Is the classroom an outdated teaching method?

Great Debates
41

Can you stand to hear from someone who is preparing to become a teacher and in less than a year will be in front of a class full time?

The purpose of education is, in short, to equip children with the tools necessary to live successful lives. Education isn’t just about the academic subjects. It’s about the social interactions that take place between students, teachers, staff, administration, parents, and communities. Remove one element of this, and the entire structure falls like a house of cards.

Sauraman Rex, the problems that you describe are very real. The traditional approach to teaching - teacher standing in front of a class lecturing - fails a substantial portion of the student population. Students become disenchanted with an educational framework that doesn’t meet their needs, and worse, they become discouraged because they’re told that THEY are the failures, not the system. While there are some children who may never succeed for one reason or another, there is no excuse for a school system that does not try everything possible to help them.

However, turning everything over to computers is not how to fix the problem. By the time you develop a computer system complex, flexible, robust, and adaptable enough to successfully educate all students, you will either have created an AI system beyond the ambition of intelligence designers, or there won’t be any students left to educate.

The “traditional” method of teaching fails in large part because maybe, maybe half the student population respond to that teaching modality. People have different learning styles. Some students learn best by having the information presented to them in an oral form. Other learn best by seeing data presented graphically. Some need tangible, manipulative tasks in order to grasp the lesson. Others have to be able to vocalize in order to process the information. This challenge is compounded by second-language students and students with learning differences (dyslexia, ADD) who sometimes need two or more learning approaches in order to completely grasp a subject.

What a good teacher must be able to do is adapt their lesson plan so that all students’ needs are met. It’s not an easy task at all, and many teachers fail, but there’s certainly no computer or software equivalent that can come close.

Pedagogy (the teaching of teaching) has dramatically altered in the last twenty years with the advent of multicultural and human relations approaches to teaching. However, our society and dominant culture are slow to adapt to these new approaches. They require not just a large initial investment of time, money, and professional dedication, but they are drastically different from “business as usual” in the education world. Even moreso, they are at odds with “business as usual” in society and culture today.

Add to that the fact that teaching is one of the most stressful, consuming jobs extant today. After five years, nearly 20% of new teachers drop out. The worst ones are fired, the best ones are lured away into new, better paying, easier occupations. The rest that are left often begin to fall back to older, easier way of teaching.

Now pile on the fact that education does not work in a vacuum. Decisions regarding curricula, pedogogy, and policy are influenced by economics, politics, religion, and cultural turmoil. Schools are never left in peace to teach. They are constantly intruded on by people who mean well or not so well, and frequently, new ideas are tried for a year or two and then abandoned before any real impact can be found.

At our best, teachers can rescue and inspire the most alienated students. At our worst, we can alienate and discourage the most gifted. On average, we tend to move kids through the system in a manner that emphasizes efficiency over effectiveness. I hope to do my part to change that when I become a teacher. Of course, if you replace me with a computer, I won’t get that chance.

42

phuoka has said most of what I wanted to say, and has said it more eloquently than I would have. Everyone should reread the final paragraph of his last post. One point in particular bears repeating: children are not interchangeable parts that can be run through some computer-assisted assembly line and come out the other side educated. Each child is different. Contrary to conventional wisdom, human variability is not an obstacle to be overcome; rather, it is the very heart of the educational enterprise.

The real purpose of education is to help children find their place in the world. Obviously, it is a different place for each child. This is an unavoidably messy endeavor. It involves interpersonal conflict, lots of seemingly unproductive activity, and many mistakes along the way. It goes without saying that some teachers do it better than others. But to abandon this part of education because we find its messiness distasteful is the height of folly.

These most certainly are not the purpose of education. What you have described here is training. In practice, our school system tries to do both, and rightly so. But the root of education is the human relationship between student and teacher.

Without any supporting evidence for these statements, I have to defer to the opinions of experienced teachers and educational researchers, who are virtually unanimous in their disagreement. For myself, I shudder to think what kind of person would come out of such a soulless program.

And if efficiency were the measure of education, I would agree with you. But, as William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” In education, the least efficient way is often the best.

Having said all that, I would wholeheartedly agree with the OP. The classroom is indeed a hopelessly outdated teaching method. :smiley:

43

How exactly do you intend to adapt your lesson plan so that all students needs are met? If you are standing in front of 20 students, each with their own unique learning methods or problems, how can you taylor your approach to each and every student while teaching them all simultaneously? In reality, the slowest students set the pace for the whole class. I have taken innumerable courses (including seminars and other adult education courses), the teacher does fine until the first exam. Then when he see’s how bad SOME people are doing he slows way down and bores the hell out of students like me who understood him the first time he explained something. Learning from a computer program would be like reading from a book in that everybody sets their own pace. In addition, the program could have lots of extra examples or alternate explanations that the student could go through, if he wanted to. A computer teaching program would be like giving each student their own 24-hour tutor and letting them set their own pace (as long as they reach certain milestones in a reasonable amount of time, i.e. you can’t take 6 years to make it through Algebra I).

44

I think I agree with everyone who posted on this thread, but I’d like to share an anecdote, as well as a long report I turned in for a college level social problems class a few weeks ago.

When I was in a private grade school (I think 2nd grade, maybe 1st or 3rd) they taught us multiplication. All fine and dandy, except for the fact that they forced the students to memorize the entire multiplication table. Not only did this approach not actually teach the students anything, it penalized students who were actually learning. At the time I noticed several interesting relationships when multiplying numbers. It occured to me that multiplying something by 7 was the same as multiplying buy 5 plus multiplying it by 2, also that multiplying by 10 was the same as multiplying by 10 and then subtracting the number. In short, I taught myself Algebra. The teacher decided to do an oral test however, and if you couldn’t quickly answer a problem of any two numbers 1-12 multiplied then you got a low grade. I got a low grade becuase I couldn’t pull the answer out of my rote memory. Of course I could beat any student in that class if we had to quickly multiply one number 1-12 and one number greater than 12. I doubt I single other student in the class could have told you what 9 times 13 was without doing the problem on paper…

Now for a LONG paper, that only begins to scratch the surface of such an issue…

I have grown up in an environment encouraging high academic achievement as my father is an electrical engineer, my mother was a substitute teacher and my brother who is two years older than me was a straight A student. My pre-kindergartens through fourth grade years were spent at a private Episcopal school. My fifth grade year my parents chose to home school us and I enjoyed this a lot. A typical school day for me was only four or five hours of class, and yet neither my brother nor I were behind our classmates when we returned to traditional classrooms the next year. I spent sixth through eighth grades at a private Catholic school and then went on to the local Catholic high school. I spent a year and a half there but for the remainder of my sophomore year I took classes by telephone that were intended for hospital and home bound children. I started my junior year of high school at a local public school, but dropped out after nine weeks to go back to telephone classes until December. February of my junior year I started at an adult education facility where high school classes were self taught and self paced, with a teacher in the room to help with questions and administer competency tests. I completed two full high school years worth of credits in less than six months despite averaging less than five hours of work per school day and simply taking a day off when I really felt like it. As with home schooling I do not feel this put me behind other students of my age group as I went on to get a 32 average on the ACT, including a 36 in science, without having taken physics or more than 9 weeks of chemistry.

In my view major flaws in current teaching technique include rote work, pacing, memorization and indoctrination. Many assignments, especially homework, are simply repetitious tasks which a student will mimic thousands of times in their academic career. While familiarity with subject matter is vital, I feel that the assigning of this work is overdone, and often related to pacing problems. It is standard knowledge that the class either moves at the speed of the slowest pupil, or it leaves that pupil behind, possibly never to catch up again. Because teachers don’t want to put a student at such a large disadvantage, the former option is usually chosen. This will often lead to cases where students who have already mastered a technique may be assigned hundreds more homework problems, because a slower student needs the extra practice and homework assignments are given on a per class basis. Compounding this issue is the fact that despite different tracks, pupils of widely varying aptitudes are usually in class together, especially in the lower grades where each class is usually taught on a per grade basis. I view problems of memorization and indoctrination largely as problems of testing. All teachers must test their students and grade their performance and the easiest approach is to teach objective facts, which are easiest to test. Unfortunately this does not make up even part of an education. Pure memorized knowledge does not further any of the three goals of education that are defined in the book. A commonly required memorization, the date that the declaration of independence was signed, does not help with upward mobility, personal development or with being a more effective citizen. While knowledge is important in attaining these goals it is tertiary. More important than memorizing knowledge are knowing how, and where to get that knowledge, as well as when you need it, and knowing how to use or apply that knowledge. Because memorizing all useful knowledge is impossible, instead of focusing our schooling on teaching and testing trivia, we should instead focus on encouraging useful though process. We should teach children when to realize that they need more information to make a decision, how to figure out where to get that information coupled with critical and analytical methods of thinking to help apply that data to the problem.

After thinking about these major issues as well as innumerable other minor issues I have devised a hypothetical schooling system that I believe will help encourage this goal. To help with equality all funds for schooling would be taken up by the county and divided by the number of students in the county. This amount of money would be made available to the parents to spend on their child’s education as they see fit, as long as they get an education of government approved quality. I would also want a doubling of the amount of money per student being spent by lowering overhead and increasing taxes. This would allow an increase in teacher salary, and an increase in the number of teachers. I also advocate extensive use of new technology, which should decrease many costs in the long run.

Through third or fourth grade schooling would remain largely the same. More teachers should allow class sizes to be reduced to 15-20 pupils per teacher, which should allow more emphasis to be placed on the Socratic method of teaching. This would stimulate children to enjoy learning and school as well as encouraging critical thinking and curiosity, which would lead toward students learning on their own. From the earliest grades possible I would encourage a mandatory thirty minute a day “free read” period, where students are allowed to read anything they wish, as long as it is not school work. I believe that any reading is intellectually stimulating and is a long-term benefit to anyone.

Past fourth or fifth grade however I would propose a radical departure from current teaching techniques. Classrooms would be set up with desktop computers for each student, computers costing only two to four hundred dollars would easily be able to handle all the tasks I have envisioned, and would not need upgrading or replacement for at least five years. One hundred dollars per student per year would be enable schools to finish this project in two to five years, even without payment plans arranged with computer manufacturers. Everyday each teacher would make a video presentation of that day’s lecture for each class. After this was finished the teacher would remain in the classroom where students would come, when they decided to, and watch the lecture on a computer with headphones. If they have a question they would simply walk up to the teacher who could then work with them one on one, as well as create addendums to their video lecture if they felt it necessary. For each day’s lecture the teacher would create a short proficiency quiz, to be given by computer, which each student would have to pass to receive credit for that day’s class. Exams and tests would have to be administered at set days and times, but normal class periods would not exist, a student could attend that day’s video lecture at any time they chose, or simply take the proficiency quiz without viewing the lecture if so desired.

Textbooks would be replaced with e-books, or simple LCD screens with a battery and storage medium. Current models cost two to four hundred dollars and have the ability to store fifteen thousand pages of text as well as simple black and white images and sound clips. These e-books can run for twenty to forty fours on a single battery charge and would replace all the textbooks a pupil uses. In the long run this may save school districts money as they would only have to purchase a license from the author to use a book, and would allow schools to update textbooks to newer versions at any time. Within ten years these pads would be able to handle multimedia, so students could take teacher’s video lectures or any other multimedia with them wherever they went.

Schooling would be done year round to help alleviate summer “brain drain,” and would be set up in four quarters with eleven weeks of school followed by a week off. Instead of the normal school week however students would also be given Wednesday off to help the younger students through school weeks that often seem interminably long. This would only bring the number of school days per year down to 176 assuming that no three day weekends were given, or 174 with two days given off for thanksgiving to make a five day weekend. Schools would still be open on Wednesdays however, but the emphasis would be more on fun and learning than just learning. Fieldtrips and outdoor activities would be scheduled, special speaker presentations could be made and sport, club and performance practices could be scheduled. Attendance would not be mandatory, but bussing would be provided. These activity days would allow teachers more creativity in teaching techniques, allow advanced students intense one on one sessions with teachers that offered them and would hopefully elevate the opinions that pupils have of the school environment by focusing on fun for one day each week.

To mesh with the yearly schedule classes would be split into quarters instead of the current semesters. The system would be set up so that beyond fourth or fifth grade the concept of grade itself would not be strictly adhered to. Video lectures, tests and quizzes would be archived, so that a student could take any advanced class that they wished to, and receive credit for that class as long as they could pass the proficiency exams. This would also cater towards diverse interests among students. Each student would be required to take a history, math, science, language and physical exercise course each quarter, but each student could chose from any class in each category that is approved for their grade level or above, as long as they have passed any required prerequisites. Thus a high school student might have a choice between American, European or World history as well as classes such as the history of Christianity and Civil War history. Offering students a choice of classes increases the chance that they will be able to choose a subject matter that they are genuinely interested in, which in my experience increases the chances that the class will have long lasting benefits.

I realize that this new educational system would not be perfect, and may not even be practical. Classes such as science labs and foreign languages would most likely need to be taught in more traditional environments. I am also sure there are a myriad over other problems that I have not foreseen, but there are also many issues that I do not have room to address here. If such a system is tried then changes will need to be made based on results, and the education of students would require more self-motivation and independence. However, In my experience I have learned the most in environments requiring these traits and encouraging self learning and independent critical thought, and I believe such a system would help students overall and I firmly believe that such a system would be worth trying.

Sorry to inflict that on you all, but I’m an arrogant bastard who thinks he’s right and that I should demonstrate this to everyone else :wink:

Kerinsky

45

I live in a suburb of Detroit and our schools have been dooing this for about 8 years. I had to go to the computer room everyday for an hour to learn either math or reading depending on the day of the week. Everyday for years and I don’t remember any of it. I can remember everything else (it was just two years ago.) but I can’t remember a damn thing I ever learned in the computer class. Oh wait, I remember the boy next to me teaching me how to remove my mouse-ball. That’s it. It was a complete waster of time and money and I know I am not the only one who didn’t learn a thing.

46

From the original poster:

Exactly. I think the most important thing to note here is that self-study education is not really a new idea. Educators have been arguing for a long time whether students can effectively “self-school” using textbooks and other materials, and what subjects and materials work best and which students respond best to them. (I self-schooled a couple of subjects in my alternative elementary school in the early 70’s; I learned the material, but I wouldn’t have wanted most of school to be like that.) Sure, the educational technology nowadays is fancier, but the concept is the same: students are reading and doing lessons and labs by themselves from a prepared set of materials, rather than constantly interacting with a teacher and other students.

Sounds as though the basic effectiveness of this technique hasn’t changed much either: it can work well as a supplement to other kinds of instruction for highly motivated students, but it will never replace personal contact with a human being who knows something interesting and is interested in explaining it. Spiffy electronic technology won’t alter that.

47

You seem to be of the opinion that knowing the significance of July 4th and why it is a national holiday, “does not help with upward mobility, personal development, or with being a more effective citizen.” Therefore, not knowing the significance of this date would be no handicap to someone striving for “upward mobility, personal development, and to be a more effective citizen.” Have I re-stated your opinion correctly? Let me ask you something, have you ever watched the Jaywalking segments on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno? Have you ever seen a July 4th episode where he walks around Hollywood asking passers-by the significance of the date? If you have seen these segments then you know just how incredibly stupid people look when Jay asks, “What happened on July 4th?”, and they give a blank stare. Jay then sets to work at making them look like a complete idiot by adding, “It’s the day of the signing of the…?”, to which the dumbass usually says something like, “Magna Carta”. To which Jay responds in a irritated tone, “No not the Magna Carta, it’s the day we declared our independence from…?”, and the dumbass says something like, “Canada”. At this point Jay just shrugs, looks into the camera, and says with a smirk, “July 4th, it’s the day we signed the Magna Carta declaring our independence from Canada.” In case you don’t believe that the Tonight Show is accurately describing how ignorant people are mocked by our society then know that I have personally witnessed the ribbing people take when they ask something like, “What’s so important about the 4th of July?. Was that Thomas Jefferson’s birthday or something?”. I believe I can say without fear of contradiction, that if you are so ignorant that you don’t know the significance of July 4th (without having to look it up) then you will not succeed at anything, let alone “upward mobility, personal development, or becoming a more effective citizen.”

48

Forgive me for pointing out that you are using a computer to read this post and you used a computer to post the above statement. You gained familiarity with computers in school, people of past generations are completely ignorant of computers and will likely remain so, would you prefer to join them?. Furthermore, you can obviously read, making people read stuff off a computer screen forces them to READ. Sitting in a classroom and pretending to listen to the teacher does not help you to read and this is why so many kids are functionally illiterate.

49

“…a human being who knows something interesting and is interested in explaining it.” This is not what motivates teachers to teach, on the contrary, having to explain the same elementary crap to class after class, day after day, year after year is enough to make anyone lose interest in a subject matter. Authors of text books are motivated by their desire to explain a subject matter to others. They write a book which describes in simple terms a subject they find to be fascinating and are forever done with explaining that subject (at least until the next edition of the book). No one finds it interesting to explain the same things over and over again to different people. Teachers enjoy the interaction of teaching, not the monotonous lecturing. Computers are ideal for repeating the same monotonous task over and over again. They can do the lecturing as well as any teacher. Note, based on my college experience, lecturing should not involve person to person interaction, if a student has a question he shouldn’t interrupt a well planned out lecture, he should ask a TA or figure it out on his own time.

50

Rote memorization that July Fourth was the day the declaration of independece was signed is useless. I do belive in learning simply for the sake of learning, but this memorization is absurd. Now if you happen to know the signifigance of the events leading up to the declaration, as well as having criticaly reflected on the American and British sides (seeing through such slogans as “taxation without representation”) then you’ve learned something. Simply memorizing that July Fourth is a patriotic holiday signifing our freedom from those nasty British chaps, is mindless regurgitation.

Our schools, as well as testing and teaching practices enforce concepts of “right” and “wrong” views of history (and other subjects) that go far beyond acceptance of proven facts. The average student knows what July 4th is simply as an answer on a test. I belive that such memorization is not learning in any respect, and I wouldn’t view anyone who didn’t know what the fourth of july (or any other specific date) was, if they could inteligently discuss the important events that are associated with that date. In America you’re probably right, almost anyone who can hold such a discussion will have been forced to memorize that date by our school system. Someone from Canada, or Ireland may not have the date memorized, while actually having learned more about American history in that era than most any high school student.

Knowing the date is meaningless if you can’t put it in context. I would say that there is no difference between someone who think that July fourth is a patriotic holiday commemorating the signing of the Magna Carta which established our freedom from Canada, and their counterpart who knows that it’s a holiday about the declaration of independece from England, but otherwise knows nothing more about the conditions leading up to it’s signing or its real effects.

You can probably teach someone with an IQ of 60 to tell you what July 4th is, but we don’t take this as a sign of intelect.

As for it hurting upward mobility, you’re probably right, but being fat hurts your upward mobility too, is losing weight educational? That 3 piece defentition was given by my school book for what the goal of an education is, but not everything that achieves one of those criteria is educational.

Yes, we want to fight ignorance, but we also want to increase education, which I hold are to seperate things.

A man who does not read books is no better than a man who cannot read books. Worst of all is the man who does read, but doesn’t understand, for he may think he understands. Few things are worse than a well meaning idiot who thinks they know what they’re doing.

Kerinsky

51

Maybe if our schools actually forced students to read, forced them to memorize certain facts and regurgitate them on demand, and forced them to do simple math, then maybe our kids wouldn’t embarrass America so much on standardized tests taken by kids from around the world. There are some things you just have to know to avoid looking like an idiot. All Americans should know the significance of July 4th without having to look it up.

What would I call someone with a PhD in American history who knew everything about America except the significance of July 4th, I’d call him a fool. What would I call an American who nothing of our history but that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, I’d call him a fool too.

52

Suruman, I think it was phouka who pointed out that your claims on the “purposes” of education are (at best) flawed. A few other points:

  1. Jay Leno as EVIDENCE? Do I really need to explain what is wrong with this?

  2. When other nations ‘compete’ with us in standardized tests, they choose their best and brightest; we use every students’ scores tossed in together. The evaluative tool becomes useless at this point.

  3. Classroom teaching, of course, isn’t 5000 years old.

  4. Why do you claim that lecturing is bad but then also complain if a student wants to contribute and thus “spoil” a lecture?

  5. Where is your proof that your subjects (your “95%”) can be taught better with a computer? Do you have one scrap of evidence? One metastudy cited in Esquire a couple of years ago indicated NO benefit to computer aided instruction. I have another book (title can be tracked down) which claims that such programmatic instruction serves no valid purpose.

  6. Tell me how we’re going to teach English Literature on the the computer. Will we have test questions like “Truth is beauty–True or False”?

  7. One of the inventors of the internet (not Al Gore) claims that elementary aged children have no business being on computers. Carpal-tunnel syndrome may also be a factor here.

  8. If discussion is involved, the computer is not enough. If social skills, team-work, communication, creativity, critical thinking, self-worth, independence, and a host of other goals are to be pursued, explain how the computer will do this.

  9. Start showing some evidence. Since you have claimed no expertise as a teacher yourself, you need something more than your opinion when confronted with those who actually teach and who are trained as teachers.

53

  1. I agree that students should be made to read in school, but I really disagree with the way it’s set up. In sixth grade my entire class was forced to read “call of the wild” and come up with 20 vocab words in the book that we didn’t know. I was already well above this level of reading, and only found 1 word in the whole book that I didn’t know (epitaph) and that was simply an issue of me not knowing how to spell it. Being forced to read a specific book in school always bored my out of my mind, and made me despise my teachers, I was reading moby dick and treasure island in second and third grade, HG Wells and the Grapes of Wrath in fifth (granted I didn’t get all the way through the Grapes of Wrath, I found it rather boring) and Tom Clancy in sixth. Reading the “outsiders” in 7th grade was rather annoying. It was a good book, but sitting down and reading it out loud over the course of a month is the wrong approach to use imo.

  2. Most standardized tests strive NOT to be based on memorization of facts, but rather on critical thinking skills (which our schools do not emphasise at all)

  3. You’re right, schools should force practice of math skills, but forcing kids to memorize multiplication tables is assinine. What you’re really teaching the kids is that they don’t have to learn how to multiply by 7, just memorize how to multiply by 7.

Schools are supposed to prepare students to get jobs (among other things). Not many intelectual jobs I know of demand much in the way of memorizing or recalling tons of facts, which is how we teach history. Even being a lawyer where it may be important to memorize many cases and their precedents, you’ll still qoute more cases that you found for research, than the big ones you can memorize.

I belive that people will perform best at something if you truly enjoy it. I know several people that read history texts for the simple joy of it, but none of them sit down with the intent to memorize a bunch of dates and names. I don’t think it’s enjoyable for anyone to simply memorize stuff, but learning history can be enjoyable. Why should we be making learning less enjoyable than it can be?

It seems to me rather predjudical to call someone a fool simply for not knowing one fact that you do, even if it is common knowledge. Intelligence is usually considered an ability to think and learn.

54

*quotes in italics were originally posted by Bucky

  1. Jay Leno as EVIDENCE? Do I really need to explain what is wrong with this? *
    I cited Jay Leno as evidence of what Americans like to mock. At one time Americans liked to mock racial minorities and black-faced minstrel shows were popular, this is no longer the case. Americans loved mocking Dan Quayle because he was perceived to be a fool. If you try to go through life as an ignorant American then you had best have a very thick skin because no one is going to give you any credit for something as ethereal as “analytical thinking skills”.

2) When other nations ‘compete’ with us in standardized tests, they choose their best and brightest; we use every students’ scores tossed in together. The evaluative tool becomes useless at this point.
Oh, so I guess this is why some American kids can’t locate America on a map of the world.

3) Classroom teaching, of course, isn’t 5000 years old. I am estimating that the first classroom teaching began sometime after the birth of civilization circa 10,000 BCE. I don’t know when it was first used but am confident that it is a very old practice and is perhaps due for an overhaul.

4) Why do you claim that lecturing is bad but then also complain if a student wants to contribute and thus “spoil” a lecture? My point is that a lecture and a discussion section are two completely different things. Many of you seem to think that if a kid is having trouble understanding something then it’s OK to interrupt the whole class with a question. Unless the teacher has made a mistake or the lecture is very poorly written, there shouldn’t be any reason to interrupt a lecture. Questions should be reserved for discussion sections (at least this is how it worked at my college and other colleges I have heard about). Furthermore, with computer teaching it would be like giving each kid their own tutor and the student can stop and go over something again any time he wants without interrupting a whole class.

*5) Where is your proof that your subjects (your “95%”) can be taught better with a computer? Do you have one scrap of evidence? *
Have you ever tried to introduce a computer technique to people who have never used computers? I have, and no one ever likes using a computer to do a task the first time they try it. After a while they get used to using computers, though, and stop arguing that everything was better before when they did everything by hand. There were people at one time who maintained that computers were useless for word processing since typewriters produced higher quality print. I have not heard that particular load of crap since the mid 80’s. Does anyone here even remember the term “type-quality” printing? Since laser printers were introduced the typewriter has gone the way of the dodo. I can’t prove that the boring monotonous task of lecturing students day after day can be done better by computers, but I think its worth a SERIOUS try.

6) Tell me how we’re going to teach English Literature on the the computer. Will we have test questions like “Truth is beauty–True or False”? English Lit. is disguised as a discussion course but from my experience the teachers are lying when they say they want to hear your interpretation of Hamlet. What they want is for you to regurgitate their interpretations back at them. If you actually try to advance your own opinion of the meaning of “To be or not to be” they will tear you a new one. A computer can have you read Shakespeare and then tell you what it all means just as well as a person.

7) One of the inventors of the internet (not Al Gore) claims that elementary aged children have no business being on computers. Carpal-tunnel syndrome may also be a factor here.
Kids should not be allowed on the internet to protect them from porn and predators not to protect them from learning. I am not suggesting that kids be given access to the internet. The teaching computers that I am suggesting will not have web browsers.
Carpel-tunnel syndrome is brought on by excessive typing. Students will have to do some typing, in answer to test questions for instance, but 99% of the time they will be reading or watching short films on their monitors.

8) If discussion is involved, the computer is not enough. If social skills, team-work, communication, creativity, critical thinking, self-worth, independence, and a host of other goals are to be pursued, explain how the computer will do this.
We are discussing this topic right now using computers. Why does discussion have to be in person? Kids could submit discussion questions to a message board like this one for a teacher (anywhere in the world) to answer and discuss.

9) Start showing some evidence. Since you have claimed no expertise as a teacher yourself, you need something more than your opinion when confronted with those who actually teach and who are trained as teachers.
I use my computer every day for everything that it can do. I shop with it, work with it, communicate with it, learn with it, get my daily news from it, and entertain myself with computer games. Why do you think that computers can’t be effective teachers, have you ever tried using computers to teach? (Keep in mind that computers never work right the first time, the first word processors were a disaster, thank God we didn’t give up on them. I hope we don’t give up on using computers to teach.)

55

My impending move that I mentioned in the OP can not be delayed any longer. I won’t be posting again until I get to my new place and get the phone hooked up. It’s a remote rural town so I hope they have local internet access. It has been fun arguing with you all, I hope I haven’t offended anyone.

56

Well, here I am, running late again. I’m hoping, Saur, that you do get Internet connectivity, because I do want to continue this discussion. A few points I’d like to make:

  • maybe it’s just me, but I’m inferring a lot of hostility towards teachers from your posts. Am I reading things accurately? If you are hostile towards teachers, why is that? I’d like to hear about any experiences of yours that may have alienated you from current educational philosophies and practices.

  • this discussion has expanded to more than just classroom teaching practices. We’re touching on some fundamental controversies regarding education equity, funding, goals, societal structure, values of intelligence and knowledge, and much more. All of these concepts are intertwined, but we should be clear about which ones we’re addressing.

  • Saur, you haven’t, as I’d hoped, addressed some of the things I’d mentioned in my first post, especially regarding what roles a teacher plays in the classroom. I’ll touch on that more further down in my post.

This is going to be rather long, so I hope you’ll forgive me, but I wanted to address as much as possible.

This, more than anything else you’ve said, disturbs me. You cannot “force” a child to learn anything. Children are not tabla rasa piled into a classroom to be scrawled upon by any teacher with a piece of chalk. They are not automatons to be programmed with instructions and punching of buttons. A child, as much as any adult, deserves respect, courtesy, and individual interest and attention. Anything less guarantees that they will be unwilling to learn anything you might offer.

Regurgitation of facts is not education. In the absense of context and motivation, it is nothing, and it will not create better students, brighter children, or successful adults.

You don’t have to create a completely unique lesson plan for each student. There are perhaps seven or eight learning styles and eight types of intelligence. Students each possess a combination of these. All that is necessary is that each new subject be approached from four or five directions - perhaps a short lecture, a class discussion, a project which entails tactile objects related to the material, a group task that mixes students heterogenously so that they can play against each others’ strengths. It’s just as much work as the long lecture and two pages of exercises out of the book, but it reaches all the children instead of just half.

This is a disgenuous statement and begs the original point you posted. There are classes specifically designed to teach computer skills. They are valuable classes with a goal of helping students aquire abilities they will need in a technologically advanced society. However, that is not the same as insisting that all instruction be done by computers. Computers are wonderful resources for students, teachers, and people outside of education. They can supplement classes and classroom equipment. However, they are only tools. They cannot and should not replace teachers.

This is both true and false. I am becoming a teacher because I want to help children succeed in life. I want to be their advocate, their facilitator, their aide. I choose English and Art as my subject areas because they are the subjects I am most proficient in and have the most talent. Will I get bored teaching one book over and over again for twenty years. Maybe. More likely, I’ll find new thoughts and perspectives from my students to refresh me. Even if I don’t, it’s not like that one book is the only book I can teach. It’s not as though I’ll only ever be teaching pen and ink techniques to squirmy freshman. It’s not as though I can only ever discuss African textiles or Industrial Age poets.

This is a non-sequitur. If some children (how many? how old? what kind of map?) lack the ability to locate the United States on a map (and I believe that study was taken out of context and the results distorted), then there is a deficit for those children in that area of education. That does not mean that the entire educational system of the nation should be thrown on the scrapheap.

Wrong! Decidedly wrong! Absolutely wrong! So wrong it makes me want to strip naked, paint myself purple and march through downtown Escondido with a bullhorn announcing how wrong this is.

Students must have the ability to interrupt and question during a lecture. Even if it’s only Suzie who doesn’t understand Point A, if the teacher doesn’t clarify it for her, she won’t get Point B, Line C, Arc D, or Parabola E. The whole lecture is then lost for her, and she stands a significant chance of being lost to the subject matter. If it’s already been made plain to Suzie that her question aren’t welcome during the lecture, she’ll be that much more hesitant to ask her question after the lecture, after the class, or at any other time.

Even then, it’s rarely just Suzie. Out of a class of 20, it’s probably Suzie, Manuel, David, and Xia - a whole fifth of the class. It’s very easy for a teacher to word something in a way that most of the students get, but it’s also the teacher’s responsibility to word, describe, draw, act out, or demonstrate it in a way that the rest of the students understand.

This is not a distraction for the class. This is the class. If the students go off on a tangent with their questions, it’s the teacher’s responsibility to decide if the tangent needs to be addressed or if it’s something that can wait until later. That’s classroom management, and it’s not something a computer can do.

You’re missing a step in your logic path there, Saur. Let me plot it out:

  • lecturing day after day is a bad teaching method. (I’ll grant you that. Lecturing in a classroom has it’s place, but it shouldn’t be the primary, let alone only teaching method used.)

. . . .

  • therefore, we should replace all teachers with computers.

Do you see the gap? Your premise is good, but you’ve missed the fact that there are dozens, nay hundreds of other teaching modalities available that create an inclusive, supportive, successful school environment that meets all the goals of education.

Even then, to say that it’s worth a “SERIOUS” try without having any research to back up your claims, suggesting any sort of experimentation or observation, is a total disservice to the students. Children should not be guinea pigs. If you have a new pedagogy to introduce, please, make sure it measures up to the other teaching philosophies out there before demanding that it should implemented across the board.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Computers are a tool. They are a wonderful tool, a great resource. BUT they are not teachers.

Computers can’t:

  • engage individuals or groups in a spontaneous manner
  • gauge deficits accurately and diagnose the cause of those deficits
  • involve parents in the education of their children
  • supervise student interaction
  • update and inform the community about school matters
  • grade in anything other than an absolute, arbitrary manner
  • spontaneously alter lesson plans to meet the needs of students
  • monitor students’ personal and academic growth
  • encourage children to strive and reach out
  • report suspicions of abuse
  • work with administration, parents, and community to solve school problems
  • adjust to changing facets of society
  • counsel students on personal troubles when asked
  • challenge notions of racism, sexism, and classism in the classroom
  • stop fights or intervene in bullying in the hallways
  • coordinate an extra-curricular activity

Do I need to continue?

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oops wrong button.

I’ve had a computer since before I can remember. Maybe others learned how to use a computer from it, but not me. Another problem I recall is that we never got a grade for anything we did it there. I never understood that because it wsa like a wasted hour of school. I guess in your plan you will get grades, but I think some teachers will be like mine and read romance novels instead of grading the kids and use it as a recess for themselves.