Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps they need offending.
Perhaps. I just worry about it being like insulting the person serving your food. Tack needs to be used.
Indeed, you might need to try a different tact.
Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
201–210 of 227 posts
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#202School 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…
How many teachers in the past were men? I went to primary school in the 80ies (Austria) and had only female teachers. Which completely sucks as those women do. not. understand. young boys. Any natural behavior by young girls is good, any natural behavior by boys is distracting. You can't do that ad nauseum. My step-son, 10years, had a male teacher for 3 years. What an amazing difference that makes. It's a mixture of…
That's interesting. I went to primary school in Switzerland in the 90ies, and I only had male teachers. In fact, except for sewing classes, I only had male teachers all the way through high school.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#203School 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…
How come they don't seem to have this problem in China, India or Germany? It isn't that kids can't handle the workload, the problem is the boring curriculum.
They very much have exactly this problem in Germany as well.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, historically mass education of the type we now employ is only about a century old, and designed to produce factory workers not to promote creativity. Learning to handle monotonous boredom and obey orders was of primary importance to a factory worker. Second, much of this is unprecedented. When my parents were children, they didn't attend Kindergarten, and first grade was a half day. When my parents younger sib…
designed to produce factory workers not to promote creativity I disagree with this common trope. The benefits of mass literacy are extremely obvious; consider that countries where agriculture was and is more important than industry also adopted universal education.
The benefits of mass literacy are extremely obvious
And? You can teach the average 9 year old to read in 50 contact hours. Quadruple that so they can learn arithmetic (200) and and quadruple that to account for the fact that all school hours can't be contact and you have 800 hours. That's 20 work weeks. Whatever school may be about it's a hell of a lot more than literacy.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#205School 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…
> now it's the "global workforce"
I know this is highly anecdotical in nature, but perhaps there's some useful information to it :-).
I'm part of the "global workforce"; I don't live in the US, but I have done some contract work with US employers as an independent consultant. I was born and currently live in Europe.
Funny thing is, while I absolutely loved learning and still do -- to the extent that an important factor in my choice of avoiding large corporations (after getting burned twice) was that a job there would leave me too little time for history, philosophy and programming of my own -- I didn't go to school that much. I was one of the top students in the class (I even unintentionally ended up as a valedictorian, so besides my BSc in Instrumentation Engineering they also handed me a badge of nerd shame or something), but I was regularly getting into trouble for skipping classes, faking illnesses and, every once in a while, challenging the professors' authority.
Fortunately, I actually had my parents behind me on this, and both of them are teachers (high school and university level, respectively). I'd literally tell my dad I was too hung over to go to school this morning, he'd shrug and tell me that as long as I think it's best to stay at home, I can stay at home.
And it was ok. I'm not starving -- I'm actually quite well off -- I have a job that I love, I do what I like and what I am best at. Despite my trouble with authority, my academic credentials are fairly good (to the extent that I am a published author -- my work ended up in IEEE journals -- but that was before I got my BSc, and I didn't push for an MSc after that).
Quite frankly, I'm horrified at the amount of work we put children to. I managed to dodge it because the system in my home country is shaggy enough that, as long as you're blunt and cunning enough, you can get away with anything. The sheer thought of actually having gone to school all that time is simply unrealistic, I'd have broken down.
I think this is a typical case of "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". No one bothers to think what the problem is, and appears to put it strictly in terms of MOAR SCHOOL MY LITTLE MINIONS! This is woefully unproductive. I swear, if I'll ever have kids of my own, I'll do just like my dad did with me -- encourage them to think for themselves and learn what's interesting for them, treating school as the necessary diploma-producing evil it seems to have ended up in our days.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
On /r/askhistorians someone asked about this idea that universal education was brought about to raise a nation of docile factory workers. Here's the thread, the idea gets debunked pretty hard http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hbezd/was_th...
I don't think that thread is convincing. The one substantial comment makes assertions with very little evidence. Here's some evidence: Rockefeller's General Education Board wrote the following in 1906: "In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and re…
> Protestants of Northern European descent were horrified by all the "dirty", "drunken", Catholic Southern European and/or Irish immigrants who didn't share their culture.
As a Southern European, I find that idea hilarious. Drunkenness is far more pervasive and culturally ingrained in Northern Europe and in America than in Southern Europe. If all you've ever known is America, you may find it hard to understand just how ridiculously obsessed with getting drunk your culture appears from outside.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just this past week they had a riot because some poor teachers tried to crack down on cheating.
The justification for the protests was that the crackdown was a "pilot program" that only affected a small portion of students.
Which just goes to show how systemic it is, if cracking down on some subset of students put them at such a severe disadvantage as to be worth rioting about.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#208Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#209As a long-time teacher in multiple countries, I've also had this concern. I realize it's a fairly heretical belief to hold on this site but I think boys are systematically discriminated against in most western societies. As a child that teachers (nearly all women) tended to be biased against boys and downright dismissive of male dominated interests such as science fiction, video games or arm-wrestling. Talking with s…
> In fact the amazingly good hacker school I went to charges men $2000 more than women.
Is that even legal?
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#210School 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…
> now it's the "global workforce" I know this is highly anecdotical in nature, but perhaps there's some useful information to it :-). I'm part of the "global workforce"; I don't live in the US, but I have done some contract work with US employers as an independent consultant. I was born and currently live in Europe. Funny thing is, while I absolutely loved learning and still do -- to the extent that an important fact…
Your parents are truly nice, but that makes you the exception, not the rule. Most students at my university perform like crap because their parents are either too demanding or don't give a damn.
I also observed that people who get great grades at school usually can't get anything serious done on their own.
I'm perfectly happy being average in school.