From: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Subject: [misc.education] Problems of schools / education
Reply-To: jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 14:47:31 GMT

A repost from misc.education:

From: brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder)
Subject: Re: CHILL OUT
Organization: Quake Public Access
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 03:59:25 GMT

In article <00717615264@elgamy.sccsi.com> elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green) writes:
>From article <Bv5M9r.MM6@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, by hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin):
>> In article <1992Sep24.155149.15195@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> sdg5e@curry.edschool.Virginia.EDU (Susan Dawn Galea) writes:
>>>   Sometimes I feel that educators are so plagued by the
>>>political issues that they forget their main goal:  to educate
>>>our students.

>Nobody cares to read their history books nowdays. 

That's because the purpose of history books is no longer to convey information
about history.  They are supposed to instill "racial pride", "universal
tolerance", "good citizenship", and "a feeling for history".  Who needs to have
a textbook when you can read the writings of the people themselves?  If the
teacher knows something about history and why knowing about history is important
that might help too.  Maybe that's more to ask for if the unions are to be
placated.

>Nobody cares to look at
>eighty years of educational research, much of which is garbage but enough
>of which is valid to be a good guide to educational practice. 

My experience is that almost all of it is garbage.  If everyone knows this,
how can you explain the fact that so much of it continues to be produced?

>> So what do you expect us to do?  If those in charge of the educational
>> establishment insist on merely warehousing instead of teaching, and do

>I don't think anybody insists on "merely warehousing". 

Of course that's not what they call it in public, but can you tell me what
else you can call a process by which a student spends 13 years in school
and cannot read and write if it is not "warehousing"?  What do you call it?
"Education"?

>For one thing, it is
>impossible to manage a classroom full of students who are being "merely
>warehoused". Or, as the saying goes, "idle hands are the Devil's tools."
>You must have the kids doing SOMETHING, or else it degenerates into mayhem.

Oh sure, they do SOMETHING.  They fill out work sheets, they engage in role
playing, they have group discussions, they have field trips, and class 
projects, and school assemblies, and pep rallies, and driver education, and
a thousand other things.  What they DON'T do is bother with education.

>There's some teachers who've gone downhill to the point where they don't
>bother teaching, they just prop their chair against the door to keep the
>"animals" from escaping and sit there and snore, but I assure you that this
>isn't the typical teacher. 

Sure, many more put on a much better show without doing anything any more 
educationally valuable.

>Most teachers do the best job they know how to
>do, within the limits of the amount of energy that they're willing to
>expend. 

Would you accept this kind of attitude and behavior among physicians?  Car
manufacturers?  What do you think the results of this kind of incompetence
would be in those cases?  those are pretty lame excuses.  If they can't do
their jobs, they should be fired.  It's too bad the unions won't allow it.

>> their best to see that the bright cannot learn more than the stupid, what

>Nobody TRIES to assure that the bright cannot learn more than the stupid.

My experience has been that they exert a considerable effort toward that end.
Of course, they don't call it that.  They call it "socialization", and 
"cooperation skills".  They call having the bright learn more than the dull
"elitism".  Among other things, the schools are organized around the 
transparently false premise that the best way to generate intellectual
development is to gear the coursework to anything but intellectual ability.
Students are organized according to age, race, athletic ability...anything
but intellectual development.

>That's just how the system is organized. I am of the opinion that it is
>impossible to do anything else within the current educational system, which
>has no place for mentorships and semi-independent study. 

What makes you think that bright students need independent study?  What they
need is education.  They are just able to go through more material more quickly.
Of course working alone apart from the influence of teachers IS better than
being in a class that bores the student into oblivion, but it is NOT a good
education.

>I personally have
>my higher-level students working semi-independently out of kits and
>encyclopedias and library books (for example, a report on African animals
>assigned to a smart 5th grader). This does, however, require that I make
>two extra lesson plans (for my two brightest kids) and expend the energy to
>give them some extra help when they need help with those advanced
>assignments.

What a shame!  Let me play my violin for you!

Actually, since brighter kids are usually easier to teach, they could be put 
into bigger classes with other bright kids.  The problem is that students
are promoted by age and not by ability.  Why should a 3rd-grader reading and
spelling at college level have to take reading classes?  Why should he be held
back to the level of others his age?

Why not just put all of the smartest kids in the school together and have 
one teacher do one lesson plan for them?
 
>> class attendance, be incorporated?  What can we do about the incompetence
>> of the teachers except suggest that there be honest testing of their
>> knowledge, not just grades and credits, and the ones who do not know
>> get their pay reduced relative to those who do?

>The question is, "what knowledge do we test?". And to what level of
>competence?

Gee, every other profession in the economy seems to have no problem determining
who is competent and who is not.  What makes you think that education is so
different?  The problem is that nobody has the power to judge their competence
and then do something about it.  Neither the "customers" (parents/students)
nor the administrators (who are prohibited by tenure rules from firing teachers
for incompetence).  It's also a crime that a young highly skilled teacher makes
no more than a young incompetent teacher, and makes LESS than an older 
incompetent one.  Teachers, like students, are advanced according to age
rather than ability.  In fact, the whole idea that some people are more able
than others is immediately denounced as "elitism".

>I didn't need a degree in Physics to do this, though. What I did
>need was the ability to put it into kid language, and the ability to listen
>to his questions and try to clarify things as much as possible.

that is certainly a good skill to have, but if the only thing a kid ever
learns is a "kid version" of the knowledge in school, when does he ever get
a chance to learn the real thing?  A great many educators I have observed
spend so much time trying to warp and "simplify" the material that they 
never really get around to discussing the real stuff, and end up achieving 
nothing but the obscurement of the material.  Such an approach also teaches
the implicit lessons that "School teaches things unrelated to the real world.",
and "Teachers are phonies.".  

>Testing understanding of complex concepts is one thing. But how do we test
>ability to present those concepts?

That's what we used to call "writing " in the old days.  I realize that these
days, asking a kid to write more than four words in a row is considered
cruel and unusual punishment, but that IS how you go about measuring the 
ability to generate and express ideas.

>I've not been satisfied with any current attempts to test this, I must
>admit. The best way I've come up with is a way which most teachers resist
>highly -- to measure the kid's knowledge at the end of the year, and see
>how much the kids have learned. Because, in the end, that's what counts.
>That's what the kids are there for. The kids are there to learn. If the
>kids learn, I don't care about how the teacher does it, or whether she's
>comfortable with quantum physics, or whatever.

Certainly student learning is the goal, but are you saying that you don't think
that the teacher's having real knowledge of the subject matter is a 
prerequisite for this to occur?  How can you teach what you don't yourself
know?  When I was in school, I complained again and again that the teachers
did not know the material they wer eteaching themselves.  What I was told 
repeatedly was that knowledge of subject matter is unnecessary.  Once you know
"how to teach", one can teach any subject equally well.  It was blatant 
nonsense then and it still is.

>Any attempt at "teacher assessment" which measures only teacher knowledge
>rather than teacher RESULTS is, in my opinion, seriously flawed.

How do you expect to get results from teachers who don't know anything abou
their material?  A teacher who is barely literate cannot teach, cannot learn,
and cannot serve as a positive role model.  A teacher of history who is not
certain who Patrick Henry was, or who has never read the Magna Carta cannot 
effectively teach these subjects and cannot be an example for the students
of what an educated person is like.  Even young students can spot a 
phony very easily.  You can't fool them into thinking you have encyclopedic
knowledge if you don't, except by avoiding intellectual discussion, which is
one of the most common techniques I have seen poor teachers use to hide 
their incompetence.

>(Unfortunately, every school system in the land resists evaluating
>teachers via results).

They have a hard time getting the data in the first place, and are
disallowed by the unions from doing much about it.

>> There cannot conceivably be a good educational system if children are placed
>> into their age group regardless of ability and desire.

>Definitely agreed here. In the past, I've proposed grouping students based
>upon mastery, with students given as much or as little time needed to
>master the material needed to get a high school diploma. This, naturally,
>is not a widely-accepted reform proposal. 

Is it necessary that a policy be popular for it to be right?

>> Any school which does
>> not allow the genius to greatly outstrip the idiot does not have education as
>> its main purpose.

>The main problem is that the school systems are not organized to educate
>the genius. 

Nor the average student, nor the dullard.

>They are organized to educate the "unwashed masses." 

If so, then why do so many of the masses emerge from school so utterly 
uneducated?

>That has
>always been the purpose of school systems. Traditionally, geniuses were
>educated via independent tutors, mentorships, "special study", etc., rather
>than via government-supported school systems. It is laudable to desire that
>school systems be reformed to be able to educate geniuses to their
>potential -- but given the design of school systems, that's probably not a
>really practical goal. The institution of "schooling" simply isn't set up
>to do it.

So that's just it then?  Must we accept whatever the school systems dish out?
Why must we never ask for change?  Improvement?  Your implication seems
to be that the average students are well-served by the current system.  I
can't see how you can reach such a conclusion.

--Brian
Xref: sparky alt.uu.future:238 alt.uu.announce:14 alt.uu.misc.misc:8