life and not just try to coast through life on natural ability alone.

[defanatic]

The really sad thing is that while you can't single out kids for poor academic performance, you can single them out for poor athletic performance. Any kid who isn't athletically inclined will be publicly humiliated in every gym class until he learns to hate all team sports. And of course, no one has any problem with that kind of treatment because sports, apparently, is more important than learning.

I hate this, and everyone knows my opinion on this, so I stand around and watch balls roll by and crap. I think people have realised that I don't care.

[tharkûn]

On the aspect of positive reinforcement, perhaps schools need to have more competitions that are non-athletic.

Two words:

Robot wars

Some of the local schools have taken this up and it works amazingly well. You need everything from the machine shop guys to the computer geeks. It also helps that the mechanical carnage taps into competitive, violent, and destructive impulses of the students.

The biggest problem is of course that you need some seriously good advisors (most of the schools I know doing it use automotive ME, IE, or EE volunteers) and a decent budget for the program (though still far less than even the basketball team requires).

[Sir Sirius]

You can switch from short to long math in Finnish high schools. However, short math courses don not make up for long math courses (long math does make up for short math). Meaning that you have to basically start math studies from scratch, usually this means evening school and 11 to 12 hour schooldays a couple of times a week for a few months. I knew a few who did just that.