Public Education
POSTED BY: TheHappyTrader
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 10, 2024 23:18
VIEWED: 7483
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I am an English Major... I have worked in a bank since 2004...
My dad and stepmother were both English Majors and have held banking jobs for most of their careers. I know a few other English Majors, but they're waitresses, bartenders or work at a truck stop. What exactly are English Majors supposed to do as a career? The most successful ones I've seen have all worked at banks lol.
This is no offense to English Majors of course, if I did not have the 'Ed' in my Music Ed degree I'd probably be even worse off.
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I have an extended family member who has a very smart child who has "failed" kindergarten once already. Her mother believes it is the school systems' job to completely educate her child and so she does not help in any way... And she has two children... And she and her husband think that anyone who gets good grades is a stuck up snob.
She will not let anyone help... Any suggestions???
Oh my, I have never encountered a parent like that before. I've seen many who seem to expect the school to raise their children for them, but they don't outright refuse to assist in that manner, they are just lazy.
However, this person does have somewhat of a point. Now this doesn't really apply in practice, but in theory, I student should be capable of earning a 'C' by class room work and experience alone. A 'B' should take a little extra outside effort from the student, in the form of homework or extra study. An 'A' should be very rare and signify truly going above and beyond on the students part. So, the child should be able to earn a C if the show up to class and do their assignments and pay attention.
Of course, in practice, everyone's supposed to make A's and B's and if your making C's you're doing something wrong. Making an F probably means you aren't turning things in or are doing very poorly on test.
You say the child is very intelligent. Does the child have any learning disabilities like dyslexia? (I like to think I'm fairly intelligent but I struggled k-3rd grade because of dyslexia). Or perhaps ADD, ADHD, mild autism? Without details on what and how the child is failing, all I can guess is there may be some kind of issue interfering with the child's ability to focus or retain information.
As for the parents... you can't change parents minds. It doesn't work, but if you're really sly, you can 'agree' with them, repeat their argument in slightly different words that change the meaning just a little,(taking care not to let anything look like the parents fault) and give them a solution that steers them in a more productive direction.
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Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,
As a point of interest, I am an English Major who could not pass rudimentary mathematics courses and dropped out of college.
I have worked in a bank since 2004, and have an excellent Quality Assurance record.
Not saying that you shouldn't study what you want to, or attempt to follow your muse where it takes you. I do have to ask if working in a bank is what you figured would fulfill you when you decided to be an English major.
Unfortunately, someone has to grow the food, and stock the shelves, and flip the burgers, and design the light switches, etc. If folks want to study Greek architecture because that makes them happy, more power to them, but there's just not that many jobs out there for that particular skill set.
It could be that many folks have to work at stuff they don't particularly care for to survive, and spend their off time pursuing the things that actually stir their souls. Sometimes there just aren't positions available for all the folks who love poetry, and sometimes folks who love dance just aren't that great as dancers.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Quote:
Originally posted by TheHappyTrader:
You say the child is very intelligent. Does the child have any learning disabilities like dyslexia?
Just a parental disability...Her mom has an attitude a mile wide, never ever tells her kids no, sits on the computer(husband too) most of the time while the kids are home... the girl at 6 decided she didn't want to participate in gym so mom says OK. Kid makes up sicknesses all the time and mom lets her come home whenever. We think she makes up being sick because she feels soo bad about looking dumb!
Kid will also only eat like 5 different foods, cause mommy lets her...
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As someone who only went to 1st thru 5th grade, ironically, I've also been a highschool teacher.
My rails against the system would be very long. I agree that it programs perfect little worker bots like it was designed to do, and that is obsolete, but the intellectual self defense videos make a strong point about how critical thinking was intentionally removed from the curriculum, so you can try to inject a little back in.
Here's what you can really do to help improve your results:
Studies I've read say that students can only take in new information for 2 hours at a time, and then their brains are essentially full. If you're the first class, many of your students may be sleepy or late, but second is probably a pretty good slot. Also, directly after lunch would work well, or last in the day. Sure, they're worn out at the end, but there's a relaxed feeling about last class. If you get varied slots, check out the relative retention rates, or look it up online, and see if this is correct. It made sense to me when I read the theory which was in some MSM source like Time about 15 years ago or so, but I never researched it.
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"It could be that many folks have to work at stuff they don't particularly care for to survive, and spend their off time pursuing the things that actually stir their souls. Sometimes there just aren't positions available for all the folks who love poetry, and sometimes folks who love dance just aren't that great as dancers."
Hello,
Quite right, Geezer, and quite my point. There's no guarantee that when you choose an area of study, that you will get a job in that field. That's true all the way up through college. I need look no farther than my home towns of Hialeah or Miami to see a history of Doctors doing Dishes or Lawyers driving Taxis.
But the freedom to pursue your interests and study areas that fascinate you... well, if you will forgive me a bit of drama, it enriches the soul. It makes a better person out of you.
And the Doctor who does Dishes can still sit in the den with a good medical journal while looking for opportunities to become a medical professional.
The alternative is to push children into generic boxes of standardized ideals. And for what? Will they be better dishwashers or solar panel assemblymen or even farmers... if we deny them the ability to study Contemporary Art and Native American Basketweaving because it's more important for them (and the school's standardized test scores and revenue streams) if they learn Calculus?
No, they may not become professional basketweavers or Artists, but if they were destined to become mathematicians, then they'd have requested the Calculus as a subject of interest to them. And how many unemployed Engineers and Accountants are circulating the country now, or perhaps grasping for employment at Walmart?
So if their time is going to be 'wasted' in trivial pursuits, let them choose the pursuits. Let's not crush their desire to learn by forcing them into a shape that we prefer. And who knows? Maybe they will actually find a way to prosper at the things that interest them. That's between them and fate. I'm not interested in standing between the two.
--Anthony
Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.
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Quote:At the risk of sounding like a gushing groupie, this is beautiful. You and HK, you both have an amazing way with words and ideas and insights.
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
But the freedom to pursue your interests and study areas that fascinate you... well, if you will forgive me a bit of drama, it enriches the soul. It makes a better person out of you.
...
Maybe they will actually find a way to prosper at the things that interest them. That's between them and fate. I'm not interested in standing between the two.
You may work in a bank, but you also make RWED a better place because of your interest in poetry and writing. You're a richer person because of it, and others are enriched as well.
Like, THT, I am a full time educator as well. (I just have much fewer students.) I love this perspective, that "The purpose of education is to allow the student to be the best person he/she can be." It will shape the way I teach a little bit more.
----
Arrogant and proud of it.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Studies I've read say that students can only take in new information for 2 hours at a time,..
Interesting. I teach my kids in 2 hour slots. Two hours in the morning, a big lunch break, and two hours in the afternoon.
Another nice thing about homeschooling, I can tailor the schedule to whatever they want. If they say they are tired after 15 minutes, we stop. It is nice that we CAN stop.
----
Arrogant and proud of it.
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I'm going to go with "Obsolete" but for a different reason: The internet.
I was fortunate enough to have a brilliant mentor for my history program. While I loved listening to him tell stories of stuff he'd read in various letters by roman officials, etc. I was still listening to him talk. Not all classes and work was like this, but that which was was inefficient.
The fact is that what he had to say there wasn't a text for, and no publisher wanted to print it. It was anecdote heavy history designed to give us a feel for what it was like to be an egyptian, greek, roman or medieval european. It included lots of stuff that happened outside the golden road of history* and it was interesting. He should have written a book, a blog, and then he could have elaborated with answers to questions and even run a forum. But every year twice a year he would tell the same story, for 50 years, rather than write it once and have the students read it. That's 1% efficiency. Sure, he would undoubtedly add stories and change stories, but still the efficiency of this oral tradition is very low.
* golden road or follow the gold history is traveling the line of wealthy societies from Egypt to Greece to Rome to Spain to England, which would probably then go US to China?
Since it was not a forum, there was little option for knowledge flow other than top down, should any student happen to know something. I remember one section on medieval music. If this has been an online community, someone would have been a musician, and posted more information. If all the students were not 18-21 then there would have been more input.
It's simply an obsolete form of communication, because those who are in it, hour for hour, are learning less than those who are not.
And that's the crux of where the global marketplace really fits in. American workers are put into direct competition with workers in other countries, and whoever has the most efficient learning system will have a distinct advantage.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
If it were up to me, classes would be almost all-elective in Middle school, and absolutely all-elective in High School, with guidance counselors to help you learn what you wanted and needed to learn for the job you wanted to do. Teachers would be facilitators and not programmers. I can only imagine the earth-shattering joy to be had in a learning environment where you were allowed to pursue your interests wherever they took you.
If everyone would choose a course of study that ended up with a career that filled a niche in the total economic and social fabric without too much disruption, this would be great. But say everyone wanted to study English Literature. Not a lot of refrigerators or solar panels get build by happy English Lit majors. Not a lot of food gets grown.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
I can see what you're saying, but just the last bit called to mind in a vivid fashion my 6th grade "English" class. I went to school in 5th and 6th grade in California, on a military base. My English teacher on that base was a hippie. An actual hippie, probably the first I'd ever interacted with on any kind of regular basis. His name was Mr. Silverman. Our big project for the year? An organic garden. For English class.
And the thing is, it worked. We learned how to grow food, we learned to care about the environment and ecology, we learned about recycling, composting, etc. - and we learned by READING, and by DOING; we were putting what we learned in our books (NOT our textbooks, but gardening and environmental books the Mr. Silverman provided) into action in real life.
It was a unique experience, and it was so out of the ordinary that, even as it was happening, I knew it was amazingly fresh and untried. That it still sticks with me so strongly now is a testament to how effective a teacher Mr. Silverman was. I'd be hard-pressed to name another of my teachers from back then.
The most valuable lesson I learned from that experiment wasn't just how to read and comprehend more effectively, or how to grow strawberries, lettuce, and spinach; it was how a good teacher can teach you without you even realizing you're learning. Had it seemed like "work", I might have pushed back or rebelled; but it was FUN, so I couldn't wait to get to class every day.
Good, effective teachers should be treated like rock stars.
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