The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
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The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
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Re: The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
#2It's about time this topic get the attention it needs and deserves. And I am glad to see so many people take interest. I hope this article will turn some heads. Very timely with new Waiting for Superman movie. If you don't know what I am talking about, you need to read this post.
Re: The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
#3Our education system needs a facelift! And this is a great post. More people need to recognize what is said in this article. Very interesting read.
Re: The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
#4I would like to see high school having an optional two-year extension. During those two years teach students skills they are likely to use and start earning a living. Then let them now go and start making money.
A few years down the line, when they have figured what they really want to do, they can go an enroll and pursue advanced studies.
As of now I can spend lots of time learning and understanding history. When I was 19, I was just not interested in history, geography, medicine etc...
Re: The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
#5I agree with the general premise of the article (that school's purpose should be to help children become adults who know their talents (and have talents)), and will ignore the notion of "discovering" purpose (as acknowledging it requires that we discuss whether purposes are created or found, which I don't care to discuss beyond this cursory treatment).
However, the pragmatics of it all are quite a bit messier.
Helping each individual student discover his/her individual talents and skills and passions requires that we restructure schools almost entirely.
1) The current system of 22+ students per class means that, in a 50 minute class period, each student can get a maximum of just over 2 minutes of personalized time, assuming a minimum of time wasted. Over the course of a school year (180 days), this works out to be about 6 hours. Hardly enough time for direct individual feedback or for solid relationships.
(I understand that there is a lot more to it than simple contact time, and also that small groups can be more efficient than 1-on-1 interaction). If all you are doing is lecturing, it does not matter how many people are in a room so long as their behavior is not disruptive (or so long as their behavior can be controlled). If you are hoping to deal with their ideas, though, there is a definite point beyond which it's impossible to do much meaningful work.
2) The school system, as it is, is mostly designed to get as many kids through as possible. Again, individualization plays only a cursory role, typically only with students who are "exceptionalities" (read: who have IEPs). Not the environment needed for the type of learning the author describes.
3) In order for the changes the author wants to see happen to actually happen, students (and teachers) will need a lot more autonomy. This means freedom to set one's own schedule to at least some amount, freedom to at least somewhat choose one's own learning, and access to all types of competent and caring adults and older peers who can help guide the student.
Personally, I'd love it if a student who was very talented in music was able to spend 4 or 5 hours a day practicing and learning those skills, and the other 3-4 hours per day doing the other bits of learning necessary to be a competent adult (literacy, numeracy, scientific and historical thinking, and so on, as well as reflective and metacognitive thinking).
Conclusion: the current system was built by people who see students as points of data and entries in a gradebook, and needs to be rehauled dramatically to provide the freedom and opportunity necessary for the type of individualized teaching the author suggests.
Re: The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
#6"The Purpose Of Education" - He left out "babysitter" as one of the purposes. Another purpose of education is to babysit children, teach them that they are a number and to blindly follow authority without question. If they happen to pick up some math or reading along the way that is nice too.
Re: The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
#7"The Purpose Of Education" - He left out "babysitter" as one of the purposes. Another purpose of education is to babysit children, teach them that they are a number and to blindly follow authority without question. If they happen to pick up some math or reading along the way that is nice too.
I can see why you say this, it seems to be that way in a lot of cases. This is most likely the fault of the system though. Students wouldn't be that bad if they were taught properly from the beginning.
Re: The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
#8I agree with the general premise of the article (that school's purpose should be to help children become adults who know their talents (and have talents)), and will ignore the notion of "discovering" purpose (as acknowledging it requires that we discuss whether purposes are created or found, which I don't care to discuss beyond this cursory treatment). However, the pragmatics of it all are quite a bit messier. Helpin…
This is a brilliant look at the system. And you are of course correct. There is an entire overhaul needed if we ever want to make learning more individualized. This will probably never happen. However, I included one link to a school trying it out, you would probably like it: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-litt...
Your conclusion is bang on, and yes the current system is set up in such a way that it classifies students as data in a system.
Re: The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
#9I feel that we do need to reward the "good" teachers a lot better than what is currently common practice. Having two close relatives that are teachers I hear firsthand the struggles they deal with just to be teachers. Sometimes it is hard to imagine why anyone would ever want to go into that field, but knowing these people the way I do I know that it is their true desire to be there and to do everything within their ability to be good teachers to our children. So why wouldn't we want to reward them for taking on such a huge and important responsibility of educating our children.
Re: The Lost Opportunity: Our Education System
#10Premise: learning is fun.
Premise: school children are bored.
Conclusion: learning is not taking place in schools.
This seems as true now as it has ever been. The belief that schools can be fixed is one of the main reasons people become teachers and why the existence of schools will drag on for at least another half century.