[Edu-sig] Re: Switching Gears (long)

[Dethe Elza]

Re: Teachers

I grew up travelling a lot, changing schools, always being the outsider.  I
got to compare a lot of school systems (including private, public,
priviledged suburban, inner city, Catholic, and alternative) and a lot of
teachers.  I had a fair number of really excellent teachers over the years.
One math teacher who taught me a lot more than math, for instance.  I also
had teachers who varied from incompetent to apathetic to downright hostile
(one gym teacher who tried to get in physical confrontations with the kids,
and I'm talking 4th-5th graders).  A good teacher can make a big difference.

Unfortunately, the system is flawed on so many levels.  Even with great
teachers, school was very traumatic.  By changing schools so often I was
always the outsider, which may have been part of it.  Part of was that I
didn't clique well.  Part of it was the essential meaningless of what we
were forced to do.  Here's an example of how bad it got:
One day I woke up with a spontaeous nosebleed and my mom let me stay home
from school.  For the next couple of weeks I spent part of the morning
punching myself in the nose to try (unsuccessfully) to recreate it.

But I survived the system (the alternative schools helped) and even went on
to finish a bachelor's degree and a master's.  Now I have two kids, a girl
(Mina) age 4, and a boy (Azlen) age 6 months.  My wife (Daniela) and I have
discussed what to do if they don't like school--we won't force them to go.
So far it's not a problem.  Mina is in daycare and Montessori, and loves it.
She is very social and needs to be around other kids, and to have lots of
structured learning time (like most kids if allowed, she soaks up learning
like a sponge).  She starts kindergarten in the fall, and we've found a very
nice K-3 primary school.  There are only 100 kids, and the principal, who
showed us around, seemed to know them all by name.

So Mina will be going to school.  But I still consider her homeschooled.
Daniela spent three years home with Mina and it shows--she can read more
than 30 words, write her name, and do simple math in her head (as long as it
involves Fig Newtons).  She's going to school for social skills -- like
surviving bad teachers.  We'll try to cushion the blow of the real world,
but we have to expose her to it eventually.  If she absolutely hates school,
she can stay home and get a better education and we'll find other paths for
socializing, but I don't think that will happen.  She's got a very different
personality than me, very extroverted, so to her school will just be a
bigger audience for her, and she'll probably continue to do additional
"academic" learning at home.  After all, she has two over-educated parents.

What I'm trying to say, is that the schools can't and won't be the solution.
School, especially in the US, is designed to keep kids off the streets as
long as possible, train them to sit stil and endure boredom for hours at a
time to prepare them for the work force, and to follow meaningless
instructions without question or creativity.  And, on the scale of education
institutions in the US, that's how they *have* to be.

The criticisms that are levelled against the schools/teachers/curriculum are
the same now as they were 100 years ago.  Literally.  In that time there
have been any number of suggestions for improving the situation, any number
of attempts to change.  Some really great ideas.  But the system has proven
to be very resillient to significant change.  The best hope for schools is
small, localized change -- that can work and is working in many places.  But
trying to change the way math is taught, in toto, is tilting at a very big
windmill.

There have always been some great teachers, who rise above the system.  Even
great (usually very small) schools.  And there will continue to be good
reasons for kids to go to school.  The three Rs just might not be among
them.

--Dethe