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LOL. I will make sure I add "front page of the internet" to major national media sources, and I will probably add it to my first go to place for news, because every knows if its on the internet its gotta be true.
It would be a big mistake to underestimate the relevance and readership of Reddit.
You can get a Blue Book on cars to see that the value of cars declines. Everybody knows it.
So why can't you find economists discussing it or planned obsolescence? Anyone that wants to can research how economists discuss that. But it is probably easier to find them blathering about Keynes versus Hayek.
Sure, anything that doesn't conform to the usual BS is a "conspiracy theory". That is just name calling.
psik
Question?
What is your experience in education, other than reading a bunch of articles about education by biased individuals?
It gets easier to be taken advantage of as a person ages and can be easily replaced by someone who's half their age. I agree with your points in principle, but given the reality of the situation, I wouldn't blame someone for just toeing the line.
A large number of teachers are quitting their jobs for others, or tutoring or going to private schools too. These are people voting with their feet. Yes, you have to pay heed to the reality of the situation. No, you should not sit back and be silent. The teacher was *directly* challenged. She should either defend her 'method' (I'd say non-method) or better use it to see what the rest of the class thought. I'll bet as she seemed to be zoning at her desk while she was supposed to be 'teaching' she would be really surprised.
She could go sell shirts at walmart and at least not harm anyone as she is in her classroom by teaching that only following the rules is okay.
I am employed by the school. As an employee, I do what my employer wants or I find another job. There are no other jobs. Guess I'm doing what my employer wants.
I have plenty of moral convictions but they don't matter because they'd get me fired and getting me fired won't fix the situation because the next teacher will just find herself in my shoes. How does my getting myself fired fix anything?
I'm not cheating. Not in the slightest. I'm teaching in the manner the admins want me to. The powers that be think that packets and student talk are the way to go. That lecture is old fashioned and needs to die. Investigations is the new buzzword. Let the students discover chemistry (never mind it took much more educated minds a cumulative few thousand of years of research to do that ).
You act like I have a choice. I don't. They've made it very clear that my continued employment hinges on teaching via methods they see as modern. So I'll write packets and park my students in front of computers where they can watch some programmers representation of things best left to the imagination (because we really don't know what they look like and planting an image thwarts imagination....imagination is what leads to new discoveries.).
Sorry kid. I don't make the rules but if I want to work for a living, I have to play by them. I'm a fan of teaching in a lecture format supplemented by demonstrations and labs with liberal sprinklings of supported work time but that's antiquated and not keeping up with the times. Lecture is out. Discovery is in. I'm supposed to lead my students to the answers not explain things to them.
I've lost all will to fight this because I see the other chemistry teacher teaching this way and her kids do just as well on the tests as mine. While my way, apparently, doesn't hurt, neither does hers. I was really hoping her kids wouldn't do as well and I could show that actually getting up there and teaching works better but I can't. In the absence of any evidence that a lecture format works better, I have no choice but to adopt what the school system wants and that is group work and student talk. So, packets it will be and the students will work in groups to figure it out while I guide from the side. I think it will be a slower process but, as I said, the other chem teacher's kids do just fine so I have no reason to die on this hill.
If you were my kid's teacher, with that attitude, I'd be in your classroom explaiing how wrong you were and why you needed to lose your job. That you KNOW it is not the way to learn but you continue to use it is morally reprehensive.
I'd be very badly served by a system which did this and be sitting at your desk asking mounds of questions and that you explain how it got there until you got tired of me and answered. I learn by lecture not reading boring stuff. There were classes I learned a whole lot more than most, but never read the text at all.
You do not get a pass from me. You do not have the right to do nothing in the face of what you know is a failure. Either step up or quit. This applies to the admins as well.
If you were hired to teach lecture style, then you shouldn't be forced to change into packet style, just because one class of students did well.
That isn't even good research. Thirty students is not nearly a large enough sample size.
Do you really know there are a dozen teachers waiting for your job?
Learning method has LONG been up to debate. Some learn by reading. Some best by lecture. Some best by hands on. If you are a lecture learner and the class is all packets, then I can guarentee you just shut out a student. I never read the text book either. But I had notebooks of notes and one class a week was question and discussion. The classes I barely passed were the ones where the 'teacher' sat like a statue/robot and never talked. I had almost an A average in college where lecture is how it was taught. The last year in high school it was mostly 'fillin' and except for creative writing was utterly boring. I got C's in most, barely past an F in one.
If lecture is going away in some schools, then I'd be a failure. I'm lucky they taught how I learned but it was no more fair then than it is now. Quit treating students as all the same. Maybe for each subject have a primary 'discovery' class and a primary lecture class and see in the real world of comparison, not statistics, who does better in what.
Personally I'd love to be a tutor right now since I wonder how many able to pay someone for it are using them so their kids who are being FAILED by the system are not at least failed by their parents.
Of course you have the right to your opinion. And that means you have the right to voice that opinion and look like an ignorant dufas when you talk to experts about their profession.
I have the right to tell engineers how to build a bridge. They have the right to laugh at me for talking out of my butt or tell me go F*** off. But since I've driven on bridges, I have that right/knowledge to tell them how to, don't I?
Same goes for neurosugeons. I don't criticize those that carry this out since I've never had their training, but since I have a brain, shouldn't I have the right to discuss the specific details about it and tell them what they're doing wrong or how to improve their methods?
That's exactly the kind of logic some posters are using when justifying their rants about education. Yes, there are some bad eggs in every profession, and I'd say we all - well, most of us - can feel somewhat justified in our criticism. But just because you've sat on the student's side of the desk doesn't mean that you know what goes on on the teacher's side of that desk. This is called arrogant presumption.
Also, since we truly don't have the full picture - since we only see 90 seconds of one side of the issue - it makes one look foolish to criticize the teacher based solely on 1 student's opinion. I'm not saying either she was right or wrong, or that the kid was justified or an attention-grabbing lunatic. But to automically assume "truth" based on this small segment is moronic. And when people do such, they only embarrass themselves.
You don't have to be an expert to tell a bridge builder to build his/her bridges in the right way for the right bridge. That is the issue.
This 'packet' method might benefit some students. But its going to leave some lost in the cold. Students and bridges are much the same in that. I'd just go dump the packet on the teachers desk and tell them to start talking about it since it wasn't working this way. Then if she/he didn't I'd skim the surface and get a D to get it over and not care if I wasn't interested. If I was I'd go and complain each day to the teacher. I personally wouldn't care if anyone was bothered because I wouldn't be ignored. I'd tell my parents and maybe someone else. My parents would have been in the VP's office complaining to them.
I went to private school for half of elementary school since they taught phonics. The LA unified districts taught 'look, see' and mom saw nothing but kids who could barely read and were grades behind. Once I got a good foundation in that I decided I wanted to see my friends from home at school, but I was always the one who brought the reading book in the day after we got it and said I'd finished it, did we have a harder one?
One teacher didn't do anything but most provided alternate, often a couple grades past material. I read better because the school my mom put me taught how to read well and it didn't fail me. Parents DO have power and should use it.
If my kid complained about this to me I'd be finding something, even tutoring, to get them past it. And if you own property and pay taxes your paying those lumps who don't teach's salary and can speak up.
I know people who were auditory learners and didn't do well in school because of it when lecture was the primary method. They were failed as the current method is failing students. Lecture was used because it is the primary learning method of most people. I've tried packaged lessons in math and never got anywhere without a person to ask all the questions I need to. I'm really bad at math thought I shine in other things.
If we want to make bridges an example, we ask what the bridge is for. How much traffic is it intended for? Will this hold in the future or should there be an allowance for that? What is the seasonal weather patterns and how will they effect the use and safety of a more standard approach? The goal is a good bridge which won't fail and will continute to fill needs. This is only accomplished by looking at all factors and all needs before you decide on the best way. No, I don't have this knowledge, but I can and should expect bridge builders not to be stuck in the best bridge building method book, and not to ever disregard concerns which will effect the end results becasue they believe there is one best bridge.
Just as there is no 'best way' with students. Serve them PROPERLY by seeing how they learn and directing them based on that. I'll be there would be mostly lecture with reading as homework and only few packet, directed classes, but it would be right for the student.
My son lived with his dad's family in high school. But it was a mess and he quit his senior year. He is smart but not a 'packet learner' and did well in classes where they talked about the subject. It's a highly rated school too, in terms of test scores. So these scores do not mean they serve all students. I wish I could do a 'doover' because I liked at the time that he was in such a 'good' school. He took some time off and has learned responsibility and is going to be going to community college. I forsee him doing well there. They don't live and die by manditory tests and the unreality that every student has the same possibilities.
I feel sorry for all the round pegs of students out there who are being failed by a system where teachers are too much cowards to say it does not worl.
But when you are a kid you don't know that. So all of the people who have been properly conditioned to stay in line expect everyone to do it. It is the Conformist Majority that has the problem.
That is why a good reading list could help short circuit the school system and possibly why we do not have one. But now these tablet computers are more powerful than any mainframe that a high school could afford in the 1980s. Do the kids need the schools anymore?
Is the real problem for educators keeping the kids from making the best use of technology. That would be funny.
If he was my son I would probably pat him on the back while discussing why it could have been a tactical mistake in dealing with that school, and now that it is all over YouTube it may have been a strategic mistake. You never know who is recording what these days.
psik
On the other hand, it has inspired a lot of discussion and students weighing in in his support. Awareness is a good thing. He wasn't trying to make a viral video and it was simply his own frustration but sometimes your moment comes.
Given that my son was badly failed by the 'education' he got in high school, I'd tell him he did the right thing and other students should make their voices heard. It IS their future we're talking about.
What is your experience in education, other than reading a bunch of articles about education by biased individuals?
I never wanted to be a teacher. Most of the teachers I had I did not like. I have done computer seminars at various companies I have worked for.
Went to an engineering school for electrical engineering. But even then I noticed engineers do not talk about planned obsolescence? How can any competent engineer not know about it over the last 50 years. But it creates jobs for engineers.
Double-entry accounting in high school would have been far more useful than English literature. But engineering schools make students take such irrelevant junk and pay the same as they do for math and engineering courses.
Another thing is that "real" sci-fi books put more information in less space than most teachers. Educational institutions and books written for educational institutions are designed more to serve the interests of institutions than the students. Read Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust and learn about Plato's Allegory of the Cave. What kind of people want to become teachers?
I found this very interesting and not in the least bit surprising:
For example, I always hate how doctors purposely overbook, knowing there's no way they're really going to see 2 patients every 15 minutes and then apologize for seeing me late.
You know darn well you're not sorry or you wouldn't overbook.
Exactly. We shouldn't make teachers or doctors gods. I and a terrible patient after learning that the hard way.
Parents and students should question and insist on action when they see failure in schools. Teachers should not be such cowards as to sit and follow orders when a student needs something more either. If a kid is not learning then that is what matters, not to find the one perfect method for the state testing to shine.
You're seriously saying bravo to a disrespectful KID, not man. He isn't 21 yet.
He's 18, and has already granted some of the rights of adulthood. He also *chose* to go back to school and found it was failing his needs. He didn't record it himself OR post it or even know about the posting until later.
As for the teacher, other of her students have been interviewed and she doesn't seem to do much teaching. Stand up and review the 'packet' with the students. Answer questions. Discuss ideas. This is teaching. Photo copying and reading in your seat is warehousing. She could have said she was doing what the district had said she was to do, and then perhaps let the class discuss it as it was a problem to at least one. I'll bet more.
And sometimes frustration gets to you when nobody listens. And sometimes it gets good results. This *has* created discussion on the cookie cutter fit in the slot education I'm sure is failing a lot of students who are only learing to give the 'right' answers, not being educated.
That he chose to go back to school is to his credit. That the school is failing him and likely many others is certainly not to theirs. That it has got people talking is very very good.
If the teacher does nothing but hand out assignments which should be homework then she deserves to go.
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