Texas Public Schools Now Majoraly Hispanic

I tried to steer this thread into comedyland by trolling about Texas originally being spanish.... I return, and its a discussion about beating kids into obedience.

I'm not entering this hornets nest.....

All rght, we all know I can't stay away from such things, so I'm going to make one argument. People talk about how children should fear their teachers. A good fear, but fear nonetheless. Apparently, this instills disipline because they fear consequences etc etc. I dare say, that any person who enjoys standing in front of 20-30 kids who fear you for 6 hours a day should definitely not be around children.

Oh, and PJ, that schools grading system is old and retarded. The grade you get when you finish school represents what your ability is now. Not what it was 6 months ago, not what it mght be tomorrow. Tests you take over the year should never factor into that grade, those grades serve two other purposes. firstly, they allow the student to see where they stand and highlight areas they need to work on. Secondly, they provide a means for the teacher to see how well your classes have been, how much your students have learned. If they score high, you're probably on the right path. If they score low, you should start looking for alternative ways to teach. Sure, tests taken over the year can be a help when yiu set the final grade, but that final grade should still only represent the level the student is at right now.

Oh, and I might add that I currently work in primary school(or perhaps its the first year of junior high for you, they're 12/13), and I evaluate not just some monthly test or paper, but every single class. I evaluate my students and they evaluate me, themselves and each other. And not by a grade, mind you, because there's no research showing that has any effect, but by using a grade with comments and discussion, which research shows is what contributes moet to learning in schools.

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Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger

ACIN, I owe you a proper, detailed, and point by point response. Ironically, my school work and work-work are keeping me unusually busy, so all I can offer is a condensed version.

In my completely amateur opinion on schooling, children, especially teenagers, first need discipline and structure before they can excel as independent, free-thinking adults. That same basic formula applies to virtually every acquired skill in life, be it arithmetic, reasoning, or fencing. You need to be disciplined in proper form before you can freestyle.

It is very true that plenty of kids make it through public schools ready for life's challenges, and indeed public schools vary widely in quality around the country and even around different areas of the same municipalities, but I would argue that they accomplish that largely in spite of their schooling and not because of it. As you noted, intelligent people will overcome a poor educational environment and push themselves to excel.

The most obvious example is the comparison between most Asian school systems and our own. They instill a level of discipline in their students that simply isn't found in our own public schools, and the results are reflected in our yearly embarrassment when the global standardized tests are published. (Of course, such discipline starts in the home - and that is a huge problem that our public schools don't have much control over.)

Anyway, the point to this now rambling post is to say that I went into the school spoiled, undisciplined, lazy, not particularly smart, and yes Centurion, a prick. Search for some of my earlier posts in here to see what I mean. The Brother's thousand big and small tortures (and my little story was nothing compared to some of their 'corrective measures') seemed intolerable at the time, but they changed me for the better in countless ways. I'm not sure I could have gotten the same results in a public school.

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I also owe you a proper response and yet I am having the same uni work issue!

In my own amateur option on school I believe there is a big distinction between children and teenagers. Children need discipline and structure because for the most part, young minds are not coherent enough to understand any thing but bits and pieces of easy information to process. (They can pick up on complex emotional situations, but formal learning is not instinctual to humans.) It's why science classes are for the most part extremely simplistic and wrong up until uni. Are middle school children really going to "get" anything more complex about electron orbitals than the Bohr model? Maybe, idk. Middle school is very iffy. Elementary kids definitely won't get it. EDIT:From HoreTore's example I am extending my "maybe" to even the younglings.

Teenagers (which imo are those in high school) don't need that much in discipline or structure, they need motivation more than anything else. High school students do just fine in following along with the structure. They do the homework, half listen in class, and do the bare minimum it takes to get a C in the class. The not so proper term is to DGAF (look it up in urban dictionary if anyone doesn't know it) and that isn't a discipline problem, it is the result of a mind coming to the conclusion that with the information given to them, it is pointless to try and "excel" in the given scenario they are in. This is not that unreasonable considering we don't really give students the info they deserve to know. I mean, when you hear the whole "you can be anything you want, as long as you work hard" shtick when you are 13,14,15 and can clearly see that that isn't case from the social inequalities that are abundant, you get disillusioned. Imo, part of this also comes from the strains of anti-intellectualism that runs in American society which attempts to revoke pride in being an intellectual. But that is a whole different debate. And of course, people in general are just lazy, and that is also a big part of it. But these teenagers have been doing their work for 8 grades before reaching high school now, the discipline to do the work is there, now they are getting to the cognitive stage where they want reasons to do work. After all, how many adults would be working if there wasn't a clear financial motivation?

Of course you can always say that more rigorous discipline and punishment will solve all these problems, and of course that is exactly what your private school did. But this isn't really anything new, authoritarianism gets stuff done despite the internal objections of the individual. History has a list of those who were great at implementing it, we call them tyrants and dictators and sometimes monsters. But just as Stalin and the various Kremlin leaders got their country to run properly, was it really "functional"? Eventually, it all came crashing down in a wave of self-determinism and individualism. Now I am sure you have people (maybe AP if he was still around and not banned) who would argue that Russia is in a worse state with cronyism, organized crime and an overall kleptocracy than when the Communists had everything under control so they wouldn't lose face to the Americans.

Perhaps you might have not have noticed some things by being in a private school, but public schooling for all its flaws do not have people succeed "in spite" of the school. Let's be honest, the "intelligent" are not the majority. But the majority of students do graduate and go on to succeed in their own ways. In fact, high school drop out rates have been declining over the past decade if I remember correctly. If public schooling wasn't there, I don't think it would be a controversial statement to say that for most of the students, they would be worse off at that stage in their life than by having a place to go to every day to at least have the opportunity to learn and better themselves. I have seen a bunch of "winners" lets call them in freshman year, to continue "winning" at life only to find out in junior year that they have been living life wrong and that they want to go to community college and be the first in their family to have a college education. This one guy in my class got a scholarship for his rapid (and some said inspiring,) turnaround.

In regards to the Asian schooling system, I would have to say that the comparisons between nations in education are more complex then "Country A scored higher than Country B in math, therefor our math isn't as rigorous." Like I said earlier, there are social factors (do we pride intellectualism here?), and there are pluses and minuses that go along with education standards. Sometimes we have to also step back and look at the big picture when it comes to developing a fully functional person/citizen. Education and knowledge is only one aspect of having a proper citizen/person. By stepping it up to the point where students are pushed to the breaking point but not quite over it, we neglect other areas of development. No Child Left Behind has made every school and class a teach to the test kind of school/class where if it isn't on the test, than we will not bother teaching it to you (is that really what education is about)? As such, younglings are seeing recess (an important socialization event in their lives) removed and middle school students are growing up in an absence of proper physical education because they need more time to be taught tests, not to run miles.

In fact, many Asian countries such as Japan have much higher suicide rates among the student population than in Western countries if I remember correctly. Is this really worth the "advantage" they are getting in the global marketplace? Maybe, idk. Also at this point I have not even asked the question of what do standardized tests really mean? Does a 850 compared to a 650 on the SAT say definitively that one person "knows" more than another or is smarter? I have seen all too many times, the AP (Advanced Placement) students practice "regurgitation" studies. Cram it in your head, regurgitate on test for A+, then forget it all and make space for the next class, repeat until you have been accepted into college (then continue until you have your degree? god, I hope not).

I agree that you might not have gotten the same results in a public school, but that is life. The what if's are always there, but we cannot rely on anecdotal evidence to see us through the future. Your example is very inspiring, but it isn't statistically significant. In fact, it might even be an anomaly.

The education problem is much more complex than most of us will ever recognize or even understand.

You're wrong when you say that children cannot be taught "heavy" stuff, ACIN. Look up sugatra mitra, he's teached 9-year olds neurobiology to a level where they took the exam needed to teach neurobiology.

EDIT: and that, I might add, wasn't some group of little einsteins, it was the children of some random backwater village in India.

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

You're wrong when you say that children cannot be taught "heavy" stuff, ACIN. Look up sugatra mitra, he's teached 9-year olds neurobiology to a level where they took the exam needed to teach neurobiology.

EDIT: and that, I might add, wasn't some group of little einsteins, it was the children of some random backwater village in India.

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I have not read up on him, but did they understand the neurobiology or did they know it?

EDIT: I personally think that children can be taught anything (even to betray their own parents to the Gestapo) but I am not knowledgeable in mental development and capacity of young children, so I left it with "idk, maybe". Now that you bring this up with 9 years olds, I will extend my "idk, maybe" to elementary children as well.

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

I have not read up on him, but did they understand the neurobiology or did they know it?

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To pass the exam needed to be a neurobiologyteacher, do you think you have to understand or just know?

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

To pass the exam needed to be a neurobiologyteacher, do you think you have to understand or just know?

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Pessimistic ACIN: No, I have had multiple teachers who did not know what they were talking about when it came to subjects they taught.

Optimistic ACIN: Yeah, I guess you have a good point.

EDIT: Also made an edit on my earlier post.

EDIT 2: Realistic ACIN: For a subject such as neurobiology, I think they would have to understand it. While other subjects are more lenient, most science teaching positions are probably not lenient at all.

Kids, in my opinion, are very capable of understanding once they are able to understand abstracts(Piaget's formal operational stage).

But what's holding them back, the thing that makes people think they're "dumb little kids", is a limited vocabulary.they don't know what our advanced terms, like "democracy" or "economy", mean. But if you discuss things using a simple language, or spend some time explaining all the difficult terms you're going to use, I have found little difference in the level of reflection in my class of 12-year olds and in adults.

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

Kids, in my opinion, are very capable of understanding once they are able to understand abstracts(Piaget's formal operational stage).

But what's holding them back, the thing that makes people think they're "dumb little kids", is a limited vocabulary.they don't know what our advanced terms, like "democracy" or "economy". But if you discuss things using a simple language, or spend some time explaining all the difficult terms you're going to use, I have found little difference in the level of reflection in my class of 12-year olds and in adults.

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Hmm, I never thought about it like that. An incomplete mastery of the language is the main barrier in the level of contemplation from the children (or at least their ability to express it and thus show us their real level). I will have to think about that and look up some links that support that (including sugatra mitra).

Vygotsky talks a lot about language of the first and second order. Language of the first order is "our language", language of the second order needs translation for us to understand it.

Edit: and the aim is of course to make languages of the second order into the first order. I'll use my own english knowledge as an example:

When I started out learning english, I read it differently than now. I read the words, but in my mind, I translated it into norwegian. I had to translate it to make any sense, and the language in my mind as I read english was norwewgian. This has changed now that english is a language of the first order for me. As I write this, the words and thoughts in my mind are in english, not Norwegian, and in fact it's quite hard for me to think in norwegian right now. But not all english is first order for me. When I encounter unusual, "hard", words, like for example technical terms, the language in my mind changes back to norwegian, because technical english isn't a first order language to me.

This is the same for other fields, like maths or sociology. If the language of the field is of the second order for you, the translation part is vital for your understanding of what is presented, as well as your ability to express your opinions.

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Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name

I have not read up on him, but did they understand the neurobiology or did they know it?

EDIT: I personally think that children can be taught anything (even to betray their own parents to the Gestapo) but I am not knowledgeable in mental development and capacity of young children, so I left it with "idk, maybe". Now that you bring this up with 9 years olds, I will extend my "idk, maybe" to elementary children as well.

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This is the rub

And this is also what seperates teachers and educators