Originally Posted by
Tonus
This paints an extremely inaccurate picture of schools today.
Today, teachers are encouraged to have students work in groups. In my classes they do frequent group projects and creativity is explicitly encouraged. My high school has a certificate system where students choose what they are interested in and pursue electives so they can graduate with a concentration in an area. Time management is crucial because many students are involved in sports, arts, endless extracurricular activities.
The main problem I see, however, is that I can only use these strategies on the very small proportion of my students who have been well raised. There's a huge group of students that, if given freedom to be creative and work independently, will just choose to do nothing. So on one end of the spectrum I have a class where I give a worksheet at the start of the class and tell my kids to work together to see if they can figure something out on their own. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, I have a class where I give them a worksheet that reteaches them the rote knowledge they missed last class because they barely ever pay attention, and I give them a grade based on whether they actually are working on it when I walk by (because otherwise they will do nothing). On Wednesday in my period 1 I had 4 students who came to school and immediately fell asleep at their desks. I responded by playing loud children's music, which woke 3 of them up (the 4th remained totally unresponsive). A lot of the grade in that class is based on effort and providing little rewards for doing things, because you have to keep the kids constantly active or the behavior starts to go haywire. You can't spend more than 30 minutes on any one activity because again, they start to get restless. Without explicit structures and rules, nothing gets done, and you end up with kids fighting in your classroom instead of working creatively or whatever.
A large proportion of students, if given freedom to be creative and explore, will just do nothing. Every day in class, you're trying to force knowledge into completely unwilling brains. Of course, it gets repetitive and boring, and people hate the teacher. The degree to which students don't apply any effort is truly astonishing. Example:
Here's how we taught linear equations and slope in my low level class... first we taught about y=mx + b, but using a ton of real world examples (a pizza costs $10.00 and .50 per topping...). We did an entire unit on "drawing linear equations", then another unit on "writing linear equations" which is the exact same thing but in the other direction. Then we taught about parallel and perpendicular lines, which is really just teaching y = mx + b again, but with a slight twist at the end. Then we taught scatter plots, where they draw a line in y = mx + b form, which is, again, just another way to expose them to the same concept again. Then we taught graphing inequalities, which is the same as graphing but you shade above or below the line. Finally, at the end of this, one kid said, "Anyone else notice how the last 10 things we've learned are all basically the same thing?" Still, the average grade on the next test was an F.
The kids pay so little attention that you just end up teaching the same thing over and over. But if you teach the exact same thing, they get mad. So you dress it up differently. Their minds are totally turned off. When I try to do something creative, it bombs. I gave them an interactive thing where they were trying to find slope, and it was kind of a guessing game designed to get them to work out the rules on their own. One question it asked was literally "Guess a number!" and the kids were like, "I don't know what number to guess!". One girl asked me, "Can you just teach the normal way?"
Where do the parents fall on this spectrum? On parents night, the session for my high level class is standing room only and I can barely scratch the surface on the number of questions I get. The session for my low level class is nearly empty. I interact regularly with parents who consider a D to be totally fine.
The most frustrating part about all this is, obviously, the degree to which parents are content to just let their kids be dumb. But then, there's the problem where the school system invests massive resources in those kids, who just aren't ever going to try. Special ed is out of control. Kids get identified, they get special treatment, and as a teacher you're given a document for that kid telling you all of the "accommodations" you are supposed to provide them to ensure they are successful. Each kid has like 8 things, and you might have 10 kids who are sped in one room. It's impossible to actually do all of these things individually, so you end up just making the class easier for everyone, and you make sure to never give a sped kid an F because you might get in trouble for not giving them appropriate accommodations (holy crap do I give a lot of D-s).
One of the frustrating things that's a result of this system is that teachers aren't encouraged to spend time pushing the bright students. Teaching bright students forces teachers to become better; more knowledgeable so they can push their students. But no one cares about that, so the teachers don't have to become any smarter and at the end of the day the smart kids are disillusioned.
You hear a lot about how great the educational system in the 50s was, and to me a big part of that was people saying, "Hey we have to beat the Russians; we need to develop really smart kids." In that situation, you focus on the kids who try, and the kids who don't get left behind unless they step up. As silly as the 'we have to beat the russians" mantra was, it actually pushed us in the right direction. Right now we are engaged in a quixotic quest to "leave no child behind" which means the worse a student is, the more we invest in them, and the less return we get out of it. It's ridiculous.
Righteous Orbs no longer dropping
Righteous Orbs no longer dropping
May be stop wasting resoures on experiments?
MMO-Champion
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