Education & Learning

I’ve wanted to hear people’s thoughts on Education for some time, and recent discussion in the teenager thread reminded me.  I want to hear from teachers especially, but also students and parents.  Talk about your experience anywhere, not just the USA.  The only “rule” is that this thread is about kids, not about college education. 

 

Are today’s kids getting a good education?  If not, what specifically do you feel are the barriers?  What needs to be done to improve and provide a well rounded education?   What do we need in terms of teaching skills?  Are teachers unions a barrier to good teachers, or do they help ensure good teachers?  What responsibilities are parents/students living up to, or not living up to?  What about charter schools, private schools, or home schooling?  Are these a threat to public education, or do they make it better?  What new techniques and technologies are truly worthwhile in the classroom, and what (if any) traditional techniques and tools should be kept?

 

We hear a lot of blame game from politicians, and let me make clear, I do not want this to be a political debate.  I want to hear what people really feel should change in our schools, to make them better and stronger.  But let’s try to set aside political discussions about funding levels.  That is a factor, but let’s talk about the other factors beyond that one. 

How about icons in schools?











Just kiddin'

Excellent points by Rob, obviously coming from someone who knows the system from the inside. The only point I don't agree with is No.3. 

Epignosis wrote: 3. Zero tolerance for bullsh*t in high school.  I mean this.  You go to school and dick around?  You are wasting taxpayers' money.  You are robbing other students of a valuable eduction.  You are not cute.  No detention, no suspensions, no writing sentences 100 times.  You get two warnings, and after that, you are out.  See you at McDonald's.

I missed this whilst I was writing my post (had to take a call in the middle of writing it) and I agree with you on a lot of your points, though obviously we're talking about different countries with different systems. However, I wanted to pick up on this one as I fundamentally disagree with it, though I can see exactly why you've come to this conclusion. What particularly worries me is that it doesn't take into account why students might "dick around" and whether there are fundamental problems that need to be dealt with there. The thought of a student with really severe problems beyond their control (unstable family scenario or whatever) being denied an education just because they dealt with their problems in an immature fashion doesn't sit comfortably with me at all.

Epignosis wrote: Trouserpress wrote: Epignosis wrote: 3. Zero tolerance for bullsh*t in high school.  I mean this.  You go to school and dick around?  You are wasting taxpayers' money.  You are robbing other students of a valuable eduction.  You are not cute.  No detention, no suspensions, no writing sentences 100 times.  You get two warnings, and after that, you are out.  See you at McDonald's. I missed this whilst I was writing my post (had to take a call in the middle of writing it) and I agree with you on a lot of your points, though obviously we're talking about different countries with different systems. However, I wanted to pick up on this one as I fundamentally disagree with it, though I can see exactly why you've come to this conclusion. What particularly worries me is that it doesn't take into account why students might "dick around" and whether there are fundamental problems that need to be dealt with there. The thought of a student with really severe problems beyond their control (unstable family scenario or whatever) being denied an education just because they dealt with their problems in an immature fashion doesn't sit comfortably with me at all. First, your comments in your first post are spot on and really hit home for us in the US as well.  I did not do a very good job explaining #3.    Let me elaborate if may.  You are absolutely right about problems at home.  I of all people would understand that (given where I taught).  At the same time, it simply isn't fair that students who are doing well have to put up with poor behavior (the same is true for teachers- teachers should be free to teach with minimal disruption).  Perhaps problem students could be moved to an educational facility where they could learn as well as build character and get whatever special attention they need (I worked at a charter school that did this).  The spirit of my #3 is simply that teachers and other students should not have to suffer on account of foolishness (whatever it's cause), that is all.  I apologize if it came off as too harsh or not understanding.

No worries, thanks for clarifying. You are absolutely right that teachers and students shouldn't have to put up with disruptive behaviour, but it's such a complicated problem to try and solve. There are also systems in place where really problematic students can be taken out of normal classroom environments and sent to so-called "pupil referral units" (which I imagine is not unlike the school you taught at) but I think this system reaches only the most challenging of students, and I expect there are thousands who would benefit from such an experience but never make it that far (presumably money is the overriding factor here... when is it not?). Mind you, I've no idea how effective these PRUs tend to be. The aim is to eventually send students back into mainstream education, but I imagine you end up with a lot of "repeat offenders".

Personally, I have no valuable suggestions for how to deal with disruptive students. It was never a strength of mine during my brief tenure as a teacher.

Epignosis wrote: It was also integrated in terms of gender (not good).

Hmm... I would've assumed that was the norm in the states. It certainly is over here these days. I've always felt that mixed gender schooling is preferable. Perhaps the most important thing about school is learning social skills to prepare you for life in the real world, outside the home. A friend of mine went to a girl's school, and she claims it just made boys seem like these strange, unknowable entities and made post-school life a lot tougher for her.


Edited by Trouserpress - June 11 2010 at 13:12

Epignosis wrote: Trouserpress wrote: Epignosis wrote: It was also integrated in terms of gender (not good). Hmm... I would've assumed that was the norm in the states. It certainly is over here these days. I've always felt that mixed gender schooling is preferable. Perhaps the most important thing about school is learning social skills to prepare you for life in the real world, outside the home. A friend of mine went to a girl's school, and she claims it just made boys seem like these strange, unknowable entities and made post-school life a lot tougher for her. It is the norm, but not for a school of delinquents.

Ah, I see. Yeah, that might be a tad more problematic.

I'm not exactly sure where to begin here. I'm only freshly out of college, meaning I have had very little time to reflect on my pre-college education. (Most of the time it has been on focused on college education pitfalls...buts thats not for this thread.) However, like most things in life I can mostly just point out problems, not offer solutions, which isn't too much of a help in actually fixing problems. But again, thats not for this thread.

Trouserpress wrote: Epignosis wrote: 3. Zero tolerance for bullsh*t in high school.  I mean this.  You go to school and dick around?  You are wasting taxpayers' money.  You are robbing other students of a valuable eduction.  You are not cute.  No detention, no suspensions, no writing sentences 100 times.  You get two warnings, and after that, you are out.  See you at McDonald's. I missed this whilst I was writing my post (had to take a call in the middle of writing it) and I agree with you on a lot of your points, though obviously we're talking about different countries with different systems. However, I wanted to pick up on this one as I fundamentally disagree with it, though I can see exactly why you've come to this conclusion. What particularly worries me is that it doesn't take into account why students might "dick around" and whether there are fundamental problems that need to be dealt with there. The thought of a student with really severe problems beyond their control (unstable family scenario or whatever) being denied an education just because they dealt with their problems in an immature fashion doesn't sit comfortably with me at all.

Eh, I don't buy the "unstable family directly correlates to behavioral problems" thing at all.
If the kid is mentally ill/mentally unstable, of course having family problems may potentially exacerbate this.
I can understand that, because I went through it personally as someone who lived their entire teen years and probably even longer than that with mental illness and having had problems with being able to really talk to my parents properly made things worse by wrecking havoc on my paranoia and anxiety issues.
But there is no excuse for a kid who is completely mentally healthy, but just has family problems, to be acting up at school.
 If you have the luck of having a healthy mind, you should be able to make the good decisions not to act like a fool at school. If you choose to act like an idiot, an immature little brat, bring on the punishments.
I've known more than a few kids who have had to endure pretty bad family situations (alcohol and/or drug addict fathers, divorced parents, fighting parents etc etc) but were always well behaved at school, because they were just mentally healthy.

I agree with many of Rob's points.
Maybe it's just because "Old Man Syndrome" has hit me WAY too early in life, but I find it almost impossible to relate to most kids in their mids teens despite the fact I'm only just barely out of my teen years (21 years old), just because of how many of them behave.
The "Cool to be dumb" attitude is just absolutely rife in the lower socio-economic area schools in Melbourne, and obviously, a problem across the world, but this thread is more about the local, rather than global experience, so I'll speak about the issue in such a manner.

Anyway, back  to the "Cool to be dumb" thing. It just seems that teachers in Australia have absolutely zero idea  of how to curb that problem.
First off, it starts off as the kids that were raised with no father or something like that and as a result, it's totally screwed with them mentally, and they are constantly compensating for having no dad by acting tough, refusing to do the school work, effectively just making themselves dumb.

Then there are the kids who don't really have the problems, just due to the fact they are bored teenagers who just don't give a sh*t about worldly things and understanding other cultures and haven't experienced real hard ship, they want to create their own culture, and create their own hardships and experiences.
These kids want to get in on the aforementioned crowd who genuinely had it rough, and then it's just this vicious cycle.

Kids that just come to school to socialize, to be "cool" and "tough", to "rebel" (which is by far the biggest irony, because the less educated and the less you understand, the less chance you have of being able to make a difference, which is why the true rebels are often highly educated, worldly, intelligent people).
And then, it's not enough for these kids to play out their "Tough" and "Coolguy/girl" antics at school, so they take it to the street, in the form of harassing random people on the street, petty theft, assaults and even stuff like drug dealing.
This really came to light recently when I was stopped by a few kids in their mid teens that asked me for a dollar, some cigarettes and then proceeded to ask if I'd just hand over my skateboard (I just kinda walked off, and I think they realized I was older than them and could absolutely smash their faces in with my skateboard if I needed too, so they laid off and didn't follow me).
These are exactly the type of kids that want to be perceived by their peers are tough, and cool, and being too educated is considered nerdy and uncool , hence you're not gonna fit into the crowd.

Yeah, teachers will go on about "peer pressure' as topics at school, but I know for me at my school, they sure as hell didn't really go into the core values that might have actually had a chance at penetrating the kids brains and making them understand the value of actually being educated and that being dumb is actually not at all cool, because inevitably in the long term, the "cool to be dumb" kids suffer most financially and with their general day to day standard of living.

And perhaps, while I'm there, if kids play up, hell yeah, hand it to them real good, rather than a slap on the wrist with a 10 minute lunch time detention.
Like in the US, kids that waste their time in schools here are wasting Australian tax payers dollars, so better that the kids use their time productively.
If not, boot them out, and they'll understand real hardship, finding a job and being able to fend for themselves, which is going to too much time out of their lives for them to be worrying about standing around at train stations walking around with that pretentious tough kid attitude.

History, an absolute must subject IMHO.
A solid understanding of history helps to create more worldly people that understand there is something bigger and more important than themselves.
Life Skills? HELL YES. Absolutely a great idea.
Real computer skills are an absolute must too. It boggles my mind that 10 years into the 21st century, that I have to hear stories from IT techs getting calls from relatively young people asking about things like how to re-install a corrupt a driver for the printer so that the printer works or even idiots that call asking why stuff isn't working, but they haven't even turned the damn thing on.
Some people think it's enough to just be able to click the mouse around use the web browser.
NO, THAT ISN'T ENOUGH. People need how to actually learn to use a computer properly, understand what the hardware in their computer actually does to a reasonable degree, and to be able to troubleshoot every day problems.
There is no excuse not to be able to do/know that kind of stuff if you're between the ages of 18-40, unless you were legitimately brought up in a ghetto house hold that couldn't afford a computer, but otherwise, for the well off first world peoples, there is NO excuse.
I'm just inclined to think you're a complete drooling idiot if you don't understand the reasonable basics to properly get around a computer and to be able to solve problems and constantly have to call IT tech support.

Religion?
No, sorry Rob, but NO kid should have to be forced to do a religion class.
A lot of your points were great, but you lost me on that one. Religion is not an essential thing and I know myself, as a staunch atheist, I would have been DAMN pissed off if I had to waste my time doing a religion class when I could be studying something like history or grammar.
If a kid wants to do the religious class, cool, but putting kids through it even though a lot of them are not going to enjoy it at all and a fair chunk will be atheist.
I personally also find some aspects of religion to be repulsive and offensive, and I would not want to be subjected to a class that would not at all sit well with me on a personal level.

Anyway, I might have more later seeing as I have a pretty big beef with the Australian education system, but time for bed, heh.