Education

[Ivory]

and there are many peopl ewho do use those things...im sure there are! so...is education too ridgid? should you be able to choose things you think will be relevant to you in later life? ...how could you impliment that even if it was agreed that that would be ideal?? Only a minority know exactally what they want to do with their life at 16 let alone 12!

 

any thoughts??

[Strong Bob]

Honestly... Something as advanced as Pythagoras' theorem shouldn't really be taught to people who are uncertain of their life goals. It's redundant and excess information that has no real bearing on a person's life if they decide to live a career that does not concern it.

 

I'm in agreement that we should choose what we are taught in school. Yes, there are many who would readily choose "No school at all" And I would agree with that too. Since school resources should concentrate on those who want to learn and not force those whom are uninterested.

[NKF]

No matter how pointless some of the lessons may have been to those at 10 or two those at 90, we need to form a basic framework of knowledge that we can build on.

 

There are a lot of mathematical formulas, theorems, etc that may not have relevence, to, say, burger flipping (just as an example), but it is still useful knowledge to have, whether we intend to use it or not. Being able to find the distance or angle between two points with the help of another known point is useful in quite a number of fields. Engineering, land surveying, programming and a variety of other technical and not so technical careers. Maths happens around us every day and in every way. We don't need to know exactly how it works to appreciate it, but it can't hurt to know.

 

It's like literacy. We don't have to be able to know to read and write or know what the heck a stanza or an onomatopia is to be successful at life and your chosen career.

 

History lessons for example always seemed pointless to me. Why do we need to know what battles happened when, why on earth the political trends were the way they were? As a teenager, who cares? But history is important - even more so for various cultures around the world. We need to know where we came from in order to know who we are and where we are going - or some other fancy rubbish like that.

 

Having a few other skills to fall back on cannot hurt at all should you decide a change in career. You might start work as a full time professional proof reader. After the billionth typo and grammatical mistake, you decide to take on a new job and become a mechanical engineer after watching too many shows like Monster Garage or Scrapheap Challenge.

 

But I guess I agree, we should be able to choose what we want to learn. Not what we HAVE to take and endure just to satisfiy all the odd requirements for whatever qualification we want to obtain. Or more to the point, education (like religion, politics and custard) shouldn't be shoved down your throat. You have to be receptive in order to learn something.

 

Hey, wait a minute. Now what am I doing participating in an intellectual thread like this? It's too much for my feeble mind! Argh!

 

- NKF

[Ivory]

ok, so how do we teach everyone the way they want to be taught, the subjects they want to be taught, when they want to be taught it? any thoughts, cos i cant see it working so well, not without spending millions the education system dont have....but im open to suggestions!

[Strong Bob]

The education system could save millions by merely doing some filtering. Right now there are millions of kids being served an education at school, that just plain do not want to be there. A simple change in law, making it so nobody is ever forced to go to school, would allow the schooling system to let go the people who do not want to learn and keep their eyes on those who do.

 

Even in my final year of high school, where most kids could simply drop out, I encountered more than my share of peers that would often say things like: "I don't feel like going to school. This teacher's such a bitch, I'm going to just walk-out" And so, their dislike of a particular teacher causes such irrationality that the student risks his own education. Some are porperly expelled, but that doesn't happen frequently enough. There are still kids that often skip class or even school, while the teachers and counselors waste time and resources trying to 'teach' these students when they have no interest to be taught.

 

There would need to be more to this. But once the disinterested are removed from the equation, it frees up a lot of time and space to ponder molding the public school system to accomodate the students more than the teachers.

 

Also... Downsize on bad teachers. Looking back, I can name a list of, literally, over a dozen teachers that should lead a different career far from education. This would free up payrolls, and maybe attract better students.

 

That's only the beginning. And so far, I've saved money instead of spending it.

[Ivory]

strong bob, i see MANY problems with your argument and idea, i will share a few...

 

firstly, by making education optional, some (i want to write many but have no actually data at present) potential student maybe forced into work in order to help support the family, regardless of wether they want to attend school or not.

 

Tax payers would not be happy. (they never are) but if a percentage was going into education as it is now, and not everyone was going they would complain. just as they did about university funding, and this contributed to why students now have to pay their own fees. are we goning to end up with under 16's pay for education. is this not moving back not forwards?

 

i would suggest that we ask why are children disinterested in learning? by placing the "problem" with the child as you have done there is no solution to this, by placing the "problem" with the teachers and teaching methods is there more chance for change?

 

Schools and teachers are working in extream conditions. Working hours they are rarely paid for in classrooms 30 plus. I dont see how teachers are accodedated, but it would be good if you could explain what you mean.

 

I think your right however, about the teacher review. Every three years maybe a teacher shoudl be reviewed for his or her job. Surely teaching tomarrows generations is a great responsibility and we should ensure that checks are made in the same way checks are made on others working in high responsibility jobs???

 

Kick out teachers who cant/dont teach or kick out kids who cant/dont want tolearn who are dis-interested?

 

any thoughts?

[Accounting Troll]

A lot of the kids who are disinterested in school are that way because their parents did nothing to encourage them. Many parents find looking after their kids to be too much effort, so they regard school as somewhere to dump them during the day and television is used as a babysitter in the evenings.

 

With boys in particular, learning is unfashionable. If you are keen on your studies you run the risk of being labelled a nerd which means being socially ostracised and bullied by your peers.

 

If you make it too easy for children to drop out of school, I fear that most of them will do so as soon as they hit one or two rough patches, which everybody experiences at some point during their education. You save on education costs but there will be terrible social costs because you create a large underclass of uneducated and unemployable people who expect constant failure in their lives.

[NKF]

Peer pressure, oh how I hate thy name. When I was in secondary school, a lot of kids skipped class or just vanished entirely for the day simply because other kids in their clique were doing it. Okay so it was often because they did not want to attend a class with a teacher with a distinct personality conflict with said students, but then again, they just did it because they could. Oh, and other various outside influences like sex, drugs and rock and roll (Well, perhaps just two out of the three at the very least).

 

I saw some very bright kids just waste themselves away. But I attribute this to bad influences from peers. Recently, when getting in touch with an old classmate, and after spending a while reliving old times, we got to discussing our friends and classmates. I was actually quite amazed to hear how different some of them were now than they were back then. Quite a number of the more 'unusual' individuals now seem more subdued (and much more courteous); have been able to get themselves into good jobs and are doing fine. It's just amazing how different they are now that we've left school. But back at school, oi. All the rowdiness and making such a mess of themselves that one or two teachers burst into tears out of sheer frustration (most just lost their temper and performed a bit of disciplinary action). I can tell you now that our class was the problem class of the entire school. Any trouble crops up, we're the first ones to be scrutinised.

 

But I guess we were young. There were mismatched personalities between peers and educators and what have you. Then there was peer pressure, the need to impress or conform with what everyone else was doing. Then there's just general laziness. Kids do that. There's a bunch of other things, but let's leave it at that.

 

Education encompasses everyone. Parents, teachers, the students, the syllabus, friends, peers, the system, the environment the government and everyone else involved in the education process. Well, I suppose ultimately, it's about ourselves, as only we can choose to learn or not learn. But this choice is still influenced by everything that hapens around us.

 

Actually, I haven't a clue what I'm really going on about here, but I just felt the need to toss something in while it was still fresh in my mind. Had a point I was going to make, but the brief nostalgia trek's muddied my thoughts. Carry on folks.

 

- NKF

[Ivory]

well put troll. and a good point i feel

 

do we not have to do things in life that we dont want to do sometime?

Work with people we dont woant t o work with?

 

should schools eliminate these social conflicts, or let them emerge and support children in dealing with them???

 

Maybe support through these times is what makes a good teacher?? any thoughts

[FullAuto]

do we not have to do things in life that we dont want to do sometime?

Work with people we dont woant t o work with?

 

I don't anymore!

[Ivory]

if you decide to walk away then thats your choice. Sometimes we cant. so my question was....

 

should schools protect children in every sense of the word, or shoudl they allow some "real" situations to emerge?

[FullAuto]

I find it odd that you're taught all sorts of things that are no practical use, but are not given any help in preparing for situations that crop up in real life.

[Ivory]

ok, good point. anyone else had this experience, or did you go to a school where they taught you how to deal with "real" issues.

 

are schools too centered around the idea of learning the right thing, not about exploring the options?

[FullAuto]

I'd love to have gone to a school where they teach you how to deal with Life, and the constant obstacles that come up. What to do about falling in love, coping with death, finding a job, becoming bankrupt, and so on. It'd be a laugh, anyway. Instead we leave people to grow up and let these things be surprises (more nasty than pleasant, I've found) and we muddle through them and say "Let them find out for themselves" as if we're determined that our children should have just as hard a time as we did.

[Ivory]

thanks fullauto. anyone have a different experience? did your school prepare you for "life"? how?

 

any6 thoughts

[Zeno]

Ivory, this is a really interesting topic--I read through every post, completely engrossed in the opinions!

 

I'm an educator at university, so I guess I'm on the "other side". A lot of the posts here put blame on parents, teachers, or students. The thing we should remember is, school, and education in general, are simply a mirror-image of life. If there are social problems, then those social problems affect the school, and everyone involved with the school. Education is a sort of "bubble world" where you have rules set up that are different from real life, you're given freedoms and restrictions that are different from real life, and everyone involved pretends that this "bubble world" is a good training ground for real life.

 

Teachers are human. Some of us hate our jobs, some of us love it. Most of us love certain aspects, and hate certain aspects. Students also, whether they admit it or not, love certain things about school, and hate certain things. As humans, we also all have different things we love and hate. (Sorry to be so general--let me try to narrow this a bit).

 

If you give students a choice of what they want to study, most have absolutely no idea. They will choose whatever their friends choose to study. It is also an inherent human trait that we are lazy, and greedy. So, most students will pursue whatever path they see as both the easiest and most rewarding. One major problem with this is that "most rewarding" for children is different from "most rewarding" for adults. It is, therefore, better for adults to mould and enforce certain educational minimums on children.

 

Does every child need to know Pythagorean's Theorem? No. But how is a child supposed to know they *don't* need it unless they study it? I've seen students come around and *love* a subject they started off hating! I've seen students pursue fields and degrees in things they never thought about before! Why? Because they were forced to learn something...and then discovered that they liked it!

 

Many of us here love to read. How would you know you love Shakespeare or Chaucer or Goethe or Whitman unless you're forced to read their work? Or any other "great" author--even the Norwegian ones? How do you know you hate trigonometry or geography or biology unless you're forced to study it? The fact is, children *must* be forced to learn certain things, and after being forced through a few hundred subject areas, they will find some they like. Once a child is educated, they should then be given some control over their education. In practice, this usually happens in secondary (aka high school) for a few classes. In university, students who elect to continue their education are given much more control. Master's and PhD are virtually free-reign study, depending on your advisor.

 

Different countries, and different schools within the same country, have different opinions about what material should be "forced". Indeed, even teachers have different opinions--I have complete control over my course material in higher-level classes (whereas, first-year classes are mostly--but not completely--mandated by the administration).

 

This, then, becomes another difficulty. Teacher quality. Am I a good teacher? Some of my students say yes, some say no. You must remember that teaching is a *job*. Just like running a business, or programming, or serving food at your local restaurant. Teachers look at their job as a *job*. True, it has a great deal of responsibility (I think of it as a managerial job sometimes). But it is still a job. My work is to prepare course material and homework assignments, lecture classes, teach lab, advise projects, grade papers, prepare and grade exams, and perform various administrative functions. My responsibility is also to *force* students to learn. I must convince them to come to class, to not cheat, to do their work, and to learn the material.

 

If a student fails, then I've failed. Why do teachers try to help the "bad" students? Because it is our *job* and our *responsibility*. And also, because it feels so damned good. When a student skips class or cheats, it is because they don't care about the class. When I help a student, and make a "boring" class interesting, and the student comes around from failing to getting an "A" on the final exam, it is an incredible feeling. It is, in fact, one of the prime joys of teaching. And it happens rarely--perhaps this is because I'm a bad teacher?

 

Anyway, I guess I'm trying to make a point here that is getting lost. Students and teachers both have difficulties in real life, and in school. Society expects education to be perfect--and it is an impossible expectation. Can education be improved? Most definitely. But different students react to "improvements" differently. In an ideal world, we could tailor each student to a single perfect teacher. But life and education are not ideal.

 

Back to you, Ivory. If you choose to become a teacher, you'll find it incredibly rewarding and incredibly difficult. (I work 90 hour weeks most of the semester. It's offset by 0 hour weeks during school breaks, though). The best advice I can give is to find your teaching style--one that works. Give it a minimum of 3 years. Every teacher has a horrible, horrible first year. The second year is okay. I'm starting my third year shortly, but every teacher tells me that the third year is the beginning of a steady stream of "good" experiences. Teaching requires a great deal of patience, a lot of preparation and forethought, expert problem-solving skills (people-skills, that is), and rigid discipline (yes, even "fun" teachers must keep iron-fisted control within reach).

 

I don't know the key to becoming a great teacher though. I imagine it's like any other job. Experts are those doing something they love, and willing to try and learn more.

 

For those of you in other professions, think about it: How many of your coworkers are experts? How many of your coworkers do you think would be better as teachers, if only teaching paid more? If a company fired every "bad" programmer, and hired only "good" programmers, would they produce the best software in the world? Or would they simply be understaffed with too much work for too few people?

 

Education is a field that involves human behavior--and a wide variety of human behavior at that. Once we get through the education system, then we begin our real life, and learning never ends.

 

This post is long, and I ramble. Apologies.

 

--Zeno

[Zeno]

FullAuto--

 

Just a separate comment to you regarding a school for "Life". Life *is* learning, all the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When you sleep and dream about that person you just can't get out of your head, you learn. When you go to your first funeral and watch the stoicism from one, the unashamed crying from another, and your sadness is about to overwhelm you but you don't know how to let it go...you learn. When you are first offered drugs from a trusted friend, you learn. When you spend all your birthday money on candy and see the disappointment in a parent's eyes, you learn. When you realize school is simply a monopoly on your time and that the control your teachers possess is merely illusion...you learn. When you blow off a class project and get your first failing grade, you learn.

 

When do these things happen? For most of us, it happens during the time we're in school. The strangest truth at all, it seems is that school *does* prepare us for success, for failure, for heartbreak, for loss, for joy, for Life. We learn a small, very small part from the classroom. Many educators argue that the most important part of learning is outside the classroom--that is where students learn to adapt to their society. That is where many students refocus the morality and justice learned from home.

 

Adults *do* try to prepare children for life. Parents, educators, and humans all have different opinions on exactly how to do that, though. And children have different needs, so there isn't any one "right" or "wrong" way. And finally, everyone has different experiences--and how many children actually believe their parents when they say, "I went through the same thing when I was your age."

 

Life is hard. That's just something every child must learn, at one time or another. It's also a part of learning to discover all the amazing, wonderful joys life offers as well. As some would say, without the bad, there is no good.

 

It would be interesting to see how your opinions change in 10 years!

 

 

--Zeno

[Bomb Bloke]

Ten years ago, I always made sure to tell myself I didn't know everything. Now it's just that much easier to believe it.

[Ivory]

the ten year question is interesting, ... does that mean your in favour of the "re-test" of teachers? trainng and tough has moved on..but has teaching. When you went to school did it seem as if your teachers were in the ark??

[FullAuto]

It would be interesting to see how your opinions change in 10 years!

 

They haven't so far. 10 years ago I thought life was mostly boring, interspersed with crap bits and good bits. As for people learning from exprience, yes, I do try, but most people seem to make the same mistakes over and over again, with depresssing regularity.

The only thing school prepared me for was drudgery, but at last it did a good job of it!

[Ivory]

fullauto, is there any one thing you could pick out from your education that was actually a positive? im just interested

[FullAuto]

Setting fire to people using the bunsen burners. Pouring hydrochloric acid into Peter Swan's bag, so when he picked it up the melted bottom fell out, along with what was left of his books. Doing something creative, in any class. Watching terrible 70's sex ducation videos. Drinking ethanol. Girls. Falling asleep in RE. Sawing through chair legs in Woodwork. Stapling people to things. Getting stapled to things.

[Ivory]

'doing something creative...'?

[FullAuto]

Yes. Creative. As opposed to being brain dead.

[Zeno]

FullAuto, that's so...fatalistic and depressing. But it's good you had some creative opportunities. It seems creativity is really not encouraged in a lot of schools--teachers seem to fight against students who express it, in some vain attempt to ground the studends into some morbid reality.

 

Still, there are a lot of places to express creativity outside of school. Traditional schooling is designed to teach students a range of subjects, without really letting students get too much of any one area. You get more freedom of choice in university or, if you're very, very lucky, in a job (though most people never find it at work). For students, extracurricular activities that aren't associated with school is really the best place to find like-minded people.

 

If school prepared you for drudgery, and you're able to accept it, then you should be able to survive in a drudgery job. And then, after work--when you can use your free time--that "free time" becomes so much more important. Think of work as a way to earn cash, save for retirement, pay the rent, feed the cat. Think of time away from work as an opportunity to live, in creativity.

 

If you can't do the drudgery job, then you've got a long and difficult road ahead of you trying to find a job that actually satisfies your creative impulse.

 

 

Ivory: Sorry for the late reply, my Internet connection has been failing recently. When I went to school, I had a wide range of teachers with a wide range of ability. Most had flaws, most also had very good qualities. I didn't feel any were outdated, no. Certainly they weren't up to date on slang and whatever we thought was cool each week. But the knowledge they tried to force on us? No, the information was fine, mostly.

 

I did have some teachers who knew less about certain subjects than I did. That was disturbing. It wasn't often, but it makes a student wary of anything the teacher states unless those statements are supported by additional sources.

 

And that leads to my other answer, regarding teacher testing. I fully support teacher testing. Any teacher who is unwilling to take a test should not be allowed to give a test...or teach, for that matter. In every job I've had, I've undergone annual tests and evaluations. It should be the same with teachers. We are hired to perform a job, after all.

 

--Zeno