Education-What is the answer?

Remove all ads!

I think I might also have a bit of a rant about how vacuous the English curriculum is.

I received the highest mark in the grade for year 12 English and I didn't learn a single thing in that class. It was the most pointless exercise in dull, boring bull**** that I've ever come across.

The idea seems to be that we must study various great works of literature and somehow this is important. *It isn't* - it doesn't matter. It's totally irrelevant to life and most 'great works of literature' are among the most boring books that you'll ever come across. Studying them doesn't do anything but give most students a distaste for reading. Certainly it doesn't improve their writing or use of English.

So - if we have to study a book - why not make it some short enjoyable pulp? Then stop. Studying books, plays, etc. - unless it's a short study used to illustrate a more practical point - is merely a lazy way of avoiding actually teaching anything useful in the class. If you can spend three months waiting for the class to finish reading the book then you don't need to spend time telling them how to string together sentences of their own, a skill that might actually be ... y'know, useful.

 

Aikanaro, you have hit on one thing that is so true. I was shocked to find out my exwife had read only 1 book in her entire life! This prompted me to ask her what she would like in a story. I handed her Burroughs, Kline, and like to never got my Tolkien books back. She has read hundreds of books through the years and would never have done that if just stuck with the assigned reading from school. For over 25 years we fought over who owns what book. We still do if I'm missing one!
A student or anyone must have an interest in what they are doing and that needs to be triggered by someone showing an interest in their ideas.

My youngest boy was considered a candidate for state school and a bit dim. He read Natl Geo and Readers Digest at home and thought nothing of taking over my computer at home. Not so odd now but this was under DOS right after Ver3.0 came out. He even found a way to change file times and dates to keep me from finding out he had been on it instead of doing after school chores.
Don't bore a youngster to death, hand them what they will use even if it is a bit off the mainstream.

On a side line I understood how important this was being one of the students like Register. Mom told me if I did not bring home a C average...well the world would end for me. I handed her a card with 3 A's and 3 F's.

 

Indeed, and in many ways it is. Education is something that prepares you for the working life and let's face facts here. Whatever you end up working with your performance will be rated somehow. The earlier you get used to this the better. In the end though I don't think too much preassure should be put on grades, the important thing is that you pass the tests, what grade you get is more or less irrelevant. Grades might support your further studies giving you scholarships or making it easier to study further but they're not everything. Someone who does not get the better grades will not automatically end up being a looser for his entire life.

Especially in the gymnasium the responsibility lies on the student to complete the courses and the education. By the second year you should be an adult and therefore the responsibility to learn lies within yourself. The Finnish gymnasium offers a vide selection of choice, there are mandatory courses that everyone needs to complete but the rest is voulentary giving you the choice of specializing in that which you wish to continue with after you've completed the gymnasium.

The Finnish gymnasium offers the possibility for this. You can study courses yourself and only do the test and mandatory work such as essays. You won't have to attend in classes. Many teachers set as an requirement though that you have gotten good grades in that subject from earlier courses.

I would agree, but only a few tests that I've faced have been disasters. Usually they have been disasters in the way that they've been way too easy so that everyone has gotten good grades.

 

I have noticed something within my own group of associates. We are all in what would be considered the upper party of the lower class socio-economically.

The children in families that do not own/use a TV learn far more quickly and willingly than the children of TV heavy homes. It seems to be a direct correlation by what I have observed.

I doubt there is a single fix that can be made to improve the US educational system, to be honest. How schools are handled and organized varies greatly from state to state, and no real checks on them.
The state I live in has a very high out of state retirement rate, and those voters (who are the majority0 quite frankly don't care about education. Their children and grandchildren don't get educated here, so they don't consider it important. That's why my state is ranked 47th for education.

 

Reading through these post again I find it interesting the amount of agreement and consensus that sticks out. This shows how serious the problem is since we come from all over, are all ages and most of the time can't agree on very much at all.

Seems like the system in Finland is the most conductive to learning. Follows what Nakia has said.

 

I'd like to point out though that the gymnasium is not mandatory. As far as I know the american high school is. The gymnasium is also not the complete equivalent since it starts and ends a bit later (normally from age 17-19). Mandatory school in Finland is from classes 1-9 and does not offer all that much in terms of free choices to pupils.

 

@Mirgoroth

Sounds like our 2yr junior collage. My mistake, I thought it was 15/16 year olds to start. Our second/third year high school age.

 

well, in High School, we had our mandatory courses, which was just over half of the requirements to graduate. 40 percent almost automaticcally selected, another third you had more freedom, but within some guidelines...

That was 22 of 30 required credits for me. For some, you could do this on 21 as one course would fit both categories...


But I found that some of those requirements put me in positions where I felt that I was either unable to keep up (side effect of my Tourette Syndrome) or not interested, but other areas where I really enjoyed it. When that enjoyment or interest is not fostered, education will fail because apathy will sabotage the process...

 

Things are a lot different in schools today than when I went - and we aren't exactly going back into ancient history here, as I graduated from high school 15 years ago.

My wife's school actually does make some effort to place the children in a class that is more appropriate for their level of learning. All students are rated for each subject that is being taught as either "below grade level", "on grade level", or "above grade level". This systems allows two beneficial results. First, if a student is gifted in one particular area of study, (s)he can receive advanced work. Similarly, if there is one subject that a student has great difficulty with, but is doing fine with all the others, (s)he can receive some type of remedial education. And just because you are above grade level in one area doesn't mean that you are considered above grade level everywhere else. It is quite possible for a student to be above grade level in math, but below grade level in english for example.

The only potential drawback of this system is that it does not account for students who are exceptionally gifted, or who are significantly futher behind their peers. My wife teaches 5th grade. As a result students rated "below grade level" receive education appropriate for 4th grade, whereas students rated "above grade level" receive the equivalent of 6th grade education. But the flexibility ends there. You can't get either 3rd grade or 7th grade work.

It pretty much is. In the U.S. you are required to attend school from the ages of 6-16. Unless you failed several grades and had to repeat them, there is no way that you can get to 16 without being in high school.

 

I'm hoping you're being sarcastic... but I think you're serious.

Great works of lit are important for many reasons. Like all great art, they give us insight into what it means to be human and how one should approach life, interact with other people, etc. Gaining those insights from a great work of lit, to me, is more palatable than reading some dry, boring philosophy book or getting a dry, boring lecture from a teacher.

If reading a great novel hasn't enriched your life and given you some insight into the nature of life, well, you need to learn to read between the lines. I'll just blame your English teacher.

 

The answer is that parents need to take a greater responsibility for their children's education. Simple things like reading to them, explaining things to them, answering their questions, helping them look up things, taking them to enriching places (not necessarily expensive places - taking them to the beach and showing them the rock pools would be a good example) will all do far more for your kids than school will.

My philosophy is that school is somewhere that my kids will learn how to get on with other people (who aren't their family) and how social structures and conventions work etc. Any actual academic learning they do there will be a bonus, because I am pretty pessimistic about the teaching that will actually occur.

 

Sir Fink:

Oh - definately my life has been enriched by books. I'm sure most people here can say that.

However, to the average person in my English class, reading does not enrich their lives. The only books they read are those that are immensely popular or those that they are forced to read by their English teacher. They do not find the sorts of books on the English curriculum enriching; they find them boring. For that matter - so do I. My life was not enriched by To Kill a Mockingbird. It wasn't a book that appealed to me (or the person who had written stuff in the margins either, apparently).

Books can only give great insights to people if the people like the book and are engaging in it willingly. Getting teenagers to read books that don't interest teenagers is pretty much saying: 'Hey! Books are boring! Won't it be good when you leave school and never have to read one of these stupid things again?'

The goal should be to give people an interest in reading, rather than shoving books down their throats. Then they can go out and read more books which can enrich their lives, rather than killing off any chance of that before they've left high school.

 

Absolutely. I was fortunate that both my parents were teachers and taught me to read and write before going to school. The only thing is the school actually had the audacity to complain and asked them to stop. Mum was so incensed she stood for the school governor body, and only stood down as head of governors last year, 26 years later.

 

It shocks me when my wife tells me that most people going to first grade in the US do not know how to read or write. You have to be at least 5 when you start 1st grade, and it seems that by the time you are that age you should have some rudimentary form of literacy. Everyone in my family was capable of reading and writing basic words by the time we went to 1st grade, and it floors me that this is now considered rare. In fact, my wife tells me it's considered a good thing if the kid can spell their own name.

I feel that it is the responsibility of the parents, especially in the early grades, to make sure that the kids are doing well in school. I can't make that claim throughout high school. If 16 years from now my presently in-utero child is taking calculus, I don't know how much help I'm going to be to him/her, considering I will be 3 decades (give or take a few years) removed from a calculus course by that time. Barring some type of learning disability, there is no reason for a child to perform poorly in the early years of his/her schooling. If that is the case, 90% of the time it's mom and dad's fault.

 

My Teachers Training was with children ages 3 to 6. It was my experience that children vary in their ability to learn to read and write. Each child is unique but we set artificial standards on them. This is why I think that the early years should be ungraded.

I came from a household where reading was important but over the years I found this to be the exception rather than the rule. How many households have a complete set of any Encyclopedia? How many parents reading frequently to or with their children?

 

Learning doesn't stop after school hours.

I make history fun for my nephew by taking him to local castles and he has fun identifying the gatehouse, battlements, keep etc and which castles were occupied by Normans and which by Irish.