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Bingo! School is not preparing kids for real life, the way real life exists now. Innovative thinking and creativity should be what's getting kids ahead in school, not rote memorization.
I'd like to see more open options. Part-time schooling open to all kids, a healthy mix of in-school and virtual options, lots more collaboration, interaction with the community at large. No standardized testing (or very minimal) and if the kids are in school full-time, very little homework.
Innovative thinking and creativity in ADDITION to rote memorization.
We need standardized tests. We have to be able to compare a kid from Iowa with one from New Mexico. There are too many differences from district to district let alone long distances.
In larger areas there should be separate schools for the children going on to college and for the ones that aren't. Our competitor countries don't mix all kids together. I also doubt they have special ed in the same building.
In smaller areas there should be tracking, and I don't care about the connotations. Should some be held back so others have self esteem?
Phys Ed every year. Look at today's children. Music and arts too even if you have to extend the school day.
I am not in favor of local control of school districts. Too many board members have an agenda that usually has to do with their kid, their religion, or their political beliefs. Most districts don't have a board of well educated members. They have people that made the most noise.
Bring back competition. Kids have to learn what it takes to be the best and those kids should be recognized.
There has to be a way to get rid of bad teachers. There is no reason for tenure.
Funding has to change. I don't know the answer but what we have now isn't working.
I could not disagree more. The open books are for people who already have a solid, ingrained base of knowledge and are capable of knowing exactly what they need to do, rather than having to re-teach themselves every time. In the "real world" many important decisions have to be made quickly, based on prior knowledge and experience, without the luxury of spending hours on research. A person that can't give an answer in a meeting without looking something up first does not instill much confidence. And teamwork does not replace individual abilities, experience, and knowledge. These qualities come first, otherwise the worker is not really a team player but a leech feeding off the abilities of others. It's important to be creative, but it's equally important to have a solid learned knowledge base; it's important to be a team player, but it only works if the person is capable of working on their own. Otherwise it's not a working team, it's a train wreck in motion. Trust me, I've seen those
In college, I used to dread the open book engineering tests, because they tended to be extremely grueling and tricky and unless you knew your **** really really well and could act very quickly you were dead meat. You didn't have time to fumble through index pages or think what kind of solution to apply. You had to catch the professor's dirty little hidden land mine in the 4.5 minutes allowed per problem Closed book exams were far more straightforward and easy by comparison. At work, I often had to deal with urgent problems that had to be resolved quickly, when a piece of essential equipment goes down and you have the top management of one of the biggest corporations in the world calling your bosses' boss and you're called into their office unprepared, you better be able to answer questions on the spot without consulting documentation, or the next time they will call in someone who can. That's real life for you. The ability to look up things on the Internet does not equal knowledge and proficiency. Any dummy can do that, but it takes learned knowledge to be able to act with confidence and make informed decisions in a real world situation. Would you want your emergency room doctor to have an attitude like " I can always look it up, no reason to memorize anything ?"
You don't seem to get it. I'm not supporting the position of "Learn nothing, look up everything", I'm supporting the position of allowing outside resources on most exams. It is simply giving students another option to route memorization, most of which they will forget within a week or two.
This is not saying go into a meeting uninformed and be bad at decision making.
Innovative thinking and creativity in ADDITION to rote memorization.
We need standardized tests. We have to be able to compare a kid from Iowa with one from New Mexico. There are too many differences from district to district let alone long distances.
I agree about using standardized tests as a tool for comparison. Standardized tests like the ACT/SAT are not rote memorization though. They're not like material based exams given in classes. They're not absorb, regurgitate and forget. They're more of a measure of comprehension, which is very important.
You don't seem to get it. I'm not supporting the position of "Learn nothing, look up everything", I'm supporting the position of allowing outside resources on most exams. It is simply giving students another option to route memorization, most of which they will forget within a week or two.
The problem is, there are things they are not supposed to forget, and it must be based on both memorization + repetition. Things as basic as the multiplication table or basic algebra or basic physics. There's no way around memorizing and repetition. Basics must be memorized and drilled, you can't solve a complex algebraic equation unless you know your basic building block equations and methods by heart. This applies to engineering as well.
I am not saying that absolutely everything must be drilled, but the basics for each subject should. I don't have a very good memory but I still remember much of trigonometry and algebra - far more than I expected - thanks to my teachers being extremely demanding, by today's standards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mandalorian
This is not saying go into a meeting uninformed and be bad at decision making.
If a person don't develop the skill of memorizing important data, they will be uniformed and grasping for straws the moment a question comes up that requires specific knowledge-based answer. Learning is a skill, and memorizing is a subset of this skill. I don't believe in open book tests until the basics are ingrained in memory. And by "basics" I don't mean elementary school stuff.
I have to agree with Oldhag on this one, I believe this has to be up there with the top ten worst ideas on this forum. The objective for educating our children is not to make them sit still for hours on end to save some money.
1. Our goal is to teach students to love to learn and give them information they can use in their future.
2. That's not going to be done by sitting on their butts all day. All of my kids chose small private colleges because they never wanted to be in that situation. We moved to where we are for the great schools. They didn't go to private schools because there was no need to do that. If your public schools are good, the private schools are not as important.
1. This is not the goal of schools. I never once had a teacher that wanted me to "love to learn." Their goal was to get me to pass the standardized tests.
You also changed the subject by somehow getting into a topic on how you had to move to where the good schools were. This happens in my City as well. If you did choose Private you wouldnt have had to move to where a good Public school was. If you raised the cap on the class size then Private schools would be more affordable.
2. So youre arguing against lecture style classes? Cause thats the current model....
In larger areas there should be separate schools for the children going on to college and for the ones that aren't. Our competitor countries don't mix all kids together. I also doubt they have special ed in the same building.
In smaller areas there should be tracking, and I don't care about the connotations. Should some be held back so others have self esteem?
Phys Ed every year. Look at today's children. Music and arts too even if you have to extend the school day.
I am not in favor of local control of school districts. Too many board members have an agenda that usually has to do with their kid, their religion, or their political beliefs. Most districts don't have a board of well educated members. They have people that made the most noise.
Bring back competition. Kids have to learn what it takes to be the best and those kids should be recognized.
There has to be a way to get rid of bad teachers. There is no reason for tenure.
Funding has to change. I don't know the answer but what we have now isn't working.
Some countries do not even have special Education. We don't need separate buildings for special education or vocational education. We should let decide if they want to go college or vocational training.
I'd add a centralized, well researched, best-practices based curriculum that sets a solid base while still expecting the teacher to improvise and challenge kids. Not the current hodge-podge of poorly thought through methods that together form a very incoherent, disconnected educational system where every district marches to their own drum.
You want the federal government to remain entrenched in the loop so it grows worse than it is now?
The problem with public eduction is Uncle Sam. K-20, No Child Left Behind, school feeding, national standardized testing and anything else the governmentt can do to be involved makes it all worse. The states themselves should be the ceiling. States shouldn't accept federal funding for schools for the very reason.
As for the current hodge-podge of poorly thought through methods that together form a very incoherent, disconnected educational system where every district marches to their own drum. That is your opinion. The poorly thought through methods are all part of Common Core. All schools are to be adhering to it or someone is fraudulent in use of federal funds, how Common Core is paid for.
How is every school in every school district of this country to adhere to a "centralized, well researched, best-practices based curriculum that sets a solid base while still expecting the teacher to improvise and challenge kids" when it doesn't work?
Take it from the feds and give it to the state; how it use to be just 30 years ago. Schooling hasn't regressed...society has. Most parents are of the Homer Simpson train of thought when it comes to their kid's schooling. If they go to school everyday everything is good. Grades? Who cares about grades? No kids fail a grade these days as all are promoted on so the school looks good. Failing students draw a red flag everywhere but in the kid's home.
My changes?
1) No more federal intervention. The schools fail when feds intercede.
2) Bring back vo-tech. Auto shop and other skilled professions can be taught there.
3) Bring back recess/PE. Kids need to go out to recharge, especially the wee ones. Bring back PE into the HS so those kids get some form of exercise during the day.
4) Let parents make the choice of what their kids eat in school, especially if sending the kid to school with a packed lunch. Food from home should be off limits to school administration.
5) Bring back art into the schools, especially music.
6) Quit pushing college onto all students as not all are college bound and those who do graduate are finding it hard to get the high dollar employment they have been taught to expect. Immigration has ruined the job market in the USA; my brother owns a construction company and all of the sub contractors he uses are but families of immigrants. When he and I were young we did the jobs immigrants do today. Today's American kids are too used to taking it easy and couldn't fathom a week as a laborer on a construction site, let alone being a journeyman in the trades. They may have to work an occasional Saturday.
You want the federal government to remain entrenched in the loop so it grows worse than it is now?
The problem with public eduction is Uncle Sam. K-20, No Child Left Behind, school feeding, national standardized testing and anything else the governmentt can do to be involved makes it all worse. The states themselves should be the ceiling. States shouldn't accept federal funding for schools for the very reason.
As for the current hodge-podge of poorly thought through methods that together form a very incoherent, disconnected educational system where every district marches to their own drum. That is your opinion. The poorly thought through methods are all part of Common Core. All schools are to be adhering to it or someone is fraudulent in use of federal funds, how Common Core is paid for.
How is every school in every school district of this country to adhere to a "centralized, well researched, best-practices based curriculum that sets a solid base while still expecting the teacher to improvise and challenge kids" when it doesn't work?
Take it from the feds and give it to the state; how it use to be just 30 years ago. Schooling hasn't regressed...society has. Most parents are of the Homer Simpson train of thought when it comes to their kid's schooling. If they go to school everyday everything is good. Grades? Who cares about grades? No kids fail a grade these days as all are promoted on so the school looks good. Failing students draw a red flag everywhere but in the kid's home.
My changes?
1) No more federal intervention. The schools fail when feds intercede.
2) Bring back vo-tech. Auto shop and other skilled professions can be taught there.
3) Bring back recess/PE. Kids need to go out to recharge, especially the wee ones. Bring back PE into the HS so those kids get some form of exercise during the day.
4) Let parents make the choice of what their kids eat in school, especially if sending the kid to school with a packed lunch. Food from home should be off limits to school administration.
5) Bring back art into the schools, especially music.
6) Quit pushing college onto all students as not all are college bound and those who do graduate are finding it hard to get the high dollar employment they have been taught to expect. Immigration has ruined the job market in the USA; my brother owns a construction company and all of the sub contractors he uses are but families of immigrants. When he and I were young we did the jobs immigrants do today. Today's American kids are too used to taking it easy and couldn't fathom a week as a laborer on a construction site, let alone being a journeyman in the trades. They may have to work an occasional Saturday.
Somewhere in another thread somebody posted the latest global ratings.
The top 10 (including Canada) all have more or less centralized curriculum. It doesn't need to happen on the federal level, but even at the state level there's a total mess right now. The US is #28 on that list. Canada is #10. Why ? And why don't we (#28) emulate what Canada (#10), Finland (#6) or Switzerland (#8) are doing ? Shoudln't we learn from the best rather than continue with the system that is very clearly broken ? And note, I deliberately didn't pick Singapore (#1) or Hong Kong (#2) or South Korea (#3) or Japan (#4). You can't blame the Asian culture and mentality when Canada is #10 and we're #28.
BTW I agree with your list except #1. The federal gov't may not be the answer, but when you give too much freedom to individual districts and even school teachers, without setting the base requirements high enough, you get the total chaos and stupid unworkable teaching methods that are so prolific now. Somebody, somewhere, must be constantly improving the curriculum and holding these clowns responsible for teaching it. I am not sure it would even work on the state level, not each state is equipped well enough to handle this task.
Last edited by Ummagumma; 05-13-2015 at 03:02 PM..
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