I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

Wabbit

I think that is the idea behind forcing schools to teach to the tests so they don't have time for anything else.  But it won't work ... unless you lock your kids in a room they are going to be exposed to other ways of thinking and other ideas in this day and age. 

Businesses are pushing the idea of 'educating' kids with the job skills they need instead of all that history and science and civics, etc. stuff.  Not that technical training is not a good thing.  But a desire to do that to the exclusion of all else is merely a ploy to get the state to create drones for them.  I never wanted my kid to grow up to be a drone.  She knows what I believe and why and I'm proud that she can and will think for herself ... even if she disagrees with me sometimes.      

Wabbit

Has anybody invited yorkiemom to come over and have a drink with us?  She probably needs one by now too.

kira1234

Here in Florida we have been teaching to the tests so to speak since No Child Left Behind came into effect. So now our grades have just come out today, and guess what they had to do some adjusting as a state our kids are doing so poorly. It all looks so bleak to me. A school can only drop by one grade this year! Yes we are doing such a good job now aren't we? And the really sad thing is I teach in florida and hate what is happening to our schools, and more importantly to our kids.

Wabbit

People who can't think can only memorize and repeat.  Understanding is what is required to really learn something IMO. 

kira1234

I couldn't agree with you more WhiteRabbit!

RetiredLibby

My husband and I (full disclosure -- we have no children and are not educators) have always called "No Child Left Behind" - "Our Children Won't Be Left Behind But Yours Will."  (Or, for short - "None of OUR Children Left Behind.")  We always had grave doubts about teaching to tests because we were both educated with critical thinking skills, not rote memorization.  We have begun to think that "they" want some children (not theirs) educated just enough to push the buttons and pull the levers to make the machines go.  And if you think just a little more about it, you begin to see it as perhaps a long-term plan-- gut public education, get rid of teachers by lowering their wages and working conditions.  I'm not one for conspiracy theories, since I consider them generally the province of the right-wing, but I begin to wonder if we're overlooking a one right under our noses. 

L

ananda8

I feel bad that I got the other thread closed because I posted the article on the brain.    I didn't think anything in the article was positive or negative one way or the other.  It just indicated that the way we think can be linked to structures in the brain and vise versa.  Well, I guess we thoroughly covered that subject for now. As time goes by, it will pop up again.

As for memorization vs analysis, these skills often go hand in hand.  Sometime the effort of memorization leads to understanding.  Certainly the act of memorization helps build the skill of concentration. Analysis needs a foundation of facts and data both of which can be effectively taught through memorization.  One cannot do high math if one doesn't know the multiplication tables.  One's understanding of the flow of history comes in part from the study of time lines.

Many cultures in the world prize memorization as a mental skill and a link to understanding.  Muslims award prizes for memorization of the Koran.  Theravada Buddhist countries award prized for memorization of the Tipitaka.  Of course this is not simple regurgitation.  The candidate is given a phrase and must repeat the section before and after the phrase and explain its meaning. Many Christian sects encourage memorization.

Of course if only memorization is taught throughout all grade levels, then one is merely turning children into parrots. 

CLC

Athena's post about responsibility brought to mind the preamble to the declaration of indepencence and something else that I think people forget...

That to secure these rights (life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness), Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Rights are not just about rights to be free from government action.  It is about being freed by government action. 

Wabbit

notself ... you didn't get the thread closed.  It was at the end of its lifespan anyway.  The facts had already been put forth and the fundamental differences in beliefs and philosophies were out there plain as day.  It was only going around in circles for the last few days. 

I do agree with you that memorizing facts can lead to information and understanding.  But I also remember tests in school with all those questions about the dates (instead of the whats and whys) of historical events.  I have a good memory and could sail right through those ... but I wiped it all out almost immediately after the test.  We just can't leave out the 'explain its meaning' part ... or perhaps 'discuss' its meaning is better.  I just hope there is time for teachers to be doing that also.    

1Athena1

Notself - I would give you my appraisal of what really closed that thread, but I won't in case they close this one....

That thing about Texas and thinking belongs squarely either in an NPR quick note by Steve Inspeek or as an endnote to an article in The New Yorker.

The writer of that Texas GOP statement is probably so dumb that s/he thought the word "critical" was being used as "to say bad things about" instead of as "to analyze."

CLC

As a biology teacher, I can say that the thing I need more time for is space and time for kids to think.  To make the material meaningful to them...in other words, give them some time to mull things over, make them their own, find the fun in thinking.  We are always rushed to the "serious."  In reality, play with knowledge is what motivates us to return to it and take mastery of it.  There is no room for any of the "fun" stuff anymore.  The kids have lost the motivating factors...(a place for their own creative brain).

ETA...I am not suggesting we just fool around, mind you.  I think the kids need to learn that playing with knowledge is fun...

alexandria58

The news about the Republican Party of Texas trying to keep out critical thinking skills- which I've read before - reminds me of  the film, Inherit the Wind, which is about the Scopes Monkey trial.  It has some of my favorite quotes -

Mathew Brady (who plays the fundamentalist defender of the law against teaching evolution): I do not think about things I do not think about

Henry Drummond ( the Clarence Darrow character): Do you ever think about things you do think about?

Or - even better -

Henry Drummond: Do you think a sponge thinks?
Matthew Harrison Brady: If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks!
Henry Drummond: Does a man have the same privilege as a sponge?
Matthew Harrison Brady: Of course!
Henry Drummond: Then this man wishes to have the same privilege of a sponge, he wishes to think! » 

What a world we're getting back to: when politicians once again try to preclude thinking.

crazy4carrots

Memorization is just one tool in the learning kit.  Memorizing the multiplication table comes in handy when doing arithmetic, and memorizing a long poem, or Hamlet's famous soliloquoy, adds to one's appreciation of good literature.  But several Asian countries have discovered that rote learning, although providing excellent scores on international tests, has produced young adults who have great difficulty with university courses that actually require critical thinking. 

I don't have any experience of home schooling, but I suspect that if intellectual stimulation is limited to one's parent and siblings, and is religion-based, those young adults will also have great difficulty coping with the "real" world.  I wonder how many of them actually go on to post-secondary education?

alexandria58

I wouldn't generalize about home schooling.  People do it for all sorts of reasons. I do know one family of home schooled kids - and all of them went on to college.  They were home schooled, though, because their mother, a former physicist who was at home because she was disabled, thought that they could learn more at home, which could be geared to their considerable - I must admit - intelligence rather than for reasons of religion.

They did well academically, and they did projects, mock trial, and science contests with other home schoolers so that they had social contact outside the family.

1Athena1

Maybe that's why some people believe everything they hear and just keep it in with no filter. So if Rush Limbaugh says (which he has done) that the rich in the US pay too many taxes and the poor to few, then they will not question it. If Bill O'Reilly questions climate change, they will believe it doesn't exist. If Sarah Palin says the liberals want government death panels, they that's what it's all about.

The same people who ask others not to think are the ones who feed others lies. It is known colloquially as brainwashing, and it is usually most effective in totalitarian societies where information is tightly controlled.

crazy4carrots

I'm probably influenced by the fact that religion seems to play the major role in home-schooling here in Ontario.  Our teachers are well-respected and well-paid, and there is much less of a tendency for parents to withdraw their kids because of dangerous conditions or bad teachers.

Wabbit

I think most do well with college courses.  But it is a common lament in the business world that so many employees need somebody to tell them exactly what to do.  They are capable of following detailed instructions but have no initiative ... no coming up with their own proposed solutions to problems.  Not only does it not even occur to some that they should even try ... they are scared to try.      

CLC

Interestingly, the greatest majority of those students that are afraid to go out on a limb are the ones within the honors classes.  At least within my own experience...

Anonymous

So who needs to report on the study just published in the journal Nature http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html  based on ring formations in the old growth trees over the last 2,000 years or so about climate change not being all about what people have done since the industrial revolution for you to believe it?

It seems so arrogant to believe that people's actions are directly capable of controlling the weather, no matter if it is getting warmer or cooler right now.  We may rely the detailed records that have been kept for the last 100 years, but weather existed on earth long before that.

kira1234

CLC I agree with you the kids do need more time to explore. WhiteRabbit what you are seeing in the working world is a result of how we are teaching the kids today. Our kids aren't given the time to experiment and learn. We are spoon feeding them the information and then expecting them to regurgitate what we told them for the test.

We are in the process of going to a new mandate from Obama that must be completely  implemented by 2014. We can only hope it will be an improvement on the No Child Left Behind mandate. I have hope, it looks like we will be spending a great deal more time letting the kids learn by experimentation rather than just by wrote.

Momine

HappyLibby, although I don't quite follow you in the more conspiratorial part of your theory, I do wholeheartedly agree with your initial premise of "Not OUR child ..."



It is a fact that the gap between the educational haves and have-nots is widening. Since I am a nice, college-educated, middle-class "mommy," my kid WILL learn how to read, WILL understand the concepts behind the math etc, because either I will teach him or else I will pay Sylvan to do it for me. So for me it doesn't actually matter that much if public education is sub-par.

bluedahlia

I used to have a photographic memory but somewhere along the line I ran out of film.  haha!

I depend on good old logic to get me through.  For instance, I am against abortion personally, but I do believe that child, and later person, should be valued as much as the fetus.  I can't understand the other side's stance at all. Against abortion but to hell with you after you're born.  Non-sequitur.  Does not compute.  

kira1234

Momine, I love parents that get involved in their children's education, but unfortunately the have nots in many cases simply are unable or UN willing to be actively involved with their kids education.

Dx 6/1/2010, ILC, <1cm, Stage Ia, Grade 1, 0/1 nodes, ER+/PR+, HER2-Surgery 07/10/2010 Lumpectomy (Left); Lymph Node Removal: Sentinel Lymph Node Dissection (Left)Radiation Therapy 08/03/2010 InternalHormonal Therapy 10/05/2010 Aromasin

alexandria58

And from the same magazine  http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n7/full/nclimate1452.html - stating strong evidence that the increase in severe weather experienced over the past few years has been caused by human activity.

Well, maybe the 116 degree temperatures in the Southwest might persuade some doubters that there is climate change.   And the drought in the Midwest cornfields.  Newest conservative tact: yes, climate is changing, but it's not caused by humans, so we don't need to do anything to try to slow or stop it.  

Arrgghhhh!!!  Head exploding!!!

bluedahlia

Patmom, so how do you know the weather was the same before the industrial revolution if it had not been recorded?  I do know there has been a rise in disease, for instance PD, since the industrial revolution.

Momine

Kira, that is sort of my point. The reason we need a good and strong school system is so that the kids without eductaed and/or involved parents ALSO have a fighting chance.

gardengumby

IMHO, in addition to the education problem is the fact that kids do not have the freedoms they had when, for example, I was young.  They don't tend to play outside, but rather in a controlled environment or even worse, they spend their time playing video games and watching television.  They do not interact with the real world, with real animals and real people.  One of the results of the increased sterile environment is a further erosion of "common sense".  Common sense is developed by interacting with the living world and experiencing the outcomes of a variety of actions - not just with other people and domesticated (or caged) animals but with plants and animals in their native environment as well.  We have cloistered our children and now we are seeing some of the results - and they aren't all that great, I don't think.

Edited to add:

We evolved over millions of years and have completely altered our environment and the environment of our youth over the last few hundred - increasing the alteration at an ever faster rate.  We didn't, as a species, adapt to live in clustered cities with little or no interaction with the rest of life on the planet.  This is a recent phenomenon - one we probably won't survive, as we are quickly losing so many of the things that made humans - well, human.

Momine

Gumby, I agree, and it was one of my reasons for moving to Greece with dd. Although Greek parents can helicopter like nobody's business, life is still a bit more laid back and old-fashioned in many ways.

kira1234

You're right we are seeing the results and they aren't pretty. The children social skills are non existent. In the past we at least tried to give the Kindergarten children some training in getting along with each other during free choice time. We no longer have that luxury the children have educational centers only. We have only a 10 minute recess break as well during a normal 7 hour day.

gardengumby

You live in Greece, Momine?  That is a country that I've wanted to visit (or live in) my entire life.  One of the worst mistakes I ever made was turning down my Mom's offer to take me there if only I'd not marry the man I first married.  The marriage was a terrible mistake even had I not lost out on that chance to go to Greece!!!