Drafting for a future white paper

[raccaldin36]

My view of education is that it's a process by which immature human beings can be helped into becoming mature human beings. Anything tangential to this objective is just that: tangential. I view the vast majority of coursework in the grade school system to be tangential, including literature, math, art, and science

Comments

[yahalomay]

Yes, I absolutely agree with this. In English especially, the importance of the text has superceeded the importance of analysis and genuine thought. In high-school English, maybe one or two texts a year should be disseminated as a class - to teach/review how to do so - and the rest should be the students finding out, sorting out, thinking for themselves, on the texts and topics they want to.

Maths, also, has lost its way. It used to be a vehicle to make real world decisions and teach logic. Now it's definately not. It's a whole list of problems in a text book.

My History and Geography professor's maxim is "So what?". If you can't answer that question about the units of work you design, then they're useless. "What's the point?" Not a list of useless facts to be forgotten as soon as the exam is past.

Thank you also for the link to "Age of the Essay" (http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html) that you have further along in your LJ. It was very enlightening reading.

[yahalomay]

As well: all of Australia's curiculum/syllabuses are like this: "By the end of Year 2, students must know how to count in 2s, 5s and 10s and solve patterns for these numbers". So, naturally, teachers teach to that, because they don't want to get fired. We are getting a new National Curiculum soon, hopefully it will place more emphasis on the tenents you described.

[raccaldin36]

My History and Geography professor's maxim is "So what?".

Sadly, the first time I ever heard that was in college. English class.

all of Australia's curiculum/syllabuses are like this: "By the end of Year 2, students must know how to count in 2s, 5s and 10s and solve patterns for these numbers".

I've noticed the same style in the California curricula I looked at a few years ago. It's a little disappointing that these don't change even as teaching styles are changing.

[yahalomay]

Sadly, the first time I ever heard that was in college. English class.

Yeah, I'm at college too. I'm enrolled in an Bachelor of Education course, so, I meant my college professor who teaches us History to teach kids History. :)

It's a little disappointing that these don't change even as teaching styles are changing.

Absolutely. Much of the pedagogy I'm being taught is incompatible with current classroom/curiculum. We have all this knowledge of new teaching methods, but you'd have to go against the main paradigm already instilled in classrooms to use it, which is difficult for most people.