Not sure of your point there** Dio**. Some people can produce great music with no formal background at all. You’re much less likely to get anywhere with math if you don’t have your basic arithmetic tables down. You’re unlikely to be able to learn to read or write if you don’t know the alphabet. After those very low level basic skills, every person is going to be different. Some people will do better learning theory, others need to master the details before they grasp the theory. But amongst the big problems are a lack of meta-education. The concentration is on the particular subjects and the learning process itself is ignored. Learning to learn is the most important skill you can develop. But it’s not in the interests of the school business to promote such an idea.
We can spend a lot of time discussing this, but the traditional school concept is not long for this world. Computers will be able to replace the teachers and the structured environment before long (they could do it now, but there are huge special interest groups that will do anything to stop this from happening).
Why not teach them together? Grading content has to be age appropriate, of course, but there is no reason for a third grader who writes something illogical not to be corrected. You can’t expect subtle arguments, but you don’t need to accept blatant non sequiturs either.
Grading and correct content is a lot harder than correcting structure, so I suppose it is tempting to concentrate on it.
Politics aside, how would it benefit society to have children educated in a teacher-less, structure-less environment?
Do you remember the Harry Harlow experiments with the metal vs. cloth primate mothers? The milk-bearing metal mothers produced neurotic monkeys, and the infant primates preferred the cloth mothers, even though they had no milk.
Computers are a wonderful and beneficial teaching tool, but that is all they are - a tool. I’m a science teacher, but the most important things I teach my students are how to interact in society, how to treat other people, and how to operate in a structured environment. This does not mean I’m training future wage slaves, because I’m also teaching critical thinking and questioning authority, but the simple truth of life is that we need each other, and we need to learn how to live and work together.
This is not remotely true. Lemme lay out a typical day for me:
-Students come in in the morning. In between doing morning logistics, I’m teaching them some basic social skills, e.g., how to conduct the standard polite greeting. (Yes, this needs explicit teaching and reinforcement). I give them a math assignment to work on as soon as they’re settled.
-Students that struggle with the math let me know, and I work with them, analyzing their misconceptions to help fix them. I pull out various manipulatives–coins, cubes, counters, blank paper, etc.–to demonstrate to them what’s going on, as necessary; many of these kids are very tactile, and need that physical interaction in order to be able to focus on the underlying mathematical principles.
-We discuss the morning math.
-We do a morning meeting, during which we review the calendar and discuss what’s happening in our lives and the world at large. I answer students’ questions as long as they’re relevant (“Is Egypt a friend of ours?” is relevant. “Can you zoom the map in on Cairo?” isn’t really relevant).
-I explain what their independent literacy tasks are for the day, and then we dissolve into leveled reading groups; students have half an hour in a leveled group, and half an hour to complete independent tasks. Computers are often involved in these independent tasks.
-During the leveled groups I teach various skills. More advanced readers learn how to ask probing questions of a text and how to discuss a book with other readers; I moderate the discussion to keep it on-track, to answer questions when they lack background knowledge (“Who’s Jackie Robinson?”), and to ensure that everyone participates as both a listener and a speaker. Less advanced students work on phonemic skills, retelling skills, and the like, with some (but not as much) emphasis on higher-order thinking skills. I work individually with the less-advanced students, listening to their reading and watching for patterns of errors (“Kate, I’m noticing that of the last 53 words, you read 51 correctly–excellent! The only two errors were ‘watched’ for ‘watching’ and ‘they’ for ‘that.’ Notice that both mistakes were because you didn’t read the end of the word. I want you to really focus on reading the entire word, not just looking at the beginning–and then your reading is going to get even better!”)
-We move into math, a fairly structured curriculum. I provide whole-class assignments and then work with struggling students in small groups, watching for misconceptions, scaffolding the problems, and providing manipulatives. At the same time, I provide challenge problems to the more advanced students, problems that will help them understand the underlying principles in greater depth: if we’re working on addition, for example, I might challenge more advanced students to find patterns in what happens when you add two even numbers, two odd numbers, and an odd and an even number.
-Later in the day, I’ll conduct a reading lesson, focusing on a specific skill (e.g., how to make predictions about a book). I’ll read with individuals during this time, watching how they’re employing that skill and making suggestions. They’ll meet with a partner to share their books, and I’ll monitor those meetings.
-We’ll work on writing: I’ll provide a short lesson teaching a technique, and then I’ll confer with individuals to see how they’re using the techniques we’ve learned. They’ll meet with a partner to share their work, and I’ll monitor these meetings.
-During science lessons, I’ll provide a brief overview, ask students to write predictions about what will happen during the activity, lead a discussion about the predictions, facilitate the logistics (providing materials, making sure everyone’s getting a chance to work on the science, holding students accountable for work), monitor students as they record their observations, lead a post-experiment discussion about their observations, guiding students toward scientifically defensible conclusions, and either asking probing questions or providing background knowledge to correct student misconceptions.
-During social studies lessons, I provide big questions, as well as lessons that allow students to explore those big questions. I teach students how to discuss their findings and I monitor those discussions, as well as helping students create products to demonstrate their findings.
Yeah, some of that could be replaced by a computer. But much of it involves higher-order thinking skills: not just recall, but information evaluation, pattern-finding, analyzing, and more, both on my end and on the student’s. Watson couldn’t hope to make it through the first fifteen minutes of my day.
Teaching is a two-way process. It’s not just one person relaying facts to another. It’s a feedback system where both sides are constantly adjusting to each other. When teachers say they learn as much from their students as their students learn from them, they are not saying that in an anthropological observation way. Learning (and growing) is an product of this interaction and connection.
Furthermore, teaching is inherently emotional work. To consider new world views, challenge your beliefs, etc. as the highest learning requires is an act of vulnerability. In order to get that kind of response from your students, you also need to show (the right kind) of openness. One thing that makes teaching so difficult is that you can’t have an “off” day. If you come to school tired, your students are not going to respond to anything even if you say all the same words. Teachers light a fire.
Anyway, teaching will be replaced by computers when councilors, priests and sports coaches are replaced by computers.
Recent example: I was struggling with a student on his understanding of rectangles, i.e., that they have four right angles. I showed him a rectangle and asked him to count the right angles; he told me there were two.
A computer at this point would have stopped the analysis, told him his answer was wrong, and given him problem after problem until he gave up and started saying there were four right angles just so the damn thing would shut up, never believing that the answer was correct.
I probed further to figure out exactly what his misconception was, and asked him to point to the right angles. He pointed to the angles on one side.
“So what are these?” I asked, pointing to the two angles on the other side.
He gave me a deeply suspicious, “Is this a trick?” look, and said, “Left angles!”
That probing gave me the information I needed to correct his misconception, and thirty seconds later he knew exactly what a right angle was.
How would a computer have been superior to a human teacher in this situation?
I wasn’t talking about teaching. I was talking about learning. Who teaches kids how to use a cell phone? How to text? How to play video games? Learning is a skill people are born with. Then they go to school and are told they can’t learn, they have to be taught. Children are very impressionable. It’s an awful trick to play on them.
Here is something written by Paul Feig (creator of “Freaks and Geeks”), in his book Kick Me, that really stuck with me. I think he hit the nail on the head with the following observation:
"There’s nothing like being told you’re not allowed to know about something to really get your imagination racing. Especially when you’re a kid.
The irony was that people were always telling us things they wanted us to know when we were in school. They were constantly trying to force us to listen to them and remember their words and concepts, warning us that everything they were teaching us was for our own good and that it was information we’d definitely need to know in real life. Clearly, no one in the educational system had ever read “Tom Sawyer.” Their misguided attempts to “make learning fun” were never effective because learning wasn’t fun back then.
They simply should have figured out what the most important subjects were that we would need later in life, and then told us that they were forbidden to teach those things to us. We would have paid every penny of our allowance just to hear tales about the taboo isosceles triangle or the verboten declarative case, and the con job would have been complete. But, no, they would simply try to convince us how important these subjects were, and so the only attitude we rebellious children could possibly adopt was one of total indifference. It’s because of this that I’ve always felt the school system is designed completely backward. "
Are you serious? Do you spend any time around children at all?
First, it’s very likely that parents, older siblings, and/or friends teach all the skills you describe.
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.
Because a lot of the stuff that kids need to know, whether it’s how to weed a garden plot or how to design a spreadsheet, are not things that provide immediate positive feedback. Kids need to develop an ability to engage in short-term unpleasant activities in order to achieve long-term goals.
Anything can be presented in a manner that provides positive feedback at a level necessary for the student’s abilities. Anything the teacher does now can be presented in many varieties of ways that can be more closely to suited to a particular student’s needs. Not everything has to be done without up close and personal contact, but the scheduled environment, teacher-class dynamic is a convenience for everybody but the student.
Yes, I’ve been around kids, I used to be one, and nearly half a century later, I still am one.
You are definitely a teacher! You don’t remember being a fetus, but do you remember being a kid?
I’m not trying to knock you, or the job you do. Without newer technology, the school system that we criticize so often may have been the best workable system. That doesn’t mean it will be forever.
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.
The “left angle” is just one of my stories. I had students recently tell me that, of the five different-sized containers we’d set out in the rain, the largest one held the least amount of water. (Their reasoning was essentially that the water filled the smallest fraction of the large container, although they weren’t able to say it in those terms). I have students who stick strange shit in the middle of a story, like, “It was Christmas and it was six o’clock. Before that it was one o’clock.” (They intended to communicate the idea that they’d woken up at 1:00 am, excited by Christmas; I had to work with them to get them to understand that the reader wouldn’t understand that based on what they’d written). Today I had students who said 47+32=16, and I had to figure out what their reasoning was, and help them see how an understanding of place value invalidated their conclusion. My smartest students can read a novel about children and not understand any character motivation whatsoever unless it’s spelled out either by the author or by me; my job is to help them look for key passages and trace the clues left by the author to understand motivation, so that next time they can do it without my help, and more importantly next time it occurs to them that it’s worth figuring out why characters are doing things.
Kids don’t think like adults. Their brains are amazing at certain tasks (you should watch them learn Spanish, it’s awesome) and terrible at other tasks, and I need to get into their psychological
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.
Left Hand, you are a prime example of a teacher. Ready to pound down creativity where ever it raises its ugly head. And never tolerate the concept that people can learn without the magical abilities of a teacher by their side.
Oh my, I’ve disappointed a teacher! That chastening will make me a much better student in the future.
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.
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:
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!
You must have a long list of anecdotes about those dumb kids. 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?
Yes, and their grammar is awful too.
Yes, learning on a computer will be nothing but rote. Question pops up on the screen, student answers right or wrong, they get a grade at the end of the session. It would be impossible use a computer to watch humans explain concepts, give examples of usage, and a variety of exercises that a student could use to develop and strengthen skills. And of course, communicating with other humans is a technology only available in improbable science fiction stories. And even if those dumb machines could do those things, what good could come of the plethora of choices then available for a student. After all, everyone should learn exactly the same way, at the same pace, using the same material.
Congratulations Left Hand, you are the epitome of the modern teacher!
Wow, I posted that before reading Tripolar’s last post.
Now I see s/he’s probably not actually worth discussing educational issues with. The combination of ignorance, inability to comprehend what others are saying, and uncalled for hostility isn’t mindblowing because it’s par for the course on the interwebs.
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.
Ok, please point out my ignorance. I’m always looking to get rid of that.
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.
Finally, I didn’t start the hostility. Both you and** Left Hand **seem to address all criticism of teaching by insulting my ability to think. Maybe if I couched my comments in a discussion about the ‘education system’ you’d be able to respond with reason instead of ad hominem attacks.