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Old 07-10-2011, 08:33 PM
 
Location: Fairfield, CT
6,981 posts, read 10,915,950 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lhpartridge View Post
I've always wondered how it works in schools where students are allowed free periods. We've always had it drilled into us that we are responsible for whatever a student does during the time that he/she is scheduled for our class. It's difficult enough to keep track of them without free periods. Do the students not go for a quickie in a relatively unsupervised area? We've had them in the restrooms, in the locker room, and once even outside up against the back wall of the gym! At another school, a girl was leaving campus to go /ahem/ work in an apartment across the street.

Even with three security guards, our students find ways to get into trouble. I can't imagine what it would be like with more freedom.
The looser school that I went to had a decent amount of problems due to their lax supervision, but it was a small school. Eventually, they dropped all the freedom and became stricter, because it wasn't working.

At the stricter school, only seniors had the greater freedoms, since it was considered a transitional year. But that greater freedom is a big part of why myself and a lot of my friends got into a lot of trouble senior year. We used to hang out in the library and sometimes got a little rowdy. We also used to go drinking sometimes at lunch and not come back for the afternoon class. I think I spent more time in detention senior year than the previous three years combined. But still, there weren't that many serious problems that I can think of. Just the petty stuff I talked about.

 
Old 07-10-2011, 08:51 PM
 
10,449 posts, read 12,437,677 times
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I think we should look at the real issue. Of course students abuse the bathroom privilege. Why? Because they hate school. The school system needs to be completely revamped. The way school is working now is frustrating for both teachers and students. We obviously need a new system of education.
 
Old 07-10-2011, 09:04 PM
 
Location: Fairfield, CT
6,981 posts, read 10,915,950 times
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I suspect it would be pretty hard to get kids to stop hating school. But fresh ideas are always good. Still, fresh ideas when it comes to education have a pretty high failure rate.
 
Old 07-10-2011, 09:10 PM
 
Location: earth?
7,284 posts, read 12,898,622 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dazzleman View Post
I suspect it would be pretty hard to get kids to stop hating school. But fresh ideas are always good. Still, fresh ideas when it comes to education have a pretty high failure rate.
Especially when you have powerful teacher's unions blocking them. The average person has no idea about the politics of education. Hint: It is not to empower "students" (i.e., future corporate clones).
 
Old 07-10-2011, 09:43 PM
 
10,449 posts, read 12,437,677 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dazzleman View Post
I suspect it would be pretty hard to get kids to stop hating school. But fresh ideas are always good. Still, fresh ideas when it comes to education have a pretty high failure rate.
That's cause we always look to adults for answers and not the kids going through school. I think if we asked kids more of what they would be interested in naturally, then adults and kids could team up to create an environment that works for both of them.
 
Old 07-11-2011, 06:17 AM
 
Location: Whoville....
25,386 posts, read 35,460,699 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dazzleman View Post
I suspect it would be pretty hard to get kids to stop hating school. But fresh ideas are always good. Still, fresh ideas when it comes to education have a pretty high failure rate.
You know, the same is true in industry. The initial reaction to anything new is "This too shall pass".

Unfortunately, fresh ideas are only fresh ideas when they first come out. Then they're yesteday's flavor of the day. This is why I think what we really need to do is instill a sense of responsibility for their own educations (the way they do in other countries) in our children. If students take ownership for their own educations, we won't need teachers finding the flavor of the week to keep them interested. Besides, trying to find new ways to engage kids takes away from educating them. As long as we insist on making it the teacher's responsibility to engage students instead of the student's job to be engaged (as it is in other countries that succeed in educating their youth), we will lose this war. What engages one child is boring to the next and over the head of another.

The only good thing that will come out of the push towards online education is that it will become the student's job to be engaged because no one is going to rewrite the computer program for each student. After that experiment fails, and it will for 80% of the students, we will, finally realize that it is our students attitudes towards education that are holding us back not what we are teaching or even our teaching methods (both used successfully in other countries). It is this idea that if a student isn't engaged or learning it's someone elses fault and someone else should fix it. It can't possibly be that the student doesn't work at paying attention or that the student doesn't do his work. It MUST be the sytem or the teacher. We are expecting the system to make up for a poor attitude about education in our students and the system cannot do that.

Last edited by Ivorytickler; 07-11-2011 at 06:27 AM..
 
Old 07-11-2011, 06:21 AM
 
Location: Whoville....
25,386 posts, read 35,460,699 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nimchimpsky View Post
That's cause we always look to adults for answers and not the kids going through school. I think if we asked kids more of what they would be interested in naturally, then adults and kids could team up to create an environment that works for both of them.
I don't think this would work because I don't think kids have a clue as to what they should learn and how they would learn it best but I'd be interested in their answers.

I think the issue with education here is our children's attitude towards education. They expect it to be entertainging and engaging. That is not an expectation held in other countries that educate their children well. In those countries, education is seen as an honor and it is seen as the student's responsibility to be engaged. THEY have failed if they are not. If they are not learning, THEY take action to fix that problem. Here, we just say the teacher is boring, should be fired and replaced by a more engaging teacher. Here, learning is everone's job EXCEPT the student. The student is this passive thing that sits in the room that the teacher much figure out how to manipulate into learning. There, the student is an active participant in his own education.

BTW, I hate posts like yours. You say the system needs to be revamped yet offer not one clue as to what should be changed and how the new model will look. So what would your revamped system look like? What would work for our kids? How do we get them to want an education and to embrace being engaged in the classroom? How does changing the SYSTEM get us to where we need to be? What can the SYSTEM do to force (because that's what we're talking about here when you expect someone else to make you want to do something) students to want to learn? Maybe it's time we did what other countries do and make education a privilidge not a right.
 
Old 07-11-2011, 06:33 AM
 
Location: Eastern time zone
4,469 posts, read 7,180,481 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BadJuju View Post
It is entirely unreasonable. They should not even have to ask you if they can use the bathroom. And if they choose to use that time to skip class, so be it. The point of having grades is to measure a student's participation and learning of a subject. If they **** up, then they **** up and they reap what they sow.
Ideally, that's how it would work. Unfortunately, schools are way too heterogeneous, and administrations make homogeneous rules to cover what can be reasonably expected from the lowest common denominator.

My high school had an open campus, and teachers set their own classroom attendance and bathroom policies. It was reasonable for a group of 300 well-mannered preppies who couldn't afford (grade-wise) to screw up their applications to Amherst, Yale and Columbia. OTOH, it would be bedlam in my local middle or high school (nearly 2000 kids each, with demographics ranging from the 'hood to multi-million-dollar beach houses).

Last edited by Aconite; 07-11-2011 at 06:52 AM..
 
Old 07-11-2011, 06:51 AM
 
Location: Eastern time zone
4,469 posts, read 7,180,481 times
Reputation: 3499
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler View Post
I don't think this would work because I don't think kids have a clue as to what they should learn and how they would learn it best but I'd be interested in their answers.

I think the issue with education here is our children's attitude towards education. They expect it to be entertainging and engaging. That is not an expectation held in other countries that educate their children well. In those countries, education is seen as an honor and it is seen as the student's responsibility to be engaged. THEY have failed if they are not. If they are not learning, THEY take action to fix that problem. Here, we just say the teacher is boring, should be fired and replaced by a more engaging teacher. Here, learning is everone's job EXCEPT the student. The student is this passive thing that sits in the room that the teacher much figure out how to manipulate into learning. There, the student is an active participant in his own education.

BTW, I hate posts like yours. You say the system needs to be revamped yet offer not one clue as to what should be changed and how the new model will look. So what would your revamped system look like? What would work for our kids? How do we get them to want an education and to embrace being engaged in the classroom? How does changing the SYSTEM get us to where we need to be? What can the SYSTEM do to force (because that's what we're talking about here when you expect someone else to make you want to do something) students to want to learn? Maybe it's time we did what other countries do and make education a privilidge not a right.
I think the high school I went to could be translated into a workable model for public (magnet or charter, no doubt) school, but only for certain quantities of public-- which leads to charges of a two-tiered system. Realistically, the two-tiered system would be kids who want to learn vs kids who don't, and leaving aside race, socio-economics, disability, etc. But I don't see that being left alone. There are parents and community members who don't want to admit that some kids will not work up to a certain level, and will come up with any excuse handy to brush away responsibility.
 
Old 07-11-2011, 06:57 AM
 
Location: Whoville....
25,386 posts, read 35,460,699 times
Reputation: 14692
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aconite View Post
Ideally, that's how it would work. Unfortunately, schools are way too heterogeneous, and administrations make homogeneous rules to cover what can be reasonably expected from the lowest common denominator.

My high school had an open campus, and teachers set their own classroom attendance and bathroom policies. It was reasonable for a group of 300 well-mannered preppies who couldn't afford (grade-wise) to screw up their applications to Amherst, Yale and Columbia. OTOH, it would be bedlam in my local middle high school (nearly 2000 kids each, with demographics ranging from the 'hood to multi-million-dollar beach houses).
The only way this would work is if the students really cared about getting the highest grade possible. I can see allowing it then. It works in college because we place the onus to succeed on the student in college, wheras, we place it on the school to make students succeed in high school and the kids know it.

Most kids in my school do care about their grades but there are engough that don't that an open campus policy would be a disaster. Still some policies are pretty lax. For example, the punishment for skipping class is an hour detention. There is no letter home and no suspension. Students do detention and they are not allowed to make up the work missed that day for the class they missed.

The only way an open campus will work is if the onus to succeed is place, squarely, on the student and they actually care whether or not they succeed. This does not describe even the average student in the United States. The vast majority view education as something forced upon them, they do not take responsibility for their own learning and they don't care if they are educated. They see no value in education and, unfortuntely, there is nothing I can do as a teacher to change that. Every now and again you see a teacher who can make things so exciting that kids learn by accident but there are very few of those teachers around. For most of us, we require the cooperation of our students to teach them.
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