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Why are you singling out me to ask that question of?
Because you responded to this:
Quote:
It really is an amazing video. I enjoyed watching it. I think that people can't get past the thread title "No teachers required" and unfortunately that's where all of the defensiveness is coming from.
with this:
Quote:
Hey, I'm not a teacher!
I wasn't singling you out or even talking about you but I guess my post somehow resonated with you so I'm asking if you watched the video or if you are just responding to some of the posts in the thread (some of which imo are defensive due to the thread title and have absolutely nothing at all to do with the content of the actual video).
I wasn't singling you out or even talking about you but I guess my post somehow resonated with you so I'm asking if you watched the video or if you are just responding to some of the posts in the thread (some of which imo are defensive due to the thread title and have absolutely nothing at all to do with the content of the actual video).
Well, I was responding to this part of your statement:
Quote:
I think that people can't get past the thread title "No teachers required" and unfortunately that's where all of the defensiveness is coming from.
Sorry I didn't edit your post to reflect that. I actually have a strong distaste for people psychoanalyzing posters on CD.
Well, I was responding to this part of your statement:
Sorry I didn't edit your post to reflect that. I actually have a strong distaste for people psychoanalyzing posters on CD.
I'm not trying to start an argument. Just curious if you watched the video. Not sure why this is even such a big deal as I was just agreeing with the op's post just prior to mine and adding my own thoughts.
I hate learning in groups. Attending class as an individual is okay. I am responsible for my learning and my grade. And nobody else has any business harassing me if I don't learn or don't do well. But the intensive group learning BS that students are forced to do in grade school and in college is a disaster waiting to happen. Just look at how stupid everybody is today. Look at their terrible test scores and haplessly defeated attitudes. Students don't care about thinking for themselves which is all the fault of school mind programming and behavior modification programs disguised as "learning." Nor are they articulate. More than half of those YouTube video blogs are horrible. They show how people of today cannot explicate a clear main idea with a clear theory backed up with rationales and secondary research. It's sad. They do not articulate themselves or organize their material either. Everything is a mess of obscurantism. Even worse is few people can think for themselves including teachers and professors no thanks to the herd mentality technique that schools always utilize on the kids and college kids. It really is a mess in some schools and colleges. On top of that you are learning to please your group members by doing what they do. It is too cultish and creepy IMHO. School is not a cult or a church.
John Dewey, a educational philosopher, stated that the goal of education is not to educate, but to indoctrinate. Dewey was a Marxist, but our school system seems to agree with Dewey. I was educated by my parents and taught in the public schools for over 30 years. I agree with you that putting kids in groups does not work unless all kids are motivated. I found that the non-performers always let the performer do all the work. Standardized testing is also a worthless concept. Memorizing trival facts is great for playing Trivial Pursuit.
No. A certain amount of actual learning needs to take place BEFORE you can employ those resources in an intelligent manner. It does no good to look something up if you lack the educational background to make use of what you just looked up. I could tell my students to look up RedOx reactions until hell freezes over but unless they have a considerable amount of understanding about chemistry before they look it up, they will not understand what they read. Sorry, but a lot of memorization and practice is required before you're ready to just look things up as you need them. Unfortunately, what I'm seeing is kids who think they don't need to learn anything because they can just Google it. Googling it only works if you have the background to make sense of what you read. Twice in the past week, I looked something up and realized, immediately, that what I was reading could not be correct. Sure enough, I found other sources that said something different. I realized that what I was reading was wrong because I had a basic understanding of the topic before I went looking things up.
Trust me. My students have a lot of chemistry to memorize and practice before they're close to ready to start Googling and making sense of what comes up in the search.
I remember being in high school and being required to read an article in Scientific American. I needed a dictionary to translate what I was reading. It was one of those assignments that was so hard it sticks in my mind still. Now I consider Scientific American leisure reading. It's amazing what several years of memorizing and practicing can do to broaden your horizons. While I have forgotten many more times that which I now know, the brain I grew in the process of learning all of that is still mine. You have to be able to process what you look up and that takes a, considerable, amount of education if you're looking up anything with any substance.
I'm sure anyone here can look up the shape of a water molecule but I wonder how many can tell me why that shape is so critical to life being possible on this planet. When all you do is look things up, all you have is a fact sitting in front of you and no matter how many facts you look up, all you have is a pile of facts. You need to be able to do something with those facts and THAT takes a brain.
Yeah, and to put it in a simpler way, I don't want my future brain surgeon opening up my skull and then Googling "How to operate" so that her brain isn't cluttered up with, you know, facts.
I don't want my mechanic Googling "How to change a tire."
I don't want the chef in the restaurant at which I eat Googling "meat safety."
I want them to KNOW these things -- not just look them up.
Let's put it in another way: I do not cure illiteracy by handing someone a dictionary and saying, "Look it up."
Not necessarily. Only in a classroom does it become necessary to get a grade. As they advance through their experimentation, they learn what they need to at any given point.They would learn to survive,
and eventually to build a society.
Ever read Lord of the Flies?
Yes, I have.
They do not build a society; in fact, one of the central points of the book is that they revert to savagery. At the end of the book, a gang of boys has accidentally set the island on fire while they're chasing down Ralph, the "good" and "civilized" boy who tried (and failed) to establish a civilized society, and they have every intention of killing him, cutting his throat, and putting his head on a stake. Ralph is only saved when he almost runs into a soldier from a nearby aircraft carrier who saw the island in flames.
Build a society? In the words of my students, that would be an "epic fail."
I homeschooled my kids and I was always on the fence about unschooling, b/c even though I believed in it intellectually, I didn't have enough faith, lol. So I made sure we covered math every day, and they hated it; I felt justified in making them do it b/c I knew they would never do it on their own. On other subjects I was a lot more casual b/c I knew that if they got behind, they could catch up. I will always remember when some of the girls' friends came over and they had a test coming up and wanted help to study for it. My girls already knew the answers and I didn't see how b/c we had not even covered that material! One of my girls was 3 years younger than these kids. The only thing I could figure out is that we were a bookworm household and if we hadn't have been, I don't know if I even would have homeschooled them.
One thing that I've read, is that kids, if left to their own devices, will learn what they need to, to do what they want to do. That's where we have to be careful though, b/c if we're modeling a society where our values show that ballplayers and rappers and drug dealers are the most successful members of society, guess what they'll decide they need to learn?
Also, if a child decides that he/she needs to learn something specific, they can learn it amazingly fast. Some kids have been known to cover 4 years of mathematics in 1 year if sufficiently motivated, and they don't even have to love the subject--they just have to see the need for it. I read a story about a young man who'd been kidnapped and held hostage for 6 years or so, and then they rescued him and reunited him with his family. They were interviewing the father on the radio one day and the man said that his son had managed to catch up to his classmates in 1-1/2 years--remember, he'd missed 6!
When I put my kids back in school, they were well ahead of the curve despite the fact that I so often felt guilty b/c I wasn't making them do more, but they apparently did plenty on their own and their writing skills are fantastic even though I didn't make them write very many papers. I think the round-the-world trip helped.
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