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Mann's vision also made sense for the industrial age in which he lived. The factory line was simply the most efficient way to scale production in general, and the analog factory-model classroom was the most sensible way to rapidly scale a system of schools. Factories weren't designed to support personalization. Neither were schools.
That's because kids back in the day dropped out. Only a few went on to secondary education. That was tracking back then.
The Prussian system was compulsory education K-8. There's nothing about high school in it. Therefore, it has nothing to do with tracking. Nor does the link say anything about tracking at the end of 4th grade, which the German system does now.
From the link: **After the first eight years of education, attendance was no longer free, so typically, only the somewhat affluent were able to attend secondary school. Nonetheless, the idea of providing any sort of education to every member of a country, no matter what their means, was a revolutionary one. **
. . .
They don't want the extra days at work, and if they are forced to work them, they'll want EXTRA PAY.
I agree with some of your points, but not this one. Teacher pay varies too much from state to state to say teachers are/are not underpaid. Starting teachers make under $30,000 in some states, to over $50,000 in the District of Columbia. Teacher in some districts spend hundreds of dollars/year on supplies. Others are given everything they need.
I guess people in most professions do prefer to be paid for their work. Extend the teachers' work year to 45 weeks and keep the pay at $30,000. That comes to $16.67/hr, assuming a 40-hr work week. Make it 50 weeks and the wage goes down to $15/hr.
-End the idea of locally funded schools (i.e. with local property taxes). It seems like that ensures a caste system, where kids will never move out of their economic condition or social strata. Won't schools in poor neighborhoods always have funding problems?
It would be akin to having one set of employees you pay $8 an hour and one you pay $15 or $18 an hour (in a better neighborhood). Education should include broadening your horizons....not something you just put on a test score. Being exposed to different environments is just as valuable.
-Cut the class size down to 3 or 4 a semester. I remember being in college and thinking, "this is so much easier." I had fewer classes, I could go at my own pace. Three or four is much easier to handle than 6. How many high schoolers understand how to manage their time? Very few. Why cram 6 in there just to meet some quota that shows they're "educated"?
-(Shock) Let people take subjects....not measured by arbitrary grades or classroom hours...but by how much they've mastered the material. You'd have many 16 and 17 year olds ready for college. Proficiency, not time should be the standard. If some students aren't proficient by a certain amount of time (say a year or two), maybe the subject isn't for them. Move them into vocational school. End this idea that every high school students time has to be filled up. Just to meet a quota or standard. It's not natural. They could be using that time to develop other hobbies or skills.
-I would also put in an internet/video conference/tele conference feed in the back of every room hooked up to china, japan, south korea, europe, canada. I think it would be an eye opener to see what other kids are learning at the same time american students are. This idea of walling everyone off is nuts. It would probably inspire debate about what's taught and why.
The question to ask is what do we want in the next generation of workers and how do we get there?
I would think that we need creativity more than anything in the future. However, you can't be creative about that which you know nothing about so that means we need to get a lot of information into their heads before we can ask them to think creatively about what's in their heads. BUT, we are now dealing with a generation that sees learning as useless because they think they can just look anything up they need. With the computer, we've taken the problem of kids not learning basic math because they can always use a calculator to do it, and applied it to all subjects. The problem is, if you can't do/think about the basics, how can you do/think about more challenging problems? What kind of workers will users of information who don't actually understand the information be?
As part of their lab reports, I make my students write a paper on the topic of the lab and then I put basic questions that anyone who actually read their own paper should be able to answer on the test only to find that most of them can't answer them or they parrot back some excerpt from the internet they memorized 5 minutes before the test because a friend told them the question was on the test. The only problem is, those excerpts are often vague descriptions and they don't even have the sense to realize they have not answered the specific question I asked. They are users of information but they don't use it well. They take the first site they go to and run with it. They can't analyze information and decide if it's good or not because they don't have enough information stored in their brains to recognize good/bad information when they see it.
I also give an extra credit assignment to separate sugar and salt every year. All they do is google a youtube video on how to do it using isopropyl alcohol and run to the pharmacy to buy some. When they turn in their results I ask them what they did about the fact that the isopropyl alcohol they used contained 30% water and they just look at me like deer caught in headlights. They don't bother to figure out why you can separate salt and sugar this way or to read the label on the alcohol they bought. They just google and do. That's the way this generation "thinks".
Just as I believe kids should learn math without calculators first, I'm thinking they need to learn everything else without computers first only we can't make the internet go away so we can't accomplish this. Lord help this generation if they ever lose the ability to google a you tube video of whatever it is they need to do at the moment because they will be lost. They think they're all that because they can google anything but they can't figure anything out for themselves. They can't even answer questions about papers they wrote!!! They "write" by taking what someone else wrote and going through the paper and paraphrasing every sentence. You should see some of the nonsense I get. It's obvious they just reworded phrases without an inkling of understanding about what they read because they do it out of context. It's done sentence by sentence. They don't read the entire article and then put it in their words. They just pull out individual sentences they think sound good and edit them then string them together. It's cut, paste, shake and edit and if what they did makes it past a plagiarism checker, they think it's original writing.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 10-15-2013 at 03:55 AM..
-End the idea of locally funded schools (i.e. with local property taxes). It seems like that ensures a caste system, where kids will never move out of their economic condition or social strata. Won't schools in poor neighborhoods always have funding problems?
It would be akin to having one set of employees you pay $8 an hour and one you pay $15 or $18 an hour (in a better neighborhood). Education should include broadening your horizons....not something you just put on a test score. Being exposed to different environments is just as valuable.
-Cut the class size down to 3 or 4 a semester. I remember being in college and thinking, "this is so much easier." I had fewer classes, I could go at my own pace. Three or four is much easier to handle than 6. How many high schoolers understand how to manage their time? Very few. Why cram 6 in there just to meet some quota that shows they're "educated"?
-(Shock) Let people take subjects....not measured by arbitrary grades or classroom hours...but by how much they've mastered the material. You'd have many 16 and 17 year olds ready for college. Proficiency, not time should be the standard. If some students aren't proficient by a certain amount of time (say a year or two), maybe the subject isn't for them. Move them into vocational school. End this idea that every high school students time has to be filled up. Just to meet a quota or standard. It's not natural. They could be using that time to develop other hobbies or skills.
-I would also put in an internet/video conference/tele conference feed in the back of every room hooked up to china, japan, south korea, europe, canada. I think it would be an eye opener to see what other kids are learning at the same time american students are. This idea of walling everyone off is nuts. It would probably inspire debate about what's taught and why.
I would love the idea of making high school more like college but we can't. In college, you either live on campus or you're driving yourself to school AND you're an adult so YOU are responsible for what you do. In high school, they're kids who often can't drive and have no way to get to/from school and the school is responsible for them during the school day so they must be supervised at all times. Also, teachers are blamed for their failures if they don't bother to do the work. We can't go to fewer hours and allow a study hall because they won't study and it will be our fault they didn't study.
What are the kids who opted to only take 4 classes instead of 7 going to do during the hours they don't have class? Where will they go? Who will supervise them? In theory I like your idea but it will never work. College is optional and you pay for it yourself. Those who go want to be there for one reason or another. We're dealing with kids who'd rather be anywhere but school who would opt to take nothing if you gave them that option. If we let kids take 4 classes at time, many kids would take 6-7 years to graduate so we'd be dealing with 21 year old seniors.
I would like to see the option to transfer to an upper secondary school more like college in the 11th grade, when most kids are driving but this would require lowering the age of personal responsibility to 16 and removing the requirement that the school is responsible for the teen during school hours. You'd have to move the kids who want to take longer to graduate from the normal high school. We just can't have 21 year old seniors in the same school as 14 year olds. Any student who takes 3 years go complete 11th grade should be moved to a different school with a slower pace that can accommodate older students.
-End the idea of locally funded schools (i.e. with local property taxes). It seems like that ensures a caste system, where kids will never move out of their economic condition or social strata. Won't schools in poor neighborhoods always have funding problems?
It would be akin to having one set of employees you pay $8 an hour and one you pay $15 or $18 an hour (in a better neighborhood). Education should include broadening your horizons....not something you just put on a test score. Being exposed to different environments is just as valuable.
-Cut the class size down to 3 or 4 a semester. I remember being in college and thinking, "this is so much easier." I had fewer classes, I could go at my own pace. Three or four is much easier to handle than 6. How many high schoolers understand how to manage their time? Very few. Why cram 6 in there just to meet some quota that shows they're "educated"?
-(Shock) Let people take subjects....not measured by arbitrary grades or classroom hours...but by how much they've mastered the material. You'd have many 16 and 17 year olds ready for college. Proficiency, not time should be the standard. If some students aren't proficient by a certain amount of time (say a year or two), maybe the subject isn't for them. Move them into vocational school. End this idea that every high school students time has to be filled up. Just to meet a quota or standard. It's not natural. They could be using that time to develop other hobbies or skills.
-I would also put in an internet/video conference/tele conference feed in the back of every room hooked up to china, japan, south korea, europe, canada. I think it would be an eye opener to see what other kids are learning at the same time american students are. This idea of walling everyone off is nuts. It would probably inspire debate about what's taught and why.
Most states have some sort of "equalization" funding in place these days. Colorado does for sure. The state funds about 60% of public ed here, local taxes fund ~ 40%. Not to say there aren't "rich district/poor district" dichotomies, but there are attempts to mitigate that. It is also an urban legend that big-city schools have less funding than other districts. Cities generally have an enormous tax base with all their businesses. In addition, many big city schools get additional funding for low-income students, etc. Most large cities have higher per-pupil spending than suburban districts. When I lived in Illinois, some of the rural districts also had a large tax base, due to the value of farmland.
Some districts, including some here in metro Denver, do have "block scheduling", where students take 3-4 classes at a time. Some people love it, some hate it. Most districts here have courses that can be taken for college credit at the U of CO, called "CU succeed". CU Succeed | CU Succeed | University of Colorado Denver
Your video conferencing idea is interesting; I think you'd actually be surprised at what's going on in other schools around the world. It may not be as rigorous as you think.
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