<p>I think there are times to stand up for your convictions, and other times when it just doesn’t pay. Fighting with an English teacher over the correct interpretation of “The Lord of the Flies” is probably one where it doesn’t pay.</p>
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<p>I agree. I just meant that it’s a characteristic of certain kinds of people who go on to greatness, not that it’s always sensible. I would think that in most everyday situations, refusing to do anything you don’t passionately believe in would be quite a hindrance.</p>
<p>EDIT: And I don’t mean to imply that my son is one of them. He’s neither that smart nor that annoying. I’m under the impression that most of history’s leading geniuses were very hard to live with.</p>
<p>Well, my son is a little short of genius territory, but I would be surprised and disappointed if he wrote something he didn’t think was true in a paper just to please the teacher and get a grade. Sometimes you have to just take the A–and sometimes you have to just take the C.</p>
<p>As a high school student, I don’t often venture onto this area of the forum. But when I saw this thread on the New Posts list, I knew I had to respond. So, if you’ll bear with me, here’s some perspective from someone actually in the American school system.</p>
<p>THE PROBLEM</p>
<p>Our schools are rife with problems. However, I think that there is one issue far more critical than any other, an issue that threatens everything our schools work for. The problem is a lack of truly challenging material. Let me clarify the term “challenging”. Obviously, we all have our own talents and skills. When I say challenging, I mean work that engages both student and teacher and delves deeply into a problem. Let’s consider what my school is like:</p>
<p>I attend a fairly high-achieving public school. It’s not award winning, but there really isn’t anywhere better to go in the state. This school has the cream of the crop when it comes to teachers, who left other schools in a mass exodus to come here. Almost everyone here takes an AP class of some kind before graduation, and about half of the school takes grades quite seriously. So, with dedicated teachers and students, what could be the problem? Answer: a complete dearth of in-depth projects. No, I don’t mean posterboards or diaramas or anything in that vein. Even classes that are supposedly challenging really aren’t. I can take what is (for my school) a competetive schedule and not do an hour of homework for weeks. Getting a good grade just involves taking what is given, rearranging it a little, and handing it back. Worksheets, study questions, review sheets… these are the culprits at the heart of our uneducation system. Filling out a worksheet involves nothing more than telling the teacher what they expect to hear. Here, for your reading pleasure, is my own guide to completing the bogus busywork that we call education:</p>
<ol>
<li>Decide what the teacher expects. There’s no sense in doing work that isn’t going to meet their expectations exactly.</li>
<li>Now that we know what to look for, finding it is easy. The chemistry problem is of the same form as the one in the notes; just copy that down and change the numbers. If the question wants us to list a few meaningless adjectives about how Harry behaved near the end of chapter seven, pull out the thesaurus.</li>
<li>If the teacher actually reads the assignments, consider some finishing touches. For an English class, quotes are marvelous. Just flip to the middle of a chapter and scribble down some nice-sounding fragment - it’ll make it seem like you read the night before.</li>
<li>Don’t worry about the test next week. Just read Sparknotes for 20 minutes before leaving for school.</li>
</ol>
<p>I will admit that the above is somewhat satire, but there is a great deal of truth there as well. Most of you will now have decided that I and my ilk are little more than apathetic and lazy youngsters with no passion for learning. Yes, ma’am, you’ve nailed it! We have no passion. But not because we don’t want a passion, but rather due to our school’s inexcusable inability to help us cultivate one. Short, one-day assignments like those listed above do not foster deeper thought or interest. In fact, they seek to do the opposite. School is seen as a checklist or manufacturing item - do your time and punch in the grades, but don’t actually think!</p>
<p>If you see little in the way of enthusiasm for social studies and English in this post, it is because that is where the impact of busy work is felt most sorely. In math, some repetition is necessary to reinforce concepts (though it could be done better - see below). But learning to read analytically and write well requires more than a dozen study questions. English, more than any other subject, can be passed with no real effort. To solve a math problem, clear steps must be taken to find a right answer. But writing an essay can be done “well” with no effort or interest. This happens when there is no involvement in the subject; no real passion for the topic. Such apathy can be averted with long, in-depth projects such as the NHD paper mentioned later.</p>
<p>Even if the hard sciences are somewhat protected, they too suffer somewhat. Chemistry labs are always short and obvious, intended to reinforce one simple concept. There is no detailed preparation, we rarely do multiple trials, and short class periods leave little time for experimentation.</p>
<p>THE SOLUTION(S)</p>
<p>If our problem is one of apathy, how can it be solved? Certainly not with more time for more worksheets. What we need in schools is long-term material that builds on itself and invites participation outside of school - because that is, after all, where we spend most of our time. After the dreary recitation above, let me tell you a few of the bright stars in my school career:</p>
<p>Elementary (local magnet school)
4th grade: My amazing teacher introduced many projects and ideas, but two stand out. One was the First LEGO Robotics competition the entire class entered. We learned principles of engineering, math, and the scientific method and actually got involved with the project. Just as importantly, we practiced teamwork and group interaction. The second notable project was the book titled The Number Devil. This amazing little text lightheartedly introduced mathematical thinking and caused half of the class to skip three grades of math the next year.</p>
<p>Middle school (non-magnet high achieving school)
8th grade English/History: over the period of several months, we worked on a major research paper for entry in the NHD competition. Everyone was allowed to choose their own topic (within reason), and the teachers acted as guides as we revised our finished products.
Algebra II: Some of the great things in this class cannot be duplicated, since I was fortunate enough to have just 4 other classmates. This small size helped facilitate amazing interaction with the teacher. However, some of the principles could be applied to a larger class: more of a focus on derivation in lectures, spending plenty of time going over the concepts and leaving busywork for outside the classroom.</p>
<p>High school (non-magnet high achieving school)
AP Calculus AB (10th grade): this is an example of how a teacher can make a difference through inhuman dedication. My awesome calc teacher devotes his lunches and early mornings to any students who want to come in and talk over a difficult concept or problem. This kind of resource makes it possible to really explore a concept in depth.</p>
<p>I mention these anecdotes in the hope of providing some understanding of the sorts of activities that can energize an entire class to the material, not just a few students.</p>
<p>Even these happy memories could be improved. My Calc class would be so much better if we did not follow the current textbook and approach. The textbook makes little attempt to tie the different parts of calculus together - something done beautifully in the first chapter of Gilbert Strang’s excellent textbook (available for free as PDF from MIT). If we followed that deeper approach, the learning would be greatly enhanced.</p>
<p>How do we introduce in-depth and passion-building material in schools? For one thing, class hours are too short. Even on blocking days (when we have four 80-minute classes) class times aren’t long enough to really get into something. We need to visit classes fewer times a week but for much longer stretches - 2-3 hours at least. True understanding of the material should always be the goal. Students should have greater freedom in the classes they take, so that there are fewer hours wasted in classes that do not arouse any interest.</p>
<p>If this post was too rambling or off-topic, I apologize. I’m sick today and am certainly not at my most lucid. But if you can take away only one thought, let it be this one: “is our children learning?” Really learning, about things that make them truly passionate and focused?</p>
<p>Wow, noimagination, that’s a lot to chew on. I’ll have to come back and re-read it in the morning, but thank you for taking the time to share so many observations and suggestions. This discussion needs a thoughtful student’s perspective.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s too late to respond to your marvelous post; as a high school English teacher myself, I’d be over the moon if I had you as a student. I have to say that I’m in complete agreement with you. Here’s the secret: We teachers are also perfectly aware the whole system is shallow and without depth–at best (at worst, it is ludicrous). But we are powerless to change it. We are micromanaged by incompetents, and this is only rapidly increasing in our rapidly increasing national hysteria/obsession with test scores; for about 80% of students, these standardized tests are so easy they could pass it with their eyes closed; but quite hard for 20% of the population, so that is where the attention must go (because we are penalized if ANY student fails once). My supervisor is a former elementary teacher with zero knowledge of how to teach English (she doesn’t even like to read, and her emails are riddled with grammatical errors); another is a former gym teacher. Those are the GOOD cases; many administrators never were teachers, or were teachers for one year (and terrible at it). So many really have zero idea what they’re doing. One of my colleagues put it this way: “I feel like there’s a stake in my heart, and I’m a puppet.” Another teacher said, “I feel like my soul is sucked dry.” We are under constant, relentless pressure to ‘get their scores up’ (ie, get the lowest 10th percentile to pass the standardized tests), to ‘prove’ we are doing this or that activity–and since our supervisors have zero understanding of our subject matter, they judge us based on shallow yardsticks, such as how many SAT activities we do, how many vocab exercises we do, how many study guides we pass out, and so on. A truly inventive activity or assignment is highly risky in that many administrators - having no knowledge of content or of teaching - have no idea how to assess it; they can’t ‘tick off the boxes.’ I have seen countless brilliant - I mean brilliant - activities bashed by clueless administrators, and by the same token, countless mediocre activities that are boring the kids’ brains out, given five star reviews, so to speak, because the observing administrator could check off the box. Only teachers who have been around for 30 years and are secure in their position can behave truly creatively. But even these teachers must be careful. A friend of mine was recently force-transfered from high school, where she’d taught for 15 years, to first grade. She found out in August. She left the school sobbing; she hadn’t taught elementary school in over 15 years (she had an elementary ed certification, which made it legal). Her crime? At one meeting, she said the board’s insistence on memorizing a list of vocab words out of context every two weeks was ‘stupid,’ and refused to do it. She believed in teaching vocab in context, from within the text. She was forced to first grade as punishment (they don’t care about the kids).</p>
<p>^ Interesting post.</p>
<p>Two-and-a-half months into junior year, I am a bit less optimistic than in my post above. Honestly, I seriously question the need for many of my subjects. Allowing everyone to bring in a book of their choice and read it for an hour would accomplish far more than AP Lang.</p>
<p>hmom, can you post the link that discusses why Asians/Jews/Caribbeans are ahead? I don’t know where it is, and the search results are not picking it up.</p>