SCHOOLING ISSUES:

The other night I heard a debate about schooling stuff. The debate was talking about should we “test” teachers on the job they are doing.
On the one hand they often seem to have their hands tied on the other hand they are tasked with the next generation/s coming up.

The point was made that the elementary students are being given too much homework and are unable to complete it just due to sheer volume.

I think the real problem with that is that they are being told to memorize not think.

My wife went to college to teach elementary age children, And while she was a student teacher in her final year she worked with a wonderful lady named Suzie. Suzie believed the way children ought to be taught is they ought to learn how to THINK, once they have that most of the stuff you try to teach them will be easy because they can figure it out.

Notably, to me, Suzie would approach Math that way. She taught the third grade and usually when a student came into her class that child was struggling with mathematics that a second grader of the 40’s would have found simplistic.

When they left her class the teachers who got these kids were always amazed that the kid/s they received from Suzie’s class were not only better at math then their counterparts from other schools, sometimes they were almost prepared to look at college level courses. BECAUSE THEY COULD THINK THE PROBLEMS THROUGH.

Kids always want to know why, you ever notice that? Just try talking to a two year old for 20 minutes and you will see what I mean. See the thing is “why” is about how things work what processes are involved to reach the point that you are at. If you tell a two year old you need to do something (“feed the fish”) the child will ask “why” you will tell him or her, (If we don’t feed the fish it might get sick and die.”) what does the child ask?… “Why” then you explain the next part, (“because everything living needs to eat so that they can use the food to make them strong and healthy.”) and this will go on and on until the child has logged in his or her head the whole process. Then that child can use THOUGHT to extrapolate other scenarios. (“the fish needs to eat to be strong and healthy and not die, the dog needs to be fed because if it is not then IT might get sick and die.”)
That is what learning is about, it isn’t that the child is taught to memorize though some might think that is the case (“child memorized the fact that living things need to eat.”) right? NO the child took that information and used it to think. If all the child had done was memorized you end up with LOTS of happy, FAT fish… and all the doggies are starving.

We need to teach kids to think, we need to show kids the way to be able to take things like math and figure out how to make it go. There is no “why” being taught because “why” is thinking, NOT memorizing. Sadly I have been a victim of the memorizing process and so to, I think, have most of our teachers.

And if you think about it the way people are taught is usually the way they will teach, so the system is feeding back on itself and the process of rote memorization is getting worse while the ability to think falls further behind.

Here is the “negative example” that proves my point.
I have a math learning disability, and I was further damaged by the public school’s insistence on the memorization form of education.(it never took, I think now that it wasn‘t a math problem it was memorization problems).
Later when I tried taking a college math class I was out of my depth, when I tried to address the problems I had (the teacher was confusing the whole class and couldn‘t put the math in a format that the students could understand, he expected thinking not memorization.) I went to the head of the math department who said, AND I QUOTE, “it is not the teacher’s job to teach it is the student’s job to learn.”

Well the first problem with that approach is that the students, ALL of the students, were taught to memorize NOT THINK, how can the student learn in that environment? In order to learn from experience you have to be able to think it through. You are setting the student/s up to fail.
Second of all if it is not the teacher’s job to teach but the student’s job to learn; Why am I, the student, having to pay out the money? Every other job I have ever had I got paid for doing the work, in school I am paying the teacher through class fees, so, conversely, what are they getting paid for? (if they’re not doing any work.)
Well I am outta here, until next time…