From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 27 Sep 92 11:34:24 CDT
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: CHILL OUT
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

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.

It depends upon who you're talking to. Most teachers, to tell you the
truth, are rather burned out on all the "political" stuff and continue
teaching only because it's the only job they know how to do. Education
suffers in that sort of environment.

>>I'm tired of hearing people complain about
>>education while refusing to do anything about it.

What I'm tired of is hearing people complain and then having those very
same people offer "solutions" that failed fifty years ago and would work no
better today.

Nobody cares to read their history books nowdays. 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. Everybody
"knows" what the best way to teach children is. I don't know how everybody
"knows" this -- maybe mental telepathy from invisible Martians living on
the Moon -- but they "know" it anyhow. This includes most "educators", who
know "the way it 'spozed to be" and won't tolerate anything else.

>>country's teachers to do our job.  "Education is like taking
>>out the garbage, if you don't do it, then you have no right to
>>complain about it later!"

I do it, so I have a right to complain :-). (Mr. Rubin remembers when I was
just another computer geek spouting off on the net... that was a couple of
years ago, now I've put my money where my mouth was).

> 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". 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.
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. 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. Unfortunately, many teachers don't have the knowledge to do a good
job, and many teachers aren't willing to expend the energy to do a good job
(because under the current system, you must expend incredible amounts of
energy to do a good job -- the entire system is stacked towards
mediocrity).

> 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.
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. 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.

> 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?

A student asked me why we didn't fall off the Earth, if the Earth was
really round. I explained Newton's law of gravitation to him in kid
language. No big deal. He swiftly grasped it, and made an analogy to
magnetism, "except a lot weaker," I explained, "the only reason we can feel
the Earth pull at us is because the Earth is very huge and heavy and the
heavier, the more pull it has." (Naturally I didn't get into distance
effects!). 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.

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

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.

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

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

> 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. The idea of a 12-year-old getting
a high school diploma, or a 24-year-old getting a high school diploma,
seems to send quivers up the spine of anybody who thinks that a grade
school education "must" be 12 years and exactly 12 years.

Not to mention that it's against the law, anyhow, in most states, which
provide state education funding only until age 18, and which prohibit
students from finishing school prior to age 16.

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

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