Fucking education! How does it work?

[ceptimus]

Peter Higgs (of Higgs boson fame) gives his views on why he would never have been employed by a university if the current system had been in place when he was young. Also his opinions about religion, TV, the internet and The Big Bang Theory.

Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system | Science | The Guardian

[BrotherMan]

I'm listening to the podcast of my local morning radio program. Last week the hosts held their 16th Campout for Hunger. During this week they have local celebrities, politicians and companies drop by, talk about some stuff and donate money or food to Philabundance. One of the locals who always shows up is M. Night Shyamalan. Usually they get him to talk about an upcoming movie or other things he's up to. This year he pimped his new book: I Got Schooled: The Unlikely Story of How a Moonlighting Movie Maker Learned the Five Keys to Closing America's Education Gap.

The idea for the book began way back when he was scouting locations for his movie The Happening. As he tells it, he visited one of the popular, prominent and successful schools in the Philadelphia area. Inside he found bright hallways, clean floors and walls and excited students that were happy to be in school (and even happier to see him). After that visit he and his crew drove a few minutes away to another school. This one was pretty much the polar opposite: poorly lit, shuffling and surly students walking in the halls; a place where no one was happy to be there.

This dichotomy sent him on an adventure to try and understand the differences and what, if anything, could be done about it. There were things that he found that didn't surprise him: Racism is the dark heart at the center of the education gap. Not just an overt racism but the kind I call industrial racism (by which, I mean institutional racism). The racism that's so inbred in a system that it's difficult to extricate and eradicate easily. And there were answers that surprised him and shifted his thinking.

He didn't get a chance to really elaborate what the five points are, partly because of time and partly because he didn't want to be brief with them; these points deserved a more thorough discussion than just bullet points in an interview. I thought some folken here would like to know about this if they wanted to read something by somebody. I just hope it's not him being a quack about some pet subject. (It doesn't seem like it as he was talking with smrt people about something they were already researching, he's just a front man putting it into book form.)

[Ensign Steve]

Spoiler alert, HE WAS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME!

[BrotherMan]

[The Lone Ranger]

He has never been tempted to buy a television, but was persuaded to watch The Big Bang Theory last year, and said he wasn't impressed.

Interestingly, the subject of The Big Bang Theory came up recently at a faculty gathering. People in the Humanities generally praised the show for being funny and "realistic." People in the Sciences ... didn't. As one of my colleagues, a chemist, said, "I've yet to meet a single working scientist who says they think that show is either funny or accurate."

Put me in the latter category. The few episodes I've seen have left me ... profoundly unimpressed.

[Dragar]

Back when I was a grad student, we all loved it. I am still fond of it.

Perhaps it's life sciences versus physical sciences...

(I wouldn't call it realistic, but a lot of the references and jokes are genuinely things you'd only fully understand if you knew a good chunk of maths/physics/geeky boardgames/video games. That makes it this unusual combination of having completely ridiculous characters that you are laughing at, yet empathising with at the same time.)

[lisarea]

I think maybe someone poasted something about this place before maybe:

Sudbury Valley School: Is Alternative Education Right for My Kids? | New Republic

This is very similar to a couple of the schools I went to as a kid, and it wasn't perfect then, either, but I'd be really interested to see how many of those kids spend all day every day playing video games. I'm pretty sure that's what we would have done if it were an option.

But also PS to other old people: Quit whining about cursive. It's not essential anymore. Young people don't use it unless you make them, because they don't need it. It's OK. It died a peaceful and natural death from obsolescence.

Give it a few years and maybe it'll come back as some sort of hipsterism or something, but just shut up about it now.

[Janet]

Oh, gods, you're probably right. I can see hipster cursive right now and it looks horrible.

[BrotherMan]

YEAH? BUT WHEN THE SINGULARITY HITS CURSIVE WILL BE THE ONLY WAY WE CAN COMMUNICATE WITHOUT THE COMPUTERS KNOWING WHAT WE'RE SAYING! WHAT THEN HUH?

[lisarea]

[The Lone Ranger]

My Advanced Human A&P class just let out. They had their first lab practical today, and their first lecture exam was on Monday. One of the students wasn't happy about the results.

As she was walking out, she was loudly complaining to one of her companions. One of her comments was, "I knew I should have taken this course on the Main Campus; I would have 4.0'ed it easy."



Part of me is still feeling a little ticked off at that, though in a weird sort of way, I suppose it was a compliment -- not that she'd intended it that way. First, I very-much doubt that my Main Campus colleague who teaches this course is any easier on her students than I am on mine. After all, we've had numerous discussions regarding what we expect of our students, and why. So there's that. But much more irritating is the underlying attitude -- the attitude that good grades aren't earned, but something you get just by showing up.

Of course, the fact that plenty of our colleagues in other departments (and apparently, some in our own department) apparently do give students good grades just for showing up -- and/or give them "study guides" which explicitly spell out exactly what will be on the tests* -- only encourages this terrible attitude.

*I wish I was kidding about this, or at least exaggerating. I'm not. One of my colleagues, a Chemist, got ahold of one of the "Study Guides" given out by another of our colleagues. This so-called "Study Guide" wasn't an outline showing the key concepts and how they relate. Oh, no. Nor was it a list of terms and concepts that students would be expected to understand.

It was a straightforward list of definitions, with the notation: "This is what will be on the exam." And to hammer home the point, we took a look at one of the exams from that class. It consisted of a random (as far as we could tell) sampling of questions drawn directly from the "Study Guide." The "questions" were word-for-word repeats of the definitions given in the "Study Guide," so all the student had to do was remember the definition and fill in the missing word.

In short, to "earn" a 4.0 in the class, you literally didn't have to read the textbook, do any of the homework, or even come to class. Ever. All you needed to do was get a copy of the "Study Guide" and memorize the definitions given, and you'd get a perfect score on each exam. (The "Study Guides" are sold in the campus bookstore.)




Anyway, back to today. After I'd had a few moments to think about it, I reminded myself: "You know, if I have a reputation for forcing students to actually earn good grades, then good. I can live with that. These guys are going to be nurses, and EMTs, and physicians' assistants, and the like. As far as I'm concerned they'd damn well better know their stuff if they expect to pass my classes."

***

I really do think that my job is both important and necessary. And most of the time, I honestly enjoy it.

Most of the time.


-- Michael



ETA: Students often ask at the beginning of each semester if I'm going to give them a "Study Guide." I give them plenty of guidance on how to study, and even what to study, to some extent. But I do not give "Study Guides."

I've developed a standard spiel that I give at the beginning of each semester, to discourage the question. "No, I do not give out Study Guides. And here's why: When someone asks, 'Can we have a Study Guide?', what I hear is: 'I don't care about learning this stuff; I just want to get a good grade.' Well, I do care whether or not you learn this stuff, and if you expect to get a good grade in this class, you will. So no, there will be no Study Guides."

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

My Advanced Human A&P class

So I was wondering, is "Advanced Human" an entry criterion, or the outcome of the class?

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

ETA: Students often ask at the beginning of each semester if I'm going to give them a "Study Guide." I give them plenty of guidance on how to study, and even what to study, to some extent. But I do not give "Study Guides."

I've developed a standard spiel that I give at the beginning of each semester, to discourage the question. "No, I do not give out Study Guides. And here's why: When someone asks, 'Can we have a Study Guide?', what I hear is: 'I don't care about learning this stuff; I just want to get a good grade.' Well, I do care whether or not you learn this stuff, and if you expect to get a good grade in this class, you will. So no, there will be no Study Guides."

Students -

Just join FF and read all TLR's posts. There's your study guide.

[Nullifidian]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Students -

Just join FF and read all TLR's posts. There's your study guide.

But his students can't find the forum because nobody links to us.

[lisarea]

A couple of really good pieces I've seen recently about math education:

5-Year-Olds Can Learn Calculus - Luba Vangelova - The Atlantic

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/s...zet/three.html

I especially like the second one, because it emphasizes the importance of the humanities for understanding any topic. And because obviously, the way we teach math is legitimately traumatic to a lot of people, to the point that even smart people's brains just shut down as soon as they see something that looks mathlike.

I've probably told this story before, maybe even in this thrad, but my brother and I were both, a few years apart, accused of cheating in algebra class because the teacher honestly didn't believe that you could do math any other way than simply by memorizing the formulas from math books. He wasn't just saying that the assignment was to solve the assigned problems using the formulas he taught. He genuinely seemed to think that the only way to solve a math problem was to memorize a specific formula and just apply it, and if you came up with the answer any other way, you obviously just copied it from somewhere and then made up the intermediary steps. This was in high school AP math classes. And that is fucked the fuck up.

[Dingfod]

"Show your work," I was admonished in high school math classes. On that simple of shit? Math came easy for me, many problems that required four or five steps for some was just plain obvious to me. I guess I was combining the steps in my head without thinking of it.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Dingfod

"Show your work," I was admonished in high school math classes. On that simple of shit? Math came easy for me, many problems that required four or five steps for some was just plain obvious to me. I guess I was combining the steps in my head without thinking of it.

I'm having the same problem with my grandson in 2nd grade. He would explain how he solved a problem with "I used Subtraction" or something like that, I finally got to ask the teacher and she said she was looking for a bit more elaboration than that, as I expected. Math was easy for me too, and sometimes I just knew the answer, but now I can see the value of understanding what the actual process was. Understanding the basic processes built the foundation for the more complex operations.

I found that you don't really understand something till you can explain it to someone else. That is why I really enjoyed geometry when I got to explain how a proof "in the book" was wrong. The "Book Proof" had missed several steps that I had seen the necessity of, for the proof.

[lisarea]

I can even see that sort of making sense in the event that an answer is wrong and you want to see where things went sideways. But yeah, sitting around writing out simple operations, or requiring you to use one specific formula is stupid.

I don't know if they're still doing it that way, though.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by lisarea

I especially like the second one, because it emphasizes the importance of the humanities for understanding any topic. And because obviously, the way we teach math is legitimately traumatic to a lot of people, to the point that even smart people's brains just shut down as soon as they see something that looks mathlike.

I've probably told this story before, maybe even in this thrad, but my brother and I were both, a few years apart, accused of cheating in algebra class because the teacher honestly didn't believe that you could do math any other way than simply by memorizing the formulas from math books. He wasn't just saying that the assignment was to solve the assigned problems using the formulas he taught. He genuinely seemed to think that the only way to solve a math problem was to memorize a specific formula and just apply it, and if you came up with the answer any other way, you obviously just copied it from somewhere and then made up the intermediary steps. This was in high school AP math classes. And that is fucked the fuck up.

Secondary teachers can be quite dogmatic that way, that's one of the reasons I quit teaching, and had problems with my daughters teachers. I like the idea of teaching the child to think and then give them the tables to memorize as they see the need. I was always bored with arithmetic where you just memorized useless information, without knowing the reason why you needed to know it. I had a similar problem with the piano, except the teacher neither explained why I should practice scales or even asking me to practice them. Scales and arpeggios would have been just what I needed for the genera of music I preferred.

[Dingfod]

Welsh teacher called the police on students who she heard were planning not to smile for a class photo.

[lisarea]

The premise of the second article was that kids should focus more on their language skills and don't even need math at all until about 7th grade; and that teaching math to young kids was actually damaging their abilities to understand problems. So you end up with kids who can't solve this pole problem, from the paper:

"Here is a wooden pole that is stuck in the mud at the bottom of a pond. There is some water above the mud and part of the pole sticks up into the air. One-half of the pole is in the mud; 2/3 of the rest is in the water; and one foot is sticking out into the air. Now, how long is the pole?"

That paper was written in 1936, so maybe things have changed since.

Nope. Even today, people post things like this on the internet all the time.

Anyone who is able to read those sentences and do the simple arithmetic involved should understand both of those things instantly, but for some reason, a lot of people don't. And not because they're stupid or not 'math inclined' or whatever. The only explanation that makes any sense at all is that they've been so traumatized by their schooling that their brains shut down when they see something that looks like it might be math.

So anyways, I find that second paper's ideas pretty intriguing. All you really need to solve problems at that level, and a few levels up from that at least, is the ability to comprehend and then articulate the problem with natural language. So it actually makes sense to me that maybe, up to a certain point, kids should be doing a lot more reading and writing, and maybe shouldn't be worrying about math as a discrete topic until they're a lot older.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by Dingfod

Welsh teacher called the police on students who she heard were planning not to smile for a class photo.

That'd make a great class photo, though, with a bunch of cops holding guns to their heads ordering them to smile.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by lisarea

Sorry that pole is not long enough, I wouldn't touch that problem with a 10' pole.

[Dingfod]

Why is there a wooden pole stuck in the mud at the bottom of the pond?

[BrotherMan]

Well, see, it all started with this hole in the bottom of the sea...