From: elg@elgamy.jpunix.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 22 Jan 93 19:10:56 CDT
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: Magnet schools
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <C161Kt.DCr@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, by hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin):
> The capable students have gotten garbage, as I see it.  A capable 4th grader
> probably should be using Newton's laws of motion quantitatively.  The details
> are not of that much importance, and can either be looked up, or figured out.
> A lot of figuring out should be done.

We're not talking about "a capable 4th grader". We're talking about 4th
graders who are behavior problems and who, upon entering the program, were
generally 2 to 3 years behind. Now they're at or slightly below grade
level.

There is one child who probably could use Newton's laws of motions
quantitatively. When I first mentioned gravity to him, I was tempted to do
it. However, he has never seen an equation before -- so that didn't strike
me as a good time to talk about something that most people don't learn
before college.

> But the bright students probably did get the whole of that lesson in at
> most a few minutes.  Now what could they have added in the rest of the time?

What you saw was only a small portion of the lesson. There was a whole lot
more. We wandered all over the countryside.

>>Of course, one place where this IS a problem is in Math, where I can't pull
>>that sort of trick. A kid either knows it, or doesn't, and you can only
>>move at the rate of the slowest learners in the class.
>
> The same holds for physics or English or history.  Partial learning is a
> chimera, "deduced" by looking at the learning of nonsense syllables.

You're right about "partial learning". It doesn't exist. Your assumption
that this is based upon the learning of "nonsense syllables" is absolutely
correct, though for the opposite reason of what you imply -- research on
the learning of "nonsense syllables" says that you either know a fact, or
you don't.

On the other hand, there are a great many facts and concepts out there on
this planet, most of which are interlocked in a large web of
interrelationships that we cannot put into logical order as with
mathematics. For example, I defy you to say that a 2nd grader and a 8th
grader cannot learn descriptive writing in the same class. First of all, we
do not know how to teach children how to write. The process of writing is
not an artificial system like mathematics. It is a chaotic system whose
rules are uncertain. I write well. That is because I have read much good
writing, and done a whole lot of writing on my own. It doesn't matter
whether you're a 2nd grader or an 8th grader, this process (reading good
writing, and trying to write good writing on your own) is still the only
reasonable method for teaching someone how to be a good writer. We can
teach rules like subject-verb agreement and things of that nature -- but
those are trivial details. I could write sentences with proper subject-verb
agreement long before I could write a coherent paragraph. Enough English
grammar to serve a person can be easily taught in a year -- and generally
is, year after year after year, as a substitute for teaching anything
meaningful.

> even a C job.  The only thing the present schools can be said to do well
> at is keeping the kids off the streets.

Not even that. Truancy enforcement is a joke in many places.

>>two years more mature. He has enough trouble coping in the current
>>classroom -- for instance, I had to make him re-do his math assignment
>>today because he sped through it swiftly in order to get finished and do
>>something "fun", and ended up missing half the problems (the other half I
>>couldn't read, so it didn't make much difference which half he missed).
>
> Would he?  Maybe being put in an environment which only considered education
> would do some good.

That was considered, and rejected. In a regular environment, he refuses to
do anything that a teacher tells him to do. Instead, he wanders around the
classroom, looks out the window, and wanders out to the playground to play
in the sandbox with the pre-schoolers.

> As for "missing" the problems, was it that he could not
> do them, or was it just busy work for him?  Once someone knows how to do a
> type of problem, additional problems of that type should only be used for
> test purposes, clearly explained as such, and using them on a drill basis
> is totally counterproductive to decent pedagogy.

They were difficult for him, not busy-work. I do not assign busy-work.
However, I also do not assign impossible work. I had verified on the board
that he had the general idea of how to do these particular problems (3
digit by 1 digit multiplication, I seem to recall). He simply lacked the
emotional maturity to keep things straight. He was always putting numbers
in the wrong column or forgetting to add his carry or other stupid
mistakes of that sort where he knew how to do it, but just was in too much
of a rush to remember all the time.

As for the "counterproductive to decent pedagogy" part, you ought to tell
that to H. Ross Perot. He passed the legislation that mandates that each
and every child in the state of Texas must take the TAAS test in order to
advance to the next grade. Calculators are not allowed on the math portion
of the TAAS. Thus basic mathematical operations must be done with great
speed and accuracy in order to pass the test and advance to the next grade.
This DOES require drill. However, I do not regularly drill students on
things they already work with near-100% accuracy. That'd be busy-work.
Right now, subtract with carry is a biggy -- they keep forgetting to mark
down the digit to the left after they borrow from it, because they're so
accustomed to just dealing with one digit at a time. I do not, however,
waste class time on subtract with carry, except for perhaps three minutes
at the beginning of the class going over what they missed on homework. I
assign a few problems for homework to keep the process fresh in their
minds, mixed in with a bunch of whatever we're currently learning, and
that's pretty much it. Once a concept is learned with 100% accuracy, you
don't need to give busy work to keep it fresh in a kid's mind. Two or three
problems worth, maybe three minutes, every few days, will work just fine.
Whether the kid is a future Rhodes scholar, or an inner-city kid.

> And even if he wants to play, are you doing him any good by having him sit
> through boring lessons?  Could it be that he is learning more from his play
> than from the classwork?

His preferred playtoy is toy action figures, which he then proceeds to
spend a bunch of time slamming into each other in WWF fashion (World
Wrestling Federation). He enjoys the sandbox, and he enjoys the swings. He
enjoys bouncing on the little bouncy spring toy that the 1st graders love.
His play interests are on very low level, and that's ALL he wants to do. He
doesn't care for academics because he wants to be in the sandbox. It is
unlikely that he will learn how to read, write, or do math by playing in
the sandbox. He would be a disaster in a classroom with a lot of older
students. Not that he can function academically at that level anyhow... I
just offered him up as an example of a child whose low social functioning
would preclude putting him in a classroom with older children. He can't
even relate to children his own age, much less older children... he'd be a
disaster.

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.jpunix.com   Dodson Elementary
 (713) 664-6446                             Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"
Newsgroups: boulder.general