quote:I don't think that school is a game or that life is revenge of the nerds or that soldiers and firefighters should decide public policy and that academics do not live in the "real" world.
I know that's what you think. But you're wrong. --
KQ: Hmm...I can believe that. I think my statement is the equivelent to "Hold on, it will get better." It does get better. I probably say that because I DIDN'T play the game at all and didn't even try, and I know I lost opportunities because of it. Not as many I should have, maybe, but some.
[ January 17, 2005, 04:33 PM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
Posts: 1163 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
Irami, did you seriously mean science is the least important subject taught in school or did I misunderstand?
Edit: And yes, I think this school works really well for my kid. My point as far as peers helping peers is that that "help" can come in the form of simple presence, and that many children will choose to help more if they are simply asked.
posted
Because if one has to go, science is the least concerned with virtue. There are stories of good people who can't explain the chemical makeup of anything or think that plate tectonics is cookware, but they know the bible and I think they live good lives.
posted
Personally I'd place History and Science on the exact same moral plane. So I'd say if you're going to shorten stuff to an absolute minimum and be fair you've got to go: Math, English, PE
AJ
(Incidentally, the Math, English, PE trifecta was the one my mother ran our school days by.)
posted
I'm just trying to figure out how you -could- eliminate science from the elementary school curriculum, especially at an age where children are deeply curious about the world around them.
Science has a way of making itself impossible to ignore .
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posted
Why PE? It's not the school's responsibility to keep kids from getting fat. The three rs will do nicely.
On a different subject, I want to object to the apparent belief, a few pages back, that the loss of the Bible in schools also means the loss of moral instruction - 'the good bits'. That is an incredibly arrogant attitude for Christians to take, and a major reason I think religion whould be abolished entirely.
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posted
And I'm not willing to concede that science does not concern itself with virtue btw. That comment just stirred up too much in me and I'm separating the wheat from the chaff.
Banna, I loved Ranger Rick .
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posted
Math is not concerned with virtue. Neither is P.E., really. English is only insamuch as it allows people to read works which are concerned with virtue.
Making moral choices is not just about having the right character. It's also about having as much information about the problem as possible. We cannot decide which action to take if we do not know what the consequences will be. How can we decide whether embryonic stem cell research is moral if we lack the scientific skills to understand it?
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posted
I had zero science lessons in grades six and seven, and one - count 'em - one science lesson in grade eight.
Every time I think about it, I find it odd that my whole class seems to have passed grade nine science.
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posted
lma and Eaquae Legit, I totally hear what you're saying - I overheard one of the first year students at Oxford discussing the same thing in almost the same terms - she said "Britain is the only English speaking country that uses the phrase 'too clever by half.'" Talking to you guys I'm not sure that's so, but it does worry me that kids are encouraged to hide their light under a bushel when they have so much to give. I don't know if I did the right thing with my very bright student: she gave an unbelievably well thought out and informed answer to a tough question, and the rest of the class applauded her (yay! I like classes like that where everyone supports each other) and I said to them straight up "You should be proud to have this lady in your class." I think they are, and I think that academic gifts are more valued by the school system that I work in than the one I was taught in. But I want to be the sort of teacher that values every kid, whatever their talents or personality - and I think that's no more than they deserve.
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posted
Math/PE would be second. These are all in the core curriculum, and I think that they should all be in the core curriculum, but I don't think they are all equal with respect to developing good, knowledgable people at the elementary level.
posted
I honestly think I could live with never learning science, and only the basics of maths.
Wait, I pretty much did. High school science was (luckily) pretty much non-existant, and math was (supposedly) easier than the curriculum. Yay Kama's high school.
Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
If we eliminate science in the classroom, then we will halt technological development. And yes, that would be immoral. It would be wrong to hamstring our ability to protect ourselves from new diseases. It would be wrong to continue to burn fossil fuels when we could develop a way to use the sun's energy directly and cleanly.
What's the point of learning to be moral when we all die from something we could have prevented?
Edit: Okay, I think I misinterpreted what you said. You obviously don't want to eliminate science or math or anything else. But my question stands: why is understanding the world on a lower plane than understanding literature?
posted
Guess that depends how you define the basics.
I need maths for my finances. I need science to know that the lightbulb is not magic. I think what I learned in elementary school (i.e. grades 1 through 8 here) was pretty much what I ever needed to know.
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quote:If we eliminate science in the classroom, then we will halt technological development.
Oh, yes, I agree completely. What I'm saying is that there should be a point where you can decide you've learned everything you need to know, and move on to things that really interest you. It should be that way with most subjects, not just science.
I don't exactly know where that point should be. But college is too late, IMO.
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posted
Yeah, a little more specialization in high school would be nice. However, the universities want to see a broad education, so it wouldn't be feasible to change it now.
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Irami, earlier you said stupid and gifted are empirical terms, and now you are saying gifted is morally active. I think you are being disrespectful of my common sense.
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posted
I kind of tried to explore the point with my question, but since it's being ignored, let me actually explicitly state it and see what people think, because I think it's a point that hasn't been explored.
The problem isn't that there are gifted classes, so much as that these classes are closed to people who are supposedly not gifted. Is it really safe to assume that the tests that the state administers can really know ahead of time how well a student will do in a given class or, more importantly, how that class will effect that student and encourage them to, perhaps, become gifted?
Let me put it another way, do you think that kids in so-called special ed classes should not be able to take regular classes even if their test scores suck, as long as they don't hold the rest of the other kids back?
'Yeah, but they will.'
This is an assumption. A very large one, I think. Just like it's an assumption to say that 'low achievers' can't rise to an occasion.
Am I saying that standards are wrong and that testing should be thrown out the window? No.
What I am saying is that, perhaps, the reality is that the state can't predict things with 100% accuracy, that it's better to err on the side of the individual in this case. The principle should be that the state is not the final determiner of whether or not an individual is worthy to be in a particular class, or with other people, the individual is.
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posted
I find it interesting that the existence of gifted classes is being attacked both by the pro-group and pro-individual mentalities.
To back up to my statement that public school systems need to accomodate the gifted in order to compete with private schools, there is a degree to which the existence of the gifted program in the school is helping the rest of the school. It is analogous to the matter in which some have been saying gifted class members can help out regular class members.
I know that as a student, I became very concerned with the idea of a magnet school where gifted students (gifted in science, in this case) were removed from the other schools and all put in one super sciency school. And yet I had watched "Fame" and thought it was great that all the arty students could go to that school.
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posted
I had a big problem with that when I wanted to opt in and out of GATE as I pleased. They wanted to tell me that if I didn't want to be in it one year, I couldn't be in it the next year, and once I'd been in it that year, I couldn't be let out the next year if I didn't want to. Bureaucracies...
The end solution was to enroll me and not force me to go to things I didn't want to go to. A pain in the rear, especially considering that, as I mentioned before, the program was mostly crap.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Irami, I think it is funny...you are the only person referring to any kids as "stupid", but here you are saying that it is (or should be) the gifted kids who should have to sacrifice to help their "stupid" classmates.
I don't think so, and neither do most educators, thank God.
I make less money than you do....why shouldn't you have to give me part of what you make, because there is obviously a difference in status reflected in one's income, and that makes me less important in the eyes of society...
Do we require sports teams to take on the kids who are not coordinated enough to play well, or who lack the size to be effective?
Why should I have to help the other kids at the things I am good at when all they do is use their skills and size to intimidate and abuse me?
I think that if most kids cared they would learn a lot more, and all the peer counseling and teaching isn't going to motivate those kids to learn better....I believe that if it does anything it would do the opposite. It makes kids resentful of those who already know the subjects, and causes them to label themselves "stupid" even though no one else is calling them that.
Sort of like you did, perhaps.
My sister is a very hands-on type of learner, and she barely graduated high school with a c average. I always knew she was very smart, but she was very social and hated the academic subjects.
When she went to college after a taking a few years off she made the Deans list at her Technical College...and out of all the people she told about making the list for the first time in her life, I was the only person who didn't express surprise.
She learned really well in a different environment, after maturing for a few years, and now she makes more than twice what I do at a job she loves....she is an admission officer at that same college.
quote: Ela,
quote:Kwea, I think you hit the nail on the head as to why my kids, and others like them, would end up doing more than their fair share of work on group projects.
I don't know if this has to be a problem. I'm also not sure that any project in elementary school is so important that we should be so eager to break our communal ties, for sake of a baking soda volcano or a mobile. I'm also not talking about set projects as much as correcting classwork and reading groups.
So when I was held back from learning by lazy classmates doing exactaly what you are suggesting it wasn't a problem? Why? Because I am fairly smart I should have to spend my time babysitting a bunch of kids who are at least a full grade behind me in knowledge?
How is putting me in a group of other kids who are as smart as I am and as eager to learn as I am cutting any ties with anyone? Most of those kids I was in class with had no real ties to me, nor did we ever develop any other than mutual distaste. I didn't like them because they were in to doing all sorts of things I didn't care about....some were into sports, some in to cars....and I was in to music, reading, and science.
How does letting the "normal" speed kids leech off of the "smart" ones help them at all. Most of them don't WANT to learn, all they want is a passing grade. If they can get that without working a lot of them will.
I think that forcing the smarter kids to play teacher is a huge mistake, at least if it is done to the point were it is taking resources and time from the smarter kids potential class time. I would have been glad to read ALL of the classics in high school, and to have been tested on them. I could have done it in a semester, to be honest.
Instead I took a Science Fiction class, with the worst teacher I had ever had, just so I could graduate. That in addition to College Prep English, the same semester.
I literally slept through both.
quote: And you seem to be advocating depriving "gifted" children of the chance to maximize their learning if such deprivation will help children you refer to as "stupid."
I wouldn't phrase it that way, but yep. I think it will make for a richer classroom. I'm not a maximizing for sake of maximizing type of guy.
On the other hand I am in favor of doing the opposite...I think that removing the more advanced kids from the classrooms, at least for a few hours each day, allows BOTH groups to more along faster. The teachers are not being interrupted by the one or two kids who care ever 5 seconds, so the normal kids get a better education and the teachers can spend more time with each student making sure they understand. The more advanced kids get the one on one attention to encourage them to keep on trying and to challenge themselves. They also get the specific knowledge they need to excel in the subjects that need specific skill sets....science and math.
But the kids are still in the same classes for part of the day, improving their social skills and intermingling.
Mack, I did feel I was entitled to the best education possible, and I didn't care if I was asking questions that the rest of the class thought was unnecessary. I didn't care that some of them had a problem with me because I was curious and wanted to learn....and a lot of them did.
I didn't assume I was the best, or that the "jocks" were stupid, but at that point I was SO tired..tired of pretending I was not smart, that I was the same as the rest of the class, that I just went all out in the subjects I liked....and to hell with the rest of them.
I got college credit too, something very few high school kids did, so I guess that the last two years of school were worth the trouble.
Just thing what I could have done if I had felt free to do that every year.
posted
I have a unique perspective on gifted and special ed programs, because I was in the gifted program growing, and all four of my siblings were in special ed classes ranging from a younger brother who was a little behind in his reading ability to my step brother who is mildly retarded and didn't learn how to read at any level until just this year at age 16.
I was only actually in a gifted program for two years, fifth and sixth grade, but I would say that those were the two best school years of my life. However third grade also stands out as a good year for me. I started out the year with the rest of the class, however as it became clear to the teacher that I wasn't learning anything (I'd already figured out long division and memorized multiplication tables) she broke the class up into sub groups depending on level. After instructing the main class while they were working on an assignment, she'd pull us aside and instruct us for a few minutes in something more difficult. She also had me work with the kids who were struggling. I think it worked out well. I made friends with the kids I was tutoring and played with them at recess. By the end of the school year, I was staying in at recess so that the teacher could give me individual assignments to work on at home, and spending all of my class time working with other struggling students. I enjoyed it because it was interesting to learn new things and I got to help others.
It was harder for me at home, because my older brother had a lot of difficulty with school, but whenever I tried to help him he was very offended. I did feel guilty for being smarter than him, but there was no way to help him without hurting him. Being able to help others at school was a good thing. The problem was that they learned the teachers learned the wrong lesson on how to deal with me.
So the next year in fourth grade, since I was doing all of my lessons by the end of third grade essentially during my recess alone, the fourth grade teacher decided to let me work alone again, but this time she made work alone during class time. So I spent over three quarters of my class time sitting at a table working out of a book. By the end of that school year I was nearly failing because I wasn't turning in assignments. There was no motivation, there was no interaction, the book wasn't really letting me work at my own pace, because I'd have to answer every problem in every chapter. Well after I understood a concept, I'd have another forty or so problems or questions to answer on it. My mom met with my teacher about my potentially failing the class, and I promised to do all the overdue work, so I passed, but the experience was pretty bad overall.
The next year I went to the gifted program. Like in my third grade class, the teacher split kids up according to ability in certain subjects like math. So I was able to work with other kids for a change, but the most important lesson I learned in the gifted program was humility. For the first time in my life I met people my age who were on my level, or in some cases above it. I had taken it for granted that I knew more than anyone else; I probably drove a few teachers crazy with correcting them. The other nice thing about the gifted program is that my teacher tried to teach us on a more comprehensive level. Instead of testing us to see if we had read the material, she was asking us to explain what it meant. I really learned more that year than I have in any other grade college included. More importantly though, I was excited about school again. I felt like I was doing something worthwhile, where the previous year, I felt like I was a burden to the classroom, and isolated from my peers.
In middle school, they had a gifted block of history, writing, and reading (which were three separate classes). Then they put me in a couple mainstream classes and a math class two years above my grade. The gifted block was interesting, and I learned how to work in groups without having to do all the work myself. I was still the primary motivator, but I had learned how to assign others tasks that fit their skills, do my own part, and be available to help the others if they were struggling. In my mainstream classes, I literally brought a book to class and read it. I didn't even try to hide it under the desk. If the teacher asked me a question I was able to answer it with no problem. In the math class I found that my classmates were impressed with me. They were enough older than me that they couldn't be my friends, but they often treated me with a respect that I didn't really deserve. Remembering the kids in the gifted program who were smarter than me helped prevent me from becoming arrogant.
Having that respect was important to me though, along with the approval of the teachers. My home life was pretty bad. My parents constantly held me up as an example to my other siblings. My older brother often times would beat on me when my parents were around to prove that he was still physically better than me. At the same time, if I brought home a good report card, my father would tell me that it was just what he expected, while he became very excited if my brother passed a test with a C. If I didn't have school and a feeling that I was worthwhile there, I probably would have killed myself. As it was it was a close call. I finally decided that there had to be a reason that I was good at school, otherwise my life wouldn't make sense. That feeling that I had something I had to do in order to justify my existence really has been a driving force. We later moved to a new school district without a gifted program, but I forced myself to keep learning more outside school. The few years that I was in the program really made a difference in how I saw myself, and in how I related with other people in general. For the first time I didn't have to make friends with the teacher to find someone interested in what I was interested in, and close friends are something no one can live without. Anyway I realize this after most of the debate, but I couldn't help but put in a bit of my perspective.
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Names have power. 'Science', like 'faith' and 'values', is used today in a lot of contexts where it doesn't belong, because it has considerable prestige among the people. (Rightly so!) When someone calls astrology a science, would you react? Now, the soft sciences are clearly much closer to physics than to astrology on the spectrum of agreement-with-reality. Nevertheless, until there are some real quantised models out there, they are not real sicence.
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posted
They ARE real science, but they are still in the beginning of their life as such. I imagne if you looked at some of the early models of the world you wouldn't reconize them, but they ewre the beginnig of the physical sciences we have now, and without them (or without people taking them seriously in the beginnig) we wouldn;t have anything to build upon.
According to the scientific method, there is no shame in disproving a theory...at least you have excluded a possibility.
posted
They might legitimately be referred to as protosciences, as opposed to pseudosciences like astrology, yes.
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I went back and reread your posts, and I'm sorry for misreading them the first time.
What kind of support do you think your daughter would have needed that would have been more impressive than the gate program, and would have released some of the anxiety that led her to purposely misspell words? _________
quote:Irami, earlier you said stupid and gifted are empirical terms, and now you are saying gifted is morally active. I think you are being disrespectful of my common sense.
I don't see the problem. One claim is about the quality of a student's intellect, and that claim is made upon the results of some objective test. It's an empirical inference with moral connotations.
The word "gifted" seems to connote that someone is different in a morally relevant way, their responsibilities are different.
I completely agree. All through elementary, middle, and high school I found that many kids in my class didn't care about learning - they just cared about passing their classes. And usually, instead of working for their grades, they just leeched off the "smart" kids. They'd do things like fool around during class (or even skip class entirely) and then photocopy people's notes the night before the test. This was especially prevalent during my senior year of high school, when there were literally two people taking notes for almost the entire class.
On the subject of group projects - the idea that the "smart" people in the group can teach the others sounds good in theory, but in my experience it doesn't work in practice. I often found that the others in my group hadn't been listening in class and thus didn't even have the basic knowledge required to do the project. I would have had to reteach almost everything the teacher had said in class, and there simply wasn't enough time for that when we were working under a deadline. That's why I usually ended up doing most of the project myself.
Don't get me wrong, I thinnk that in the younger groups the social interactions between peers is very important, and most kids at that age are willing to learn most of the time. Some forms of peer teaching are great, as long as it isn't the only form of teaching that goes on.
I also get pissed when people refer to the kids in the mainstream classes as dumb, or stupid. Kids know some classmates learn faster than others, but no one...not teachers, not the kids peers...should be refering to kids as dumb or stupid. They can still learn all of it, it just takes them longer sometimes.
That is what a lot of my sisters teachers did, and look how wrong they were about her.
I was placed in an advanced 5/6th grade class when I was in 5 th grade, and I had to be pulled out of it because I was givng myself an ulcer...at age 11! I couldn't hang with the other kids at the math stuff, so I was having nightmares.
I had to be placed in a "mainstream" class after 3 o months, and I got a lot of crap about it. From my classmates, mostly, but even some of the adults were unkind.
So I withdrew, and read my books, and learned a lot of things on my own. Then when the tests came, I outscored every one of the "gifted" kids in every subject...except math.
My math block meant I had limits on how much science I could take, and that changed my life permanatly. I had always love science, and was really good at it...but I couldn't even take most of the advanced classes without the advanced math classes.
Not every kid is good at everything. To this day I consistantly score extremely well on most tests without even trying, but I have problems with advanced math. Hell, anything algebreic is enough to make me sweat. In basic math I am slightly about average, and I did OK in geometry.....but without algebra you can't really do anything.
I even failed College Algebra....twice. That was YEARS ago, but I still remember how stupid I felt when I took those classes.
I am going back to school here if Jenni and I don't move this winter, and guess what I am going to take? I am going to get a tutor if I need to, but I am not going to let this subject beat me ever again.
quote:I am going back to school here if Jenni and I don't move this winter, and guess what I am going to take? [Big Grin] I am going to get a tutor if I need to, but I am not going to let this subject beat me ever again. [Mad]
Good for you, Kwea!
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posted
Why are we saying that gifted kids are the ones who want to learn, and average kids are the ones that don't? I've noticed the exact opposite in many, many cases.
Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
That isn't what I am saying...I like to learn, and was one of the "gifted" ones, but I had major problems with math throughout my school career.
But if a gifted kid wants to learn, why should he be forced to creep along with everyone else, and have to share in the burden of teaching kids who are only going to resent him for knowing the material?
I think that a balance is necessary so that everyone gets the chance to learn at a speed that is right for them. Since we can't afford a tutor for every shild, gifted programs are the only sensible program that has proven it can make a difference in their schooling.
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quote: If I weren't there, I'd never be smart enough for Hatrack.
Jonathan, not true. If you like to discuss ideas, and are able to communicate what you want to say, you're smart enough for Hatrack. A gifted class may help you develop those skills, but there's no reason why not being in it would keep you from Hatrack. Or any other discussion board.
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posted
The thing is, all kids would benefit greatly from a smaller class with a teacher paying them more attention.
I really like an idea of a program which helps a kid develop, and makes school fun and interesting. What I don't like is that it's being limited to the smartest kids.
Notice that everyone who's enjoyed their gifted classes did so not just because they were being taught more challenging and academically advanced things. They enjoyed it, because the classes were smaller and because they had fun. We're denying this to average kids.
Posts: 5700 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
It's possible the gifted kids were bored in their classes and lost interest in learning. Now that I am in college, it is beginning to happen to me. Gifted students will be very inattentive in classes which don't challenge them, but tend to be highly engaged in classes which do.
Maybe students should be segregated on the basis of interest rather than ability. And those who are not interested are probably like that for a reason, so perhaps teaching styles that are better geared to their learning styles should be attempted.
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