(no subject)

[rm]

via kalichan
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/education/01education.html

This type of shit makes me spitting mad and is happening on all levels of education. A student who rarely attends class, misses examinations and hands in few homework assignments isn't "marginal". Marginal involves students who either never show up and do well, or diligent students with legitimate obstacles or unique situations that fall on the border. Certainly, no one should get 45 points for showing up to A SINGLE CLASS ALL SEMESTER.

High graduation rates are completely meaningless if they are not indicative of attainment.

College education for all is a meaningless goal if college is teaching people what they should have learnt in high school, or, dare I say it earlier.

I am a hardass and a half about education, despite the fact I was something of a fuckup at various points in school.

A BA used to mean something. It didn't mean enough when I got mine in 1994, and now it too often seems to mean little more than you paid money, did some marginal time and can handle comprehension of a story in The Daily News, which is, for the record, written at a third grade reading level -- sadly, I'd be happy if most college students could write that cogently. I have taught college senior journalism majors who could not properly use quotation marks or make sure their sentences generally contained both subjects and verbs.

This stuff INFURIATES me.

And don't even get me started on the view that arts education isn't necessary or useful, that kids from poorer backgrounds don't need or aren't capable of succeeding at foreign languages or other components of a traditional education, or that athletic education doesn't also have the capacity to enhance the mind. I think it's CRAP, and if I were less selfish or a day had forty hours in it, I would teach and fight the good fight of being the most hated teacher ever if it would make a damn difference. Sadly, I'd probably get fed the fuck up and take my ball and go home like the dude in the article too.

Comments

What About Self-Esteem?

[lawnrrd]

Now, now. That student is a precious and unique, just like a snowflake, and ought not be denied the important credential of a diploma just for being unsuited to the rigors of an academic environment.

Re: What About Self-Esteem?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I know you're joking and yet I'm still apoplectic.

Self-esteem comes from conquering obstacles and, at times, receiving recognition for such. Man, I'd be a total waste of carbon without my own experience of stuff that sucked.

Re: What About Self-Esteem?

[lawnrrd]

One thing that I sincerely admire about you is how you can maintain your outrage in a world full of outrageousness. I haven't had the energy for that for a very long time, and I let things pass sometimes when I'd probably do better not to.

Re: What About Self-Esteem?

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

I read something interesting recently, I wish I could remember where I'd seen it or at least remember the details better. It talked about a group of kids being given a relatively easy test and afterwards half the kids were praised for how smart they were and half the kids were praised for how hard they'd worked. The results made sense because "being smart" is something that is more or less out of your control, which can either make you think you're bulletproof or completely anxious or some bizarre combination of the two.

Re: What About Self-Esteem?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I saw that too and also can't remember where, but yes! yes! yes! So many of the people I know who are younger than me (and had more of a "self-esteem" education than I did) who are blindingly smart insist they are idiots and have lots of anxiety about it. It's awful. I have various issues, but I've never thought myself a fool.

Re: What About Self-Esteem?

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit older than you and definitely got out before "self-esteem" education was in vogue, but I'm still kind of in that category. My god, but people did like to talk about how smart I was. But the results of my work - if it was good it was what was expected. I could never "do" something praiseworthy I could only "be" something praiseworthy, so it trained me early on that "doing" was a zero sum game.

Gah, I'm having a hard time figuring out a way to explain it without sounding like one of those entitlement brats myself.

Re: What About Self-Esteem?

[graene.livejournal.com]

Oh, or my experience of being told they would be proud of me if I did my best, but whatever I did was never my best, because the teacher said I was smarter than my grades (with an A average yet!). So, yeah, I'm smart when I bother to use it, but mostly I'm lazy that way because effort got more criticism than not bothering.

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am so with you on this.

Kids get self-esteem from being nurtured and coached to accomplish something worthwhile on their own. Not from gaming the system or being taught to game the system by others who should know better. I am not surprised that teacher missed so much work, he probably has stress related illness from being hounded by those who profess to 'Caaare about the children! but can't be arsed to actually put in the work that's required to help struggling student succeed. Hmm.. maybe there's a cause and effect relationship here, says the sustitute who recently had to teach 8th graders about subject-verb agreement because they'd never had to correct their grammar before.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of relatives who are teachers so I hear about this a lot.

Conversely, the "No Child Left Behind" bullshit has destroyed an awful lot of kids' interest in becoming educated. Boyfriend's mom teaches 4th grade, which used to be the year to do awesome things and get your kids to love school-- I still remember my own 4th grade year with a kind of unreal glow (partly because 5th grade was such a sudden crash into Horribility-- puberty, bullies so bad a friend brought a gun to deal with them, associated bullshit)-- but now?
It's one long year of test prep.

Mother-in-not-law made me cry one night over dinner telling the story of her friend the special ed teacher, whose students regardless of handicap have to take the same tests as the other kids. She had to tie a pencil to the hand of one too disabled to hold it himself-- it is customary to allow an aide to scribe for such a child, but No Child Left Behind struck that down too. She would psych these kids up like a football coach, and fling them into the exams, and then watch as each was machine-gunned down by inappropriate things they hadn't even been taught.

Two years ago the math exam had accidentally been written for the wrong grade level. The fourth graders were given sixth grade questions. (Some of the teachers cried when they saw the exam. They knew their kids couldn't do it.) The highest grade in the state was something like a 70%, by some genius kid. There was no real move to amend this, by the state, and the newspapers all had a field day about the low test scores in each school, without really examining why. Similarly, the English exam frequently contains vocab words the kids have never seen.

There's a way to instill a love of learning in kids.
No wonder they've got to resort to fuzzy math to get them to graduate. Any sense of meaning to the whole affair has been blasted out of them long before they get to senior year the first, let alone second or third, time.

[beemerbike.livejournal.com]

holy fuck a duck...at that rate I should have graduated with honors.

[sociallyawkrd.livejournal.com]

Social promotion is a policy here. And its terrible.

Also, I hear you on the lack of arts education. And foreign language. We are lucky in that we can provide private lessons in violin and piano for T and private French lessons. Because he gets very little in school.

Public education is very frustrating to me.

[sociallyawkrd.livejournal.com]

Although can I add how annoyed I am that the teacher release student records to the press? Because that, no matter what the argument is wrong. I would be pretty pissed if I found out that happened.

And what use in the future, this?

[geoectomy.livejournal.com]

I got myself--of all things--a degree for writing poetry. Mind you, I worked my way through college to pay for it. I made a living for a handful of years as a technical writer. I read a lot and I write a fair bit. I can follow most of the rules of grammar--certainly better than I can teach it.

I had a job as a freshman tutoring basic English to English-as-a-primary-language type of people. To this day, I am still amazed at how many people going into university hadn't a clue what a noun was. I mean, you can't get much more basic than nouns and verbs.

When it gets to the point where it's more important to justify next years' budget or maintain community graduation levels, I have to wonder just what the hell these people are going to be doing a decade down the road.

[graene.livejournal.com]

Also, must confess to trying to recruit decent/committed NYC teachers to move down here while on the cruise. However they were already talking about not being able to afford living there and having kids and had already put this area on their list to research.