Some flava and response:
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| It's not us. It's you! |
"This is an underlying reason for student disengagement; high-performing students are forced to learn things that don’t challenge them." Challenges? You want challenges? Come to my classroom, little lambs. I'll show you nice and fast the paltriness of the standards to which you've been held so far. Say buh-bye to all those Hindenburg-sized grades you've been getting. Then you'll be "engaged." Ever considered, I dunno, plain old hard work -- you know, like your employer will expect of you in the real world?
"This process does for students what we have continually failed to do in education – allows them to be autonomous in pursuing their passions. Replacing examinations removes the pressure from a student to conform to what is being examined." In other words, here are the keys, inmates. Have fun "validating your passions." You don't need to know any of that "stuff" as long as you can finger paint. Again, your real world employer will appreciate this immensely. Tell them I said hi.
"In order to create an all-encompassing student experience, we must recognize the diversity in thought and learning that can be gained by including NGOs, private organizations and the public in the schooling process. It often unnerves people when they think of third party influences on schools, but the reality is that students are already exposed to everything from propaganda to partisan politics." Crowdsourcing education -- what could go wrong?Strel, help! Bring your best, cuz we need it.
The whole toilet-bowl full, twice around and tapered at both ends. [Full article.]
We were told this was the future of education in 1970. It didn't happen. With any luck, it still won't happen, like the severe food shortages forecast by Paul Ehrlich for 1975, or that nuclear war we were supposed to have in the '80s. It may still cause all manner of harm, and especially, anxiety. But thankfully, schools without grades have become a joke, as shown here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSjLiQxEZlM
Or that Moon base we were supposed to have in 2001, serviced by Pan Am, of course...
DeleteAnd where the hell is my flying car!?
DeleteFlying cars are just a bad idea in the first place. I certainly hope they don't become common within my lifetime. With the way people drive, I don't want them flying! And of course, unless someone can come up with something truly revolutionary such as anti-gravity, real flying cars will probably be about as loud as a jet engine. It's hard to argue with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
DeleteThe Onion's all over this one.
DeleteAnti-grav is right Frod. Although I loved 'The Jetsons' as a kid, I did remember that George and another guy collided, and the saucers stayed aloft while they yelled at each other. They didn't have the classic cartoon reaction of plummeting after they noticed there was nothing holding them up..
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DeleteForgot to add the sarcasm sign thingy.
DeleteI wish I had the time to dissect that, sentence by sentence. But then I'd have the time to take the dogs for an extra-long walk, to start reading Proust, to make long, slow love to my wife.... I'll just give it a C for its English and its otherwise trite, well-worn, unoriginal thinking. Of course the twerp was once a student school trustee, another increasingly fat edge of an even fatter wedge. Hey, kid: people have always been able to take control of their education--they used these things called books.
ReplyDeletePortfolios to replace exams has been tried, more or less, in Britain from 1984 to about 2000. It didn't work.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't stop our education department from pushing it as hard and often as they can.
DeleteIf my current crop of students are "challenged" when it producing a simple outline of their next major project using a model I provided for them and previewed for them (a task 18 out of 40 failed to do today), I'm guessing not a whole lot of learning will be taking place with this kind of model.
ReplyDeleteThe amount of time that students spend in school shouldn’t depend on their age but instead, on their ability to perform.
ReplyDeleteBy that criterion, some of my college students belong back in the 6th Grade.
If someone would be willing to give me a class full of students who would thrive under such a system, I'd be delighted to have them. Heck, I'd even take the few over the current limit the administration keeps trying to foist on us. However, even allowing for the stifling effect of most K-12 education (which I entirely admit), I'm not seeing a lot of students who could handle this system in my classroom. Perhaps they're all in their parents' basements creating startups in between taking free online classes. If so, more power to them. I'm all for recognizing the abilities of autodidacts; I just don't think successful autodidacts are nearly as common as some people (perhaps especially successful autodidacts*) assume.
ReplyDelete*In fact, I'd guess that people who tend to learn well on their own are the worst people to make education policy, and don't necessarily make good teachers, either. If anything, I'm a bit too independent of a learner to make a really good teacher myself, though I think I've learned reasonably well to compensate for the fact that my students are not, for the most part, younger versions of me. I suspect that's true of many college professors.