Is the classroom an outdated teaching method?

Great Debates
21

Good thoughts on how to do computer teaching and why, but here’s what I’ve seen in my school system:

  1. School systems spends lots of $$ on computers, equips them with software, gets the labs ready.
  2. Classes are created in which students are to learn on computers.
  3. Teachers know nothing about computers and don’t know how to help with technical problems.
  4. Teachers set classes free to learn. Students goof off. software is badly designed. Students learn nothing.
  5. Student either fails class or passes with little knowledge gained. Student either goes on to take a “real” course and starts over from scratch or moves to the next level of instruction and fails miserably.
  6. Polititions continue to pledge more money for computerized classrooms.

I’m not saying it CAN’T work, I’m just saying I haven’t seen it work too well so far.

As for discussion not being useful until you know something, say the graduate level, pshaw. How many solid facts do YOU remember from high school? Or college for that matter? What you remember is learning how to think, and that involves anylyzing things, and that involves discussing them. I’ve forgotten most of my literature class and most of my math class, but I retained a love of poetry and an appreciation for the beauty of a simple algebraic word problem.

22

tripoverbiff summed up the situation fairly well. In my school district they attempted to introduce a course that was taught completly by computer, but had a teacher wandering around to help out. I was just graduating at the time, and was a bit of an outside observer, as I co-ran the lab in which the classes were taking place. My father at the time was being forced to use this system in the highschool he taught in, so I also had feedback about it in that respect. This was a couple years ago, but I’m sure the results today would be similar.

The course in question is math, which would would think requires a fairly minimum amount of teacher participation, given a decently designed software package. You have nice graphs on the screen, video clips of things moving around for geometry lessons, a voice explaining it all so that the kid didn’t have to even read.

The results were disasterous. Without exception, every person who went into that course required some sort of remedial work afterwords. The reasons follow in no specific order.

  • The software wasn’t all that friendly. It was understandable, but an idiot couldn’t pick it up and used the thing.

  • With any computer product, there are going to be technical problems. These caused kids to lose access to their machine and as a result, get behind.

  • Not all people like computers! In fact, only a small percentage of people are at ease with them! This percentage is getting higher, of course, but it’s still low.

  • Kids these days (I love saying that) have an extremely small attention span. People who grew up with a steady diet of TV and computer games are used to seeing fast action and rapid succession of ideas when they look at a screen. Keeping a 15yr old interested in a boring “educational” program is an impossible task. Literally.

  • Even the most dedicated student working on a computer is going to need someone to ask a question to. Any teaching program is going to have to be able to explain anything in an almost unlimited amount of ways in order to be able to get through to everyone. This is the art of teaching, incidentally. The ability to digest information and explain it to ANY SINGLE PERSON is a way in which they are able to understand it. A computer can not do this.

  • A lab situation limits a teachers ability to help students. When you’re bent over a monitor helping a boy at point A, it’s hard to see the girl waving her hand at point B.

  • A lab situation reduced the ability of a teacher to maintain control over the class. Kids can hide behind CPUs and talk to their friends without a teacher knowing what’s going on.

  • Computers provide a very tempting source of entertainment. Why learn stuff when you could be playing quake? Kids are amazingly adept at sneaking software on to systems.

  • There are also very real money issues. I’m not sure about the states, but here in Canada we are getting less and less money for education. A new computer lab, or a computer for every student, is totally out of the question.
    Anyway, it didn’t work at the schools it was tried on. They’re attempting with next generation software, so we’ll see what happens. I’m not convinced that a computer will be able to come close to human interaction though. Remember, you didn’t just go to school to learn facts, you came to learn how to live in a society with other people, and to learn how to think.

-niggle

23

I would like to clarify some of my suggestions. It is true that keeping up with the cutting edge of computer technology can be very expensive but that is not what I’m suggesting for our school computers. To be specific I am suggesting that school funds be used to provide parents with vouchers to buy a very simple and specific type of computer. I know from reading computer mail-order catalogs that you can get a basic machine with a hard-drive, CD-ROM drive, keyboard, monitor, and 54K modem for under $500. What I am suggesting is a complete computer + operating system + software all in one specially designed package. I’ll call it a “teaching computer”. It will have to be portable but not like the ultra-thin battery powered ultra-expensive notebook computers adults use, it will be the size of a suitcase (with computers smaller=more expensive) and will have to use a flat panel display instead of a CRT. It will not need a battery or a cell-modem like laptops. The only reason it needs to be portable is so that a kid can take it with her from wherever she lives to wherever she goes to do schoolwork. Thus, it is obvious that the computer belongs to the student and is not school property and if the kid spills Elmer’s glue on her keyboard then her parents will need to buy a new keyboard, not the school system. This computer will have no floppy drive and the built in operating system will only run the school software, i.e. there will be no games, no internet browser, no fun stuff at all, and NO WAY for the user to put any new software on the machine. When the machine needs a software upgrade then the student will have to connect to the school’s server and download new software the way I download my ant-virus software upgrades. This computer and software are only designed for one purpose, to teach material off of CD-ROM’s and to connect to a school server for monitoring and upgrades. Thus, until the purpose of this system is changed it will never be obsolete.
The way the new school system will work is as follows:

K-4th grade: the school system will function almost exactly as it does now, students will attend classes with other members of their age group until they have learned the basics of reading and writing (both printing and cursive writing). When they have passed all of these grades and have passed an additional “computer proficiency exam” which will prove that they can read text, type, and operate a teaching computer (at least at a basic level) they will graduate to “home schooling”.

5-8th grades: the parents will be given a voucher to go out and purchase a special “teaching computer” which will be useless for any other purpose so no one will steal it and so the parents can’t use it to play games and surf the web. The hard drive will have special numbers recorded on it that are registered to a particular user (and are checked by the server upon every log-in) and the software will require a password to get started. Thus, if one kid breaks his computer he can’t steal somebody elses and use it as his. Once a computer is reported stolen it is completely useless.
Now that they have the machine they will buy a set of CD-ROM’s for their kid, these CD’s will be different for remedial, average, or advanced children. The parents will then have to find a safe place for their 10 year old kid to use his new computer, whether it be at home with a parent/baby-sitter or at a day care center or public library. These day care centers will be unlike current ones that care for babies, it will be more like a school in that the kids will have to bring their computers with them to a study hall with a hundred or more students per proctor. The only kids that have to go to these places are ones who have no parent or grandparent to supervise them at home, so it can’t possibly be as overcrowded and expensive as the current school system. The students will learn everything by reading it off their monitors (i.e. their reading skills will be superb by 8th grade), they will have to be supervised by the computer system and by their human caretakers to insure that they aren’t chatting or goofing off when they are supposed to be learning. The computer system will monitor their progress constantly so that the instant they start to fall behind schedule their parents can be notified. That is, if you don’t finish reading chapter 3 of American History and pass the computer test on this chapter by noon today then your parents get an automatic e-mail telling them that you are slacking off. This is infinitely better than the current month or two gap between a kid starting to fall behind and the parents getting a bad report card. At the end of each grade you will have to report to a physical school and take a series of final exams which will form 100% of your official grade as recorded in your permanent file. If you fail any test then you need to take that subject again until you pass the test.

9-12th grade and possibly beyond: 95% of everything you need to learn you will read off your monitor. The other 5% such as science labs, public speaking, debate class, art class, singing lessons…will have to be done at a traditional school. This 95% reduction in total classes will correspond to a 95% reduction in the total cost of the school system.

Note that gym class will be replaced by organized sports such as little league baseball, basketball, football, soccer, hockey, tennis, golf, volleyball or whatever else the kid shows an interest in and the parents are willing to pay for. (I for one hated gym class because they made us do all sorts of stuff that I sucked at and it was a huge embarrassment).

The total cost savings of this system over traditional schooling could be passed on the students. That is, if there is some tax dollars left over after implementing this program (and I think there would be once the initial costs have been recouped) they could be used to reward students who do well on their final exams giving them an incentive to do more than just pass.

24

Incidentally, you can check out the Stanford Gifted Youth program at:

http://www-epgy.stanford.edu/

It’s probably one of the closest examples to what is being discussed here.

25

All the money that would be wasted buying such a massive number of computers to take care of a minuscule part of the curriculum would be much better spent on hiring more teachers to reduce class size.

26

If you think that the equipment/software would never become obsolete, let me ask you why my community college believes that we “need” to upgrade every three years even though most of the faculty use their computers for

  1. word processing (not a whole lot of real advances, IMO, since I’ve started using computers about twenty years ago).
  2. e-mail (nost of which is junk)
  3. surfing the net (like I’m doing right now).

I’ve argued that we could get by on much cheaper computers for the most part. The response is that we “have to stay cutting edge.” I believe that would inevitably happen under Suramn Rex’s model.

Also, Rex, can you tell me how I teach my classes in theatre, public speaking, interpersonal communication, etc? I believe, based on over ten years experience as an actual teacher, that people tend to learn by doing, then by talking with each other, and somewhere way down the list by programmatic instruction by people who have never met them.

Bucky

27

As Matt said,

Get the class sizes down first. Effective supervision is essential before you can teach anything.

I’ve done enough work at night school and university on computors to know that much of the tutors time is spent trying to help students understand the software such as P-Spice and Matlab rather than teaching the subject matter.

The software was supposed to enable students to carry out design work and aid understanding but the reality was that these should not have been included in the course until familiarity with it had been accomplished first.

The tutors spent large amounts of time with individuals but could not possibly get round the whole group in the time available and there were only 14 of us, many of whom were computor literate and were using stuff like Autocad most every day of their lives at work.

The result of this misguided attempt to use computors as teachers instead of teachers as teachers was that only 7 of us made it through the relevant units.

When it comes to my education I really do not like being the subject of someone elses experiment, so would you be prepared to allow your children to do the same ?

Not many parents would.

28

It just struck me that, beyond the other problems brought up in this thread, there are health risks involved with a computer school. If children were required to spend hours a day studying with a computer for years on end then many would develop eyestrain, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc.

29

You may be right, there may be pressure to “stay cutting edge” if the demands being placed on the machines kept changing. My suggestion is not to use currently available PC’s to run a currently available operating system and special software. My suggestion was to use custom computers, with a custom operating system, with a custom software package. The cutting edge of the rest of the computer/software world will have no impact on this machine. It will be a tool designed for a specific purpose. In other words, when was the last time you upgraded the software (firmware actually) in your VCR or your microwave oven. My VCR is ten years old, it’s RAM space must be tiny compared to modern programmable VCR’s, yet I have no desire to upgrade it since it still does it’s only job.

If a kid wants instruction in theatre, public speaking, or interpersonal communications then she’s on her own since it won’t be part of the public school curriculum under my system.

30

You are quite correct, to avoid the sort of eye-strain that computer programmers suffer from in the workplace I would suggest that there be a 15 minute break in studying every 2 hours (or whatever OSHA requires) to insure that the kids are not staring at a screen all day. Implementing this break will be easy for a computer to do, it just turns off the monitor every 2 hours and displays a 15 minute countdown. As to carpel tunnel syndrome there will have to be a limit as to how much any course can require a kid to type in a day. Unlike computer programming learning is mostly reading (and watching short video clips etc) rather than typing. Essays will have to be typed and e-mailed to a grader but the standard multiple choice quizes at the end of each chapter will require minimal typing.

31

You are absolutely right there will be a significant learning curve with any new software package. The example you gave was of students who had one semester (15 weeks?) to figure out how to use a program they had never seen before to do a complex task they had never done before. Am I right in assuming that most students didn’t take the time to familiarize themselves with the software until the night before their first assignment was due? The exact same thing happened to me when I was given a matlab assignment. My suggestion is NOT to repeat the half-assed attempts at computer education that have failed in the past. I have read about (and experienced) having a computer program thrown into the curriculum at the last moment, to be used on a single course and never touched by the students again. It is invariably a disaster. This method of computer teaching assumes no learning curve. Let me ask you this, was it easy for you to use a word processor for the very first time. I remember my first time and it HURT. I hated it at first because it was so difficult but after a while I got better at it and it became so easy I would never consider doing it any other way. Oh, and I also got better at word processing :). Computer programs always have a learning curve, they can only pay off in saved time and effort if you keep using the same program for years (not weeks). I intend to start 5th graders out using a computer program to just read text. I’ll call it Reading Comprehension Course 1. This will familiarize them with the machine and give the school administrators a chance to measure a kid’s reading level and from that put the kid into remedial, average, or advanced courses. This assessment will, of course, be updated continuosly as a student either gets too far ahead or falls behind.

Did you appreciate the “experiment” in not having teachers beat children with paddles and rods to discipline them? There are still people out there who say “spare the rod and spoil the child”, are they right? It takes a certain amount of experimentation to improve any system and I am not suggesting the whole California school system be ditched in one day. I am suggesting that one class of 5th graders be given the opportunity to try this new form of education for one or two years. If it doesn’t work then we can either fix it and try again or ditch the whole idea. The only misguided effort would be to not try at all or to try another half-assed attempt at computer education.

32

So, will the same happen to:

music
studio art
physical education
home economics
shop
etc.

Why the choice of the fields you list? If it’s just because they can’t be taught on computer, that seems a poor rationale. Given that classes in communication fill three of employers’ top five stated needs and improve academic success across the board, excluding them seems pretty short-sighted.

As to not “needing” to update, schools will still do it to be able to tangibly show how they’re “improving.”

P.S. Those of us who teach interpersonal communication don’t make a plural of it; did you get a degree in “engineeringS”?

33

in my opinion most teachers could be replaced by well written books. LOL! there are 3 things going on in the schools, some education (not much), indoctrination (lots), and psychological conditioning to be subservient to authority. the schools propagate the european world-view. what idiot came up with the idea that europe and asia are TWO CONTINENTS when they are obviously a single land mass. so you will have to be careful how objective this education material is.

then there is the PRIORITY of information. we all have to make financial decisions after leaving highschool. plenty of people take on lots of debt, liabilities, paying for college. how many highschool students get any accounting or financial education. the book RICH DAD, POOR DAD says accounting is 5th grade arithmetic, so why isn’t some taught to everyone?

                                              Dal Timgar
34

You make a good point that a lot of things can’t be taught by computer but my curriculum would focus on:
the basics: reading, writing (i.e. typing, who uses handwriting in the business world anymore?) and arithmetic.
the sciences: geography, chemistry, physics, biology…
the social sciences: psychology, sociology…
the humanities: history, english lit., western cultures…
From everything that I have heard about how utterly horrific the test results are for current school children I can’t help but think that my system would be an improvement.

Not if the parents all have to go out and buy new teaching computers for all of their children and throw the old computers away when they still obviously get the job done. Even if the school district pays for the new machines the parents will still be inconvenienced for nothing.

This is not a sarcastic question: Why do people say they majored in communications not communication? Is this a different study than the interpersonal communication you teach?

35

You’re right, there is more to school than learning facts but I was hoping that my system would better prepare kids to work in the computerized business world of tomorrow. At the very least they would have to read at a reasonable level.

I agree that accounting should be added to the curriculum if at all possible. I suspect that a great many courses could be added to the standard high school requirements once the 9 period school day is abandoned. I suspect the course catalog most computer high schools will offer will be comparable to most present day colleges.

36

**

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Bucky
From everything that I have heard about how utterly horrific the test results are for current school children I can’t help but think that my system would be an improvement.

I have to disagree there. Part of the responsibilty for the poor test scores rests upon the parents’ shoulders. How many parents really go over their children’s homework with them in the evening? Not nearly as many as necessary. The other reason, I believe, is that many of these tests are ridiculously difficult. I live in MA, and the controversy over the MCAS tests rings on every day. The governor himself has been noted as saying the tests are necessary, but won’t try them out to placate the student protestors. I believe that a teaching curriculum based on an exam is not only annoying for the teacher, but detrimental to the educational development of the student. These students should be getting the basics right up through the end of high school. Students need review. I moved a great deal while I was in high school and completely missed grammar coverage. When I went to college, I had to meet with my professor on an individual basis to receive the assistance I needed. Computers don’t help much with individual assistance.

[quote]
Not if the parents all have to go out and buy new teaching computers for all of their children and throw the old computers away when they still obviously get the job done. Even if the school district pays for the new machines the parents will still be inconvenienced for nothing.

[quote]

Again, I have to mention that not all families are wealthy enough to pay for computers. Taxpayers (in states like NH, especially) have enough anger over what they pay their teachers; do you really think they will justify the funds for computers? Enough computers for each and every student in the school? I doubt it. Beginning teachers live barely above poverty level and they, too, have student loans to pay off. Ask any young teacher (who paid for his/her own education) how his/her credit is and I’m quite certain you will find that it is not good. It’s hard to pay rent, buy food and pay for student loans on pratically nothing. These young teachers often buy classroom materials out of pocket as well. Parents don’t always care and often feel that teachers make a “cushy” salary and ought to be paying for the classroom materials out of pocket.

I think that computers may be a great classroom tool, but it in no way makes up for the attention that a human being offers a student. For example, what computer is going to be able to intervene when a child is being abused at home? These are the real problems that teachers face. Human teachers offer guidance and assistance when some students have nowhere else to turn. Abused children are out there–more of them than the general public cares to notice. Those human teachers are often the ones who SEE the signs and are able to intervene on the child’s behalf. That’s just ONE example.

37

I think you’re right about the costs. My program would require an influx of cash (from the federal gov’t?) to the local school systems. I never claimed that it wouldn’t require significant start up funds, but in the long run I think computer schooling would be cheaper than traditional classroom teaching.

38

Computor-aided teaching might work if it were funded properly but, in the cynical world, politicians will use it as a means to cut budgets all the while lowering standards to appear to achieve improvements.

Not that it isn’t happening right now using conventional methods.

We have in the UK severe social problems caused by errant parents whose offspring tend to end up in the same schools.
The demands placed on teachers are changing from educators to social workers and welfare workers, all this in class sizes of 30 or more.

Computor-aided education IMHO requires closer suprvision rather than less, think how long it took your nearest geek to explain some of the most basic things and multiply by 30.
Education takes place at home just as much as at school so maybe assignments could be done on a portable machine at home.
I still think that class sizes need to be drastically reduced.

Disruptive pupils are increasingly excluded from school because it is not possible to control them in such numbers.
Such pupils show up the school badly on the comparison charts so there is even less incentive for that school to struggle on trying to educate the unwilling.

A study by Bristol University showed how this affects both the pupil and society.
They looked at 3 groups ,one a control group, two pupils in state care, three pupils who had been excluded from school.

Group 2 had a 1/3rd rate of crime and imprisonment and an inrceased suicide risk(cant remember the exact figure here)

Group 3 was striking.It had a 60% chance of going to jail and a 20 fold higher rate of suicide than group 1 and nearly 1000 fold increased rate of committing murder.

Would throwing money at education have changed this ?

Well I think that closely supervised education rather than exclusion would make a differance and I really don’t think that computor-aided education is what I would call close supervision.

39

For the record, nothing in HGREENE23’s post was ever posted by me. Of course, in a school where everything is on computer, you would never have a human to point that out.

Suruman, the communicationS phenomenon springs mostly from business-people using that terms; of course, many many of them have no clue about anything other than the bottom line. (this is why business-people now call themselves “professionals” when, of course, they are not. That term distinguishes people who are NOT in business, and has a very limited application, but I’ll leave that alone.)

Even if I accepted that computers can teach some subjects to some students better than a good human teacher, it seems as though Rex’s schools just eliminate any subject that the computers couldn’t teach. I almost have to say that if you can’t see the ansolute and utter stupidity of that plan (if that is how subjects are excluded) that there is nothing more to be gained from debating the topic.

Bucky

40

In response to the thread on the government monopoly on education I have decided to revive this thread. In answer to Bucky, the purpose of elementary education is to teach the basics, i.e. reading, writing, and arithmetic. The purpose of intermediate education is to teach the basics of more advanced subjects like science, literature, algebra… The purpose of advanced education is to teach the intricacies of physics, economics, business management, engineering, calculus… I stand behind my original assertion that 95% of everything taught in public schools today can be taught by a computer. Courses that can not be taught by computer (such as gym, art, public speaking…) can still be offered by the public school system but I wouldn’t make them required for everyone. My whole point is that we can use computers to convey the vast wealth of our knowledge to our children a lot more efficiently. The argument that if you can’t do everything efficiently you shouldn’t do anything efficiently is just plain stupid.