/johnny
So. The idea of getting the grandkids a Breaking Bad Leggo Kit for Christmas might not go over too well?
Posted on 12/05/2014 11:59:46 AM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
A history professor, writing in VEER (an arts and culture magazine published in Norfolk, Virginia), tells a startling anecdote:
“A couple of years back, a student came to me for a conference, late in the semester, and asked, ‘Which came first, the Civil War or the Revolutionary War?’ Never mind that we had spent a week on both, and that he had been in attendance (physically, at any rate), for all of those sessions.”
Note that the professor and the student seem equally unashamed.
This is not a homeless man with a drug problem. This is an adult student taking a history course at Old Dominion University, a fairly prestigious college. But he does not know the answer to a question that is roughly equivalent to “What’s 6×5?” Furthermore, he’s not the least bit aware that the question is foolish and he should be ashamed to ask it.
Meanwhile, the professor is similarly oblivious. He doesn’t have any sense of shame that one of his students has learned so little. Why isn’t the professor wringing his hands and screaming, how could I be such a failure? My students have learned nothing!
Just as striking, the professor makes no resolution to figure out what has gone wrong and how he can improve his teaching. Instead, he brazenly asserts the cliché that has gotten us into this mess:
“Yes, the learning and retention of certain facts is important. But it receives far too much emphasis in conventional education, especially in this day and age when one can look up virtually any fact in a matter of seconds.”
Far too much emphasis?? No, apparently not nearly enough, as he proves to the world. A college-age student doesn’t know which came first, the Revolution or the Civil War, and this professor thinks there is too much emphasis on retaining “certain facts.” Aren’t we seeing a sort of liberal collective insanity? The very sophistries causing the problem are celebrated as if they are bold new wisdom. Clearly, the learning and retention of “certain facts” needs to receive far more emphasis.
He then adds a second cliche. Because virtually everything is on the Internet, you don’t need to bother learning anything. Wherever ignorance rules, this goofy sophistry is the palace guard. Didn’t we have encyclopedias 50 years ago that contained everything worth knowing? Did it ever occur to even the nuttiest professor to say, well, kids, you don't need to learn anything because it’s all right here in these books? In obedience to this nihilism, our public schools have often stopped teaching altogether. Welcome to Wasteland.
This professor, now on a roll, charges onward to a condemnation of everything that could save us:
“But the greater challenge for me, as I see it, is that there’s also much work to un-do. Thanks to Virginia’s ‘Standards of Learning,’ and comparable initiatives in other states, my students come into my classrooms carrying a deeply ingrained notion that their minds are vessels; it is my task, many of them seem to believe, to fill them with knowledge—and it is their task to spit it back on tests or in papers.”
What filling? What knowledge? What spitting back? Student who know virtually nothing have never experienced either the filling up or the spitting back.
If you want to understand why American public schools wallow in a swamp of mediocrity, it’s because this professor’s attitudes are epidemic, and have been for years. Educators at all levels robotically echo these pious hostilities toward the gathering of knowledge. Failure is built in, because all of education should start with a foundation of facts but typically does not. Young minds arrive as empty vessels….and they are kept empty.
When students have big gaps in their knowledge, it’s usually because the school didn’t bother to fill those gaps. There is nothing obscure about this. Students won’t learn much unless teachers teach, or at least set up a structure that forces the students to learn. Take your pick
Unfortunately, we have something new in our era, a celebration of non-teaching, of floating disdainfully above it all, of refusing to fill anyone with knowledge. The professor’s “task,” whatever it now is, does not include anything so trivial as dealing in knowledge.
Quite naturally, you have college students who don’t know the basic facts of American history.
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"Jaywalking": relevant video, 6 minutes long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Url1HL6oExk
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VEER article: http://veermag.com/2014/09/seeds-of-passion/
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Our kids are not taught logic as a formal discipline. Even with an ignorance of history, a sense of logic would tell a student that a nation must come into being (the revolution) before it can be threatened by a civil war.
Try decades later. Try when they’re no longer in school so the data just isn’t useful to them anymore. Again, try yourself. How much do you really truly remember pow right off the top of your head, even if you didn’t do the traditional school thing you clearly know stuff, but how much retrieval was there.
Hebrew’s not in your daily life. But is it in your weekly life? Monthly? Clearly it’s in there sometimes if you still read it. I spent 7 years in various point of school learning German. At this point multiple decades later the only German I know is stuff from Frank Zappa lyrics, yeah maybe there’s a hundred words that ring a bell and I can suss some stuff out but I can’t read German anymore. I wish I could, but my life didn’t go in a direction to use all that German I learned, so it’s gone... well not GONE, it’s down there somewhere and 1 or 2 classes could probably dredge it back up. But even if I did that, if I didn’t use it after it would sink to the bottom again.
No my conclusions are based on well grounded psychology and teaching research. This is how human brains work, data you put into them that you don’t retrieve periodically sink to harder to retrieve places. Even folks that use various memory tricks like mind castles still find rooms that get “dusty” and take more work to get back.
Ahh now you’re getting into a different section. The teaching of logic and retrieval. One of the reasons math is so important, even if you don’t use algebra in life you use algebraic thinking. Definitely good stuff. And also why I keep talking about data not logic.
And remember, I’m not saying don’t teach kids this stuff. I’m saying don’t be surprised or disappointed when they forget. It’s just life. Use it or lose it is one of the oldest rules of teaching. And the vast majority of the data we’re taught we don’t use, so we lose.
They won’t remember it if they don’t use it. Use it or lose it, oldest rule of education, and 100% true.
I gave up my ham radio license back in 1982 or something.
With my 3rd wife getting her license right before 2000, I got talked into taking the tests again.
I aced the written up to Advanced, and surprise, managed the 13 WPM morse code requirement.
It had been decades since I'd messed with morse code.
Your experience is not applicable to everyone.
/johnny
/johnny
I like that one. And it’s true. But again we’re going into the different between data and other stuff. I’m talking about data. Data you put in your brains that you don’t periodically get back out goes away. But of course that framework you wind up using, just because you can’t not use. I’m not saying don’t teach them, I’m saying don’t be upset when they forget. Somebody that’s had a couple of physics course between AmHis classes is probably going to be a bit rough on their history, they weren’t using it, and while they weren’t using it they were cramming all kinds of other stuff in there. It doesn’t mean they’re dumb, it means they’ve been busy with other stuff.
I’m an American. But even with TV I can spot a strawman when I see one. Heck TV is where I learned that stuff about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia and canning and Pasteurization and refrigeration. Connections 1, 2 and 3. Fantastic shows for learning history.
When I went back to college I had to take the math assessment and actually tested into 2 classes higher than the last one I took. Which was handy since it was one past the highest level needed for my major. I did do a bit of studying first just to flex the math brain again, because I really didn’t want to take any math classes.
It’s there, it can be retrieved. But it’s different than the other stuff we use every day. I had to get my math brain on to ace that test. You probably did a bit of review for your, get that part of the brain warmed up.
It’s NOT my experience. It’s how the human brain works. Hundreds of research articles have been written about this. Doesn’t matter how hard you stomp your feet, you’re wrong. Use it or lose it. It’s real. And you know it. You just want to pretend.
I'm an American, too. I was an NCO in the USAF.
If you have a TV, you can waste a lot of hours that can be used for learning 'useless' stuff.
I'll stick with what works for me.
One thing that has never let me down is that children (including me) live up to expectations placed on them.
/johnny
/johnny
Yep, straight for the strawman, and even a bit of insult. Meanwhile you’re still wrong.
Age HAS taught me. It’s taught me you forget things. And it’s taught me that denial is more than just the longest river in Africa. It’s clear you just can’t admit you’re wrong. But you are. And now you’re resorting to fallacies, so that show you know you’re wrong. So we’re done. Have fun forgetting this conversation, which we both know you will.
/johnny
My FACTS
https://www.google.com/search?q=use+it+or+lose+it+theory&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb
vs your assertions.
You are, quite simply, wrong. Bye.
The only reason I brought the NCO thing into it is that you WILL teach post high-school teens if you are an NCO.
And get all the latest theories in the 'Train the Trainer' classes.
Mostly BS.
/johnny
/johnny
/johnny
So. The idea of getting the grandkids a Breaking Bad Leggo Kit for Christmas might not go over too well?
These days people need to start taking their own education into their own hands. No more relying on nitwit teachers. If more Americans viewed high school as training for the real world then I am certain that they would likely be better off.
The real key is taking your life in your own hands and taking responsibility. These days too many young idiots view college as an extension of high school, meaning that professors are supposed to end up coddling and guiding them.
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