quote:from rivka: And they usually do that, right? Like they did with ACG, SMART, TEACH . . . oh, wait . . .
Well if you're going to argue against hypotheticals like that, there isn't much point in trying is there?
You mean, using actual examples? Those are all the new college grants that have come out of Congress in the past 5 years. Not one included funding for schools to administer the programs (Pell does, for example), and each has a considerable burden of oversight. It does appear to be a trend.
(Personally, I think we'd all be better off if all three programs were repealed and the money rolled into increasing Pell, but don't get me started.)
I guess my point was that, if reality doesn't end up matching my hypothetical, then I'm unlikely to support it the same way, and thus arguing the unlikelihood of said hypothetical is sort of superflous. That's sort of the magic of hypotheticals.
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quote:Liz - you had to take all of those courses to graduate? Really? How did you fit in academic subjects? Why in the world would your school require driver's ed?
Maybe I just went to a very academically-motivated school district, but all of the students at my high school were too busy trying to fit in English, Social Science/History, Math, Science, Foreign Language, Fine Art, and then two more academic courses (often a second art, a second science course, or a class on something like philosophy or international law) to take courses like "family living" or shop. In fact, I know we didn't have home ec, driver's ed, or a shop class when I attended.
You know, I went home & thought about it (and asked my husband), and I think driver's ed was probably an elective. We got a reduction on insurance if we took it, so *my* parents required it. (No reduction for good grades, iirc.) I don't know of anyone who didn't take it, but I don't think it was required.
Yes, you went to a very academically motivated high school. (About 30% of my graduating class went on to 2- or 4-year colleges.) We didn't have "extra" academic electives like you describe. There were only 3 AP courses offered, but a whole host of home/ career/ agriculture classes. Perfectly appropriate, because that's the population the school was serving. (As a side note, it didn't have any kind of negative impact on my getting into colleges--or more importantly, my education. The school and my teachers bent over backwards to help me and other students go as far as we could. For one thing, we could leave school to take courses as the local university.)
If community service becomes a requirement of a district, I think it usually gets folded in with the social studies curriculum, rather than being an extra course.
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We had trimesters in my school, and for two years (I think 7th and 8th grades) we were required to take one tri each of art, home ec, and shop. The shop was wood shop and metal shop one year, and drafting, silk screening, and I think electricity the second year. We didn't have any art required after that, and when you say Fine Art was required for you, Jhai, I'm not sure how that's any more an academic subject than "family living" would be. (We did not have a family living course, but we did learn to balance a checkbook and make a budget in one of the home ec courses.)
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Woodshop, drafting, and "production" was in 7th grade, metalshop, silkscreening & electricity was in 8th. 7th grade home-ec was cooking and "relationships," 8th grade was sewing and sex.
Assuming they didn't change it in the two years between when I was in Jr. High and when ElJay was.
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They did. Drafting was definitely with silkscreening and electricity, because I had the somewhat rotund old guy for all of those and the lanky old guy for the others.
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quote:Tres, English & mathematics courses are required because they're fundamental academic subjects, not just because they're life skills. I truly doubt that you believe that our schools are in the business of teaching life skills, and I hope you don't want them to be. The majority of life skills are not suited to learning in a classroom environment, and are almost certainly best left to the families and communities at large.
Why then is learning "fundamental academic skills" important - if not for their usefulness in life?
Or, to put it differently, if we were to tell students that they are learning things that are fundamentally important for academics but will not serve them in any way in real life, why should they care about learning them? The vast majority of kids will not grow up and have a career in academia.
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I think schools ARE in the business of teaching important life skills, and are partners with parents and families in that endeavor. I do think there are many life skills that aren't best taught in classrooms, which is why schools need to go beyond the classroom in many cases, with programs such as community service or extracurriculars. But I also think that among the most important life skills are reading, writing, math, and more generally, learning how and why to learn.
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Liz, I think it's great that your high school offered courses that would best suit the students' needs, while also giving them a good education. My high school had a bunch of internship-like classes where you spent part of the week learning things like computer programming, and part of the week working for free at a local tech start-up or lab (yes, this was Silicon Valley) applying those skills. A lot of the students used this opportunity as a chance to get a head start on figuring out a major or as a way to secure a summer job in a field they were interested in. However, like I said to begin with, I don't think that these sorts of classes should be requirements for graduation.
ElJay, by "fine arts" I meant things like pottery, painting, band, chorus, orchestra, and the like. I think of these things as more academic than "life skill" type courses because I believe that, along with things like philosophy or history, they're very important things to study, but they don't give any concrete skills that one might use in day-to-day life. "Life skill" subjects, on the other hand, can also be quite important to learn, but they are quite specific skills that one uses to perform a particular task. Driver's ed teaches you to drive a car, home ec (I think) teaches you how to do things like cook & sew & budget. Great things to know; not necessarily things that you must study in order to be considered "educated" at either a high school or college level.
This is all IMO, of course. I wouldn't think someone improperly formally educated if they can't sew on a button, but I will think their formal education lacking if they don't have a decent grasp on world history or on how science studies things. If a person turns 18 and can't take care of themselves in day-to-day living, then I blame the parents and family, not the schools. If they don't know much about literature or math, then the schools are in for their fair share of the blame.
Tres, I'll reply to you when I get a breather at work.
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I agree with your second to last paragraph, but I don't agree that what you list as fine arts are more academic than home ec or shop. I wouldn't think someone improperly formally educated if they've never touched clay, paint, or an instrument. But I think those classes are valuable and help people grow into a well-rounded individual. Just like home ec and shop do.
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quote:What exactly distinguishes between "life skill" and "academic" requirements? I was always under the impression that the reason English and Math were required in high school or college was because reading, writing, and math were important life skills.
My impression is that "life skills" is sort of a euphemism for a less abstract curriculum, intended for students with lower academic capabilities. Which is a euphemism for a dumbed down curriculum. In any case, a life skills curriculum would include english and math, just not the abstract stuff that we expect of an average student.
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quote:Senior year we had a government class, but I don't see how it's not an academic class - I mean, it basically covered the history of the U.S. political system and how government policy worked.
In my school, the requirement was that you had to take a government class one semester and an economics class the next semester, at some point in your high school career. Likewise for...geeze, what was it...'Life Management' and something else. Anyway. Why do we insist our children know something about our political system?
quote: This is all IMO, of course. I wouldn't think someone improperly formally educated if they can't sew on a button, but I will think their formal education lacking if they don't have a decent grasp on world history or on how science studies things. If a person turns 18 and can't take care of themselves in day-to-day living, then I blame the parents and family, not the schools. If they don't know much about literature or math, then the schools are in for their fair share of the blame.
My question for you is, "Why do we insist schools teach these things to our children?" For what purpose? Why do we spend such vast amounts of time and money on this matter, exactly? While certainly an education is a good thing in and of itself, that's definitely not the only reason. Why is it important for our children to grow up and know how to count, read, and to have some basic knowledge of their own history?
My opinion is that at least one of the reasons we do this is that so they will be better citizens in our society when they're older. Would you agree or disagree with that statement, Jhai?
And if you agree, why shouldn't the idea of serving one's community also be something we teach? And if you disagree, why do you disagree?
(Note that 'we shouldn't force kids to serve their communities' isn't really a very valid answer - in my opinion, at least - because as I've said before, we force `em to do lots of things.)
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Fine arts, etc. classes would certainly be considered "academic" classes if what we mean by "academic" is "college prep."
Posts: 834 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: Why then is learning "fundamental academic skills" important - if not for their usefulness in life?
Or, to put it differently, if we were to tell students that they are learning things that are fundamentally important for academics but will not serve them in any way in real life, why should they care about learning them? The vast majority of kids will not grow up and have a career in academia.
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I think schools ARE in the business of teaching important life skills, and are partners with parents and families in that endeavor. I do think there are many life skills that aren't best taught in classrooms, which is why schools need to go beyond the classroom in many cases, with programs such as community service or extracurriculars. But I also think that among the most important life skills are reading, writing, math, and more generally, learning how and why to learn.
In my mind, the subjects that are academic are those that make us better people. The things we learn in academic classes are often extremely useful in our future lives, but that sort of utility is secondary. Sometimes schools teach things, such as spelling, which is not, in & of itself, a thing that makes us better people - but it is a necessary step to learning how to communicate through writing & literature, which is the actual goal. There may be students who aren't as capable, academically, to progress beyond those intermediate skills to the more advanced ones, which are really the goal - but we should give every kid a chance.
The vast majority of things studied in philosophy, for instance, are not at all useful in day-to-day life. But I think it would be an extremely good thing if students studied at least some philosophy. Or, to take a more concrete example from your list, math. At least at my high school, you were required to take three years of "high-school level" math if you were an academically average student - which essentially amounts to Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II. Now, I don't know how long it's been since you were near an Algebra II text, but at least half the stuff in the typical course are things that no one outside of a quantitative job will ever need to know or use in day-to-day life, and few with those sorts of jobs will either. Learning it for these students has no practical value, especially since by 11th grade there are at least some students who know that they won't be going into quantitative jobs. Nonetheless, learning it is a good thing, because mathematics forces the mind to stretch in a way the fine arts or literature or even science don't.
I think the question of how to motivate students to learn any particular material is beyond this discussion, and likely beyond my particular knowledge set.
quote:I agree with your second to last paragraph, but I don't agree that what you list as fine arts are more academic than home ec or shop. I wouldn't think someone improperly formally educated if they've never touched clay, paint, or an instrument. But I think those classes are valuable and help people grow into a well-rounded individual. Just like home ec and shop do.
I guess we'll have to disagree with what it means to be formally educated, then. And, for the record, I have never said that "life skills" courses are not valuable, or that they don't help people grow into well-rounded individuals. Just that they shouldn't be required courses for an academic degree.
quote:My impression is that "life skills" is sort of a euphemism for a less abstract curriculum, intended for students with lower academic capabilities. Which is a euphemism for a dumbed down curriculum. In any case, a life skills curriculum would include english and math, just not the abstract stuff that we expect of an average student.
I do agree that "life skills" courses are less abstract than other courses, but that's not the distinction I'm trying to make. And I certainly don't believe that they're "dumbed-down" or intended only for students with lower academic capabilities - one of my smartest high school friends took all of the electronic & computer related courses my high school offered, then dropped ot, got his GED, and started his own tech company. I'm not sure what became of it, as I've lost touch with him since high school, but I have no doubt he landed on his feet one way or another. I've never heard of a life skills curriculum, so I'm not sure what that would or would not include.
Anyways, I've been thinking about it overnight, and I think the major difference between life skills courses and other courses is that life skill courses are teaching, essentially, about a trade. And, while I have nothing against learning about or practicing trades, they aren't things that are permanently helpful in the way that what you learn from academic courses is.
Shop class is today's blacksmith class. Typing is only useful as long as we use keyboards. If I had been required to take a class in balancing a checkbook, that would have been wasted time because I've never needed to balance a checkbook - I rarely write checks, and when I do, I have software that can balance anything I want balanced. I suspect in 10 or 20 years I'll never need to write another check in my life. In 5th grade we had a class that taught us how to use some basic computer programs - some word processor and a database software, I think. Those hours in the computer lab were completely wasted, since those programs no longer exist.
I don't think we should be requiring students to put their precious educational hours towards things that are trades which might fade as our society changes. Better to stick with the things that give long-term value.
quote:Why do we insist our children know something about our political system?
For the same reason we require them to learn about history and the social sciences - after all political science is one of the social sciences. And, for the record, I don't think it's absolutely necessary to have a government class - the things studied there could easily be wrapped into another course.
quote:My question for you is, "Why do we insist schools teach these things to our children?" For what purpose? Why do we spend such vast amounts of time and money on this matter, exactly? While certainly an education is a good thing in and of itself, that's definitely not the only reason. Why is it important for our children to grow up and know how to count, read, and to have some basic knowledge of their own history?
My opinion is that at least one of the reasons we do this is that so they will be better citizens in our society when they're older. Would you agree or disagree with that statement, Jhai?
And if you agree, why shouldn't the idea of serving one's community also be something we teach? And if you disagree, why do you disagree?
(Note that 'we shouldn't force kids to serve their communities' isn't really a very valid answer - in my opinion, at least - because as I've said before, we force `em to do lots of things.)
I believe I've answered the first four questions already. I disagree with the idea that we teach our children so that they will be better citizens in our society when they're older - that's certainly a nice benefit of what we teach, but if that were our true goal, then the educational system should be restructured tremendously. It could be a secondary goal, but, if so, it doesn't trump the first goal of education so that that the students know more & are better people for it.
I think the idea of serving one's community is something that could be taught as a worthwhile thing, dependent on many conditions. I don't think that students should be forced to serve the community by the federal government, for the reasons I've previously stated in this thread. At the very minimum, I think it interferes with the primary goal of schools, which is to learn academics. There's a limited number of things any school can do, and that one doesn't rank all that high on my list of "things I'd like schools to be teaching."
Liz, fine arts are academic because they expand the mind, and that expansion - along with the learning - is always something a person can have with them during his life. While there can be an art to the trades - woodworking & shop & sewing - they aren't typically taught in that manner, and they aren't typically taught for that reason.
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quote:In my mind, the subjects that are academic are those that make us better people. The things we learn in academic classes are often extremely useful in our future lives, but that sort of utility is secondary. Sometimes schools teach things, such as spelling, which is not, in & of itself, a thing that makes us better people - but it is a necessary step to learning how to communicate through writing & literature, which is the actual goal.
Understanding the value of community service makes us better people. Being educated in physical fitness makes us better people. Learning about how to be healthy makes us better people. If those are life skills subjects, then I don't think "making us better people" can be the criteria that separates academic from life skills education.
quote:Now, I don't know how long it's been since you were near an Algebra II text, but at least half the stuff in the typical course are things that no one outside of a quantitative job will ever need to know or use in day-to-day life, and few with those sorts of jobs will either. Learning it for these students has no practical value, especially since by 11th grade there are at least some students who know that they won't be going into quantitative jobs. Nonetheless, learning it is a good thing, because mathematics forces the mind to stretch in a way the fine arts or literature or even science don't.
I think possibly where we differ is on what we mean by "useful" or "practical". A lot of people seem to equate "practical" with "allowing one to reach material or career goals", which I consider to be a very mistaken understanding of utility. I consider something "practical" insofar as it enhances one's life or the world around us. Getting a job is practical, but stretching your mind is also practical. Making money is practical, but making a friend is also practical. In contrast, "impractical" might be something like getting a job you don't like that isn't very productive for the world to purchase things that don't bring you or anyone else much happiness. This is how I understand practicality and usefulness.
So, with that in mind, I think that algebra II is practical insofar as it does stretch the mind. And because it is practical in that way, we ask kids to learn it. Similarly, I think community service learning is practical insofar as it helps students understand the value and significance of service. And because it is practical in that way, it would also make sense to ask kids to learn about it. Both of these are useful - precisely because they make kids better, more capable people, which in turn will improve their lives and the world in the future.
quote:The vast majority of things studied in philosophy, for instance, are not at all useful in day-to-day life.
I use stuff I learned from my philosophy classes almost daily. Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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"For the same reason we require them to learn about history and the social sciences - after all political science is one of the social sciences. And, for the record, I don't think it's absolutely necessary to have a government class - the things studied there could easily be wrapped into another course."
I don't agree with that. If you want to have a basic understanding of how government works, it needs to be its own course. As it stands now, most high school history classes don't even get passed the 1930s. It is pretty awful, I think, that most young Americans don't know hardly anything about events after the Great Depression. It isn't surprising people don't appreciate their country when they don't know anything about its government, geography, or history.
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Tres, I think half our disagreement lies in definitions. I completely agree with you that stretching one's mind can be considered practical - in that it is of great use, and a good thing to do. However, I don't think that's the immediate association people get with the word "practical", and thus, I tend to not use it that way in order to better communicate with others. I'm using the word practical in the same manner that my husband's mother did when she told him to major in something practical, like pre-med or economics, rather than in English lit & religious studies like he did.
I've also, you might have noticed, been putting "life skills" in quotation marks (altho I stopped halfway through my last post because I didn't want to look pretentious) to signify that this was a special kind of life skill - namely the ones used in day-to-day life. And, by "day-to-day life" I mean the "fill up the car with gas, curse at the commute while listening to NPR, work, get home, try to figure out what's for dinner, walk the dogs, throw some clothes in the laundry, catch up with the news, talk to the family about the day" part of life. Not the part where you ponder the meaning of justice and try to figure out which life goal you want to tackle next.
I didn't think that these things needed to be spelled out, but, clearly, I was wrong.
To answer your point about "making us better people", again, I thought I was clear that it was in a mental/mind-stretching kind of way. I don't think that schools should try to impart other sorts of things to their students, frankly. Learning about forgiveness, love, devotion, belief, teamwork, and so forth all make us better people, but I sure as hell don't want the schools teaching those subjects.
Edit: Mercury, I didn't say anything about rolling a government class into a U.S. History class, and I'm not sure where you got that idea. I'd be more in favor of going with a senior-year capstone-type course that focused on connecting lessons learned in other classes to modern discourse, with a large emphasis on rhetoric, politics, economics, and evaluating arguments and statistics.
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Most people suggest rolling into history when they make that argument. I apologize for assuming that was where you were going. I still think it requires a class of its own. Understanding the workings of our system of government is barely even possible in a single class as it is, at least in my limited experience.
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quote:I do agree that "life skills" courses are less abstract than other courses, but that's not the distinction I'm trying to make. And I certainly don't believe that they're "dumbed-down" or intended only for students with lower academic capabilities - one of my smartest high school friends took all of the electronic & computer related courses my high school offered, then dropped ot, got his GED, and started his own tech company.
Of course, words have different meanings depending on use, but I'd refer to electronic & computer related courses as vocational, not life skills. Home Ec would be a life skills course, I guess, but for special ed kids I've heard the term "life skills" when what they are doing is teaching kids to tie their shoes or how to purchase something at a store.
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