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Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

theguardian.com

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Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#51

Post by yongjik »

Eumenes wrote: post #48
squigz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm kidding, but... you want school to build your kids' social skills? Apart from all the pathologies common in schools, you want your kids to grow up to live in an adult world, which is almost completely unlike school. I mean... yes, it seems reasonable to learn social skills from a school setting? Interacting with other people, some of whom dislike/disagree with each other, interacting with other adults, etc. Thi…

“Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale orga…

And put those children in an invisible cage with two adults who will tell them when to get up, what to wear, what to eat, what to read, and when to go to bed, and these kids will learn...... what?

I think homeschooling could work for some combinations of parents and kids, but so many discussion sounds like "Of course it's going to work for my kids because I'm different!"

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#52

Post by squigz »

Eumenes wrote: post #50
squigz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cage > isolation > interruptions > ridicule > shame I wonder if this person's view on schools is at all biased.

I'd say someone who taught in NYC public schools for 30 years and won teacher of the year award is a good resource to learn from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto

So biased toward American public education, in New York City of all places.

For what it's worth, I look back on my time in school with relative fondness. Certainly I don't agree with anything like it 'being a cage' or feeling isolated from other people (????)

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#53

Post by jan_Inkepa »

sollewitt wrote: post #26

In TY in 1998 I: worked at an architect's, an archeologist's, a hospital, an epidemiological research institute where I got to use _my own computer_ all day - decided I needed to work with computers, got a summer job there. earned the President's Award medal had one class where we stripped an engine over the term got my first aid certificate learned how to develop film took night classes touch typing (on an electric…

School for me (in Ireland) was more or less a race to get out of school (+ concomitant bullying) and into university to study what I was interested in (maths - at that point I wasn't able to advance any further on my own and there was nobody who could help/guide me further where I lived) - the idea of adding a year on felt like it would be a waste. In retrospect, yeah I think I made a good call. Happy to see other people getting benefit from it though.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#54

Post by alephnerd »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #47
alephnerd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! Good extracurriculars are expensive. I remember taking part in Debate, MUN, XC, DECA, Wrestling, Quiz Bowl, Volunteering (NHS/CSF), and a bunch of Olympiads in HS and there was always a cost associated with participating (either a fee or the need to travel to the place hosting the EC). Unsurprisingly, this meant ECs would skew upper middle class and upper class. Sadly, these same ECs are also blockers for colleg…

unweighted GPA, relative class ranking, and SAT/ACT for college admissions - sort of like what the UCs do UC admissions decisions don't use SAT or ACT scores. Relative class ranking is a poor measure for students who gained entry (by merit) to a selective high school. Like if you do well in middle school and get into Lowell by the skin of your teeth, should you be penalized for being in the bottom 10%?

> UC admissions decisions don't use SAT or ACT scores.

Ope. I forgot that changed after COVID.

Pre-COVID SAT/ACT was required.

> Like if you do well in middle school and get into Lowell by the skin of your teeth, should you be penalized for being in the bottom 10%?

Someone is always going to be penalized no matter what. Most schools in California as well as nationally are not specialized or gatekept via entrance exams like Lowell was.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#55

Post by SoftTalker »

wiredfool wrote: post #23
Filligree wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which seems fair enough. There’s already a year difference between the youngest and oldest student in any given class; if you want your children to do well, make sure they’re among the oldest. The problem is it might come too late to change their self-perception. A year is a lot of time when you’re nine

TY is typically at 15ish.

A year is still a lot then. You can do a lot in a year if you don't have to worry about earning a living and have the time to engage in things that are interesting.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#56

Post by SoftTalker »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #5

Sounds like a great idea. In England, I've seen education get consistently more rigid and inflexible over the years. All about tests, tests and more tests. Teachers leave the profession, children turn off. And as it consistently fails to produce better results, the answer is always to do more of what has failed. Bring something like this to England, please!

> tests, tests and more tests

Same in the USA. The old student question "will this be on the test?" is now also asked by teachers and administrators. If the answer is "no" they skip it.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#57

Post by dijksterhuis »

timthorn wrote: post #43
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #5

Sounds like a great idea. In England, I've seen education get consistently more rigid and inflexible over the years. All about tests, tests and more tests. Teachers leave the profession, children turn off. And as it consistently fails to produce better results, the answer is always to do more of what has failed. Bring something like this to England, please!

> it consistently fails to produce better results The performance of the English education system has improved markedly over the past couple of decades. At least, as measured by tests!

my physics A level teacher did something really interesting with us.

we spent a whole class looking at an old O Level question from an exam.

all of us, including the boffins in the class, were completely stumped by it.

he explained it to us at the end, but it did solidify an appreciation in me that, at least 20ish years ago, we definitely had it easier than folks before us.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#58

Post by heisenzombie »

sodality2 wrote: post #35
alephnerd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! Good extracurriculars are expensive. I remember taking part in Debate, MUN, XC, DECA, Wrestling, Quiz Bowl, Volunteering (NHS/CSF), and a bunch of Olympiads in HS and there was always a cost associated with participating (either a fee or the need to travel to the place hosting the EC). Unsurprisingly, this meant ECs would skew upper middle class and upper class. Sadly, these same ECs are also blockers for colleg…

Open entry would change a lot of things - lots of schools and rankings use drop out rate as a proxy for how useful attending there is, because of the assumption that if the dropout rate is higher, there's a worse education. It would at least upend the old saying about the hardest part about some colleges is getting in. I agree with the SAT/ACT part - they pushed "holistic review" during Covid but ultimately SAT prep…

Open admission is an interesting way to do things. I spent a bit of time in Belgium where the main universities will accept anyone who has a high-school level education. The first year dropout rate can be 70% in some courses. This system seemed to be very well loved by Belgians.

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/eag_highlights-2010-...

Notably the US has the lowest dropout rate, so obviously they are pre-filtering students hard. That necessarily means that there are lots of people who /could/ have succeeded but were excluded at the admissions stage. The degree to which that's the right choice probably depends on whether you think doing a year of university and then leaving is a huge waste, a horrible failure, or a worthwhile experiment.

(The unique economics of US universities obviously interact with this calculus in pretty major ways.)

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#59

Post by SoftTalker »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #10

I took a year off after high school in the US to work part time and take welding and accounting courses at the local community college. Great experience that convinced me that I did actually want to go to university.

I'm pretty sure that if I had taken auto shop or welding in high school (it was still offered, but I was "college-bound" and steered away from anything in that wing of the building) or in a "gap year" I would have ended up doing something in that field. I love making stuff and repairing stuff. I also was interested in computers and programming them, I think there's a lot of overlap there in terms of motivations.

Re: Ireland's big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

#60

Post by Macha »

anotherhue wrote: post #15

20 years ago it was considered a 'doss year' (waste/screw-around etc.), and the general perception was that it was for those that require a little more time in the oven developmentally before proceeding to the next stage. I was a child then so I don't know if that was true, but certainly the majority of people who took it were not academically inclined.

It was both extremes when I did it 15 years ago. Those who needed it just to catch up on what they were supposed to have learned in junior cycle and those who wanted a bunch of extra curriculars for whatever reason. Note that admission to college/university in Ireland is not a motivator for extra curriculars - for school leavers the only things that matter are your overall grades, and for some courses, grades in specific subjects. (For foreign students, over 25s, those with special needs etc. there's a 10% or so allocation for an alternative process which is more subjective application based. But the 90% go through the purely grades based CAO)

Think it varies a lot school to school and sometimes even year to year.

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