Public Education
POSTED BY: TheHappyTrader
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 10, 2024 23:18
VIEWED: 7483
PAGE 4 of 7
Hello,
I also did a lot of Role Playing in school, and it was the primary driver for personal research.
So I echo your experience.
--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:That's the whole point of unschooling. When you pursue your interests, you pick up a lot of basic skills and knowledge along the way. All knowledge is interconnected and nested within each other.
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I also did a lot of Role Playing in school, and it was the primary driver for personal research.
I know a lady whose 2 unschooled boys played a lot of video games. A LOT of video games. When they weren't playing, they were learning about games. They grew up to be successful game programmers.
It's funny because if a kid spends 5 hours a day practicing the violin, no one assumes the kid is not learning anything else. But if a kid plays video games 5 hours a day, they tend to think he's an airhead.
The difference between unschooling and neglect is that the unschooling parent supervises the self-directed learning as part of a larger learning experience. Neglect is when the parent ignores the kid altogether.
The funny thing is, a lot of kids in school are educationally neglected--despite the appearance of supervision. It's not always easy to tell the difference.
Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
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Quote:
Originally posted by TheHappyTrader:
I was having a chat with a teacher friend, much older and more experienced than me, who made a very interesting comment concerning what's wrong with our public schools. The Answer...
Nothing.
There is nothing wrong with our public schools, they are doing exactly what they have been designed for, training children to behave themselves, follow directions and become productive members of the work force. The schools are just fine, but they are obsolete. The workforce is in other countries. People expect the schools to prepare students for college but that's just not how they work. Also, it's silly expect every student to prepare for college when most of them will not be attending it.
As a new teacher, I found this perspective very interesting. As a music guy, I'm not as regulated or interfered with as the others, but I'm also not as hired. Still, at least I get to remain an idealist within my subject area, a part-time idealists, but an idealist none the less.
Anyhow, what are some of your thoughts on education, what's wrong, what's right, how can it be improved, etc...
Simple. Abolish the department of education.
PreDOE America led the world in most statistics
PostDOE dropping fast.
Let locals decide what and how to teach their children.
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Quote:I can support this if it is implemented with 1) the abolishment of personal income taxes and 2) there were some kind of transition period. I am especially concerned about the limited options of indigent children.
Originally posted by kaneman:
Simple. Abolish the department of education.
Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
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Even without parental direction children succeed on their own. All they need is the lack of an abusive environment, which more than anything, steals their time, and restricts their freedom of learning.
I went to grades 1,2,4 and 5, which is four years of schooling. When I started first grade, we were asked to teach something to the class. I demonstrated multiplication. I hadn't heard of times tables, the concept of mulitplication was obvious to me. The first time I encountered it in real life, I just drew it out visually, and that's how I demonstrated it on the board.
Second grade was totally pointless. There was nothing that the teacher had to tell us that I didn't already know, and she was abusive and mean and taking 8 hours of my day. After hearing that the 3rd grade teacher was much worse, I abandoned school.
Starting in Fourth Grade, we were given different subjects with different teachers. We didn't have freedom to select, but it was a more interesting format, so I went. My homeroom teach was an english teacher, and even though my mother was also, he was nice and entertaining. Next year I had the science teacher for home room. He was entertaining but it quickly became obvious that he was totally ignorant.
For the two years, Math was pointless not because the teacher wasn't good, but because the subject curriculum was way below what I would have considered normal. I spent the time teaching one fellow classmate math tricks like algebra and exponents. He was six, his parents had just decided to skip elementary school. Now he's a robotics engineer.
Social Studies was full of information but even then it seemed heavily agenda laiden and incredibly time consuming. I still think it is, I would much rather be solving problems than debating social issues. We spent a lot of time on current events, which is still a game of chase the ball, today the ball is TSA, tomorrow it will be something else.
Health was a pointless class. If this class had been taught as if it were a premed, we could have all been doctors by the time we graduated. That would have been reason enough to stay in school. Instead it was infantile. Again, I don't blame the teacher at all. She was very nice, and was sitting there with a hand-me-down totally inane curriculum.
Phys ed. was a pretty abusive class. I did well in it, but it had myriad problems. It was sexually segregated, and the bullying was bad. I don't know why I was a bully victim, I guess I was a push over, certainly not as socially adroit as my peers, but I was bigger than them, and had a gf, so it is hard to see in retrospect how I became so beta. These things are difficult to understand as a kid.
Art was something I did not excel at, and it took me years to take it up again. No one taught anything, so you either knew what you were doing or you didn't, and then you were graded on it. The underlying belief seemed to be genetic determinist: You were either born with something called "talent" for art or music, or you were not. Then you were graded on it. this would hurt your otherwise flawless record. It was pretty damaging. Later it would all prove to be nonsense, all you had to do was study it on its own, and like everything else, it was intuitive.
If I left something else out it didn't leave much of an impression I guess. I had no specific classes for history or govt., these were part of social studies, but probably in time I would have gotten them.
After fifth grade I wasn't able to go back because of family situations, but the only part I regretted was not seeing Regina.
Kaneman has a point. I would only say, individuals, not local govt. As my local govt. is almost as corrupt as my state govt. (True, they wouldn't agree to fracking.)
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Here is an interesting interview about the new documentary "Race to Nowhere," from the film's Facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/video/video.php?v=442956650948
Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
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Interesting discussion.
Free public education was fought for because it was seen as a great leveller of the class system . Back in the bad old days, people only received education if they could afford it. It was probably a classier system, but it was so the elite could remain elite. the vast bulk of population was illiterate, and could expect nothing more than being a ditch digger or a servant, and their children and their children's children would all be the same.
education was seen as one way to improve your lot in life.
Not sure whether that applies to the US system. For about 20 years here we had free tertiary education, of which I was lucky enough to enjoy the fruits. Now that certainly increased opportunities, but damned expensive to fund.
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Quote:That is something I've entertained for a while.
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Not sure whether that applies to the US system. For about 20 years here we had free tertiary education, of which I was lucky enough to enjoy the fruits. Now that certainly increased opportunities, but damned expensive to fund.
Here in Peru, all state-run universities (not a lot of them though) are free. Just free. As a result, they get the "smartest" (measured by exam results) people in the country, no matter how poor or how rich. Those who are plenty smart, but don't score high enough on the entrance exam go to private universities, where they pay a reasonable tuition.
I just LOVE the idea that smart, hard working youngsters can hope to get a free college education. I know there is a scholarship system in the States, but it doesn't feel quite as equitable.
Of course, the idea I love doesn't mesh well with my other ideologies, so...I don't know what to make of it.
I am happy though that Australia has a free tertiary education system.
Can't Take (my gorram) Sky
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Peru?
In the US there used to be ways to get a free college education, but now the debt monster has taken them.
Public school debate here is not about class, it's about conditioning. People think the system brainwashes and abuses children, and I agree. I think Charter Schools and private schools with vouchers and scholarships will replace them, but the internet will make almost the whole thing obsolete, except the part where you have to get away from your parents or they will eat all of your time.
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You know, I still think that family has the most influence on kids, up until the teenage years at least, and that even if they go a bit feral in those years, what happened when they were young still has the biggest influence on them.
I don't homeschool, but I don't leave the education of my son solely in the hands of the professional educators. I think what he has learnt, he has mainly learnt from us. As it should be.
My reference to class, was that it might be a crappy system, but it is probably better than no publicly funded system at all.
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