Posted on 08/03/2006 11:38:51 AM PDT by neverdem
Just to play devil's advocate, how would you know? How would you know that one school is better than others? By the "grades" it gives? By some write-up in Time or Newsweek magazine? By "education specialists" who declare them so?
I see where you're going with your question, I just think that more accountability (and less political correctness) in public schools would do wonders for boosting the value of education received there.
I get what you're saying. Tech courses are important for American students of all sexes, including male, female AND the yet-to-be-determined. I say this tongue-in-cheek to highlight my chagrin at the 'tolerance' being taught for gays in the lower grades!
I guess the Ivy League president who said women weren't mentally up to the tech courses didn't know about the other side of the coin. Curriculums need work, across the board. I think they get more attention in colleges and if we had fewer liberal profs we'd be on the right track!
Those are all good points. I agree that boys, and often girls, too, would benefit from education that teaches them to do something useful. Fixing an air conditioner, for example, would be more valuable to me than all the Spanish literature I've studied :-).
We live in a society that emphasizes "schooling" rather than "learning" or "education." I find that makes it difficult to focus on what my children really want to learn and might need to know (for real life), because we also have to consider what the state wants them to be doing now, and what colleges will want them to know and have done for admission. While it's true that college is not always valuable for a student, I want them to have the opportunity, if they choose to pursue it!
I like your suggestion about creative writing. My oldest daughter does a great deal of that, and it definitely develops skills. However, it's also useful to do persuasive and expository writing -- giving facts about things, expressing and opinions and reasons. Free Republic gives us all opportunities for reading and writing of this kind :-).
Regarding literature, I agree that much of what is taught in school is pointless at that time in life, and in that situation. Most of the world's great literature is aimed at willing adults, not incarcerated 15-year-olds. When a person wants Shakespeare in his life (or Dickens, Hardy, Tolstoy, etc.) those books are available in the library, along with the information the reader needs to help him understand it, if he finds it difficult.
This is what people (of any age) will do when they WANT to read and understand something, instead of being forced to. For example, I taught myself to read French in college (although my efforts to speak it are catastrophic), because I wanted to read "Cyrano de Bergerac" in the original.
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I think boys and girls should have seperate classrooms and casual uniforms should be required. JMHO.
Just as consumers vote with their wallets when they buy cars, furniture or homes, they would spend their money wisely on education. Free choice leads to higher standards, higher quality, better products, innovation, and customer satisfaction. If the customer isn't satisified, he or she looks for another education company (or clothing store, etc.). People are not so dumb that they need socialized education, in my opinion.
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Ping - you might be interested in this one.
Thanks, Metmom.
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I have never been interested in literature. I'd rather write something worth reading myself than read what people read hundreds of years ago. I think teaching in the modern era should be updated with modern subjects. At the same time, sadly, it seems like efforts to take that advice wind up in analysis of rap songs and the like, which I'm not sure is an improvement.
What's great about Free Republic in this regard is that it gives people an outlet for their interest in persuasive writing on subjects that its users are passionately interested in.
I think that's the best way to learn. It might be something worth sharing with older children as they try to grapple with related skills.
The question is how to passionately interest a child in something nowadays. Our culture seems to oppose passion about anything and I find the curious lack of ethusiasm in today's kids - even the good ones - unnerving and depressing.
Have you faced that problem and how do you personally deal with it?
D
I've never understood why we should waste time on Shakespeare, for instance, when reading him requires that we acquire an entirely new vocabulary we will never use again for as long as we live.
How would kids know whether or not what they desire out of education is genuinely useful? There are undoubtedly some kids who think watching MTV is enough education for them.
True, Shakespeare may not have a contemporary application--especially with the way kids butcher plain English, using tools such as instant messaging and e-mail--but that doesn't mean that there isn't educational value in learning the social, political, and historical implications that Shakespeare's works had on modern literature.
I remember a class I took on database management in college. The professor told us, "I'm not going to teach you specific database packages such as FoxPro, Access (or whatever else was popular at the time). Instead, I'm going to teach you how datbases work in general, after which you'll be able to apply to any database package."
It was sage advice. Knowing only things that have "immediate payback" are fine, but not always transferable. Understanding the foundations of things, whether it be phonetics, algebra, logic or ancient history goes much further to creating a life-long learning experience.
My kids asked that question all the time. Come to think of it, so did I.
I always tried to give them answers because I, too, hate busy work and if I felt something in the curriculum was just that, I didn't make them do it.
The one example that comes to mind is when they were learning to write out numbers in words. When they wanted to know why they needed to know this, I showed them the next time I wrote out a check and told them this was a skill they'd be using the rest of their lives. That settled that. Other things haven't been so easy to deal with; it's taken more creativity.
what is REALLY shocking is that the ivory tower sees the solution as imposing MORE feminizing upon the boys.
They don't see the ivory tower as failing to teach.
Essentially they have outlawed via PC learning methods for boys.
ping
No kidding, they'd have me on a Ritalin IV drip.
Socialized, no. A "standardized" level of competence in education, yes.
If you had a son or daughter in such a school, how would you determine whether or not you're getting your money's worth?
I'm just posing the question as to whom (or what body) would judge whether or not educational standards are being met, and to what degree.
Second, how would people with low incomes fare in such an environment? Would they be able to afford a "Kia" education, while their neighbors across the tracks can buy a "Lexus" education?
Articles like this only reinforce the parochial school wisdom of separating the sexes. Boys and girls have different educational needs and mixing them together at best makes for uneasy compromises. In the hands of an agenda-driven bureaucracy things get downright dysfunctional.
LOL!
You just reminded me of a Geometry class waaaay back when.
The teacher showed the entire class this old disney film with the crazy duck professor. It was how geometry was all over our lives in the real world. (in buildig things, how to play pool etc.)
From that pont forward, geometry was seen as part of our immediate world.
I doubt teachers today would be competent enough to even handle that simple demonstration.
ps, yes it was a male teacher...
Regarding Shakespeare and similar subjects, for us in the West, including non-Europeans living in Western democracies, each generation has the responsibility to impart the canon of Western Civilization to the next.
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