"Spare yourself the anxiety of thinking of this school thing as a conspiracy, even though the project is indeed riddled with petty conspirators. It was and is a fully rational transaction in which all of us play a part. We trade the liberty of our kids and our free will for a secure social order and a very prosperous economy. It's a bargain in which most of us agree to become as children ourselves, under the same tutelage which holds the young, in exchange for food, entertainment, and safety. The difficulty is that the contract fixes the goal of human life so low that students go mad trying to escape it." Quoted from "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto.
We are all prodcuts of some system or other but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists to escape the zombification process and become real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet, the medium in which we are now having this exchange, the process is accelerated.
Gatto wrote an article for _Harper's_ a few years ago, which supposedly summarized his argument. I remember thinking at the time that it sounded like elaborated and generalized grumbling; the Prussian connection was evidence of nothing much, IMO, as education has always been a kind of socialization, and the Prussian model just happened to be the one that was widely admired at the time American public education was becoming generalized.
The trouble with Gatto's complaint, as well as most complaints about education, is that the complaints all tend to sound the same, but the solutions are all contradictory. The complaints are that we know too little, that we think too little, or that we're unable to learn anything except what we're spoon-fed. The solutions are that we spend too little time in school; we spend too much time in school (Gatto's position). School is too permissive; school is too authoritarian. We spend too much time teaching by rote; we don't require kids to commit to memory the foundations of western thought.
And on, and on, and on. No two critics see the problem in the same way, and few offer remedies that aren't contradicting the *last* remedy that someone published.
All they have in common is that they don't like what's going on. They all seem to have a utopian vision of what education should be, but their utopias contradict each other.
It makes one skeptical about the whole enterprise.
That sounds like a retread of most complaints about education we've been hearing for 50 years or more. Now it's the Internet. Good luck.
I generally agree. The opportunities are there. The motivation to take advantage of it is lacking. And the idea that students are bored because education somehow doesn't engage them, while tautologically true, only tells us that those students don't want to be engaged.
But how would you know, Gunner? Aren't you a product of the system yourself?
Or are you one of those who bemoan the education system -- which is practically everyone -- and who feels that he is one of the exceptions, who avoided the "zombification"? But, if nearly everyone who criticizes the education system is among those who escaped, that means nearly everyone escaped. Which means, of course, that the "zombification" didn't work, and that you aren't one of the exceptions at all. You're one of the mainstream.
You've got yourself on the horns of a dilemma, Gunner. And they have very sharp horns indeed.
I think the complainers have forgotten what we had before the adoption of universal public education. It used to be that everyone was ignorant and illiterate except for a tiny minority of elites that were able to pay for a private education or tutoring. When it was decided that everyone would benefit from universal education some kind of system where all children were to be "educated" had to be chosen. For many years the system we had was the envy of the world and was unquestionably the best system invented to educate the children of an entire nation. Now it's charged with doing the same job for a country of 300 million with a huge number of children of different countries speaking different languages as well an underclass and a huge income disparity to deal with. All in all it's still doing a rather remarkable job. In addition, if you look at what the statistics are when you take out blacks and Hispanics you find that the system is excellent. An objective view shows that the minorities throw the stats way out of whack by pulling down the averages for the whole system. What's ironic is that the minorities take the least advantage of our free system and by all accounts they would benefit the most from it. What's that saying about advice most needed is advice least heeded? Those who need it the most use it the least. No wonder the system appears broken. I think it's not the system that's flawed but the children who are in it.
Without checking the numbers and some of the facts, I'd say that sounds about right on the surface. Asian-Americans seem to do very well indeed with our educational system. It must be good for some people...maybe the ones who have family support and motivation.
On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:48:25 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed Huntress" quickly quoth:
Asian-Americans (I hate politically correct hyphens) do better in school because the Asian mindset is that of their teaching system. School is severe and ruggedly enforced, and their children do better because of that. It could never happen here, but we need more burger- flippers here than the Japanese do, so it's OK. ;)
I feel blessed to have had an educated and loving family behind me to prop me up through several nastyass teaching experiences, including the metal brace one teacher mandated that I use in my left hand (since I was left handed.) One full school-day of crying + coming home in tears put an end to that. Mom ripped her a new asshole.
I also had a few -real- teachers in my life, those who taught me to want to learn and how to do so. [Thanks Ms. Hankins (2nd grade) and Mr. Downs (high school civics) for your love and support.]
Hawke's half right. Many children are broken. Anyone with a chip on their shoulder will have one helluva time learning through it. But our school system is seriously flawed. I got more out of life because I wanted to read. (Sci-Fi books made me what I am today, and I'm leaving my body to science fiction. ;) But, seriously, I was wider read than most students (not so more widely read than other honor roll students) and it helped me.
If anything, I'd like for all of our teachers to learn how to teach or inspire curiosity. That's the key to getting more out of life. Without curiosity, students are fodder for the lovely "Would you like fries with that?" or union worker lifestyles.
Luckily, there are lots of curious kids in our schools today, despite the teacher's union, the NEA, and uncaring parents/teachers. For a lot of other kids, it's a choice, and it's sad that so many make the wrong one in life. C'est la guerre, non?
-- It's a sad day when you find out that it's not accident or time or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you. -- Lillian Hellman
I know HEAPS who are as you describe, ie all the Kiddies I go to trade school with - and others who are hopeless and will probably never work in their lives.
I think Gunnerland is composed of the latter...glad I dont live there..visit sometimes, but dont live there...
The very first thing a pupil should hear is: "You can learn. Learning is one of the things people do best. Learning can be slower or faster for some people, but everyone can learn and learning is fun. So let's get curious!"
I had the pleasure (?) of being assigned to tutor a fellow student in high school. Skip was considered slow. Maybe so, but he was also thorough. In three weeks he learned enough to pass his final exam in French with a low A. Since French was what would prevent him graduating, we both felt really good about that. The very first thing I said to Skip was: "You can learn this, it's just another way of talking." Turned out the whole problem was he didn't do well in a classroom setting, but glommed onto it one-on-one like he was born in France. Slow? I don't think slow so much as needing a different way of learning that particular thing. :)
I got a contract once from the VA to teach a guy basic blacksmithing and metalwork. He was very interested, but also very hard on himself. He seemed to think he should be able to perfect every manual skill in one try. Finally had to tell him:" I said to do, not to do well the first time. Do each skill many times. Well will come. One day you'll pick and use the right technique without consciously thinking about it -- and you'll laugh at yourself over how it will surprise you."
Over the entire student body [there are always exceptions] it has been know for the last 85 years or so that the *LEAST* effective method of instruction, measured both as how much knowledge is retained, and how long it takes to acquire the knowledge, is the traditional "sage on the stage" classroom lecture / text book method.
So what method do we stress??????
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
We are all products of some system or other but there are enough misfits, loners and individualists to escape the zombification process and become real thinking human beings. Plenty have done it and, with the incredibly liberating power of the Internet, the medium in which we are now having this exchange, the process is accelerated.
In addition I will offer the growing paroxysms of school violence, which has accelerated since Columbine, as proof that the young students will no longer suffer the zombification and strictures which are forced upon them but will revolt, even to the death against it.
No, it was not video games, not arguments with the sports team members nor our violent culture and media that had anything to do with it... those things have been around for a long time. But the Internet and the growing realization among young people that their future has been mortgaged away, literally as well as figuratively speaking, inevitably leads to the explosions of violence which have occured with increasing frequency.
Look to the system itself, NOT THE STUDENTS, for the causes.
Yes, you said that. That's quite a sweeping claim, predicated on the idea that most school turns most people into "zombies" who can't think. That isn't my experience.
Before I graduated from high school I attended 12 different schools in six different states, two private and 10 public; I also attended one university in the US and one in Europe, which had students from all over the world. There were good ones and bad ones in that mix, to be sure, but I knew both excellent and awful students who had been educated in a wide variety of school types and systems.
The difference, as Larry also suggested here, seemed to be the students, not the systems. Some were fortunate to have supportive families and/or a couple or three exceptional teachers. That's what I experienced, as well. The worst schools I attended produced a lower percentage of good students who could think, who were creative and who were self-motivated by the time they were upperclassmen in high school. The best schools produced more of them. But those good schools also tended to be located in communities where education was held in high esteem and there was little cynicism about school among the students. The most outstanding example of that was the high school from which I graduated: Princeton High School, a public school in a small town of
14,000 but located in the midst of Princeton University, Westminster Choir College, The Princeton Theological Seminary, the Institute for Advanced Study, and several top-rated prep schools, where more than a few of the students were sons and daughters of university professors and where it was cool to be smart and to get good grades. The school system was conventional; the teachers were well above average; but, most importantly, the culture of the students themselves was one that encouraged and motivated other students.
That made all the difference. The opportunities to learn were there and, while they were above average, they were based on the same state requirements, the same institutional model, the same teaching credential requirements, the same NEA, and the same salaries being paid throughout the system.
Students -- or what they bring with them to school -- are the key. Families are key to the students. Families collectively produce a community's culture and attitudes. And attitudes in the general community shape the attitudes of the students.
Columbine is proof that there are some very screwed up people attending our schools, and that cultural aspects of the school environment itself can provoke them to murderous behavior. How much the school, as an institution, contributed to that is hard to say. In any case, the Columbine killers seem to fit the profile you favor: misfits and loners who escaped being socialized by the schools. They escaped it forever.
It seems likely that you had an unhappy experience in school. It also seems likely that you've force-fit the events into your theory, finding "proof" of what you're saying by presuming causative relationships where none probably exist.
Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
Never mind me, I'm just one from many. My experiences are hardly definitive and you've attended far more schools at all levels than I ever did. But that very fact probably saved you from its full effect. Besides, teachers are for the most part good and well intentioned and they resent the system as much as everyone else. Read Gatto's book, it's all there - the smuggled in "guidelines" and "standards" about what our students would or would not learn, could or could not learn, should or should not learn and the role of "socialization" (remember what was then called "social studies").
I took some education courses at Rhode Island College in the late 1960's and I recall my astonishment at the Maoist like intensity with which the views of Jean Jaques Rousseau, Dewey and Horace Mann were propounded as if they were the be all and end all of educational philosophies.
I will put the book on my list and try to get to it. I've been catching up lately. d8-)
The late '60s was a very strange time. I was in college then, too, and I can imagine there were plenty of rabid ideologues in teacher's education, as there were in many other fields. But those three were important thinkers who had a powerful effect upon education, and, to some extent, upon politics. As historical figures and original thinkers they were all important; you can't teach the history of education, or understand how we got where we are, without a serious study of their lives and ideas. I'd need to know the context in which they were being taught to appreciate your judgment in this case.
When education was extended to the general population, as someone else commented in this thread, the question arose about what they were to be educated *for*. Until that time education was for the elite, the future leaders in government, business, religion, the professions, and so on. It wasn't until our lifetimes that the general socialization objective came under scrutiny.
So, here we are in 2008. What would you have kids learn today? What is it that you think the schools are failing to teach? And what, specifically, would you remove from the current curriculum?
I think you hit on it exactly. The two keys are self motivation and family support. Anyone with a modicum of either of those attributes is going to do well in our system. Sadly, only a minority of people have those things in a sufficient supply.
The best thing we can do for the people of this country is to provide a good educational system for each new generation. I once heard someone say that we can't guarantee that everyone will have a good home but we can guarantee everyone will have a good school. If we were really serious about doing that we'd solve a lot of the problems. One place to start is to pay for public education out of the general fund and not have it paid locally the way it is now. Wealthy areas have great schools. Poor areas have schools that suck. If we provided the money to all schools equally and gave enough to ensure they all were top notch I think we would see a big improvement in our schools. Despite what some say money does do a lot to making one school better than the others, like just about anything else in life.
For the sake of Honest Disclosure..Eddy should mention his wife is a school teacher......
Gunner
Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
She teaches pre-school and kindergarten mentally handicapped, as you know perfectly well. You want to talk about that in the context of academic excellence and self-motivation, you smug asshole?
Listen to what Gatto says: (from "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto, "By the late 1960s I had exhausted my imagination inside the conventional classroom when all of a sudden a period of phenomenal turbulence descended upon urban schoolteaching everywhere. I=92ll tell you more about this in a while, but for the moment, suffice it to say that supervisory personnel were torn loose from their moorings, superintendents, principals and all the rest flung to the wolves by those who actually direct American schooling.
In this dark time, local management cowered. During one three-year stretch I can remember, we had four principals and three superintendents. The net effect of this ideological bombardment, which lasted about five years in its most visible manifestation, was to utterly destroy the utility of urban schools. From my own perspective all this was a godsend. Surveillance of teachers and administrative routines lost their bite as school administrators scurried like rats to escape the wrath of their unseen masters..."
Gatto goes on to describe how the school district later tried to get rid of him by secretly canceling his teaching license while he was on sick leave and and they sent the legally required notice to an address that he had not lived at for 22 years. After several hearings in which the required sick leave papers that he filed had vanished, Gatto found a payroll secretary who verified that he had filed the proper papers and that people had come to her office and made an effort to locate and remove those papers. Gatto was eventually reinstated and made teacher of the year two years later.
It was this battle with those cynical administrators that taught Gatto how easily the impersonal public school monster could be backed up in the face of opposition that showed any hint at all of exposing the entire sham.
Again in your post you have focused on the family and on the student rather than on this administrative structure, filled with well meaning people, which seems to enact what a few money controlling agencies, foundations and government offices desire rather than act for the good of the students and their futures.
Listen to what Gatto says: (from "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto, "By the late 1960s I had exhausted my imagination inside the conventional classroom when all of a sudden a period of phenomenal turbulence descended upon urban schoolteaching everywhere. I?ll tell you more about this in a while, but for the moment, suffice it to say that supervisory personnel were torn loose from their moorings, superintendents, principals and all the rest flung to the wolves by those who actually direct American schooling.
In this dark time, local management cowered. During one three-year stretch I can remember, we had four principals and three superintendents. The net effect of this ideological bombardment, which lasted about five years in its most visible manifestation, was to utterly destroy the utility of urban schools. From my own perspective all this was a godsend. Surveillance of teachers and administrative routines lost their bite as school administrators scurried like rats to escape the wrath of their unseen masters..."
Gatto goes on to describe how the school district later tried to get rid of him by secretly canceling his teaching license while he was on sick leave and and they sent the legally required notice to an address that he had not lived at for 22 years. After several hearings in which the required sick leave papers that he filed had vanished, Gatto found a payroll secretary who verified that he had filed the proper papers and that people had come to her office and made an effort to locate and remove those papers. Gatto was eventually reinstated and made teacher of the year two years later.
It was this battle with those cynical administrators that taught Gatto how easily the impersonal public school monster could be backed up in the face of opposition that showed any hint at all of exposing the entire sham.
Again in your post you have focused on the family and on the student rather than on this administrative structure, filled with well meaning people, which seems to enact what a few money controlling agencies, foundations and government offices desire rather than act for the good of the students and their futures.
Citizen Jimserac
=============================================
But what about the question of what is being taught, or should be taught, and what should not be taught? Gatto is complaining about the administration. How about the education?
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.