6 ms·

Nobody broke the kids, they were doing exactly what they were taught to do. I'm not a fan of the education system in the least bit, but something about this ru

Nobody broke the kids, they were doing exactly what they were taught to do. I'm not a fan of the education system in the least bit, but something about this rubbed me the wrong way. She's probably exaggerating when she said she had a "meltdown", but all the same, what are you supposed to think as a kid when your teacher has a tantrum in front of you because you're doing what you were trained to do? To the kids she's just part of the institution, and in this particular case the institution is sending them very conflicted messages. "Think for yourself! As long as you're thinking what you're supposed to be thinking." In any case, I think the real problem with the education system is it's constantly trying to bullshit kids into "learning" things they really don't need to learn. (And they don't really learn it. Quick sanity test: what do you remember about high school trigonometry? But you "learned" it right? Or did you, really?) Most kids aren't stupid. They're naive, but they're not stupid. They can tell when their time is being wasted. They're out to give the right answer and not think about it because when you're literally trapped in a system like that, the most logical thing to do is minimize effort and not make waves until you can make your way out. So that's what kids do, and then pompous teachers are surprised that kids aren't "passionate" about these things. Well no kidding they're not! Why should they be?

demallien 12y ago
Like 3pt141597, I remember everything about high school trig. Not only do I remember it, but as it turned out, 10 years after leaving school, I actually started having to use it regularly (graphics programming). I also remember high school level calculus. Sadly I can't say the same for university-level maths, which I regularly have to break out the text books for when I need them (stats and probability, complex numbers being my two regular bugbears). When I think about it, I struggle to find a single useless class from high school. If anything, I regret mostly that I didn't make enough of the opportunities that my school provided me - I really regret not having put in the effort in art classes for example.
- silencio 12y ago
  I thought lightly of all the arts classes I had to take in school and that my parents wanted me to take for "a well rounded education". Drawing, painting, ceramics, piano... It took me almost 10 years after high school to realize how useful it's been for me in so many random little ways. Everything from being able to craft some of the things I needed for my wedding (designing my ring to sewing a ring pillow and painting table numbers) to just everyday mundaneness when I'm meeting with a client and I can just draw out what they're thinking and get the point across easily. The piano especially useful because it's so relaxing and good for taking my mind off stress/pain better than painkillers. Never in a million years as a kid would I have thought sitting in an art history class or 10+ years of playing a piano would come in as handy as all the obsessive studying I did of science, english, math and other classes. I'm so disappointed courses like that are disappearing (along with home ec - never had that, but my husband can't mend clothes or cook...) but so many people are struggling with basic math/language skills that I can understand why.
lucidguppy 12y ago
Kids do what they're told. Problem is there are several types of learning. Among them are skill learning and another is exploratory learning. For much of education's history - we teach skills. That we can test easily. That's fine - kids need skills. We also need to teach creative and exploratory thinking. But teachers must tell the kids to be mindful when they are working exploration mode. Perhaps mornings are skill learning and afternoons are creative/exploratory. Perhaps you can test exploratory skills but don't ever give an evaluation to it back to the child - as they probably won't get evaluation for it in the real world. In exploratory learning - you will need to test or check your own work. These kids need to learn that. There may not be one right answer - but a person should be able to evaluate their own hypothesis and not get upset if they're wrong. That is a life skill we could all use. Why do we have grade it anyway - a teacher can see when a kid is slacking off and grade on that.
3pt14159 12y ago
I remember everything about highschool trig. And chemistry. And physics. And certainly the rest of math. We might waste the time of the kids that are going to end up flipping burgers, but we don't waste the time of the brighter kids. If anything we move too slow.
- ZenPro 12y ago
  As a parent of three bright children with excellent development reports your comment makes me want to do you considerable violence. Regardless of whether my children were skilled in mathematics or not, if I overhead your derisory attitude to kids learning abilities I would probably punch your teeth out. And no, I wouldn't be sorry. Sometimes violence is the best teacher and learning not to refer to other peoples children that way is probably far more valuable a lesson in life than your highschool trig. Just remember, for every child you refer to as a burger flipper - X probability will have fathers standing 6' 2", weighing 240 and a former linebacker.
  - tks2103 12y ago
    Your propensity for violence is likely the least impressive thing about you.
    - ZenPro 12y ago
      You are right. It is. Thank you for the compliment.
  - BWStearns 12y ago
    Possibly excessive snark but I'm having a bad day so screw it. I find it ironic that ZenPro is so quick to violence. That said insulting people's children is never nice, but everyone is someone's child so sometimes it's a necessary evil.
    - jonpeda 12y ago
      When you go Pro, it becomes all about the money and not about the spirit of the Zen. ZenAmateur may be less skilled, but more desirable. > That said insulting people's children is never nice, but everyone is someone's child so sometimes it's a necessary evil. Making broad prejudicial statements is never a necessary evil. There are plenty of ways to make accurate statements without insulting people or exaggerating their weaknesses.
jostylr 12y ago
Exactly. When I follow these thoughts to their logical conclusion, I always reach the Sudbury model: let the kids figure out what they want to do and learn. Humans (and kids are human) are smart and savvy. Give them a system and they will learn to navigate it to their advantage. But give them no system, let them find their own way, and they can achieve anything. Teachers can see the symptoms that the system is letting down the students. But it is extremely hard for them to accept that it is the whole structure that is problematic requiring a massive redesign.
- army 12y ago
  That completely ignores the fact that people don't know what they don't know, or tend to erroneously assume that something they don't know about isn't relevant.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  There should be some allowance for self-direction, but humans are only "smart and savvy" over a period of several hundred generations and not any specific individual. By the time a kid figures out that he should have learned something, he'll have great-grandchildren (assuming he's still alive at all).
pdonis 12y ago
> Nobody broke the kids, they were doing exactly what they were taught to do. I would say that the fact that that's what they were taught to do is what broke them. In other words, trapping them in the system (and I agree with you that they are trapped--I certainly felt that way when I was in school) is breaking them. > what do you remember about high school trigonometry? Everything. But that doesn't really contradict your point, because (a) I have actually used trigonometry many times since high school, both for work and for fun, and (b) I didn't actually learn trigonometry from my high school trig class; I already knew it (or at least most of it), because my Dad had given me a book on trig some time before and I had read through it on my own, because I was interested in the subject matter.
- zanny 12y ago
  In the same line of thinking, I can remember most of my classes from high school. But that doesn't mean just being able to recall something made it a good use of my time. For example, Spanish class. Now some people are fine with the language classes effectively just being a deep social studies curriculum around one culture where most of the time is spent on rote memorization for arbitrary reasons, but while I can remember my vocabulary, I can't speak real Spanish at all. But then again, I never did in class either. 5 years of Spanish, including two required semesters in college, and if I hear a Spanish conversation I'm completely lost. If they slow down I can translate the words in my brain bank and figure it out, but I never spoke the language. In the same line of thinking, I read Shakespeare, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, Uncle Toms Cabin, etc and never actually got anything more than factual recall of the story plots to show for it. Of course I remember the math, because I liked the math and specialized in the math and went into software in part due to the math. But the entirety of HN is deeply biased because almost anyone here is an intellectual who likes knowledge in general, so they didn't mind the English and Reading and Social Studies classes even if they didn't directly contribute to their future employability or character. But most kids are not like that. It requires both luck and intellect to realize that you should make the most of the prison you are stuck in for your childhood. Many don't get lucky, and the mental synapses that would lead them to embrace the education system to extract value from it have a hostile reaction and abandon it. And that doesn't mean they are dumb, it means they didn't get the right combination of random teachers to inspire them. If they could be inspired at all - it requires a specific brand of personality to be compelled into a repetitive environment and find value in it. Some just won't be able to no matter what. None of it changes the fundamental flaw in modern education, which is the need to inspire children to learn the things that interest them most and learn about that. And to try to inspire them to find interest in all the things we routinely parrot from their textbooks and lectures onto tests for them to have a "placement" on. And if they don't? The parroting is rarely doing any good, and is only doing long term damage to the childs ability to reason and have a passion for learning. I don't think knowing the plot to Uncle Toms Cabin is worth that.
dinkumthinkum 12y ago
I remember trigonometry, I think must of us here do as well. You're talking about something. You're promoting this notion that kids should be uneducated because knowledge is useless and it's better to simply learn the lowest of material possible to help attain low-skilled jobs. This teacher is bemoaning the thinking patterns of kids, I think it is a very different issue.
- overgard 12y ago
  You seem to have made quite a few assumptions about what I'm supposedly advocating based solely on the fact that I'm critical of the current system. (You might notice I've made no prescriptions here, only commentary on the status quo). But please, by all means continue to argue against this strawman you've constructed, don't let me ruin your fun.
  - dinkumthinkum 12y ago
    Oh, sorry. But, it was a straw argument. You stated no one really remembers trig anyway. Just stating than any criticism is attacking a strawman does not imply the argument was not imply the argument was not made of straw to begin with. :)
001sky 12y ago
They rarely think about what they are doing as long as at the end of the day their answer is “correct”. Agree. These kids are just playin "THE GAME". I don't know why this is bad. It shows the kids are smart. At the end of the day, the only use of education is getting stuff. The kids are focused on the "getting stuff", and see the eductation as hoop to jump through. The truth is they are right.
GhotiFish 12y ago
> what do you remember about high school trigonometry? But you "learned" it right? Or did you, really?) <aside> Soh Cah To-ah sin over hypotenuse cos over hypotenuse tan over adjacent. I'm REALLY glad I learned that, That's helped me a lot. Though, it doesn't really take away from your argument. </aside>

demallien 12y ago

Like 3pt141597, I remember everything about high school trig. Not only do I remember it, but as it turned out, 10 years after leaving school, I actually started having to use it regularly (graphics programming). I also remember high school level calculus. Sadly I can't say the same for university-level maths, which I regularly have to break out the text books for when I need them (stats and probability, complex numbers being my two regular bugbears). When I think about it, I struggle to find a single useless class from high school. If anything, I regret mostly that I didn't make enough of the opportunities that my school provided me - I really regret not having put in the effort in art classes for example.

silencio 12y ago
I thought lightly of all the arts classes I had to take in school and that my parents wanted me to take for "a well rounded education". Drawing, painting, ceramics, piano... It took me almost 10 years after high school to realize how useful it's been for me in so many random little ways. Everything from being able to craft some of the things I needed for my wedding (designing my ring to sewing a ring pillow and painting table numbers) to just everyday mundaneness when I'm meeting with a client and I can just draw out what they're thinking and get the point across easily. The piano especially useful because it's so relaxing and good for taking my mind off stress/pain better than painkillers. Never in a million years as a kid would I have thought sitting in an art history class or 10+ years of playing a piano would come in as handy as all the obsessive studying I did of science, english, math and other classes. I'm so disappointed courses like that are disappearing (along with home ec - never had that, but my husband can't mend clothes or cook...) but so many people are struggling with basic math/language skills that I can understand why.

lucidguppy 12y ago

Kids do what they're told. Problem is there are several types of learning. Among them are skill learning and another is exploratory learning. For much of education's history - we teach skills. That we can test easily. That's fine - kids need skills. We also need to teach creative and exploratory thinking. But teachers must tell the kids to be mindful when they are working exploration mode. Perhaps mornings are skill learning and afternoons are creative/exploratory. Perhaps you can test exploratory skills but don't ever give an evaluation to it back to the child - as they probably won't get evaluation for it in the real world. In exploratory learning - you will need to test or check your own work. These kids need to learn that. There may not be one right answer - but a person should be able to evaluate their own hypothesis and not get upset if they're wrong. That is a life skill we could all use. Why do we have grade it anyway - a teacher can see when a kid is slacking off and grade on that.

3pt14159 12y ago

I remember everything about highschool trig. And chemistry. And physics. And certainly the rest of math. We might waste the time of the kids that are going to end up flipping burgers, but we don't waste the time of the brighter kids. If anything we move too slow.

ZenPro 12y ago
As a parent of three bright children with excellent development reports your comment makes me want to do you considerable violence. Regardless of whether my children were skilled in mathematics or not, if I overhead your derisory attitude to kids learning abilities I would probably punch your teeth out. And no, I wouldn't be sorry. Sometimes violence is the best teacher and learning not to refer to other peoples children that way is probably far more valuable a lesson in life than your highschool trig. Just remember, for every child you refer to as a burger flipper - X probability will have fathers standing 6' 2", weighing 240 and a former linebacker.
- tks2103 12y ago
  Your propensity for violence is likely the least impressive thing about you.
  - ZenPro 12y ago
    You are right. It is. Thank you for the compliment.
- BWStearns 12y ago
  Possibly excessive snark but I'm having a bad day so screw it. I find it ironic that ZenPro is so quick to violence. That said insulting people's children is never nice, but everyone is someone's child so sometimes it's a necessary evil.
  - jonpeda 12y ago
    When you go Pro, it becomes all about the money and not about the spirit of the Zen. ZenAmateur may be less skilled, but more desirable. > That said insulting people's children is never nice, but everyone is someone's child so sometimes it's a necessary evil. Making broad prejudicial statements is never a necessary evil. There are plenty of ways to make accurate statements without insulting people or exaggerating their weaknesses.

jostylr 12y ago

Exactly. When I follow these thoughts to their logical conclusion, I always reach the Sudbury model: let the kids figure out what they want to do and learn. Humans (and kids are human) are smart and savvy. Give them a system and they will learn to navigate it to their advantage. But give them no system, let them find their own way, and they can achieve anything. Teachers can see the symptoms that the system is letting down the students. But it is extremely hard for them to accept that it is the whole structure that is problematic requiring a massive redesign.

army 12y ago
That completely ignores the fact that people don't know what they don't know, or tend to erroneously assume that something they don't know about isn't relevant.
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
There should be some allowance for self-direction, but humans are only "smart and savvy" over a period of several hundred generations and not any specific individual. By the time a kid figures out that he should have learned something, he'll have great-grandchildren (assuming he's still alive at all).

pdonis 12y ago

> Nobody broke the kids, they were doing exactly what they were taught to do. I would say that the fact that that's what they were taught to do is what broke them. In other words, trapping them in the system (and I agree with you that they are trapped--I certainly felt that way when I was in school) is breaking them. > what do you remember about high school trigonometry? Everything. But that doesn't really contradict your point, because (a) I have actually used trigonometry many times since high school, both for work and for fun, and (b) I didn't actually learn trigonometry from my high school trig class; I already knew it (or at least most of it), because my Dad had given me a book on trig some time before and I had read through it on my own, because I was interested in the subject matter.

zanny 12y ago
In the same line of thinking, I can remember most of my classes from high school. But that doesn't mean just being able to recall something made it a good use of my time. For example, Spanish class. Now some people are fine with the language classes effectively just being a deep social studies curriculum around one culture where most of the time is spent on rote memorization for arbitrary reasons, but while I can remember my vocabulary, I can't speak real Spanish at all. But then again, I never did in class either. 5 years of Spanish, including two required semesters in college, and if I hear a Spanish conversation I'm completely lost. If they slow down I can translate the words in my brain bank and figure it out, but I never spoke the language. In the same line of thinking, I read Shakespeare, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, Uncle Toms Cabin, etc and never actually got anything more than factual recall of the story plots to show for it. Of course I remember the math, because I liked the math and specialized in the math and went into software in part due to the math. But the entirety of HN is deeply biased because almost anyone here is an intellectual who likes knowledge in general, so they didn't mind the English and Reading and Social Studies classes even if they didn't directly contribute to their future employability or character. But most kids are not like that. It requires both luck and intellect to realize that you should make the most of the prison you are stuck in for your childhood. Many don't get lucky, and the mental synapses that would lead them to embrace the education system to extract value from it have a hostile reaction and abandon it. And that doesn't mean they are dumb, it means they didn't get the right combination of random teachers to inspire them. If they could be inspired at all - it requires a specific brand of personality to be compelled into a repetitive environment and find value in it. Some just won't be able to no matter what. None of it changes the fundamental flaw in modern education, which is the need to inspire children to learn the things that interest them most and learn about that. And to try to inspire them to find interest in all the things we routinely parrot from their textbooks and lectures onto tests for them to have a "placement" on. And if they don't? The parroting is rarely doing any good, and is only doing long term damage to the childs ability to reason and have a passion for learning. I don't think knowing the plot to Uncle Toms Cabin is worth that.

dinkumthinkum 12y ago

I remember trigonometry, I think must of us here do as well. You're talking about something. You're promoting this notion that kids should be uneducated because knowledge is useless and it's better to simply learn the lowest of material possible to help attain low-skilled jobs. This teacher is bemoaning the thinking patterns of kids, I think it is a very different issue.

overgard 12y ago
You seem to have made quite a few assumptions about what I'm supposedly advocating based solely on the fact that I'm critical of the current system. (You might notice I've made no prescriptions here, only commentary on the status quo). But please, by all means continue to argue against this strawman you've constructed, don't let me ruin your fun.
- dinkumthinkum 12y ago
  Oh, sorry. But, it was a straw argument. You stated no one really remembers trig anyway. Just stating than any criticism is attacking a strawman does not imply the argument was not imply the argument was not made of straw to begin with. :)

001sky 12y ago

They rarely think about what they are doing as long as at the end of the day their answer is “correct”. Agree. These kids are just playin "THE GAME". I don't know why this is bad. It shows the kids are smart. At the end of the day, the only use of education is getting stuff. The kids are focused on the "getting stuff", and see the eductation as hoop to jump through. The truth is they are right.

GhotiFish 12y ago

> what do you remember about high school trigonometry? But you "learned" it right? Or did you, really?) <aside> Soh Cah To-ah sin over hypotenuse cos over hypotenuse tan over adjacent. I'm REALLY glad I learned that, That's helped me a lot. Though, it doesn't really take away from your argument. </aside>