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No child left behind was the most disastrous cancer to infect public education. We should absolutely segregate the kids who don't want to learn from those who

by EricE 2y ago

No child left behind was the most disastrous cancer to infect public education. We should absolutely segregate the kids who don't want to learn from those who do, instead of dumbing them all down.

Aloha 2y ago
This has nothing to do with this problem though - phones are pervasive among kids today, absent policy allowing teachers to take them away, there isn't anything you can do.
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  Rutherford says he was careful not to blame his students for their phone dependency. I remember a teacher in high school throwing a textbook at a student that wasn't paying attention. He paid attention after that. I suppose times and approaches to teaching have changed.
  - Aloha 2y ago
    I was the kid who no one thought was paying attention, until I read back the last 3-5 min of conversation to the Teacher. I dont think you can enhance learning thru fear, there is no way that you get people to be more engaged and retain information presented in that environment.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Absent physical violence, I spent 180 days in lunch detention during middle school for refusing to do my math homework due to the marginal impact it had on my grade. Even after 2 trimesters away from my friends during lunch I refused to do the teacher's busywork, and they refused to give me my time back. It was a zero-sum solution for both of us (and a surprisingly childish response from an adult that ought to know better). Sometimes, students recognize the barriers around them and exploit them to their fullest potential. One student pays attention after getting the book thrown at them, another observes how the teacher aimed for the floor and tests their patience because they know they won't get hit no matter how many times they zone-out. It's disappointingly easy to bait educators into disproportionate escalation, in my problem-child experience.
    - tcbawo 2y ago
      > surprisingly childish response from an adult that ought to know better The lesson you learned from this experience was that the adult was being childish?
      - talldayo 2y ago
        I expected them fail me on the homework, as was fair. The assignment has a point-value, I showed up each morning with an empty notebook and requested a zero on the assignment instead of a late penalty. Homework was worth 15% of the final grade and I had no problem passing without any homework credit whatsoever. The lesson I learned is that if you beat certain people at their own game they will never let you live it down. Whether I was dysfunctional or not, their response didn't work and they refused to renege after months of failure. They failed as a teacher, when I hadn't failed as a student.
        tcbawo 2y ago
        Do you think your teacher saw potential in you and was trying to get more from you? My biggest frustration with the public school near me is that they don’t care whether a student thrives, only that they don’t fail. Attempting to instill a work ethic as a teacher is admirable, but clearly didn’t work in your case. I could see how facing resistant students could grind the optimism and energy out of a teacher.
        jrs235 2y ago
        I share a similar experience and response to talldyo. The problem is "we" (talldyo and I) understood how to solve the problems (as proved by passing the tests) but were uninterested in wasting our time doing busy work. The teacher could have changed their grading to be something like 50% of the grade comes from homework and 50% from tests. Then I likely would have done the homework, while still being pissed because it's just "busy work". I prefer just taking quizzes and tests to determine grades and if I understand the material. How I learn and how much practice I need to get to understanding and being able to solve the problem should be no ones business but my own. If the teacher was prudent they would have just left talldyo alone. The teacher needlessly caused additional problems and pain and suffering.
- banish-m4 2y ago
  While true, it's a related dysfunction that damaged American education in profound ways. I went through an under-resourced education system with 50+ students per class and bused 3 hours per day to a school with gangs and drug problems because of my race. All the while, I was bored to tears with material already covered up to 2 years previously in private school. (Dad was a cheapskate and wanted more money for buying stereo equipment, and so Challenger had to go.)
banish-m4 2y ago
Too late. But that wasn't the first assault: the abandonment of phonics, forced busing, property tax cuts, creationism, culture wars, and arbitrary, unproven experiments are also doing all they can to dismantle what was once a shining accomplishment of commonwealth and excellence. Also, America has always been deeply anti-intellectual, but W said "hold my beer" and went about destroying it with good intentions without a shred of understanding. Hell is paved...
contingencies 2y ago
Well, here in Australia schools seem to successfully ban phones during school hours. Perhaps "Kids who don't want to learn" is not a constructive way to look at the issue. Maybe "Kids who are engaged with something other than what is going on in the classroom" would be more useful. That goes for covert books, magazines, hunger, lack of sleep, drug addiction, unstable home life, personal drama, or any other distracting factor. Teachers and schools have existing strategies for these ranging from internal and external referrals, social support and psychologists, learning disability specialists, temporary removal from the class, etc. Some students will fail, but you should never brand kids as write-offs or uninterested, that's akin to giving up on them which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As for separating higher motivation and engagement students from the general student body, gifted and talented programs continue to exist for this purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_education I attended such a program in Sydney Australia at ages 11 and 12 then a similarly academically tested high school. In the former and most of the latter case I found it to be quite positive experience, but lack any point of direct comparison. There were still troubled kids, drugs, etc. Mostly it was still slow and not very challenging. However, there were virtually no distracting elements in an average classroom whereas my understanding is that in many countries, high school teachers may often be unable to maintain a genuinely focused and academically engaged classroom. To me, this sounds like a state-mandated waste of time for all involved. These days, where switched on kids can grok arbitrary subjects through the internet within seconds, what's the point of rote schooling? Perhaps we need to reduce the classroom hours expected of children and increase other activities, this would partially recognise the declining utility of rote knowledge in the workplace. This touches on the greater social problem, which is that post industrial revolution schooling largely performs a child minding function. What do we do with the kids if they're not locked in school? State and other schooling often also seeks to ingrain what IMHO are various negative, outmoded and incorrect ideas (much of religion, false assertions of the representative nature of a local "democratic" system, nationalism, etc.) in the student body. Home schooling is a good antidote but comes with its own challenges.
- banish-m4 2y ago
  There are significant numbers of kids who have been trained not to want to learn in America because America is deeply anti-intellectual and teaching to excessive standardized testing drives what little curiosity there was out of greater numbers of them. As a result of this and wildly inappropriate teacher performance measurement, the really good teachers who inspire kids get frustrated and leave. As a result, most American public schools are watered-down, don't care about excellence, and are de facto prison daycare with absurd levels of performative testing pantomiming a quality education while being anything but. It's not the teachers' fault but the parents, voters, school districts, state education boards, and past US presidents who all share in culpability.
arrowsmith 2y ago
Not every school is in the US, bro.

by EricE 2y ago

No child left behind was the most disastrous cancer to infect public education. We should absolutely segregate the kids who don't want to learn from those who do, instead of dumbing them all down.

Aloha 2y ago

This has nothing to do with this problem though - phones are pervasive among kids today, absent policy allowing teachers to take them away, there isn't anything you can do.

wannacboatmovie 2y ago
Rutherford says he was careful not to blame his students for their phone dependency. I remember a teacher in high school throwing a textbook at a student that wasn't paying attention. He paid attention after that. I suppose times and approaches to teaching have changed.
- Aloha 2y ago
  I was the kid who no one thought was paying attention, until I read back the last 3-5 min of conversation to the Teacher. I dont think you can enhance learning thru fear, there is no way that you get people to be more engaged and retain information presented in that environment.
- talldayo 2y ago
  Absent physical violence, I spent 180 days in lunch detention during middle school for refusing to do my math homework due to the marginal impact it had on my grade. Even after 2 trimesters away from my friends during lunch I refused to do the teacher's busywork, and they refused to give me my time back. It was a zero-sum solution for both of us (and a surprisingly childish response from an adult that ought to know better). Sometimes, students recognize the barriers around them and exploit them to their fullest potential. One student pays attention after getting the book thrown at them, another observes how the teacher aimed for the floor and tests their patience because they know they won't get hit no matter how many times they zone-out. It's disappointingly easy to bait educators into disproportionate escalation, in my problem-child experience.
  - tcbawo 2y ago
    > surprisingly childish response from an adult that ought to know better The lesson you learned from this experience was that the adult was being childish?
    - talldayo 2y ago
      I expected them fail me on the homework, as was fair. The assignment has a point-value, I showed up each morning with an empty notebook and requested a zero on the assignment instead of a late penalty. Homework was worth 15% of the final grade and I had no problem passing without any homework credit whatsoever. The lesson I learned is that if you beat certain people at their own game they will never let you live it down. Whether I was dysfunctional or not, their response didn't work and they refused to renege after months of failure. They failed as a teacher, when I hadn't failed as a student.
      - tcbawo 2y ago
        Do you think your teacher saw potential in you and was trying to get more from you? My biggest frustration with the public school near me is that they don’t care whether a student thrives, only that they don’t fail. Attempting to instill a work ethic as a teacher is admirable, but clearly didn’t work in your case. I could see how facing resistant students could grind the optimism and energy out of a teacher.
        jrs235 2y ago
        I share a similar experience and response to talldyo. The problem is "we" (talldyo and I) understood how to solve the problems (as proved by passing the tests) but were uninterested in wasting our time doing busy work. The teacher could have changed their grading to be something like 50% of the grade comes from homework and 50% from tests. Then I likely would have done the homework, while still being pissed because it's just "busy work". I prefer just taking quizzes and tests to determine grades and if I understand the material. How I learn and how much practice I need to get to understanding and being able to solve the problem should be no ones business but my own. If the teacher was prudent they would have just left talldyo alone. The teacher needlessly caused additional problems and pain and suffering.
banish-m4 2y ago
While true, it's a related dysfunction that damaged American education in profound ways. I went through an under-resourced education system with 50+ students per class and bused 3 hours per day to a school with gangs and drug problems because of my race. All the while, I was bored to tears with material already covered up to 2 years previously in private school. (Dad was a cheapskate and wanted more money for buying stereo equipment, and so Challenger had to go.)

banish-m4 2y ago

Too late. But that wasn't the first assault: the abandonment of phonics, forced busing, property tax cuts, creationism, culture wars, and arbitrary, unproven experiments are also doing all they can to dismantle what was once a shining accomplishment of commonwealth and excellence. Also, America has always been deeply anti-intellectual, but W said "hold my beer" and went about destroying it with good intentions without a shred of understanding. Hell is paved...

contingencies 2y ago

Well, here in Australia schools seem to successfully ban phones during school hours. Perhaps "Kids who don't want to learn" is not a constructive way to look at the issue. Maybe "Kids who are engaged with something other than what is going on in the classroom" would be more useful. That goes for covert books, magazines, hunger, lack of sleep, drug addiction, unstable home life, personal drama, or any other distracting factor. Teachers and schools have existing strategies for these ranging from internal and external referrals, social support and psychologists, learning disability specialists, temporary removal from the class, etc. Some students will fail, but you should never brand kids as write-offs or uninterested, that's akin to giving up on them which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As for separating higher motivation and engagement students from the general student body, gifted and talented programs continue to exist for this purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_education I attended such a program in Sydney Australia at ages 11 and 12 then a similarly academically tested high school. In the former and most of the latter case I found it to be quite positive experience, but lack any point of direct comparison. There were still troubled kids, drugs, etc. Mostly it was still slow and not very challenging. However, there were virtually no distracting elements in an average classroom whereas my understanding is that in many countries, high school teachers may often be unable to maintain a genuinely focused and academically engaged classroom. To me, this sounds like a state-mandated waste of time for all involved. These days, where switched on kids can grok arbitrary subjects through the internet within seconds, what's the point of rote schooling? Perhaps we need to reduce the classroom hours expected of children and increase other activities, this would partially recognise the declining utility of rote knowledge in the workplace. This touches on the greater social problem, which is that post industrial revolution schooling largely performs a child minding function. What do we do with the kids if they're not locked in school? State and other schooling often also seeks to ingrain what IMHO are various negative, outmoded and incorrect ideas (much of religion, false assertions of the representative nature of a local "democratic" system, nationalism, etc.) in the student body. Home schooling is a good antidote but comes with its own challenges.

banish-m4 2y ago
There are significant numbers of kids who have been trained not to want to learn in America because America is deeply anti-intellectual and teaching to excessive standardized testing drives what little curiosity there was out of greater numbers of them. As a result of this and wildly inappropriate teacher performance measurement, the really good teachers who inspire kids get frustrated and leave. As a result, most American public schools are watered-down, don't care about excellence, and are de facto prison daycare with absurd levels of performative testing pantomiming a quality education while being anything but. It's not the teachers' fault but the parents, voters, school districts, state education boards, and past US presidents who all share in culpability.

arrowsmith 2y ago

Not every school is in the US, bro.