Living with the mentally challenged
Karen Lofstrom
frustrations of dealing with folks who are on the OTHER side of average.
I know how nasty it feels to have someone else looking down on you for
being DUMB. My ex-husband treated me to years of condescension and
contempt because I was so so so DUMB. Maybe compared to him, the infant
math prodigy, but then -- he can't sew. Anyway, I am teaching adult
education, at night, and am encountering MORE THAN MY SHARE of the
mentally challenged.
Like the very nice lady who just can't read very fast or well. She *won't*
read the textbook; she waits for me to tell her what it says. I tell her
to click on the Format menu and she stares at the toolbar for five
minutes, until I *show* her where the menu is.
Like the ex-student to whom I gave my Linux computer (wiped and installed
with evil OS Win98). She calls up: "Karen, my mouse stopped working."
Me: "You have another two mice, plug in another one."
Her: "Plug in where?"
Me: "In the back of the system unit."
Her: "I don't know how, I'm scared. And when you come over, could you fix
my email? My email doesn't work."
So I had to go over and plug in the other mouse for her, and then show her
how to click on the MAIL and NEW buttons in Hotmail.
Aargh! Aargh! Aargh!
I need a Buddhist prayer for patience ...
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Support the Hawaiian-Welsh Cultural Exchange Program
Bringing vowels and consonants to those in need
Dorothy J Heydt
Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>Aargh! Aargh! Aargh!
>
>I need a Buddhist prayer for patience ...
The only Buddhist prayer I know of (not being a Buddhist), and I
had to look it up in _Twisting the Rope_, is the Maha Prajna
Paramita Hridaya Sutra, and that looks as if it might serve. At
least, Mayland Long uses it for coping with someone even more
mentally challenged than your students.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
mike weber
typed
>Like the ex-student to whom I gave my Linux computer (wiped and installed
>with evil OS Win98). She calls up: "Karen, my mouse stopped working."
>
>Me: "You have another two mice, plug in another one."
>Her: "Plug in where?"
>Me: "In the back of the system unit."
>Her: "I don't know how, I'm scared. And when you come over, could you fix
>my email? My email doesn't work."
>
>So I had to go over and plug in the other mouse for her, and then show her
>how to click on the MAIL and NEW buttons in Hotmail.
I go through this sort of thing with my mother periodically.
And my mother is far from dumb -- she got her PhD at age 75, ran her
own ad aganecy for years and so on...
--
=============================================================
"They put manure in his well and they made him talk to lawyers!"
-- Cat Ballou
mike weber <mike....@electronictiger.com>
Book Reviews & More -- http://electronictiger.com
Richard Kennaway
> Most Raseffarians are bright. If you please, tell me how you cope with the
> frustrations of dealing with folks who are on the OTHER side of average.
I remember that ultimately, it is Not My Problem. Even if, to some
extent, it is, because I'm the person teaching them. I'll make my best
effort, but in the end it's up to them to learn, and they will or they
won't.
I've recently been helping an 84 year old relative to begin using a Mac
for word processing and getting online. She is not at all mentally
challenged, but is absolutely, totally, inexperienced with computers, to
a degree that anyone under sixty may have difficulty comprehending. On
her defunct Amstrad, which she used only as an electric typewriter, she
was able to type letters and print them out, but I don't think she ever
got the concept of saving a copy to disc, or cut and paste, or even
files and directories. I'm 300 miles away, so my technical support is
limited to phone calls. ("Ok, to get rid of that window, move the mouse
up to the top left onto the little square box and then click the
button....I think you missed, try again, and make sure the tip of the
arrow is in the middle of the box....") I'm not laughing, or
complaining, but that really is the level I have to work at.
She has a neighbour who apparently has some involvement with Macs at
work, so I hope she can get some local help there. Except that the
neighbour asked her to ask me, "What's that apple symbol at the top left
of the screen for?" Uh-oh... So I gave an answer suited to her level.
("If you click on it, you get a menu of commands, yes?" ("Yes...")
"Well, they're a collection of standard utility programs that you don't
need to bother with. Just ignore them." For those who *know* Macs,
this is MacOS 9.)
Not My Problem. Not My Problem. Not My Problem...
-- Richard Kennaway
Dale
> Most Raseffarians are bright. If you please, tell me how you cope with the
> frustrations of dealing with folks who are on the OTHER side of average.
>
> I know how nasty it feels to have someone else looking down on you for
> being DUMB. My ex-husband treated me to years of condescension and
> contempt because I was so so so DUMB. Maybe compared to him, the infant
> math prodigy, but then -- he can't sew. Anyway, I am teaching adult
> education, at night, and am encountering MORE THAN MY SHARE of the
> mentally challenged.
>
> Like the very nice lady who just can't read very fast or well. She *won't*
> read the textbook; she waits for me to tell her what it says. I tell her
> to click on the Format menu and she stares at the toolbar for five
> minutes, until I *show* her where the menu is.
>
> Like the ex-student to whom I gave my Linux computer (wiped and installed
> with evil OS Win98). She calls up: "Karen, my mouse stopped working."
>
> Me: "You have another two mice, plug in another one."
> Her: "Plug in where?"
> Me: "In the back of the system unit."
> Her: "I don't know how, I'm scared. And when you come over, could you fix
> my email? My email doesn't work."
To qoute Bill Clinton "I feel your pain." I felt the same kind of
frustration with some of my students in Japan while I was an English
teacher. Some of my students could not grasp any demension of the
English langauge for various reasons. They usually broke down into a
few groups:
1. Older people. I taught quite a few students who were in their
sixties and seventies. Many of them have been taking English lessons
for years and not making any progress. They still had trouble
answering very basic quiestions. Ultimately many teachers decided that
these students came mainly for giggles and not learning English.
2. Social Work Cases: ESL teachers in Japan have a joke theory that
Japanese pyschologists tell their patients to take English lessons. I
had many students who suffered from various mental and social
problems. These students were extremely shy and would blush and
scratch the back of their heads. Most of the teachers had no
experience in social work or pyschology so it was extremely hard
getting these people to talk.
3. Stonefaced Salarymen: I taught many salarymen who had to learn
English for their job but could only come in for lessons on their
weekend. They really resented having to loose their weekend and really
did not want to study. They wanted me to be able to do some kind of
Vulcan mind meld which would make them fluent English speakers.
4. Stuck in Level Students: Like older people these were students who
stayed in the same (usually lower levels) for years as in three to
five. Many of them came very frequently but never advanced.
Ultimately I just ended up trying to do my best to survive classes
with these people. With stone-faced salarymen I would say "I will talk
about whatever you want to talk about but have to talk." For the stuck
in levels and older students I would try to think about other things.
Mark Atwood
>
> 3. Stonefaced Salarymen: I taught many salarymen who had to learn
> English for their job but could only come in for lessons on their
> weekend. They really resented having to loose their weekend and really
> did not want to study. They wanted me to be able to do some kind of
> Vulcan mind meld which would make them fluent English speakers.
>
> 4. Stuck in Level Students: Like older people these were students who
> stayed in the same (usually lower levels) for years as in three to
> five. Many of them came very frequently but never advanced.
Sounds like these two need something like a "Pimsleur's English For
Japanese Speakers". (I have no idea if such a thing exists.)
--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@pobox.com | you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra | http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Her: "I don't know how, I'm scared. And when you come over, could you fix
> my email? My email doesn't work."
Oh yeah, oh yeah. I feel your pain. "Can you fix Internet for us next
time you come? It's broken." "What do you mean, broken?" "I click on the
little dots and nothing happens."
Argh.
These are my parents - by no stretch of the imagination stupid people.
They just don't think in the same way the computer does, I guess.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan - ada...@spamcop.net - this is a valid address
homepage: http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
English blog: http://annafdd.blogspot.com/
LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/annafdd/
James Nicoll
Dale <Shado...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>4. Stuck in Level Students: Like older people these were students who
>stayed in the same (usually lower levels) for years as in three to
>five. Many of them came very frequently but never advanced.
My aunt had someone like that in swimming class. UPenn student,
couldn't swim, wanted to learn. Apparently composed entirely of cement
(I myself am very boyant, which has its own problems). Did in fact stick
with it until they learned, but it took a lot longer than is typical for
adult students of this sort of thing.
James Nicoll
--
"The keywords for tonight are Caution and Flammability."
JFK, _Bubba Ho Tep_
yeltr...@email.com
>Most Raseffarians are bright. If you please, tell me how you cope with the
>frustrations of dealing with folks who are on the OTHER side of average.
<snip>
I charge more.
--
John Bartley K7AAY http://celdata.cjb.net
This post quad-ROT-13 encrypted; reading it violates the DMCA.
Nobody but a fool goes into a federal counterrorism operation without duct tape - Richard Preston, THE COBRA EVENT.
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>Most Raseffarians are bright. If you please, tell me how you cope with the
>frustrations of dealing with folks who are on the OTHER side of average.
I waited a day to answer this to see if I could phrase it better. How
do I cope with it? I don't. I don't tutor/instruct/teach people who
are not bright. Part of the problem is that I lose patience and
become angry. The other part is that I don't always know how things
happen in my brain and people who are bright don't need as much
explanation.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Nancy Lebovitz
Nate Edel <arch...@sfchat.org> wrote:
>
>I tend to be like that with physical skills that involve any kind of
>whole-body coordination. Fortunately, I'm very bouyant, which means that
>swimming at the level of "futzing in the water and not drowning" is not an
>issue, but the basic real "swim" of turning my head, stroking with my arms
>and kicking is a skill that I've had to relearn several times and has always
>taken me _forever._
Have you tried breast stroke? IIRC, the movements are symmetrical and
that might make them easier to learn.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Karen Lofstrom
> Have you tried breast stroke? IIRC, the movements are symmetrical and
> that might make them easier to learn.
But if you do the frog kick that is usually taught with the breast stroke,
that is HARD. Combination breast stroke plus flutter kick is doable.
IMHO, the best stroke for a beginner (at least a beginner with some
bouyancy) is the backstroke. You can breathe whenever you please. Only
problem is orientation. Until you get good at judging your position with
side glances at the pool surroundings, you're constantly veering into
lane markers or bumping your head against the end of the pool.
I find lap swimming a pleasant kind of boredom. Relaxing. You can also
sing to yourself as you swim. Interesting acoustic effects.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
*harumph*
Karl Johanson
news:108g5kf...@corp.supernews.com...
> In article <gRLhc.1060$Hf.7...@newshog.newsread.com>, Nancy Lebovitz
wrote:
>
> > Have you tried breast stroke? IIRC, the movements are symmetrical and
> > that might make them easier to learn.
>
> But if you do the frog kick that is usually taught with the breast stroke,
> that is HARD. Combination breast stroke plus flutter kick is doable.
I find frog kicking far easier than the flutter kick. I tend to swim under
water coming up for air every 10 meters or so.
Karl Johanson
Jim Toth
> "Karen Lofstrom" <lofs...@lava.net> wrote in message
> news:108g5kf...@corp.supernews.com...
>> In article <gRLhc.1060$Hf.7...@newshog.newsread.com>, Nancy Lebovitz
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Have you tried breast stroke? IIRC, the movements are symmetrical and
>>> that might make them easier to learn.
>>
>> But if you do the frog kick that is usually taught with the breast stroke,
>> that is HARD. Combination breast stroke plus flutter kick is doable.
>
> I find frog kicking far easier than the flutter kick.
Me, too, FWIW. I very vaguely recall hearing stats that while the
majority of folks find flutter kick easier, there's a significant
percentage that find the frog kick easier. I don't know if this
relates more to how the leg/hip/etc musculature is put together or to
how the brain is wired.
> I tend to swim under water coming up for air every 10 meters or so.
I haven't done much swimming lately, but when I have I've typically
kept my head above water, because I don't like (chlorinated) water up
my nose. Since the point of my swimming is to get the heart rate up
and get exercise, and not speed, I don't see a problem with this.
I'd like to make the deceptive statement here that I used to swim
competitively[1].
[1] I was 8, maybe 9, was there because my older sisters were, spent
the time we were supposed to practice just messing around, and came in
dead last at every single competitive event I was in.
--
Jim Toth
jt...@acm.org
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>Most Raseffarians are bright. If you please, tell me how you cope with the
>frustrations of dealing with folks who are on the OTHER side of average.
>
>I know how nasty it feels to have someone else looking down on you for
>being DUMB. My ex-husband treated me to years of condescension and
>contempt because I was so so so DUMB. Maybe compared to him, the infant
>math prodigy, but then -- he can't sew. Anyway, I am teaching adult
>education, at night, and am encountering MORE THAN MY SHARE of the
>mentally challenged.
>
>Like the very nice lady who just can't read very fast or well. She *won't*
>read the textbook; she waits for me to tell her what it says. I tell her
>to click on the Format menu and she stares at the toolbar for five
>minutes, until I *show* her where the menu is.
>
>Like the ex-student to whom I gave my Linux computer (wiped and installed
>with evil OS Win98). She calls up: "Karen, my mouse stopped working."
>
>Me: "You have another two mice, plug in another one."
>Her: "Plug in where?"
>Me: "In the back of the system unit."
>Her: "I don't know how, I'm scared. And when you come over, could you fix
>my email? My email doesn't work."
>
>So I had to go over and plug in the other mouse for her, and then show her
>how to click on the MAIL and NEW buttons in Hotmail.
>
>Aargh! Aargh! Aargh!
>
>I need a Buddhist prayer for patience ...
No, you need perspective. I notice there are lots of replies, but I'm
writing this without reading them, so apologies if I have repeated
anything anybody else has said.
The people you're dealing aren't necessarily stupid: some of them may
be, but it's not necessary.
There are people who never ever ever learn anything you _tell_ them or
anything they read. They have to learn by watching and doing. That's
just how they learn. And if you demand that they listen and read to
learn, you will be frustrated every time and so will they.
Now, as to repetition -- when I learn something by reading it, I
generally reread it several times. So it's not so surprising that a
person who learns by watching and doing will have to watch and do more
than once to get something down.
For these people, you have to show them, using as FEW words as
possible. -- for most fannish sort of people, the discursive
instruction is best, because they are word-oriented people who get a
better grasp on a thing if it has a matrix of ideas attached to it.
For these visual and kinetic learners, words are an impediment to
understanding.
I have been learning this the hard way.
Anyway, you have to show, then have them repeat the action. Do it
with as few words as possible, and in as small steps as possible, so
that their bodies have a chance to store the information.
You know that some of the learning we do is stored not in the brain
but in the lower nervous system? Like movement things? I believe,
though I do not know and have not been told*, that for kinetic
learners, more of that learning is stored down there in the lower
nervous system than it is for word and sound oriented people.
Marilee J. Layman
>I haven't done much swimming lately, but when I have I've typically
>kept my head above water, because I don't like (chlorinated) water up
>my nose.
That's why they make those little slide-on nose clamps.
--
Marilee J. Layman
SAMK
Sigh. Me, too. Even people who are bright. My daughter asks
me to help with math, and I end up yelling. Not that she's
stupid by any means--she's working a grade above her level. But
when I explain it once, I can't figure out how to explain it any
other way, and what seems obvious to me either has to click,
or I'm lost.
My 5th grade math teacher tried to make me tutor a slower student
once. But only once.
And that particularly condenscending tone of voice as you explain
*again* how to do something does not help at all.
SAMK
fairest one
SAMK <samkhom...@sbcglobal.net> warbled:
> Marilee J. Layman wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 19:41:08 -0000, lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom)
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Most Raseffarians are bright. If you please, tell me how you cope with the
>>>frustrations of dealing with folks who are on the OTHER side of average.
>>
>>
>> I waited a day to answer this to see if I could phrase it better. How
>> do I cope with it? I don't. I don't tutor/instruct/teach people who
>> are not bright. Part of the problem is that I lose patience and
>> become angry. The other part is that I don't always know how things
>> happen in my brain and people who are bright don't need as much
>> explanation.
>>
>
> Sigh. Me, too. Even people who are bright. My daughter asks
> me to help with math, and I end up yelling. Not that she's
> stupid by any means--she's working a grade above her level. But
> when I explain it once, I can't figure out how to explain it any
> other way, and what seems obvious to me either has to click,
> or I'm lost.
my dad, who is a big old stats geek and who loves math, could explain math
homework to me, but not to my sister. between my sister hitting middle
school and me going off to college, i frequently ended up interpreting
between the two of them.
there are plenty of people who are smart, but whose brains work
differently enough from mine that i am amazed that we can manage to
explain to each other that grass is green and then both agree.
fortunately for my frustration level, i figured this out in elementary
school. there was one kid who was in the gifted program with me who made
me want to gnaw my arm off whenever we had to work together, and one kid
who was in the lowest track of classes and he and i just totally clicked
and i'd look to work with him whenever i got a chance.
betsy.
--
"I never liked you anyway. And you have stupid hair."
--spike
Karen Lofstrom
Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
> For these people, you have to show them, using as FEW words as
> possible. -- for most fannish sort of people, the discursive
> instruction is best, because they are word-oriented people who get a
> better grasp on a thing if it has a matrix of ideas attached to it.
> For these visual and kinetic learners, words are an impediment to
> understanding.
>
> I have been learning this the hard way.
I sorta know this, because I have a hard time breaking down things like
using the mouse into IDEAS. You hold it, you use it, you don't think about
it, OK?
But it *is* very difficult to connect with people who function so
differently.
Thanks everyone for reminding me to take a deep breath and calm down.
I should be looking for other work, preferably as some kind of
writer/editor/proofreader, and I suspect that I will function a LOT BETTER
immersed in my familiar universe of words and ideas.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"There is a lot of U.S. history here." -- my mother
Richard Kennaway
> And that particularly condenscending tone of voice as you explain
> *again* how to do something does not help at all.
Why do it if it doesn't help?
-- Richard Kennaway
Paul Dormer
samkhom...@sbcglobal.net (SAMK) wrote:
> Sigh. Me, too. Even people who are bright. My daughter asks
> me to help with math, and I end up yelling. Not that she's
> stupid by any means--she's working a grade above her level. But
> when I explain it once, I can't figure out how to explain it any
> other way, and what seems obvious to me either has to click,
> or I'm lost.
Some years ago, I visited my parents for Christmas. My sister and her son
were also there, and my mother suggested I could help Michael, my nephew,
with his maths homework. My sister disagreed, saying I wouldn't know the
stuff. At the time, Michael was working towards his A-levels, the exams
you take when you are about 18, before going up to university. I guess I
would have taken these about 20 years earlier.
As it was, I couldn't help. I could answer all the problems no trouble.
(Maths is a bit of a hobby for me.) It's just that my method of working
out the answers seemed to be totally different to what Michael had been
taught.
Alan Braggins
>In article <gRLhc.1060$Hf.7...@newshog.newsread.com>, Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>
>> Have you tried breast stroke? IIRC, the movements are symmetrical and
>> that might make them easier to learn.
>
>But if you do the frog kick that is usually taught with the breast stroke,
>that is HARD. Combination breast stroke plus flutter kick is doable.
Breaststroke uses a symmetrical (frog) kick by definition. There may be
people who find a breaststroke arm movement with flutter kick easier -
certainly there are people who find proper breaststroke without a screw
kick difficult - but it's by no means universal.
>bouyancy) is the backstroke. You can breathe whenever you please. Only
>problem is orientation. Until you get good at judging your position with
>side glances at the pool surroundings, you're constantly veering into
>lane markers or bumping your head against the end of the pool.
You can breathe whenever you please with breaststroke too. Swimmers
doing *fast* breaststroke will have their mouths under the water
except in a specific part of the stroke (see pictures at e.g.
http://www.breaststroke.info/grotebreast.htm), but you can hold your
head up higher if you are just swimming for fun.
Backstroke might be suitable for beginners organized lap swimming,
but for many beginners hitting other swimmers is the main problem.
(And for anyone who finds laps boring, laps looking at the ceiling
are even more boring.)
And for swimming-as-survival-skill rather than swimming-as-recreation
looking where you are going has obvious advantages.
(Admittedly it's years since I actually had any qualification as a
swimming teacher, but watching my children's lessons things don't
seem to have changed that much.)
Karen Lofstrom
>> And that particularly condenscending tone of voice as you explain
>> *again* how to do something does not help at all.
>
> Why do it if it doesn't help?
Patience fails, irritation creeps in. Same problem that led me to start
the thread.
At one point I ended up apologizing to my student who can't read too well,
telling her that I was a cranky bitch that evening, and I would take a
deep breath and start again.
BTW, she did a darn good job on the last day of class, when I had my
students use OpenOffice for the first time. I had been assuring them that
the Word 2002 skills they were learning would carry over into other word
processing programs and you know, I was right. I think they were all proud
of themselves for being able to type a letter in their first half hour of
using OO.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to realize you're joking
just because you're posting something that is patently deranged.
Nels E Satterlund
>
> In article <n4pg80hpgodhq1qku...@4ax.com>,
> Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
> > For these people, you have to show them, using as FEW words as
> > possible. -- for most fannish sort of people, the discursive
> > instruction is best, because they are word-oriented people who get a
> > better grasp on a thing if it has a matrix of ideas attached to it.
> > For these visual and kinetic learners, words are an impediment to
> > understanding.
> >
> > I have been learning this the hard way.
>
> I sorta know this, because I have a hard time breaking down things like
> using the mouse into IDEAS. You hold it, you use it, you don't think about
> it, OK?
>
> But it *is* very difficult to connect with people who function so
> differently.
>
> Thanks everyone for reminding me to take a deep breath and calm down.
>
> I should be looking for other work, preferably as some kind of
> writer/editor/proofreader, and I suspect that I will function a LOT BETTER
> immersed in my familiar universe of words and ideas.
On computer training, specialy if You use them all the time it is
important to make them drive to your direction even if the aren't a
physical learner. You know ere things are but they don't do they have
problems seeing what you did at the speed you did it.
Nels
--
Nels E Satterlund I don't speak for the company, specially here
Ne...@Starstream.net <-- Use this address for personal Email
My Lurkers motto: I read much better and faster, than I type.
Wilson Heydt
Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>In article <n4pg80hpgodhq1qku...@4ax.com>,
>Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
>> For these people, you have to show them, using as FEW words as
>> possible. -- for most fannish sort of people, the discursive
>> instruction is best, because they are word-oriented people who get a
>> better grasp on a thing if it has a matrix of ideas attached to it.
>> For these visual and kinetic learners, words are an impediment to
>> understanding.
>>
>> I have been learning this the hard way.
>
>I sorta know this, because I have a hard time breaking down things like
>using the mouse into IDEAS. You hold it, you use it, you don't think about
>it, OK?
>
>But it *is* very difficult to connect with people who function so
>differently.
>
>Thanks everyone for reminding me to take a deep breath and calm down.
>
>I should be looking for other work, preferably as some kind of
>writer/editor/proofreader, and I suspect that I will function a LOT BETTER
>immersed in my familiar universe of words and ideas.
There is also the occasional problem that some *very* basic
information may not get passed along.
I was once in a postion to observe a very talented corporate trainer
test a new training program for an upcoming application. The
trainging was done on a Mac, though the application would actually
be run on PCs once the client software was completed. The trainee
was having a simply terrible time using the mouse.
since I was there just to make sure that all the software was in
place and the network connections were working (and everything on
the tech side was working jsut fine), I was just sitting in the back
of the room with nothing to do but watch the proceedings.
When a break came, I went to the instructor and pointed out that (a)
the trainee had a death grip on the mouse, and (b) the trainee
appeared to be trying to rotate the angled pointer that is the
cursor by rotating the mouse--thereby losing a lot of fine
directional control.
When things picked up agian, the instructor maneuvered around behind
teh trainee and *watched* what was going on. She then made a very
smooth transition to talking about the mouse, how to use it and that
you *can't* change the rotational position of the cursor by turning
the mouse, and that sitting at an angle like that is perfectly
normal and not to worry about it.
After that, things went much better.
--
Hal Heydt
Albany, CA
My dime, my opinions.
Nancy Lebovitz
SAMK <samkhome...@sbcglobal.TEN> wrote:
>
>Sigh. Me, too. Even people who are bright. My daughter asks
>me to help with math, and I end up yelling. Not that she's
>stupid by any means--she's working a grade above her level. But
>when I explain it once, I can't figure out how to explain it any
>other way, and what seems obvious to me either has to click,
>or I'm lost.
Have you tried asking her what she's thinking as she tries to
solve a math problem and/or at what point the problem stops
making sense to her?
Karl Johanson
news:b8fic.1729$Ua5.1...@monger.newsread.com...
> In article <9B1ic.855$DL1...@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com>,
> SAMK <samkhome...@sbcglobal.TEN> wrote:
> >
> >Sigh. Me, too. Even people who are bright. My daughter asks
> >me to help with math, and I end up yelling. Not that she's
> >stupid by any means--she's working a grade above her level. But
> >when I explain it once, I can't figure out how to explain it any
> >other way, and what seems obvious to me either has to click,
> >or I'm lost.
>
> Have you tried asking her what she's thinking as she tries to
> solve a math problem and/or at what point the problem stops
> making sense to her?
Sometimes "I'M BORED" is what people are thinking when they're having
trouble learning something. If they think math is boring they'll likely have
trouble learning math. In one scene in the movie Big, Tom Hanks' character
teaches a youngster about fractions by relating them to sports
(*paraphrase*) "If Joe Nameth gets 6 points per quarter, how many points
will he get in the whole game? That's fractions." The student is less likely
to be bored if the topic is related (or can be related) to something they're
interested in. Fractions could be related to engines, if that's what the
student is interested in. "If a V8 engine produces 400 horsepower, how many
horsepower is there per cylinder?" If the person is a good cook, you could
say, '3 eggs are needed for a cake mix which produces 24 cupcakes. How many
eggs (or what fraction of an egg) winds up in each cupcake?' One math
teacher I talked with taught probability, using various birth control
techniques as the examples.
I knew a person who was terrible at math, unless there was money involved. I
showed him how to calculate the odd of winning the 649 lottery (
6/49*5/48*4/47*3/46*2/45*1/44 or 720/10,068,347,520 or 1/13,983,816 ) He
used the principle & calculated the odds of winning the Keno lottery. Had I
used 'probabilities of mayflies mating' as my example, he wouldn't have
learned it.
Karl Johanson
Anna Mazzoldi
> In article <108av6k...@corp.supernews.com>,
> Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>
>>Aargh! Aargh! Aargh!
>>
>>I need a Buddhist prayer for patience ...
>
> The only Buddhist prayer I know of (not being a Buddhist), and I
> had to look it up in _Twisting the Rope_, is the Maha Prajna
> Paramita Hridaya Sutra, and that looks as if it might serve. At
> least, Mayland Long uses it for coping with someone even more
> mentally challenged than your students.
It is also (perhaps more widely) known as "Heart Sutra" (short for Great
Sutra of the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom, or possibly Sutra of the
Heart of the Great Perfection of Wisdom, one of which is the translation of
the Sanskrit title you quoted). Many Mahayana buddhists consider it a full
summary of the Dharma (=teachings of the Buddha, or Path to enlightenment).
It is certainly a beautiful (and short!) sutra. I would not call it a
prayer though: it's more like an exposition of the true nature of reality.
I wouldn't say I know any buddhist prayers, actually (though I know they
exist). For patience (as for many other things), I could simply suggest
reciting the Refuges, as a kind of reminder ;-)
What I would actually suggest is not prayer, but taking up the practice of
the Metta Bhavana -- "development of Loving Kindness" -- a type of
meditation. I think Karen practices in a Zen tradition and I don't think
the Metta Bhavana is common there, but she can certainly find out about it
by googling on the name. Patience is not its central focus, more like a
side benefit...
--
Anna Mazzoldi <http://www.livejournal.com/users/aynathie/>
"But Mahler has SOUL. Not as much as Beethoven and Stravisnky,
who were quite obviously black, and probably blind, one legged
and homesick." -- Eric Jarvis on rasfc
Del Cotter
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> said:
>lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom) wrote:
>>Most Raseffarians are bright. If you please, tell me how you cope with the
>>frustrations of dealing with folks who are on the OTHER side of average.
>>
>>I know how nasty it feels to have someone else looking down on you for
>>being DUMB. My ex-husband treated me to years of condescension and
>>contempt because I was so so so DUMB. Maybe compared to him, the infant
>>math prodigy, but then -- he can't sew. Anyway, I am teaching adult
>>education, at night, and am encountering MORE THAN MY SHARE of the
>>mentally challenged.
>>I need a Buddhist prayer for patience ...
>
>No, you need perspective. I notice there are lots of replies, but I'm
>writing this without reading them, so apologies if I have repeated
>anything anybody else has said.
I use mental judo. I recognised it was my geek nature that caused me to
assume difficult things were simple, so now I put my geek nature to work
against itself.
You know how geeks always go into the minute details of the simplest
things? I found that when you're teaching, that's a *good* thing, and
now I write up instructions in the minutest possible detail, and my
colleagues love it. It's the same with directions, some people have
told me I'm the only person who's ever given them directions they could
actually follow without getting lost.
Obviously you need to do this without eye-rolling or the written
equivalent: my tone tends to be "isn't this stuff cool?". They don't
think it's cool at all, but at least they don't feel they're being
treated as inferior. In fact they tend to think of themselves as
slightly superior for not being so geeky.
The bonus is that it's also a prophylactic against my time being abused,
as nobody wants me to come round and deliver a half-hour lecture about
setting up a new printer. What they want is for me to do it for them so
they don't have to learn themselves, and I don't let them get away with
that. Give a man a fish and he wants a fish from you tomorrow. Teach a
man to fish and you can tell him to bugger off. Karen's student didn't
really want to learn to plug in a mouse, she had a servant to do that.
>You know that some of the learning we do is stored not in the brain
>but in the lower nervous system? Like movement things? I believe,
>though I do not know and have not been told*, that for kinetic
>learners, more of that learning is stored down there in the lower
>nervous system than it is for word and sound oriented people.
By the way, Lucy, I don't know if it was just my imagination, but it
seemed to me you weren't posting recently. If so, welcome back!
--
Del Cotter
Thanks to the overwhelming volume of UBE, I am now rejecting *all* email
sent to d...@branta.demon.co.uk. Please send your email to del2 instead.
Kip Williams
> Give a man a fish and he wants a fish from you tomorrow. Teach a
> man to fish and you can tell him to bugger off. Karen's student didn't
> really want to learn to plug in a mouse, she had a servant to do that.
Head-smackingly true, that.
--
--Kip (Williams) ...at members.cox.net/kipw
"Bad enough having [expletive] flu, without being crucified." --John
Cleese (after Monty Python's Life of Brian)
Richard Kennaway
> Give a man a fish and he wants a fish from you tomorrow.
> Teach a man to fish and you can tell him to bugger off.
Sig quote!
-- Richard Kennaway
SAMK
> In article <9B1ic.855$DL1...@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com>,
> SAMK <samkhome...@sbcglobal.TEN> wrote:
>
>>Sigh. Me, too. Even people who are bright. My daughter asks
>>me to help with math, and I end up yelling. Not that she's
>>stupid by any means--she's working a grade above her level. But
>>when I explain it once, I can't figure out how to explain it any
>>other way, and what seems obvious to me either has to click,
>>or I'm lost.
>
>
> Have you tried asking her what she's thinking as she tries to
> solve a math problem and/or at what point the problem stops
> making sense to her?
The last situation, her tone of voice hit that whine
that just sets me off and complained that she just didn't
get it at all and why couldn't I tell her how to do it...
which, as I *thought* I just had, didn't really lead to a
good communication.
On the other hand, she then sat down and did them all right,
so I'm still not sure what her problem was.
SAMK
Nancy Lebovitz
Maybe she needed a chance to vent as well as the explanation?
Really, though, I'm just guessing, and even she may not be
able to explain what's going on emotionally.
Karen Lofstrom
Anna Mazzoldi wrote:
> What I would actually suggest is not prayer, but taking up the practice of
> the Metta Bhavana -- "development of Loving Kindness" -- a type of
> meditation. I think Karen practices in a Zen tradition and I don't think
> the Metta Bhavana is common there, but she can certainly find out about it
> by googling on the name. Patience is not its central focus, more like a
> side benefit...
I've benefited enormously by reading a book on lovingkindness meditation,
though my attempt to practice it daily fell by the wayside. I should make
another attempt.
Aside from sitting, my one real prayer is "Namo Kannon Bosatsu", which
invokes the Boddhisattva of Compassion. It's my driving prayer, mostly :)
I invoke compassion on myself when I merge into the freeway, on the
someone who needs help as ambulances and fire engines dash off on their
missions, and on the poor mangled roadkill (mostly birds and cats) I see
as I drive.
Since I can't always accurately identify WHAT I'm seeing as I zip along
the freeway, I'm afraid I've prayed for cardboard boxes and old shoes (as
they turn out to be on closer inspection).
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------
Oh what a cute wee thing!
Carol Hague
> Give a man a fish and he wants a fish from you tomorrow. Teach a
> man to fish and you can tell him to bugger off.
May I use this for a sig please?
--
Carol
"The bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion."
- Angela Carter, "The Lady of the House of Love"
Del Cotter
Carol Hague <ca...@wrhpv.com> said:
>Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Give a man a fish and he wants a fish from you tomorrow. Teach a
>> man to fish and you can tell him to bugger off.
>
>May I use this for a sig please?
Help yourself, you don't have to ask as long as you attribute.
Carol Hague
> On Sun, 25 Apr 2004, in rec.arts.sf.fandom,
> Carol Hague <ca...@wrhpv.com> said:
>
> >Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >> Give a man a fish and he wants a fish from you tomorrow. Teach a
> >> man to fish and you can tell him to bugger off.
> >
> >May I use this for a sig please?
>
> Help yourself, you don't have to ask as long as you attribute.
Thank you kindly sir.
I wouldn't quote someone's post without attribution of course - that
would be rude, and I'm hopeless at being *deliberately* rude, although I
seem to do it by accident easily enough....
--
Carol
Give a man a fish and he wants a fish from you tomorrow. Teach a
man to fish and you can tell him to bugger off.
- Del Cotter on r.a.s.f.f.
Randolph Fritz
> Most Raseffarians are bright. If you please, tell me how you cope with the
> frustrations of dealing with folks who are on the OTHER side of average.
Let me suggest that these problems are similar to those other people
experience in dealing with the behaviors that are identified with
Asperger's syndrome.
>
> Like the very nice lady who just can't read very fast or well. She *won't*
> read the textbook; she waits for me to tell her what it says. I tell her
> to click on the Format menu and she stares at the toolbar for five
> minutes, until I *show* her where the menu is.
>
> Like the ex-student to whom I gave my Linux computer (wiped and installed
> with evil OS Win98). She calls up: "Karen, my mouse stopped working."
>
You have problems responding to other people's faces and emotions, not
so? Are you therefore "stupid"?
>
> I need a Buddhist prayer for patience ...
>
Abandoning your belief in your "superiority"--which I suspect is
rooted in fear, anyway--would probably help. Don't get me wrong: you
are probably better than the people you complain about in dealing with
computers. But it is easier to deal with this if you simply recognize
it as a difference in cognition, rather than looking down on them.
You may also have taken on too much support work; teaching can be
wearing if it's not something that comes easily.
Randolph
Lucy Kemnitzer
<karljo...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>"Nancy Lebovitz" <na...@unix5.netaxs.com> wrote in message
>news:b8fic.1729$Ua5.1...@monger.newsread.com...
>> In article <9B1ic.855$DL1...@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com>,
>> SAMK <samkhome...@sbcglobal.TEN> wrote:
>> >
>> >Sigh. Me, too. Even people who are bright. My daughter asks
>> >me to help with math, and I end up yelling. Not that she's
>> >stupid by any means--she's working a grade above her level. But
>> >when I explain it once, I can't figure out how to explain it any
>> >other way, and what seems obvious to me either has to click,
>> >or I'm lost.
>>
>> Have you tried asking her what she's thinking as she tries to
>> solve a math problem and/or at what point the problem stops
>> making sense to her?
>
>Sometimes "I'M BORED" is what people are thinking when they're having
>trouble learning something. If they think math is boring they'll likely have
>trouble learning math
It's the other way around with my students. If the work is too hard
(in their case, if there's too many words they don't know or too many
cultural or other references they don't know), they get bored, and say
so, volubly, with clever variations and elaborate body language.
On the other hand, it's really really hard to find decent, interesting
writing which is at their "challenge level" (just hard enough). So I
am often reduced to two choices -- drop down a level so they can get
it done and be proud of themselves (and there's some evidence that
this is actually kind of helpful), or go up a level or three and
either rewrite extensively, or develop side activities to explicate
the material, both of which are a lot of effort for me.
It looks like I may be underemployed again next (school) year -- I
have this idea for developing readings about adolescent issues around
the world. What does dating look like in Indonesia? What are Russian
gangs like? What chores do Uruguayan parents expect their kids to
do? How old are they in Uganda when they get married? How long is a
school day in Finland? Stuff like that. I think I could do it, too.
Last summer I worked the whole of summer school and I managed to
reinvent the wheel for a half-assed Direct Instruction reading program
(I mean, it's been prety good, but the real thing would have been
better).
>
>I knew a person who was terrible at math, unless there was money involved. I
>showed him how to calculate the odd of winning the 649 lottery (
>6/49*5/48*4/47*3/46*2/45*1/44 or 720/10,068,347,520 or 1/13,983,816 ) He
>used the principle & calculated the odds of winning the Keno lottery. Had I
>used 'probabilities of mayflies mating' as my example, he wouldn't have
>learned it.
For my Directed Studies students (study hall with extra nagging and
emails to the academic teachers) I make everything possible into
money. And I have these little cubes, and I make them make number
lines and times tables. Life is entirely too tedious if you don't know
your times tables. I mean, these kids think they have to whip out the
calculator for 3x7.
I also snagged some leftovers from the fundraising Bingo game we run
for my daughter's music program, and I use that.
Karl Johanson
news:rtao80ls3eg6oiu40...@4ax.com...
A complex process when you're dealing with multiple students. For education
computer games we often used 'active levelling' which adjusted difficulty up
or down, based on the success & failure rates of the player.
> It looks like I may be underemployed again next (school) year -- I
> have this idea for developing readings about adolescent issues around
> the world. What does dating look like in Indonesia? What are Russian
> gangs like? What chores do Uruguayan parents expect their kids to
> do? How old are they in Uganda when they get married? How long is a
> school day in Finland? Stuff like that. I think I could do it, too.
Sounds like an interesting project.
Karl Johanson
SAMK
> In article <Z0yic.11679$dn7...@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com>,
> SAMK <samkhome...@sbcglobal.TEN> wrote:
>>On the other hand, she then sat down and did them all right,
>>so I'm still not sure what her problem was.
>
>
> Maybe she needed a chance to vent as well as the explanation?
>
> Really, though, I'm just guessing, and even she may not be
> able to explain what's going on emotionally.
I'm sure that was some of it. The other, thinking back, was
that we introduced a concept (square roots) and my help was
"Push the square root button on the calculator" (which was allowed
for this assignment) and that did not satisfy her sense
of understanding how square roots worked and why and what
and the theory behind it and all that detail.
I'm more the "I know how to get a right answer, what
else do I need?" type. She's... not.
SAMK
Karen Lofstrom
> Let me suggest that these problems are similar to those other people
> experience in dealing with the behaviors that are identified with
> Asperger's syndrome.
True enough. When my slow-reading student was feeling down one day, I told
her that I was certain there were things she did better than I did, or
even better than anyone else in the world.
I think I'd be a lot less cranky if:
1) I were better at saying NO to some people.
2) I could tutor rather than try to teach a whole class, even a small
class. When you're tutoring, it doesn't matter if the student is slow; you
can take time to work through it. If you're trying to run a class and some
people are racing ahead while others are lagging, it feels like being torn
in pieces. You can't respond to everyone. Everyone is being shortchanged.
The cost-saving Industrial Revolution Lancashire teaching model is so so
so obnoxious.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW! IMPROVED! ECONOMY SIZE!
David Dyer-Bennet
> The cost-saving Industrial Revolution Lancashire teaching model is so so
> so obnoxious.
I suppose it is. But could we possibly have the level of education we
have today without it?
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net> Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
David Friedman
David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom) writes:
>
> > The cost-saving Industrial Revolution Lancashire teaching model is so so
> > so obnoxious.
>
> I suppose it is. But could we possibly have the level of education we
> have today without it?
I think so. Couldn't you do it with a model where most of the student's
time was spent reading or working through a workbook or interacting with
a computer program and when he did interact with the teacher it was one
on one? Or with the model where the teacher teaches ten students, each
of whom teaches ten students?
The problem Karen points out is a pretty serious one from the standpoint
of the students, since it means a large fraction are wasting their time
because they are ahead and another large fraction because they are
behind. I suppose you could partly solve that by much more detailed
tracking--separating students by ability in subject--than U.S. schools
are willing to do, but in practice we don't.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
Cally Soukup
>> lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom) writes:
>>
>> > The cost-saving Industrial Revolution Lancashire teaching model is so so
>> > so obnoxious.
>>
>> I suppose it is. But could we possibly have the level of education we
>> have today without it?
> I think so. Couldn't you do it with a model where most of the student's
> time was spent reading or working through a workbook or interacting with
> a computer program and when he did interact with the teacher it was one
> on one? Or with the model where the teacher teaches ten students, each
> of whom teaches ten students?
My grade school years were very much that former model. It was an
experimental system called "PLAN", and it worked well for me -- and
very, very badly for other people in the class.
--
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend
to the death your right to say it." -- Beatrice Hall
Cally Soukup sou...@pobox.com
David Dyer-Bennet
> In article <m2hdv7t...@gw.dd-b.net>,
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>> lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom) writes:
>>
>> > The cost-saving Industrial Revolution Lancashire teaching model is so so
>> > so obnoxious.
>>
>> I suppose it is. But could we possibly have the level of education we
>> have today without it?
>
> I think so. Couldn't you do it with a model where most of the student's
> time was spent reading or working through a workbook or interacting with
> a computer program and when he did interact with the teacher it was one
> on one? Or with the model where the teacher teaches ten students, each
> of whom teaches ten students?
Maybe; but lots of students, especially before highschool, won't learn
very well on their own from books. Having other students tutoring is
somewhat useful, if the other students are any good at it. Is a
10-year-old trying to tutor for the first time actually better than
sitting in class listening to a teacher with a lot of experience?
The computer training could be somewhat useful, but again, is it
better than a lecture? It does give you rate independence, which is
very important, but mostly they're not very good about answering
questions.
> The problem Karen points out is a pretty serious one from the standpoint
> of the students, since it means a large fraction are wasting their time
> because they are ahead and another large fraction because they are
> behind. I suppose you could partly solve that by much more detailed
> tracking--separating students by ability in subject--than U.S. schools
> are willing to do, but in practice we don't.
I suppose I could have been run through school faster, but would I be
a better person if I had been?
Randolph Fritz
>
> I think I'd be a lot less cranky if:
>
> 1) I were better at saying NO to some people.
>
Oh, that's a big one.
>
> 2) I could tutor rather than try to teach a whole class, even a small
> class. When you're tutoring, it doesn't matter if the student is slow; you
> can take time to work through it. If you're trying to run a class and some
> people are racing ahead while others are lagging, it feels like being torn
> in pieces. You can't respond to everyone. Everyone is being shortchanged.
>
Perhaps you can get the better students, who have some extra time, to
act as tutors? That's an older model but, I think, still an effective
one.
>
> The cost-saving Industrial Revolution Lancashire teaching model is so so
> so obnoxious.
>
Oh, yeah. And I don't think it's ever really been necessary.
Randolph
Mark Atwood
>
> 2) I could tutor rather than try to teach a whole class, even a small
> class. When you're tutoring, it doesn't matter if the student is slow; you
> can take time to work through it. If you're trying to run a class and some
> people are racing ahead while others are lagging, it feels like being torn
> in pieces. You can't respond to everyone. Everyone is being shortchanged.
I like tutoring. My experience with tutoring is 80% of the work
mainly consists of giving constant "approval noises" while the student
is doing things right but isn't sure they're doing the right thing.
And 10% giving *immediate* possitive correction the moment they go off
in the wrong direction, and 10% explaining things that the text
explained poorly.
Of course, that was just remedial algreba, with kids that were brighter
than they thought they were.
--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@pobox.com | you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra | http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus
David Friedman
David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nospam.com> writes:
>
> > In article <m2hdv7t...@gw.dd-b.net>,
> > David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
> >
> >> lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom) writes:
> >>
> >> > The cost-saving Industrial Revolution Lancashire teaching model is so so
> >> > so obnoxious.
> >>
> >> I suppose it is. But could we possibly have the level of education we
> >> have today without it?
> >
> > I think so. Couldn't you do it with a model where most of the student's
> > time was spent reading or working through a workbook or interacting with
> > a computer program and when he did interact with the teacher it was one
> > on one? Or with the model where the teacher teaches ten students, each
> > of whom teaches ten students?
>
> Maybe; but lots of students, especially before highschool, won't learn
> very well on their own from books.
Lots don't learn very well in class either.
> Having other students tutoring is
> somewhat useful, if the other students are any good at it. Is a
> 10-year-old trying to tutor for the first time actually better than
> sitting in class listening to a teacher with a lot of experience?
Probably less good for the tutee, better for the tutor. But the ten year
old doing it for the first time is the worst case for tutoring, and you
are comparing it to a relatively good case for the alternative.
> The computer training could be somewhat useful, but again, is it
> better than a lecture? It does give you rate independence, which is
> very important, but mostly they're not very good about answering
> questions.
> I suppose I could have been run through school faster, but would I be
> a better person if I had been?
I was run through school faster than normal--I went to college when I
was sixteen. I don't think I was a better person, and I might have fit
in a little better at college if I had been older, although probably not
much better. But it did save me wasting more time in K-12.
Going back to alternative approaches ... .
Some years ago, I gave a talk at a private school that turned out to be
Delphi Academy, the parent school of the CoS network of private schools.
I'm not an admirer of CoS, but the school was interesting--in part
because it was largely organized as monitored self study rather than
classes. The system seemed to work reasonably well, judging by the kids
I talked to.
I prefer a free school approach, which is why my kids used to go to a
Sudbury model school until the one they went to developed problems--but
I suspect that works better with a good deal of parental involvement. My
impression of Delphi was that it was largely a boarding school for kids
whose parents were too busy with CoS business to spend time with their
children.
David Dyer-Bennet
That's true, but it's still reasonable -- teachers stay in the
business for more than a year, usually, and have quite a lot of
training before they first take over a classroom. Whereas each year,
the 10 year olds tutoring for the first time (random choice on what
age to start doing that of course, but we don't seem to be arguing
about that) will *still* be tutoring for the first time.
The benefits to the tutor are also somewhat relative. Pamela dropped
her idea of getting a PhD partly because of how much she hated
teaching (which was the only way for her to finance it), for example.
For *me*, tutoring is very beneficial, but I don't think I'm
particularly normal in that any more than most other things.
>> The computer training could be somewhat useful, but again, is it
>> better than a lecture? It does give you rate independence, which is
>> very important, but mostly they're not very good about answering
>> questions.
>
>> I suppose I could have been run through school faster, but would I be
>> a better person if I had been?
>
> I was run through school faster than normal--I went to college when I
> was sixteen. I don't think I was a better person, and I might have fit
> in a little better at college if I had been older, although probably not
> much better. But it did save me wasting more time in K-12.
I actually started a year early (so I was younger than most people in
my grade), and also skipped 7th grade (but not by jumping from 6th to
8th; I spent that year in Swiss schools, not learning the things
expected in the US).
I actually found I fit better with the college crowd, socially, than
the highschool crowd -- when I was in 9th grade. I met lots of people
in the computer center, where I worked with one bunch and hung out
with another (partially overlapping) bunch.
And the time I used to learn photography, and to learn computer
programming, might not have been available to me if I'd been in a
school system that pushed me at all. Everything I've made money at in
my life is stuff I learned on my own, never anything I learned in
school. Despite that I'm a big supporter of schools; go figure. (My
father was a math professor, and my school experiences were quite
good; they just didn't happen to be the place I learned most of the
things I spend my time on these days.)
> Going back to alternative approaches ... .
>
> Some years ago, I gave a talk at a private school that turned out to be
> Delphi Academy, the parent school of the CoS network of private schools.
> I'm not an admirer of CoS, but the school was interesting--in part
> because it was largely organized as monitored self study rather than
> classes. The system seemed to work reasonably well, judging by the kids
> I talked to.
>
> I prefer a free school approach, which is why my kids used to go to a
> Sudbury model school until the one they went to developed problems--but
> I suspect that works better with a good deal of parental involvement. My
> impression of Delphi was that it was largely a boarding school for kids
> whose parents were too busy with CoS business to spend time with their
> children.
Given my success at teaching myself the things that are important to
me, I might have done very well in a free school. But my actual
friends who attended actual free schools (by choice) were *not*, in my
opinion, served very well by them. I think there are significantly
fewer people who will do well in a free school than there are who will
do well in a "regular" school.
I don't know how to apply a diversity of school approaches in such a
way that kids will actually get into the schools that actually work
well for them. Lots of kids will try for the ones that gratify
short-term goals (like not having to work). Some parents will try for
the ones that gratify *their* short-term goals, like the school not
bothering them about their kids very often. And our current system is
very badly under-funded; trying to add multiple teaching approaches to
all the schools all around the country, and sorting kids properly into
them, is a *major* additional requirement on the schools.
David Dyer-Bennet
> lofs...@lava.net (Karen Lofstrom) writes:
>>
>> 2) I could tutor rather than try to teach a whole class, even a small
>> class. When you're tutoring, it doesn't matter if the student is slow; you
>> can take time to work through it. If you're trying to run a class and some
>> people are racing ahead while others are lagging, it feels like being torn
>> in pieces. You can't respond to everyone. Everyone is being shortchanged.
>
> I like tutoring. My experience with tutoring is 80% of the work
> mainly consists of giving constant "approval noises" while the student
> is doing things right but isn't sure they're doing the right thing.
> And 10% giving *immediate* possitive correction the moment they go off
> in the wrong direction, and 10% explaining things that the text
> explained poorly.
>
> Of course, that was just remedial algreba, with kids that were brighter
> than they thought they were.
I really like teaching, and also tutoring. I find it helps me nail
the stuff down in my own head pretty well. I did quite a lot of
informal tutoring in highschool, and since at work various places.
But I've observed that a LOT of people don't. I've watched people get
all upset and tongue-tied and jittery about just going up to read a
resolution to a committee meeting -- nothing requiring actual thinking
on the fly, just reading what it says. My wife dropped her PhD plans
partly because of how much she hated teaching (and that was how you
financed a PhD in literature). I've also found that lots of people
who are *doing* teaching are still rather averse to preparing their
own materials to teach from (whereas, if I get in trouble with any of
the certifying agencies for my carry permit teaching, it's going to be
because of the degree to which the materials have improved since I've
been working with them; and Joel and I have prepared two additional
courses, one mostly my work actually, in addition.)
But then, you don't need every single kid to tutor, either; not every
single kid needs to *be* tutored a lot, either. Those who *can*
tutor, or can learn to, will benefit signifcantly from doing so, I
agree. And getting them started early will help some of them overcome
shyness, stage fright, and such. Others will just find it hell on
earth. Can't make a rule to sort all that out, requires application
of observation and intelligence -- which, again, is why *good*
teachers are needed in classrooms.
Keith F. Lynch
> I suppose I could have been run through school faster, but would I
> be a better person if I had been?
You could have had more time for other things. Or, in the same amount
of time, you could have learned more.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
Lucy Kemnitzer
.
Really? I'm trying to imagine one-on-one tutoring as a primary model
of education for millions of children. Or what are we imagining at
the K-12 level, if we're going to do away with classrooms and teachers
altogether?
I know that under those conditions maybe two of all the students I
have this year would ever learn to read in the language of the country
they're living in, and probably not many more would ever learn to read
in the language of the country their parents opr grandparents came
from. Let alone learn anything else.
You know what else? My students love coming to school. They adore
it. Even the ones who never do a lick of academic work in their
lives. Why?
Because with nearly two thousand adolescents to choose from, life is
very exciting. We've gone through about three rounds of boyfrienmds
this year alone. And the drama over the girls' fights, and the ethnic
tension, and the birthdays -- oh, my, the birthdays -- huge bouquets
of helium balloons, teddy bears, cologne, singing, throwing eggs (I
think it's a Michoacan tradition).
Well, this is education also. They learn to keep their tempers when
some girl calls them a skanky ho because they leaned up against the
other girl's cousin who is somebody's best friend's boyfriend. They
learn what an adult means by "This is your last warning." They learn
what it feels like to have an adult walk by when your boyfriend is
climbing inside your halter top behind the cafeteria. They hear the
music of other ethnic groups ("That punk stuff isn't so badf. But my
cousin only listens to banda!")
Anyway.
What do you have in mind for how to teach several million children to
read in their second language?
David Dyer-Bennet
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>> I suppose I could have been run through school faster, but would I
>> be a better person if I had been?
>
> You could have had more time for other things.
Or less time for other things, during the periods I was attending
school. And I think the other things I did during school are a big
part of why it worked well for me.
> Or, in the same amount of time, you could have learned more.
It's quite likely that things could have been improved *for me*, in
theory. But I feel that the way it was done worked very well for me,
and I'm a bit skeptical of changing it on those grounds; especially
given how many other people say school *didn't* work well for them.
Changes to the school I went to might well end up making it like the
school they went to.
The argument that it was, simultaneously, not working well for *other*
people is some kind of argument for change, either overall, or the
introduction of more choice, or something.
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>
>> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> wrote:
>>> I suppose I could have been run through school faster, but would I
>>> be a better person if I had been?
>>
>> You could have had more time for other things.
>
>Or less time for other things, during the periods I was attending
>school. And I think the other things I did during school are a big
>part of why it worked well for me.
>
>> Or, in the same amount of time, you could have learned more.
>
>It's quite likely that things could have been improved *for me*, in
>theory. But I feel that the way it was done worked very well for me,
>and I'm a bit skeptical of changing it on those grounds; especially
>given how many other people say school *didn't* work well for them.
>Changes to the school I went to might well end up making it like the
>school they went to.
>
>The argument that it was, simultaneously, not working well for *other*
>people is some kind of argument for change, either overall, or the
>introduction of more choice, or something.
The more I grapple with trying to make situations work for adolescents
who are trying to learn things (and yes, they are trying, even if what
they're actually trying to learn isn't what they say or even think
they're trying to learn or what I'm supposed to be trying to teach
them), the less sure I am about what the best sort of school would be,
in general. I do think that more rigorousness in some areas, and more
slack in some other areas, and generally smaller classes and more
stuff -- a generosity of materials and books and equipment, an
abundance of beauty and humor and kindness -- would to wonders.
Instead, class sizes are going up: field trips have been cut to almost
nonexistence: co-curricular stuff (music, arts, drama, newspapers,
yearbooks, sports -- the stuff teens live for, in one form or another)
is gasping and starving: chairs fall apart when the students sit on
them: and every couple of years they invent a new test to give the
students. I do think we ought to test students in some fashion or
another to understand what they're doing, but we just add new tests to
the pile of old ones -- this week is 16 hours of testing alone -- and
the tests are not especially good. I had to look at the Language Arts
Standards ones and there were pages and pages of punctuation questions
I could not answer.
I could not answer them. I write professionally, from time to time,
and I am well educated, and I teach grammar. And I could not for the
life of me get at what those damned punctuation questions were doing.
As far as I could figure, all the answers were equally bad.
And on this basis, they will cut the funds of schools whose students
do not perform well.
Oops.
To the point: yes, the thing people miss about the present form of
education -- I missed it too until I'd been in this corner of it for a
while -- is that it does okay for a large number of kids. And I think
that's part of the reason we can't get into reform in good faith.
(I think education reform tends to be very bad-faith in the
existentialist sense).
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
<rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
snip
>The more I grapple with trying to make situations work for adolescents
>who are trying to learn things (and yes, they are trying, even if what
>they're actually trying to learn isn't what they say or even think
>they're trying to learn or what I'm supposed to be trying to teach
>them), the less sure I am about what the best sort of school would be,
>in general. I do think that more rigorousness in some areas, and more
>slack in some other areas, and generally smaller classes and more
>stuff -- a generosity of materials and books and equipment, an
>abundance of beauty and humor and kindness -- would to wonders.
I'm with you on this. As I go through my student teaching, I really
agree with a lot of what you are saying here.
>Instead, class sizes are going up: field trips have been cut to almost
>nonexistence: co-curricular stuff (music, arts, drama, newspapers,
>yearbooks, sports -- the stuff teens live for, in one form or another)
This is a point which too many middle class folks miss. Middle class
parents can find substitutes for these things. Poor parents can't.
These things are often the factors by which poor kids can begin the
process of pulling themselves up out of poverty.
>is gasping and starving: chairs fall apart when the students sit on
>them: and every couple of years they invent a new test to give the
>students. I do think we ought to test students in some fashion or
>another to understand what they're doing, but we just add new tests to
>the pile of old ones -- this week is 16 hours of testing alone -- and
>the tests are not especially good. I had to look at the Language Arts
>Standards ones and there were pages and pages of punctuation questions
>I could not answer.
Sigh. Part of my training process is taking our Oregon Certificate of
Initial Mastery and Benchmark tests. There are things on the 5th
grade benchmark math test which *I* could not answer, after having had
math through Algebra II. I had to read the tests to some of my
special ed kids. Some of it was stuff I couldn't answer--and I have a
reasonably well-rounded education.
However, I do think that the No Child Left Behind act has had *one*
majorly good point, in that it has stirred up awareness of the need to
consider the progress of special ed, low-income and minority
populations instead of shoving them back in the closet in a far end of
the campus. Schools that have been ignoring the lower achievers have
to pay attention to the kids falling through the cracks. That is a
good thing.
snip
>To the point: yes, the thing people miss about the present form of
>education -- I missed it too until I'd been in this corner of it for a
>while -- is that it does okay for a large number of kids. And I think
>that's part of the reason we can't get into reform in good faith.
Yep.
>(I think education reform tends to be very bad-faith in the
>existentialist sense).
Education reforms tend to march with whopping huge agendas, no matter
what side of the political spectrum comes up with them.
jrw
Paul Dormer
wrote:
> I suppose I could have been run through school faster, but would I be
> a better person if I had been?
This actually happened to me.
In the UK, you start secondary education when you are 11. (Or this was
the case when I was 11 in 1964.) As it happened, a new secondary school
was opened in my area that year. In those days, secondary education was
split between elite grammar schools and secondary moderns. This was a new
grammar school, and I got selected to go to it.
The timetable for secondary education was that after five years you took
your O-level (O for ordinary) exams. Then, if you stayed on, after two
more years you took your A-levels (advanced). You could then go on to
tertiary education, which then meant either university or polytechnic
college.
At the end of my first year, it was announced that as an experiment, they
were going to introduce an express form, which would take O-levels after
just four years. I got chosen for this form. Furthermore, my birthday is
in July and the exams were in June. This meant I took my O-levels when I
was still fourteen and my A-levels when I was still sixteen. I was
seventeen for my entire first year at university (and legally not entitled
to drink) and got my degree when I was nineteen. (My graduation ceremony
was two days before my twentieth birthday.) Which is how I've just
managed thirty years working with the same company and still managing to
retire at 50.
But socially, I think starting university at 17 was a mistake. I'd always
been inclined to shyness, and university was a big blow. (I grew a beard
at that time, just to make myself look a bit older. Now I keep the beard
to make myself look a bit younger.) It took me many years to recover, and
I still feel awkward in social situations.
Marilee J. Layman
<rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>What do you have in mind for how to teach several million children to
>read in their second language?
Swap 'em with another country? Oh wait....
--
Marilee J. Layman
David Friedman
pauld...@cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) wrote:
> But socially, I think starting university at 17 was a mistake. I'd always
> been inclined to shyness, and university was a big blow. (I grew a beard
> at that time, just to make myself look a bit older. Now I keep the beard
> to make myself look a bit younger.) It took me many years to recover, and
> I still feel awkward in social situations.
I expect it depends a lot on the person.
I started university at sixteen and although not shy I was certainly
socially very backward, having done very nearly no dating in high school
and not having much in the way of non-intellectual interests in common
with most of my classmates. But looking back at it, I don't think my
experience would have been that much different if I had started at
eighteen--since, socially speaking, I was behind my age mates as well as
my class mates. From an intellectual point of view, people two years
older than I was were more likely to have things in common with me. And
it saved me two years of wasted time in K-12 classes.
Wilson Heydt
Joyce Reynolds-Ward <j...@aracnet.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 19:58:03 -0700, Lucy Kemnitzer
><rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>snip
>
>>nonexistence: co-curricular stuff (music, arts, drama, newspapers,
>>yearbooks, sports -- the stuff teens live for, in one form or another)
>
>This is a point which too many middle class folks miss. Middle class
>parents can find substitutes for these things. Poor parents can't.
>These things are often the factors by which poor kids can begin the
>process of pulling themselves up out of poverty.
Not only did I *not* live for those things when I was a teen, but I
rather strongly resented being forced to pay attention to the
unneeded item in that list that the adminstration was all enthused
about.
>Sigh. Part of my training process is taking our Oregon Certificate of
>Initial Mastery and Benchmark tests. There are things on the 5th
>grade benchmark math test which *I* could not answer, after having had
>math through Algebra II. I had to read the tests to some of my
>special ed kids. Some of it was stuff I couldn't answer--and I have a
>reasonably well-rounded education.
I admit that I am rather cencerned that someone planning to teach
(and, presumalby, have a college degree) sees unanswerable questions
on material intended for 5th grade... To make sure that I am not
being overly hasty, could you supply one or two particulars so that
the rest of us can assess the difficulty of the material?
--
Hal Heydt
Albany, CA
My dime, my opinions.
Christopher K Davis
> I started university at sixteen and although not shy I was certainly
> socially very backward, having done very nearly no dating in high school
> and not having much in the way of non-intellectual interests in common
> with most of my classmates. But looking back at it, I don't think my
> experience would have been that much different if I had started at
> eighteen--since, socially speaking, I was behind my age mates as well as
> my class mates. From an intellectual point of view, people two years
> older than I was were more likely to have things in common with me. And
> it saved me two years of wasted time in K-12 classes.
The preceding paragraph is so extraordinarily familiar-sounding that I
almost had to look to see if it was something I'd posted and yet
forgotten that I'd posted.
I'd have to drop the "very nearly" though.
--
"[G]rant us, in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the
horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the
pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right
word. In darkness, understanding." -- Learned Chivar dy Cabon
Randolph Fritz
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 20:24:55 +0000 (UTC), Randolph Fritz
><rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>>In article <108ovt3...@corp.supernews.com>, Karen Lofstrom wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> The cost-saving Industrial Revolution Lancashire teaching model is so so
>>> so obnoxious.
>>>
>>
>>Oh, yeah. And I don't think it's ever really been necessary.
>>
> .
>
> Really? I'm trying to imagine one-on-one tutoring as a primary model
> of education for millions of children. Or what are we imagining at
> the K-12 level, if we're going to do away with classrooms and teachers
> altogether?
>
Where, in that post, did I advocate one-on-one tutoring as the only
teaching method? My objection is to the use of assembly-line methods
of tuition; ordering all students to study particular topics at the
same time and in the same way, teaching primarily by lecture and
written work, and focusing on skills that make people good cogs in
whatever social order is fashionable with the powerful.
>
> What do you have in mind for how to teach several million children to
> read in their second language?
>
It would be nice if we could figure out how to teach most people to
read well in their first language. (Or maybe we know how and just
aren't willing to fund it) But I think for most people practice and a
bit of more formal instruction is the answer for first or second
languages.
Randolph
Randolph Fritz
>
> The more I grapple with trying to make situations work for adolescents
> who are trying to learn things (and yes, they are trying, even if what
> they're actually trying to learn isn't what they say or even think
> they're trying to learn or what I'm supposed to be trying to teach
> them), the less sure I am about what the best sort of school would be,
> in general. I do think that more rigorousness in some areas, and more
> slack in some other areas, and generally smaller classes and more
> stuff -- a generosity of materials and books and equipment, an
> abundance of beauty and humor and kindness -- would to wonders.
>
I do agree.
>
> To the point: yes, the thing people miss about the present form of
> education -- I missed it too until I'd been in this corner of it for a
> while -- is that it does okay for a large number of kids. And I think
> that's part of the reason we can't get into reform in good faith.
>
I don't think it does, actually. It's better than nothing, to be
sure. But it could be much improved. And--as you pointed out earlier
in your post--it is doing "ok" less and less as we become less willing
to pay for it.
Randolph
Mark Atwood
> I don't think it does, actually. It's better than nothing, to be
> sure. But it could be much improved. And--as you pointed out earlier
> in your post--it is doing "ok" less and less as we become less willing
> to pay for it.
Per pupil funding has been *increasing* over time.
That's kind of at odds with your statement there.
Aaron Denney
> Per pupil funding has been *increasing* over time.
That depends on what area you're talking about.
(Assuming you're adjusting for inflation. If not, then yeah, rather
vacuously the funding has been increasing.)
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
Pete McCutchen
<rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>> To the point: yes, the thing people miss about the present form of
>> education -- I missed it too until I'd been in this corner of it for a
>> while -- is that it does okay for a large number of kids. And I think
>> that's part of the reason we can't get into reform in good faith.
>>
>
>I don't think it does, actually. It's better than nothing, to be
>sure. But it could be much improved. And--as you pointed out earlier
>in your post--it is doing "ok" less and less as we become less willing
>to pay for it.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, education is an endless money pit
in which we're paying more and more and getting less and less. For
all its faults, the No Child Left Behind Act just about doubled
federal funding to elementary and secondary schools. Nor has
California skimped on pouring money into the system.
Now if Lucy says that they don't have field trips and the desks are
falling apart I'll believe her -- I disagree with her on most things,
but I think she tells the truth as she sees it. But that leads to the
question: what the hell are they spending the money on? And if they
spend what they've been given so badly, why would we expect them to do
a better job if given more?
--
Pete McCutchen
David Friedman
> I don't know how to apply a diversity of school approaches in such a
> way that kids will actually get into the schools that actually work
> well for them.
It sounds as though you may be making the best the enemy of the good.
No system will work perfectly.
But parents, on the whole, care about their kids and have direct
feedback both on how happy the kids are and on what they are learning.
So a system such as vouchers, which permits lots of different kinds of
schools and lets parents choose among them, seems likely to do better
than a system where school administrators and legislators decide for
almost everyone.
> Lots of kids will try for the ones that gratify
> short-term goals (like not having to work). Some parents will try for
> the ones that gratify *their* short-term goals, like the school not
> bothering them about their kids very often. And our current system is
> very badly under-funded;
I don't know what that means. I can't speak to the Canadian system,
but the U.S. public school system spends considerably more per pupil
in most states than private schools do, more than most developed
countries spend, and more than it did at most times in the past.
Quite a long time ago, I did a comment on a paper by Peltzman that
involved a statistical analysis of changes in U.S. schooling from
1960-1980. During that period real expenditure per pupil roughly
doubled while outcomes, after controlling for things such as how many
kids were taking what tests, steeply declined. Money can be useful,
and of course the people in the present system are all in favor of
having more money spent on it--but I doubt that it's the central
problem.
> trying to add multiple teaching approaches to
> all the schools all around the country, and sorting kids properly into
> them, is a *major* additional requirement on the schools.
It sounds as though you are trying to fit educational diversity into
the current monopoly public school model, which I agree would be
hard--for lots of reasons other than costs. But there is no reason
diversity should cost more if it consists of lots of separate schools,
some public and some private, each following its preferred model of
education. If anything it should probably cost a little less, since a
wider range of models means that you are drawing on a wider base of
inputs, and so less likely to bid up the price of the particular
inputs you are using.
Which, presumably, is one reason why the teachers' unions are so
adamantly opposed to such a system.
Kris Hasson-Jones
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> watched in amazement as electrons
turned into magical things called words:
>Now if Lucy says that they don't have field trips and the desks are
>falling apart I'll believe her -- I disagree with her on most things,
>but I think she tells the truth as she sees it. But that leads to the
>question: what the hell are they spending the money on?
Tests, and the administrators who fill out the forms and other
paperwork about the tests, and the trainers for the people who score
the tests and for the teachers to teach to the test.
--
Kris Hasson-Jones sni...@pacifier.com
But I *am* present as the truth of myself!
Dorothy J Heydt
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Now if Lucy says that they don't have field trips and the desks are
>falling apart I'll believe her -- I disagree with her on most things,
>but I think she tells the truth as she sees it. But that leads to the
>question: what the hell are they spending the money on?
Oh heck, I can tell you that.
Layer upon layer upon layer of administration.
(Hal worked as a contractor for a school district in San Jose for
a couple of years. He could a tale unfold.)
(Aside to Lucy, because no one else will care: he was working
mostly in Alum Rock, but he made a few trips to Watsonville.)
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Lucy Kemnitzer
I once knew a teacher with the same first name as I have, who once
worked in the Alum Rock district. They did a study in the school
where she worked, comparing the results for whole-language versus
phonics-based instruction for elementary classrooms.
What they found was that it didn't matter. But teachers who were
strongly committted to the methods they used had better results over
all.
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
I can't quote from the test I complained about -- it would be illegal,
and maybe unethical. But I can describe the situation more fully.
The students are given a page of "student writing" which resembles
actual assignments one might have to do in high school, and the
assertion that the assignments contain errors. Then there are several
multiple-choice questions relating to specific quotes from the
"manuscript." The student is asked to pick which of the alternatives
is the best correction for the error within the writing.
I found the questions unanswerable. In the cases I looked at, none
of the alternatives were good corrections. One or two of the "errors"
were best left as is. For the others, the correct reworking was not
listed, and the alternatives given were bad.
I will reiterate -- I'm not against having a standardized test for
each grade. But I want to see one comprehensive test for each
subject, and one more test for the English Language learners (maybe
instead for certain subjects and grades, and in addition otherwise:
but surely not _nine_ tests in one year, as an English Language
learner could potentially pick up in my district at this time --
that's nine, mandated, outside the class, unrelated to the students'
grades -- most get only like five or six). And I want the tests to
arise out of what we really agree, in good faith, ought to be taught
in the real classroom.
Currently, tests are designed by profit-making "consultant" outfits
who have no direct connection to the schools. THey decide -- dog
knows how -- what ought to be on the tests. During the development
phases, they leak to the schools what might be on the tests, then the
government adopts the tests, and then the kids sit down to fail them.
I am convinced that a large part of the motivation for this testing
mania is that the proponents of the tests want to prove that our
students are incompetent, and so they make the process impossible.
Now, my students _are_ below grade level. I would like a good
instrument to measure just where they are in various areas. I would
like good instruments to track our success in bringing them to grade
level. I would like to be able to compare my classes with other
classes using other methods. I would like to confirm or shake my
impressions about what my students are learning. Are they really
learning to read critically? Or are they becoming adept at giving me
the answers which sound to me like critical reading? And so on.
Lucy Kemnitzer
<sni...@pacifier.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 23:02:50 GMT, Pete McCutchen
><p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> watched in amazement as electrons
>turned into magical things called words:
>
>>Now if Lucy says that they don't have field trips and the desks are
>>falling apart I'll believe her -- I disagree with her on most things,
>>but I think she tells the truth as she sees it. But that leads to the
>>question: what the hell are they spending the money on?
>
>Tests, and the administrators who fill out the forms and other
>paperwork about the tests, and the trainers for the people who score
>the tests and for the teachers to teach to the test.
When the state government takes money away from the local
administrations, they do not take away reporting mandates, testing
mandates, etc. When we can't actually implement mandated programs
because the stipulated funds for them are cut, we still have to go
through the motions, and fill out paperwork, and test students, as if
we were actually doing the thing we're supposed to be doing.
Much money that goes into schools is not general fund money, and can't
be used for whatever we happen to want to use it for.
Here are some stupid school funding examples.
When our former governor (Wilson) decided that he would do something
for education, what he did was offer funding for districts to reduce
class size. The way it worked was that the districts receiving the
funds had to meet the capped class sizes in _every_ class of the
target grades in the district, within 3 months of the announcement, in
order to receive any money. However, the money was only designed to
cover the hiring of extra teachers, and was significantly lower than
the amount of money it would cost to hire them. A separate fund was
created to pay for the lease of portable classrooms to house the new
classes created by class size reduction, but that money would only
become available to the districts six months after school opened, and
did not pay for transporting the portables, wiring the portables,
converting rooms already on campus, increased custodial hours, etc.
YOu see where I'm going? School districts took a net loss on class
size reduction. But -- they mostly went for it anyway, because they
believed in it, and it was the closest thing they would ever get to
any help to do it.
That was, um, I think -- Emma's in 11th grade now, so that would be
eight? nine? years ago. Now the class size reduction money from the
state has been cut, and many districts are reluctantly and gradually
raising class sizes again.
There is the odd bit of out-and-put corruption -- I think more often
around land acquisition and construction than other things. And we
are forced to pay for high-priced consultants to put on (mostly
useless) workshops to "help" implement all these dandy bad-faith
education reforms. Last year the guy who came got more money for a
day of yammering at us about how we should look out for the minority
student than I get in a year. And we had him for three days before
school started, when we could have been planning, or moving boxes, or
reading cum files, or something. Dog only knows what we were actually
supposed to learn from him, though he liked to slyly imply that the
teachers at my school were racists while he also slyly slipped in the
"north zone" propaganda which leads to splitting the school district
along racial lines -- oh, go here, we made the national news --
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/04/23/brown.at.50.ap/index.html
I don't know how long the link will be good.
Pete's suspicion, that there is a lot of waste in education, is
justified: but the _source_ for that waste is the same people who
always want to "cut the fat" from us, who give us fake money as they
take away real money, who demand that we shape up to standards derived
from the belly button of a cabal of profiteering carpetbaggers whose
main educational activity is teaching buz words to legislators at
lobby lunches.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
snip
>Now if Lucy says that they don't have field trips and the desks are
>falling apart I'll believe her -- I disagree with her on most things,
>but I think she tells the truth as she sees it. But that leads to the
>question: what the hell are they spending the money on? And if they
>spend what they've been given so badly, why would we expect them to do
>a better job if given more?
Costly assessments and bureaucrats.
jrw
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
wrote:
>In article <4sor80tsqjb0jge1h...@4ax.com>,
Take the test yourself.
http://www.ode.state.or.us/asmt/sampletests/
On the fifth grade test, the question about "tesselate" was the one I
didn't recognize.
To be rather snarky right back at you, however, I think it's rather a
case of throwing rocks in glass houses when someone who would be
critical of my math ability spells "concerned" as "cencerned." Keep
in mind, however, that I've basically studied math through second year
high school algebra, which is (or should be) sufficient for a non-math
teacher.
jrw
Keith F. Lynch
> Now if Lucy says that they don't have field trips and the desks
> are falling apart I'll believe her -- I disagree with her on most
> things, but I think she tells the truth as she sees it. But that
> leads to the question: what the hell are they spending the money on?
Good question. Someone should fund a study to answer it.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
<rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
snip
>Pete's suspicion, that there is a lot of waste in education, is
>justified: but the _source_ for that waste is the same people who
>always want to "cut the fat" from us, who give us fake money as they
>take away real money, who demand that we shape up to standards derived
>from the belly button of a cabal of profiteering carpetbaggers whose
>main educational activity is teaching buz words to legislators at
>lobby lunches.
>
Absolutely.
jrw
Michael Kube-McDowell
where they could be seen:
>On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 20:30:44 +0000 (UTC), Randolph Fritz
><rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> To the point: yes, the thing people miss about the present form of
>>> education -- I missed it too until I'd been in this corner of it for a
>>> while -- is that it does okay for a large number of kids. And I think
>>> that's part of the reason we can't get into reform in good faith.
>>>
>>
>>I don't think it does, actually. It's better than nothing, to be
>>sure. But it could be much improved. And--as you pointed out earlier
>>in your post--it is doing "ok" less and less as we become less willing
>>to pay for it.
>
>Meanwhile, back in the real world, education is an endless money pit
>in which we're paying more and more and getting less and less. For
>all its faults, the No Child Left Behind Act just about doubled
>federal funding to elementary and secondary schools.
For 2003-2004, our local district received only about 1% of its budget from
Washington.
>Nor has
>California skimped on pouring money into the system.
>
>Now if Lucy says that they don't have field trips and the desks are
>falling apart I'll believe her -- I disagree with her on most things,
>but I think she tells the truth as she sees it. But that leads to the
>question: what the hell are they spending the money on? And if they
>spend what they've been given so badly, why would we expect them to do
>a better job if given more?
If you'd like to take a close look at a medium-sized school district's budget,
you can find one at:
http://okemos.k12.mi.us/users/admin/budget/proposed03-04revbud.pdf
This particular district has an enrollment of about 4200 students and a budget
of about $38 million. The administrative overhead is about 8% of the total
(that includes in-building and central admin, as well as the Board of
Education).
Really, for most schools systems most of the time, the answer to "what the
hell are they spending the money on?" is "teacher salaries and benefits,
mostly." Take a look at just the first page of the above-referenced PDF and
you'll see that. You'll also see the size of the special education budget in
both absolute and relative terms. Special ed is an area which has accounted
for a lot of the 'more and more money' in recent decades.
--
Michael P. Kube-McDowell, author and packrat
SF and other bad habits: http://k-mac.home.att.net
Wilson Heydt
My apologies for the typographical error.
I will agree that, depending on the subjects being taught, high
school algebra *may* be sufficient. On the other hand, more math
than that was required for me to get *into* college. (To ease the
pain, I will also note that I had to take Subject A--aka 'Bonehead
English', which I did pass, though just barely. In spite of that, I
never had any papers--and I tended to avoid courses that required
them--tossed back for a lack of grammar, spelling or coherence.)
I'm not sure that I would expect the average 5th grade student to
know what 'tesselate' meant, but I would expect a bright one to.
That actually would make such a question a good one.
Wilson Heydt
Okay.... That's fair enough. I should point out that 'best
correction' need not include 'good correction' or even 'accurate
correction', but so long as tehre is a 'none of the above' for a
possible response, I would consider the questions anserable, even if
very poorly constructed.
I was afraid is was going to turn out to be questions based on math
or physical sciences which have clear methods of arriving at correct
answers....
>Currently, tests are designed by profit-making "consultant" outfits
>who have no direct connection to the schools. THey decide -- dog
>knows how -- what ought to be on the tests. During the development
>phases, they leak to the schools what might be on the tests, then the
>government adopts the tests, and then the kids sit down to fail them.
>
>I am convinced that a large part of the motivation for this testing
>mania is that the proponents of the tests want to prove that our
>students are incompetent, and so they make the process impossible.
I think the unpleasant observation is that the general public are
under the impression that the schools are not doing terribly well at
actual instruction and the various teachers unions have sat up and
said 'give us more money if you want this fixed.' Since, over time,
'giving more money' has been tried without externally apparent
positive results, there has grown up a rather insistent demand that
'something must be done' and that 'something' is standardized tests.
I will agree that there are a lot of factors involved and that much
of the money put into the public schools has not been spent well,
but sometimes the 'not well spent' is on teachers who ought to have
been gotten rid of. While tenure is certainly a god idea in many
instances, it can be carried too far.
>Now, my students _are_ below grade level. I would like a good
>instrument to measure just where they are in various areas. I would
>like good instruments to track our success in bringing them to grade
>level. I would like to be able to compare my classes with other
>classes using other methods. I would like to confirm or shake my
>impressions about what my students are learning. Are they really
>learning to read critically? Or are they becoming adept at giving me
>the answers which sound to me like critical reading? And so on.
I'm not sure *how* one could tell the difference between actual and
pseudo-critical thinking. Sounds like the problem with Turing Tests
to me.
Mark Atwood
>
> But parents, on the whole, care about their kids and have direct
> feedback both on how happy the kids are and on what they are learning.
Well, there are the individual instances where that is not true.
And it's a defendable position that the current system (more or less)
is the "least bad" way of handling lots of kids with parents that
don't care.
We just may have (accidentally or intentionally, or a mix of both) ended
up optimzing for the "least bad" for that "bad case", instead of optimizing
for the "most good" for the "good case".
Karen Lofstrom
> Where, in that post, did I advocate one-on-one tutoring as the only
> teaching method?
I think Lucy was thinking of my post, where I wanted to stop assembly line
teaching and go straight to tutoring. You've given a much more nuanced
answer than my simple-minded one.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW! IMPROVED! ECONOMY SIZE!
David G. Bell
<q8tt80tgbdjj21f6m...@4ax.com>
rit...@cruzio.com "Lucy Kemnitzer" wrote:
Joyce, I see, was talking about some sort of maths test, and that has
more scope for a syllabus mismatch than what you describe.
I've vague memories of some of the maths-teaching experiments in the
sixties, and more recent reading suggests that could have taught stuff
to primary-school children which they wouldn't otherwise encountered
until university. Maybe not in the full formal notation, but ideas such
as sets. At secondary school, I was picking up stuff about Boolean
Algebra from electronics magazines which wasn't in the O-level syllabus,
but I did once see in a sample GCSE paper.
The problem with the experiments at Primary-school level was that the
teachers were used to teaching arithmetic, and didn't realise they were
teaching mathematics.
--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
"History shows that the Singularity started when Sir Tim Berners-Lee
was bitten by a radioactive spider."
Bernard Peek
<db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> writes
>Joyce, I see, was talking about some sort of maths test, and that has
>more scope for a syllabus mismatch than what you describe.
>
>I've vague memories of some of the maths-teaching experiments in the
>sixties, and more recent reading suggests that could have taught stuff
>to primary-school children which they wouldn't otherwise encountered
>until university. Maybe not in the full formal notation, but ideas such
>as sets. At secondary school, I was picking up stuff about Boolean
>Algebra from electronics magazines which wasn't in the O-level syllabus,
>but I did once see in a sample GCSE paper.
For a while there were two parallel O level maths syllabi (?) and one of
them "New Maths" included set theory. This would have been during the
mid to late 60s.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
In search of cognoscenti
David Goldfarb
>syllabi (?)
For once this is the correct Latin plural, yes.
--
David Goldfarb <*>|"Think of me as a brief electromagnetic anomaly
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | who told you some true things for your own good."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Babylon 5, "Day of the Dead"
Bernard Peek
<rit...@cruzio.com> writes
>Pete's suspicion, that there is a lot of waste in education, is
>justified: but the _source_ for that waste is the same people who
>always want to "cut the fat" from us, who give us fake money as they
>take away real money, who demand that we shape up to standards derived
>from the belly button of a cabal of profiteering carpetbaggers whose
>main educational activity is teaching buz words to legislators at
>lobby lunches.
The same situation exists here in the UK. The government will announce
that it is giving more money to education. Then a while later it will
make another announcement that it giving more money to education,
without mentioning that this is the same money. There will also be
strings attached, which they don't mention in the press-releases.
People could be forgiven for thinking that education is getting more
money than it actually is.
Having said that, from talking to teachers here I know that large
amounts of money is going into trendy schemes that have a negative
impact on teachers' effectiveness.
In theory I'm in favour of testing but as in your experience the testing
system has been subverted. IMHO it fails to adequately identify poor
teaching and puts a lot of unnecessary stress on teachers and pupils.
I've also seen the system used to punish a school with a high immigrant
population for producing results that were too good. Schools with lots
of immigrants are supposed to produce poor results.
Leif Magnar Kj|nn|y
David Goldfarb <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>In article <7gG$VmBqH3...@shrdlu.com>, Bernard Peek <b...@shrdlu.com> wrote:
>>syllabi (?)
>
>For once this is the correct Latin plural, yes.
And it was even correct to use the nominative.
--
Leif Kjønnøy, cunctator maximus. http://www.pvv.org/~leifmk
Nancy Lebovitz
>
>In theory I'm in favour of testing but as in your experience the testing
>system has been subverted. IMHO it fails to adequately identify poor
>teaching and puts a lot of unnecessary stress on teachers and pupils.
>I've also seen the system used to punish a school with a high immigrant
>population for producing results that were too good. Schools with lots
>of immigrants are supposed to produce poor results.
Details?
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
David G. Bell
b...@shrdlu.com "Bernard Peek" wrote:
Possibly more... There were a lot more exam boards in those days, each
setting their own exams. There were processes to ensure the grading was
comparable, and to keep the grades consistent over time.
And so first year University students were getting a lot of familiar
stuff in their courses, until the differences were dealt with.
Bernard Peek
<na...@unix5.netaxs.com> writes
>In article <5wq$R9Dbj3...@shrdlu.com>, Bernard Peek <b...@shrdlu.com> wrote:
>>
>>In theory I'm in favour of testing but as in your experience the testing
>>system has been subverted. IMHO it fails to adequately identify poor
>>teaching and puts a lot of unnecessary stress on teachers and pupils.
>>I've also seen the system used to punish a school with a high immigrant
>>population for producing results that were too good. Schools with lots
>>of immigrants are supposed to produce poor results.
>
>Details?
I've mentioned this one here before. The school had almost 100% Bengali
students. When the first London school league tables were published it
was very near the top. The local authority (Tower Hamlets) sent in a
team of inspectors. The head teacher was dismissed despite very strong
support from the parents (they demonstrated in the street.) The school
dropped to near the bottom of the league table.
The problem appears to be that the school's good performance removed the
excuse for the poor performance of some other schools. They had been
claiming that it was impossible for schools with a high proportion of
immigrants to do well. The problem is that in general working-class
Bengali students perform better than "British" White students, who
perform better than Afro-Caribbean students.
Paul Dormer
dd...@daviddfriedman.nospam.com (David Friedman) wrote:
> In article <memo.2004042...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>,
> pauld...@cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) wrote:
>
> > But socially, I think starting university at 17 was a mistake. I'd
> > always been inclined to shyness, and university was a big blow. (I
> > grew a beard at that time, just to make myself look a bit older. Now
> > I keep the beard to make myself look a bit younger.) It took me many
> > years to recover, and I still feel awkward in social situations.
>
> I expect it depends a lot on the person.
>
> I started university at sixteen and although not shy I was certainly
> socially very backward, having done very nearly no dating in high
> school and not having much in the way of non-intellectual interests in
> common with most of my classmates. But looking back at it, I don't
> think my experience would have been that much different if I had
> started at eighteen--since, socially speaking, I was behind my age
> mates as well as my class mates. From an intellectual point of view,
> people two years older than I was were more likely to have things in
> common with me. And it saved me two years of wasted time in K-12
> classes.
Oh, indeed. As I said, I was already inclined to shyness at school, where
I'd been teased because I had a London accent in a class full of Geordies.
And dating was something I never got the hang of.
Kris Hasson-Jones
submitted the following for your consideration:
>I'm not sure that I would expect the average 5th grade student to
>know what 'tesselate' meant, but I would expect a bright one to.
>That actually would make such a question a good one.
What you may be forgetting is that they are taught to use that word.
I remember when my younger son came home from school after being
taught the concept.
Wilson Heydt
Ah, yes... The "New Math" from the mid-60s. I remeber that only
too well (I hit it in high school, which meant that I didn't ahve
the set theory background that the high school level math assumed
you had, as if you'd come up all the way throguh the program).
Still, set theory has turned out to be useful to me.
>The problem with the experiments at Primary-school level was that the
>teachers were used to teaching arithmetic, and didn't realise they were
>teaching mathematics.
Which is why an elementary school teacher really could find it
useful to know rahter more math that algebra when teaching
'science'.
Wilson Heydt
Kris Hasson-Jones <sni...@pacifier.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 05:51:56 GMT, whh...@kithrup.com (Wilson Heydt)
>submitted the following for your consideration:
>
>>I'm not sure that I would expect the average 5th grade student to
>>know what 'tesselate' meant, but I would expect a bright one to.
>>That actually would make such a question a good one.
>
>What you may be forgetting is that they are taught to use that word.
>I remember when my younger son came home from school after being
>taught the concept.
Considering that I would have been in the 5th grade (which I was
only in for 2 weeks) in about 1960...no I don't recall that 5th
grade students are taught about tesselation. I probably picked it
up not too much later from reading _Scientific American_.
David Friedman
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
> dd...@daviddfriedman.com (David Friedman) writes:
> >
> > But parents, on the whole, care about their kids and have direct
> > feedback both on how happy the kids are and on what they are learning.
>
> Well, there are the individual instances where that is not true.
Yes. That's why I said "on the whole."
> And it's a defendable position that the current system (more or less)
> is the "least bad" way of handling lots of kids with parents that
> don't care.
I suppose it's possible, but I'm not sure I see any reason to believe
it's true. Such kids might get lucky and end up with a teacher who does
care--but then, that could happen with almost any system.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
David Friedman
Michael Kube-McDowell <roadw...@example.net> wrote:
> >Meanwhile, back in the real world, education is an endless money pit
> >in which we're paying more and more and getting less and less. For
> >all its faults, the No Child Left Behind Act just about doubled
> >federal funding to elementary and secondary schools.
>
> For 2003-2004, our local district received only about 1% of its budget from
> Washington.
That's an extreme case, but the general point is an important one that
people often miss. Most of the money for K-12 comes from state and local
governments, but most of the attention is focussed on the Federal
contribution. So if Federal funding goes down, there are loud complains
about decreased support for education--even if total spending per pupil
goes up. And, as in the case mentioned above, if Federal funding goes up
that is treated as if were a substantial increase in resources
available, even if, as in the budget you pointed to, total funding is
going down.
> Special ed is an area which has accounted
> for a lot of the 'more and more money' in recent decades.
On the budget you pointed at, special ed is less than ten percent of the
total. That's quite a lto of money, but I don't see how it can have
accounted for a lot of the "more and more money in recent decades."
I'm not sure how recent your recent decades are, but checking the
Statistical Abstract, total K-12 public school expenditure, in constant
dollars, was about 177 billion in 1970 (up from 87 billion in 1960!) and
344 billion in 1999. Total enrollment was about 46 million in 1970, 47
million in 1999. So from 1970 to 1999 expenditure per pupil, adjusted
for inflation, roughly doubled. I don't see how ten percent of the
current budget can explain much of that.
The increase would be still more striking if I started in 1960, but the
table I'm looking at doesn't have the enrollment figure for that year.
Kris Hasson-Jones
watched in amazement as electrons turned into magical things called
words:
>In article <5ljv80lqm0p6hn0bk...@4ax.com>,
I was thinking more in the context of "since it's a benchmark test for
5th graders, they probably teach the 5th graders that material." Not
that you, personally, learned it in the 5th grade.
Wilson Heydt
Kris Hasson-Jones <sni...@pacifier.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 16:56:36 GMT, whh...@kithrup.com (Wilson Heydt)
>watched in amazement as electrons turned into magical things called
>words:
>
>>In article <5ljv80lqm0p6hn0bk...@4ax.com>,
>>Kris Hasson-Jones <sni...@pacifier.com> wrote:
>>>On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 05:51:56 GMT, whh...@kithrup.com (Wilson Heydt)
>>>submitted the following for your consideration:
>>>
>>>>I'm not sure that I would expect the average 5th grade student to
>>>>know what 'tesselate' meant, but I would expect a bright one to.
>>>>That actually would make such a question a good one.
>>>
>>>What you may be forgetting is that they are taught to use that word.
>>>I remember when my younger son came home from school after being
>>>taught the concept.
>>
>>Considering that I would have been in the 5th grade (which I was
>>only in for 2 weeks) in about 1960...no I don't recall that 5th
>>grade students are taught about tesselation. I probably picked it
>>up not too much later from reading _Scientific American_.
>
>I was thinking more in the context of "since it's a benchmark test for
>5th graders, they probably teach the 5th graders that material." Not
>that you, personally, learned it in the 5th grade.
I see no problem with including test material that goes beyond what
one would expect to teach the testee, on the grounds that people
learn things outside the classroom *and* that a proper assessment
would require a range of questions running from ones that *everyone*
gets to ones that *nobody* gets. otherwise, you have no way to
determine the level of those that fall off either end of the shorter
scale.
An analogy would be a hotel. If all the rooms are full, the
management has no way of determining how many rooms they could have
sold if they had more rooms. It could be zero or it could be a very
large number. If a hotel has exactly one empty room, then they have
a precise data point on the demand for their rooms.
Marilee J. Layman
<j...@aracnet.com> wrote:
>Take the test yourself.
>
>http://www.ode.state.or.us/asmt/sampletests/
Are there a lot of Russians in Portland? Here, the language after
Spanish would be Vietnamese.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Marilee J. Layman
<j...@aracnet.com> wrote:
>Take the test yourself.
>
>http://www.ode.state.or.us/asmt/sampletests/
>
>On the fifth grade test, the question about "tesselate" was the one I
>didn't recognize.
I got them all right, which isn't surprising because there were
several where the answers were far enough apart I didn't even have to
calculate.
I watch "It's Academic" here on Saturdays and I routinely get more
right answers than the teens do.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Keith F. Lynch
> Joyce Reynolds-Ward <j...@aracnet.com> wrote:
>> Take the test yourself.
>> http://www.ode.state.or.us/asmt/sampletests/
Why are there more and more PDFs on the web? PDF is a proprietary
format. What happens if Adobe changes their terms & conditions,
giving everyone who has invested lots of time, money, and effort
into a PDF-filled website the choice between giving Adobe money and
shutting it down and starting over? This strikes me as a very poor
position for any webmaster to get himself into.
Plus, it's not compatible with regular shell accounts. And it takes
up a lot more space than an equivalent HTML file.
> Are there a lot of Russians in Portland? Here, the language after
> Spanish would be Vietnamese.
Here, it's English, then Spanish, then Korean. Or perhaps Spanish is
in first place, slightly ahead of English, I'm not sure.