Improving Education

[smiling_bandit]

In this thread, we have…

@mswas

Heh, it’s not that simple. They reject a broken system of rote indoctrination that doesn’t really educate people but pushes groups of trivia designed to facilitate the standardized tests. Most public school education IS in fact pointless or has done a poor job of getting kids to understand it’s importance. Teaching the importance of a skill is a relevant part of education. There isn’t a trend against education, there is a crappy product that is not meeting the needs it was designed to fulfill.

Having had standard tests all my life, I’ve never bought the “they teach to the test” argument, because I’ve never seen it. Loser teachers at apathetic schools might, but frankly, you’re not going to win if those are the conditions. You can onyl iwn by changing the circumstances. The standardized tests, though messy and often irritaing, do at least show the problem points.

The bigger problem is that teachers simply aren’t very good. Most are downright bad at their subjects. I used to think I was bad at math. As it happens, I just had several teachers. Once I got to calculus, I was blown away by how easy and fun it really was. It’s jsut that I finally had teachers who could actually do the job right. And I found that unlike all previous schooling (at some very good schools!), they simply went step-by-step, adding and demonstrating various complexities, in increasing number. And then, they showed me how the formulas and ideas were derived. :eek:

I used to think the idea sex-linked teaching was silly, but I do sometimes wonder about it. I have to say that, while it might just be my experience, I’ve had no end of horrible female math teachers. Their standards are lax and they are often incapable of explaining things. Science was a little better, I’ve had a good female teacher or two. OTOH, every male teacher I’ve had in those fields knew his stuff cold and explained it in a clear fashion. While I hope it’s just my experience, I do wonder if men simply are more interested in those subjects. All the ladies but one female teacher probably knew the material, but often just couldn’t be bothered to care.

I have had fine female and male language (various), literature, and history teachers. But even there I found the male teachers went deeper and had more exciting discussions. Female teachers often seemed content to leave things at the surface. Perhaps male students do relate better to male teachers?

[silly_ringtones]

Every school demands teaching to the test these days. That’s the main complaint teachers have against No Child Left Behind. Funding and their very jobs now depend on that test.
In high school, of course, many teachers, especially chemistry and math, taught to the optional SATs, because of the stature for producing competitive graduates in those areas. But that was their choice, not the administrations.

[mswas]

The point is education is often taught in terms of disconnected facts. History for instance makes no attempt to connect the student to their own place in history. They are expected to memorize names, places and dates. That’s it, that’s the extent of the history class. They are not taught the notion of narratives let alone the idea of competing narratives. Underlying that though is a general lack of critical thinking skills. People should be playing Logical Fallacies Bingo in Junior High school. It’s criminal that students are not taught anatomy courses. In gym no one is taught how to actually excercise properly. There is no focus on teaching proper body mechanics to teach uncoordinated kids to move more fluidly, or teach proper posture. Most teachers simply are not smart enough to teach outside of the test. The tests are designed around nerfing the ability of stupid teachers to mess up the curriculum and teach kids things that are just downright wrong. They require of them certain facts. We are taught that those facts are immutable. As with history we are not taught that the stuff in the text book can be contested and is largely debated in academia. Students should be taught from the outset about the debates that occur, how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[MandaJo]

Even in single-sex schools, teachers are often members of the opposite sex. I don’t know of any school where they teachers are single-sex.

That said, some teachers do seem to establish better a better rapport with one sex or the other, and some students seem to do the same with their teachers–but IME it’s not always a same-sex thing. There are boys that can never stop competing with male teachers but can relax and learn with female teachers: there are girls that take any male approval so much more seriously than any female approval that they will work harder for a man.

As far as women in general being sucky teachers–which seems to be what you are implying, which, as a female teacher, it’s a bit hard not to be offended by–teaching is a female-dominated profession. For many decades, it was one of two choices for women–teaching or nursing. Because of that, you had many women who became teachers because they hated it less than they hated nursing. Men, on the other hand, had many other choices, and so perhaps were more likely to have a true passion for it. However, there are many, many female teachers who feel that same passion.

Beyond that, what, specifically, did you want to debate?

[mswas]

yeah, making this a gender thing kind of poisoned the well.

[Voyager]

@mswas

The point is education is often taught in terms of disconnected facts. History for instance makes no attempt to connect the student to their own place in history. They are expected to memorize names, places and dates. That’s it, that’s the extent of the history class.

You are so right! I went through both my kids history books, and they were dreadful. My older daughter was in an AP history class, and she still didn’t really learn anything. We bought her a good, and long, American history book. She read it, and got a 5 on the test.
When I was in AP history we read “The Growth of the American Republic,” first volume by Samuel Eliot Morrison, second by Henry Steele Commager. Morrison didn’t see the need to have a picture on every page, or side bars, or short choppy paragraphs, one fact per. Reading him was a pleasure, not work. We hardly ever discussed the book in class, and we all got 4s and 5s on the test.

Want to know why textbooks suck today? My wife was working on a few chapters of a biology textbook. She was given a strict word limit, and a long list of topics that had to be included in each chapter. That gives just enough room for very short transitions between subjects. The history texts look like they were written using the same algorithm.

[smiling_bandit]

@Manda JO

As far as women in general being sucky teachers–which seems to be what you are implying, which, as a female teacher, it’s a bit hard not to be offended by–teaching is a female-dominated profession.

This thread is, on my end, a prospective, probing look at what we ought to do better and how we ought to do it better. Since you did not, apparently, read what I wrote:

@smiling bandit

While I hope it’s just my experience, I do wonder if men simply are more interested in those subjects.

I believe it is not yet a crime to suggest that, possibly, men and women have different interests. I have found very, very few young ladies with much interest in math, although they are quite often very skilled at doing it. And I wonder whether this is just convention, or if it has a bigger meaning of sex-linked differences. I believe there are important mental and emotional differences between men and women, and I do not particularly care who objects. I believe it’s a fact, however much it may make us uncomfortable.

Likewise, I had plenty of male teachers to look at. I certainly found them more engaging. However, it is certainly possible that given individuals will learn better under either male or female instruction, and the matter is less related to the teacher’s sex than the student’s personaility. How can we developed this into a plan of action?

We could for example, look at a large number of teachers, create a universal test for their students after they study the same material, and then correlate test scores. Recording teaching sessions and then looking for links in the data, as well as self-reported and other-reported student attitudes might help.

@mswas

The point is education is often taught in terms of disconnected facts. History for instance makes no attempt to connect the student to their own place in history. They are expected to memorize names, places and dates. That’s it, that’s the extent of the history class.

I hear that. The funny thing is that it’s quite pointless to do it that way. By high school, certainly, and probably even earlier, history instruction should be more in-depth. It can overlap on both ends, but it needs to really explain the important details and how certain events were connected.

It should also avoid the Inevitable Fallacy (it’s the fallacy of inevitability, not that the fallacy is inevitable). That is, that history couldn’t have happened any other way and everything is set. People matter; ordinary people and leaders, and both have had a profound impact on human history. People made choices for certain reasons, and some of them were stupid and some of them were right and some of them were silly. But they made choices.

[MichaelQReilly]

@mswas

The point is education is often taught in terms of disconnected facts. History for instance makes no attempt to connect the student to their own place in history. They are expected to memorize names, places and dates. That’s it, that’s the extent of the history class. They are not taught the notion of narratives let alone the idea of competing narratives. Underlying that though is a general lack of critical thinking skills. People should be playing Logical Fallacies Bingo in Junior High school. It’s criminal that students are not taught anatomy courses. In gym no one is taught how to actually excercise properly. There is no focus on teaching proper body mechanics to teach uncoordinated kids to move more fluidly, or teach proper posture. Most teachers simply are not smart enough to teach outside of the test. The tests are designed around nerfing the ability of stupid teachers to mess up the curriculum and teach kids things that are just downright wrong. They require of them certain facts. We are taught that those facts are immutable. As with history we are not taught that the stuff in the text book can be contested and is largely debated in academia. Students should be taught from the outset about the debates that occur, how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I’m a former history teacher who has tons of issue with the profession and the way schools of education work. But I can assure that no moderately competent history teacher thinks or teaches like this anymore.

[smiling_bandit]

@MichaelQReilly

I’m a former history teacher who has tons of issue with the profession and the way schools of education work. But I can assure that no moderately competent history teacher thinks or teaches like this anymore.

That’s an awfully qualified sentence.

[Anne_Neville]

@mswas

The point is education is often taught in terms of disconnected facts. History for instance makes no attempt to connect the student to their own place in history. They are expected to memorize names, places and dates. That’s it, that’s the extent of the history class. They are not taught the notion of narratives let alone the idea of competing narratives.

See James Loewen’s excellent book Lies My Teacher Told Me for some reasons why that is. Basically, attempting to connect students to their own place in history is controversial, especially if the students are non-white or lower than middle-class. Controversy means fewer textbook sales.

Underlying that though is a general lack of critical thinking skills. People should be playing Logical Fallacies Bingo in Junior High school.

I agree, there should be a course in basic logic and critical thinking somewhere in K-12 education.

I also think there should be a course in personal finance. Stuff like how credit cards, mortgages, and car loans work. Teach them the basics of how to avoid some common financial scams.

In gym no one is taught how to actually excercise properly. There is no focus on teaching proper body mechanics to teach uncoordinated kids to move more fluidly, or teach proper posture.

I think gym classes should be tracked, just like English, math, and science classes are (or don’t they do that any more?). I think it’s terrible that they put the really athletic kids in the same gym classes with the uncoordinated ones. It’s really discouraging to the uncoordinated kids, and means that the more athletic kids have a chance to pick on them.

I’d also like to see some gym classes that don’t focus so much on team sports. Stuff like dance, weightlifting, or running is going to be more useful to the kids who, for whatever reason, aren’t going to be on any sports teams.

[DrCube]

Dare I say that schools and teachers differ? That your experience may not be representative?

My biggest problems with education today (based solely on my experience and not intended to fault the institution in general) are:

1. Students are rarely held back in the lower grades, and never skipped ahead. An extra year of school (or graduating a year early) is a huge incentive to get kids to study and do their homework.

2. Schools focus more on discipline and safety than actually teaching and helping kids learn.

3. Teachers don’t make enough money and work too hard, often having very little input on the material or the lesson plan. I would love to teach kids, but guess what? I have to support a family and $30,000 a year isn’t going to cut it, especially if somebody else is going to force me to teach a certain way.

Let the teachers use the teaching methods they have experience and success with, not some “expert’s” opinion. And as long as there are still highly-paid bureaucrat paper pushers sitting on their ass down at the DMV, the teachers aren’t making enough money.

[Bridget_Burke]

@smiling bandit

…I believe it is not yet a crime to suggest that, possibly, men and women have different interests. I have found very, very few young ladies with much interest in math, although they are quite often very skilled at doing it. And I wonder whether this is just convention, or if it has a bigger meaning of sex-linked differences. I believe there are important mental and emotional differences between men and women, and I do not particularly care who objects. I believe it’s a fact, however much it may make us uncomfortable…

Well, since you’re one of those science-minded male people–perhaps you can present some data. Just stating “a fact” won’t convince anybody.

All my elementary teachers were female. Some were excellent, some were definitely not.

Secondary education included a pretty good Algebra II teacher (female) & an excellent Geometry teacher (male). My Biology I teacher was female & one of my favorite teachers, ever. She was bright & enthusiastic; so I signed up for Biology II. However, health problems prevented her from teaching that class. Instead, we had a teacher who spent most of his time coaching. He was abysmal.

For Chemistry, the teacher was incomprehensible. And male.

Of course, all this is merely anecdotal. But you’ve presented nothing but your opinion. (Pretty misleading thread title, too.)

[Llama_Llogophile]

@Anne Neville

I think gym classes should be tracked, just like English, math, and science classes are (or don’t they do that any more?). I think it’s terrible that they put the really athletic kids in the same gym classes with the uncoordinated ones. It’s really discouraging to the uncoordinated kids, and means that the more athletic kids have a chance to pick on them.

I’d also like to see some gym classes that don’t focus so much on team sports. Stuff like dance, weightlifting, or running is going to be more useful to the kids who, for whatever reason, aren’t going to be on any sports teams.

I’ve posted about Physical Education before, having been a PE teacher. There’s a lot wrong with that subject, but there are places doing it right.

Good PE programs do get away from the team sports model, and teach lifetime activities like roller blading, wellness, canoeing, etc. Trouble is, those programs are few and far between.

And PE has shot itself in the foot by being more concerned with after-school athletics. PE teachers are generally expected to coach, which I think is a big problem. Coaching takes a TON of time and energy, and I don’t think anyone can be an effective teacher with that much extra happening. I know I couldn’t.

But that is what the public sees and largely demands - good sports teams. I feel this ultimately leads to poor to PE teaching, and disenfranchising of those who don’t participate in athletics.

I worked in a good PE program, but eventually the nonsense crept up on me too. The kicker came when I went to a conference and saw a major leader in the field proclaim that the HS Physical Education model had largely failed and should be done away with.

That was a stunning statement coming from this person, and I realized he was right and it was time for me to go.

I sometimes think I’d like to return if the field changes. So my main contribution to this thread is the following:

There are good teachers out there who are fed up, and they are leaving the field as I did (I can provide a cite on this if you’d like). If a decision is made to let teachers use their professional judgement and stop micro-managing them with NCLB-type legislation, things might improve.

[The_Man_In_Black]

@Bridget Burke

Well, since you’re one of those science-minded male people–perhaps you can present some data. Just stating “a fact” won’t convince anybody.

All my elementary teachers were female. Some were excellent, some were definitely not.

Secondary education included a pretty good Algebra II teacher (female) & an excellent Geometry teacher (male). My Biology I teacher was female & one of my favorite teachers, ever. She was bright & enthusiastic; so I signed up for Biology II. However, health problems prevented her from teaching that class. Instead, we had a teacher who spent most of his time coaching. He was abysmal.

For Chemistry, the teacher was incomprehensible. And male.

Of course, all this is merely anecdotal. But you’ve presented nothing but your opinion. (Pretty misleading thread title, too.)

He did say it was just his experience. You guys are attacking him for stating what he observed. It is most likley not his fault he had problems with female teachers. He is just saying this is what happened to him, and is wondering if it is the norm.

[Algher]

Everyone thinks that they understand education, because they went to school. However, teaching is a hell of a lot harder than it seems, as I learned. I have taught at the graduate level, and also had a few hours with the elementary and middle school set as a volunteer.

Damn, it can be rough.

With that preamble, my addition to the debate:

1. We need to have a tests. I, for example, hated Calculus. If my son TAKES calculus, I will not be able to judge his achievement. I like standardized tests because it lets me know if my son is hitting a level of competency against a standardized set of measures. There is nothing wrong with teaching to the test IF the test is made well.

2. Parents need to be involved. If they are not, there is little the teacher can do.

3. The teachers’s unions exist to serve the teachers, not the students. This is no different from any other worker group - the FIRST mission is to take care of the membership. I am NOT saying that teachers, as individuals, do not want to improve education, etc. However, I will say that there are times that the union works to the detriment of education (protecting bad teachers, for example).

4. Society has changed, and it has hurt the teaching profession. When I was a boy, the options for women were still limited by society. Teaching, nursing and office support were known as the pink collar workforce. Very smart, driven women would go into teaching for lack of other opportunities. Today, those same women are not as limited. My wife’s mother was a teacher - earning teacher of the year awards at the state level. My wife is a professor, her sister is an attorney. 25 years ago, they both would have become amazing teachers. I believe that the talent pool for teaching has been diluted thanks to more opportunities for women. We need to respond to this by making teaching MORE attractive, so that the talent pool can improve. There are some GREAT teachers, but there are also some less than great based on my observation of my kid’s classrooms.

5. A follow-on to 4 - how do we get more second career professionals into teaching? I have two friends who made some serious money in tech, and then retired to teaching. We need to convince more people to do this, by making the path obvious and attractive. A specialized Master’s program for professionals with 25 years of experience, for example. half-day schedules made available.

[smiling_bandit]

@The Man In Black

He did say it was just his experience. You guys are attacking him for stating what he observed. It is most likley not his fault he had problems with female teachers. He is just saying this is what happened to him, and is wondering if it is the norm.

Exactly, thank you. I would like the issue to be studied. I think the next great revolution in education will be tailored education to individual needs.

Going off Algher’s notes, I do think we need some kind of standardized testing, though it need not be national. Without, we’re basically trying to guess what problems exist. And while bad test won’t help, a good one cannot just be “taught to”. Students have to know and understand the material. Heck, in everyday life the teachers write the tests themselves, but no-one, to my knowledge, ever suggests that these are worthless measures of acheivement.

Second idea off Algher’s notes: there are probably a lot of smart, energetic professionals who could teach effectively for relatively low pay if it were terated as a part-time, semi-retired position. We might have assistants from among retirees who want to be useful and wanted (and hey, maybe make a little money on the side). And there are a lot of lawyers or businesspeople who may have made a good amount of money but decided to leave their profesions for other work. They might be a huge, great pool of talent to draw from.

[Bridget_Burke]

@The Man In Black

He did say it was just his experience. You guys are attacking him for stating what he observed. It is most likley not his fault he had problems with female teachers. He is just saying this is what happened to him, and is wondering if it is the norm.

He’s not exactly wondering. He’s made up his mind.

I believe there are important mental and emotional differences between men and women, and I do not particularly care who objects. I believe it’s a fact, however much it may make us uncomfortable.

[MandaJo]

@Voyager

You are so right! I went through both my kids history books, and they were dreadful. My older daughter was in an AP history class, and she still didn’t really learn anything. We bought her a good, and long, American history book. She read it, and got a 5 on the test.
When I was in AP history we read “The Growth of the American Republic,” first volume by Samuel Eliot Morrison, second by Henry Steele Commager. Morrison didn’t see the need to have a picture on every page, or side bars, or short choppy paragraphs, one fact per. Reading him was a pleasure, not work. We hardly ever discussed the book in class, and we all got 4s and 5s on the test.

Want to know why textbooks suck today? My wife was working on a few chapters of a biology textbook. She was given a strict word limit, and a long list of topics that had to be included in each chapter. That gives just enough room for very short transitions between subjects. The history texts look like they were written using the same algorithm.

The problem with history is the sheer volume of it. AP World History is the history of the entire world, from the stone age to the present. AP US covers the United States in it’s entirety. Often, the teachers teaching these classes have students who are reading signifigantly below grade level (yes, even in AP classes) and so giving them an interesting, complex, sophisticated survey book is not an option. They can’t understand it. A good history teacher can bring in flashes of depth, but the current model is breadth. If you want to study alternate theories of the Salem Witchcraft trials or get a nuanced picture of how the Constitution was developed, you’ve gotta write off the War of 1812 and the Gilded Age. But whenever you suggest that, people freak out.

[Algher]

@Manda JO

The problem with history is the sheer volume of it. AP World History is the history of the entire world, from the stone age to the present. AP US covers the United States in it’s entirety. Often, the teachers teaching these classes have students who are reading signifigantly below grade level (yes, even in AP classes) and so giving them an interesting, complex, sophisticated survey book is not an option. They can’t understand it. A good history teacher can bring in flashes of depth, but the current model is breadth. If you want to study alternate theories of the Salem Witchcraft trials or get a nuanced picture of how the Constitution was developed, you’ve gotta write off the War of 1812 and the Gilded Age. But whenever you suggest that, people freak out.

History books are also driven by the market. It is expensive to create and publish a textbook. Many publishers write to make sure that they can sell into two key states - Texas and California. Apparently (sorry - foggy memory of an article on the subject, so if you object I can try my Google-fu) those two states are some of the strictest, but if you nail their requirements you get the whole state. That gives you the volume to then hit the rest of the US.

When we get into what should be taught in US history, we get into a huge debate. Lynn Cheney was the head of a group trying to determine that, and it failed. I remember a list going out that left off Robert E Lee. Minority groups do not want to be glossed over or ignored. The military guys want to be recognized. The labor unions expect their area to be covered. The Native Americans demand that the book shows how they got screwed. The Christians expect you to cover the strong Christian nature of our nation at its founding. The philosphers want you to bring up Rome, Athens, and other Western Culture memes that were here at the founding.

Writing a history book, and then a standardized test, to make even a simply majority happy can not be easy.

Edit - here is a comment on US history textbooks:

The second limitation has come through textbooks. Textbooks play a leading, though diminishing, role in the instruction of American history in high school. Writers from Frances Fitzgerald to James Loewen already have provided lengthy critics of the book’s shortcomings (4). The power of Texas and California to pressure sales-hungry New York publishers into changing the content is also well known. Teachers often overcome these problems by using supplemental reading such as that by Howard Zinn, although in many communities the selection of that particular author would raise some hackles.

http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2005may/morris.html

[MandaJo]

@smiling bandit

This thread is, on my end, a prospective, probing look at what we ought to do better and how we ought to do it better. Since you did not, apparently, read what I wrote:

Honestly, I suspect this is way too broad for an productive discussion: we might make more progress if it were narrowed a bit.

I believe it is not yet a crime to suggest that, possibly, men and women have different interests. I have found very, very few young ladies with much interest in math, although they are quite often very skilled at doing it. And I wonder whether this is just convention, or if it has a bigger meaning of sex-linked differences. I believe there are important mental and emotional differences between men and women, and I do not particularly care who objects. I believe it’s a fact, however much it may make us uncomfortable.

Likewise, I had plenty of male teachers to look at. I certainly found them more engaging. However, it is certainly possible that given individuals will learn better under either male or female instruction, and the matter is less related to the teacher’s sex than the student’s personaility. How can we developed this into a plan of action?

Well, I think your experience is limited and non-typical: our (female) AP Calc teacher has a 97% career pass rate on the AP exam. Our female AP Chem, AP Stat, and AP Biology teachers all have pass rates at or above the national average and we are an urban school with a majority of students classified as economically disadvantaged.

As far as a plan of action, I think it’s unworkable to try and match students with the sex/age/race of teacher that they work best with–for one thing, students themselves change over time, and so what works one year may not work the next. Furthermore, scheduling is enough of a nightmare as it is.

I also don’t think this sort of matching would be desirable. Students will have to learn with and work with all sorts of people throughout their life, and putting them in such a controled enviroment doesn’t seem like a favor.
[/quote]

We could for example, look at a large number of teachers, create a universal test for their students after they study the same material, and then correlate test scores. Recording teaching sessions and then looking for links in the data, as well as self-reported and other-reported student attitudes might help.

So if your universal test showed that black females as a group taught geometry better than white males as a group and Asian males as a group were more effective Chemistry teachers as a group, then what would you sugest be done with that knowledge? Teachers are hired as individuals, not as representitives. I think that’d be a poor hiring practice, even if it were legal.

I hear that. The funny thing is that it’s quite pointless to do it that way. By high school, certainly, and probably even earlier, history instruction should be more in-depth. It can overlap on both ends, but it needs to really explain the important details and how certain events were connected.

It should also avoid the Inevitable Fallacy (it’s the fallacy of inevitability, not that the fallacy is inevitable). That is, that history couldn’t have happened any other way and everything is set. People matter; ordinary people and leaders, and both have had a profound impact on human history. People made choices for certain reasons, and some of them were stupid and some of them were right and some of them were silly. But they made choices.

See my earlier post. What are you ready to give up to get depth?