Is it really best to put our children under as much pressure as possible to make high grades? Is that really ‘education’, or rather a social disease of today’s adults? Yet OTOH, there is the other extreme called “unschooling” where the child can decide (from an early age) what to study…and grades don’t mean much at all.
Both ends of the spectrum seem insane to me. I’d like to hear the SD thoughts on this. What would you suggest, if you could change the eduactional system? If possible, please shed some light on your background (i.e., parent of 2 teens, your average joe, teacher, psychologist, etc.) - Jinx
Note: In the OP, I purposely did not even attempt to consider the influence of politicians on the public schools. I am trying to look objectively at a private school I know where pressure is extreme vs. a school I know that is the exact opposite. The political aspect has been minimized, but I know that is skewing everything today…
I reckon you need both. You need to find a happy medium between applying and letting off pressure.
Some of the most important things you learn at school involve socialisation. You need to learn how to work with others, certain moral values, critical thinking etc. These are just as an factual knowledge and much of this learning occurs between classes, or in extra-murals.
Hence Oscar Wilde’s famous quote: “School got in the way of my education.”
I’d like to see a system that spends a day on each subject rather than a period of the day on everything. This would allow the teachers time to create in depth, interesting lessons and eliminate the need for repetitive drill outside of the classroom. Each day could start with a short review of the previous week’s lesson ensuring retention. Other subject days could include integration in real life applications. For example science day needs to utilize the math skills the children have learned, etc… An additional benefit to this system is that the extra time eliminates the need for regimentation of the lessons. On Language skills day for example, those having a hard time with grammar could be moved into a group to work on those skills, while those who have mastered the lesson could read, or practice writing skills. This system could also allow the creation of student leaders in each field as children discover the subjects they are good at. I also would block off a small portion of each day for phys ed, and the arts alternating days.
The problem, IMHO, with educational policy is that it’s like a factory, one-size-fits-all and children are required to adapt to whatever style the institution has adopted as it’s educational method. The trouble with that is we all learn differently. Some kids benefit from high pressure, performance-based instruction in a traditional classroom with lecturing as a primary method of teaching. Other kids crumble in that environment, it saps their self-image and confidence and their performance suffers. Those kids might perform better in a more relaxed, interactive, self-paced environment. But if you put one of the former kids in that environment, they won’t feel challenged and their performance will suffer.
I am the parent of two children. My eldest (19 now) was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiance Disorder in first grade. He has struggled for his entire educational life trying to be fit into the mold that public school required of him (e.g., sit in your chair for an hour and listen to the teacher talk, sit quietly and take this test for an hour, behave, don’t fidget, wait your turn). He just wasn’t wired to learn that way. Although, we tried to teach him coping mechanisms, the teachers were, more often than not, ill-equipped to help him. It wasn’t until he was in 11th grade that the public school was able to adapt to educate kids like my son. Sadly, I think, the damage was already done. Though he’s bright and can achieve high scores in the right testing environment, he simply didn’t have the self-confidence to function in an environment that was challenging to him. He was sort of beaten down by the combination of a mostly rigid educational system and the learning disability that made it all but impossible for him to conform to its expectations. As a result, he failed to graduate with his class. Earlier this year, he took the G.E.D. exam and scored high enough to get his diploma. Hopefully, college next.
My 11-year-old daughter, OTOH, doesn’t have these issues and performs quite well in a traditional classroom environment. She is somewhat competitive and the two years she spent in Montessori did not appeal to her. (Don’t get me wrong, I liked the Montessori style very much, and she did well in it.) She has been on honor roll for two years (though her grades are starting to slip and I think it’s related to social issues).
I see school districts already beginning to adopt a more well-rounded approach to educating by adding charter schools and magnet schools that offer specialized education in a variety of subjects as well as non-traditional educational styles, such as Montessori and Paideia. I think we’re going to see a tremendous increase in graduation rates and better performance at the college level once individualized primary education becomes more mainstream.
If you mean you are weighing two different schools as an option for your child, then I think you really need to evaluate which of those schools’ methods your child is more equipped to excel under. Will s/he do better in a high pressure situation or in a more relaxed arena? If s/he’s too young to determine that, go with whatever choice makes you most comfortable now and be prepared to change tacks later on as the need arises. The important thing is that you’re paying attention and continuously monitoring evaluating not only your child’s individual successes but the overall picture of whether the educational environment and your child are a good fit.
I think more that you need different techniques at different ages and for different pupils. For instance, rote-learning the basics to start, then critical thinking later on.
I disagree: kids don’t have that long an attention span. Nor do adults, really.
I don’t think a whole day on one subject would be all that great. For middle school and high school it might not be a bad idea to deal with 3-4 subjects in a day and then rotate subjects throughout the school year. Kind of like college.
We have a fourth and fifth grader and raise them middle of the road. We expect them to get the grades they are capable of - sometimes they don’t and we are “disappointed” but we don’t apply undo pressure. We give them plenty of time to play, don’t over schedule their days, don’t force them into chess club or band (although my daughter did chess club and my son is in band).
We provide enrichment (trips to the Science Museum, tickets to plays).
The changes I’d make to the educational system…
Track kids more. My kids don’t have leveled math or reading groups because they don’t want the less advanced kids to feel “bad” - that’s silly. They do have ‘math and reading enrichment’ which means the advanced kids have to do twice the work. And “math and reading remedial” which gives the kids needing to catch up twice the work as well.
Get rid of NCLB, which at least how its done in Minnesota is a statistical travesty.
Lower class sizes in elementary grades - 35 kids in a class room is too much.
Reduce funding of IEPs - which is the reason we have 35 kids in a classroom - because we have sign language interpreters, physical therapists, translators, occupational therapists, psychologist and social workers (our specialists now outnumber our teachers).
As the parent of a child who was on IEPs from second grade onward, I’d like to know what’s your alternative? IME, even with the IEP there were limits as to what they could offer due to *lack *of funding. But that was a symptom, IMHO, for many other needs, with the notable exception of the sports programs.
I am going to agree with you that both ends of the spectrum are insane. Forcing a child to do school work 12 hours a day and to accept nothing less than perfection is likely to result in an alcoholic or a suicide. Giving a child no motivation or structure at all is likely to result in an exceptionally ignorant student. So thankfully most schools try to find a middle ground.
Where should that middle ground be? I think there should be minimum standards that students must meet and rewards for students who exceed those standards.
My brother is retarded, and he was only able to stay in regular school because my parents pushed him, and worked with him daily. My parents did not have to work nearly as hard with me. But my dad still made sure I was an avid reader and encouraged me to have hobbies. If they had pushed me as hard as they did my brother I would have rebelled and done terrible in school. So I think that parents need to be part of a child’s education and need to help decide how much a child should be pushed/encouraged. I have two elementary school kids. And I try to give them gentle but firm guidance. I also encourage them to have hobbies. “I don’t care what you do, but you are not watching T.V. or playing video games.” is a line I trot out once or twice a week.
Reduce funding, don’t stop it. We don’t have services for the mainstream because we have to fund the IEP programs. That isn’t fair to the mainstream. 80% of our limited money goes to 20% of our kids. Is that even remotely sustainable?
I guess I’m going to have to ask for a cite. According to this table, special education funding amounts to about 14% of the total federal spending for elementary and secondary education as of 2009. More federal money is spent on Title I, which represents low-income students. More federal money is spent on nutrition programs, which represents feeding kids whose parents meet federal poverty guidelines. Those two line items alone represent 39% of federal education funds for 2009.
It seems to me systemic poverty impacts school expenditures far more than IEPs do. According to this Census table, 13.9% of families with children under 18 fall below the poverty line. Nearly 20 million kids are enrolled in free or reduced-cost lunch program.
Maybe that’s what we ought to consider reforming–not the programs, but the need for them.
The entire American public education system is set up to prepare kids for college. It doesn’t take into account the fact that only about half of kids will go to college, and among that group only about half will ever graduate from college. So, in short, the entire education system is designed around the needs of 25 percent of the student body, give or take a few percent.
In other countries such as Germany they instead acknowledge the fact that not all kids are made for college and college isn’t made for all kids. Over there, children all attend the same school up to the age that roughly corresponds with sixth grade. After that they split into gymnasium (academic high school) or trade school. Hence those who won’t go on to college get to learn practical, useful skills rather than spending the next six years sitting in a room and ignoring information that’s completely irrelevant to their life.
Federal money has nothing to do with this issue. Education is a state mandate and always has been; federal funding is aimed at projects which are not at all representative of actual per-student spending.
Video games consistently provide intermittent positive feedback of a sort that education cannot do. Movies require very little intellectual work (although they may reward it). Your examples of high attention spans don’t transfer well.
Kids benefit tremendously from small-group attention from really good folks. When we’re talking about the military, we’re willing to pay hundreds of billions to be the best in the world, and we don’t complain about how “throwing money at the problem” won’t fix it. We know what will work for education: get really good people in there with small groups. Let’s do it. Yeah, it’ll cost a bunch, but if we’re serious, that’s what we’ll do.
And in my elementary school it is currently much more. 80% of our educational funding is on 20% of our students. (Strip out facilities, administration, et. al) Unfortunately, my cite is a PTO meeting I was at.
I agree with you on tracking, but disagree on public education being set up to prepare kids for college. That is really dependent on where you go to school. My high school (and I did graduate a long time ago) was not set up to prepare you for college, and when my baby sister graduated (six years after I did), they didn’t even offer enough foreign language for admittance to some colleges - my sister had to be private tutored to get in to college.