Eben Eliason wrote: > For what it's worth, I would be careful to portray "the low-achievers" > and "the brightest" as opposites. As I note below, I frequently find > that some of the brightest are also some of the low-achievers, due to > certain aspects of the educational system. This doesn't change your > point, of course, which is noted. It simply means that the way we go > about raising the overall educational level might not be as > straightforward as many think.
What is important, higher overall education level ALWAYS benefits society given other equal conditions, and lower overall educational level ALWAYS hurts it. Ex #1: The above mentioned Republicans (or to be more precise, Social Conservatives that in US are represented by Republican Party) who are mostly supported by either rich or ignorant. Ex #2: Modern industrial development that contrary to the popular belief goes well in any social and economic system as long as skills and education level that society provides are sufficient to develop technology locally (such as all parts of "China" -- PRC, ROC and Hong Kong). Social development follows the economy that in its turn follows education, science and technology, what, of course, depends on social development. Ex #3: Countries that made their bet on developing specific and narrow industries and skills oriented entirely for export (Mexican industry in the past, current Indian remote technical support and software development) only to lose demand after greener/cheaper pastures become available to foreign importers of their services. Real education is not a machine tool operator manual, or an English textbook and a phone script. >> * What has gone wrong that teaching to the test so often ends up being seen >> as being in conflict with teaching to the skills ? To the extent that often >> teaching to the skills is neglected ? Why there ARE tests that are not a part of the teaching process in the first place? US turns everything into some kind of adversarial system where government acts as both public schools' owner and adversary that challenges schools with tests instead of co-operating with them, thus basically not trusting its own employees to do their job, and doing it through students for whom both government and teachers are supposed to be figures of authority. From student's point of view it's about the same as a customer going into a bank only to become an unwilling participant in a fire or bank robbery drill every month. > I don't think this is the fundamental problem; teaching to the test > can happily coexist with teaching to the skills, in theory. In > practice, I feel that this is seldom the case, because the "teaching" > doesn't happen in a manner which actually imparts true understanding > of the concepts. That is, teaching to the skills frequently manifests > itself as memorizing to the skills, which might provide short term > results (in the form of good test scores and further funding), without > providing any long term educational benefits. The means are put > towards the wrong ends (the test scores, not the learning). When tests exist to evaluate students' progress, and minimum curriculum is already predetermined, tests are not a problem at all. When "minimum curriculum" only exists disguised as "standardized tests" and the fundamental relationship between the entity that determines the curriculum and the entity that teaches it is adversarial, tests serve a completely different purpose -- evaluating school in the eyes of the government. If government was confident that schools' actions are always directed at teaching the curriculum, the need for government tests would be eliminated, however thanks to US federal/states/local split schools have to serve three masters -- two with money, one with local political influence (and occasionally with saddled dinosaurs). >> * What has gone wrong that the claim "it is extremely important for society >> that we raise the educational level of the low achievers" is so often used >> as the justification for "a system which does not do much for the brightest" >> as if this the only way things can possibly be ? > > This is another big problem. Clearly in the top-down > teach-as-the-source-of-knowledge model, more attention is often given > to those who need help. Understandably so. One might even argue that > this is expected, since the bright kids are not only capable of doing > the required work, but are often self-empowered learners capable of > going beyond that which is required. In practice (at least in my > experience), two things get in the way. First, I have seen the bright > ones who "get it" actively discouraged from going above and beyond by > teachers, who desire to keep everyone at the same level. Second, some > of the bright ones who lack a real challenge often lack (or lose) the > desire to put in any further effort at all; it's boring. Not to mention, without a learning process that actually challenges students and requires application of their abilities, schools often descend into being a truly toxic social environments for both categories -- idle hands, and all. > It seems like a relatively hard problem to address with the strict > teacher/student model, but seems it could naturally be resolved in an > environment which encourages peer collaboration, since a) the teacher > can depend on the bright students to assist in helping those who > require a little more time to grasp the concepts (and let's face it, > you can learn just as much by teaching) and b) because the bright > students can work together to challenge each other as well. I disagree. Most kids, bright or otherwise, are completely unprepared for the role of teachers, and they should not be forced into it. To improve education one has to make it interesting (what is not the same as entertaining), so students have positive motivation to learn. Fear of anything that a school can impose on a student will never overcome fear of social ostracism that a well-performing student will face in the environment where students find learning to be an unnecessary burden imposed by adult oppressors, even if the student independently finds the subject of study and learning process to be interesting. -- Alex _______________________________________________ Olpc-open mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open
