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Reinventing the School

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Re: Reinventing the School

#21

Post by ironchef »

MarcScott wrote: post #17
skullum wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think stuff like Khan academy https://www.khanacademy.org/ is the future.

Although I use video instruction occasionally in my own lessons, it is not a solution. It is a one-shoe fits all approach. The talent of a teacher is to be able to engage learners of all ability ranges and adapt their lessons according to the progress made by individual students. Software can't do this (yet).

Agreed. The khan academy and similar solutions are good for pupils who are engaged and will act as their own advocates; however, a significant number don't respond as well to that currently.

Re: Reinventing the School

#22

Post by SirSkidmore »

vtempest wrote: post #4

Good ideas, but lets just not have classrooms / teachers - just learn online and then come in to use teacher as consultant

Online learning can be good, but it can also be absolutely detrimental to education.

I just graduated from high school in a relatively rural community where online classes were extremely popular among students. You got time in the computer lab, and had an "adviser" for each of your online classes. There were notes, assignments, tests, and quizzes. Sounds great right? Except students quickly discovered their "adviser" cared a lot less about online classes than the real counterparts, so notes and assignments quickly vanished from the curriculum. Computer lab time wasn't regulated by any means, so many students "helped" (read: cheated) each other on their quizzes and tests no one cared, even after several incidents were reported.

I even took two online classes my senior year. Each course was supposed to be a semester long, yet I got both of them done in less than a month. Sure, I was an honors/AP/gifted student, but a semester course shouldn't be that easy to complete in such a short amount of time. I took "Online Intro to Creative Writing," and none, NONE, of the writing assignments were required by my adviser. There was no context for the lessons; no discussions to solidify concepts.

Sure, my one experience is probably relatively isolated, but I have heard similar stories from other students in the state. Online learning, imho, isn't helping the problem, it's making it worse.

Re: Reinventing the School

#23

Post by MarcScott »

As a teacher myself I agree with most of what is said here. However, with few exceptions, I can spot students who are going to succeed in school within a week of teaching them. These are the students who have supportive parents that are engaged in their children's education.

As a profession we strive to get all our students to engage, but we are with them for a few hours a week at best and have nowhere near as much impact on their lives as their parents.

Note, however, that I said 'succeed in school'. Many students have passed through my classroom door over the years, who have not achieved academically, but have gone on to achieve in later life. These students are often those for whom the Model Victorian Classroom is simply not appropriate.

The very concept that you can take a random sample of thirty teenagers, place them in a socially pressured environment and then expect them all to make academic progress under the tutelage of a single individual is frankly ridiculous.

Ken Robinson say's it far more eloquently than me though, and with pretty graphics to hammer home the point.

http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-...

Re: Reinventing the School

#24

Post by ollysb »

ironchef wrote: post #20
jarrett wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true, but it's not just socioeconomically disadvantaged schools that are in trouble. Schools serving middle-class populations often have the problems the author enumerates. For example, the author says that classes do not teach practical skills such as filing taxes or negotiating. He also says that teacher pay is too low, considering its social importance. These (and other) problems the author addresses are not…

Sure...and part of it is that to do things well there's (generally) not a one-size fits all solution. Unfortunately that's what most americans are geared towards. To get a multitude of solutions is typically more costly. Spot on about the middle classes also feeling it by the way. On the plus side, I know even in a poor school here they have consumer education classes which includes things such as balancing checkbook…

Given recent events it seems that an understanding of how government related systems work e.g. democracy, capitalism, legal etc. And I'm not talking about how to participate at a practical/individual level, I mean how these systems benefit society and what dangers the population needs to guard against to ensure that they continue to work.

Re: Reinventing the School

#25

Post by SirSkidmore »

arethuza wrote: post #19
codva wrote: post #15

Instead of reinventing the school, I think we need to be thinking outside the school. The institution of school comes with a whole host of problems that are just systemic to the idea of everybody reporting to a central location and being primarily segregated by age. Not that you can't get a decent education in school, because many of us did. We don't need the best and brightest teachers. We need the most passionate a…

A quick question - when you say "where every kid could branch off to follow their interests" does this imply that kids in the US education system don't choose a set of subjects to focus on at about 14?

Completely true, if not implied. I just graduated from secondary school in the US. I want to be a programmer, but I never once took a programming class; my school didn't offer them. Most of my peers still have NO idea what they would like to study, even though some of them are paying $10,000-$20,000 to go to college.

At least at my school (a small rural secondary school), there just weren't enough classes to to "specialize" or focus on any one particular field. You just took the core classes every year: a science (sometimes), a math, an English.

Re: Reinventing the School

#26

Post by MarcScott »

msluyter wrote: post #11

I'd love to pay teachers more -- if I were appointed Dictator of the United States, I would also (at least) double their salaries. But how would we actually go about achieving that goal in the actual world we live in? Well, we'd have to raise taxes[2], and a solid third of US citizens would veto any raise in taxes for any reason whatsoever, and another 50% or so would veto raising teacher salaries on tribal affiliati…

Have a look at these charts and ask yourself whether tax increases are really necessary, or whether a few cuts might do the job.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/e...

Re: Reinventing the School

#27

Post by randomdata »

jarrett wrote: post #16
blhack wrote: post #8

The school isn't the problem. There are huge social problems that need to be addressed, which are unfortunately politically-incorrect, before we start changing schools. Go visit a school in a very poor area sometime. They need social workers, not teachers. The problem is that a lot of teachers don't want to be social workers, they want to be teachers.

Very true, but it's not just socioeconomically disadvantaged schools that are in trouble. Schools serving middle-class populations often have the problems the author enumerates. For example, the author says that classes do not teach practical skills such as filing taxes or negotiating. He also says that teacher pay is too low, considering its social importance. These (and other) problems the author addresses are not…

> He also says that teacher pay is too low

That may be true, but it is not clear if that will translate into a better education. Teacher pay in Canada puts many of them into the top 5% of earners, yet when demographically adjusted, students in the USA perform on par or sometimes even better than their Canadian counterparts. When observed as a whole, Canadian students show better performance, but that is, according to the study that I cannot seem to find now, due to demographic cohesion that is not found in the US.

Re: Reinventing the School

#28

Post by dragonwriter »

SirSkidmore wrote: post #25
arethuza wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick question - when you say "where every kid could branch off to follow their interests" does this imply that kids in the US education system don't choose a set of subjects to focus on at about 14?

Completely true, if not implied. I just graduated from secondary school in the US. I want to be a programmer, but I never once took a programming class; my school didn't offer them. Most of my peers still have NO idea what they would like to study, even though some of them are paying $10,000-$20,000 to go to college. At least at my school (a small rural secondary school), there just weren't enough classes to to "spec…

> I just graduated from primary school in the US. I want to be a programmer, but I never once took a programming class.

Normally I would say "that's okay, you've got plenty of time to do that in secondary school (middle/high school)". But then you go on to say this:

> Most of my peers still have NO idea what they would like to study, even though some of them are paying $10,000-$20,000 to go to college.

If you just graduated from primary school, why are your peers going to college? That's quite odd. I suspect, in declining order of likelihood, that either "primary school", or "college", or "peers" is an error...

Re: Reinventing the School

#29

Post by Inception »

codva wrote: post #15

Instead of reinventing the school, I think we need to be thinking outside the school. The institution of school comes with a whole host of problems that are just systemic to the idea of everybody reporting to a central location and being primarily segregated by age. Not that you can't get a decent education in school, because many of us did. We don't need the best and brightest teachers. We need the most passionate a…

I agree with you about allowing people to follow their interests.

The curriculum that schools follow turns people off to learning in my opinion. We as a society have become so set on fulfilling educational requirements that it takes the fun out of learning. I have a piece of paper worth over $100,000 that symbolizes my ability to memorize, regurgitate and forget information that my college decided would make me a contributing member of society. Don't get me wrong, I did take courses that I was interested in and I still use to this day, but I would bet that I can't tell you one thing that I learned from the majority of the required courses that I took because I was not interested in them.

Now that my curriculum days are done I've rediscovered the fun in learning. I would attribute that to my interest in the areas that I am exploring. What I find for myself, and this may be true for others as well, is that if I am truly interested in an area that I am learning about I can remember and actually use the information.

Teach children the basics and then the rest of their education should be interest based.

Re: Reinventing the School

#30

Post by kazagistar »

codva wrote: post #15

Instead of reinventing the school, I think we need to be thinking outside the school. The institution of school comes with a whole host of problems that are just systemic to the idea of everybody reporting to a central location and being primarily segregated by age. Not that you can't get a decent education in school, because many of us did. We don't need the best and brightest teachers. We need the most passionate a…

> We don't need the best and brightest teachers. We need the most passionate and dedicated teachers.

Agreed. It is reasonable that people who did poorly academically will be the ones who have the best insight on how to improve academic performance, and the teachers who struggled to understand a subject area will have the best insight on how to make the subject easier to learn.

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