151–160 of 227 posts
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More to the point, the children/teenagers in question range from 13 to 18 years of age. I gather that "12th grade" is meaningless in much of the world.
Thanks. It was kind of cute how the american terms were explained using more american terms.
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> Perhaps there would be less classroom disruption if friends could have time together outside of the one class they took together knowing that would be the only time they could be together? There is. School ends at 2:30, upon which point they can enlist in formal or informal shared after-school activities. Turning classes into a free-for-all where no one needs to afford the teacher and other students any respect for…
Turning classes into a free-for-all where no one needs to afford the teacher and other students any respect for their time and attention isn't a great option. This is an insulting straw man. But I'm glad school was optimized for your needs.
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> The problem is that schools aren't aware of that I think the schools, and the teachers, are very aware of their "half babysitting" role. The public schools, in the US, are paid based on heads-per-day, with some restrictions on minimum days and test scores (depending on the state). They get money for providing services to the children. So, as with all incentive plans, the system gets gamed. > What 6 or 7 year old ca…
>> What 6 or 7 year old can possibly sit still and study for 5 or 6 hours each day? > The ones society wants to succeed in school. So, the malleable, obedient ones should succeed. I'm sure that will be convenient for someone .
Individual action and group inaction can have the same result. A conspiracy is not required.
School is half education and half babysitting. The problem is that schools aren't aware of that, and they try to cram too much learning/work into a day at school. Kids just don't have the attention span. College isn't taught this way. Colleges realize that even young adults can't handle 40 hours a week of continual instruction, why do we do this kids can? I think the reason, is that we're always behind other countrie…
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Turning classes into a free-for-all where no one needs to afford the teacher and other students any respect for their time and attention isn't a great option. This is an insulting straw man. But I'm glad school was optimized for your needs.
This comment is a bit rich, given that you're basically saying you want it changed so its optimised for your needs.
If the other commenter needs a quiet environment where he/she can listen to a lecture, that should be available without forcing those for whom it is unsuited to be there too.
"While Reichert and Hawley's research was conducted in all-boys schools, these lessons can be used in all classrooms, with both boys and girls." Not true, research shows that girls do worse when their performance is evaluated in relation to others (competitively), as opposed to when their performance is evaluated against an objective standard.
Sad that I need a throwaway account to talk about this, but such is life. Spend some time doing searches on terms like "gender grading gap" and reading the recent research. What you find may surprise you, is consistent across multiple Western democracies, and can be summarized thusly: * When assessment is left to teachers, there is a grading gap in favor of girls; girls receive grades that are inflated relative to th…
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Having been homeschooled, this is a great suggestion. It's pretty easy to get too isolated, and homeschooling groups help a lot. Also check with your local schools - I was able to take 2 classes while still being classified as 'homeschooled', for free (since it's part of taxes already), which can give access to tools that are otherwise way too expensive.
> Having been homeschooled, this is a great suggestion. Agreed. I was homeschooled as well, and homeschool groups were absolutely vital to making the experience a success for me. I did great teaching myself at home, but especially in high school, I needed outside classes and outside social activities. The city I grew up in had a huge homeschool community, so it was easy to find classes on a wide variety of subjects.
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class participation and whatnot counted, and I had not a problem with that, when a teacher asked a direct question and I was not sleeping deeply enough (if I was half-sleeping and heard the question I woke up) I would usually be the first to reply. Only later I figured this was bad idea (here in Brazil at least, the norm is to noone ever try to reply to the teacher, as a kind of weird social convention, and since I a…
Feels for you, bro. I don't know if Brazilian education has improved since Feynman wrote this: http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education I suspect not by much.
That piece is a great illustration of just how messed up education can be. Not all of US K-12 public education is so messed up, but a lot of it is significantly messed up in similar ways -- formality over reality.
And in particular, for the OP, a lot of women trying to teach boys when the women do understand the girls, are happy teaching the girls, but assume that somehow there is something wrong with the boys. Indeed, in the OP, the author does make progress on the problem but for her teaching idea of having team members come to the front of the class to look at something for 30 seconds, she is back to some absurd formality instead of anything close to reality.
Here's one: Boys are good at figuring things out. So, mechanical things -- boys are good at taking them apart and then putting them back together. Then one level more advanced, boys are good at making things -- e.g., give them some elementary parts and pieces and ask them to make something, say, something that will be the tallest in the class or a bridge with the longest free span or a bridge between two points that will hold the greatest weight. Have them make, say, rubber band powered cars and then have drag races. There are paper airplane contests with well developed rules -- get the rules and have a paper airplane contest. Redo some of what the Wright Brothers did with the world's first, good wind tunnel. So, measure lift and drag for various airfoil shapes. Then discuss Reynolds number. For selecting the materials for the frame of an airplane, discuss density and Young's modulus. Move to have the students explain how Hughes was able to build the 'Spruce Goose', about the size of a 747, out of wood.
There must be some books somewhere with some good projects for boys.
If the girls want to do such things, too, okay by me. If the rubber band car, the bridge, the air foil, or the airplane they build wins, terrific.
But, then, teachers might want to understand some things about boys! If I was a boy in that class and making a rubber band powered drag race car, it'd all be fine as long as I was racing against other boys -- I'd like to win, but no biggie if I came in second or third. But as soon as one of the girls started to compete with me, it'd be no food, no sleep, nothing else in school, nothing else for 48 hours as I wracked my brains looking for whatever, anything, to totally blow the doors off that girl's car and send her back to decorating her picture of her little pink pony and doing gossip about lipstick! And, uh, I had some pretty good talent with mechanical things, spatial relations, etc. In the US a lot of boys are really good with mechanical things.
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why do you think the armies around the world have to threaten recruits with corporal punishment, prison, and even execution when they don't follow orders?
Do American football programs have to do the same thing?