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In my eyes this kind of vision, that old teaching style is better than new style, derives from old people more out of a sentimental desire than out of real resu
by erikb 13y ago
In my eyes this kind of vision, that old teaching style is better than new style, derives from old people more out of a sentimental desire than out of real results. Modern teaching methods are very likely much more successful than older one's, because in such kind of details humanity generally is able to improve well (can't provide statistics, though).
People are not completely wrong, though, when they say that the old paradigm was more efficiently executed than the new one. The reason might not be that it is more efficient in general though, but simply that we did it for thousands of years, while the new approach is only done for a few centuries. It's very likely that we go too far and need to add more discipline, but that is part of the stuff science can do and will do in a few centuries anyway.
The main reason I am writing this comment is that I believe the way to progress is forward not backwards. The idea can not be to see that a new paradigm applied for 3-5 generations of teachers is less efficient then the old one that was applied for hundreds or thousands of generations and then just go backwards. The idea should be to improve upon what we do now. Yes, teachers of now need to learn again to be more demanding and they should regain the power to do so with the necessary force. But explanation, praise and convincing need to stay in the game! At least for myself I can say that I learned much more in the last 2 years then in all 13 years of school, because learning on the internet works based on motivation, detailed explanations and rewarding, "gamey" technology and not on old people in front of the class who tell me what an idiot I am.
- hrkristian 13y ago>The main reason I am writing this comment is that I believe the way to progress is forward not backwards. I couldn't disagree more, forward only implies new, which isn't necessarily better. The old paradigm of teaching, I find, was built on a lack of rules; evolving naturally from the one-on-one home upbringing, to apprenticeships and into the modern classroom. (Feel free to add jumps.) Obviously it had flaws, as with a despotic ruler the students were at the mercy if his/her whims, but from what we're seeing today that hasn't been mitigated in the least. Despite serious efforts (teacher evaluations, PISA testing, etc.) Instead, because teachers are being scrutinized down to the atom and the school system is monopolizing education, we have children who aren't taught to respect their teachers, and parents who aren't taking appropriate action to it because teaching is being brought out of their area of responsibility. How can we hope to best human nature at teaching when human nature is something we've barely scratched the surface of? Is it really right to bet our children's future on a live experiment in human understanding? Yes, of course we have to attempt to improve, and obviously there is and always has been room for improvement, but the teachers weren't the enemy in that regard. They were generally doing what they could every day to make kids learn. Now, instead of teachers, we have politicians trying to secure the upcoming election by ripping apart the status quo so they are able to use fancy sentences and faulty statistics in the media.
- erikb 13y agoI love your straight disagreement and have to agree with most of your arguments. Your first line is not complete, though. You said forward doesn't imply better, which is true. Forward can even mean worse. But we already know that backwards never gets better, because it was already shitty the last time. We must make new experiences to find the path towards better.