From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 29 Sep 92 20:39:05 CDT
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: CHILL OUT
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <BvBn33.6pJ@quake.sylmar.ca.us>, by brian@quake.sylmar.ca.us (Brian K. Yoder):
> 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

This has been true for quite some time. I grew up in the early 70's using
grade school history books from the late 50's/early 60's, and they were the
exact same way -- they were supposed to instill "love of country" and
"patriotism" and "moral values", rather than teach history.

Not to mention that the current Texas curriculum does not include any
history at all at the elementary school level. Instead, it has a bunch of
nonsense about "answer multiple choice questions about Texas geography with
80% accuracy". I don't give a flying fleep about whether the kid can answer
multiple choice questions. I have a kid in my class who can answer multiple
choice questions all day without the foggiest notion about the geography of
Texas. What I care about is whether the kid knows this stuff and can apply
it. The application being important. What do you tell some inner-city kid
who has never been two blocks outside his neighborhood? How important do
you think he'll give to Texas geography? The way the book is written --
NONE. Because you ask this kid what state he lives in, he's likely to say
"Houston." or "The Fifth Ward." Or whatever. He doesn't know. It doesn't
mean anything to him. He's never experienced a state. All he knows is two
blocks around the school building. That's what he knows. To get him to the
point where he can understand, truly understand, what a state is, you have
to do a whole lot of teaching. Which most teachers don't bother to do,
because "it's not in the state-mandated curriculum and I have enough
trouble just covering the state-mandated stuff."

>>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?

Educational research continues to be produced for the same reason that
physics research continues to be produced -- because we don't know
everything there is to know about the universe. The universe including
teaching kids, of course.

Surely you don't say that all physics research is garbage just because
there are hundreds of physics papers published each year?

> 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"?

I'd call it incompetence on the part of the principal, is what I'd call it.
Any kid who has gotten through 13 years of school and learned nothing has
been raped in the worst way, and any principal who allows this sort of
thing to happen in his school needs to be immediately fired. Of course, for
this to be an effective deterrant, principals would first need to have the
authority to hire and fire their own teachers based upon teacher results.
Which is a power that I support -- if the principals themselves are
similarly accountable for school-wide results.

I've never attempted to say that I agree with the way the current
educational system is organized. I don't. In fact, I have, in the past,
advocated Pell-grant style vouchers and school-based control rather than
the current setup.

>>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,
                                             ^^^^ ^^^^^^
  In my opinion, all worksheets should immediately be burned and replaced
  with assignments that require at least full sentences (preferably
  paragraphs and essays, depending upon the age of the child).

> they engage in role playing, they have group discussions,

Uhm -- what's wrong with role-playing? I've found role-playing to be quite
useful as a practice tool for things like basic problem-solving. The way to
learn how to do something is to do it. I did not learn how to program a
computer by sitting in computer science classes. I learned by taking those
notes to a computer and actually seeing what happened when I put them into
effect. I have a degree in Computer Science and know everything from O/S
internals on up. I can tell you how the Unix 4BSD kernal swaps pages, I can
tell you how the old AT&T filesystem fragments disks, and none of that did
I learn by staring at books. I learned by role-playing, basically. By
taking the ideas and running with them. By building my own little toy
filesystems to see how the AT&T algorithms must have evolved. By looking at
the issues that led to the BSD FFS, and seeing how I might have done it
differently. By playing. Period. Not by sitting in a classroom and
listening to a professor drone.

In my opinion, any classroom which does not contain a large amount of this
sort of "play" is a classroom where no learning is taking place.

Group discussions are the same way. When you and I are on the job, when we
hit a snag we don't go crying to a professor or supervisor. No. We go hunt
up a co-worker who might be able to help. In the end, we have to decide: is
the desired outcome of education knowledge, or grades? If knowledge, then
group discussions are a great way to find out what each kid doesn't know,
and a great way to re-teach the concepts that the kids don't have.

> 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.

I see. And how long has it been since you've been in a school, and which
school was it? How do you know this with such certainty? I repeat: they
*DO* bother with education. They just don't have a clue how to do it,
usually, and thus do it "the way it 'spozed to be" rather than the way that
the research says we ought to do it.


> 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.

I agree perfectly. What do you think I've been saying? Do you think I've
been excusing the behavior? No. I've been saying that you're wrong when you
say they don't care. They do care. They just don't have a clue. But you,
dear sir, seem to be similarly clueless. What would you suggest past
"firing the teachers"? My own particular bias would be towards eliminating
the "public school" as such, with its central heirarchy and state
regulation, and go to a decentralized system with schools run by parents
and principals. Parents to do the quality control and kick out the
principal if he doesn't teach. With the only state regulation being the
monitoring of knowledge via test results etc. so that parents can tell
whether the rascals are doing a good job or not.

By the way, the unions are no problem down here in Texas. You can basically
fire a teacher any time you want to with no problem. Most principals don't
bother. Which says a lot about school administration.

>
>>> 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.

Perhaps you should read Diane Ravitch's history of American education
before you jump to conclusions. The current structure of American schooling
basically jelled in the 1920's and 1950's, two eras when schools were
overwhelmed by the demand for education and had little ability to deal with
high or low achievers due to simple overcrowding and staff burnout. Nobody
goes out of their way to give high or low achievers a bad education. That's
just the way the system is organized. The people might actually do a good
job of teaching if they were doing it in a better system. Which is why I
support local accountability with the principals hired by the parents and
the teachers hired by the principals and no central authority setting
curriculum (beyond the curriculum implied by testing).

>>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?

Because that's the only way I've ever learned anything? I don't know. Why?
I know that at college I did a lot of independent study even though I was
supposedly with other "bright" people. Structured coursework simply drives
me crazy. I don't like it.

> What they need is education.

I'm confused. If education implies the aquisition of knowledge, and it is
possible for a very bright kid to learn to his potential via mentorship and
semi-independent study -- what's the problem?

> They are just able to go through more material more quickly.

Hooboy. You can tell that you're not a teacher.

The difference between "bright" kids and "dull" kids is NOT just the rate
at which they go through material. The primary difference is their ability
to *THINK*.

Bright kids, in my experience, can draw conclusions from related facts and
otherwise do high-level inferencing skills.

"dull" kids, on the other hand, can do no such thing. You can condition a
dull kid via behavioral methods to be a "good reader" (i.e., be able to
read prose and regurgitate it). But teaching him to actually draw
conclusions based upon what he has read...

Needless to say, the bright kid doesn't need just more of what the dull
kid gets. He needs a DIFFERENT education.

> 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.

Uhm, what is this "good education" that you're talking about? I'm confused.
You've used the term over and over again, and never operatively defined it.


>>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!

Why? I'm just doing my job. Most teachers are too tired from fighting the
system to bother with expending the energy that I do, but so it goes.

> Actually, since brighter kids are usually easier to teach,

WHAT!!!??? You, dear sir, have obviously *NEVER* taught!

Bright kids will rip your guts out and hang you to dry. Bright kids will
challenge you until your tongue is hanging out and you're panting for
mercy. Bright kids will give you sleepless nights and frantic days as you
scurry hither and fro trying to find a challenge for them.

What reality do you live in, anyhow? It certainly isn't mine! Most teachers
will run in terror if given the opportunity to teach "gifted and talented"
students. The work of teaching them is tremendously reinforcing -- they
learn in leaps and bounds, and it's always great to see your hard work
paying off -- but it is *HARD*. Much harder than teaching "dull" kids, who
might challenge you physically but never intellectually.

Are you sure you're still on this planet? Did you accidently step through
Dr. Strange's door to another dimension? Hmm...

> 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?

Answer: He shouldn't. I've never said he should. In fact, if you read
further, one of my proposals (other than the local control one) was that a
high school diploma be based upon mastery of some amount deemed "high
school education", no matter how little or how much time it takes. Your
third grader reading at college level may actually be ready to graduate --
if he gets his math up to snuff and learns a little biology and such, of
course :-).

In my opinion, if we're going to say that the high school diploma means
something, we might as well define what it means educationally and then
give it out whenever the kid masters that material.


> Why not just put all of the smartest kids in the school together and have
> one teacher do one lesson plan for them?

You've obviously *NEVER* dealt with gifted and talented students from a
teacher's point of view. Each one is wildly individualistic. Their
abilities in no way match. One might be great in math and practically
illiterate in English. Another might be exactly the opposite. Putting all
these kids on the same lesson plan is a recipe for mediocrity. In fact,
that's what happens right now -- we find that putting G-T students into
self-contained classes doesn't result in appreciably more learning, because
the G-T teachers do one lesson plan for the whole class and must thus pitch
it towards the "lowest common denominator" (the kid who's no good in math
detirmining what the kid who's great in math will do). What herbs have you
been smoking, by the way?

In a word: Get a clue.

There's solutions out there. But the one you offered, though a time-worn
one, isn't a particularly good one when it comes to educating genius.

>>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.

Huh?

I came into teaching from the computer industry. I can assure you that half
the folks I met in the field were incompetent for the job they were doing.
They were there because they snow-jobbed the engineering manager, or were
related to the owner of the business, or whatever. But I've seen no more
cases of incompetence in teaching than I did in the computer business.

Cast not ye stones if you live in a glass house?

In any event: the National Teacher Exam purportedly says whether a teacher
is "competent" or not. It is a simple test of knowledge.

The last time somebody supported a VOLUNTARY certification for computer
professionals, they almost burned the house of the person who supported
such a "demeaning" thing.

In practice, computer professionals and teachers should both be evaluated
the same way: by their results. If a teacher is ignorant or if a computer
professional is ignorant, they won't get results. But knowledge alone is a
necessary but not sufficient condition for results. Testing knowledge,
then, makes sense only as a pre-screening, rather than as something to say
"this teacher is a good/bad teacher."

In other words, testing for knowledge is a start. No teacher should get
into the classroom without a basic knowledge base. But in the end, it's
results that count.

>>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?

In Physics class, obviously. Do you expect me to suddenly veer into
Newtonian physics in the 4th grade during a lesson on Texas geography? Do
you really think that kid wanted to know Newtonian physics, or could have
comprehended it? No. He wanted to know why we didn't fall off the Earth if
the Earth was round, and I answered his question. Accurately. Not a "kid
version" of the information, but with the real McCoy. All I did was express
it in language that he could understand. If I had started spouting
equations, he would have said "huh?" because he's a fourth grader. He
barely knows how to multiply and divide.

You can't learn "real" physics until you have the mathematical base. But
you can certainly teach some basic concepts of physics earlier -- like the
fact that the reason we don't fall off the Earth is because two masses
attract.

> A great many educators I have observed
                                ^^^^^^^^
Observed? Where? (I say that only because you're so obviously clueless
about effective teaching that the teachers you observed must be absolutely
terrible -- I don't want to go anywhere NEAR there).


> 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."

Uh -- it seems to me that the question "Why don't we fall off the Earth if
it is round?" is directly related to the real world!

I'd suggest that you read some of Asimov's science books aimed at
youngsters. They put the concepts into kid language -- but they do *NOT*
"warp" the material. It's the real McCoy. This is the sort of thing that
teachers should be doing.

> 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.

Well -- most kids learn how to read (nonwithstanding a few inner-city
school districts). Most kids learn how to do math with acceptable results.
Most kids learn how to write a simple letter. But, most important of all:
MOST PARENTS ARE SATISFIED WITH THEIR CHILD'S SCHOOL!!! They think American
schooling needs reforming, sure. But they like their child's school.

You don't get such survey results if the average student is not well-served
by the current system.

Both of us probably agree that the average student could and should be
better-served by the current system. But the current system produces the
same amount of knowledge (today) for "average" students that it produced in
the year 1950. It's the education of the "above-average" students that has
suffered in the intervening years.

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.sccsi.com         Dodson Elementary
 (713) 437-6908  uunet!nuchat!elgamy!elg      Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"