Sounds a lot like many homeschooling approaches done well in a non-home environment. Interesting.
No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
231–240 of 254 posts
Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
#232Every time I come home from a mind-numbing eight-hour Scrum meeting, I feel frustrated for having accomplished absolutely nothing. Then I realise that this is what school was like, every single day. I'm sure some people prefer to be force-fed instead of learning on their own, but self-organised schools as in the OP should at least be an option for people who know what they want.
"eight-hour Scrum meeting" Why are you having an eight hour Scrum meeting? Isn't that the complete opposite of what a Scrum meeting is supposed to be? 15 minute max, standup meeting is a Scrum.
To be clear, I find all eight-hour meetings exhausting, be it at work, making plans for Christmas, or sitting through school. Mentioning Scrum was a red herring in this thread, but a very effective one(?!) :)
I guess our meta-problem is that Scrum was a buzzword-based requirement chosen by non-programmers, so we naturally have programmers subverting the process out of spite, lots of politics and distrust, and inexperienced folks managing the whole thing in a horribly broken JIRA installation (what else?).
As a result, our development team is _really_ far behind on a huge backlog of very fuzzy stories. If you realise in a meeting that you've misunderstood key requirements, there's no point going back to building the wrong thing after the time-box ends. You have to come up with a new plan, and at the same time you need to make it fit into the desired Scrum schedule, and don't break that burn-down chart or JIRA, ...
Of course, at that point it is not really a Scrum meeting anymore.
Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would agree if she didn't want to learn calculus or linear algebra, but I think long division is a pretty fundamental skill in today's world. How much is my monthly car payment going to be if I take this loan? What is my share of the rent in this house? What are the consequences of running up a credit card balance?
No, sorry it's not a fundamental skill in the least. It's a method for dividing on paper. In 37 years I've never used it outside of school as I have calculator in my pocket as does everyone else (smartphone obviously). Furthermore, "In the United States, long division has been especially targeted for de-emphasis, or even elimination from the school curriculum..." according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
To clarify even though it's probably too late. She couldn't do division or multiplication of any size in her head, and was fuzzy on what occasions to use them in. For example, if you said "pay me back over 3 years for this $30,000 car", she might first multiply it by 3, get a very large number and then try dividing it and decide that's the right answer.
People are getting hung up on the fact that I said "long division" but it was basically anything beyond addition and subtraction.
Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Waldorf education assumes, for completely unscientific reasons that are about as reasonable as homeopathy, that children go through fairly specific phases at fairly specific ages. Based on that belief certain things are taught at specific ages in specific ways. Any deviation from that is seen as harmful to a child's development. So, their disapproval is not strange at all, it's completely consistent with their view,…
My son is in a Waldorf kindergarten. He loves it, especially the silly little rituals. I think of it as a trade-off. Most of the ideas Rudolf Steiner had are harmless, at least in the way they are practiced today, but others are clearly beneficial. Either that, or they attract teachers who spend more time reflecting on what's good for the children, as opposed to how to put some specific knowledge into their heads. I…
Of course they can do well and even better for some students. You shouldn't ignore why that is though. They are at an advantage because their students that are incredibly privileged. Steiner also made rather obvious improvements on the status quo but that doesn't mean he has found an optimal solution, if such a thing exists for pedagogy.
Waldorf education has turned Steiner's ideas into an ideology and the movement is unable to reflect on what it's doing, why and that it might be wrong. This creates a culture that, just like religion, is fixed and cannot change without conflict.
Science doesn't have that problem, the culture around it embraces change and improvement. An education policy that truly takes advantage of that, will eventually lead to institutions that outperform alternative ones like Waldorf schools.
Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like your cohort was great. There was an "unschooled" girl in my college friend group who was failing remedial math and science classes in her third year. She never wanted to learn basic mathematics (we're talking long division here), so she never did, and she did not understand how to motivate herself to learn about something she wasn't already interested in. She didn't end up graduating despite the small, pr…
The flipped perspective is that she's clearly a talented, competent person who can succeed—the fact that she didn't says more about how the school system defines success than it does about her. Hell, who's more likely to end up doing something great: her or somebody who fills out the minimum requirements exactly but nothing more? Even if they manage to learn long division and she doesn't? Besides, it's not like many…
She works at Trader Joes and has for four years now and is in severe credit card debt. Not to say that being bad at math makes you more likely to get into debt but not understanding compound interest or even percentages certainly makes it harder to understand the ramifications of it.
Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the link, thanks for your efforts. I'll definitely read up on sudval.org. "They are fully democratic and focus on producing empowered self directed citizens..." Word. I've run democratic teams. The empowerment is real. I can't explain it; it feels like magic. Those experiences have transmuted me into a full throated advocate for democracy. Democracy, in its multitude of forms, is very much a technology. Ju…
> I wonder why learning can't be more like that? As John Taylor Gatto explains, it is because our education system was designed back in the 19th century to produce factory workers who would follow orders and do the same boring thing all day long.
http://johntaylorgatto.com/ -- his books are all worth reading, especially his Underground History of American Education.
Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
#237Every time I come home from a mind-numbing eight-hour Scrum meeting, I feel frustrated for having accomplished absolutely nothing. Then I realise that this is what school was like, every single day. I'm sure some people prefer to be force-fed instead of learning on their own, but self-organised schools as in the OP should at least be an option for people who know what they want.
Why are you allowing this eight-hour meeting to happen? Where is your feedback mechanism?
I work as a freelance developer/consultant for several clients, and giving feedback with no regards for hierarchy or my own future is awesome. So my job definitely beats school.
I still need to sit through a few dumb meetings before I can give feedback, though, and even then it doesn't always work.
Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People learn to perform quite complicated mathematical operations in the course of their lives, through experience. With the greatest of respect, I do not think a child is going to learn significant mathematics beyond arithmetic by "living". Give them a book and an interest? Sure. A little direction and help? Better. But the number of people who can invent calculus from scratch is pretty low. > most of what most pe…
Knowing calculus and linear algebra has been of about as much use to me as my knowledge of history; none bar intellectual satisfaction. I feel the same way about people who force their interests and prejudices on others even when I share those prejudices. Those people are st best obnoxious. I derived neither enjoyment nor any discernible benefit from having to do P.E. in school. I am not in favour of forcing Math or…
You want to let a 10 year old decide for themselves whether or not they'll want to do any branch of science/Engineering that relies on mathematics at university level?
This is not about forcing an interest, this is about shaping opportunity. The ideal of school is to have provided a well rounded education such that the individual at 16 or 18 can start to make informed decisions about their life.
I get that calculus isn't very useful for the largest proportion of society. I can't remember the last time knowing how to derive the volume of a sphere was useful to me. The concepts, the mode of thought, is useful.
History? Should have been teaching you about sources. Bias. Propaganda. Analysis. Argument. Things you need to learn to be able to generate a position on something in life. I can assure you that my knowledge of medical history through the ages has yet to be useful - but that doesn't mean that what I learned in that class hasn't been?
Maybe I'm wrong, and the rest of the world isn't like me. Maybe the rest of the world are motivated self starters with insatiable curiosity and infinite capacity for broad self directed learning. Me? I'd have picked the couple of things I enjoyed, learned sod all else, and once I realised there were no consequences to slacking off? I'd have done that, heck I did do that.
In other words. Parents make children eat vegetables because we know what is good for them, better than they do at least. Abdicating responsibility for that by passing it off to the child just seems mad
Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
The country I live in uses a proportional voting system - and what happens is that one of the smallest and most narrow special interests party gets to be the the point of equilibrium - as nobody can form government without it. And then that party proceeds to blackmail everybody all the time. Thus all the governments need to pander to this particular party and they get to gridlock the government whenever they feel the…
nobody can form government without it Of course they can, they just choose not to. What you are saying is that the parties are choosing a blackmailer over a self-declared "enemy". That's a choice , it's not inevitable. Besides, if the political landscape is diverse enough, a minority coalition can be a boon for everyone: it means that the ruling parties must actually learn to cooperate with the opposition instead of…
You are indeed correct.
However our political landscape is polarized to a degree where minority coalition has no chance of doing anything.
Not that any political problem could solve people acting as idiots.
Re: No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
"eight-hour Scrum meeting" Why are you having an eight hour Scrum meeting? Isn't that the complete opposite of what a Scrum meeting is supposed to be? 15 minute max, standup meeting is a Scrum.
To be clear, I find all eight-hour meetings exhausting, be it at work, making plans for Christmas, or sitting through school. Mentioning Scrum was a red herring in this thread, but a very effective one(?!) :) I guess our meta-problem is that Scrum was a buzzword-based requirement chosen by non-programmers, so we naturally have programmers subverting the process out of spite, lots of politics and distrust, and inexper…
> horribly broken JIRA installation
That's the first thing I'd scrap. Software to control the process doesn't help unless the team understands and wants the process, otherwise it's just an annoyance.
My path towards Scrum started after a pointless and long meeting. I found some coloured memo squares and some drawing pins, and cleared everything from an old noticeboard. (This is nicer than using post-it notes on a whiteboard.)
I copied out the tasks, making a rough go at splitting them into reasonably-sized things, and making my own estimates in days. I made "backlog", "this week" and "completed" columns.
The resulting mess showed that the project wasn't under control, which itself was valuable. The PM and the 'customer' were then able to ditch half the requirements, and the developers could concentrate on the highest priority tasks.
This wasn't Scrum, but it worked well, and led to buy-in from almost everyone that we should try Scrum.
(The most important things I missed on the first go: acceptance criteria and team estimation.)