GameBanshee Forums

i saw it on the news about them making the exit exam easier(at least in AL)

Originally posted by Xandax:
<STRONG>
Well I don't know if I wanted attention - but for instance in math in public school I wanted more/thougher problems when I finished the regulars one. But instead I was often told to help the others because they wasn't as good at math. I hated that.</STRONG>

Like you, I was understimulated in primary school and always had to ask for things to do since I usually finished different task long before everybody else. When extended problems, homework, and everything else was finished, I was also told to help out the others in my class. So, between age 7-12 I spend most of my time in school with helping my classmates. After that I got totally fed up, got permission from the principle to skipped one class ahead, quit primary school totally convinced studying was nothing for me. It took until I was 22 before I started styding again.

I think the whole problem is like people say. The memorisation of facts is more important than knowledge. In history for example you have to mix the two. You need the knowledge of the period but you also need to present the skills of reasoned arguments in conclusions (similar to science). However saying that most subjects in school need more memory requirements than absolute skill. You memorise formulas, equations etc and do not rely on reasoning enough. IMHO that's what makes a person smart, the ability to write with skill and knowledge.

Part of the problem in the US, IMO, is that parents have pretty much abandoned the upbringing of their children to television, and peer groups. No political party wants to suggest mandatory testing for teachers, whose own class handouts would flunk them in high school. (There was a university professor at Glassboro back in the 70's and 80's who regularly published some of the worst examples of teaching aids prepared by school teachers, and disected them.) To do so would risk the loss of the votes of the teachers' union.

I wouldn't say the problem is one of sacrificing thought to "touchy-feely," because my own experience of the US educational system, before its makeover, was that of simple rote drills designed to crush any interest among students in learning. I have tons of horror stories from elementary school through highschool--students being deliberately flunked on tests because they refused to look down at their desks after finishing, and wrote poetry, instead, for example. Or being told by one teacher that there wouldn't be a test the following day after being handed a reading assignment, only to be given a test the following day, with a lecture by that same teacher that you can't trust anybody, and that she was teaching us that. Or once, when I had an asthma attack in fifth grade, the teacher deliberately instructed the class to watch me and laugh. This is the stuff of nightmares, not teaching. And it was all too common, supposedly in the "good old days."

In so far as the results of the educational system is worse today, I think it's because affluence is widespread, apathy is rampant, and the main source for information, tv, is a cesspool. Any questions?

[ 07-01-2001: Message edited by: fable ]

Sorry to introduce spam on a serious topic, but...
originally by Waverly

I was constantly bored and sought to entertain myself and the rest of the class at the teachers expense.

Nothing much has changed.......

[ 07-01-2001: Message edited by: dragon wench ]

On a more serious note,
I would concur with Fable. I have run tutorials for first year history students, and I have also graded their work. By far and away the poorest students were those in the faculty of education. They can't think critically, and most can barely string a sentence together. Sometimes of course this was funny. Somebody once wrote the following on an in-class exam.
"They (presumably the European settlers) taught them (the native people) how to use fowl language."

LMAO

I have to agree with Fable, although one can learn a lot from TV if it is regulated. There is a fine line of education over entertainment, most people do not watch television with education in mind.

Parents are also in the home less and less, most children are brought up by nannies or baby sitters, this can not aid the development and growth, most children need a caring nuturing environment in which to thrive.