On schools and their education

[alastairjohnjack]

>insert an intelligent discussion which I'm not capable of making or wording properly here<


There's something about the education system which seems highly unethical and dysfunctional. And I'm not quite sure what it is at the moment.

I think one part of the problem is homework.
Especially in the later years where we were continually given more work to produce outside of class. The focus (in Aus at least) is all about getting a good score, this proves how awesome/smart you are. But to get that score, you have to live and breathe school work outside of school (at least for most of us). But my interest in school work outside of the school environment was closer to zero.

And when you're at school, most of the teachers are in a pissed off mood because no one could be bothered doing the homework (besides the usual people who always do it) plus they're always having to spend half the time annoyed at people who aren't behaving. How're you meant to learn from teachers when they're always angry at you?

Or maybe this is the whole purpose of school, to learn to endure a class and get use to the practices of our consumer society.

Maybe it was just the school I went to, or maybe school isn't designed for certain personalities (probably the case for me), I don't know.

Although for those people who are capable of making friends with people (most people), having friends seems to justify the experience of school (from my viewpoint) since I certainly learnt more from reading websites, experiencing the world and making personal observations.

Don't get me wrong though, there are certainly many valid aspects to school (obvious things like learning to count and read and occasionally what a word means). But there really seems to be some fundamental flaws in the education structure (or something).

I ask these things because I don't understand, and maybe there's someone intelligent who will help explain.

[feverstone]

Hmm. I'm interested in the responses. A lot of my friends talked about their loads of homework and grumpy teachers, and it never made much sense to me. I was home-schooled from kindergarten to 12th grade.

I think the constant focus on good scores really subtracts from learning in general.

[Muffy]

Dec 17, 2009 9:33:15 GMT -5 @alastairjohnjack said:

Or maybe this is the whole purpose of school, to learn to endure a class and get use to the practices of our consumer society.

I think this might be right. I've never been in school before, but the thing about preparing for consumer society sounds right.

[Jeremy]

: an argument/statement applauded in high school and laughed at in college.

[Ferd Berfel]

The purpose of homework is for the student to prove their knowledge of the subject matter. This is true for almost anything that happens in a classroom setting, whether it be a test, classroom discussion, questions and answers, or homework.

Some teachers are better at it than others. It's the bad teachers that give the good ones a very poor reputation.

Good teachers need to understand that from the student's point of view, homework is a worthless waste of time. When the teachers realize this, they can better accommodate student's learning and help them feel more motivated to do their work.
Good students need to realize that the homework actually does serve a purpose; without the work, teachers would have no idea how much the students have actually learned. Teachers design their lesson plans around what the students already know and what they are struggling with.
When a student refuses to do homework, that makes the teacher's life infinitely more difficult.

The obsession with grades is mostly due to society's obsession with "educational standards".
Education has been going through a rather alarming trend, where schools don't focus on what the students need to learn and HOW they learn it; instead, they focus entirely on how those students can perform on a test.
Teacher's entire jobs are based on the grades and test scores of their classroom. If a teacher consistently has students that underperform, they will lose their job. Because of this, teachers try to "teach to the test", meaning that they're spending all their effort and time teaching students in a way that will help them attain high grades on a test and in the classroom.
Of course, students hate this because it's not actually teaching them anything interesting; it's simply telling them that they need good grades "because".

Of course, all of this is written from the standpoint of a currently-in-school American educator, so my opinion is strictly limited to what I know of the American education system. Still, I hope that it helps answer some of your questions.

[bayonetwork]

I found the same thing with the School Certificate (Year 10 exams, Alastair will know), and my geography teacher spent the entire time saying what will be in the test, never gong off topic. I hated it.

I'm entering my final year of school, and are dreading the HSC. And I'm hating how everyone I know asks me what I want to do once I've left shool, and there's this subtle pressure that they want me to go to Uni. But I'm over schooling. So much. Almost the opposite of my girlfriend, who's like top of the year in everything, and will likely be Dux next year, and has pretty much her entire life planned out already.

Life shouldn't be about the marks you make, or the job you have. To quote God So Loved The World, "life is who you are, not what you do".

[Scott]

Dec 17, 2009 13:50:23 GMT -5 Ferd Berfel said:

Because of this, teachers try to "teach to the test", meaning that they're spending all their effort and time teaching students in a way that will help them attain high grades on a test and in the classroom.

I had to go through this during the past semester. The "foundational" math classes at this university are coordinated, and that meant that I had no say in what was on the test. Hence I had to see what would be on it and make sure I had that coverered. I hated it.

[Brent]

this thread = definition of tl;dr

homework = practice

[alastairjohnjack]

Here's a shorter version of the thread:

[Samhain]

I haven't read this entire thread, but if anyone is really interested in education theory, the first place you should look is the essays and books of John Taylor Gatto