So instead of kids learning we should just hold everyone back so they can talk to each other at lunch?
Real social skills don't come in school, they come when you're out of a school and grow the fuck up. Maybe it would help teach kids that it's okay to have friends not exactly their age.
I never knew a lot of kids who had a problem with that, at least after you got to high school.
Also, everybody I've met who was homeschooled their entire life was pretty damned awkward (anecdotal, I know), so it would seem to me that yes, school does teach you social skills whether you realise it or not. Maybe your school was different than mine.
Probably because they didn't spend enough time while not being schooled socializing.
My brother who has been homeschooled his entire life has many friends and isn't socially awkward. I was in public school my entire life and I'm actually afraid of people. Wee, ancedotes!
In fact, if you were to grade me and my 3 brothers on how 'social' we are, the more that one of us has been in homeschool, the more social they are.
I would like to talk to your brother on this topic for personal reasons. Just saying.
I'm still not clear on what the purpose of this system is.
The cynic in me wants to say it's just a shakeup to try and pretend that they're doing something about educational reform.
I don't even really know what "educational reform" means.
What should our educational system be doing? Preparing kids for college? For vocational school? For blue-collar labor? To immediately enter the workforce? To make smart economic decisions? To be informed voters? To take the SAT? Are we teaching them useful skills? Social skills? Critical-thinking? Or is the purpose just to babysit them until the age of 18-ish so they don't get into trouble?
Any project, no matter how small or grandiose, needs to start with a clear mission statement... one with clear terms and a minimum of vague platitudes. How can you fix a thing if you haven't even figured out what it's supposed to do when it's working?
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
So instead of kids learning we should just hold everyone back so they can talk to each other at lunch?
Real social skills don't come in school, they come when you're out of a school and grow the fuck up. Maybe it would help teach kids that it's okay to have friends not exactly their age.
I never knew a lot of kids who had a problem with that, at least after you got to high school.
Also, everybody I've met who was homeschooled their entire life was pretty damned awkward (anecdotal, I know), so it would seem to me that yes, school does teach you social skills whether you realise it or not. Maybe your school was different than mine.
Probably because they didn't spend enough time while not being schooled socializing.
My brother who has been homeschooled his entire life has many friends and isn't socially awkward. I was in public school my entire life and I'm actually afraid of people. Wee, ancedotes!
In fact, if you were to grade me and my 3 brothers on how 'social' we are, the more that one of us has been in homeschool, the more social they are.
I would like to talk to your brother on this topic for personal reasons. Just saying.
I don't even really know what "educational reform" means.
What should our educational system be doing? Preparing kids for college? For vocational school? For blue-collar labor? To immediately enter the workforce? To make smart economic decisions? To be informed voters? To take the SAT? Are we teaching them useful skills? Social skills? Critical-thinking? Or is the purpose just to babysit them until the age of 18-ish so they don't get into trouble?
Any project, no matter how small or grandiose, needs to start with a clear mission statement... one with clear terms and a minimum of vague platitudes. How can you fix a thing if you haven't even figured out what it's supposed to do when it's working?
That's the problem...I can't speak for Colorado, but for us you could tell that the planning was as vague and as half-assed as the implementation. That's why everything changed every couple of years. Somebody said, "Let's try it like this and see what happens" - which always ended up being nothing (or in a couple of occasions things actually got worse). So they'd try something else which was just as random and useless until they couldn't pretend it was going to work anymore.
The real "goal" of these policies was keeping the school system's funding from getting yanked for another couple of years, and (mostly) they succeeded in doing that, IIRC. Once again, I don't know what this particular district is trying, but if it was something like "make schools betterer" I wouldn't be terribly surprised.
I dunno... it's too close to a Japanese way of doing school, which I don't really like. They gear the classes so people can pass the tests, which works great for science and math. But literature classes, and liberal arts, suffer because they don't really give a true understanding to the subjects.
But, I'm curious to see how this would work out in the States, as a big difference is that you can fail in the States.
That actually hurts science as well. A lot.
It depends on creativity and real thinking over wrought memorization just as much as literature and liberal arts.
Yeah, but learning in school (at least at a Junior High level), is mostly wrought memorization to begin with. There isn't really much free thinking until a college level, at least in my experience. It's all "This guy did X, and this guy did Y. Let's do it and see for ourselves how this worked", which is carried over to college, too, come to think of it. We don't teach free-thinking scientists in school, we educate them with the knowledge to be able to experiment and be free-thinking on their own.
As for the Japanese school thing, I see them just at the extreme end of the testing spectrum. But at least they know why they are teaching kids the information, even if it is assine. Doesn't mean there isn't good parts. Japan is producing more scientest and engineers every year where the US is losing more every year. A lot of the problem with the Japanese school system is that because of a huge baby boom the system overreacted with entrance exams, the private sector tried to correct it with Jukus leaving the system which is in a decreasing population with an out dated exam model and a school system using the private juku as a crutch to not alter and change their way of thinking.
Now onto what Adams is doing. Personally I think the idea sounds nice but like many ideas in reality it won't work. Between parents pushing their kids through with threats of violence to litigation, the probably development of quotas and just the lack of money to completely over haul the system to fit this, it will probably just fail before it gets a chance.
Some one was asking about CO schools and how they get their money. If I remember right, since I am from CO, all state property tax is flooded into a big pot which is then given to districts by the state depending on test scores and other factors. Most districts then use bond measures to raise money. The CO school system is pretty fracked at the moment. It was getting worse when I graduated almost 8 years ago. I missed the state standardized test which is how they were going to distrubute the money, I think they finally got rid of it though.
Under this system all the different classes would be broken up into phases. If you could pass some sort of standardized test with an 80% or higher you'd be moved on to the next phase of the class. If you couldn't, you'd be stuck at the current phase. Once you go through all the phases of a given class you'd be done with that class entirely. So, lets say, if you were 10 and got through all the phases of all the different available history classes you'd be "done" with history throughout your entire pre-college education career, right? And once you've completed enough classes in order to be considered a highschool graduate you'd be done with school, correct?
For some reason I don't think ageism would factor in greatly into this system.
Mainly because they're slow students, average students, and exceptional students in every school. There wouldn't be just one or two kids moving ahead to classes, there'd be 3-4. In each class. Every time the class is taught. So while a class may have a wide variety of student ages, they're be several groups of kids the same age.
Ageism exists when a single kid gets bumped up a year in school. With this system I don't see that being a problem.
I don't see how this helps the graduation rate. The kids who won't do the work still won't. The kids who are C students will take what, 2 years to get each level of math or science or whatever? I could see it helping the exceptional kids I suppose.
Growing up elementary and high school were never much of a challenge for me. I was placed in the gifted program up here.(I live in Toronto not sure what the equivalent is in the US or elsewhere.) So while I coasted through my early years I never developed the work ethic needed in post-secondary studies. I did graduate with a degree but not with a GPA I would have liked and pretty much can't do any graduate studies. Hopefully keeping the exceptional students challenged they can prevent cases like mine, though honestly it might be my own laziness and not a problem at all >.>
I just see this holding back more students then normally would be held back. Is someone who holds a steady 70% average not fit to graduate high school?
I never knew a lot of kids who had a problem with that, at least after you got to high school.
Also, everybody I've met who was homeschooled their entire life was pretty damned awkward (anecdotal, I know), so it would seem to me that yes, school does teach you social skills whether you realise it or not. Maybe your school was different than mine.
Same here. Honestly, I've never actually met a homeschooled kid who did well socially. All the homeschooled kids I've met and spoken to have all been extremely awkward and weird, and I think the basic social skills and how to beget yourself around others etc. is learnt at school.
The person you become and want to be happens after primary/secondary school.
Let's not bring up the "homeschooling kids are akward/public school kids are dumb" argument. As for the idea I imagine it will get in the way of friend forming for alot of people. Basically you will be forced to make friends only as "bright" as you, which is probably not a fantastic idea.
fjafjan on
Yepp, THE Fjafjan (who's THE fjafjan?)
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
I don't understand how this is a new idea. Isn't this pretty much how one room schools used to run a century ago?
It isn't. Here's the famous article, Good-Bye, Teacher...," from '68 discussing this very approach to education, although at the college level. Check out page 81 for a description of the standards-based approach.
Between this and online learning, I believe we are looking at the future direction of education. To the extent you can predict those things anyway.
So... the class can't move forward until the smart kids get the slower ones to get it? Sounds more like holding kids back than accelerating.
I think the idea is that any individual student who passes with an 80% or higher gets "promoted" to the next level. They don't graduate classes. At least, I hope that's what they mean, because it would be terrible the other way.
Given the advocates disdain for "tracking" (which is one of the clear cut reforms that does work IMO. People decry the "Japanese system" but generally don't bitch about special ed or Charter schools) I don't think that's true.
And chronologically it doesn't make sense. When do they move up? At the end of the year? Then all they've done is move "failing" to 80%, which will inevitably mean dumbing down of standards because failing say 30-60% a year in each subject won't be tolerated. Once mastery is achieved? Then they'll be joining classes in the middle and unprepared. More often than that, say monthly? Requires a much much higher number of teachers since you're increasing the number of incremental classes from 12 to say 120 (10 per "grade") and at any given time you could have students spread amongst the units. And if someone fails an unit do they just start all over again or do they get review, taking up resources, until they get it?
The system doesn't make sense because its trying to cling to the class concepts while leaving the framework that makes them make sense.
That's before you even get to "who makes the test" and "whats tested" questions.
the students articulate their goals and develop things such as a code of conduct as a classroom
a bottleneck gets created. Since no student can move forward without a "B" equivalent, it's also essentially impossible for students to have lower than a 3.0 GPA, which could be a challenge to explain to colleges.
Are two of the problems. If students were mature enough to "articulate goals" and "develop" a code of conduct these reforms would not be necessary. That part is clearly idiocy and BS that will be dropped immediately when it fails spectacularly. And the fact that they are making these 'reforms' is going to be difficult to integrate into the framework expected of them. How do you determine when someone graduates? I was doing material my junior year, even my sophomore year of HS that was more advanced than the average graduating senior.
Posts
He's only 12, so no :P
I don't even really know what "educational reform" means.
What should our educational system be doing? Preparing kids for college? For vocational school? For blue-collar labor? To immediately enter the workforce? To make smart economic decisions? To be informed voters? To take the SAT? Are we teaching them useful skills? Social skills? Critical-thinking? Or is the purpose just to babysit them until the age of 18-ish so they don't get into trouble?
Any project, no matter how small or grandiose, needs to start with a clear mission statement... one with clear terms and a minimum of vague platitudes. How can you fix a thing if you haven't even figured out what it's supposed to do when it's working?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I often wonder what the world would be like if Hitler got the A-bomb first.
...and people often wonder why I often say education is the only issue I care about come election time.
Sorry.
The real "goal" of these policies was keeping the school system's funding from getting yanked for another couple of years, and (mostly) they succeeded in doing that, IIRC. Once again, I don't know what this particular district is trying, but if it was something like "make schools betterer" I wouldn't be terribly surprised.
Yeah, but learning in school (at least at a Junior High level), is mostly wrought memorization to begin with. There isn't really much free thinking until a college level, at least in my experience. It's all "This guy did X, and this guy did Y. Let's do it and see for ourselves how this worked", which is carried over to college, too, come to think of it. We don't teach free-thinking scientists in school, we educate them with the knowledge to be able to experiment and be free-thinking on their own.
Now onto what Adams is doing. Personally I think the idea sounds nice but like many ideas in reality it won't work. Between parents pushing their kids through with threats of violence to litigation, the probably development of quotas and just the lack of money to completely over haul the system to fit this, it will probably just fail before it gets a chance.
Some one was asking about CO schools and how they get their money. If I remember right, since I am from CO, all state property tax is flooded into a big pot which is then given to districts by the state depending on test scores and other factors. Most districts then use bond measures to raise money. The CO school system is pretty fracked at the moment. It was getting worse when I graduated almost 8 years ago. I missed the state standardized test which is how they were going to distrubute the money, I think they finally got rid of it though.
Under this system all the different classes would be broken up into phases. If you could pass some sort of standardized test with an 80% or higher you'd be moved on to the next phase of the class. If you couldn't, you'd be stuck at the current phase. Once you go through all the phases of a given class you'd be done with that class entirely. So, lets say, if you were 10 and got through all the phases of all the different available history classes you'd be "done" with history throughout your entire pre-college education career, right? And once you've completed enough classes in order to be considered a highschool graduate you'd be done with school, correct?
For some reason I don't think ageism would factor in greatly into this system.
Mainly because they're slow students, average students, and exceptional students in every school. There wouldn't be just one or two kids moving ahead to classes, there'd be 3-4. In each class. Every time the class is taught. So while a class may have a wide variety of student ages, they're be several groups of kids the same age.
Ageism exists when a single kid gets bumped up a year in school. With this system I don't see that being a problem.
Growing up elementary and high school were never much of a challenge for me. I was placed in the gifted program up here.(I live in Toronto not sure what the equivalent is in the US or elsewhere.) So while I coasted through my early years I never developed the work ethic needed in post-secondary studies. I did graduate with a degree but not with a GPA I would have liked and pretty much can't do any graduate studies. Hopefully keeping the exceptional students challenged they can prevent cases like mine, though honestly it might be my own laziness and not a problem at all >.>
I just see this holding back more students then normally would be held back. Is someone who holds a steady 70% average not fit to graduate high school?
Same here. Honestly, I've never actually met a homeschooled kid who did well socially. All the homeschooled kids I've met and spoken to have all been extremely awkward and weird, and I think the basic social skills and how to beget yourself around others etc. is learnt at school.
The person you become and want to be happens after primary/secondary school.
I think your brothers are one offs Fyre.
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
It isn't. Here's the famous article, Good-Bye, Teacher...," from '68 discussing this very approach to education, although at the college level. Check out page 81 for a description of the standards-based approach.
Between this and online learning, I believe we are looking at the future direction of education. To the extent you can predict those things anyway.
And chronologically it doesn't make sense. When do they move up? At the end of the year? Then all they've done is move "failing" to 80%, which will inevitably mean dumbing down of standards because failing say 30-60% a year in each subject won't be tolerated. Once mastery is achieved? Then they'll be joining classes in the middle and unprepared. More often than that, say monthly? Requires a much much higher number of teachers since you're increasing the number of incremental classes from 12 to say 120 (10 per "grade") and at any given time you could have students spread amongst the units. And if someone fails an unit do they just start all over again or do they get review, taking up resources, until they get it?
The system doesn't make sense because its trying to cling to the class concepts while leaving the framework that makes them make sense.
That's before you even get to "who makes the test" and "whats tested" questions. Are two of the problems. If students were mature enough to "articulate goals" and "develop" a code of conduct these reforms would not be necessary. That part is clearly idiocy and BS that will be dropped immediately when it fails spectacularly. And the fact that they are making these 'reforms' is going to be difficult to integrate into the framework expected of them. How do you determine when someone graduates? I was doing material my junior year, even my sophomore year of HS that was more advanced than the average graduating senior.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+