Improving Education

[mswas]

A good PE program would IMO teach:

1. Body Mechanics
2. Multiple Years of Anatomy and Physiology along with the Science Dept.
3. Nutrition
4. Proper excercise techniques for Proprioception, Ranges of Motion, for both flexibility and muscle building.

Right now PE classes don’t really teach you anything. If they had anatomy classes whose curriculum was coordinated with the Gym class, that would help them remain healthy for their entire lives.

Maybe start with The Skeletal system in 7th grade, Myology/Kinesiology in 8th grade, Internal systems in 9th grade Circulatory/Digestive/Respiratory/Urinary, control systems in 10th Neurology/Endocrine

[guizot]

@Voyager

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.

That’s a micro perspective. You also have to consider the politics of content interacting with the bureaucracy of state ed policy interacting with the profit motive of increasingly expanding publishers consisting of writing by committee interacting and creating as frequently as possible new texts or editions to “keep up with technology” (i.e., “Somehow get the Internet in there. We don’t care how. Just get the Internet in there.”), and on and on. Administrators typically have so little imagination that they really think the textbook teaches the class, not the teacher.

I was once the chair of a textbook approval committee for LAUSD (second largest district in the country), and parameters were so byzantine that most of the texts just blurred together into undifferentiated mush.

[Llama_Llogophile]

@mswas

A good PE program would IMO teach:

1. Body Mechanics
2. Multiple Years of Anatomy and Physiology along with the Science Dept.
3. Nutrition
4. Proper excercise techniques for Proprioception, Ranges of Motion, for both flexibility and muscle building.

You’ve just described a typical program prospective PE teachers go through at university. There is a lot of science - it’s what weeds many candidates out of these programs.

@mswas

Right now PE classes don’t really teach you anything.

I’m highly critical of PE as it is currently taught, but I can’t support such a sweepting generalization. Certainly, you’re correct in some cases. But the good programs are indeed teaching something valuable.

@mswas

If they had anatomy classes whose curriculum was coordinated with the Gym class, that would help them remain healthy for their entire lives.

Maybe start with The Skeletal system in 7th grade, Myology/Kinesiology in 8th grade, Internal systems in 9th grade Circulatory/Digestive/Respiratory/Urinary, control systems in 10th Neurology/Endocrine

Here you have described a good Health / PE program, as they currently exist.

All the pieces are in place to teach PE properly. IMHO, athletics is a big obstacle, as well as an overall lack of valuation of PE both from outside and INSIDE the discipline.

[Anne_Neville]

@Mach Tuck

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.

This probably has something to do with why PE classes are so oriented toward team sports, as well. The school has sports teams, and the teams have coaches who are also PE teachers. The coaches’/PE teachers’ knowledge and interests are presumably oriented toward the sports they coach. They know how to coach softball or football or whatever, not how to teach aerobics.

@smiling bandit

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.

When you present history as inevitable, you can portray everything that happened as having been good (as history books generally do). You don’t have to ask whether the choices people made were right or wrong. If you don’t portray the course of history as inevitable, questions about the rightness of those choices come up, and those are controversial.

@Algher

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.

A lot of these groups want to see the stuff they believe and were taught in school taught to their kids, even if we now know that what they learned in school was factually inaccurate or was a biased picture of what actually went on. Stuff like how Columbus proved the world was round…

[mswas]

Mach Tuck I’ve never heard of a PE program that works like that. What I had as a “Health” class was pretty pitiful.

Athletics and PE should be absolutely separated from one another. Teach PE like that and it will benefit the athletes by teaching them how to train properly. Let Athletics remain an after-school or elective option.

[Algher]

@Anne Neville

A lot of these groups want to see the stuff they believe and were taught in school taught to their kids, even if we now know that what they learned in school was factually inaccurate or was a biased picture of what actually went on. Stuff like how Columbus proved the world was round…

No just wrong or biased - but when there is limited time in the classroom, what gets cut? If we go back to the debate on the national history standards from the 90s, we find a great example of the problems:

    One of the most often mentioned
    subjects, with 19 references, is McCarthy and McCarthyism. The Ku
    Klux Klan gets its fair share, too, with 17. As for individuals,
    Harriet Tubman, an African-American who helped rescue slaves by way
    of the underground railroad, is mentioned six times. Two white
    males who were contemporaries of Tubman, Ulysses S. Grant and
    Robert E. Lee, get one and zero mentions, respectively. Alexander
    Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and the
    Wright brothers make no appearance at all.

This is Lynn Cheney’s WSJ editorial - but the debate is captured in many places, I picked up this bit here: H-Teach | H-Net

Now, I am NOT necessarily agreeing with Darth Cheney’s wife. I AM, however, stating that something gets cut every year when room is made for a bit more information that has either been created (as our nation ages - my textbook certainly did not cover the Iraq war!), or has been discovered (as white house records are made public), or has been found to be more important (a completely subjective issue).

[MichaelQReilly]

@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.

I’m not sure that you were directing this at me, but I agree 100% with your points.

[burundi]

A huge part of the problem is that teachers have to put up with a phenomenal amount of crap. Not so much from the students, but from the administration. My husband is an elementary school teacher, and my jaw regularly drops at the mind-boggling inanity of the directives that come from his principal and Central Office. If my husband taught according to the schedule the administration has set up for him, he would have 15 minutes a week to teach social studies or science. Teachers are not treated as competent professionals by their superiors. Add to this the low pay, and you get two kinds of people who stay in the field long-term: teachers who stay because they love the kids and teachers who stay because it’s a state job with guaranteed benefits.

Originally posted by DrCube
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.

Exactly.

[Llama_Llogophile]

@burundi

A huge part of the problem is that teachers have to put up with a phenomenal amount of crap. Not so much from the students, but from the administration. My husband is an elementary school teacher, and my jaw regularly drops at the mind-boggling inanity of the directives that come from his principal and Central Office. If my husband taught according to the schedule the administration has set up for him, he would have 15 minutes a week to teach social studies or science. Teachers are not treated as competent professionals by their superiors. Add to this the low pay, and you get two kinds of people who stay in the field long-term: teachers who stay because they love the kids and teachers who stay because it’s a state job with guaranteed benefits.
Exactly.

All of this is exactly why I departed the field. I never got tired of teaching kids, and it wasn’t (for the most part) about the money. It was the working conditions.

Administrators were over-involved with minutia, and under-involved in issues of importance. But the kicker for me was micro-managing of teaching style and curriculum.

Now I don’t expect to work without oversight, and I understand how a chain of command works. But that chain doesn’t need to be looped around my neck.

There seemed to be little trust in teachers’s professionalism. In my state, one needed a master’s degree for permanent certification. I never felt there was much acknowledgement of that preparation.

[smiling_bandit]

@Manda JO

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

(Tihs refers to history teaching.)

A lot, actually. Something I saw repeatedly was an atempt to stuff all of human history or all of US history into a single school year. Then NEXT school year was the exact same thing - just a little more detail. Maybe. It taught most students nothing and pushed no one to deveop their knowledge. Essentially imagine if mathematics started, every year, with addition and proceeded down to long division, and never got to anything else.

In high school, certainly, they need to drop the nonsense idea that you can cover that much. Let people focus on much more detailed bites of history. And in large high schools, a choice of Early America, Civil War, Progressive Era, early 20th century, and middle-late 2th century wouldn’t be a bad thing. Even if they didn’t offer all those sections, by high school the kids ought to have a good idea of histy in general. They don’t need to constantly go over the same material, taught poorly.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

@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.

From here:

One of the most interesting differences appear in the way men and women estimate time, judge speed of things, carry out mental mathematical calculations, orient in space and visualize objects in three dimensions, etc. In all these tasks, women and men are strikingly different, as they are too in the way their brains process language. This may account, scientists say, for the fact that there are many more male mathematicians, airplane pilots, bush guides, mechanical engineers, architects and race car drivers than female ones.

[lobotomyboy63]

I’m a teacher. What would I change?

The OP says:

“Most public school education IS in fact pointless or has done a poor job of getting kids to understand it’s importance.”

I disagree. Cognitively they can see that if they study hard and become a doctor, they’ll have a nice life…but that doesn’t make them willing to do the work.

I think that the importance of education is a value that has to be taught first at home. I can preach all day to them about what an education can do for them, but if the parent doesn’t back me up, I’ve got nothing. In fact, that should be pushed early and often and forever at home.

I saw a documentary on TV about tests they give in Japan to six year-old kids. These tests determine much of the direction their lives will take, like what schools they can later get into. One six year-old committed suicide after bombing the test.

If I only get one thing to change, it would be for parents to instill the importance in their kids, and mean it by following up. Last week, I met with a parent and her son. I had a copy of the latest report card. She looked at it for a long time. “It’s the first one she’s seen this year,” he told me. HUH? We give report cards to students with the understanding that they take them home. He simply doesn’t and she simply lets him get away with it.
More thoughts…

1. In other countries, they separate students before high school…some go to a trade school, others go to college-bound prep. It’s silly to make everyone take heavy academic courses when their interest and abilities lie in things like cosmetology and carpentry. They’re forced to learn subjects that are useless to them, and the class is dragged down by them.

2. I’d cut it out already with the standardized testing that loops a noose around the teacher’s neck. If your job depended on it, you’d slow down until every last kid got it, and meanwhile some got it a long time ago and want to jump out the window. That would almost be okay if the slow kid was really trying but more often than not, they simply don’t care to get it. Then we’re bad teachers if we don’t have the magic wand to motivate the kid.

In general, the solution to educational problems always seems to be that the teacher isn’t smart enough or working hard enough, etc. IMO that’s because you can’t legislate parenting. Learning is collaboration—co, labor: if the kid isn’t doing the work, then what?

3. Parents need to be a lot more involved with their kids. A kindergarten teacher would probably tell you that getting the kids to behave has become the primary focus, not teaching them academic concepts. There’s just so much disciplinary static that the profession has become an awful lot of babysitting.

Schools throw new approaches out there, with technology and experiential learning and all that, but it still comes down to the student being willing to follow our lead. I’m always hesitant to call parents because sometimes, they claim I’m picking on their kid (like I don’t have enough to do already) and further enable the bad behavior.

4. Non-teachers as teachers: sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve known some who are natural teachers; I remember one getting run out by the students after only four weeks.

If I had to pick a bias in this board, I would generally say that it doesn’t take into account the slower students. If I taught at the pace I wanted my kid to learn at, I’d bury half the class. They’d fail, I’d be on the carpet, etc.

BTW some people think private schools are great and point to their success stories.

1. They can cherry pick who they want; public schools can’t.
2. By virtue of the fact that their parents are dishing out big money, you can bet their parents EXPECT success from their children.
3. Some may also say this effect exists in college. I was a pretty smart kid I guess, but I never pushed myself till college. Why? I was paying for it.

[mswas]

@lobotomyboy63

1. In other countries, they separate students before high school…some go to a trade school, others go to college-bound prep. It’s silly to make everyone take heavy academic courses when their interest and abilities lie in things like cosmetology and carpentry. They’re forced to learn subjects that are useless to them, and the class is dragged down by them.

And in Europe their track is fairly immutable at 14. I am certainly glad that I have the ability to change my career track at 30. I wasn’t as into intellectual topics at 18 as I was at 12 or 28.

2. I’d cut it out already with the standardized testing that loops a noose around the teacher’s neck. If your job depended on it, you’d slow down until every last kid got it, and meanwhile some got it a long time ago and want to jump out the window. That would almost be okay if the slow kid was really trying but more often than not, they simply don’t care to get it. Then we’re bad teachers if we don’t have the magic wand to motivate the kid.

Not blaming you. It’s not your fault, if you do the best you can, then that’s the best that can be expected. But you’ve pointed out a lot of the problems yourself.

3. Parents need to be a lot more involved with their kids. A kindergarten teacher would probably tell you that getting the kids to behave has become the primary focus, not teaching them academic concepts. There’s just so much disciplinary static that the profession has become an awful lot of babysitting.

Schools throw new approaches out there, with technology and experiential learning and all that, but it still comes down to the student being willing to follow our lead. I’m always hesitant to call parents because sometimes, they claim I’m picking on their kid (like I don’t have enough to do already) and further enable the bad behavior.

Absolutely, as you pointed out though, egalitarianism is the problem, and there is little to be done about it. I do not intend to send my daughter to public school. The goal is to setup a homeschool co-op with several other families.

4. Non-teachers as teachers: sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve known some who are natural teachers; I remember one getting run out by the students after only four weeks.

I ran out a teacher in HS, I can sympathize.

If I had to pick a bias in this board, I would generally say that it doesn’t take into account the slower students. If I taught at the pace I wanted my kid to learn at, I’d bury half the class. They’d fail, I’d be on the carpet, etc.

Yea, well the smart kids got held back by the dumb kids. It’s kind of irritating. I’ve spent my last few years playing catchup. I wish I had a better foundation, but as you said it’s as much the result of my parents as the school. shrug

I was genuinely good at Math. I did the problems in my head until the 10th grade, and failed 11th grade Algebra II because the way it was taught just seemed so pointless. 30 proofs that took up half a page each every night? Ridiculous. Why not just give 5 problems and make sure we do them perfectly. Also, the teacher needing you to follow the formula exaclty the way she wants you to so she can grade it by rote.

BTW some people think private schools are great and point to their success stories.

1. They can cherry pick who they want; public schools can’t.
2. By virtue of the fact that their parents are dishing out big money, you can bet their parents EXPECT success from their children.
3. Some may also say this effect exists in college. I was a pretty smart kid I guess, but I never pushed myself till college. Why? I was paying for it.

All of those things are understandable, but understanding why it works that way doesn’t make it seem better.

[lobotomyboy63]

I’m not offended, mswas. Just thought a view from my side of the desk might be useful to the conversation.

The thing that has always been true, I think, is that when parents expect their kids to succeed and communicate that to them regularly, follow up on it, and so on, the kids do tend to achieve.

[MandaJo]

@smiling bandit

(Tihs refers to history teaching.)

A lot, actually. Something I saw repeatedly was an atempt to stuff all of human history or all of US history into a single school year. Then NEXT school year was the exact same thing - just a little more detail. Maybe. It taught most students nothing and pushed no one to deveop their knowledge. Essentially imagine if mathematics started, every year, with addition and proceeded down to long division, and never got to anything else.

In high school, certainly, they need to drop the nonsense idea that you can cover that much. Let people focus on much more detailed bites of history. And in large high schools, a choice of Early America, Civil War, Progressive Era, early 20th century, and middle-late 2th century wouldn’t be a bad thing. Even if they didn’t offer all those sections, by high school the kids ought to have a good idea of histy in general. They don’t need to constantly go over the same material, taught poorly.

That’s not really how they do it any more: in Texas, as least, it’s State History (7th), US History, Colonial-1877 (8th), World Geography (mostly current events/current state of the world, not just what country is where) (9th), World History (10th), US History, 1877-present (11th, unless you do AP, then it’s Colonial-present), and Government/Economics (12th). So even not overlapping, there really isn’t room for any sort of detail.

[DrCube]

@MichaelQReilly

I’m not sure that you were directing this at me, but I agree 100% with your points.

Sorry, I should have clarified. My first sentence was directed at the OP. The rest was my perspective on education.

However bad education is as a whole, there are some schools that are doing everything right and lots that are doing some things right.

A lot of points being brought up in this thread are simply not relevant to my personal school experience; for example, history. My high school had two years of in depth US history plus an elective “Western Civilization” class with three semester-long surveys: “Stone age to the Greeks”, “Greece, Rome and the early middle ages”, and “Middle ages to Napoleon”. Plus a few other niche history classes you could choose. It was a good program.

On the other hand, my school would kick you out of class for wearing a trenchcoat, a hat or a t-shirt with a picture of the Budweiser frogs. And all you had to do to graduate was show up sober to the majority of your classes.

I guess I’m saying that everyone here has their own pet problem that plagues their school. But very few of those issues are universal.