Education in the U.S., ONE MORE TIME

Reading the Public Opinion today, the "Ask Annie" column caught my eye:

Disgusting. This person doesn't deserve to be an educator. I wasn't through the first sentence before I started getting angry. All I could think was "Oh man...Annie, you've GOT to come through for me...don't publish this sh-OOP! just to agree with it."

YES!! Take that, Massara Educator in Pennsylvania! What now?!

Okay...so it's a minor victory. But it's something, and it made me happy. And she's right--there HAS to be a better way.

Another thing that just came to my attention: my sister has to do a presentation on a topic drawn from a stack of cards. For math class. The topic is "the slope of a line".

What the hell? Shouldn't one be doing math in math class? Like we did? I know, we had Boyles and she's stuck with Stouffer; and we were in Algebra II and she's in Integrated (and boy do I remember making fun of the integrated classes that year)...but still, numbers are numbers and math is math.

Also, what kind of topic is that! The slope of a line really isn't all that important. I mean, there's the derivative, but that's first-year calculus. And Stouffer wants to know who "discovered" the slope of a line. What? I suppose Newton gets credit for the derivative, but the slope of a straight line is so obvious that Og and Moog probably figured it out while they were hunting mammoth.

It's this kind of sh-OOP! that makes school so unbearable. Why can't anyone see that?

Something that's been on my mind of late: Who makes a better teacher: someone whose passion is the subject they teach, or someone whose passion is teaching?

Or from another angle: Would you rather your physics teacher (though the subject is irrelevant) be a physicist first or a teacher first?

Personally, I'd take the former teacher--better to be passionate and knowledgeable about what you're teaching, and pick up the tricks of the teaching trade as you go.

I agree, but sometimes I will disagree (let me know if you might want me to be more ambiguous)...
Having worked at camp(i know its different but still), I have had to teach a number of different things in very limited timeframes and very different places.... ever have a class of 30, each one in their own canoe???
id have to pick someone who wants to be a teacher but has experience or knolodge in the subject.
A good teacher may not know the answer but that can teach you how to find it.
as I have learned over and over again.
"School does not teach you what you need to know, it teaches you how to learn, search, find.
so my firend, I hope you have learned what you do not know" ~confused philosopher.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&feature=channel

This is a 20-minute talk by a guy named Ken Robinson on creativity in schools. A warning, though: this guy is a bit of a comedian, and at times it comes across as interrupting the talk instead of complimenting it. But still, at only twenty minutes, it's worth the watch.

A lot of what he says lines up with my own idea of a high school centered on "study and creation". As some random person on the xkcd forums pointed out--and I really wish I could find the exact post again--all of academia seems to fit the pattern of study and creation. The mathematician studies math, then creates new math. The musician studies music, then creates new music. The writer studies literature, and then creates new literature. Et cetera, ad nauseum. This struck me as being the perfect concept around which to design a high school (or higher-level) curriculum.

How? Well, I don't know--the logistics are a bit tricky. Any sort of traditional accountability is going to come from testing the "study"...but "creation" can't just be tacked on, and considered extracurricular. Both aspects have to combine in the classroom, and exist at the same time, putting the responsibility for upholding the philosophy in the hands of the teachers.

At least at the beginning. As time passes, I would hope the philosophy would become a source of school pride that goes beyond "We're from the same geographical area and generations earlier someone arbitrarily picked some sort of animal to represent us--but mainly our athletic teams. LBJ!" (Speaking here from a high school's perspective, of course. At the college level, the pride issue becomes a little more involved. Of course, I've seen MIT students cite their philosophy "Mens et Manus" (mind and hand) as a source of pride for them. And "Mens et Manus" isn't too far off from "Study and Creation".)

That's pretty bold. Ballsy, even.

In fact, his whole spiel about education was pretty damn bold. Here's the context for the quote above:

Now, personally, I'd rather make a high school diploma worth more, instead of asking everyone to go on to higher education. After all, if higher education becomes commonplace, it ceases to have the meaning it does now. Isn't that what happened with high schools? When everyone started reaching that level, it suddenly wasn't enough. Increased supply led to decreased demand.

As I was starting to say, I'd rather make a high school education mean something more. Let's raise the standards, and expect more from the young people of the nation! If we don't, our country will surely begin to stagnate (especially if one has sit through 14+ years of schooling before accomplishing anything important).