For today I have several thoughts and questions. These acts of cogitation are not sublime, they aren’t even that profound. To be honest, they are some thoughts which I have lying around (in the back of my mind) and decided I may as well put them out there (wherever ‘there’ is).
1. I wonder why Rhetoric and Logic (some VERY traditional mainstays of education!), which are now such valuable tools for modern students are not given the push they really needs for high school curricula. These skills were an important part of the Trivium, along with grammar even in Abelard’s day! There is so much persuasion and manipulation of ideas in all forms that I can’t see why these skills are not taught rigorously!
2. In this port-modern world, I often wonder what has happened to objectivity…I see lots of continuous movement towards several directions in our schools such as: validation of emotion over reason, presenting relativism to the degree that almost anything is as good as anything else, and in the greater society, the continuing lowering of standards in public speech, whether political, punditry or even presenting NEWS! Most of these things trickle down to the average classroom quickly enough. Considering how much is spoken about the value of role models, it seems that most people in the public eye (who are being carefully watched by children) are getting sloppier and sloppier in how they express themselves.
3. The problems we have in American schools are quite different from the problems seen in most other countries. While we are troubled with trying to get students to care, most other developed (and especially developing) countries have some far different ideas about having to motivate students. I have seen 7th graders in South Korea who spend almost every waking hour of their whole week involved in classes or in study (I have seen these 7th graders typing up and handing in 5+ page papers IN ENGLISH several times a week!). In their society and especially in their family structures middle school students already are quite aware of the duties and responsibilities. There are many countries which have students who are working this hard. Considering the fact that American English has become the international language of global business, it seems shameful that there are far better speakers and writers coming from schools in many parts of Asia than what are considered to be typical in this country.
Many European countries have completely different curricula depending upon where the student wants to go (the notion of college for everyone is not taken as a given there!). Discipline is a standard commodity in most schools (outside the USA), and I have seen student beatings in some foreign countries. This isn’t to advocate any position regarding how to teach students, but when looking at the American education industry, it would seem appropriate to examine what is working in other countries (and why…).
4. For students, this is an amazing example of how connected we all are: Pen spinning, a skill first developed in pre-war Japanese schools is now a skill observed in most countries where there are organized schools! I guess that this would be some evidentiary proof that there are boring school classes everywhere. All you need is a bored student, a BIC pen, and a little time…
5. I could mention that I am starting to get some feedback related to the Wiimote presentation systems. I now have a few comments from a software developer in Italy who has an annotation program to use on a computer screen (you would need to compile it in a Windows environment…), but it certainly looks good!
6. I saw a quite interesting letter to the editor in this morning’s New York Times. This idea that students know who the ‘good’ teachers are is one which bothered me over forty years ago. If you consider that most teachers are under very little real scrutiny on a daily basis, except for their students, this sort of begs that these sorts of perspectives should be looked at.
A May 3 letter has it right: parents do know which teachers are best. But the letter skates over another truth: students do, too. We are the ones in the classrooms every day; why do our voices not count?
I remember being involved with many similar, short, unfulfilling arguments with teachers when I was in high school. The only answer I was ever given (time after time was (roughly paraphrased) something to the fact that we were not objective enough (read #2 in this post for some more irony…).
