That irrepressible engineer, Philip Greenspun has a novel idea on how to save secondary education (High School) in the US:
As evidenced by terrible average scores on standardized tests covering very basic material, the average high school student is not learning science, math, or computer programming to any perceptible degree.ÃÂ And realistically why would we expect a kid to be motivated to learn these things? [...]ÃÂThis reminds me of my mom's stories about high school. All of her teachers were consipiring against the student body to actually learn stuff. Anything taught in an English class at 10am was expected to be correct in an essay question on a History quiz at 12pm. By the time I attended one of the best public high schools in Philadelphia a few years later, expectations, curricula and performance were all decidedly lower. As a history teacher at my high school, my mom couldn't get away with enforcing the same the high standards that were expected of her years before.The combination of a high degree of an abstraction and the apparent ability of people to reach the highest echelons of society in perfect ignorance of these subjects makes it tough for a lot of kids to hit the books.
Why not make it all concrete?ÃÂ Suppose that starting in 8th grade the kids were told "Each of you is going to design and build your own bicycle over the next 4 years.ÃÂ To help you do a better job, you're going to learn some math, some physics, and how to use computers to simulate and model."
Pity this idea won't go anywhere, at least in the US... Pity this one engineer's vision for saving education doesn't address liberal arts or civic responsibility, either...
Re:Unfortunately
ziggy on 2003-05-21T02:04:13
That's a great solution if you can swing it, but it won't scale. If I had kids, it's what I'd want to do. But that feels like avoiding the problem, not fixing it.Re:Unfortunately
pudge on 2003-05-21T02:23:38
But I cannot fix the problem of the public schools, and I won't sacrifice my children to a broken school system for the sake of the school system. That feels like putting the system above of my children, and it is absolutely the wrong thing to do.Re:Unfortunately
ziggy on 2003-05-21T15:42:06
Fixing public schools is orthogonal to sending your children there.Sadly, I don't think public schools will be fixed, regardless of parental involvement, because of that great American pasttime: Apathy. If anyone is guilty of not trying to fix public schools, it's me: I honestly don't care about the public school system where I live, and I live across the street from a high school. I remember how broken the system was 20 years ago, and I know that it's gotten much worse.
Re:Unfortunately
pudge on 2003-05-21T15:54:34
A broken public school means I will, under no circumstances, send my children there. They are directly related.
And it has little to do with apathy, it has to do with lack of power. Even the experts don't know how to fix the problems. And when people do come up with ideas -- for example, some districts are trying out all-boys and all-girls classes, which lead directly to increased performance from the overwhelming majority of students -- the ACLU decides that it is unconstitutional.
Maybe the ACLU is right, though I don't think so, but it isn't the point. The point is that the problems are so big, so difficult, so pervasive, that it isn't about apathy, it is about lack of power. We really are powerless to fix the problems. They really are too big. And if we are not, if they are not, it sure seems that way.
I will continue to do what I can to help fix the public schools. I have been involved in various ways in my community. But until they get fixed, there is no chance my children will attend them, because it would be morally wrong of me to allow it. It would be a shirking of my parental responsibility.
Re:Unfortunately
ziggy on 2003-05-21T20:36:06
Exactly my point. The issues are orthogonal, yet intertwined.A broken public school means I will, under no circumstances, send my children there. [...] I will continue to do what I can to help fix the public schools.:-)
