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Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

economist.com

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Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#91

Post by Marwy »

zmk_ wrote: post #45

Having grown in Poland, I have to say I was very lucky to be born in 1985 which was the cut-off year for the reformed educational system. I managed to escape it. It is widely agreed that the system brought nothing but deterioration in the level of education students receive pre-univeristy, esp. in maths/physics/chemistry. So much so that when I was still studying in Poland, I often heard that "new" students are at a…

> First of all, education is obligatory until one is 18 years old in Poland.

I was about to point out your mistake, but decided to actually check that fact, and you're absolutely right.

> There is no such thing as dropping out of school before that age.

I must have slipped through the government's fingers. I'm not sure if it's a bad or a good thing.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#93

Post by TeMPOraL »

ericd wrote: post #57
austenallred wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Highschool felt at best a dungeon, and at worst a torture chamber." I had a largely similar experience, though my method of coping was a bit different. Simply put, day in and day out, I would try to manipulate systems as best as I could and raise hell. Every teacher had figured out a system that they wouldn't deviate from. Spend the first two weeks of each class studying how the teacher behaves and befriending the s…

I didn't realize how lucky I was to attend the public school I did. I need to write my diff eq teacher a thank you card for deciding to teach high school instead of doing engineering work for much better pay. Maybe someday I'll do the same for my kids' school, when I have kids.

Please do so. You may just make his/her day much, much better.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#94

Post by Joakal »

rustynails77 wrote: post #79

This year, I've engaged schools at length to discuss computer based systems. There are a few recurring threads that I have seen that would support this article. * Real-world examples are not favoured. I'd go as far to say they are unpopular. There is an over emphasis on theory and rote learning, without providing context. This may be a result of "stove piping" mathematics to be "pure math only", rather than having "r…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori ?

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

pgeorgi wrote: post #37
Qantourisc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you DO need a school to learn to read and write. Atleast for a few years. Otherwise their won't be much learning on your own :) And about declining school: there are does that decline them trough reasoning, and other due to being lazy... The most important thing to teach a child, any child, and you need to get this one right: self-reflection/evaluation: what am I doing, what effect will this have? Get that one r…

I know lots of kids that knew reading and writing before they entered school. Second year level calculation, too. Of course the writing is quite crude, but motor control improves with age not with schooling. The main thing in common I could discern so far is that the parents encourage curiosity and use those skills themselves.

> I know lots of kids that knew reading and writing before they entered school.

There are kids who don't know reading/writing before school? o_0. I thought it's what parents are for.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#96

Post by DanBC »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #95
pgeorgi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know lots of kids that knew reading and writing before they entered school. Second year level calculation, too. Of course the writing is quite crude, but motor control improves with age not with schooling. The main thing in common I could discern so far is that the parents encourage curiosity and use those skills themselves.

> I know lots of kids that knew reading and writing before they entered school. There are kids who don't know reading/writing before school? o_0. I thought it's what parents are for.

> There are kids who don't know reading/writing before school? o_0. I thought it's what parents are for.

There are children who don't know what books are, let alone how to read.

The UK (which starts school at a very young age) has several things in place to help. There's the charity BookTrust which gives books to parents. Early Years teaching (pre school) has lots of stuff around books and reading. There are charities and schemes aimed at improving parent literacy so that can be passed onto children; and at increasing the number of men reading to their children.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booktrust

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#98

Post by Ras_ »

History proves some interesting insight to education.

Take for example literacy. There are Finnish/Swedish parochial records/church examination registries dating back to 17th century down to a level of individual families. This is important due to Charles XI's Swedish Church Law of 1686 stating that everyone had to be able to read bible. So you can follow how that emergent Lutheran essence actually turned into literacy. From an individual perspective it was necessary to learn because you weren't allowed to take holy communion, be confirmed and later wed without reading ability. By 1750 some parishes started to have 90% reading ability. What is surprising is the writing ability. It achieved same levels only around 1900 (1920 in Finland). So that is clearly connected to industrial reform rather than spirit of protestantism. At least my initial assumption that reading/writing go hand in hand was proven wrong. In light of this long history of literacy in Nordic countries I tend to value the South Korean jump in literacy from previous generation more highly, even if it was achieved through “culture of educational masochism”.

Book about this: Understanding Literacy in Its Historical Contexts: Socio-cultural History and the Legacy of Egil Johansson.

Take a look at pg. 47 at Google Books and see how incredibly detailed those church examination registries in 1688-91 could be (pg. 56 has a nice graph differentiating the development of reading and writing ability): http://books.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=frontc...

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#99

Post by Houshalter »

austenallred wrote: post #24
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

Growing up, I declined to participate in the educational system (primarily to avoid harassment at school) and instead spent all of my time learning to program video games at home. So I would sleep through class, go home, and try to write Pong. My academic performance was nonexistent, but I came out of it with a career. I was wondering, was anyone else's childhood experience similar? Highschool felt at best a dungeon,…

"Highschool felt at best a dungeon, and at worst a torture chamber." I had a largely similar experience, though my method of coping was a bit different. Simply put, day in and day out, I would try to manipulate systems as best as I could and raise hell. Every teacher had figured out a system that they wouldn't deviate from. Spend the first two weeks of each class studying how the teacher behaves and befriending the s…

That's very awesome, though at the same time I feel like you would be a terrifying person.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#100

Post by rbehrends »

dnautics wrote: post #26

Was I the only one who found no evidence in this article about 'teaching children to think'? There was some discussion about metrics (such as PISA) but that is not, to me, any sort of evidence about the ability to think.

It's probably an allusion to Amanda Ripley's experience with taking the PISA test herself, described at the start of the book. To wit:

"Several questions like this one asked for my opinion, followed by rows of blank lines for writing my answer; that was odd. Since when did a standardized test care about anyone's opinion?

"Other questions reminded me of problems I'd encountered as an adult--having to decipher the fine print of a health-care policy before choosing it, or comparing the fees of checking accounts offered by competing banks. It seemed more like a test of life skills than school skills.

"All the math formulas were provided, thank God, including the value of pi. But I noticed that I had to really think about my answers. When I tried to speed through a math section, I had to go back and erase several answers."

"PISA demanded fluency in problem solving and the ability to communicate; in other words, the basic skills I needed to do my job and take care of my family in a world choked with information and subject to sudden economic change. What did it mean for a country if most of its teenagers did not do well on this test? Not all of our kids had to be engineers and lawyers, but didn't all of them need to know how to think?

"I still didn't believe that PISA measured everything, but I was now convinced that it measured critical thinking."

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