<p>marite:</p>
<p>I agree with you about international comparisons. I think it may be possible to make them, but only by carefully controlling the samplings.</p>
<p>BTW, thanks for the link. It requires a subscription, so I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on reading the information, but I appreciate the reference.</p>
<p>In my mind (and what a place that is!), I do think that US education is lacking in some pretty important areas, but I think that we lead the world in creativity, initiative and go-getting-ness. I simply don’t think any other countries have the “can do anything” mentality we have, and I would never want that lost in favor of rote learning.</p>
<p>Tarhunt: You must concede that Reg Weaver’s analysis that public schools are doing an <em>outstanding job</em> is painting with a rather broad brush also. Also, it’s as easy to blame “anti-intellectualism” in parents as it is to blame teachers. Personally, I tend to hold schools more accountable than parents - it is their JOB, after all, to teach. Parents used to be able to leave that job to the schools. Now, they are “partners” in education, and more and more the education establishment is pushing the blame off on parents. (That’s why we’re told now we need universal pre-school - more interference in homelife which will produce no better results but will, of course, provide more jobs!) If anything, I think it is the schools who are too anti-intellectual due to the fact that they’re more interested at the present time in teaching students how to work together in a group, be good teamplayers, handle and explore their inner feelings, handle conflicts, and all kinds of other psycho-social babble that has no place in the classroom. Until they eject all that stuff out of the classroom and get back to what should be the purpose of their employment - to teach academics - I sense that things will only get worse. This is, of course, only my personal opinion.</p>
<p>Funny how the report EXCLUDED homeschool students. I wonder, I suppose the stark superiority of many homeschooled students would have disgraced many of our GRAND OL’ Public Schools. </p>
<pre><code> -“The Question is, Is our kids getting educated?” Bush
</code></pre>
<p>REL:</p>
<p>Do you have to repeat Bush’s bad grammer. GWB is a blueblooded, Homeschooled, Andover, Yale, and Harvard graduate and he can’t get the plurals and punctuation correct in a 7 word sentence. NBLB</p>
<p>Robert E. Lee:</p>
<p>The “stark” superiority of only SOME homeschooled students is more accurate. Taken as a group, homeschooled students do not outperform students educated in public or private schools. Some students are so much more advanced than their age peers that no school, public or private could accommodate them. In many cases, these students take college classes. But many other students are homeschooled for other reasons by parents who may or may not be most suited to the task.</p>
<p>herehoping:</p>
<p>I agree completely that saying the public schools are doing an outstanding job is WAY too broad a brush. Clearly, some are and some aren’t. My own experience suggests that the public schools are pretty much like every other large organization. There are a few outstanding people, a few terrible people, and a bunch of pretty average people in the middle.</p>
<p>You and I will have to disagree about the responsibility of educating children. I have always maintained that it is my and my wife’s responsibility. We can and do choose people to help us (the public schools in most cases), but the responsibility is ours. I have a basement lab where my kids and I have done experiments. I take them out for ice cream and then run through through Socratic thought experiments. In the summers, we take trips that are designed both to be fun and educational (I don’t think most of them ever caught on to the education part until they were almost grown).</p>
<p>I am a psychologist. Could you be more specific about what constitutes “psycho babble”? It would be helpful if you could cite the specific issues, the evidence supporting those issues and the evidence against.</p>
<p>As for “teaching academics,” I’m not sure exactly what you mean by that. I believe that the active verb “teach” is one of the biggest problems in understanding what education is and how it works. Children can learn. Adults can learn. But we cannot be “taught” anything. Learning is an active process of the learner. Teachers can help. And that is all they can do. If any person refuses to learn (and this includes children), nothing can be done.</p>
<p>Yes, very gifted teachers can inspire learning in those who didn’t think they wanted to learn. I had a few, and I’ll bet you did, too. But suggesting that this is a solution to dealing with kids who have insufficient motivation to learn is like suggesting that physicists would be better at their jobs if they were more like Albert Einstein. It’s not a workable solution in most cases.</p>
<p>RE Lee:</p>
<p>Getting a representative sampling of home-schooled students is difficult, at best. I will take marite’s word for it that home-schooled students do not outperform those in regular schools. But if it turns out that they do, the answer will be obvious. We will need to pay forty to fifty times the amount of taxes for schools so that ALL our children can have private tutors.</p>
<p>I have stated on here before and I still stand by my statement. Public schools do a very good job of educating children who want to get an education.</p>
<p>Here is one specific example of what I would call delving into the area of “psycho-babble” - this one in English class. Assignment (reading C.S. Lewis’ <em>The Screwtape Letters</em>):</p>
<p><select a=“” “patient”=“” and=“” set=“” out=“” to=“” win=“” him=“” or=“” her=“” over=“” “our=”" side.“=”" you=“” should=“” select=“” person=“” who=“” know=“” well=“” whose=“” weaknesses=“” are=“” familiar=“” you.=“” at=“” least=“” three=“” of=“” his=“” soft=“” spots=“” target=“” them=“” with=“” plan=“” attack=“” which=“” will=“” cause=“” the=“” patient=“” denounce=“” all.=“” must=“” do=“” this=“” in=“” letter=“” form=“” creative=“” manner=“” presentation.=“” is=“” fun!=“” honest!=“”>
This is just one example. I could give you a hundred other such assignments in the 16 years I’ve been in this district. And a person with a B.A. in English has the right to delve into these areas with his students, why?
I see you view teachers as “facilitators.” That’s fine for a certain caliber of student. The majority, I believe, need to be TAUGHT certain fundamentals early on to move into more advanced work. It seems that most states are having trouble getting the majority of their 11th graders to pass their EIGHTH grade proficiency tests. To me, that signals a problem in our schools, along with the fact that, for example, at my son’s state university students were tested so they could be placed in REMEDIAL reading and math classes. We were told 1/3 of the kids needed remediation. To me that signals a problem.
Finally, I think a lot of parents, especially the many single moms out there, are working hard just to put food on the table for their kids. To blame the victim, so to speak, the kids and their parents, for not having motivation is something I’m not about to do. With all the billions spent and the waste and graft and silliness I see around me and read about, yes, I put the blame at the feet of the educational bureaucracy. It seems to me that in this country we should be able to get it together enough so that parents can expect their kids will get a decent education, whether they encourage it at home themselves or not.
That’s my 2 cents, and just my personal opinion. I really don’t want to get into a debate about this, but since you asked I thought I should answer you.
</select></p>
<p>Tarhunt and Wharfrat - the both of you are just way too sensible to be taken seriously. What do you think this is, a reasoned discussion?</p>
<p>Hereshoping:
I’m not clear about what you characterized as “psycho-babble.” Is it C.S Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters or the assignment? It was C.S. Lewis, after all, who wrote about The Patient, weaknesses, etc… Trying to write “in the style of…” an author is a time-honored way to learn English.</p>
<p>hereshoping:</p>
<p>Like marite, I didn’t understand what you were getting at with the example of psycho babble.</p>
<p>marite: This was not a creative writing assignment. This was done with other students. In other words, you pick out your classmate’s weaknesses and “target them.” This is not a hypothetical person, but the kid sitting next to you. That is why the teacher had to remind the kids that this was “fun” “honest.” If it was a creative assignment with a hypothetical “patient” I wouldn’ have a problem with it. I feel it’s dangerous to play around with kids’ feelings in a classroom setting in this way. As I said, this is but one of dozens of examples.</p>
<p>hereshoping:</p>
<p>Personally, I would have loved that assignment in high school, though I wouldn’t have enjoyed “The Screwtape Letters.” I was more into Faulkner, Welty, and Robert Penn Warren at the time.</p>
<p>I’m a little fuzzy on the “psycho babble” aspect of this. To me, it just looks like the idea is to make a writing assignment in which one copies the style of the writer while being specific about “weaknesses” as they are portrayed by CS Lewis. I certainly wouldn’t have been the least offended with one aimed at me. My most likely response, given the Lewis’ style, would have been laughter. </p>
<p>I also don’t understand why you say it’s not a creative writing assignment and then you say that it is. If one is writing a “letter,” how can it not be a writing assignment?</p>
<p>All schools can be judged fairly when all schools have exactly the same students. Otherwise it’s just a debate over nothing. </p>
<p>Having been married to an educator for several decades and observing firsthand the differences each child has coming into the classroom it is pretty silly to firmly stand on who is better. It’s an assumption based on a variable (children) that simply is not consistent. </p>
<p>America does a pretty great job in making the educational opportunity available to all it’s citizens. WE try to educate all even our severly handicapped and ■■■■■■■■. </p>
<p>Some of you folks should realize that sometimes a good teacher is one that can teach a ■■■■■■■■ manchild to use silverware. That in itself could be a greater accomplishment than many of you understand. </p>
<p>99% of our educators work very hard to improve what comes into their classrooms for relatively little pay. They are just an easier group to beat up on for educational failures than ourselves because if 99% of parents worked as hard with their kids, we wouldn’t need a post like this.</p>
<p>Tarhunt: The term psycho-babble was poorly phrased shorthand (I’m in a hurray and very busy today) for our district’s chosen pedagogical method. Learning here is not considered learning unless it encompasses affective (emotional), cognitive and even behavioral CHANGES in the student.</p>
<p>That is why most of our assignments are designed to cause “cognitive dissonance” in the student. Our educators feel that this is the only way “true” learning takes place. In other words, students are jarred out of what our educators view as their “complacency.”</p>
<p>You may like this method, but I don’t. To each his own!</p>
<p>I’m with Tarhunt.<br>
My s, after being asked by his GC to come up with two adjectives for his brag sheet, decided to poll his friends, some by email. The most common ones: “weird” and “nerd.” Needless to say, he did not include them on the bragsheet, but he had a good laugh. He was also told by one teacher that his style would benefit from being “less Hemingway and more Faulkner.”
One 8th grade assignment was to write a diary as though he were a young German boy who was friend with a Jew but who begins to distance himself from his Jewish friend under the avalanche of Nazi propaganda. The exercise was inspired by reading a fictional diary for humanities/social studies. He said he could better understand the concept of “banality of evil” after doing that exercise.</p>
<p>hereshoping:</p>
<p>Personally, I’d say that what method is used should not depend on what you or I like, but the goal and the most effective methods.</p>
<p>Cognitive theory derives from consistency theory which was put forth by Fritz Heider in his famous work with cognitive balance. The theory is one of the best-researched and substantiated theories in all psychology (and in all other social sciences, for that matter). Recently, work with brain imaging equipment has proven (to the degree anything can be proven) that cognitions stimulate sectors of the brain associated with emotional pleasure and pain. So far (and to the best of my knowledge), the predictions of consistency theory have been routinely validated by brain imaging techniques.</p>
<p>What this means is that this is not “psycho babble” at all. It’s science. So what you and I “want” to believe in this matter is no more important than what we want to believe about the speed of light. </p>
<p>The idea that learning is enhanced by cognitive dissonance is not new. Socrates did it quite well. Unfortunately, cognitive dissonance, unless one is adapted to it, provokes strong negative emotions, including rage. I think Socrates would have been pleased had he realized that his execution proved the link between a certain kind of learning and very strong emotions.</p>
<p>Bateson says that there is certainly a kind of learning that does not need “affect” and that does not need cognitive dissonance. He called it “Learning I,” and it is, essentially, the rote memorization of facts. For instance, it does not require cognitive dissonance to learn that the founder of Egypt’s XIX dynasty was Ramses I. On the other hand, if this fact is memorized for a test, and the fact is left free of connections to other facts and/or affect, it is likely to be forgotten shortly after the test is taken.</p>
<p>This is a vast subject and I’m stepping out on a bit of a tangent to my field which uses consistency/cognitive theory (among other things) to explain mass behavior. But I do know just enough about the topic to understand that what your school district is attempting to do is valid. The techniques they use may or may not be good ones. I have no way of knowing that. But the theory is about as proven and sound as theories get.</p>
<p>On a different topic, I never meant to imply that some children could have their learning facilitated and other must be taught. My point is that no one can be taught. It isn’t possible to force learning into someone else’s mind. You, for instance, could not teach me anything if I didn’t want to learn. Nor could I teach you anything. Both of us can learn. Both of us could probably use some help. But you cannot download bupkus into my brain unless I cooperate.</p>
<p>You’re the experts, guys 
This is just one person’s opinion, FWIW.
My son prefers traditional, not psychological methods, of instruction. Luckily, I found a school which fits his needs.</p>
<p>Tarhunt, that sounds fascinating - if well beyond my level of understanding in that area. But I will say this: learning generally happens when there’s thinking going on, and some serious thinking generally happens when conflicting ideas come into contact.</p>