Since I’ve had so much [del]brainwashing[/del] schooling, I’m just going to mindlessly accept what you and Boyo Jim say, rather than questioning it or thinking critically about it or doing any independent research to see whether it matches reality.
Specifically, the difference between coniferous and deciduous has changed a decision as to whether or not wind turbines will be placed near my property.
Generally, America sucks when it comes to dealing with climate change. Climate change will have broad reaching negative effects that will affect what species live or die, what people go hungry, and what economies suffer and fail. Lack of environmental awareness is key to this.
Garbage in, garbage out. The lower the level of education, the less the ability to make informed choices in a person’s own life, and when affecting others through voting.
At the very least, you’re mindlessly accepting ideas that are not the status quo. Good for you, I guess?
As a college prof who regularly receives students (even native ones) who can barely manage a coherent sentence, I’m thinking it wouldn’t hurt to have all the kiddos in K-12 do some old-fashioned sentence diagramming.
Am I alone in being taught all this ‘unnecessary stuff’ yet still magically obtained the ability to read, write and count?
I don’t know about anyone else but I use the trivial crap I learned in K-12 all the time. Determining how to translate inches into meters, knowing what plants in my environment are poisonous, understanding how global and national events impact my local community and vice versa, having knowledge of the various branches of government and what each is responsible for, and even art impact my day to day life.
Enjoying LOTR is one thing. Having enough musical education and appreciation to see that a large part of Tolkien’s inspiration was Wagner’s Ring Cycle brings both works to a whole new level for their audiences. When I took the music unit in HS and we covered Jazz I didn’t have any clue that I would one day live in Harlem, but I must say that now that I do I am so appreciative of my musical education and how it helps me understand and feel connected to my community. Knowing the basics of astronomy helped me find my way home when I got lost driving in the boonies of Texas more than once. Understanding several of the basics of science enables me to be a better cook because I understand the importance of a “falling oven” or why a tsp of salt and a tbsp of salt shouldn’t be mixed up. Sure the coniferous tree thing hasn’t helped me yet but I bet if I give it enough time it will come in handy some day.
No.
Do you remember at what age you learned to read and write with reasonable proficiency? I was six. Somehow I doubt that the understanding of long division and multiplication would have eluded me much longer than that, provided I was actually exposed to those practices before/during first grade.
Oh, come on. Two seconds of thought would tell you that the point isn’t that you learn that the trees that dump leaves on your yard are called deciduous trees, it’s that you learn that some trees drop their leaves seasonally and some don’t, and here are some reasons why that’s true. And here are some places where the trees are mostly evergreens and here are some places where they aren’t, and some reasons why that’s true also. And here are some places where there are no trees at all, and here’s why. And here’s why most of the trees around here are loblolly pines - it isn’t because that’s the native forest type in this area, it’s because most of this land was once cleared for farming, and we’re going to go on a field trip to the Congaree Swamp to see old-growth native forest. Use your head.
Teaching is like popping popcorn. If you cook it too long, you pop the difficult kernels but burn the easy ones. If you cook it too short, you get a lot of unpopped kernels at the bottom of the bag. The only way to effectively carry it out is to pop a lot and leave some behind.
Same thing in the classroom. No matter what system we use, some kids will turn out stupid. There will always be people that can’t use they’re/their. If you really strive to beat it into 100% of the kids, you’ll bore the intelligent half to death. They’ll hate school, and thus learning.
You’re holding up these few kids that aren’t coming out of the system very educated, and claiming that the whole thing is flawed. I don’t know about you, but I know the difference between their and they’re. It worked for me. It worked for you. The system isn’t broken.
I’m beginning to realize that my parents’ decision to send me to private school was the best decision of their parenting career. I learned all kinds of practical knowledge about how to survive in the real world. In a classroom setting, from a teacher using a lesson plan, I learned:
How to tie a tie.
How to balance a checkbook
How to calculate interest
Mortgages vs. leases, and how to know which is better in a situation
Bank statements
How to write a (good) resume
How to interview well
Dining etiquette in various cultures
Current events around the world and locally, with full discussion/debate
So I thoroughly disagree that real-world survival isn’t taught.
Good thing, too. Otherwise, we’d have a society of leeches. Or worse…liberals!:p. Sounds like you hate your job, not school.
Small problem with this. I’m not the freaking parents! Stop expecting me to do a job that belongs to the biological/social parents. I have enough on my plate teaching kids why the political system is broken.
I have no such doubts, unless you’re truly a remarkable person. Very few people will be able to master multiplication without direct instruction.
Again, this thread is the equivalent of people who think they know all about dentistry because they got their teeth cleaned. Education is more complicated than you think. You’ve not addressed ZPDs, the move from concrete to abstract thinking, self-talk, phonemic awareness, the debate between contructivists and traditionalists, or any of the myriad other topics that teachers must know about in order to perform their job competently.
[Ron White]
If I’d known the difference between anecdote and antidote I could have saved my friend’s life. He got bitten by a snake, I shared an amusing story.[/Ron White]
Are you kidding me?! Of all the kids I went to school with, two ended up as a professional actor/singer.
However, MANY of them went on to use music as a hobby as an adult. Some are in paid positions, some just do it for fun. MANY kids I know would not have stayed in school were it not for band. They liked band that much. School sucked for them but at least they had band to look forward to.
Music programs aren’t about music. They’re about camaraderie, discipline and team/personal accomplishment. Even if you suck at band or choir you can still be part of a winning team. You are guaranteed a bunch of friends. You’re able to hone skills and move up or down within the ranks. You’re able to teach younger kids as you get older. You’re part of a community.
In our school system, at least, everyone is required to be in the music classes in elementary school. By 5th grade, you’re able to join band and/or choir. By 6th grade, you’re able to stop taking any music if you want. Those elementary school classes, give you a chance to try out music and see what you think. If nothing else, they give you a chance to get out of your boring classroom and do something different and fun.
Don’t knock school music programs. They’re probably the best part of the day for many many kids in the school.
I write lots down, and I do it in print. Half of what I write down are equations anyway, so cursive was never really beneficial to me. And if I’m ever in the need to write large amounts of text, I type it.
And I suppose as computers become more ubiquitous, especially in note-taking situations, cursive will continue to fade out of existence.
I also never claimed to have all the answers to solving the issues of education. I know it’s an extremely complex topic and one that I certainly don’t have the expertise to reformulate from the ground up. I do, however, still think time in class could be better spent, learning relevant life skills rather than trivial knowledge. There’s a reason so many students go to college and get in ridiculous debt (they never learned money management), or why so many people don’t “believe” in science and go to alternative medicine for treatments (they never learned to critically think and question the products and their efficacy). That doesn’t mean there’s suddenly no more place in school to teach a wide variety of topics so kids may peak their interests.
There is an old story about education:
Once, when Euclid was teaching geometry, a student protested that none of this would ever be practical. Euclid threw a coin at the student, blacking his eye, and said “Never say you didn’t get anything useful from me! Now begone!”
BrandonR, here is your coin.
Meh. Spray them all with Lysol. Let God sort it out.
Or four, depending on whether you consider 2x4 equivalent to 4x2 or not 
Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t: changing the orientation of my bed would block my bedroom’s door, which is sort of a big oops.
You’re still not getting it. In many cases, the “trivia” is only the most superficial part of the lesson, the part of the lesson that matters the least in terms of long-term “education”. It doesn’t matter if a kid remembers specific tree names, but it does matter that they’re taught how to examine something on different levels, how to differentiate items, how to classify and categorize things, as well as something useful about the natural world, their local and wider environments. You can teach the same physics lesson by lecturing from a textbook on pure physics principles or by skipping stones. Guess which one a kid is more likely to spark to and remember? Per this discussion, would you be bitching and moaning about how rock-skipping is irrelevant to the child’s professional future, and missing the point by a wide country mile?
Also, it’s “pique”.
It is exceedingly bizarre that you seem to think I was stating direct instruction is extraneous. The point of my original post was that after arithmetic, reading and writing are taught to students that there are few obstacles to self-instruction.
Certainly, there are other concepts that are very difficult to learn on one’s own. However, if one can read and write, he can definitely seek help of his own volition.
This should adequately address the unquoted portion of your post. (Except, perhaps, for “self-talk” - I have no idea what that term means.)