# Bad ideas in education **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 19, 2011, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893 "2011-02-19T07:48:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/101 "2011-03-01T01:56:58Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I guess I’m retarded Your words, not mine. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/102 "2011-03-01T02:00:05Z")
> [@ENugent](#): > > This is the only part of your post that I agree with. LHoD, you sound like a great teacher, and I hope my kids have ones that give them as much individual attention and support as it sounds like you give to yours. Thanks, **ENugent**! At first I was trying to figure out where in my posts I could possibly come across as quashing creativity (on the contrary, I teach contraband units on the Hero’s Journey and how to write comic strips, and I emphasize discovery of scientific and mathematical principles over rote memorization almost to a fault, and I delight in long authentic projects over daily routine, etc. etc.), but then I figured out that **Tripolar** has issues. Anyway, I appreciate the compliment! ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2011, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/103 "2011-03-02T12:04:33Z")
It occurred to me this morning [as I was reading a scholarly article](http://www.cracked.com/article_18983_5-complaints-about-modern-life-that-are-statistically-b.s..html) that, even stipulating the highly questionable claim that our public schools used to be the envy of the world, there’s an alternate explanation: maybe other nations had even shittier schools than ours way back then. The countries that have surpassed us in education have taken two different paths, as near as I can tell: -The China path, which involves a shit-ton of memorization, as part of a culture with a millennia-old tradition of standardized tests; and -The Finland path, which involves a shit-ton of teacher training and planning time. I certainly prefer the latter path. I’m unaware of any country that advocates the US system of 50 years ago: who is surpassing our current educational scores by using huge segregated classrooms with no technology more advanced than the electric light? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2011, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/104 "2011-03-02T12:55:01Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Left Hand, you are a prime example of a teacher. > Ready to pound down creativity where ever it raises its ugly head. A claim made with no evidence at all. I can’t even find a passage you could have plausibly misinterpreted this way, so the best I can do is ask you what exactly you were talking about here. > [@](#): > > And never tolerate the concept that people can learn without the magical abilities of a teacher by their side. Again, no evidence can be found in the thread that **LHoD** thinks this. S/he has illustrated the ways in which she can help people learn. This is not the same as arguing that none of them _could_ learn without him/her. That’s such an obvious falsehood–most people throughout human history had no one designated as their teacher, yet all have learned–that you’d have to present some pretty strong evidence before it was plausible that **LHoD** thought anything different. > [@](#): > > Oh my, I’ve disappointed a teacher! That chastening will make me a much better student in the future. Snark which completely misses the mark, since there’s no sense in which **LHoD** functions as a teacher in this conversation, and no sense in which you function as a student. > [@](#): > > I see, it’s impossible to remember one’s childhood. Then what is the point of learning all those facts in school? I guess I’m retarded if I don’t understand. Remembering one’s childhood is a separate matter from remembering facts one learned in childhood. Moreover, **LHoD** did not argue that it’s impossible to remember one’s childhood, rather her claim is that it is difficult to remember a lot of one’s childhood accurately. > [@](#): > > Perhaps kids do think like adults, which for most of both groups, is not much. Making a chore out of thinking for children will probably help this problem:rolleyes::dubious: No evidence has been presented that **LHoD** “makes a chore out of thinking.” > [@](#): > > Definitely teachers have to step in and tell kids how to think. Their brains are definitely defective and need that direction lest they become adults who think the sun rotates around the earth, or you can lose weight by drinking a diet soda along with that double calorie burger. Thank Og you teachers have done such a wonderful job! Before you incorrectly ascribed a view to **LHoD** that teaching is necessary for learning. Here you incorrectly ascribe a completely different view to him/her, that teaching is sufficient for learning. **LHoD** has not argued that teaching is either necessary or sufficient for learning. Rather, she has argued that it can help, and that learning with the help of a teacher is typically more effective than learning without. You seem to disagree with both of these statements, which is fine, but in your posts you fail to address views like these–the important and interesting meat of the disagreement–and instead ascribe _other_ positions to **LHoD** which she doesn’t hold and which are trivially easy to knock down. You know the term for that method of argumentation, I assume. (Or do I have to teach you?) > [@](#): > > You must have a long list of anecdotes about those dumb kids. The idea that the kids are dumb most definitely did not come from **LHoD**. \*\* And they must have terrible parents too. Imagine! Children who can’t perform in a classroom at the same level of an adult. Whatever is wrong with them? \*\* More incorrect ascription of views. **LHoD** nowhere said there was anything wrong with the children in his/her illustrations. > [@](#): > > Ok, please point out my ignorance. I’m always looking to get rid of that. I began that project in all of the above comments. Your ignorance is of the basics concerning comprehension of others’ views and methods for discussing them rationally, with the goal of zeroing in on the truth concerning the matter at hand. > [@](#): > > Then explain what your prior post meant about students and needs. I may be unable to comprehend it, but you seem to be saying education is about changing students needs (I assumed by definition that a education is the student’s need). Perhaps you’ve confused students desires (or lack of them) with needs. Everything a student needs to be able to think and learn and operate in a modern society are their personal relevant needs. > > Then explain how you are disagreeing with me by stating that the student’s needs are secondary to the educating culture’s. If that second statement is what you meant, you hit the nail on the head. The ‘educating culture’s’ needs are aren’t relevant to the issue. The very last sentence has both “are” and “aren’t” in it, and I’m not sure which you meant. I would have thought you meant “are” since you say you don’t disagree, but “aren’t relevant to the issue” seems like more typical English usage in this context. What I think is that when we educate people, we are doing it for the good of the educating culture primarily, and only secondarily for the good of the student. I am not criticizing that fact–I’m saying it’s what education really is all about. I have no problem with this fact about education. I expect this to be a view not overtly shared by almost anyone. I think that “needs” are just “legitimized desires,” and in education, we are both altering desires and shaping what counts as “legitimate” and what doesn’t–hence it’s not surprising that by educating students, we’re not fulfilling their needs, we’re changing for them just what those needs _are_ in the first place. > [@](#): > > Finally, I didn’t start the hostility. You told **LHoD** that as a teacher, she is necessarily playing a horrible trick on her students. Them’s fightin’ words. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2011, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/105 "2011-03-02T19:48:51Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > However, I think [Michelle Rhee](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Rhee) in DC is on the right track. She is eliminating tenure, holding teachers accountable for failing students, yet rewarding them for good performance. In the past, this was prone to abuse and poor school districts. But, she is focusing on teachers as the key to a child’s education; not computers, not parents, not solar flares, but teachers. If you trace all the flaws in the US school system today, it all comes back to the teacher: teacher’s unions, teacher training programs, teacher salaries, etc. By focusing on teachers, I hope she can unveil everything behind them that is causing students to fail. Here’s a fact: You can hire the best teachers on earth, pay them a million bucks, and give them all the tools they need–but you still can’t guarantee that the students will do well or better. Teachers are but one link in a complex chain. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2011, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/106 "2011-03-02T20:52:55Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Again, no evidence can be found in the thread that **LHoD** thinks this. S/he has illustrated the ways in which she can help people learn. He :). Thanks for your comments on this; I appreciate them. For what it’s worth, here’s my thought about teaching: Everyone can benefit from the help of a knowledgeable, intelligent instructor when they’re trying to learn almost any skill or body of knowledge. Learning is the central job of childhood for pretty much any mammal, and that goes extra for human beings. I tell my students straight up that it costs about fifty bucks a day for them to be in school, and that that’s a lot of money. They should try to get fifty bucks worth of learning out of every day. It’s my job to set up opportunities for them to get that learning, but it’s their job to take advantage of those opportunities. Yes, I teach some content: what does place value mean? Where should capital letters go? What’s an anemometer? But a great deal of my teaching is how to think like a modern adult: when measuring rainfall, what’s the proper metric–temperature? volume? depth? When trying to research something online, what’s the best key word to search for? If you have a conflict with another student, how can you solve it so that everyone is happy with the solution? When embarking on a major project, how can you break it into smaller steps? When telling a story, what are the key pieces you should tell, and what’s a sensible order for telling them? All of these are skills, and none of them come naturally to kids. It’s not because they’re stupid: on the contrary, they’re brilliant, inasmuch as brilliance signifies an ability to learn. Rather, they’re ignorant of the ways our culture handles these situations. My job is to help them figure out how to handle them. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/107 "2011-03-04T19:16:30Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > A claim made with no evidence at all. I can’t even find a passage you could have plausibly misinterpreted this way, so the best I can do is ask you what exactly you were talking about here. Right here. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I used to be a fetus, but that doesn’t qualify me to deliver babies, nor is it cute for me to claim that I’m still a fetus. Surely you recognize the traditional teacher’s response to those who point the inconistency in the teaching plan. Throw up a straw man and attempt to ridcule the student who thinks out of the box. I doubt **Left Hand** even realizes what he is doing there, it’s probably been ingrained in him that his primary job is to maintain order in the classroom. If this is simple misinterpretation on my part, then I apologize. But it certainly wasn’t a meaningful response to my question. Then \*\*Left Hand \*\*goes here: > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I do. Moreover, I deal with kids every day, and I’m profoundly aware of the fact that **kids don’t think like adults**. Your memory of being a kid is deeply flawed, due to the fallible nature of human memory. You don’t think like a kid–or if you do, it’s due to some flavor of mental retardation. My job as a teacher is to figure out how kids are thinking, fit myself into that space,a nd help them make the next appropriate move toward thinking like an adult. My memory is not flawed, and I am not mentally retarded. To address the first part, if human memory is so fallible and people can’t maintain their childhood memories, then school is a waste of time for children. The second part is simply an ad hominem attack. [quote] > [@Frylock](#): > > Again, no evidence can be found in the thread that **LHoD** thinks this. S/he has illustrated the ways in which she can help people learn. This is not the same as arguing that none of them _could_ learn without him/her. That’s such an obvious falsehood–most people throughout human history had no one designated as their teacher, yet all have learned–that you’d have to present some pretty strong evidence before it was plausible that **LHoD** thought anything different. Poor comprehension skills\*\* Fry\*\*. The subject was the replacement of teachers by computers. An exagerrated description of the situation on my part, I don’t think teachers will disappear from the use of technology, but the traditional teacher’s role will. Left Hand and other’s seem to feel that a person in direct contact with a student is the only way to achieve the goals we all seem to agree on, but the only argument for this is that it is the traditional approach. In his posts, Left Hand does point out the extraordinary ability of children to learn, something they are born with, not given them by a teacher. People aren’t born with all skills and knowledge they need, but they will pick them up readily with only a minimum of assistance. Yet for some reason that ability rapidly diminishes among many children when they go to school. Why is that? I think a significant part of that is the education culture which believes it gives children the gift of education, while diminishing the children’s abilities in order to convince them they are dependent on school. > [@Frylock](#): > > Snark which completely misses the mark, since there’s no sense in which **LHoD** functions as a teacher in this conversation, and no sense in which you function as a student. Again, incorrect, as I pointed out before. It may not have been Left Hand’s intent, but it is clearly the expression of a professional teacher. > [@](#): > > Remembering one’s childhood is a separate matter from remembering facts one learned in childhood. Moreover, **LHoD** did not argue that it’s impossible to remember one’s childhood, rather her claim is that it is difficult to remember a lot of one’s childhood accurately. It’s difficult to remember many things over a long period of time. But that is irrelevant. You remember many things from childhood (do you still remember the alphabet? If I may be ‘cute’ without insulting you). Many of the memories you have of your childhood are very accurate, especially the memories of how you feel about school. I think teacher’s should spend more time recalling those memories and feelings instead of taking the tack that children’s feelings are the incorrect ones, and your own are faultily recollected. I addressed this topic previously as well, which is more about Left Hand’s substitution for actually addressing this. > [@Frylock](#): > > No evidence has been presented that **LHoD** “makes a chore out of thinking.” I did not specify **Left Hand** there, but was addressing the same problem consistently, that the traditional school system removes the incentive to learn that children are born with. You could try to address this topic somewhere instead of introducing yourself into my discussion with **Left Hand** without addressing the topic. > [@Frylock](#): > > Before you incorrectly ascribed a view to **LHoD** that teaching is necessary for learning. Here you incorrectly ascribe a completely different view to him/her, that teaching is sufficient for learning. > **LHoD** has not argued that teaching is either necessary or sufficient for learning. Rather, she has argued that it can help, and that learning with the help of a teacher is typically more effective than learning without. You seem to disagree with both of these statements, which is fine, but in your posts you fail to address views like these–the important and interesting meat of the disagreement–and instead ascribe _other_ positions to **LHoD** which she doesn’t hold and which are trivially easy to knock down. You know the term for that method of argumentation, I assume. (Or do I have to teach you?) I don’t know what you are talking about. Here is Left Hand’s statement on the matter: > [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Sure, some day teachers may be unnecessary for the more autistic among our population, no doubt. That day will come when AIs are able to pass the Turing test. Teaching is one of the last jobs that can be done by computers, due to the constant need to assess students and to customize instruction for an individual’s needs; just as important, as others have pointed out, is the need for most kids to learn from a human being. We’re social critters for the most part. > [@Frylock](#): > > The idea that the kids are dumb most definitely did not come from **LHoD**. > > \*\* And they must have terrible parents too. Imagine! Children who can’t perform in a classroom at the same level of an adult. Whatever is wrong with them? \*\* > > More incorrect ascription of views. **LHoD** nowhere said there was anything wrong with the children in his/her illustrations. Left Hand appears to take the position that children lack the capacity to learn without the aid of a teacher. Are you missing that somewhere? This is the topic of the discussion, and what we disagreed about. > [@Frylock](#): > > I began that project in all of the above comments. Your ignorance is of the basics concerning comprehension of others’ views and methods for discussing them rationally, with the goal of zeroing in on the truth concerning the matter at hand. > > The very last sentence has both “are” and “aren’t” in it, and I’m not sure which you meant. I would have thought you meant “are” since you say you don’t disagree, but “aren’t relevant to the issue” seems like more typical English usage in this context. > > What I think is that when we educate people, we are doing it for the good of the educating culture primarily, and only secondarily for the good of the student. I am not criticizing that fact–I’m saying it’s what education really is all about. I have no problem with this fact about education. I expect this to be a view not overtly shared by almost anyone. > > I think that “needs” are just “legitimized desires,” and in education, we are both altering desires and shaping what counts as “legitimate” and what doesn’t–hence it’s not surprising that by educating students, we’re not fulfilling their needs, we’re changing for them just what those needs _are_ in the first place. An interesting list of words that connected together make little sense. My statement was clear. You claim \* that the student’s needs are secondary to the educating culture’s.\* My response is,\* The ‘educating culture’s’ needs are aren’t relevant to the issue\*. It’s quite common to use ‘are’ and ‘aren’t’ to point out the difference in a matter of disagreement. ‘Needs’ have no relationship to ‘desires’ no matter what you think. > [@Frylock](#): > > You told **LHoD** that as a teacher, she is necessarily playing a horrible trick on her students. Them’s fightin’ words. They could be fightin’ words, but it has no bearing on the truth. I doubt this is Left Hand’s intent, but it is built in to the traditional education system as I have discussed before. **Left Hand of Dorkness** , this was a response to Frylock’s rambling criticism of my posts. We may have some disagreements, but I’m perfectly willing to discuss the issues with you. I did not intend my statements as a direct criticism of you, but the system you work within. However: > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Your words, not mine. Those are your words. You introduced invective into this discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/108 "2011-03-04T20:09:45Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > My response is, _The ‘educating culture’s’ needs are aren’t relevant to the issue_. It’s quite common to use ‘are’ and ‘aren’t’ to point out the difference in a matter of disagreement. Not like that it isn’t. “The ‘educating culture’s’ needs are aren’t relevant to the issue” is not a sentence in any dialect of the English language. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/109 "2011-03-04T21:37:10Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Not like that it isn’t. > > “The ‘educating culture’s’ needs are aren’t relevant to the issue” is not a sentence in any dialect of the English language. Well you have me there. Until this last time I read the quote, I hadn’t realized I had written that:smack:. My apologies, my statement was unclear, and meaningless, and your response in regard to it makes sense. For clarification, I am stating: “The 'educating cultures’s ’ needs are not relevant to the issue.” It sounds like you are talking about indoctrination, not education. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2011, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/110 "2011-03-04T21:58:04Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Well you have me there. Until this last time I read the quote, I hadn’t realized I had written that:smack:. My apologies, my statement was unclear, and meaningless, and your response in regard to it makes sense. > > For clarification, I am stating: “The 'educating cultures’s ’ needs are not relevant to the issue.” > It sounds like you are talking about indoctrination, not education. Got it, thanks for the clarification. I probably _am_ talking about indoctrination–and **LHoD** would surely not agree with me here but I think that’s basically what a “teacher” is–an agent of indoctrination. I say that while also believing that there’s _nothing wrong_ with indoctrination–in fact, it’s necessary. The question isn’t whether we should indoctrinate, it’s _what_ we should indoctrinate. Anyway, I’ll bow out of the conversation now, for various reasons it’s not important for me to specify. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2011, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/111 "2011-03-05T00:29:51Z")
Yeah–everyone indoctrinates kids. Young mammals, especially young humans, are excellent learners–but without guidance, they may not learn useful shit. It’s why you can get your ass kicked by 10-year-olds playing World of Warcraft. They’re much better learners than you, and they have a lot of time to learn in, possibly unlike you. But learning how to play WoW isn’t especially useful for them, and kids who spend their afternoons unsupervised have a bad tendency to learn how to kick ass at video games, and not learn how to construct a reasonable argument or how to solve social conflicts constructively or how to approach a difficult math problem or the like. If by “indoctrination” you mean “steering kids to learn useful shit,” then yeah, I’m all about the indoctrination. I certainly minimize my own perspective, again sometimes to a fault (I wouldn’t even tell my students that Mubarak’s ouster was good riddance), but I do believe that it’s important for kids to devote a significant amount of energy to learning how to research, how to approach a problem logically, how to act diplomatically, how to express their thoughts elegantly, how to read deeply, and so on. > [@TriPolar](#): > > Those are your words. You introduced invective into this discussion. No, they’re not–and herein shows your trouble with reading coupled with a angry paranoid response to what people say. I said that if you think like a child, it’s due to severe mental retardation. This isn’t an insult; rather, it’s the very definition of mental retardation. If you need an explanation of Piaget, of Vygotsky’s Zones of Proximal Development, of the concrete operational stage, etc., I can give that to you. If not, I’ll just summarize: kids think about the world in very different ways from adults, in different and predictable ways. There’s a shitload of evidence to support this conclusion of mine. It’s totally uncontroversial. My smartest second-graders, kids whose insights sometimes blow me away and humble me, predicted that if you poured 30 ML of water from a tall narrow glass into a short wide glass, you’d have less than 30 ML of water. They were amazed when they ended up with 30 ML of water. At the same age, I was in tears over my disagreement with the riddle’s answer that a pound of feathers weighed exactly the same as a pound of lead. To adults, these conclusions are trivially obvious. To a child, they are not. Similarly, tell an adult the following story: -Bob played with a toy dog. His younger sister Mary watched him. Mom called Bob,so he put his dog under the bed and told his sister not to touch it. While Bob was gone, Mary played with the dog. When she was done, she put it in the toy chest. Bob came back in the room and looked for the dog. Where did he look for it? Nearly every adult will say that Bob looked under the bed, where he left it. Very young children, unable yet to understand the difference between their minds and those of other people, will say that Bob looked in the toy chest. If you think like a child, then you think that 30 ML of water poured into a short wide glass will be less than 30 ML of water. You’ll think that Bob looked in the toy chest. You’ll be retarded. If you think that the short wide glass will contain 30 ML of water, and that Bob will look under the bed, then you don’t think like a child. And yes, your memory is flawed, or else you’re not a human being. This kind of flawed memory is highly relevant, since you seem to think that having been a kid 50 years ago qualifies you in any meaningful sense to talk about how kids think and learn. I’m around kids every day, am responsible for the mental success of a bunch of kids every day, and I’m intimately familiar with both theory and practice of how kids think. When I think they think like adults, I fail at my job. When I approach them in their own worlds, I rock at my job. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/112 "2011-03-10T05:46:59Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > No, they’re not–and herein shows your trouble with reading coupled with a angry paranoid response to what people say. I said that if you think like a child, it’s due to severe mental retardation. This isn’t an insult; rather, it’s the very definition of mental retardation. I wondered for a while whether it was worth responding to you. It probably isn’t, but I feel like telling something anyway. You are an asshole. It’s the combination of your inability to think and patting yourself on the back for knowing more than children do. I can think like a child, as I can also think like something like you do, because I have not limited my brain to operating on a fixed path determined by others. Perhaps you can insult children who don’t know better and get away with it, and maybe you gain satisfaction from that. But trying to impose your own limitations on your students is an indication that you do not ‘rock’ as a teacher, much less as a person. Learn to read and comprehend, then to think and create before you undertake to gauge others. And I’ll try to explain a simple concept to you now, if children cannot rely on their memories from childhood, there is no point in their learning. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/113 "2011-03-10T06:08:42Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You are an asshole. Thank you for reporting your own post, but I’m still going to issue a Warning for such a blatant insult. The rest of your post would have worked without this sentence. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/114 "2011-03-10T11:24:54Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I wondered for a while whether it was worth responding to you. It probably isn’t, but I feel like telling something anyway. You are an asshole. It’s the combination of your inability to think and patting yourself on the back for knowing more than children do. I can think like a child, as I can also think like something like you do, because I have not limited my brain to operating on a fixed path determined by others. Perhaps you can insult children who don’t know better and get away with it, and maybe you gain satisfaction from that. But trying to impose your own limitations on your students is an indication that you do not ‘rock’ as a teacher, much less as a person. Learn to read and comprehend, then to think and create before you undertake to gauge others. And I’ll try to explain a simple concept to you now, if children cannot rely on their memories from childhood, there is no point in their learning. So weird. So so so so very very weird. I’m sorry, Tripolar, but it’s true–your posts in this thread are just _weird_. I’ve seen your posts in other threads and they’re not weird. In this thread, you’re weird. LHoD has not insulted any children in the least, not even in the slightest bit. No one would think so from having read his posts. No one. I mean, I guess you do, but I find this absolutely unaccountable. And it’s not a “simple concept” that if you can’t rely on your memories from childhood then there’s no point in learning. I have no frickin’ clue when I learned how to add or how to read. I have no recollection of it at all. (Do you?) Yet, here I am adding and reading. I learned it sometime in my childhood, and the knowledge stuck with me, but my memory of it is _completely gone_. I’d say _that_’s a “simple concept” but I suppose it’s not to you because dammit, Tri, you’re being _weird_ in this thread. ETA: All I can figger is you had some _really bad_ (as in abusive) teachers as a kid, and also, you’ve got perfect recall or something and haven’t realized that everyone else doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Dumbguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Dumbguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dumbguy)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/115 "2011-03-10T21:04:26Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Second, you’re describing tasks with immediate positive feedback systems; indeed, videogames are one of the most finely honed positive feedback systems ever designed, and they’re something that educators are studying, trying to take cues from. And as someone who makes video games, I can tell you untold man-hours of work goes into interface design and tutorials and feature ramps that introduce concepts slowly and require increasing levels of mastery, providing constant feedback on success and failure. Someone is still indoctrinating the kids. WoW is the probably best example of ‘playability’ in a multi-billion dollar industry where most of the tens of thousands of employees make more than teachers. I’m dubious that we can ever make programs that can respond to people with something approaching the depth and complexity of another human being, and even if we can I can’t imagine the market is ever going to find education a viable channel for these energies. We can hope, I guess. I just had a son and have been worrying about the state of education in the US, but some great posts in this thread from **Manda Jo** , **even sven** , **LHoD** and others have made me feel a lot better. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/116 "2011-03-11T02:41:26Z")
Hi **Fry** , glad to have you back. > [@Frylock](#): > > So weird. So so so so very very weird. Thank you. I take pride in that. 😃 > [@](#): > > I’m sorry, Tripolar, but it’s true–your posts in this thread are just _weird_. I’ve seen your posts in other threads and they’re not weird. In this thread, you’re weird. You can’t have seen very many of my posts and arrived at that conclusion. 😃 > [@](#): > > LHoD has not insulted any children in the least, not even in the slightest bit. No one would think so from having read his posts. No one. I mean, I guess you do, but I find this absolutely unaccountable. Left Hand didn’t directly insult children, and I don’t think intended to insult children. But he seems to me to hold some kind of view that children don’t think correctly, and are missing some ability to learn, and need a ‘teacher’ to correct those things. His various comments don’t express a clear statement on that issue. I doubt that is actually his attitude either, but I think I see some of the standard educational system mantra leaking into his comments. It’s only natural considering his job and frequent exposure to educational PC. I don’t really have much of a problem with any insult, intended or otherwise, aimed at children by Left Hand. I have a problem with him insulting me. > [@](#): > > And it’s not a “simple concept” that if you can’t rely on your memories from childhood then there’s no point in learning. I have no frickin’ clue when I learned how to add or how to read. I have no recollection of it at all. (Do you?) Yet, here I am adding and reading. I learned it sometime in my childhood, and the knowledge stuck with me, but my memory of it is _completely gone_. I’d say _that_’s a “simple concept” but I suppose it’s not to you because dammit, Tri, you’re being _weird_ in this thread. I do remember learning to add and read, and don’t remember other things from my childhood, and the same goes for the rest of my life too. I’ve noticed that people have different levels of recollection from childhood, so if you don’t remember, it doesn’t sound unusual. But you do remember how to read and add. I assume you’ve done those thing many times since, so that would be expected. But if you reflect carefully on the basis of your knowledge, you may realize you remember things you first learned at a very young age, with little or no reinforcement since. I’m sure in my case and yours, the less reinforcement, the more likely you are to forget. But people often recall memories from their youth that they had not revisited in many years, and may never have been able to recall on demand. Not all the things we think we forget are actually forgotten. Sometimes the associations that allow us to recall memories become so obscure that we cannot remember how to access them again. Memories can also become distorted or lose detail over time. But not always. For many different reasons the clarity of memories will vary. I don’t doubt that the most distant ones are most subject to degradation, but I don’t think there’s a clear, fixed relationship between precision and time. My whole point here is that having a good memory of childhood is a great asset to a teacher. What you read in a book about what a child thinks may or may not be accurate, while many people have an excellent example of what an actual child once thought right inside their head. > [@](#): > > ETA: All I can figger is you had some _really bad_ (as in abusive) teachers as a kid, and also, you’ve got perfect recall or something and haven’t realized that everyone else doesn’t. Far from perfect recall. But I do remember an awful lot of my entire life since the age of 4. I did have one really bad teacher, a couple of really good teachers (I’ve been in contact with one for almost 40 years), and bunch of the run-of-the-mill sort. The bad one wouldn’t be allowed to teach now-a-days, and the modern run-of-the-mill sort are probably better teachers now. I have relatives and friends who are teachers, and consider it a noble profession. So I don’t have a issues with teachers. I do find considerable problems with the educational system and its academic and political allies though. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/117 "2011-03-11T03:08:57Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I don’t really have much of a problem with any insult, intended or otherwise, aimed at children by Left Hand. I have a problem with him insulting me. Thing is, tempting as it’s been, I haven’t insulted you. You’ve misread some of my factual statements about cognitive growth to take them as personal insults, but they were no such thing. > [@](#): > > I do remember learning to add and read, I find this a remarkable claim, because reading is such a complex battery of skills. Where were you, for example, when: -You realized that text is read from left to right? -You realized that books have front and back covers? -You figured out what sound the letter “z” makes? -You learned to look at a picture for a clue when a word was difficult? -You learned to try different medial vowel sounds on unfamiliar words? -You started pausing at periods? and so on. > [@](#): > > My whole point here is that having a good memory of childhood is a great asset to a teacher. What you read in a book about what a child thinks may or may not be accurate, while many people have an excellent example of what an actual child once thought right inside their head. No, that’s a terrible example, because your memories are so skewed by time. I have excellent examples of what actual children think in my classroom. I ask them questions all the time, and in so doing I uncover both wonderful insights (I had a kid blow my mind the other day when he solved a patterning problem in a way that I was sure wouldn’t work, but when I tested out, worked in all cases) and misconceptions. While I do read that hifalutin research by them pointy-headed scientists about cognitive growth, that’s not my primary source of information: my primary source is the kids I work with daily. When I talk about misconceptions and insights, I’m not talking about what I think I had many decades ago, nor what some Poindexter hypothesized: I’m talking about the kid today who told me that 53+10=17, or the other kid who figured out the inverse property of addition (not in those words, which is fine, because I don’t think they’re the right words anyway). > [@](#): > > But he seems to me to hold some kind of view that children don’t think correctly, and are missing some ability to learn, and need a ‘teacher’ to correct those things. Yeah, absolutely, in some cases. If you think that 30 ml of water poured from a fat container into a thin container will become more than 30 ml of water, you’re not thinking correctly. That’s not the magic of childhood, that’s just plain wrong. If you think that the angles on the left side of a rectangle are called “left angles,” you’re just plain wrong. With the water, you can figure that out on your own. My job as a teacher is to make sure that everyone has experiences where they can figure it out. If they don’t, they’ll find themselves later on at the mercy of marketing geniuses who reshape bottles to confuse consumers about their contents. THe left angles thing is something that very few kids will correct on their own. My job as a teacher is to correct those misconceptions. But “missing some ability to learn”? Where on earth do you get this from my posts? I’m not insulting you. Believe me, if I were, you’d know. But I deal with kids directly every day of my life, and I read research about childhood cognitive growth, and my job depends on my being able to get into the heads of kids to figure out what’s going on in there. I have very little patience for romanticized nostalgic views of childhood, and that’s what you appear to me to hold. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/118 "2011-03-11T18:39:55Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I have relatives and friends who are teachers, and consider it a noble profession. I’d be curious to know what would happened if you showed **LHoD** ’s posts in this thread to your teacher friends and relatives. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/119 "2011-03-11T19:27:18Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > However, to address the OP, there’s a fault in the underlying premise: education used to be better. In 1914, drafted soldiers were given literacy tests and 90%+ passed. In 1942, after the public school system was started by FDR, the number of literate drafted soldiers dropped to below 50%. This indicates the public school system we have today is seriously flawed… > The reason literacy was so high back then was reading was the only source of entertainment when living on a rural farm, and as children did 8-10 hours of chores, they would dream of going back to their room and reading a book instead of doing backbreaking labor all day. You don’t think the depression had anything to do with that? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/120 "2011-03-11T19:29:12Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > This is funny timing. I’m actually literally sitting in a hotel room at a conference where I won a major teaching award mostly on the strength of an essay I wrote on this topic. This may be too long to be worth reading, but here it is:… It was worth reading and I agree that the only thing worse than rote learning is rote teaching but how do we get teachers to do this? How do we deal with teachers who are practiaclly under seige and under threat of physical violence in their classrooms? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893.md?page=7)