True–we’ve discussed congruency extensively, though, and I made it clear for this lesson that we were not counting congruent shapes as separate shapes. (Note that if you changed the orientation of your bed, it doesn’t change the bed itself; you still have the same bed, just in a different position.)
Mr. Krebbs, if you think exposure to long division “during/before first grade” would have prepared you for this concept, you’re–well, you’re something else, to cover all the bases. And no, what you said subsequently didn’t come close to addressing my points. The idea that someone who can read and write can definitely seek help of his own volition is absurd: we’re not talking about adults, we’re talking about kids here. Most children lack the context, maturity, and logistical resources to seek help independently.
This has been stated in several ways by others in the thread, but let me sum it up: gradeschool teachers have no way of predicting which stuff is going to be useful to which kids. Their job is to (a) teach the kids how to learn and (b) give them enough of a broad-based education to provide a starting point for research.
One of the kids in the woodworking class I used to teach made a point of telling me how useless this “geometry” stuff he was learning in school was. Once he finished calculating angles on a compound miter saw, producing cutting lists, converting fractions to decimals, and so forth, he figured out how useful math can be in those “non-math” professions.
Highly useful. Is the kid ever going to own a house? Will it be useful to know general characteristics of woods that are good for building a deck or picnic table? Understanding the shade characteristics in winter of evergreens vs. deciduous trees? Understanding that if oak is better in the fireplace than pine, it’s probably better than fir, too? A basic fundamental understanding of the types of trees (and the fact that “evergreen” is not the same as “coniferous”), their leaves, and their wood is useful to just about anyone.
Just to hammer the point into the ground: you need fundamentals in a subject before you can make rational extrapolations. Understanding general characteristics of coniferous trees, of hardwoods and softwoods, and so forth, allows you to make intelligent guesses that dramatically shorten research time–or even eliminate it.
I type faster than I write, but I write a whole lot faster than I print–and there are places where typing is impractical. Generally speaking, I’d have to call cursive handwriting useful.
There’s a debate going on among educators whether to teach cursive. I come down slightly on the “no” side, mostly for selfish reasons: kids’ printing tends to be messy enough that just teaching proper printing takes up plenty of time. When kids write in cursive, it’s often completely illegible. (My own handwriting is terrible, and I’ve basically had to relearn how to print in order to become a teacher). I tend to think that this generation is better learning how to print, how to type, and how to text quickly, in that order; that’ll help them in written communication to an optimal level, I think.
Also, regarding self-teaching, there’s plenty of research showing that different people learn best through different methods. Some learn best by reading, sure. Some learn best by hearing. Some learn best by seeing. The vast majority learn best by doing it themselves, under the guidance of an expert. If all we taught were the three R’s, we’d do a vast disservice to those who don’t learn best by reading.
There is not much out there that is in and of itself both useful and cannot be picked up outside of school.
The flip side of the coin is that there is a great deal out there that is useful and is best picked up in school, despite that education also containing things that might not be useful to certain individuals in later life.
Oh come on. One can easily own a house and even build a deck without knowing that information. The relevant information there is what kind of wood is suitable for what applications, and that is not what is generally taught in school. And like I said before, if such information is *really *that important to doing either, you’d learn that kind of information when you’re older and more keen to understand and apply such knowledge. No one is going to build a deck and base their decision on what wood to use based on a factoid learned in 4th grade. You’re really stretching the limits of the example I mentioned. Shade characteristics?
Fair enough; that’s a valid side of the argument. Although I do wonder how effective that method really is, and if time could be better spent teaching those fundamentals while still learning applicable knowledge.
It seems like you’re saying that it’s the learning process that’s sometimes more important than the actual facts learned. I’m agreeing, but saying that for some subjects/topics (and I will not use the damn tree example again), the facts learned could be more useful and applicable so that both the process and the facts are beneficial.
Which facts, and who decides what’s “beneficial”?
How do you mine useful facts from context, so that you can teach a kid something useful about the above subjects but avoid imparting “useless factoids” like the difference between types of trees? Why would you want to?
Is biology important? How do you teach biology without imparting “useless factoids” like the difference between a bacteria and a virus, or the classification system?
You can’t take all the interesting context from the “facts”, and you can’t separate pure educational principle from… I dunno, everything that’s interesting about the world. Kids don’t learn that way, and bright, inquisitive, creative minds don’t develop that way.
I don’t know how else to explain it. You can’t sit a kid down and read off “The Facts of Science”. Their eyes roll back in their heads, they drool and stare out the window and wait for recess. You can, however, take a posse of kids for a (virtual or literal) stroll through their local forest and talk about the evolution of plants and how the horsetail they’re looking at was around when dinosaurs walked the earth. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about bugs or primates or trees, the lesson on evolution (or ecology or taxonomy or whatever) runs underneath. It’s the “useless factoids” that give these lessons context and meaning to students. What ends up being engaging in primary education and useful in the end isn’t necessarily the same to a future engineering student as for a budding chef or writer or a pharmacist or a cranberry farmer. The trick is to teach the “fundamentals” while providing engaging and interesting enough subject matter that the majority of kids stay interested and absorbent
And, no, it’s not necessarily the process that’s important, though sometimes (as I believe is the case with penmanship) it is. Maybe fine motor control can be taught with something more broadly useful than the practicing of precise handwriting in the modern day, but I’m still having a difficult time imagining the educational process in which you can generally strip “education” of “factoids” and still turn out broadly educated, inquisitive thinkers.
Excellent! If you want to conform, you will need to stop reading the SDMB too. Let’s face it, we are the renegades, the ones one who the programming didn’t work.
The best explanation is that not only are schools lousy at educating people, they are also lousy at programming drones.
Depends on where you live. I live in a forest. My town is a forest industry town. Anyone living up here who can’t tell the difference between a cone tree and a leafy tree is either an idiot or so unaware of their physical and economic surroundings as to be taken as an idiot.
Someone living in the Sahara would not need to know this sort of stuff, and I expect that anyone form my town who magically appeared in the Sahara would seem like an idiot there.
When a child first goes to school, you don’t know where the child will end up later in life, or what talents the child will develop, what skills the child will need, and what information the child will need. Best to give the child a broad based education.
I am loathe to respond to this - because I think you’re deliberately being obtuse - but here goes.
Children learn long division by exposure (absorption) all the time. Some kids need to memorize steps which will take them to a solution prior to understanding what exactly each step is doing, but that is irrelevant. What else does school do but expose one to something?
Children seek help in answering questions that they do not understand long before formal schooling. Context comes from interaction with the world. The guardians of the child are perfectly acceptable resources for learning. Finally, I imagine that you confuse lack of interest for lack of maturity (of course, this is not to say that children don’t also lack maturity).
To summarize the above paragraph, a son is not acting absurdly when he asks his father where babies come from.
The number of students who end up as rocket scientists is miniscule too. Perhaps we should stop teaching science.
Most school districts only require music classes up to a certain grade, after which they can elect to be in band or chorus. These classes may ignite a life long passion for music in a kid, regardless of whether they possess the desire or talent to be a professional.
BTW, a “music job” doesn’t have to be a full time career. I know lots of people who are part time pros and weekend warriors. Many who had music classes throughout their entire school career (K-12 and beyond).
This is exactly what I have been thinking whenever chequebooks or cooking or other minutae of daily life have been brought up in this thread. My parents taught me all of that outside of school through our daily lives wher we were ready to handle it.
I am not a teacher and I think that is where this knowledge should come from.
You’re completely missing the point. I was throwing out a list of places where you’d benefit from having some comprehension of different types of trees and their characteristics. You carefully avoided my description of extrapolation, of the use of base knowledge to provide a starting point for research, and focused in on one part of one example.
And, to address your point directly, you could go to the store and buy a bunch of fir lumber and build a deck and have it rot away in a few years, or you could use redwood and have it last. Knowing something about trees and wood is useful in life.
I am not an English major…but more than once I’ve been drug into an argument like this:
Why do they teach Shakespeare in high school? How can that possibly help students in their future lives?
My response…“Well…when should they be exposed to Shakespeare?”
Their response ??? WTH you talkin about?
My response…“What I’m talking about is high school is EXACTLY when they should be exposed to Shakespeare because otherwise they never will be exposed to it!”
Their response: ??? WTH are you smokin?
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There is a philosophical difference between people. Most people see school as should be dealin with life prep…practical skills they will use in the future. If the student wishes to pursue an academic subject, they do it later.
Some people think that primary/secondary education should be devoted to exploration/learning about stuff they would never be exposed to otherwise…to discover interests and talents. Practical/life prep stuff is something they will learn on their own/through family.
This is a continuum…but I land far more to the latter than the former.
