Measures of Performance and Effectiveness (ATTN: The Marine References: <Pine.GSU.4.05.10105160825280.7810-100000@psyche.the-wire.comFollowup-To:
"John ...@oemcomputer.foo.bar
In article <3b099ca4...@netnews.worldnet.att.net>, Fedor wrote:
...
>"The effective teacher cannot currently be measured,
>because the true measure of an individual's intellectual
>success is based in large part on hir subjective
>self-measurement.
I understand this, but I can definitely see the practical
management problem, here. The taxpayers are paying for
their kids to be taught. How do they know whether they're
getting a good deal? How do they know whether what they're
paying for is worthwhile? How do they even know whether
their teacher is trying, or is just serving time until he
retires?
I suspect that simple testing can't distinguish an adequate
teacher from a great one, but it seems likely that it can
help distinguish an adequate teacher from an incompetent
one.
--John Kelsey
k.e.l.s.e.y.(dot).j.(at).i.x.(dot).n.e.t.c.o.m.(dot).c.o.m
PGP: 5D91 6F57 2646 83F9 6D7F 9C87 886D 88AF
``So long ago, when we were taught, that for whatever
kind of problem you've got, you just put the right formula
in, a solution for every fool....''
--Indigo Girls, ``Least Complicated''
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maenad
> In article <3b099ca4...@netnews.worldnet.att.net>, Fedor wrote:
> ...
>>"The effective teacher cannot currently be measured,
>>because the true measure of an individual's intellectual
>>success is based in large part on hir subjective
>>self-measurement.
> I understand this, but I can definitely see the practical
> management problem, here. The taxpayers are paying for
> their kids to be taught.
<nitpick> The taxpayers are paying for THE kids to be taught. </nitpick>
> How do they know whether they're
> getting a good deal? How do they know whether what they're
> paying for is worthwhile? How do they even know whether
> their teacher is trying, or is just serving time until he
> retires?
Interestingly enough, the generic taxpayer will have a hard time judging
this, because people look at them funny if they volunteer to hang around
schools.
Those taxpayers who are also parents, however, can do all of these things,
by the simple method of GETTING INVOLVED. Go to the PTA meetings, call the
kid's teachers, or volunteer in the classroom. Ask the kids what they
think. Help them with their homework, see what you think of it. The
answers to all of your questions above will be revealed.
Now, I know parents are busy. I know they generally don't have time to do
all of the above. But if they don't have enough time to do enough of the
above to satisfy themselves as to the quality of their kids' teachers, I
have to wonder what they were thinking when they decided to have kids.
> I suspect that simple testing can't distinguish an adequate
> teacher from a great one, but it seems likely that it can
> help distinguish an adequate teacher from an incompetent
> one.
<sarcasm>
So, fire the incompetent ones, while at the same time lowering the morale
of the adequate ones, and generally failing to reward the excellent ones.
Test again, repeat as necessary, and bemoan the lack of good educators in
the country.
</sarcasm>
How exactly are we improving the system with this method?
maenad, cynical
--
-------------------> maenad <at> vex <dot> net <-------------------
Thomas G. McVeigh
maenad <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
> "John wrote:
>
> > I suspect that simple testing can't distinguish an adequate
> > teacher from a great one, but it seems likely that it can
> > help distinguish an adequate teacher from an incompetent
> > one.
>
> <sarcasm>
> So, fire the incompetent ones, while at the same time lowering the morale
> of the adequate ones, and generally failing to reward the excellent ones.
>
> Test again, repeat as necessary, and bemoan the lack of good educators in
> the country.
> </sarcasm>
>
> How exactly are we improving the system with this method?
>
> maenad, cynical
m0nkyman looks confused. "Maenad, how does getting rid of incompetent
teachers lower the morale pf the good ones? In any line of work I've
been in, if someone can't do the job they drag everyone down. I'm
usually ecstatic when management gets rid of the dead weight. It means I
don't have to shoulder part of their job anymore. Or did I miss part of
this thread that explains this?"
--
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution!"
Emma Goldman
||Thomas G. McVeigh||th...@idar.com||
work - http://www.idar.com
fun - http://members.home.net/tmcveigh
Fedor of Momus
> > <sarcasm>
> > So, fire the incompetent ones, while at the same time lowering the morale
> > of the adequate ones, and generally failing to reward the excellent ones.
> >
> > Test again, repeat as necessary, and bemoan the lack of good educators in
> > the country.
> > </sarcasm>
> >
> > How exactly are we improving the system with this method?
> >
> > maenad, cynical
>
> m0nkyman looks confused. "Maenad, how does getting rid of incompetent
> teachers lower the morale pf the good ones? In any line of work I've
> been in, if someone can't do the job they drag everyone down. I'm
> usually ecstatic when management gets rid of the dead weight. It means I
> don't have to shoulder part of their job anymore. Or did I miss part of
> this thread that explains this?"
Fedor steps in briefly to comment on m0nkyman's queries.
"Maenad has described (accurately, IMO/IME) the genereal atmosphere
for teachers in public schools. I did not read her statement as a
connected series, but as covering the main aspects. I would only add
that dismissal for incompetence does not seem to happen as often as
might be appropriate, judging from many stories I've heard. Thus, from
a different POV, *not* firing teachers for incompetence is a common
cause for lower morale."
Posted from Google, which warns of a 3 to 9 hour delay for Google
readers and posters.
maenad
> m0nkyman looks confused. "Maenad, how does getting rid of incompetent
> teachers lower the morale pf the good ones? In any line of work I've
> been in, if someone can't do the job they drag everyone down. I'm
> usually ecstatic when management gets rid of the dead weight. It means I
> don't have to shoulder part of their job anymore. Or did I miss part of
> this thread that explains this?"
Mmmm, yes, you missed something, but I don't know that it's part of this
thread specifically.
All the testing scenarios that I have seen put forth, are put forth
specifically 'as a tool to weed out the bad teachers'.
I believe I am more than adequate at my job. My performance reviews and
history of promotions would indicate my employer thinks so too. If I was
forced to take a test at my job that was put forth specifically as a 'tool to
weed out bad <my job description>' I would be
1) royally pissed, as I do a good job, and my manager knows it, so whoever is
interested in applying the test can't be bothered to use the completely valid
measurement tools already in place, and/or ask the people who know me
2) depressed, as it means that obviously the people who want to measure think
that overall my job function is done poorly enough that they need to butt in
3) looking for a new job, as it means that the people wanting to measure are
*looking* for people to fire, based upon the way they frame the test.
Why should adequate and excellent teachers feel any different?
This doesn't even touch on the main causes of poor teaching, IMO, which are
lousy wages, capricious administration, and bad public attitude toward
teachers, of which the promotion of this kind of testing is a symptom. I
think the people in teaching today are primarily good ones, for whom it is a
vocation, and bad ones, who figure they can't do much else - and who get
hired anyway because of chronic shortages. The pool of people who have the
potential to be good teachers but don't have the calling for it go elsewhere,
where their prospects and salaries are friendlier.
maenad (knows a fair number of teachers at many levels of education)
Kris Overstreet
wrote:
>"Maenad has described (accurately, IMO/IME) the genereal atmosphere
>for teachers in public schools. I did not read her statement as a
>connected series, but as covering the main aspects. I would only add
>that dismissal for incompetence does not seem to happen as often as
>might be appropriate, judging from many stories I've heard. Thus, from
>a different POV, *not* firing teachers for incompetence is a common
>cause for lower morale."
>
This is in general because teacher's unions fight tooth and nail to
make sure that (a) nobody can be fired for incompetence, (b) raises
are based on seniority ONLY, and (c) any standardized method of
appraising teacher performance is as questionable as possible. They're
out to make sure that union members have their jobs protected, no
matter what that means to the kids they teach.
Said unions pretty much own the Democratic Party and have rent-to-own
options on the Republicans.
Redneck
Thomas G. McVeigh
wrote:
> Thomas G. McVeigh <th...@idar.com> wrote:
> > m0nkyman looks confused. "Maenad, how does getting rid of incompetent
> > teachers lower the morale pf the good ones? In any line of work I've
> > been in, if someone can't do the job they drag everyone down. I'm
> > usually ecstatic when management gets rid of the dead weight. It means I
> > don't have to shoulder part of their job anymore. Or did I miss part of
> > this thread that explains this?"
>
> Mmmm, yes, you missed something, but I don't know that it's part of this
> thread specifically.
"OK then"
> All the testing scenarios that I have seen put forth, are put forth
> specifically 'as a tool to weed out the bad teachers'.
"I can see that perception colouring your opinion of these 'tools' "
> I believe I am more than adequate at my job. My performance reviews and
> history of promotions would indicate my employer thinks so too. If I was
> forced to take a test at my job that was put forth specifically as a 'tool to
> weed out bad <my job description>' I would be
>
> 1) royally pissed, as I do a good job, and my manager knows it, so whoever is
> interested in applying the test can't be bothered to use the completely valid
> measurement tools already in place, and/or ask the people who know me
>
> 2) depressed, as it means that obviously the people who want to measure think
> that overall my job function is done poorly enough that they need to butt in
>
> 3) looking for a new job, as it means that the people wanting to measure are
> *looking* for people to fire, based upon the way they frame the test.
"Point 1 is the sticking point there. I would question whether there
are 'completely valid measuring tools' currently in place. I know that
in my job there is a very concrete metric for measuring my performance.
I sell jewellery. If I don't close sales, and get a certain percentage
of repeat customers, I'm not doing my job. This is part of every day
life for most people. We are tested every day. The flip side of any
performance evaluation *has* to be rewards for excellence. Point 3 is
debatable to a certain extent, as if you are good at your job, and know
it, you're unlikely to be worried."
> Why should adequate and excellent teachers feel any different?
"I think that the fact that you put adequate and excellent teachers in
the same class is telling."
> This doesn't even touch on the main causes of poor teaching, IMO, which are
> lousy wages, capricious administration, and bad public attitude toward
> teachers, of which the promotion of this kind of testing is a symptom. I
> think the people in teaching today are primarily good ones, for whom it is a
> vocation, and bad ones, who figure they can't do much else - and who get
> hired anyway because of chronic shortages. The pool of people who have the
> potential to be good teachers but don't have the calling for it go elsewhere,
> where their prospects and salaries are friendlier.
"Here we both agree. Care to continue this discussion over a BOYC?"
>
> maenad (knows a fair number of teachers at many levels of education)
m0nkyman (is related to a fair number of teachers at various levels of
competence)
maenad
> In article <9egsrt$fp2$1...@news.tht.net>, maenad <mae...@vex.net.invalid>
> wrote:
>> Thomas G. McVeigh <th...@idar.com> wrote:
>> All the testing scenarios that I have seen put forth, are put forth
>> specifically 'as a tool to weed out the bad teachers'.
> "I can see that perception colouring your opinion of these 'tools' "
And what is your perception of these tools, IYDMMA?
>> I believe I am more than adequate at my job. My performance reviews and
>> history of promotions would indicate my employer thinks so too. If I was
>> forced to take a test at my job that was put forth specifically as a 'tool to
>> weed out bad <my job description>' I would be
>>
>> 1) royally pissed, as I do a good job, and my manager knows it, so whoever is
>> interested in applying the test can't be bothered to use the completely valid
>> measurement tools already in place, and/or ask the people who know me
>>
>> 2) depressed, as it means that obviously the people who want to measure think
>> that overall my job function is done poorly enough that they need to butt in
>>
>> 3) looking for a new job, as it means that the people wanting to measure are
>> *looking* for people to fire, based upon the way they frame the test.
> "Point 1 is the sticking point there. I would question whether there
> are 'completely valid measuring tools' currently in place.
I would question if a test of teacher skills is a completely valid measuring
tool. Why is parent involvement and assessment of teachers not a better tool?
> I know that
> in my job there is a very concrete metric for measuring my performance.
> I sell jewellery. If I don't close sales, and get a certain percentage
> of repeat customers, I'm not doing my job. This is part of every day
> life for most people. We are tested every day. The flip side of any
> performance evaluation *has* to be rewards for excellence. Point 3 is
> debatable to a certain extent, as if you are good at your job, and know
> it, you're unlikely to be worried."
And the children that teachers teach are tested every year. Why is their
progress not the appropriate metric for judging the teachers, just as sales
volume is appropriate for judging jewelry salespersons? How would you feel if
someone was planning to evaluate your performance by not looking at your
sales record, but rather giving you a test on your knowledge of the
terminology of sales theory?
But then we run into the problem of teaching to the test for the kids, which
is also a bad thing. This is not a simple problem.
>> Why should adequate and excellent teachers feel any different?
> "I think that the fact that you put adequate and excellent teachers in
> the same class is telling."
No, I do NOT put them in the same class! If I did, I would have said
something like 'not-inadequate' teachers. Please do not put words in my
mouth, especially if you're going to make a snide remark and then leave it
hanging like that.
The *test* puts them in the same class, the class of 'teachers not going to
be fired as a result of this test, but not going to be rewarded, either,
except if you consider continued employment a reward'.
>> This doesn't even touch on the main causes of poor teaching, IMO, which are
>> lousy wages, capricious administration, and bad public attitude toward
>> teachers, of which the promotion of this kind of testing is a symptom. I
>> think the people in teaching today are primarily good ones, for whom it is a
>> vocation, and bad ones, who figure they can't do much else - and who get
>> hired anyway because of chronic shortages. The pool of people who have the
>> potential to be good teachers but don't have the calling for it go elsewhere,
>> where their prospects and salaries are friendlier.
> "Here we both agree. Care to continue this discussion over a BOYC?"
Sure, I'll have a Roundhouse Rootbeer, thanks. What can I get you?
>> maenad (knows a fair number of teachers at many levels of education)
> m0nkyman (is related to a fair number of teachers at various levels of
> competence)
And so, you want some of them tested and thrown out? :) Who do you think is
available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
If the replacement pool is no better than the ones who will be removed, then
the test is beyond moot.
maenad
Thomas G. McVeigh
maenad <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
> Thomas G. McVeigh <th...@idar.com> wrote:
> > In article <9egsrt$fp2$1...@news.tht.net>, maenad <mae...@vex.net.invalid>
> > wrote:
> >> Thomas G. McVeigh <th...@idar.com> wrote:
> >> All the testing scenarios that I have seen put forth, are put forth
> >> specifically 'as a tool to weed out the bad teachers'.
>
> > "I can see that perception colouring your opinion of these 'tools' "
>
> And what is your perception of these tools, IYDMMA?
"I have no perceptions until I actually see the tests. I am sure that
some are completely useless, others less so. It's always difficult
discussing a class of things without specific examples. My comment was
directed at the generalization that *all* the tests were tools to weed
out bad teachers. My point was that the subset that you have seen may
have been presented a certain way, and that may be colouring your
perceptions about the whole set of performance metrics. I'm sorry if I
wasn't clear."
"Actually, I have been sent on courses that go over sales theory, and
was expected to do well on them."
> But then we run into the problem of teaching to the test for the kids, which
> is also a bad thing. This is not a simple problem.
"Which brings us back to 'how do we solve it'. You've just stated the
reason that student test scores is not adequate due to the teach to the
test problem, anymore than sales volume alone is appropriate in my
field. I could push a lot more jewellery out the door if I didn't give a
rat's ass about repeat business.
> >> Why should adequate and excellent teachers feel any different?
>
> > "I think that the fact that you put adequate and excellent teachers in
> > the same class is telling."
>
> No, I do NOT put them in the same class! If I did, I would have said
> something like 'not-inadequate' teachers. Please do not put words in my
> mouth, especially if you're going to make a snide remark and then leave it
> hanging like that.
"I apologize. It was intended as a snide remark. I misunderstood your
phrasing."
> The *test* puts them in the same class, the class of 'teachers not going to
> be fired as a result of this test, but not going to be rewarded, either,
> except if you consider continued employment a reward'.
>
> >> This doesn't even touch on the main causes of poor teaching, IMO, which
> >> are
> >> lousy wages, capricious administration, and bad public attitude toward
> >> teachers, of which the promotion of this kind of testing is a symptom. I
> >> think the people in teaching today are primarily good ones, for whom it is
> >> a
> >> vocation, and bad ones, who figure they can't do much else - and who get
> >> hired anyway because of chronic shortages. The pool of people who have the
> >> potential to be good teachers but don't have the calling for it go
> >> elsewhere,
> >> where their prospects and salaries are friendlier.
>
> > "Here we both agree. Care to continue this discussion over a BOYC?"
>
> Sure, I'll have a Roundhouse Rootbeer, thanks. What can I get you?
"Guinness please! I'll pay ... Mike, can I get a couple of cold ones
please."
> >> maenad (knows a fair number of teachers at many levels of education)
>
> > m0nkyman (is related to a fair number of teachers at various levels of
> > competence)
>
> And so, you want some of them tested and thrown out? :) Who do you think is
> available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
"If there aren't better teachers than some of my idiot relatives, I
shudder to think what our children are facing. "
> If the replacement pool is no better than the ones who will be removed, then
> the test is beyond moot.
"There are some very bad teachers out there. In my neck of the woods
it's difficult to get teaching positions, and I know of several people
who will make wonderful teachers, but can't get anything but part-time
work as substitutes. I think we may have different perceptions of
supply and demand for teachers."
"Ah there's our drinks. Cheers!"
Kris Overstreet
<mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>> I know that
>> in my job there is a very concrete metric for measuring my performance.
>> I sell jewellery. If I don't close sales, and get a certain percentage
>> of repeat customers, I'm not doing my job. This is part of every day
>> life for most people. We are tested every day. The flip side of any
>> performance evaluation *has* to be rewards for excellence. Point 3 is
>> debatable to a certain extent, as if you are good at your job, and know
>> it, you're unlikely to be worried."
>
>And the children that teachers teach are tested every year. Why is their
>progress not the appropriate metric for judging the teachers, just as sales
>volume is appropriate for judging jewelry salespersons? How would you feel if
>someone was planning to evaluate your performance by not looking at your
>sales record, but rather giving you a test on your knowledge of the
>terminology of sales theory?
I agree with this; it's like asking a technical writer to take a
grammar test and diagram sentences.
Still, far, far, FAR too many teachers are opposed even to
-standardized testing of students- as a metric.
>But then we run into the problem of teaching to the test for the kids, which
>is also a bad thing. This is not a simple problem.
All teaching is teaching to the test, if you're doing it right. The
student has to be able to demonstrate that they know the material.
What I object to is specialized test-taking courses which do nothing
but teach students how to jigger the odds of random guesswork in their
favor by taking advantage of how people write standardized tests.
>>> Why should adequate and excellent teachers feel any different?
>
>> "I think that the fact that you put adequate and excellent teachers in
>> the same class is telling."
>
>No, I do NOT put them in the same class! If I did, I would have said
>something like 'not-inadequate' teachers. Please do not put words in my
>mouth, especially if you're going to make a snide remark and then leave it
>hanging like that.
>
>The *test* puts them in the same class, the class of 'teachers not going to
>be fired as a result of this test, but not going to be rewarded, either,
>except if you consider continued employment a reward'.
Welcome to Real Life. Most people live that way; bust your butt and if
you're lucky you won't get fired, but don't expect any rewards or
promotion based on ability or merit.
What gets me is, every time someone proposes merit-based raises, the
teachers' unions fight it tooth and nail...
>> m0nkyman (is related to a fair number of teachers at various levels of
>> competence)
>
>And so, you want some of them tested and thrown out? :)
Yes.
>Who do you think is
>available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
to their students, what difference does it make?
Redneck
maenad
> On Thu, 24 May 2001 18:38:02 +0000 (UTC), maenad
> <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
> What I object to is specialized test-taking courses which do nothing
> but teach students how to jigger the odds of random guesswork in their
> favor by taking advantage of how people write standardized tests.
Ugh. I find myself fascinated by *how* they would do that, specifically. But
yeah, I object to that on principle, too.
...
>>The *test* puts them in the same class, the class of 'teachers not going to
>>be fired as a result of this test, but not going to be rewarded, either,
>>except if you consider continued employment a reward'.
> Welcome to Real Life. Most people live that way; bust your butt and if
> you're lucky you won't get fired, but don't expect any rewards or
> promotion based on ability or merit.
Yeah, okay, granted. But that's still no excuse to advocate applying a bad
evaluation tool.
> What gets me is, every time someone proposes merit-based raises, the
> teachers' unions fight it tooth and nail...
Yeah. My ambivalence toward unions extends to teachers' unions as well. I
think the union as a concept is valuable. I also think that the huge
conglomerate unions are just as destructive to the overall process as huge
corporations.
<re: bad teachers thrown out>
>>Who do you think is
>>available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
> My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
> initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
> sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
> to their students, what difference does it make?
Well, now, how are you going to judge *that*, without some kind of test? :)
Seriously, I would say that what is in order is *changing* the standards for
initial employment. (Which is happening in a lot of places, because they
don't have enough 'traditional' candidates to fill the spaces available.) I
would far rather see the requirements be a four year degree in the arts &
sciences; and a 6-month certificate in how to teach and arrange a curriculum.
Maybe I don't understand how difficult that part of the job is; but I doubt
it.
Austin Ziegler
> On Thu, 24 May 2001 18:38:02 +0000 (UTC), maenad
> <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>>> I know that in my job there is a very concrete metric for measuring
>>> my performance. I sell jewellery. If I don't close sales, and get
>>> a certain percentage of repeat customers, I'm not doing my job.
>>> This is part of every day life for most people. We are tested every
>>> day. The flip side of any performance evaluation *has* to be
>>> rewards for excellence. Point 3 is debatable to a certain extent,
>>> as if you are good at your job, and know it, you're unlikely to be
>>> worried."
>> And the children that teachers teach are tested every year. Why is
>> their progress not the appropriate metric for judging the teachers,
>> just as sales volume is appropriate for judging jewelry salespersons?
>> How would you feel if someone was planning to evaluate your
>> performance by not looking at your sales record, but rather giving
>> you a test on your knowledge of the terminology of sales theory?
> I agree with this; it's like asking a technical writer to take a
> grammar test and diagram sentences.
>
> Still, far, far, FAR too many teachers are opposed even to
> -standardized testing of students- as a metric.
<<I can think of a number of reasons why this would be a crappy metric.
First, all standardised tests are centered around certain sets of
assumptions about where children should be at a given point. In
particular, the SAT has been pointed as having a bit of a white
middle-class bias in previous years (this may not be true anymore).
<<Second, performance on a standardised test can vary significantly
based on how one feels on a given day. I'm told of a star student who,
because she forgot to go to the bathroom during lunch, did very poorly
on a test that other independent sources had shown she was very good
at. Why? Because she couldn't concentrate on the test.
<<Third, standardised testing is only one way -- and a poor one, IMO --
to measure a small subset of skills that are necessary for a person in
life. Just as folks have different ways of learning, folks also have
different ways of expressing that learning. There are smart people I
know who can't effectively take tests at all, but can express their
knowledge in other fora without problems.
<<Fourth, you end up teaching to the test. I'll address this further
below, but this is *clearly* a bad thing because it encourages solely
the regurgitation of facts and not independent thinking.>>
>> But then we run into the problem of teaching to the test for the
>> kids, which is also a bad thing. This is not a simple problem.
> All teaching is teaching to the test, if you're doing it right. The
> student has to be able to demonstrate that they know the material.
<<This is false. All teaching is the presentation of information and an
attempt to get the students to think critically about that information.
Tests are not the only, nor are they the best, measure for this. This
is why teachers use homework and projects. The best teachers use
homework, tests, projects, and class interaction to assess how well the
student has learned the materials *and the skills* necessary. A test --
especially a standardized test -- can only measure a small part of the
actual information required.
<<If you want to see teaching to a test, look no further than England.
In England, all students must be doing the same thing at the same
time. ("It's Tuesday, so it must be Geometry. It's the first week of
November, so it must be Polar Geometry.") This does not encourage
critical thinking skills.>>
> What I object to is specialized test-taking courses which do nothing
> but teach students how to jigger the odds of random guesswork in their
> favor by taking advantage of how people write standardized tests.
<<They actually do more than that. I'm not saying I like them either, but
they do more than that.>>
>>>> Why should adequate and excellent teachers feel any different?
>>> "I think that the fact that you put adequate and excellent teachers in
>>> the same class is telling."
>> No, I do NOT put them in the same class! If I did, I would have said
>> something like 'not-inadequate' teachers. Please do not put words in my
>> mouth, especially if you're going to make a snide remark and then leave it
>> hanging like that.
>> The *test* puts them in the same class, the class of 'teachers not going to
>> be fired as a result of this test, but not going to be rewarded, either,
>> except if you consider continued employment a reward'.
> Welcome to Real Life. Most people live that way; bust your butt and if
> you're lucky you won't get fired, but don't expect any rewards or
> promotion based on ability or merit.
> What gets me is, every time someone proposes merit-based raises, the
> teachers' unions fight it tooth and nail...
<<Sometimes. The devil, of course, is in the details. You still have to
figure out how you're going to measure the teacher. Frankly, it gets
more interesting because I know of teachers that haven't had a serious
review in a LONG time -- and not because they have "tenure." It's
because there are too many teachers and everyone's too busy to actually
have reviews done ... and the government what doles out the money won't
actually do anything about that.>>
>> Who do you think is
>> available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
> My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
> initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
> sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
> to their students, what difference does it make?
<<How do you measure the knowledge and ability -- especially the
ability? That's what teachers certifications are for, Redneck. In some
jurisdictions, noncertified teachers can teach in certain situations
but have to be working toward a certification.
<<You want to make it better? Make the wages better and then start
placing serious review requirements on the teachers. Don't make it
something like a salesperson (e.g., how many happy 'customers'), but
make it like a software developer's review (as an example). It's a very
*soft* thing to review; people know if you're doing well or poorly, but
it's often very hard to quantify because it's a creative process. Most
software companies also do a 360 degree/peer review, and that's where
input from the parents and students can enter the picture: validation
of what's observed otherwise.>>
-f
--
austin ziegler * Ni bhionn an rath ach mar a mbionn an smacht
Toronto.ON.ca * (There is no Luck without Discipline)
-----------------* I speak for myself alone
Kris Overstreet
<mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>
>> My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
>> initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
>> sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
>> to their students, what difference does it make?
>
>Well, now, how are you going to judge *that*, without some kind of test? :)
You test the students, by a generally standard means which the teacher
has -ZERO- ability to grade or influence.
If the students learn, you have a good teacher, and you give rewards.
If the students don't learn, you have a bad teacher, and you give the
boot.
>Seriously, I would say that what is in order is *changing* the standards for
>initial employment. (Which is happening in a lot of places, because they
>don't have enough 'traditional' candidates to fill the spaces available.) I
>would far rather see the requirements be a four year degree in the arts &
>sciences; and a 6-month certificate in how to teach and arrange a curriculum.
I utterly disagree.
I'm palled on the concept of degrees in the first place; the bullshit
you have to go through to satisfy some inept adviser's concept of a
well-rounded education is not counterbalanced by a scrap of paper that
-says- you learned what you wanted, but is worthless without
experience in your field anyway.
And training on how to -arrange a curriculum?- My attitude is you
start at one end of the book, you go to the other, and when the back
cover closes for the last time, your curriculum is complete. Training
shouldn't take six -days-, much less six months. You need broad
curriculum training for an administrator, but not for a one-subject,
front-line teacher.
These requirements don't guarantee quality; they do guarantee that
people who don't put up with the bullshit of established academia
can't get in, no matter how much they actually know or how well they
teach.
Redneck (would be -so- much happier if colleges let you take major
courses without wading through a degree plan)
Kris Overstreet
<azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>>> But then we run into the problem of teaching to the test for the
>>> kids, which is also a bad thing. This is not a simple problem.
>> All teaching is teaching to the test, if you're doing it right. The
>> student has to be able to demonstrate that they know the material.
>
><<This is false. All teaching is the presentation of information and an
>attempt to get the students to think critically about that information.
>Tests are not the only, nor are they the best, measure for this. This
>is why teachers use homework and projects. The best teachers use
>homework, tests, projects, and class interaction to assess how well the
>student has learned the materials *and the skills* necessary. A test --
>especially a standardized test -- can only measure a small part of the
>actual information required.
Problem: homework, projects, and class interaction are all judged by
the -teacher,- making them WORTHLESS for evaluating that teacher.
(I especially object to projects on PRINCIPLE: students whose parents
can't or won't help, or students with little or no money or free time,
are short-changed.)
><<If you want to see teaching to a test, look no further than England.
>In England, all students must be doing the same thing at the same
>time. ("It's Tuesday, so it must be Geometry. It's the first week of
>November, so it must be Polar Geometry.") This does not encourage
>critical thinking skills.>>
Nothing in the current curricula encourages critical thinking skills.
We are rote learners until high school, if not college, and for good
reason; concentrating on critical thought too much too early makes it
difficult if not impossible to teach basic concepts without their
being questioned and disregarded.
>>> Who do you think is
>>> available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
>> My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
>> initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
>> sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
>> to their students, what difference does it make?
>
><<How do you measure the knowledge and ability -- especially the
>ability? That's what teachers certifications are for, Redneck. In some
>jurisdictions, noncertified teachers can teach in certain situations
>but have to be working toward a certification.
Sink or swim. Throw them in for a year and see how they perform;
that's the only -true- certification of a person's ability to teach.
><<You want to make it better? Make the wages better
Making wages better and reducing class sizes are diametrically
opposing goals, incidentally.
> and then start
>placing serious review requirements on the teachers. Don't make it
>something like a salesperson (e.g., how many happy 'customers'), but
>make it like a software developer's review (as an example). It's a very
>*soft* thing to review; people know if you're doing well or poorly, but
>it's often very hard to quantify because it's a creative process.
Horseshit. Leaving aside the ability to measure student retention of
knowledge, if you know that a teacher is doing poorly that is _ALL_
you need to know.
Creative process does not mean 'you can't quantify it', not by any
means.
Redneck
maenad
<a bunch of stuff that I read, but don't really see the point in trying to
rebut>
BOYC, Redneck? I'm not going to carry this discussion further, but I'd be
happy to stand your next drink.
Kris Overstreet
<mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>BOYC, Redneck? I'm not going to carry this discussion further, but I'd be
>happy to stand your next drink.
Thank you very much, I do feel a bit thirsty.
Redneck
Austin Ziegler
> <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>>> My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
>>> initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
>>> sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
>>> to their students, what difference does it make?
>> Well, now, how are you going to judge *that*, without some kind of test? :)
> You test the students, by a generally standard means which the teacher
> has -ZERO- ability to grade or influence.
>
> If the students learn, you have a good teacher, and you give rewards.
>
> If the students don't learn, you have a bad teacher, and you give the
> boot.
<<I responded to this earlier, but I will reiterate that you have to
vary the way that the tests are done. In fact, I also know of a kid,
who won the school's literary award and was a spectacular writer, that
essentially flunked the written portion of a standardised test (not an
ABC type test, obviously) because he has very poor handwriting.
<<If it can be computer-graded, then it won't touch the creative
process or the way that kids think. If it has to be graded by humans,
then it's going to be no better than, and probably worse than, tests
given by the teacher.>>
>> Seriously, I would say that what is in order is *changing* the standards for
>> initial employment. (Which is happening in a lot of places, because they
>> don't have enough 'traditional' candidates to fill the spaces available.) I
>> would far rather see the requirements be a four year degree in the arts &
>> sciences; and a 6-month certificate in how to teach and arrange a curriculum.
> I utterly disagree.
>
> I'm palled on the concept of degrees in the first place; the bullshit
> you have to go through to satisfy some inept adviser's concept of a
> well-rounded education is not counterbalanced by a scrap of paper that
> -says- you learned what you wanted, but is worthless without
> experience in your field anyway.
Fantome shrugs. <<Degrees can be useful, if they're not seen as (a) a
sure ticket to a job, and (b) training for a career. I would like to
see colleges take a bit more realism into their curricula, but I don't
want to see them lose the benefits of a *good* liberal arts
education.>>
> And training on how to -arrange a curriculum?- My attitude is you
> start at one end of the book, you go to the other, and when the back
> cover closes for the last time, your curriculum is complete. Training
> shouldn't take six -days-, much less six months. You need broad
> curriculum training for an administrator, but not for a one-subject,
> front-line teacher.
<<This is false in every respect. It's not *enough* to start with a
book. Did you completely miss the URLs a few months ago that pointed
out that the books are mostly crap? The way you're suggesting it,
you're not going to get good teachers, but crappy teachers. Good
teachers use the book as a touchstone for the students to refer to --
and teach what is necessary outside of the book.
<<Arranging a curriculum isn't an easy thing, and frankly your idea of
a one-subject, front-line teacher is pretty much bullshit. Unless
you're in the largest of schools, even your French teacher is going to
have at least two curricula to manage -- one for each level of the
language taught. It's not an easy thing, and frankly, you *don't* have
enough information about what *good* teachers do -- because you're
recommending exactly what the *worst* teachers do.>>
> Redneck (would be -so- much happier if colleges let you take major
> courses without wading through a degree plan)
<<Then go to a UWW school.>>
Austin Ziegler
> <azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>>>> But then we run into the problem of teaching to the test for the
>>>> kids, which is also a bad thing. This is not a simple problem.
>>> All teaching is teaching to the test, if you're doing it right. The
>>> student has to be able to demonstrate that they know the material.
>> <<This is false. All teaching is the presentation of information and an
>> attempt to get the students to think critically about that information.
>> Tests are not the only, nor are they the best, measure for this. This
>> is why teachers use homework and projects. The best teachers use
>> homework, tests, projects, and class interaction to assess how well the
>> student has learned the materials *and the skills* necessary. A test --
>> especially a standardized test -- can only measure a small part of the
>> actual information required.
> Problem: homework, projects, and class interaction are all judged by
> the -teacher,- making them WORTHLESS for evaluating that teacher.
<<Bullshit, Kris. Did the teacher pull the homework from the book, or
did she track down things beyond that? Was the teacher, over the course
of several observation periods (both announced and unannounced),
patient with the students, explaining unclear concepts? Does the
teacher deal well with troublemakers in the class?
<<This is the sort of stuff that everyone *else* is judged on -- in
addition to certain classes of jobs having other measures. (If I have
the highest number of sales, but also have the highest number of
complaints about my attitude, I'm not going to get employee of the
month.)>>
> (I especially object to projects on PRINCIPLE: students whose parents
> can't or won't help, or students with little or no money or free time,
> are short-changed.)
<<Boo-fucking-hoo. Projects do not necessarily involve parental help
(and my girlfriend has told students to redo projects where the parents
have helped too much), nor do they involve money from the student
necessarily. In fact, for every project, my girlfriend provides the
materials necessary for them to at least start on each project. She
further provides the time in class for them to do much of their
projects.>>
>> <<If you want to see teaching to a test, look no further than England.
>> In England, all students must be doing the same thing at the same
>> time. ("It's Tuesday, so it must be Geometry. It's the first week of
>> November, so it must be Polar Geometry.") This does not encourage
>> critical thinking skills.>>
> Nothing in the current curricula encourages critical thinking skills.
> We are rote learners until high school, if not college, and for good
> reason; concentrating on critical thought too much too early makes it
> difficult if not impossible to teach basic concepts without their
> being questioned and disregarded.
<<You can't talk about "the current curricula" meaningfully.
Seriously. There's a different one for each jurisdiction. Your
bald-faced assertion that we're rote learners until high school is
probably the ... most ignorant thing I've seen you say in a long, long,
LONG time of arguing with you. Concentrating on critical thought can
never be done *too* early. It just means that we can't bullshit our way
through them. Is that *really* what you want to do?
<<I had strong critical thinking skills since probably before entering
school. I also knew that I needed to know more.>>
>>>> Who do you think is
>>>> available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
>>> My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
>>> initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
>>> sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
>>> to their students, what difference does it make?
>> <<How do you measure the knowledge and ability -- especially the
>> ability? That's what teachers certifications are for, Redneck. In some
>> jurisdictions, noncertified teachers can teach in certain situations
>> but have to be working toward a certification.
> Sink or swim. Throw them in for a year and see how they perform;
> that's the only -true- certification of a person's ability to teach.
<<Not really. You want to make sure that they're prepared first. You're
not going to jump into the deep end of a pool if you've never even
stepped in a body of water before. Oh, by the way, at least Ontario has
a requirement that you pass a ... I think it's TWO YEAR probation
period before you're fully certified. That's after getting a
certification.>>
>> <<You want to make it better? Make the wages better
> Making wages better and reducing class sizes are diametrically
> opposing goals, incidentally.
<<No, they're not. They're actually complementary goals, both of which
should be followed. You'd actually have to give a damn about reading
what education research has found, though, and you're not giving any
indication of that, Kris.>>
>> and then start
>> placing serious review requirements on the teachers. Don't make it
>> something like a salesperson (e.g., how many happy 'customers'), but
>> make it like a software developer's review (as an example). It's a very
>> *soft* thing to review; people know if you're doing well or poorly, but
>> it's often very hard to quantify because it's a creative process.
> Horseshit. Leaving aside the ability to measure student retention of
> knowledge, if you know that a teacher is doing poorly that is _ALL_
> you need to know.
<<The ability to measure student retention of knowledge is the fallacy;
that's not a measure of a teacher's success, necessarily. The
fundamental question is _how_ do you know a teacher's doing poorly?
Hell, the class could be a sociological nightmare with a couple of
near-psychopaths in it making the learning environment impossible for
everyone, even if the teacher is *usually* seen as a star teacher.
<<Are you saying that teacher that has been a star teacher in the past
is now a poor teacher? Bullshit, and you know it.>>
> Creative process does not mean 'you can't quantify it', not by any
> means.
<<If that's what I'd fucking said, Kris, you might actually have a
point. I'll thank you to actually READ what I wrote before you start
spouting horseshit.>>
j.w.
Austin Ziegler wrote:
>
Oh, by the way, at least Ontario has
> a requirement that you pass a ... I think it's TWO YEAR probation
> period before you're fully certified. That's after getting a
> certification.>>
If so that's new. When I was certified there was no probationary period
to be fully certified. If I had gone to work for a Board there would
have been a period before I was given a permanent contract. Is that what
you're referring to or is this a new reform?
My certification came after a year in the Faculty of Education, during
which time I taught no less than two full days a week (and had three
block teaching period of, respectively, two, three, and four weeks) and
was constantly observed and evaluated by three different supervisors. At
the end of the year my supervisors were completely familiar with my
teaching ability. At no time was I asked to sit an exam although I did
have to complete various essays and projects.
j.w. (trying really hard to stay out of this, and sure that the bite
marks on her tongue will go away in time)
--
If I _did_ kill someone, it would probably be anyone who ever said to
me, "You could be so pretty if you'd just lose a few pounds."
Patricia J. Washburn
Austin Ziegler
> Austin Ziegler wrote:
>> Oh, by the way, at least Ontario has
>> a requirement that you pass a ... I think it's TWO YEAR probation
>> period before you're fully certified. That's after getting a
>> certification.>>
> If so that's new. When I was certified there was no probationary period
> to be fully certified. If I had gone to work for a Board there would
> have been a period before I was given a permanent contract. Is that what
> you're referring to or is this a new reform?
<<That's what I'm referring to. I understand that teachers transferring
between boards do not *necessarily* need to go through said period
again; am I correct on this matter?>>
Max and GreyMan
>
> On Thu, 24 May 2001 18:38:02 +0000 (UTC), maenad
> <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>
> >But then we run into the problem of teaching to the test for the kids, which
> >is also a bad thing. This is not a simple problem.
>
> All teaching is teaching to the test, if you're doing it right. The
> student has to be able to demonstrate that they know the material.
>
GreyMan Interjects:
"Oh... *if you are doing it right*. That's a phrase open to wide
interpretation. Here's a local item which might reflect what maenad
means by 'teaching to the test'."
"In Virginia we have student testing with the unfortunate name of S.O.L.
(they claim it stands for Standards Of Learning, though). We have a
feature in our local semi-weekly paper called 'Last Word' where folks
give anonymous input. Here's a letter from this past Wednesday's
paper:"
["What's wrong with this picture? A fourth-grader comes home with an
SOL test review and has three weeks to study for it. The parents work
with the child religiously for three weeks and feel the child is ready.
The big day is over and the parents ask the child how the test went. To
the parents' dismay, the student says only about 5% to 10% of the
questions studied were on the test...."]
"(the letter goes on to criticize the clarity of the wording of the
questions which were actually on the test)"
"The parent is angry because the *exact questions they had their child
memorize were not on the test*. They spent three weeks drilling the
child on a specific set of questions. *This* is what I think of when I
hear 'teaching to the test'."
"Putting aside the idea that a fourth-grader who can compute percentages
and can memorize a brace of data *and* compare it to another set
probably doesn't need to worry about basic skills... It makes me
furious that the parents felt the need to waste three weeks of the
child's time with pointless memorization, just to pass the test. These
tests are supposed to gauge the effectiveness of the child's school, the
whole year (or cumulative years) of education in that subject area. The
child should pass or fail based on what he has learned in class, and the
consequences of failure should be directed toward the school, not the
child.
"Of course, if the child really doesn't know the subject area to his
grade level, he should have to get remedial training. He should have
that training *whether he exploits the testing flaws or not*, because
that training is the whole reason to keep the child in school in the
first place."
> What I object to is specialized test-taking courses which do nothing
> but teach students how to jigger the odds of random guesswork in their
> favor by taking advantage of how people write standardized tests.
"This, on the other hand, does not bother me the same way it seems to
bother you. The knowledge to bypass the flaws of the testing procedure
should be available to everyone. The only thing I object to is the cost
of such classes, which widens the socio-economic bias already present in
those tests."
"The jiggering you mention is a combination of BS detector and educated
guessing. You cast out the obviously wrong answers, and choose the best
of the remaining answers. If you can eliminate two seriously flawed
answers, then you improve your score by random guessing, and even more
by picking the most reasonable remaining answer. To know which answers
are seriously flawed, and to pick the best of the remaining answers, you
need to know something about the subject and use your analytical skills!
It seems to me appropriate that you are rewarded for this."
"Now, there is another kind of standardized test preparation course,
which allows the student to practice the skills needed for the test by
taking older editions of the test over and over. The analogy questions
on the SAT, for example, are a highly artificial way of measuring
vocabulary and reasoning skills. Practicing analogies will increase
your performance on those questions, because it gives you insight into
the reasoning of the test creators. Should a student taking analogies
preparation class expect to find the exact questions he studied on the
new test? NO, because the SAT folks are very careful about mixing up
question sets within a year and between years."
"I think the latter kind of course is useful for the sole purpose of
taking the test, and getting into college. It's only going to make a
difference to marginal students, those on the edge of qualifying for
college (or a better college). The 'jiggering' methodology is covered
in only a few minutes *in the test instructions themselves*, and so a
course in it is probably a waste of money."
"Intense preparation for tests which are *supposed to* evaluate the
*educational process* and not the *individual student* subverts the
whole process. If the classes were designed so over the course of the
year the students picked up life skills which happened to be on the
test, then the test *and* the school would serve their purpose. If the
children don't have the skills to do well on the test at the end of the
year, and require intensive coaching, then the test is seriously flawed,
or the curriculum is."
> >Who do you think is
> >available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
>
> My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
> initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
> sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
> to their students, what difference does it make?
"How do you know the teacher is skilled?"
"My approach, off-the-cuff, would be to pool anonymous reviews from
fellow teachers, students, and parents, and base raises on the result.
If a teacher falls below a certain level for N years in a row, they're
gone. Start the salaries where they are now but make those raises
substantial, so that qualified folks are paid on a level comparable to
their alternative employment opportunities. I'm sure there are flaws
with this, but is it worse than the seniority system?"
Max is still asleep, cattin' it old school.
j.w.
Austin Ziegler wrote:
>
> On Sat, 26 May 2001, j.w. wrote:
> > If so that's new. When I was certified there was no probationary period
> > to be fully certified. If I had gone to work for a Board there would
> > have been a period before I was given a permanent contract. Is that what
> > you're referring to or is this a new reform?
>
> <<That's what I'm referring to. I understand that teachers transferring
> between boards do not *necessarily* need to go through said period
> again; am I correct on this matter?>>
AS far as I know that's correct. Because I don't work for the Boards,
and don't belong to the union, I don't really know all the ins and outs
of permanent contracts.
j.w.
Kris Overstreet
wrote:
>> All teaching is teaching to the test, if you're doing it right. The
>> student has to be able to demonstrate that they know the material.
>"Oh... *if you are doing it right*. That's a phrase open to wide
>interpretation. Here's a local item which might reflect what maenad
>means by 'teaching to the test'."
>["What's wrong with this picture? A fourth-grader comes home with an
>SOL test review and has three weeks to study for it. The parents work
>with the child religiously for three weeks and feel the child is ready.
>The big day is over and the parents ask the child how the test went. To
>the parents' dismay, the student says only about 5% to 10% of the
>questions studied were on the test...."]
>"The parent is angry because the *exact questions they had their child
>memorize were not on the test*. They spent three weeks drilling the
>child on a specific set of questions. *This* is what I think of when I
>hear 'teaching to the test'."
My attitude is, what use is a test that gives away its format and
topics beforehand? Tests should, IMHO, always be -secret,- which is
why I shook my head in college at how many professors left copies of
their old tests on file at the libraries for their students to study.
Rather than encourage a general and thorough knowledge absorbed over
months of education, that system encourages last-minute cramming on
very specific and shallow points, which shall be forgotten the day
after the test. Sound familiar?
> It makes me
>furious that the parents felt the need to waste three weeks of the
>child's time with pointless memorization, just to pass the test. These
>tests are supposed to gauge the effectiveness of the child's school, the
>whole year (or cumulative years) of education in that subject area. The
>child should pass or fail based on what he has learned in class,
And, AFAIK, there is no objective way to determine this besides
standardized testing (since having totally independent outside
agencies review individual theses written by said students seems to me
horribly cost-prohibitive).
> and the
>consequences of failure should be directed toward the school, not the
>child.
Why not both? The child should not be rewarded for ignorance, and
-certainly- should not be pushed forward to new, more complex subjects
when he or she doesn't understand the fundamentals yet.
>> What I object to is specialized test-taking courses which do nothing
>> but teach students how to jigger the odds of random guesswork in their
>> favor by taking advantage of how people write standardized tests.
>
>"The jiggering you mention is a combination of BS detector and educated
>guessing. You cast out the obviously wrong answers, and choose the best
>of the remaining answers. If you can eliminate two seriously flawed
>answers, then you improve your score by random guessing, and even more
>by picking the most reasonable remaining answer. To know which answers
>are seriously flawed, and to pick the best of the remaining answers, you
>need to know something about the subject and use your analytical skills!
>It seems to me appropriate that you are rewarded for this."
Not me, since the skill is -only- useful for taking standardized
multiple-choice tests. (I say this because I have always had a knack
for such tests and do phenomenally well on them; the last one I took,
while actually in college (the PCAT or something, I forget what now)
measured from 000 to 999 in three different fields, and my numbers
were 963 math, 997 verbal and 999 written, if memory serves... numbers
which my college performance, needless to say, did -not- back up.
>"Now, there is another kind of standardized test preparation course,
>which allows the student to practice the skills needed for the test by
>taking older editions of the test over and over. The analogy questions
>on the SAT, for example, are a highly artificial way of measuring
>vocabulary and reasoning skills. Practicing analogies will increase
>your performance on those questions, because it gives you insight into
>the reasoning of the test creators. Should a student taking analogies
>preparation class expect to find the exact questions he studied on the
>new test? NO, because the SAT folks are very careful about mixing up
>question sets within a year and between years."
This, to my mind, is an even greater waste, since it is a skill useful
for ONLY ONE standardized test.
>"Intense preparation for tests which are *supposed to* evaluate the
>*educational process* and not the *individual student* subverts the
>whole process. If the classes were designed so over the course of the
>year the students picked up life skills which happened to be on the
>test, then the test *and* the school would serve their purpose. If the
>children don't have the skills to do well on the test at the end of the
>year, and require intensive coaching, then the test is seriously flawed,
>or the curriculum is."
Or the teacher.
>> >Who do you think is
>> >available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
>>
>> My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
>> initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
>> sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
>> to their students, what difference does it make?
>
>"How do you know the teacher is skilled?"
As I've said before, there's only one way; performance.
>"My approach, off-the-cuff, would be to pool anonymous reviews from
>fellow teachers, students, and parents, and base raises on the result.
>If a teacher falls below a certain level for N years in a row, they're
>gone. Start the salaries where they are now but make those raises
>substantial, so that qualified folks are paid on a level comparable to
>their alternative employment opportunities. I'm sure there are flaws
>with this, but is it worse than the seniority system?"
NOTHING is worse than the seniority system, except perhaps the 'buddy
system,' and that's currently in place too.
Redneck
Kris Overstreet
<azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>> Problem: homework, projects, and class interaction are all judged by
>> the -teacher,- making them WORTHLESS for evaluating that teacher.
>
><<Bullshit, Kris. Did the teacher pull the homework from the book, or
>did she track down things beyond that? Was the teacher, over the course
>of several observation periods (both announced and unannounced),
>patient with the students, explaining unclear concepts? Does the
>teacher deal well with troublemakers in the class?
All of which is useless if the kids aren't actually learning.
How many teachers did you have who allowed homework to be self-graded
totally on the honors system, never once looking at actual paperwork?
How many teachers turned midterms into 'open-book' tests, allowing the
students to go through the text and notes to get the correct answers?
How many teachers graded you on the curve?
My answers are quite a few to all three.
Homework and test grades taken by the teacher -cannot- be verified,
-cannot- be relied upon as proof of student retention.
>> (I especially object to projects on PRINCIPLE: students whose parents
>> can't or won't help, or students with little or no money or free time,
>> are short-changed.)
>
><<Boo-fucking-hoo. Projects do not necessarily involve parental help
>(and my girlfriend has told students to redo projects where the parents
>have helped too much), nor do they involve money from the student
>necessarily. In fact, for every project, my girlfriend provides the
>materials necessary for them to at least start on each project. She
>further provides the time in class for them to do much of their
>projects.>>
*shrug* All I can say is, this -never- happened in my school
experience. All projects were (a) required, (b) banned from classroom
work because of an overfull curriculum, and (c) required in practical
if not 'official' terms parental assistance (esp. for -construction of
displays-). For science projects in high school, we were -required- to
buy partial displays and lettering from a supplies salesman, or else
get an automatic F.
><<You can't talk about "the current curricula" meaningfully.
>Seriously. There's a different one for each jurisdiction. Your
>bald-faced assertion that we're rote learners until high school is
>probably the ... most ignorant thing I've seen you say in a long, long,
>LONG time of arguing with you. Concentrating on critical thought can
>never be done *too* early. It just means that we can't bullshit our way
>through them. Is that *really* what you want to do?
Consider what a six-year-old kid would do given (a) the multiplication
tables, and (b) the premise that the teacher is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
"7 times 7 is 49!" "Prove it."
>> Sink or swim. Throw them in for a year and see how they perform;
>> that's the only -true- certification of a person's ability to teach.
>
><<Not really. You want to make sure that they're prepared first. You're
>not going to jump into the deep end of a pool if you've never even
>stepped in a body of water before. Oh, by the way, at least Ontario has
>a requirement that you pass a ... I think it's TWO YEAR probation
>period before you're fully certified. That's after getting a
>certification.>>
From what I've seen, preparation is either impossible, or the
education establishment in general is clueless. I had a look a time or
two at what teachers were supposed to learn in order to learn how to
teach; it bore as much resemblance to teaching as memorizing the parts
of speech does to writing.
The best way to learn how to teach, I maintain, is to -do- it.
>>> <<You want to make it better? Make the wages better
>> Making wages better and reducing class sizes are diametrically
>> opposing goals, incidentally.
>
><<No, they're not. They're actually complementary goals, both of which
>should be followed.
How? With what money? Smaller class sizes = more teachers = lower
salaries.
>>> and then start
>>> placing serious review requirements on the teachers. Don't make it
>>> something like a salesperson (e.g., how many happy 'customers'), but
>>> make it like a software developer's review (as an example). It's a very
>>> *soft* thing to review; people know if you're doing well or poorly, but
>>> it's often very hard to quantify because it's a creative process.
>> Horseshit. Leaving aside the ability to measure student retention of
>> knowledge, if you know that a teacher is doing poorly that is _ALL_
>> you need to know.
><<The ability to measure student retention of knowledge is the fallacy;
>that's not a measure of a teacher's success, necessarily. The
>fundamental question is _how_ do you know a teacher's doing poorly?
>Hell, the class could be a sociological nightmare with a couple of
>near-psychopaths in it making the learning environment impossible for
>everyone, even if the teacher is *usually* seen as a star teacher.
>
><<Are you saying that teacher that has been a star teacher in the past
>is now a poor teacher?
Yes, unless that teacher is specifically prohibited from imposing
discipline on the class.
Redneck
Kris Overstreet
<azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>On Fri, 25 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>> On Fri, 25 May 2001 18:56:36 +0000 (UTC), maenad
>> <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>> If the students learn, you have a good teacher, and you give rewards.
>>
>> If the students don't learn, you have a bad teacher, and you give the
>> boot.
><<I responded to this earlier, but I will reiterate that you have to
>vary the way that the tests are done. In fact, I also know of a kid,
>who won the school's literary award and was a spectacular writer, that
>essentially flunked the written portion of a standardised test (not an
>ABC type test, obviously) because he has very poor handwriting.
All the more reason to favor testing -on- computer, not just graded by
computer. It takes a special effort (or HTML-encoded responses) to be
illegible on a keyboard.
><<If it can be computer-graded, then it won't touch the creative
>process or the way that kids think. If it has to be graded by humans,
>then it's going to be no better than, and probably worse than, tests
>given by the teacher.>>
If learning is a creative process, we're all lost, because creativity
is not just radically different for all individuals, it is not
consistently distributed among them.
If you're talking about grading creative endeavors like art, original
writing, or music, I personally feel that any mandatory creative-arts
education is the best possible way to instill a positive hatred for
the arts. Those who are not inclined to the art in question will
suffer through an incredibly frustrating and fruitless term, for which
they will get a low grade that follows them through much of their
schoolastic career, and from which they will remember precisely
nothing. Serious education in the arts- the how-to side, at any rate-
should be -only- voluntary, and -not- susceptible to standardized
testing or more than minimal outside review.
>>> Seriously, I would say that what is in order is *changing* the standards for
>>> initial employment. (Which is happening in a lot of places, because they
>>> don't have enough 'traditional' candidates to fill the spaces available.) I
>>> would far rather see the requirements be a four year degree in the arts &
>>> sciences; and a 6-month certificate in how to teach and arrange a curriculum.
>> I utterly disagree.
>>
>> I'm palled on the concept of degrees in the first place; the bullshit
>> you have to go through to satisfy some inept adviser's concept of a
>> well-rounded education is not counterbalanced by a scrap of paper that
>> -says- you learned what you wanted, but is worthless without
>> experience in your field anyway.
>
>Fantome shrugs. <<Degrees can be useful, if they're not seen as (a) a
>sure ticket to a job, and (b) training for a career.
What universe do you live in? I dont' know about (a), but where I live
and grew up, and go looking for work, (b) is taken as a given, despite
all evidence to the contrary.
> I would like to
>see colleges take a bit more realism into their curricula, but I don't
>want to see them lose the benefits of a *good* liberal arts
>education.>>
Which are, from a practical standpoint?
>> And training on how to -arrange a curriculum?- My attitude is you
>> start at one end of the book, you go to the other, and when the back
>> cover closes for the last time, your curriculum is complete. Training
>> shouldn't take six -days-, much less six months. You need broad
>> curriculum training for an administrator, but not for a one-subject,
>> front-line teacher.
>
><<This is false in every respect. It's not *enough* to start with a
>book. Did you completely miss the URLs a few months ago that pointed
>out that the books are mostly crap? The way you're suggesting it,
>you're not going to get good teachers, but crappy teachers. Good
>teachers use the book as a touchstone for the students to refer to --
>and teach what is necessary outside of the book.
And that method is inclined to support even -worse- teachers, like the
one that told me Patton's army marched into Berlin, or the one that
told me Shakespeare wrote the Divine Comedy, or the one who was
convinced that the moon landings were fake and taught accordingly.
><<Arranging a curriculum isn't an easy thing, and frankly your idea of
>a one-subject, front-line teacher is pretty much bullshit. Unless
>you're in the largest of schools, even your French teacher is going to
>have at least two curricula to manage -- one for each level of the
>language taught. It's not an easy thing, and frankly, you *don't* have
>enough information about what *good* teachers do -- because you're
>recommending exactly what the *worst* teachers do.>>
If that was the worst your teachers did, you are so lucky it doesn't
bear mentioning. I've had too many teachers who ignored the book
completely for teaching (but gave you assignments out of the book
anyway), teachers whose tests bore no resemblance either to the book
or the lectures, and a *ton* of teachers who never even made it
-through- the book and ended the school year with material left
untaught which we would be expected to start off knowing the next
year.
>> Redneck (would be -so- much happier if colleges let you take major
>> courses without wading through a degree plan)
>
><<Then go to a UWW school.>>
A what-what-what?
Redneck (and does it do any good for job degree requirements?)
Austin Ziegler
<<In what reality does work have that restriction?>>
>> It makes me
>> furious that the parents felt the need to waste three weeks of the
>> child's time with pointless memorization, just to pass the test. These
>> tests are supposed to gauge the effectiveness of the child's school, the
>> whole year (or cumulative years) of education in that subject area. The
>> child should pass or fail based on what he has learned in class,
> And, AFAIK, there is no objective way to determine this besides
> standardized testing (since having totally independent outside
> agencies review individual theses written by said students seems to me
> horribly cost-prohibitive).
<<It's only AFAYK because you've not bothered to look elsewhere.>>
[...]
>>>> Who do you think is
>>>> available to replace them, people of better caliber, same, or worse?
>>> My response, believe it or not, is to -lower- the standards for
>>> initial employment of teachers. If a teacher doesn't have the
>>> sheepskin, but does have the knowledge and the ability to transfer it
>>> to their students, what difference does it make?
>> "How do you know the teacher is skilled?"
> As I've said before, there's only one way; performance.
<<You're still insisting that you measure the teacher's performance by
a student's performance on a standardised test, though. No one is
disagreeing that performance needs to be measured, and it'd be nice if
you stopped pretending that it was a point of disagreement.>>
Austin Ziegler
> On Sat, 26 May 2001 17:34:37 -0400, Austin Ziegler
> <azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>>> Problem: homework, projects, and class interaction are all judged by
>>> the -teacher,- making them WORTHLESS for evaluating that teacher.
>> <<Bullshit, Kris. Did the teacher pull the homework from the book, or
>> did she track down things beyond that? Was the teacher, over the course
>> of several observation periods (both announced and unannounced),
>> patient with the students, explaining unclear concepts? Does the
>> teacher deal well with troublemakers in the class?
> All of which is useless if the kids aren't actually learning.
<<Not really. The teacher's ability to deal with troublemakers affects
the ability of others to learn in the classroom. These points are
*very* important to evaluating a teacher -- and they're things that
you've completely ignored in your zeal for tests that DON'T WORK!>>
> How many teachers did you have who allowed homework to be self-graded
> totally on the honors system, never once looking at actual paperwork?
<<None, actually. It also doesn't have anything to do with the
questions you asked.>>
> How many teachers turned midterms into 'open-book' tests, allowing the
> students to go through the text and notes to get the correct answers?
<<A few. Then again, if you'd actually given any thought to this
matter, you might actually realise that most teachers who do this make
the tests harder. Of course, at work, I can access any materials that I
have available -- so why shouldn't tests occasionally be open book?
Just judge them harder.>>
> How many teachers graded you on the curve?
<<A few, but not many. Then again, I often defined the upper limit of
the curve (that is, I got better than an A after the curve).>>
> My answers are quite a few to all three.
>
> Homework and test grades taken by the teacher -cannot- be verified,
> -cannot- be relied upon as proof of student retention.
<<Bullshit, and I've given you ways above that can do that. Read what I
write, Kris, or I'm done arguing with you this time.>>
>>> (I especially object to projects on PRINCIPLE: students whose parents
>>> can't or won't help, or students with little or no money or free time,
>>> are short-changed.)
>> <<Boo-fucking-hoo. Projects do not necessarily involve parental help
>> (and my girlfriend has told students to redo projects where the parents
>> have helped too much), nor do they involve money from the student
>> necessarily. In fact, for every project, my girlfriend provides the
>> materials necessary for them to at least start on each project. She
>> further provides the time in class for them to do much of their
>> projects.>>
> *shrug* All I can say is, this -never- happened in my school
> experience. All projects were (a) required, (b) banned from classroom
> work because of an overfull curriculum, and (c) required in practical
> if not 'official' terms parental assistance (esp. for -construction of
> displays-). For science projects in high school, we were -required- to
> buy partial displays and lettering from a supplies salesman, or else
> get an automatic F.
<<None of mine did, and no one ever tried to fuck me over with the
science projects like your school apparently did.>>
>> <<You can't talk about "the current curricula" meaningfully.
>> Seriously. There's a different one for each jurisdiction. Your
>> bald-faced assertion that we're rote learners until high school is
>> probably the ... most ignorant thing I've seen you say in a long, long,
>> LONG time of arguing with you. Concentrating on critical thought can
>> never be done *too* early. It just means that we can't bullshit our way
>> through them. Is that *really* what you want to do?
> Consider what a six-year-old kid would do given (a) the multiplication
> tables, and (b) the premise that the teacher is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
> "7 times 7 is 49!" "Prove it."
<<Then the teacher does just that. It's not as if it's hard --
especially with your given example; sometimes, the teacher can answer
"Sally, why don't you come see me later and I'll go over it with you
then." In higher grades, then the teacher can give the student extra
readings on the subject to fill in the questions.
<<Why *should* a student merely believe that 7 * 7 is 49? Especially
since the teacher can show that it's seven sevens added together. This,
in fact, will help the students understand multiplication better. (The
teacher might also be able to show the students the multiplication
table as something that can help them remember things quickly for
certain sets of values.) I'm sorry, but your objection is one of
someone who isn't willing to look for different answers than the
simplistic ones you've given so far.>>
>>> Sink or swim. Throw them in for a year and see how they perform;
>>> that's the only -true- certification of a person's ability to teach.
>> <<Not really. You want to make sure that they're prepared first. You're
>> not going to jump into the deep end of a pool if you've never even
>> stepped in a body of water before. Oh, by the way, at least Ontario has
>> a requirement that you pass a ... I think it's TWO YEAR probation
>> period before you're fully certified. That's after getting a
>> certification.>>
> From what I've seen, preparation is either impossible, or the
> education establishment in general is clueless.
<<Neither is true, which suggests that your perception of the problem
is heavily coloured by your own experiences that don't actually match
those of most of the world...>>
> I had a look a time or
> two at what teachers were supposed to learn in order to learn how to
> teach; it bore as much resemblance to teaching as memorizing the parts
> of speech does to writing.
<<I doubt that, very seriously, and reiterate that the standards *do*
vary by jurisdiction.>>
> The best way to learn how to teach, I maintain, is to -do- it.
<<Yes, but you'll note that most people who become teachers do so --
except that they do it under supervision. Try looking at what jw said
in her brief response to me -- she had to spend a lot of time in the
classroom with mentorship from other teachers.>>
>>>> <<You want to make it better? Make the wages better
>>> Making wages better and reducing class sizes are diametrically
>>> opposing goals, incidentally.
>> <<No, they're not. They're actually complementary goals, both of which
>> should be followed.
> How? With what money? Smaller class sizes = more teachers = lower
> salaries.
<<With what money? With the money we should be spending on education --
on the *classroom*, not the administrators. With the money that we
should be spending *on top of that*. Education *is* underfunded; IMO, a
large part of that is because there are too many administrators outside
of the school that cost too much money. (This isn't to say that
administrators aren't necessary; they are.)>>
>>>> and then start
>>>> placing serious review requirements on the teachers. Don't make it
>>>> something like a salesperson (e.g., how many happy 'customers'), but
>>>> make it like a software developer's review (as an example). It's a very
>>>> *soft* thing to review; people know if you're doing well or poorly, but
>>>> it's often very hard to quantify because it's a creative process.
>>> Horseshit. Leaving aside the ability to measure student retention of
>>> knowledge, if you know that a teacher is doing poorly that is _ALL_
>>> you need to know.
>> <<The ability to measure student retention of knowledge is the fallacy;
>> that's not a measure of a teacher's success, necessarily. The
>> fundamental question is _how_ do you know a teacher's doing poorly?
>> Hell, the class could be a sociological nightmare with a couple of
>> near-psychopaths in it making the learning environment impossible for
>> everyone, even if the teacher is *usually* seen as a star teacher.
>>
>> <<Are you saying that teacher that has been a star teacher in the past
>> is now a poor teacher?
>
> Yes, unless that teacher is specifically prohibited from imposing
> discipline on the class.
<<Then you're full of shit. There are a number of factors in the
learning environment of a student, and the teacher is only one of them.
A large part, I'll grant you, but not the largest by far. As an
example, my girlfriend -- a star teacher -- has a class that, under her
same curriculum that she uses every year, isn't learning.
<<Why? Because she's got a class of 32 students (the largest in the
school; the average is 26 or so) and has either four or five students
who are disruptive -- and the parents don't do *anything* about it.
(She's got one kid who is *far* too precocious for his own good, and I
don't mean in school.) If the kids aren't *doing* the work that the
teacher sets out for them to do, and they aren't doing the *rework*
that the teacher -allows- them to do, it's not the teacher's fault at
that point.
<<Your premise is based on a whole series of fallacies.>>
Austin Ziegler
> I wrote:
>> On Fri, 25 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>>> On Fri, 25 May 2001 18:56:36 +0000 (UTC), maenad
>>> <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>>> If the students learn, you have a good teacher, and you give rewards.
>>> If the students don't learn, you have a bad teacher, and you give the
>>> boot.
>> <<I responded to this earlier, but I will reiterate that you have to
>> vary the way that the tests are done. In fact, I also know of a kid,
>> who won the school's literary award and was a spectacular writer, that
>> essentially flunked the written portion of a standardised test (not an
>> ABC type test, obviously) because he has very poor handwriting.
> All the more reason to favor testing -on- computer, not just graded by
> computer. It takes a special effort (or HTML-encoded responses) to be
> illegible on a keyboard.
<<Then you favour kids who have access to computers early, who tend to
be socioeconomically better off than those who don't. This is changing,
but slowly. You also suggest computer grading -- what sort of test do
you envision? Multiple choice? Then you're no better off than you are
now with test-teaching courses. Written? Computers *cannot* grade
papers on what needs to be graded.>>
>> <<If it can be computer-graded, then it won't touch the creative
>> process or the way that kids think. If it has to be graded by humans,
>> then it's going to be no better than, and probably worse than, tests
>> given by the teacher.>>
> If learning is a creative process, we're all lost, because creativity
> is not just radically different for all individuals, it is not
> consistently distributed among them.
<<We're not lost, and the reality is that learning *is* a creative
process -- and teaching is the attempt to engage that creative process
for each student. Testing for that learning involves recognising a
student's learning process.>>
[...]
>>>> Seriously, I would say that what is in order is *changing* the
>>>> standards for initial employment. (Which is happening in a lot of
>>>> places, because they don't have enough 'traditional' candidates to
>>>> fill the spaces available.) I would far rather see the
>>>> requirements be a four year degree in the arts & sciences; and a
>>>> 6-month certificate in how to teach and arrange a curriculum.
>>> I utterly disagree.
>>> I'm palled on the concept of degrees in the first place; the bullshit
>>> you have to go through to satisfy some inept adviser's concept of a
>>> well-rounded education is not counterbalanced by a scrap of paper that
>>> -says- you learned what you wanted, but is worthless without
>>> experience in your field anyway.
>>
>> Fantome shrugs. <<Degrees can be useful, if they're not seen as (a) a
>> sure ticket to a job, and (b) training for a career.
> What universe do you live in? I dont' know about (a), but where I live
> and grew up, and go looking for work, (b) is taken as a given, despite
> all evidence to the contrary.
<<Actually, university is good for its own sake. Yes, there are some
jobs that cannot be done without years of specialised training
(engineering, medicine), but most jobs can be done by any Joe Schmoe
with a degree (to prove that [1] you can complete a major task, and [2]
that you can think critically to some degree, no pun intended). IMO,
we've got too many people going to college without actually knowing
*why* they're there.>>
>> I would like to
>> see colleges take a bit more realism into their curricula, but I don't
>> want to see them lose the benefits of a *good* liberal arts
>> education.>>
> Which are, from a practical standpoint?
<<Cross-discipline knowledge; refined critical thinking skills;
exposure to ideas that may not have occurred to you otherwise. All good
things and all very practical.
<<That said, I want universities to prepare students for the real world
(NOTE: not job training!) and not prepare them for jobs as "permanent
students" and hope they become professors and researchers.>>
>>> And training on how to -arrange a curriculum?- My attitude is you
>>> start at one end of the book, you go to the other, and when the back
>>> cover closes for the last time, your curriculum is complete. Training
>>> shouldn't take six -days-, much less six months. You need broad
>>> curriculum training for an administrator, but not for a one-subject,
>>> front-line teacher.
>> <<This is false in every respect. It's not *enough* to start with a
>> book. Did you completely miss the URLs a few months ago that pointed
>> out that the books are mostly crap? The way you're suggesting it,
>> you're not going to get good teachers, but crappy teachers. Good
>> teachers use the book as a touchstone for the students to refer to --
>> and teach what is necessary outside of the book.
> And that method is inclined to support even -worse- teachers, like the
> one that told me Patton's army marched into Berlin, or the one that
> told me Shakespeare wrote the Divine Comedy, or the one who was
> convinced that the moon landings were fake and taught accordingly.
<<Then you had shitty teachers, and I'm sorry you did. This does not
invalidate what I said, nor does it make your own statement valid. I'll
go a step beyond and point out that your response *didn't* actually
address what I said. (Note that I said that the teacher uses the book
as a touchstone.) Of course, it gets difficult when the teacher has to
teach something but there *are* no books available because of
underfunding.>>
>> <<Arranging a curriculum isn't an easy thing, and frankly your idea of
>> a one-subject, front-line teacher is pretty much bullshit. Unless
>> you're in the largest of schools, even your French teacher is going to
>> have at least two curricula to manage -- one for each level of the
>> language taught. It's not an easy thing, and frankly, you *don't* have
>> enough information about what *good* teachers do -- because you're
>> recommending exactly what the *worst* teachers do.>>
> If that was the worst your teachers did, you are so lucky it doesn't
> bear mentioning. I've had too many teachers who ignored the book
> completely for teaching (but gave you assignments out of the book
> anyway), teachers whose tests bore no resemblance either to the book
> or the lectures, and a *ton* of teachers who never even made it
> -through- the book and ended the school year with material left
> untaught which we would be expected to start off knowing the next
> year.
<<Your experience does not necessarily match everyone else's
experience. Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I'd suggest that your
experience is in the minority.>>
>>> Redneck (would be -so- much happier if colleges let you take major
>>> courses without wading through a degree plan)
>> <<Then go to a UWW school.>>
> A what-what-what?
<<University Without Walls. Go to www.tui.edu for an example. It's
expensive, yes. But it might work for you.>>
> Redneck (and does it do any good for job degree requirements?)
<<If it's accredited.>>
Thomas G. McVeigh
Kris Overstreet <red...@detnet.com> wrote:
<a bunch of snippage>
> Consider what a six-year-old kid would do given (a) the multiplication
> tables, and (b) the premise that the teacher is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
>
> "7 times 7 is 49!" "Prove it."
A box of macaroni, dumped on a table, seven groups of seven macaroni
pieces. Good lord, you mean the kid might actually understand what
multiplication actually is. Heavens forbid.
And the teacher is wrong occasionally.
Sorry Redneck, but there is no age too young to teach critical thinking.
m0nkyman (who was taught critical thought very young by the parentals)
Max and GreyMan
> Sorry Redneck, but there is no age too young to teach critical thinking.
>
"I do agree with Redneck a bit on this point, if you assume that by
teaching critical thinking you are either 1) *not* teaching the same
level of basic skills or 2) teaching unthinking criticality."
"I think that for the first few grades, fundamentals should be stressed
before analysis. You need tools to do tasks."
> m0nkyman (who was taught critical thought very young by the parentals)
>
"Ah, parents. They are allowed to (and should be encouraged to!) teach
many important things not covered in school. I know I did, and I think
DrD's children did, learn about as much outside the classroom as in."
"If you have to justify *everything* you say, you eventually run out of
class time. Good teachers in reasonable environments with relatively
quick students can manage this within allotted time or the suggested
extra materials after class. If any one of those requirements is
missing, good luck."
Max believes fundamentals include pouncing, purring, and predating. The
Three Ps.
Max and GreyMan
>
>
> My attitude is, what use is a test that gives away its format and
> topics beforehand? Tests should, IMHO, always be -secret,- which is
> why I shook my head in college at how many professors left copies of
> their old tests on file at the libraries for their students to study.
> Rather than encourage a general and thorough knowledge absorbed over
> months of education, that system encourages last-minute cramming on
> very specific and shallow points, which shall be forgotten the day
> after the test. Sound familiar?
>
"It sure does. Sounds like the way many of us studied for exams
*without* the benefit of access to old exams."
"Old exams don't hurt except in the case of the professor who asks
exactly the same questions each year. Even then, it's not a problem if
the professor includes essay questions (and actually reads the answers,
of course)."
"Just because cramming is S.O.P. doesn't mean I agree with it or think
its inevitable. With the SOLs cramming hurts not only the individual
student but contaminates the classyear-wide performance statistics which
are supposed to be the point of the whole exercise."
"College students who cram just hurt themselves, and they do have the
alternative of actually studying (to some degree they set their own
curriculum). Professors who use the same multiple choice tests year
after year are bad professors *unless* the test is a mere formality, and
they are actually teaching the subject effectively. The students can
evaluate the professor, and in fact do in periodic anonymous surveys
just as I was suggesting for grade school."
> > and the
> >consequences of failure should be directed toward the school, not the
> >child.
>
> Why not both? The child should not be rewarded for ignorance, and
> -certainly- should not be pushed forward to new, more complex subjects
> when he or she doesn't understand the fundamentals yet.
"Well, I did address that in my very next sentence:"
>>"Of course, if the child really doesn't know the subject area to his
>>grade level, he should have to get remedial training. "
"If the whole class gets a lower-than-average score on a subject, then
the whole class needs additional training to supply what they missed.
If a given student scores lower than average on the test, while the
class as a whole scored near average, it could mean the student was
having a bad day. Their actually grasp of the knowledge is more
accurately reflected in the grades over the school year."
"I forgot to mention (and it may be important) that the SOL statistics
are broken down by school and grade, no further. The individual test
scores *are* used by many schools to exempt high scoring students from
finals. As far as I know they are not used for any other purpose."
"The SOLs attempt to test teaching, not learning."
> > If you can eliminate two seriously flawed
> >answers, then you improve your score by random guessing, and even more
> >by picking the most reasonable remaining answer. To know which answers
> >are seriously flawed, and to pick the best of the remaining answers, you
> >need to know something about the subject and use your analytical skills!
> >It seems to me appropriate that you are rewarded for this."
>
> Not me, since the skill is -only- useful for taking standardized
> multiple-choice tests. (I say this because I have always had a knack
> for such tests and do phenomenally well on them; the last one I took,
> while actually in college (the PCAT or something, I forget what now)
> measured from 000 to 999 in three different fields, and my numbers
> were 963 math, 997 verbal and 999 written, if memory serves... numbers
> which my college performance, needless to say, did -not- back up.
"Oh, I've been in tons of situations where I was required to make
decisions with incomplete information. Detecting BS and casting out dud
alternatives certainly helped to improve the odds I was making a correct
decision. Granted, random guesswork is not rewarded in real life
(except where making no decision is an even worse alternative)."
"As far as your board scores and your college performance goes, I was in
exactly the same situation. My board scores were 99th+ percentile and
placed me third highest (among males) in my entering class at a
reasonably selective institution. It took me 6 years to complete a four
year program, and I graduated at the bottom of my class (2.02 GPA).
College performance has as much to do with work habits and priorities
than anything else."
"Yet, I am successful in my field. I'm considered well educated. You
are articulate and reasoning as far as I can tell (the only evidence I
have being your Usenet posts). I'd say your verbal and written scores
were not anomalous."
>
> >vocabulary and reasoning skills. Practicing analogies will increase
> >your performance on those questions, because it gives you insight into
> >the reasoning of the test creators. Should a student taking analogies
> >preparation class expect to find the exact questions he studied on the
> >new test? NO, because the SAT folks are very careful about mixing up
> >question sets within a year and between years."
>
> This, to my mind, is an even greater waste, since it is a skill useful
> for ONLY ONE standardized test.
"I'd say it was a vocabulary building exercise. It also lead me to
analyze hidden assumptions and not take the 'right' answer as gospel
(critical thinking again)."
"(For the record, I did not take the prep courses, but took the PSAT,
and then the SAT twice. It was obvious by the third iteration, at
least)."
> >If the
> >children don't have the skills to do well on the test at the end of the
> >year, and require intensive coaching, then the test is seriously flawed,
> >or the curriculum is."
>
> Or the teacher.
>
"Of course, my omission."
> >"How do you know the teacher is skilled?"
>
> As I've said before, there's only one way; performance.
>
"I don't think there's really any doubt about that. It's how you
evaluate performance that's the issue."
"I think certification, supervised internship, whatever is needed to
have some assurance that a totally incompetent teacher doesn't waste
part of the students' limited educational time, or do actual damage."
"My junior year at high school, we had a student teacher in English.
She was horrible, her main contribution to the class (at least for many
of the boys) seemed to be a preference for going braless."
"However, she was supervised and her effect was ameliorated by the
regular English teacher. By the end of her internship, she was actually
a pretty good teacher. I think her first unsupervised class probably
went fairly well."
Max generally goes braless.
Kris Overstreet
<azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 27 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>> I wrote:
>>> On Fri, 25 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 25 May 2001 18:56:36 +0000 (UTC), maenad
>>>> <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>>>> If the students learn, you have a good teacher, and you give rewards.
>>>> If the students don't learn, you have a bad teacher, and you give the
>>>> boot.
>>> <<I responded to this earlier, but I will reiterate that you have to
>>> vary the way that the tests are done. In fact, I also know of a kid,
>>> who won the school's literary award and was a spectacular writer, that
>>> essentially flunked the written portion of a standardised test (not an
>>> ABC type test, obviously) because he has very poor handwriting.
>> All the more reason to favor testing -on- computer, not just graded by
>> computer. It takes a special effort (or HTML-encoded responses) to be
>> illegible on a keyboard.
>
><<Then you favour kids who have access to computers early,
No, I favor computers in schools at all age levels, and no time limits
on tests. (Write a five-page essay on the influence of Chaucer on
Shakespeare; you have three minutes. Bullshit, teach.)
> You also suggest computer grading -- what sort of test do
>you envision? Multiple choice?
A mixture of multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank.
>>> <<If it can be computer-graded, then it won't touch the creative
>>> process or the way that kids think. If it has to be graded by humans,
>>> then it's going to be no better than, and probably worse than, tests
>>> given by the teacher.>>
>> If learning is a creative process, we're all lost, because creativity
>> is not just radically different for all individuals, it is not
>> consistently distributed among them.
>
><<We're not lost, and the reality is that learning *is* a creative
>process -- and teaching is the attempt to engage that creative process
>for each student. Testing for that learning involves recognising a
>student's learning process.>>
Like I said, we're lost. I personally do not believe it is possible to
teach creativity (but it is oh so easy to suppress or destroy it), and
attempting to teach on an individual basis is so cost-intensive as to
defeat the very hope of an educated public.
Treating learning as an individual process is good for private tutors
and home-school children, but as an institutional policy I think it
leads to disaster. Group -first-, then catch those individuals who
can't follow the group as you have time.
>>> Fantome shrugs. <<Degrees can be useful, if they're not seen as (a) a
>>> sure ticket to a job, and (b) training for a career.
>> What universe do you live in? I dont' know about (a), but where I live
>> and grew up, and go looking for work, (b) is taken as a given, despite
>> all evidence to the contrary.
>
><<Actually, university is good for its own sake. Yes, there are some
>jobs that cannot be done without years of specialised training
>(engineering, medicine), but most jobs can be done by any Joe Schmoe
>with a degree (to prove that [1] you can complete a major task, and [2]
>that you can think critically to some degree, no pun intended). IMO,
>we've got too many people going to college without actually knowing
>*why* they're there.>>
I went to college for a year; that was slightly more than my finances,
even with scholarships, could withstand. I knew -why- I was there, but
I never understood why the college was so dead set -against- letting
me get what I needed before I took all these -other- courses I had no
interest in or aptitude for. As a result, I got -zero- training for my
then-chosen career of writer, and a very minimal education in jazz
history, Pascal, horticuture, psychology, geology, and politically
correct history.
>>> I would like to
>>> see colleges take a bit more realism into their curricula, but I don't
>>> want to see them lose the benefits of a *good* liberal arts
>>> education.>>
>> Which are, from a practical standpoint?
>
><<Cross-discipline knowledge;
What's practical about that? Making interesting conversation?
> refined critical thinking skills;
In -COLLEGE-? BULLSHIT!!
Every college professor I had the distinct displeasure of getting the
attention of had a -severe- dislike for anyone who disagreed with
them, and graded accordingly. Thankfully, most of my professors that
year preferred to leave workshops to their TAs and show up only for
lectures.
>exposure to ideas that may not have occurred to you otherwise.
This is a good point, except I find that travel, or moving to an
unfamiliar city or state, has the same general effect.
><<That said, I want universities to prepare students for the real world
>(NOTE: not job training!) and not prepare them for jobs as "permanent
>students" and hope they become professors and researchers.>>
If not job training at university, then job training -where?-
Education for its own sake, as an abstraction, is nice if you have the
money to afford it. I never have; I seek education for a -purpose,-
and am usually thwarted by an establishment which wants to make me
suffer and spend for what I need.
>>>> Redneck (would be -so- much happier if colleges let you take major
>>>> courses without wading through a degree plan)
>>> <<Then go to a UWW school.>>
>> A what-what-what?
>
><<University Without Walls. Go to www.tui.edu for an example. It's
>expensive, yes. But it might work for you.>>
If it's expensive, it's not an option for me, or for most other people
who look to college as a means of escaping a low-income existence and
gaining the training required to get beyond menial labor or
secretarial positions.
State college was tax-subsidized and scholarship-supported, and as it
turned out I couldn't even afford -that.- I'm glad of the practical
life experiences it gave me, but as an educational experience I regard
it as an utterly wasted year.
Redneck
Kris Overstreet
<th...@aptenobytes.net> wrote:
>In article <39r2ht0crtmgirgnv...@4ax.com>,
> Kris Overstreet <red...@detnet.com> wrote:
><a bunch of snippage>
>> Consider what a six-year-old kid would do given (a) the multiplication
>> tables, and (b) the premise that the teacher is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
>>
>> "7 times 7 is 49!" "Prove it."
>
>A box of macaroni, dumped on a table, seven groups of seven macaroni
>pieces. Good lord, you mean the kid might actually understand what
>multiplication actually is. Heavens forbid.
I've tried that with a critical little kid, and spent an hour counting
macaroni- or in my actual case, pebbles- over and over again, pointing
out that no matter how you shaped the groups, or what rows and columns
you put them in, or what you did with them, there were -still-
forty-nine pebbles there.
She -still- didn't believe me.
Redneck
Kris Overstreet
<azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 27 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>> On Sat, 26 May 2001 17:34:37 -0400, Austin Ziegler
>> <azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>>>> Problem: homework, projects, and class interaction are all judged by
>>>> the -teacher,- making them WORTHLESS for evaluating that teacher.
>>> <<Bullshit, Kris. Did the teacher pull the homework from the book, or
>>> did she track down things beyond that? Was the teacher, over the course
>>> of several observation periods (both announced and unannounced),
>>> patient with the students, explaining unclear concepts? Does the
>>> teacher deal well with troublemakers in the class?
>> All of which is useless if the kids aren't actually learning.
>
><<Not really. The teacher's ability to deal with troublemakers affects
>the ability of others to learn in the classroom. These points are
>*very* important to evaluating a teacher -- and they're things that
>you've completely ignored in your zeal for tests that DON'T WORK!>>
If a teacher keeps a silent, attentive classroom and has 3/4 of their
class flunk out, discipline is meaningless.
The bottom line of education is that the students must LEARN.
Everything else is surplus.
>> Homework and test grades taken by the teacher -cannot- be verified,
>> -cannot- be relied upon as proof of student retention.
>
><<Bullshit, and I've given you ways above that can do that. Read what I
>write, Kris, or I'm done arguing with you this time.>>
No, you have not. You have given ways I've seen in action, which are
quite easily bypassed. Spot evaluations, sit-ins, and peer review only
weed out the idiots and those who annoy students and other teachers.
Homework and in-class test scores are effectively under the sole
control of the teacher, who has full power to cook the books.
>> Consider what a six-year-old kid would do given (a) the multiplication
>> tables, and (b) the premise that the teacher is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
>> "7 times 7 is 49!" "Prove it."
>
><<Then the teacher does just that.
And has to do it again, and again, and again, unless your childhood
experience consisted of much less stubborn classmates than mine did.
Teaching critical thinking at too young an age makes it -impossible-
for a teacher to teach, because too many children will defy the
teacher's authority both as an educator and as a disciplinarian. After
all, if they're not always right, then they -could- be wrong ALL THE
TIME... or any time it doesn't suit the student for the teacher to be
right.
><<Why *should* a student merely believe that 7 * 7 is 49?
Um, I don't know... because it's TRUE? Because it's a fundamental
aspect of the base-ten counting system we use?
>> The best way to learn how to teach, I maintain, is to -do- it.
>
><<Yes, but you'll note that most people who become teachers do so --
>except that they do it under supervision. Try looking at what jw said
>in her brief response to me -- she had to spend a lot of time in the
>classroom with mentorship from other teachers.>>
*shrug* Bill, if you're listening, I'd appreciate your input, but last
I looked here in Texas the 'student-teacher' and 'teacher-aide'
programs were mighty thin... and most teachers go direct from college
to the classroom with neither probation nor in-class training.
>>>>> <<You want to make it better? Make the wages better
>>>> Making wages better and reducing class sizes are diametrically
>>>> opposing goals, incidentally.
>>> <<No, they're not. They're actually complementary goals, both of which
>>> should be followed.
>> How? With what money? Smaller class sizes = more teachers = lower
>> salaries.
>
><<With what money? With the money we should be spending on education --
>on the *classroom*, not the administrators. With the money that we
>should be spending *on top of that*. Education *is* underfunded; IMO, a
>large part of that is because there are too many administrators outside
>of the school that cost too much money. (This isn't to say that
>administrators aren't necessary; they are.)>>
-Where- are you going to get the money? Please bear in mind that the
USA will not stand for a European-model 67% tax rate.
Myself, I've yet to see any convincing evidence that a class size
smaller than 25 students has any appreciable effect. I -can- see that
class sizes larger than 30 students is too many for a teaching period
of an hour or less (I wish colleges could see it too), but class sizes
of 18 or -smaller- seem to me to be wasteful of school resources.
>>> <<The ability to measure student retention of knowledge is the fallacy;
>>> that's not a measure of a teacher's success, necessarily.
I missed this before: student retention of knowledge is the -only
meaningful- measure of a teacher's success.
>The
>>> fundamental question is _how_ do you know a teacher's doing poorly?
>>> Hell, the class could be a sociological nightmare with a couple of
>>> near-psychopaths in it making the learning environment impossible for
>>> everyone, even if the teacher is *usually* seen as a star teacher.
>>>
>>> <<Are you saying that teacher that has been a star teacher in the past
>>> is now a poor teacher?
>>
>> Yes, unless that teacher is specifically prohibited from imposing
>> discipline on the class.
>
><<Then you're full of shit. There are a number of factors in the
>learning environment of a student, and the teacher is only one of them.
>A large part, I'll grant you, but not the largest by far. As an
>example, my girlfriend -- a star teacher -- has a class that, under her
>same curriculum that she uses every year, isn't learning.
>
><<Why? Because she's got a class of 32 students (the largest in the
>school; the average is 26 or so) and has either four or five students
>who are disruptive -- and the parents don't do *anything* about it.
>(She's got one kid who is *far* too precocious for his own good, and I
>don't mean in school.) If the kids aren't *doing* the work that the
>teacher sets out for them to do, and they aren't doing the *rework*
>that the teacher -allows- them to do, it's not the teacher's fault at
>that point.
Um, why is your girlfriend not punishing, sending up for punishment,
or removing the students? By your own standards, as I see it, your
girlfriend is a poor teacher because she doesn't keep discipline.
><<Your premise is based on a whole series of fallacies.>>
Apparently students actually -learning- something is a fallacy to you,
since you ascribe so little importance to it.
Redneck
Austin Ziegler
> On Sun, 27 May 2001 23:30:27 -0400, Austin Ziegler
> <azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 27 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>>> I wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 25 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, 25 May 2001 18:56:36 +0000 (UTC), maenad
>>>>> <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>>>>> If the students learn, you have a good teacher, and you give rewards.
>>>>> If the students don't learn, you have a bad teacher, and you give the
>>>>> boot.
>>>> <<I responded to this earlier, but I will reiterate that you have to
>>>> vary the way that the tests are done. In fact, I also know of a kid,
>>>> who won the school's literary award and was a spectacular writer, that
>>>> essentially flunked the written portion of a standardised test (not an
>>>> ABC type test, obviously) because he has very poor handwriting.
>>> All the more reason to favor testing -on- computer, not just graded by
>>> computer. It takes a special effort (or HTML-encoded responses) to be
>>> illegible on a keyboard.
>> <<Then you favour kids who have access to computers early,
> No, I favor computers in schools at all age levels, and no time limits
> on tests. (Write a five-page essay on the influence of Chaucer on
> Shakespeare; you have three minutes. Bullshit, teach.)
<<That's a bit better, but IMO not perfect by a long shot.>>
>> You also suggest computer grading -- what sort of test do
>> you envision? Multiple choice?
> A mixture of multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank.
<<Some things can be tested that way. Others require different things
-- and they can't be graded by computer. (Plus, it's often useful to
have the work shown.)>>
>>>> <<If it can be computer-graded, then it won't touch the creative
>>>> process or the way that kids think. If it has to be graded by humans,
>>>> then it's going to be no better than, and probably worse than, tests
>>>> given by the teacher.>>
>>> If learning is a creative process, we're all lost, because creativity
>>> is not just radically different for all individuals, it is not
>>> consistently distributed among them.
>> <<We're not lost, and the reality is that learning *is* a creative
>> process -- and teaching is the attempt to engage that creative process
>> for each student. Testing for that learning involves recognising a
>> student's learning process.>>
> Like I said, we're lost. I personally do not believe it is possible to
> teach creativity (but it is oh so easy to suppress or destroy it), and
> attempting to teach on an individual basis is so cost-intensive as to
> defeat the very hope of an educated public.
<<Damnit, Kris, fucking *read* what I wrote. I did NOT say that it's
the school's responsibility to teach creativity. I didn't even *imply*
it, and it's pretty damned hard to get that from what I actually said.
<<Learning is a creative endeavour. Teaching is reaching that creative
point in everyone.>>
> Treating learning as an individual process is good for private tutors
> and home-school children, but as an institutional policy I think it
> leads to disaster. Group -first-, then catch those individuals who
> can't follow the group as you have time.
<<Bad logic here, Kris. You yourself have effectively said that you
were poorly served by the "group first" logic. The reality is that when
you teach something one way, you're going to lose more kids than you
keep. Only by a combination of methods and actually paying attention to
the kids that you have in a class can you effectively get the message
across. You might have a sixth of your class who get it by lecture
alone (if you're lucky). You might have another sixth who get it by
reading the book alone. Others might need visual aids, role-play,
homework, class interaction, discussion of principles, etc. This isn't
something where you can pretend that one way will satisfy: you *have*
to understand that each student is going to need particular attention
each way. What you hope is that they don't all need attention at
once.>>
>>>> Fantome shrugs. <<Degrees can be useful, if they're not seen as (a) a
>>>> sure ticket to a job, and (b) training for a career.
>>> What universe do you live in? I dont' know about (a), but where I live
>>> and grew up, and go looking for work, (b) is taken as a given, despite
>>> all evidence to the contrary.
>> <<Actually, university is good for its own sake. Yes, there are some
>> jobs that cannot be done without years of specialised training
>> (engineering, medicine), but most jobs can be done by any Joe Schmoe
>> with a degree (to prove that [1] you can complete a major task, and [2]
>> that you can think critically to some degree, no pun intended). IMO,
>> we've got too many people going to college without actually knowing
>> *why* they're there.>>
> I went to college for a year; that was slightly more than my finances,
> even with scholarships, could withstand. I knew -why- I was there, but
> I never understood why the college was so dead set -against- letting
> me get what I needed before I took all these -other- courses I had no
> interest in or aptitude for. As a result, I got -zero- training for my
> then-chosen career of writer, and a very minimal education in jazz
> history, Pascal, horticuture, psychology, geology, and politically
> correct history.
<<Interesting that you approach it that way. I'd personally find it
very useful to have that information as a writer, as it might inform my
writing ability and style -- as well as give me information that might
be useful elsewhere. This is why I emphasize cross-discipline
knowledge, and IMO far too universities do.>>
>>>> I would like to
>>>> see colleges take a bit more realism into their curricula, but I don't
>>>> want to see them lose the benefits of a *good* liberal arts
>>>> education.>>
>>> Which are, from a practical standpoint?
>> <<Cross-discipline knowledge;
> What's practical about that? Making interesting conversation?
<<What's *practical* about that? Whole *fields* have been created
because of cross-discipline knowledge (molbio, for one). Science
fiction writers routinely use cross-discipline knowledge (writing,
hard/soft sciences, etc.) to write effective and entertaining novels
and stories. (JP Hogan, for one, wrote the Giants series which
contained a lot of stuff about evolution, biology, geology, astronomy,
and several other hard sciences. None of these alone would have made
quite the story that the combination of these did.)
<<The reality is that all of those courses you considered 'useless'
could have had value -- except that you didn't define them as having
such.>>
>> refined critical thinking skills;
> In -COLLEGE-? BULLSHIT!!
>
> Every college professor I had the distinct displeasure of getting the
> attention of had a -severe- dislike for anyone who disagreed with
> them, and graded accordingly. Thankfully, most of my professors that
> year preferred to leave workshops to their TAs and show up only for
> lectures.
<<Whereas I had professors who spread the spectrum on that.>>
>> exposure to ideas that may not have occurred to you otherwise.
> This is a good point, except I find that travel, or moving to an
> unfamiliar city or state, has the same general effect.
<<It can. Especially travel out of the country, and moreso outside of
the touristy enclaves.>>
>> <<That said, I want universities to prepare students for the real world
>> (NOTE: not job training!) and not prepare them for jobs as "permanent
>> students" and hope they become professors and researchers.>>
> If not job training at university, then job training -where?-
<<Often? On the job. I'm not saying that the situation is perfect at
this point, but I can only point at myself as someone who has a degree
completely unrelated to my current employment -- and this actually
makes me *more valuable* to my employer than had I not gone cross-
disciplinary.>>
> Education for its own sake, as an abstraction, is nice if you have the
> money to afford it. I never have; I seek education for a -purpose,-
> and am usually thwarted by an establishment which wants to make me
> suffer and spend for what I need.
<<I'm sorry you've had those experiences.>>
>>>>> Redneck (would be -so- much happier if colleges let you take major
>>>>> courses without wading through a degree plan)
>>>> <<Then go to a UWW school.>>
>>> A what-what-what?
>> <<University Without Walls. Go to www.tui.edu for an example. It's
>> expensive, yes. But it might work for you.>>
> If it's expensive, it's not an option for me, or for most other people
> who look to college as a means of escaping a low-income existence and
> gaining the training required to get beyond menial labor or
> secretarial positions.
<<I went more than US$20,000 in debt to get my degree. It's not what I'd
recommend to everyone (though I'm less than US$6,000 from total debt
freedom), but it is good. Look at the website anyway; it'll give you an
idea for the concept -- and you might actually find something that is
significantly cheaper along the same lines, yet is still accredited.
<<It's also worth noting that this university counts significant
portions of work experience toward your degree if you go with them.
Yes, that's where I went to get my degree, and it was worth every
penny.>>
> State college was tax-subsidized and scholarship-supported, and as it
> turned out I couldn't even afford -that.- I'm glad of the practical
> life experiences it gave me, but as an educational experience I regard
> it as an utterly wasted year.
<<I'm sorry you feel that way. It may have been, too. I'm not passing a
judgement here, but I wonder what the difference is -- because I've had
mostly good experiences with professors (I went to five different
colleges/universities), and I don't really think that I'm all that
extraordinary or outgoing.>>
Austin Ziegler
> On Sun, 27 May 2001 23:05:42 -0400, Austin Ziegler
> <azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 27 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>>> On Sat, 26 May 2001 17:34:37 -0400, Austin Ziegler
>>> <azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>>>>> Problem: homework, projects, and class interaction are all judged by
>>>>> the -teacher,- making them WORTHLESS for evaluating that teacher.
>>>> <<Bullshit, Kris. Did the teacher pull the homework from the book, or
>>>> did she track down things beyond that? Was the teacher, over the course
>>>> of several observation periods (both announced and unannounced),
>>>> patient with the students, explaining unclear concepts? Does the
>>>> teacher deal well with troublemakers in the class?
>>> All of which is useless if the kids aren't actually learning.
>> <<Not really. The teacher's ability to deal with troublemakers affects
>> the ability of others to learn in the classroom. These points are
>> *very* important to evaluating a teacher -- and they're things that
>> you've completely ignored in your zeal for tests that DON'T WORK!>>
> If a teacher keeps a silent, attentive classroom and has 3/4 of their
> class flunk out, discipline is meaningless.
<<You're right. But a "silent, attentive classroom" isn't the ideal.
You're thinking of discipline in an old catholic-school or military
school sense. Functional classrooms are buzzing with energy; they're
not "quiet." This doesn't mean that they are rowdy. Yes, I've been in
classes where the teacher thought that a good classroom was a quiet and
attentive one. I've also been in classes where the teacher had no
control at all. But I've been in far more classes where the teacher had
control over the troublemakers and yet the class was buzzing with
energy.>>
> The bottom line of education is that the students must LEARN.
> Everything else is surplus.
<<Nice, but meaningless. *What* must they learn?>>
>>> Homework and test grades taken by the teacher -cannot- be verified,
>>> -cannot- be relied upon as proof of student retention.
>> <<Bullshit, and I've given you ways above that can do that. Read what I
>> write, Kris, or I'm done arguing with you this time.>>
> No, you have not. You have given ways I've seen in action, which are
> quite easily bypassed. Spot evaluations, sit-ins, and peer review only
> weed out the idiots and those who annoy students and other teachers.
> Homework and in-class test scores are effectively under the sole
> control of the teacher, who has full power to cook the books.
<<Done properly, none of the items that I've referred to are easily
bypassed. The problem is that we've got people -- like yourself -- who
buy into the lie that standardised tests actually do some good, when
they're the tiniest fraction of the real picture.
<<Frankly, there is a point where you have to verify that the kids know
what they're talking about, but you also have to trust the teacher as a
professional. More, you have to TREAT the teacher like a professional
(and most of them will act like it, too!). You seem to want to treat
them as worse than the kids that they're supposed to be teaching, which
will get you the worst possible teachers as well.>>
>>> Consider what a six-year-old kid would do given (a) the multiplication
>>> tables, and (b) the premise that the teacher is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
>>> "7 times 7 is 49!" "Prove it."
>> <<Then the teacher does just that.
> And has to do it again, and again, and again, unless your childhood
> experience consisted of much less stubborn classmates than mine did.
<<I've pointed out in other posts that there are a variety of ways to
address this. If a student isn't getting it in the classroom or with
extra help, then the teacher can turn it into a project for the
student. Just because you appear to have had incompetent teachers
throughout your life does not mean that the profession is a waste. It
may be as much about *where* you lived as anything else. In Texas,
that's almost a certainty.>>
> Teaching critical thinking at too young an age makes it -impossible-
> for a teacher to teach, because too many children will defy the
> teacher's authority both as an educator and as a disciplinarian.
<<That's not critical thinking, and you bloody well know it, Kris.
Critical thinking does NOT consist of "prove it" and "fuck authority"
attitudes. Critical thinking consists of analyzing something and asking
"why" and "what if." And it's *never* too early to teach that, because
it's the most fundamental thing about learning: if you don't learn
things with an eye to critical thought, you don't know if it's true.
After a while, you learn what you can accept as true without a doubt,
but doing so too early ruins a person for quality critical thinking.>>
> After all, if they're not always right, then they -could- be wrong
> ALL THE TIME... or any time it doesn't suit the student for the
> teacher to be right.
<<Bullshit. That's not critical thinking, and you're not using the
critical thinking skills I know you've demonstrated in the past. You're
in some kind of mondo-negative funk on this matter and you're
blathering on about stuff that is demonstrably not related to the
matter at hand or is easily handled -- or actually illustrates the
points others have made about quality teacher training.>>
>> <<Why *should* a student merely believe that 7 * 7 is 49?
> Um, I don't know... because it's TRUE? Because it's a fundamental
> aspect of the base-ten counting system we use?
<<Actually, it isn't a fundamental aspect. It *is* true, but why does 7
* 7 always result in 49? Because it's seven sevens added together. The
relationship between addition and multiplication is something that a
lot of people just *don't get* because they're never taught it. The
relationship between subtraction and division is something that a lot
of people *don't get* for the same reasons.
<<There is a *why*, and explaining *why* can help a lot of students
understand things later on. (In fact, explaining why can also help
students learn some short-cuts -- like multiplying anything by a number
larger than ten being done on a per-digit basis and then adding the
smaller results together.) Understanding is *vital* to this process,
not just learning the extremely worthless "fact" that 7 * 7 is 49. It
won't tell you that 7 * .7 is 4.9, but understanding the relationship
might.>>
>>> The best way to learn how to teach, I maintain, is to -do- it.
>> <<Yes, but you'll note that most people who become teachers do so --
>> except that they do it under supervision. Try looking at what jw said
>> in her brief response to me -- she had to spend a lot of time in the
>> classroom with mentorship from other teachers.>>
> *shrug* Bill, if you're listening, I'd appreciate your input, but last
> I looked here in Texas the 'student-teacher' and 'teacher-aide'
> programs were mighty thin... and most teachers go direct from college
> to the classroom with neither probation nor in-class training.
<<Hm. I had student-teachers while I was in Texas.>>
>>>>>> <<You want to make it better? Make the wages better
>>>>> Making wages better and reducing class sizes are diametrically
>>>>> opposing goals, incidentally.
>>>> <<No, they're not. They're actually complementary goals, both of which
>>>> should be followed.
>>> How? With what money? Smaller class sizes = more teachers = lower
>>> salaries.
>> <<With what money? With the money we should be spending on education --
>> on the *classroom*, not the administrators. With the money that we
>> should be spending *on top of that*. Education *is* underfunded; IMO, a
>> large part of that is because there are too many administrators outside
>> of the school that cost too much money. (This isn't to say that
>> administrators aren't necessary; they are.)>>
> -Where- are you going to get the money? Please bear in mind that the
> USA will not stand for a European-model 67% tax rate.
<<Then people are going to get exactly what they pay for: bupkiss. I'm
not saying that a 67% tax rate will be necessary. I *am* saying that a
number of measures will have to be done that improve the funding
situation across the board. Frankly, the wage situation *has* to be
improved, because there are a lot of people who *would* teach if it
weren't for the fact that they can earn 3x a teacher's salary in the
private sector ...>>
> Myself, I've yet to see any convincing evidence that a class size
> smaller than 25 students has any appreciable effect.
<<There was a study not too long ago that showed that the ideal class
size is about 16 - 18 because it gives the proper balance between
individual attention from the instructor and group interaction. I don't
have any cites for it, but it was pretty clear.>>
> I -can- see that
> class sizes larger than 30 students is too many for a teaching period
> of an hour or less (I wish colleges could see it too), but class sizes
> of 18 or -smaller- seem to me to be wasteful of school resources.
<<They can be, but don't have to be. If that's what it takes to ensure
that our kids are ready for the future, then why *shouldn't* we spend
the money, Kris?>>
>>>> <<The ability to measure student retention of knowledge is the fallacy;
>>>> that's not a measure of a teacher's success, necessarily.
> I missed this before: student retention of knowledge is the -only
> meaningful- measure of a teacher's success.
<<Bullshit, and I've explained why for several messages. Student
retention, especially if measured by a standardized test, is only good
until the next test. Seriously. There are dozens of other ways to
measure teacher success -- some good, some bad. I consider the teacher
a success if they manage to make it where the student knows where to
get information about the subject. (Of course, this varies. A second-
language teacher is successful to the degree that they can get the
students to speak/read/write the second language with the appropiate
level of fluency.)>>
<<She is doing what she can with the punishment. She can't remove the
student, and she's called parent-teacher conferences where the parents
don't even bother to show up. So no, she's not a poor teacher in this
case -- she's done everything *right*, and up to 60% this class is
effectively going to fail the year because they haven't actually done
the work she's set forth.>>
>> <<Your premise is based on a whole series of fallacies.>>
> Apparently students actually -learning- something is a fallacy to you,
> since you ascribe so little importance to it.
<<I have little use for the current and past mania for "facts." Those are
available in tons of books that can be cross-checked against each other,
and knowing and regurgitating them doesn't tell anyone anything.
<<I have great use for people who can actually think, who can express
their thinking, who know where to find the facts, and who can relate
apparently unrelated sets of facts with good reasoning. Those skills
are the real value from school -- not being able to say that 7 December
1941 was the date of a sneak attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour.>>
Thomas G. McVeigh
Max and GreyMan <grey...@home.com> wrote:
"OK, maybe I drove a couple of teachers nuts, but the ones that were
willing to really answer my first few questions gained my trust, and I
learned from them. I can understand the time constraints you refer to,
and pragmatically, you are correct. In an ideal world however..."
M0nkyman goes back to his Guinness, thinking about the world after the
revolution.
> Max believes fundamentals include pouncing, purring, and predating. The
> Three Ps.
m0nkyman's cat Furleigh agrees.
Thomas G. McVeigh
Kris Overstreet <red...@detnet.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 28 May 2001 06:10:49 GMT, "Thomas G. McVeigh"
> <th...@aptenobytes.net> wrote:
>
> >In article <39r2ht0crtmgirgnv...@4ax.com>,
> > Kris Overstreet <red...@detnet.com> wrote:
> ><a bunch of snippage>
> >> Consider what a six-year-old kid would do given (a) the multiplication
> >> tables, and (b) the premise that the teacher is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
> >>
> >> "7 times 7 is 49!" "Prove it."
> >
> >A box of macaroni, dumped on a table, seven groups of seven macaroni
> >pieces. Good lord, you mean the kid might actually understand what
> >multiplication actually is. Heavens forbid.
>
> I've tried that with a critical little kid, and spent an hour counting
> macaroni- or in my actual case, pebbles- over and over again, pointing
> out that no matter how you shaped the groups, or what rows and columns
> you put them in, or what you did with them, there were -still-
> forty-nine pebbles there.
>
"Actually she probably did, but watching you tear out your hair was
FUN!" M0nkyman has a over a dozen nieces and nephews and knows whereof
he speaks.
Max and GreyMan
>
> In article <1sa5htkfbh5jco1f6...@4ax.com>,
> Kris Overstreet <red...@detnet.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 28 May 2001 06:10:49 GMT, "Thomas G. McVeigh"
> > <th...@aptenobytes.net> wrote:
> >
> > >In article <39r2ht0crtmgirgnv...@4ax.com>,
> > > Kris Overstreet <red...@detnet.com> wrote:
> > ><a bunch of snippage>
> > >> Consider what a six-year-old kid would do given (a) the multiplication
> > >> tables, and (b) the premise that the teacher is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
> > >>
> > >> "7 times 7 is 49!" "Prove it."
> > >
> > >A box of macaroni, dumped on a table, seven groups of seven macaroni
> > >pieces. Good lord, you mean the kid might actually understand what
> > >multiplication actually is. Heavens forbid.
> >
> > I've tried that with a critical little kid, and spent an hour counting
> > macaroni- or in my actual case, pebbles- over and over again, pointing
> > out that no matter how you shaped the groups, or what rows and columns
> > you put them in, or what you did with them, there were -still-
> > forty-nine pebbles there.
> >
> "Actually she probably did, but watching you tear out your hair was
> FUN!" M0nkyman has a over a dozen nieces and nephews and knows whereof
> he speaks.
"ooh, good point. Kids can be quite manipulative because they don't have
much power any other way, and don't have complete awareness of other
peoples' feelings and big-picture concerns yet."
"This is why I did say that critical thinking should be de-emphasized
for the first few grades, until they have basic skills. Focusing on it
before the children are ready could be chaotic. Of course, this depends
heavily on the individual teacher."
"The teacher needs to set himself up as a leader and authority, but not
a tin-pot proclaimer. The teacher will eventually make a mistake that
the students will detect, with specific training in analysis or not. If
the teacher handles it appropriately, by admitting the mistake and
explaining either why he made the mistake (if a question of fact) or why
reality is the other way (if a question of science), the students will
continue to trust him. If he blusters over it or never admits the
mistake, the students will doubt everything he says, as Kris fears."
Max thinks multiplying is for rabbits.
Max and GreyMan
"No, but when she does, she will *really* understand math. Then, the
multiplication tables she memorized will be useful."
"If she was a *young* kid (first grade, preschool) she might not have
understood that quantity is not altered by arrangement. She may have
understood it, but had applied it only to much smaller numbers than 49.
We all went through those developmental stages. We came out of them
because someone taught us, patiently or otherwise, that quantity is
abstract and not bound to the physical item being enumerated."
"Understanding math is crucial for using it properly. I have memorized
the multiplication tables (up to 25x25 at one point) but I still have
trouble remembering certain combinations, like 8x7 versus 9x6. If I
didn't understand 8x7 was eight added seven times I wouldn't have a
chance of figuring it out when I forgot it."
"Redneck, math is a particularly bad example for your argument. I
suggest switching to something which does properly involve rote
memorization, such as second-language courses or spelling. The only
reason to memorize in math is to speed up your processing, because you
don't have to look up every operation. Languages just are, until you
get into highly technical analysis of word origins."
Max counts to three, which is sufficient for his purposes.
Austin Ziegler
> "Thomas G. McVeigh" wrote:
>>> On Mon, 28 May 2001 06:10:49 GMT, "Thomas G. McVeigh"
>>>> <a bunch of snippage>
>>>>> Consider what a six-year-old kid would do given (a) the multiplication
>>>>> tables, and (b) the premise that the teacher is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT.
>>>>> "7 times 7 is 49!" "Prove it."
>>>> A box of macaroni, dumped on a table, seven groups of seven macaroni
>>>> pieces. Good lord, you mean the kid might actually understand what
>>>> multiplication actually is. Heavens forbid.
>>> I've tried that with a critical little kid, and spent an hour counting
>>> macaroni- or in my actual case, pebbles- over and over again, pointing
>>> out that no matter how you shaped the groups, or what rows and columns
>>> you put them in, or what you did with them, there were -still-
>>> forty-nine pebbles there.
>> "Actually she probably did, but watching you tear out your hair was
>> FUN!" M0nkyman has a over a dozen nieces and nephews and knows whereof
>> he speaks.
> "ooh, good point. Kids can be quite manipulative because they don't have
> much power any other way, and don't have complete awareness of other
> peoples' feelings and big-picture concerns yet."
> "This is why I did say that critical thinking should be de-emphasized
> for the first few grades, until they have basic skills. Focusing on it
> before the children are ready could be chaotic. Of course, this depends
> heavily on the individual teacher."
<<I think I'm going to ask you to step back and define exactly what you
mean by 'critical thinking,' because based on what you're saying, I
don't think you define it the same way that I do.>>
Austin Ziegler
> suggest switching to something which does properly involve rote
> memorization, such as second-language courses or spelling. The only
> reason to memorize in math is to speed up your processing, because you
> don't have to look up every operation. Languages just are, until you
> get into highly technical analysis of word origins."
<<Oh, but critical thinking skills are useful in both of the above
subjects, even though the answer *is* often 'because it is.'
<<Take spelling for example. When one is learning a particular word,
you're not just learning the spelling, even if it's the practice at
hand. Why is "neighbour" ("neighbor") spelled the way it is instead of
"naybor"? A quick look in the dictionary will give you an etymology
with which you can begin to answer that.
<<You won't need many of these excursions before the kids start to look
up the etymologies themselves and begin to understand why the peculiar
meandering of English results in some pretty strange spellings for
homonymic words.
<<The same thing applies to foreign languages. Yes, there's a point
where you have to make sure the students understand a particular
minimum, but you're mostly going to teach vocabulary through a gloss
(3gloss2a, b at www.m-w.com) that relates known words to the foreign
language. If you're inventive, you'll show them where the foreign
language has either adapted words from their language ('le jeans') or
where their own language has adapated or appropriated words or phrases
from the foreign language ("hors d'oeuvres", "deja vu"). You'll relate
particular verb tenses to the language they already know, and indicate
where things have differed. And sometimes, you'll have to say "I don't
know why it's that way, it just is. Why don't you look to see if you
can find out why. Come see me after class, and I'll give you some
places you can start looking."
<<Critical thinking from students pushes teachers to explain things to
the students, not just give information. Teaching is about, IMO,
engaging the students.>>
Lollee Roberts
>I've tried that with a critical little kid, and spent an hour counting
>macaroni- or in my actual case, pebbles- over and over again, pointing
>out that no matter how you shaped the groups, or what rows and columns
>you put them in, or what you did with them, there were -still-
>forty-nine pebbles there.
>
>She -still- didn't believe me.
>
>Redneck
Actually, according to Piaget, there is a stage of intellectual development
where children are incapable of separating the shape of the substance from the
amount - the classic experiment was pouring a certain volume of water from a
shorter wider beaker into a tall thin one. At a certain age, children could not
be convinced that the taller beaker did not contain more liquid, even if they
saw the liquid being poured back and forth. This could very well be the stage
your child was in. A few months later, the same child will "get it" because
their brain is now mature enough to process that information.
Not saying that's what happened to you, just suggesting a possible explanation.
Lollee
Lollee
Lollee Roberts
>I've tried that with a critical little kid, and spent an hour counting
>macaroni- or in my actual case, pebbles- over and over again, pointing
>out that no matter how you shaped the groups, or what rows and columns
>you put them in, or what you did with them, there were -still-
>forty-nine pebbles there.
>
>She -still- didn't believe me.
>
>Redneck
Actually, according to Piaget, there is a stage of intellectual development
Kris Overstreet
<azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 28 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>> On Sun, 27 May 2001 23:05:42 -0400, Austin Ziegler
>> <azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 27 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 26 May 2001 17:34:37 -0400, Austin Ziegler
>>>> <azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Problem: homework, projects, and class interaction are all judged by
>>>>>> the -teacher,- making them WORTHLESS for evaluating that teacher.
>>>>> <<Bullshit, Kris. Did the teacher pull the homework from the book, or
>>>>> did she track down things beyond that? Was the teacher, over the course
>>>>> of several observation periods (both announced and unannounced),
>>>>> patient with the students, explaining unclear concepts? Does the
>>>>> teacher deal well with troublemakers in the class?
>>>> All of which is useless if the kids aren't actually learning.
>>> <<Not really. The teacher's ability to deal with troublemakers affects
>>> the ability of others to learn in the classroom. These points are
>>> *very* important to evaluating a teacher -- and they're things that
>>> you've completely ignored in your zeal for tests that DON'T WORK!>>
>> If a teacher keeps a silent, attentive classroom and has 3/4 of their
>> class flunk out, discipline is meaningless.
>
><<You're right. But a "silent, attentive classroom" isn't the ideal.
No. Students LEARNING is the ideal; discipline is of -secondary-
importance to that, which was my point.
>> The bottom line of education is that the students must LEARN.
>> Everything else is surplus.
>
><<Nice, but meaningless. *What* must they learn?>>
What is taught, which in turn is defined by those who institute and
operate the schools.
><<Frankly, there is a point where you have to verify that the kids know
>what they're talking about, but you also have to trust the teacher as a
>professional. More, you have to TREAT the teacher like a professional
>(and most of them will act like it, too!). You seem to want to treat
>them as worse than the kids that they're supposed to be teaching, which
>will get you the worst possible teachers as well.>>
And your solution is, "Okay, we won't do anything to monitor your
performance besides listen to what you say is going on and what your
fellow teachers say about you."? Or have I misunderstood?
That's not professional treatment, that's the Good Ol' Boy system.
>> Teaching critical thinking at too young an age makes it -impossible-
>> for a teacher to teach, because too many children will defy the
>> teacher's authority both as an educator and as a disciplinarian.
>
><<That's not critical thinking, and you bloody well know it, Kris.
No, it's not true critical thinking. It's disobedience disguised as
critical thinking, and children resentful of what they regard as seven
to ten hours of jail five days a week nine months a year are all too
likely to sieze on any excuse to thwart authority.
>Critical thinking does NOT consist of "prove it" and "fuck authority"
>attitudes. Critical thinking consists of analyzing something and asking
>"why" and "what if." And it's *never* too early to teach that, because
>it's the most fundamental thing about learning: if you don't learn
>things with an eye to critical thought, you don't know if it's true.
>After a while, you learn what you can accept as true without a doubt,
>but doing so too early ruins a person for quality critical thinking.>>
I believe it is the other way around; teaching a child too early to be
critical of the 'common knowledge' leads them to reject authority,
then accept unthinking cynicism and, in the end, reject everything as
uncritically as the stereotypical rote learner would accept
everything.
>> After all, if they're not always right, then they -could- be wrong
>> ALL THE TIME... or any time it doesn't suit the student for the
>> teacher to be right.
>
><<Bullshit. That's not critical thinking, and you're not using the
>critical thinking skills I know you've demonstrated in the past.
No, it's an observation based on experience with resentful school
children who want control of their own lives and don't want to learn.
>>> <<Why *should* a student merely believe that 7 * 7 is 49?
>> Um, I don't know... because it's TRUE? Because it's a fundamental
>> aspect of the base-ten counting system we use?
>
><<Actually, it isn't a fundamental aspect. It *is* true, but why does 7
>* 7 always result in 49? Because it's seven sevens added together. The
>relationship between addition and multiplication is something that a
>lot of people just *don't get* because they're never taught it. The
>relationship between subtraction and division is something that a lot
>of people *don't get* for the same reasons.
That relationship I -was- taught in school, in second, third, and
fourth grades. It -is- a fundamental aspect, in that leaving it out
makes the whole inconsistent; equations must always have a single
answer, and there is a specific order and numeration in counting.
><<There is a *why*, and explaining *why* can help a lot of students
>understand things later on. (In fact, explaining why can also help
>students learn some short-cuts -- like multiplying anything by a number
>larger than ten being done on a per-digit basis and then adding the
>smaller results together.) Understanding is *vital* to this process,
>not just learning the extremely worthless "fact" that 7 * 7 is 49. It
>won't tell you that 7 * .7 is 4.9, but understanding the relationship
>might.>>
Leaving aside the fact that -explaining- why (rather than letting the
kids work it out for themselves) is not critical thinking, learning
the fact by rote allows you to use it as a common basis of knowledge
when you come to decimal mathematics.
><<Hm. I had student-teachers while I was in Texas.>>
I never saw a student-teacher under supervision beyond first grade. I
saw three or four first-year, just-graduated teachers later on.
>>>>>>> <<You want to make it better? Make the wages better
>>>>>> Making wages better and reducing class sizes are diametrically
>>>>>> opposing goals, incidentally.
>>>>> <<No, they're not. They're actually complementary goals, both of which
>>>>> should be followed.
>>>> How? With what money? Smaller class sizes = more teachers = lower
>>>> salaries.
>>> <<With what money? With the money we should be spending on education --
>>> on the *classroom*, not the administrators. With the money that we
>>> should be spending *on top of that*. Education *is* underfunded; IMO, a
>>> large part of that is because there are too many administrators outside
>>> of the school that cost too much money. (This isn't to say that
>>> administrators aren't necessary; they are.)>>
>> -Where- are you going to get the money? Please bear in mind that the
>> USA will not stand for a European-model 67% tax rate.
>
><<Then people are going to get exactly what they pay for: bupkiss. I'm
>not saying that a 67% tax rate will be necessary. I *am* saying that a
>number of measures will have to be done that improve the funding
>situation across the board. Frankly, the wage situation *has* to be
>improved, because there are a lot of people who *would* teach if it
>weren't for the fact that they can earn 3x a teacher's salary in the
>private sector ...>>
Then reduce expenses; smaller school buildings, larger class sizes
(20-30 students), and DUMP ROTTEN TEACHERS WITH SENIORITY.
I'd also advocate an across-the-board pay cut for coaches, BTW.
>> I -can- see that
>> class sizes larger than 30 students is too many for a teaching period
>> of an hour or less (I wish colleges could see it too), but class sizes
>> of 18 or -smaller- seem to me to be wasteful of school resources.
>
><<They can be, but don't have to be. If that's what it takes to ensure
>that our kids are ready for the future, then why *shouldn't* we spend
>the money, Kris?>>
Because -we don't have it-?
I don't know about you, but I showed less income the past two years
-gross- than I paid in total taxes. I literally do not have the money
to pay any more.
>>>>> <<The ability to measure student retention of knowledge is the fallacy;
>>>>> that's not a measure of a teacher's success, necessarily.
>> I missed this before: student retention of knowledge is the -only
>> meaningful- measure of a teacher's success.
>
><<Bullshit, and I've explained why for several messages. Student
>retention, especially if measured by a standardized test, is only good
>until the next test. Seriously. There are dozens of other ways to
>measure teacher success -- some good, some bad. I consider the teacher
>a success if they manage to make it where the student knows where to
>get information about the subject.
Only if the teacher is teaching a course called Learning Skills.
If a teacher is teaching, say, European History, and the students
coming out can't name half the countries in Europe accurately, that
teacher is a failure no matter what good qualities they have.
Is the principal refusing to enact punishment, or does school policy
prohibit punishment?
Has she even tried just setting their desks out in the hall and
letting them rot in isolation, or has that been forbidden to her?
If the school board prohibits basic disciplinary tools to its
teachers, then I can forgive, but not otherwise.
>>> <<Your premise is based on a whole series of fallacies.>>
>> Apparently students actually -learning- something is a fallacy to you,
>> since you ascribe so little importance to it.
>
><<I have little use for the current and past mania for "facts." Those are
>available in tons of books that can be cross-checked against each other,
>and knowing and regurgitating them doesn't tell anyone anything.
>
><<I have great use for people who can actually think, who can express
>their thinking, who know where to find the facts, and who can relate
>apparently unrelated sets of facts with good reasoning. Those skills
>are the real value from school -- not being able to say that 7 December
>1941 was the date of a sneak attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour.>>
Then you and I have radically irreconcilable different requirements
for education.
Redneck
Kris Overstreet
wrote:
>"Redneck, math is a particularly bad example for your argument. I
>suggest switching to something which does properly involve rote
>memorization, such as second-language courses or spelling. The only
>reason to memorize in math is to speed up your processing, because you
>don't have to look up every operation. Languages just are, until you
>get into highly technical analysis of word origins."
I use math because it is one of the -easiest- to get bogged down in on
arguements and deliberate misunderstandings such as this. Language
requires a knowledge of the vocabulary before you can argue sematnics,
and history requires a knowledge of dates, settings and personalities
before you can argue reasons and motivations, but counting can be
argued so easily and so often...
Redneck
Kris Overstreet
<azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 28 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>> On Sun, 27 May 2001 23:30:27 -0400, Austin Ziegler
>> <azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 27 May 2001, Kris Overstreet wrote:
>>>> I wrote:
>>>>> <<If it can be computer-graded, then it won't touch the creative
>>>>> process or the way that kids think. If it has to be graded by humans,
>>>>> then it's going to be no better than, and probably worse than, tests
>>>>> given by the teacher.>>
>>>> If learning is a creative process, we're all lost, because creativity
>>>> is not just radically different for all individuals, it is not
>>>> consistently distributed among them.
>>> <<We're not lost, and the reality is that learning *is* a creative
>>> process -- and teaching is the attempt to engage that creative process
>>> for each student. Testing for that learning involves recognising a
>>> student's learning process.>>
>> Like I said, we're lost. I personally do not believe it is possible to
>> teach creativity (but it is oh so easy to suppress or destroy it), and
>> attempting to teach on an individual basis is so cost-intensive as to
>> defeat the very hope of an educated public.
>
><<Damnit, Kris, fucking *read* what I wrote. I did NOT say that it's
>the school's responsibility to teach creativity. I didn't even *imply*
>it, and it's pretty damned hard to get that from what I actually said.
It's pretty damned -easy- to get that. By treating learning as a
creative process, one of the fundamentals is that you must teach the
students to be more creative so they can learn better.
This is, IMHO, an impossibility.
>> Treating learning as an individual process is good for private tutors
>> and home-school children, but as an institutional policy I think it
>> leads to disaster. Group -first-, then catch those individuals who
>> can't follow the group as you have time.
>
><<Bad logic here, Kris. You yourself have effectively said that you
>were poorly served by the "group first" logic.
Treating people as groups, yes; working with them in groups, no.
>The reality is that when
>you teach something one way, you're going to lose more kids than you
>keep. Only by a combination of methods and actually paying attention to
>the kids that you have in a class can you effectively get the message
>across. You might have a sixth of your class who get it by lecture
>alone (if you're lucky). You might have another sixth who get it by
>reading the book alone. Others might need visual aids, role-play,
>homework, class interaction, discussion of principles, etc. This isn't
>something where you can pretend that one way will satisfy: you *have*
>to understand that each student is going to need particular attention
>each way. What you hope is that they don't all need attention at
>once.>>
I deny that every student needs full-time individual attention. You
catch as many as you can with the first pass, then get the rest as you
can.
>> I went to college for a year; that was slightly more than my finances,
>> even with scholarships, could withstand. I knew -why- I was there, but
>> I never understood why the college was so dead set -against- letting
>> me get what I needed before I took all these -other- courses I had no
>> interest in or aptitude for. As a result, I got -zero- training for my
>> then-chosen career of writer, and a very minimal education in jazz
>> history, Pascal, horticuture, psychology, geology, and politically
>> correct history.
>
><<Interesting that you approach it that way. I'd personally find it
>very useful to have that information as a writer,
If I need the information, I can research it at my leisure and under
my own conditions. For example, if I need to learn something about
blank jazz (YECH!!) I do NOT need to go to a $10 cover-charge night
club, waste three hours listening to something that hurts my ears, and
then write a review about it to a professor who doesn't understand why
I hate it.
>as it might inform my
>writing ability and style
I was not PERMITTED to take any courses which taught writing. The only
course I could get which involved writing at all- a history course- I
got a C in because I refused to write a thesis on why Columbus was the
most evil man in Western history.
>-- as well as give me information that might
>be useful elsewhere.
I have yet to need any knowledge on how to program Pascal, grow
pumpkins (which I knew before I went to college anyway), direct armies
of pike and matchlocks, or identify bauxite.
I CLEPped out of basic calculus, thank God, but I haven't had to
calculate electron paths lately either, so that knowledge wasn't
useful either.
>This is why I emphasize cross-discipline
>knowledge, and IMO far too universities do.>>
This is why I DE-emphasize cross-discipline knowledge. I learned more
of practical use from the people -going- to class than from those
-teaching- it.
>>>>> I would like to
>>>>> see colleges take a bit more realism into their curricula, but I don't
>>>>> want to see them lose the benefits of a *good* liberal arts
>>>>> education.>>
>>>> Which are, from a practical standpoint?
>>> <<Cross-discipline knowledge;
>> What's practical about that? Making interesting conversation?
>
><<What's *practical* about that? Whole *fields* have been created
>because of cross-discipline knowledge (molbio, for one).
Maybe I'm too young, but I hardly think of molecular biology as a
cross-discipline field.
> Science
>fiction writers routinely use cross-discipline knowledge (writing,
>hard/soft sciences, etc.) to write effective and entertaining novels
>and stories. (JP Hogan, for one, wrote the Giants series which
>contained a lot of stuff about evolution, biology, geology, astronomy,
>and several other hard sciences. None of these alone would have made
>quite the story that the combination of these did.)
Speaking as someone who occasionally attempts to make writing pay,
science fiction is -not- a practical application.
(And I like Hogan's writing, and I liked him when I met him at
Exoticon last, but nine-tenths of his science is bullshit.)
>>> exposure to ideas that may not have occurred to you otherwise.
>> This is a good point, except I find that travel, or moving to an
>> unfamiliar city or state, has the same general effect.
>
><<It can. Especially travel out of the country, and moreso outside of
>the touristy enclaves.>>
I don't regard visiting tourist sites as travel. I regard it as slow
torture.
>>> <<That said, I want universities to prepare students for the real world
>>> (NOTE: not job training!) and not prepare them for jobs as "permanent
>>> students" and hope they become professors and researchers.>>
>> If not job training at university, then job training -where?-
>
><<Often? On the job.
Not useful to someone trying to -get- the job.
> I'm not saying that the situation is perfect at
>this point, but I can only point at myself as someone who has a degree
>completely unrelated to my current employment -- and this actually
>makes me *more valuable* to my employer than had I not gone cross-
>disciplinary.>>
All this means, IMHO, is that you got very lucky. Congratulations on
your good fortune.
>> If it's expensive, it's not an option for me, or for most other people
>> who look to college as a means of escaping a low-income existence and
>> gaining the training required to get beyond menial labor or
>> secretarial positions.
>
><<I went more than US$20,000 in debt to get my degree. It's not what I'd
>recommend to everyone (though I'm less than US$6,000 from total debt
>freedom), but it is good. Look at the website anyway; it'll give you an
>idea for the concept -- and you might actually find something that is
>significantly cheaper along the same lines, yet is still accredited.
I spent a little time trying to wade through the site. I would -like-
it if it coughed up (a) some hard numbers, and (b) scholarship
information for non-fulltime students.
Redneck
Austin Ziegler
> On Mon, 28 May 2001 17:06:50 -0400, Austin Ziegler
<<Bullshit. Learning is a creative process; creativity can't be taught,
but connecting with one's creative self can be encouraged through a
variety of activities. This isn't teaching creativity -- far from it.
It's recognising that, as humans, we are all creative and we develop
and use that creativity in different ways. I guess you think it's
better to treat people as machines. Your arguments strongly suggest
that, especially given that you're not really reading what I'm writing,
apparently.>>
>>> Treating learning as an individual process is good for private tutors
>>> and home-school children, but as an institutional policy I think it
>>> leads to disaster. Group -first-, then catch those individuals who
>>> can't follow the group as you have time.
>> <<Bad logic here, Kris. You yourself have effectively said that you
>> were poorly served by the "group first" logic.
> Treating people as groups, yes; working with them in groups, no.
<<With the approach you're taking to the matter -- which isn't all that
different from what's happening AND FAILING right now -- there's little
difference between the two.>>
>> The reality is that when
>> you teach something one way, you're going to lose more kids than you
>> keep. Only by a combination of methods and actually paying attention to
>> the kids that you have in a class can you effectively get the message
>> across. You might have a sixth of your class who get it by lecture
>> alone (if you're lucky). You might have another sixth who get it by
>> reading the book alone. Others might need visual aids, role-play,
>> homework, class interaction, discussion of principles, etc. This isn't
>> something where you can pretend that one way will satisfy: you *have*
>> to understand that each student is going to need particular attention
>> each way. What you hope is that they don't all need attention at
>> once.>>
> I deny that every student needs full-time individual attention. You
> catch as many as you can with the first pass, then get the rest as you
> can.
<<And if you only catch three with the first pass? No; every student
needs appropraite individual attention. It's more than they're getting
now, but it's not full-time individual attention. You're -- once again --
not reading what I wrote.>>
>>> I went to college for a year; that was slightly more than my finances,
>>> even with scholarships, could withstand. I knew -why- I was there, but
>>> I never understood why the college was so dead set -against- letting
>>> me get what I needed before I took all these -other- courses I had no
>>> interest in or aptitude for. As a result, I got -zero- training for my
>>> then-chosen career of writer, and a very minimal education in jazz
>>> history, Pascal, horticuture, psychology, geology, and politically
>>> correct history.
>> <<Interesting that you approach it that way. I'd personally find it
>> very useful to have that information as a writer,
> If I need the information, I can research it at my leisure and under
> my own conditions. For example, if I need to learn something about
> blank jazz (YECH!!) I do NOT need to go to a $10 cover-charge night
> club, waste three hours listening to something that hurts my ears, and
> then write a review about it to a professor who doesn't understand why
> I hate it.
Fantome shrugs. <<Ever read _Earth_ by David Brin? If so, remember
Daisy and her tendency to read netnews about only what interested her,
fatally so. Sometimes, there's value in doing things we don't think
we'll like, even if it only confirms that we don't like it.>>
>> as it might inform my
>> writing ability and style
> I was not PERMITTED to take any courses which taught writing. The only
> course I could get which involved writing at all- a history course- I
> got a C in because I refused to write a thesis on why Columbus was the
> most evil man in Western history.
<<Do you tend to think in a straight line, or do you tend to have
tangental ("hypertext") thought patterns? Based on the way you're
responding to me, I'm guessing straight line. Okay, you're told to
write a thesis on why Columbus was the most evil man in Western
history? Did you not write the paper at all? If not, then the C is your
own damned fault for being so pigheaded. Better to write a
well-researched and reasoned paper that refutes the central thesis.>>
>> -- as well as give me information that might
>> be useful elsewhere.
> I have yet to need any knowledge on how to program Pascal, grow
> pumpkins (which I knew before I went to college anyway), direct armies
> of pike and matchlocks, or identify bauxite.
>
> I CLEPped out of basic calculus, thank God, but I haven't had to
> calculate electron paths lately either, so that knowledge wasn't
> useful either.
Fantome yawns. <<You said you wanted to write, didn't you? All of these
things *could* be useful to a writer. All of them. Your responses are
getting predictable -- you're *not* interested in discussion, are
you?>>
>> This is why I emphasize cross-discipline
>> knowledge, and IMO far too universities do.>>
<<Minor correction here: this should read either "far too few univeristies
do" or "far too many universitis don't".>>
> This is why I DE-emphasize cross-discipline knowledge. I learned more
> of practical use from the people -going- to class than from those
> -teaching- it.
<<Practical use is learned through application. And, frankly, cross-
discipline knowledge has value, even if you're going to keep being
pigheaded and unthinking about it. The success that I've had in my
career is only a personal example, but I think it's a damned good one
at that.>>
>>>>>> I would like to
>>>>>> see colleges take a bit more realism into their curricula, but I don't
>>>>>> want to see them lose the benefits of a *good* liberal arts
>>>>>> education.>>
>>>>> Which are, from a practical standpoint?
>>>> <<Cross-discipline knowledge;
>>> What's practical about that? Making interesting conversation?
>> <<What's *practical* about that? Whole *fields* have been created
>> because of cross-discipline knowledge (molbio, for one).
> Maybe I'm too young, but I hardly think of molecular biology as a
> cross-discipline field.
<<You're not that much younger than I am. Molbio is the only one that I
could think of that came from cross-discipline studies, but I am also
aware of a researcher (I think one of the RSA designers -- Rivest?) who
is looking at biological computation devices. Again, this is
cross-discipline. Looking at a field with a fresh set of eyes can brin
amazing insights, and I think we've gone too far in encouraging
specialisation as a society.>>
>> Science
>> fiction writers routinely use cross-discipline knowledge (writing,
>> hard/soft sciences, etc.) to write effective and entertaining novels
>> and stories. (JP Hogan, for one, wrote the Giants series which
>> contained a lot of stuff about evolution, biology, geology, astronomy,
>> and several other hard sciences. None of these alone would have made
>> quite the story that the combination of these did.)
> Speaking as someone who occasionally attempts to make writing pay,
> science fiction is -not- a practical application.
>
> (And I like Hogan's writing, and I liked him when I met him at
> Exoticon last, but nine-tenths of his science is bullshit.)
<<His science and the directions in which he takes it may be bullshit, but
he still has to research it -- extensively. The fact is that he's looking
at things from several directions.
<<I also contend that SF *is* a practical application, especially when
you look at those who HAVE made a career of it. Indeed, when serious
scientists write science fiction, is that not a practical
application?>>
>>>> exposure to ideas that may not have occurred to you otherwise.
>>> This is a good point, except I find that travel, or moving to an
>>> unfamiliar city or state, has the same general effect.
>> <<It can. Especially travel out of the country, and moreso outside of
>> the touristy enclaves.>>
> I don't regard visiting tourist sites as travel. I regard it as slow
> torture.
<<Or fast torture, as the case may be.>>
>>>> <<That said, I want universities to prepare students for the real world
>>>> (NOTE: not job training!) and not prepare them for jobs as "permanent
>>>> students" and hope they become professors and researchers.>>
>>> If not job training at university, then job training -where?-
>> <<Often? On the job.
> Not useful to someone trying to -get- the job.
<<Not true, damnit. Seriously. Not for every type of job (e.g., you
can't convince someone that you'll have the skills of a CPA unless you
actually have the certification, but you can do so for any number of
subjects). Kris, next time you go looking for a job, you'll probably
have a decent shot at it because of your experience running your own
business. Assuming you do so.>>
>> I'm not saying that the situation is perfect at
>> this point, but I can only point at myself as someone who has a degree
>> completely unrelated to my current employment -- and this actually
>> makes me *more valuable* to my employer than had I not gone cross-
>> disciplinary.>>
> All this means, IMHO, is that you got very lucky. Congratulations on
> your good fortune.
<<Yes, I got lucky. But not very lucky. I know of a *lot* of people at my
workplace who don't actually have computer degrees.>>
>>> If it's expensive, it's not an option for me, or for most other people
>>> who look to college as a means of escaping a low-income existence and
>>> gaining the training required to get beyond menial labor or
>>> secretarial positions.
>> <<I went more than US$20,000 in debt to get my degree. It's not what I'd
>> recommend to everyone (though I'm less than US$6,000 from total debt
>> freedom), but it is good. Look at the website anyway; it'll give you an
>> idea for the concept -- and you might actually find something that is
>> significantly cheaper along the same lines, yet is still accredited.
>
> I spent a little time trying to wade through the site. I would -like-
> it if it coughed up (a) some hard numbers, and (b) scholarship
> information for non-fulltime students.
<<If you want to continue this part of the discussion, I'll be happy to
do so in email -- I enjoyed my time with TUI, and can probably get
information from sources not necessarily on the website. Email me with
what information you'd like and I'll do some looking for you.
<<However, I think I'm through discussing the rest of this with you,
because you have continued to misread things -- sometimes appearing to
deliberately do so -- that I've written clearly. You're obviously *not*
getting some of the points that I'm making, and I'm too busy with a
number of other things to continue making the effort.>>
Max and GreyMan
Austin Ziegler wrote:
>
> <<I think I'm going to ask you to step back and define exactly what you
> mean by 'critical thinking,' because based on what you're saying, I
> don't think you define it the same way that I do.>>
>
"Perhaps not, though I think we're close. Critical thinking is breaking
a subject down (analysis) and not accepting an idea just because it
comes from someone who *should* know. Perhaps I am conflating it with
skepticism? If so, your distinction between the two would be helpful."
"At some point, parents are worn down with the 'why'? of the five year
old to the point where they have to say "just because it *is*' or 'I'll
explain that some other time.'"
Max prefers conflating to depilatating.
Max and GreyMan
GreyMan looks puzzled...
"So you are picking this position because it is less obviously correct,
and so can argued against more? I'm not following."
Max looks pussled.
Austin Ziegler
>> <<I think I'm going to ask you to step back and define exactly what you
>> mean by 'critical thinking,' because based on what you're saying, I
>> don't think you define it the same way that I do.>>
> "Perhaps not, though I think we're close. Critical thinking is breaking
> a subject down (analysis) and not accepting an idea just because it
> comes from someone who *should* know. Perhaps I am conflating it with
> skepticism? If so, your distinction between the two would be helpful."
<<I think you are, at least from my perspective. According to WordWeb,
scepticism is the doubt about the truth of something or the disbelief
in any claims of ultimate knowledge. Critical thinking isn't defined
_per se_, but critical includes "characterized by careful evaluation
and judgement" and "of or involving or characteristic of critics or
criticism". Criticism is "a serious examination and judgement of
something" and a critic is "anyone who expresses a reasoned judgement
of something." Thinking (noun) is "the process of thinking, especially
thinking carefully." So the concept of "critical thinking" would be
(more or less) "the process of reasoning with careful evaluation and
judgement."
<<Those skills, IMO, are definitely worth encouraging in ANY child of
ANY age. They *aren't* the constant 'why' and 'prove it' challenges
that have been posited. They are questions that indicate that the child
wants to understand better. It's looking at things for a deeper
understanding.>>
> "At some point, parents are worn down with the 'why'? of the five year
> old to the point where they have to say "just because it *is*' or 'I'll
> explain that some other time.'"
<<Yes, but always asking 'why' isn't critical thinking. It might be
critical, it might be questioning, it might even be thinking, but it's
not necessarily critical thinking. And there's the difference for me.
<<As I suspected, we're not *quite* talking about the same thing -- and
I'll agree that we don't want to encourage outright *scepticism* in
children, but I would think that we *do* want to encourage *critical
thinking.*>>
Kris Overstreet
wrote:
>
>"So you are picking this position because it is less obviously correct,
>and so can argued against more? I'm not following."
I picked that example because I believe it to be one of the most
problematic in practical application.
In short, math's a subject where a teacher is more likely than most to
catch hell from deliberately skeptical kids without some prior or
fundamental knowledge of the subject.
Redneck
Kris Overstreet
<azie...@the-wire.com> wrote:
'
>>> as it might inform my
>>> writing ability and style
>> I was not PERMITTED to take any courses which taught writing. The only
>> course I could get which involved writing at all- a history course- I
>> got a C in because I refused to write a thesis on why Columbus was the
>> most evil man in Western history.
>
><<Do you tend to think in a straight line, or do you tend to have
>tangental ("hypertext") thought patterns? Based on the way you're
>responding to me, I'm guessing straight line.
Actually, I'm extremely tangental in normal life. I free-associate at
random. I go into another room to do something and forget what I was
doing five steps away from my desk. I sit down to write a chapter of a
story and instead write three chapters of background information, one
chapter of which isn't even for the same project.
When I try to hold a rational arguement, however, I make a specific
effort to remain on topic, -only- on topic, -always- on topic. Nothing
irrelevant or tangental is included or permitted, lest it weaken the
arguement or draw it away from the actual point of discussion.
>Okay, you're told to
>write a thesis on why Columbus was the most evil man in Western
>history? Did you not write the paper at all? If not, then the C is your
>own damned fault for being so pigheaded. Better to write a
>well-researched and reasoned paper that refutes the central thesis.
We were asked to write an opinion paper, but the opinion was given in
advance; we were supposed to justify, from our readings in-class of
Cortez' conquest of the Aztecs, that Columbus was evil and the would
would be better off if Columbus had never discovered the New World. I
wrote instead a paper refusing to judge a historical figure by modern
mores, using both alternative figures besides Columbus and pointing
out the benefits of Columbus' legacy as opposed to the atrocities. I
ended by pointing out the obvious; with people sailing here, there and
everywhere from 1450 onwards, the discovery of the Americas was
probably inevitable, and postponing it by fifty or a hundred years
would not substantially change either the outcome or the morality of
the people making that discovery.
That's what got me a C for the class.
>>> -- as well as give me information that might
>>> be useful elsewhere.
>> I have yet to need any knowledge on how to program Pascal, grow
>> pumpkins (which I knew before I went to college anyway), direct armies
>> of pike and matchlocks, or identify bauxite.
>>
>> I CLEPped out of basic calculus, thank God, but I haven't had to
>> calculate electron paths lately either, so that knowledge wasn't
>> useful either.
>
>Fantome yawns. <<You said you wanted to write, didn't you? All of these
>things *could* be useful to a writer. All of them.
But -probably- won't be, and if they're needed, a writer can look up
the information... and probably get -better,- less biased information
than is taught in most college courses of my experience.
>>> This is why I emphasize cross-discipline
>>> knowledge, and IMO far too universities do.>>
>
><<Minor correction here: this should read either "far too few univeristies
>do" or "far too many universitis don't".>>
>
>> This is why I DE-emphasize cross-discipline knowledge. I learned more
>> of practical use from the people -going- to class than from those
>> -teaching- it.
>
><<Practical use is learned through application. And, frankly, cross-
>discipline knowledge has value, even if you're going to keep being
>pigheaded and unthinking about it. The success that I've had in my
>career is only a personal example, but I think it's a damned good one
>at that.>>
Its value does not excuse educators imposing it on all students
regardless of their needs or career goals.
>>> Science
>>> fiction writers routinely use cross-discipline knowledge (writing,
>>> hard/soft sciences, etc.) to write effective and entertaining novels
>>> and stories. (JP Hogan, for one, wrote the Giants series which
>>> contained a lot of stuff about evolution, biology, geology, astronomy,
>>> and several other hard sciences. None of these alone would have made
>>> quite the story that the combination of these did.)
>> Speaking as someone who occasionally attempts to make writing pay,
>> science fiction is -not- a practical application.
>>
>> (And I like Hogan's writing, and I liked him when I met him at
>> Exoticon last, but nine-tenths of his science is bullshit.)
>
><<His science and the directions in which he takes it may be bullshit, but
>he still has to research it -- extensively. The fact is that he's looking
>at things from several directions.
>
><<I also contend that SF *is* a practical application, especially when
>you look at those who HAVE made a career of it. Indeed, when serious
>scientists write science fiction, is that not a practical
>application?>>
When there are a thousand frustrated science-fiction writers and fifty
part-time writers for every one which makes a living solely off of
what they write, no, I don't consider it practical.
>>>>> exposure to ideas that may not have occurred to you otherwise.
>>>> This is a good point, except I find that travel, or moving to an
>>>> unfamiliar city or state, has the same general effect.
>>> <<It can. Especially travel out of the country, and moreso outside of
>>> the touristy enclaves.>>
>> I don't regard visiting tourist sites as travel. I regard it as slow
>> torture.
>
><<Or fast torture, as the case may be.>>
Only if the tour bus breaks down and you are permitted to run back to
the hotel before the guide can catch you. }:-{D
>>>>> <<That said, I want universities to prepare students for the real world
>>>>> (NOTE: not job training!) and not prepare them for jobs as "permanent
>>>>> students" and hope they become professors and researchers.>>
>>>> If not job training at university, then job training -where?-
>>> <<Often? On the job.
>> Not useful to someone trying to -get- the job.
>
><<Not true, damnit. Seriously. Not for every type of job (e.g., you
>can't convince someone that you'll have the skills of a CPA unless you
>actually have the certification, but you can do so for any number of
>subjects). Kris, next time you go looking for a job, you'll probably
>have a decent shot at it because of your experience running your own
>business. Assuming you do so.>>
This is the second business I've run; I shut down the first one to go
work for someone else. That first business experience netted me
absolutely -zero- benefit when the time came to seek new employment.
If I shut this one down, I expect to end up driving a truck for a
living, as anything of higher sophistication than that requires both a
specific college degree and prior experience and training, none of
which I possess in sufficient quantities.
(As for age, I was born in 1974.)
>>> I'm not saying that the situation is perfect at
>>> this point, but I can only point at myself as someone who has a degree
>>> completely unrelated to my current employment -- and this actually
>>> makes me *more valuable* to my employer than had I not gone cross-
>>> disciplinary.>>
>> All this means, IMHO, is that you got very lucky. Congratulations on
>> your good fortune.
>
><<Yes, I got lucky. But not very lucky. I know of a *lot* of people at my
>workplace who don't actually have computer degrees.>>
I know a lot of computer industry workers without degrees, but with
vast knowledge and training they got largely by hanging around other
workers in school and out. I can't afford the training, don't have the
friends nearby, and don't have friends working for companies who could
lean on their bosses to hire me.
><<However, I think I'm through discussing the rest of this with you,
>because you have continued to misread things -- sometimes appearing to
>deliberately do so -- that I've written clearly. You're obviously *not*
>getting some of the points that I'm making, and I'm too busy with a
>number of other things to continue making the effort.>>
Part of it comes from the fact, as I said elsewhere, that we have
radically and irreconcilably different expectations out of education.
You want to make a better person, whereas I want to prepare a person
for his or her chosen field without worrying about improving the
person themselves... or that's how I see it, anyway.
Redneck
Max and GreyMan
>
> <<Yes, but always asking 'why' isn't critical thinking. It might be
> critical, it might be questioning, it might even be thinking, but it's
> not necessarily critical thinking. And there's the difference for me.
>
> <<As I suspected, we're not *quite* talking about the same thing -- and
> I'll agree that we don't want to encourage outright *scepticism* in
> children, but I would think that we *do* want to encourage *critical
> thinking.*>>
>
GreyMan nods and replies:
"Yes, but I did draw the distinction between critical thinking and
unthinking criticality in one post. I think that if a person doesn't
have the basic tools to evaluate the answers he receives to his
questions, he won't know when to stop."
"I also think that skepticism in practice is (or *should be*) closer to
critical thinking than the dictionary definition you quoted. However, I
see what basis you are using and I don't think we are actually arguing
about anything at this point" <grin>
Max is skeptical that GreyMan will ever shut up.
Max and GreyMan
GreyMan replies:
"Conversely, it is the subject where it is easiest to answer and prove
the answer to questions which might be raised (at least "why"
questions)."
Max ponders, "why ask why? Eat Mouse Pie!"
Dale m Fugate
"Max and GreyMan" <grey...@home.com> wrote in message
news:3B1626D7...@home.com...
The problem is that education has it's own specific technical language like
any other profession. The term when used by educators doesn't mean
skepticism or as Chris was using it , automatic rejection of facts.
Here is the definition used by educators
http://www.ewa.org/gloss.html
critical thinking - The mental process of acquiring information, then
evaluating it to reach a logical conclusion or answer.
Here are some of the skills needed for critical thinking taken from the
article "Strategies for Teaching Critical Thinking."
http://ericae.net/pare/getvn.asp?v=4&n=3
"Finding analogies and other kinds of relationships between pieces of
information
Determining the relevance and validity of information that could be used for
structuring and solving problems
Finding and evaluating solutions or alternative ways of treating problems "
I believe that those skills can be taught at almost any age, in school or at
home. Of course when you teach them to a child, once and a while your going
to have to answer some awkward questions.
I recommend any one interested in this discussion to read the article. It
may help to improve the quality of the debate.
Max and GreyMan
>
> The problem is that education has it's own specific technical language like
> any other profession. The term when used by educators doesn't mean
> skepticism or as Chris was using it , automatic rejection of facts.
>
> Here is the definition used by educators
>
> http://www.ewa.org/gloss.html
> critical thinking - The mental process of acquiring information, then
> evaluating it to reach a logical conclusion or answer.
>
GreyMan responds:
"Thanks for the links, Dale."
"That sounds like learning to me, not critical thinking. Then again, I
don't include rote memorization in learning (without a qualifier, i.e.
"rote learning"). So I guess I disagree with many educational
professionals on that one. (I notice they don't define "learning"
"teaching" "teacher" or "education" in that glossary, though they use
those terms. I also notice they *do* define 'Total Quality Management'.
brrr.)"
> Here are some of the skills needed for critical thinking taken from the
> article "Strategies for Teaching Critical Thinking."
> http://ericae.net/pare/getvn.asp?v=4&n=3
>
> "Finding analogies and other kinds of relationships between pieces of
> information
>
> Determining the relevance and validity of information that could be used for
> structuring and solving problems
>
> Finding and evaluating solutions or alternative ways of treating problems "
>
> I believe that those skills can be taught at almost any age, in school or at
> home. Of course when you teach them to a child, once and a while your going
> to have to answer some awkward questions.
>
"The first item requires a level of abstraction, and a base of
information, not available to the average first grader in most areas."
"The second item also requires a base for comparison."
"The third is an excellent goal, and I'd include it at any age.
Children are good at thinking "out of the box" since they don't know
they're in the box in the first place. Analyzing the reasons the
alternative approach would or wouldn't work would be *very* effective in
stimulating thought."
"I'm not saying children shouldn't learn critical thinking according to
the definitions Austin and Dale have presented. I'm saying it shouldn't
detract from them building the knowledge base they need."
> I recommend any one interested in this discussion to read the article. It
> may help to improve the quality of the debate.
"Now, how are you measuring that quality? By Performance metrics or by
Effectiveness?"
GreyMan grins, drops, and rolls.
Max rolls over for bellyskritches.
Elf
maenad <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:9em9t4$1rfo$1...@news.tht.net...
> Kris Overstreet <red...@detnet.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 24 May 2001 18:38:02 +0000 (UTC), maenad
> > <mae...@vex.net.invalid> wrote:
>
> > What gets me is, every time someone proposes merit-based raises, the
> > teachers' unions fight it tooth and nail...
>
> Yeah. My ambivalence toward unions extends to teachers' unions as well. I
> think the union as a concept is valuable. I also think that the huge
> conglomerate unions are just as destructive to the overall process as huge
> corporations.
>
In the UK, performance-related pay is already in practice. The unions
fought it, but the government passed it anyway because they thought it would
win them votes. Largely, the public seem to have agreed that it wasn't a
very good idea because a) it isn't fair on the many excellent teachers who
cope with 'special needs' pupils or otherwise disadvantaged children b) it's
seen as divisive and has a negative effect on morale and c) no-one seems to
have come up with a truly fair set of standards to be assessed against.
End result: pretty much ALL teachers have been given the performance-related
pay rise by their local management to avoid further bad feeling. My father
(who has been teaching for over 30 years) still thinks this is stupid. He
would far rather see more support for teachers on a legal basis than any
additional pay (though I guess both would be pretty good)
At the moment, British teachers have almost NO legal way to defend
themselves against violence from pupils for fear of being accused of
assault. My father has been threatened and attacked several times. There
are currently moves underway to strengthen the punishments for parents'
violence against teaching staff, but this doesn't cover violence from
pupils.
> Seriously, I would say that what is in order is *changing* the standards
for
> initial employment. (Which is happening in a lot of places, because they
> don't have enough 'traditional' candidates to fill the spaces available.)
I
> would far rather see the requirements be a four year degree in the arts &
> sciences; and a 6-month certificate in how to teach and arrange a
curriculum.
>
That's the way it works in the UK: you take your standard degree in
Geography, Maths, Arts etc., then add on a postgraduate 1 year course to
qualify you for teaching.
Again, though, you have the huge problem of teaching being terribly low-paid
option for good graduates, who can get higher salaries and prospects in
industry.
Sheesh.
Elf
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Artificial Intelligence is no match for Natural Stupidity.