|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
I encountered this word in the spelling bee words I posted today. I expected to share most of the opinions expressed by the author, but became progressively disenchanted therewith. I think he grossly underestimates the ability and knowledge of our young people, however correctly he diagnoses their faults.
Please comment.
[urlwww.sspx.ca/Angelus/2002_February/Verbicide.htm[/url]
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Here's a clickable link, Dr. Bill: http://www.sspx.ca/Angelus/2002_February/Verbicide.htmI think the author is unnecessarily acrimonious, but that his points are valid overall. In speaking of the loss of vocabulary, he said, This is a national tragedy that goes virtually unnoticed in the media. . I was thinking, "Good grief--it's the media that's caused it!", but then I saw that he gets to that later. I also thought this was really interesting--and I happen to agree with it: our linguistic decline is aided and abetted by academics... They have propounded the idea that everything is relative, hence largely inconsequential, and that the use of language is primarily an exercise in power, hence to be devalued. They have taught, in other words, a pseudo-intellectual contempt for clarity, careful argument, and felicitous expression. Being scholars of their word they also write without clarity, argument, and felicity. Er, I need to qualify my statement, and say that I agree that academics have certainly contributed to the decline of knowledge of the English language. Can't say I've had experience of the rest of his statement. But I had teachers, even in college, who couldn't spell--and textbooks with incorrect spelling! And in my opinion, that is just unconscionable (the books, that is).
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Somehow I am confident that the generation he is moaning about will achieve every bit as much as his did.
Grandfathers have always moaned bout the hopeless adolescents, and expected an educational apocalypse. And the growth of knowledge and academic standards have kept right on climbing. I'll bet that one student he moaned and foamed about will be quite successful, and in his turn be worried about the adolescents he teaches.
He needs a much large sampling to make a vaild judgment.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
I agree with almost every word he said, except that I disagree with almost all of his suggestions to improve the situation. I think that his analysis is incomplete and that it drives him to improper (and unworkable) remedies.
First a note about his student who got 800 on the verbal portion of the SAT. There are three levels (at least) of vocabulary. I don't know what the technical name for these are, so I'll just invent some and explain. Each person has SOME of their vocabulary from each category.
1. Enumerated vocabulary. This is the vocabulary of the person who knows just lists of words, but may not know the definitions of them. An example would include many people who are very good at scrabble (or it's online knockoff, literati). One of the Scrabble sites says outright that most professional players consider knowing definitions to be a waste of brainspace - and those literati elites with whom I've discussed the matter have agreed without exception. You know that X is a word, but have no idea what it means. This is a small portion of my vocabulary, because I forget them if I don't play they often enough. These include words like ULU, QAT, SUQ, and numerous others. For the stronger players this includes very big words to which many do not know the meanings.
2. Partially functional vocabulary. You know that X is a word, you have a vague notion of its meaning - and you could possibly infer an approximate meaning to the word if you saw it in context; however, you would not normally use the word. (I have a very large chunk of my own vocabulary in this category.)
3. Functional vocabulary. This refers to words that one knows extremely well and which one CAN and DOES use correctly or nearly correctly with ease and with volition. I like to think that I have a high functional vocabulary, but most of my vocab is probably in category 2. Still, I have gradually improved over the years - mainly by forcing myself to use words and broadening my reading habits. I'm not too hard myself, as I suspect that type 2 constitutes the bulk of most people's vocabularies. (In fact, despite two decades of roaming the net, before I came here, I'd met a very few individuals whose functional vocabularies constituted the bulk of their knowledge.)
I've met lots of people who "knew" amazing amounts of words, but could barely construct an intelligible sentence. The other day I was playing scrabble with someone who played ARANEID but didn't know that IM is not a word. (This is a recognized sign of cheating, but I hate making accusations like that, as the conclusion is not a necessary inference.) In the literati boards, I'm a mediocre and undistinguished player. And yet, while I can listen to (i.e. "read") the conversation of the high red elites, I'm continually staggered by their near universal poor grasp and usage of language. Anyone with whom they disagree is a moron. Anyone who doesn't know what they know is an idiot. If someone says something unpleasant, he is told to STFU. One can listen the entire evening and amid thousands of sentences, glean perhaps, on a very luck night, a dozen or so sentences that have any redeeming value. After a few short minutes in the lounge area, I can fell my head becoming lighter as the IQ points seep from my skull.
On the good side: while the net provides people with the ability to communicate without thinking, it also makes it easier to communicate better - for those who have the discipline. We can lament all we like, but the best way I know to encourage others to follow this path is to set a good example. It won't persuade everyone. But if a few younger people can be persuaded, it's a worthwhile investment (of time and effort).
k
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
I think his arguments are contentious at best, pretentious for the most part, and lack the very qualities he claims to aspire to: in short he demonstrates "a pseudo-intellectual contempt for clarity, careful argument, and felicitous expression." Nearly every one of his points is based on mere assertion (I choose this word with consummate care) and he uses these to frequently extrapolate complete straw men that he then proceeds to knock down ~ for example, his suggestion that the descriptivist school of language studies is of a conspiratorial group which propounded the idea that everything is relative, hence largely inconsequential, and that the use of language is primarily an exercise in power, hence to be devalued. All of my readings and studies in this area points in quite another direction: clarity of understanding, of the kind enjoined by George Orwell indeed, is enhanced by the ability to describe and deconstruct the intellectual and social baggage carried in particular forms and applications of language. To be able to recognise the exercise of prestige varieties of English, for example, does not devalue that variety: it adds to our understanding of when that variety may be appropriate and when not at all appropriate.
To take only one other example at random, because I do not think his arguments even merit full study...
Excise "uh...like...uh" from most teenage conversations, and the effect is like sticking a pin into a balloon. says our self-appointed expert in the complete analysis of the world. Wrong: it is a matter of highly researched fact that the largest single body of language creativity tends to occur in this group in most communities. Doubtless in his self-obsessed little bubble it is unlikely to have occurred to him to consider that in talking to him most teenagers are unlikely to wish to communicate much at all, so his personal experience of speech habits in this community are probably without external meaning.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156
old hand
|
|
old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156 |
You gotta wonder, if use of language is "continutally declining", how it ever got to [the supposedly] wonderful state it started at in the first place. Don't you have to come up before you can come down?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
Anything is better than working today, so I'll bite.
Like TFF, I agree with most of the author's initial exposition, although, again like TFF, I disagree with at least the first few of his "solutions". Rather than suppress the media of choice today, it should be used to further language. However, I'm not sure how to go about that.
I was also left wondering about his final two sentences. His introduction of environmental catastrophe, unexplained, as a reason to pursue the improvement of the use of language is rather, um untidy!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
[rant]
Bill, there are two other reasons for the decline of language in the U.S. which have been discussed in various places and the blame has been squarely placed on school boards and school administrators, the very people who ought to be encouraging better knowledge and use of language.
1. The adoption of standardized tests at various levels of schooling. These are supposed to show how well schools are doing and presumably if students are consistently doing poorly, corrective measures will be taken. What happens in practice is that no teachers and no schools want to look bad, so there has grown up the practice of "teaching to the test". The entire curriculum in the years in which students will take the test is geared almost 100% to the test. Everything else goes to the wall. Which means the students miss out on being exposed to a lot of literature and language instruction that they need. Also, in many places there is now a standardized test that every student must pass to graduate from high school. This also results in teaching to the test, since low graduation rates make the school and its teachers look bad.
2. "Dumbing down" and political correctness. Many school systems have reconstructed their curricula because too many students can't manage the old ones and they are failing. So the way to fix this is to make it easier to pass by requiring less. Then there are the school boards and administrators who have to make fixes which are motivated by PC. This means editing even classic works of literature (Huckleberry Finn is the favorite target for this in places where it hasn't been banned entirely) to avoid passages or words which might give offense to some students or their parents or pastors. Since there are plenty of people who will take offense at lots of expressions, this leads to a lot of bowdlerizing and censorship and, in extreme cases, to outright book banning. To me, all this is simply a form of book burning. I'd like to burn a lot of EdDs, PHDs, MATs, and other academic types who have no qualifications in the subject matter that the schools are supposed to teach and no idea of how to really get kids to learn. Also the pinheads on schoolboards who have no educational qualifications whatever but want to meddle in school policy and impose their own prejudices.
[/rant]
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
Well Bob, you're obviously hot under the collar about this. How about cooling down by putting on an old Etonian collar?  http://makeashorterlink.com/?T6EA12F75
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Thanks for that article, CK; I can't say that I'm glad to know that other countries also dumb down their tests, but I am relieved to know that we're not the only ones. Does anyone know whether the Japanese schoolchildren are still being pushed to actually learn things, as ours no longer are, really?
Speaking of hot under the collar: don't get me started on dumbing-down. On the one hand, I can sympathize with school administrators who face a shortening of funds and resources if the pupils perform poorly; BUT--when the alternative is to produce a whole generation of people who can't do basic math or write understandably, and who are ignorant re: a lot of geography and history...dammit. I'm not meaning to imply that this is due to widespread failure by teachers; on the contrary, I have witnessed only a fraction of the things they are required to do, and I can tell you, there's not enough money on the earth to pay me to be one. I haven't studied this "No Child Left Behind" program at all, but I do agree with the premise that the title implies: if some pupils can come out well-learned, like our own inimitable Jazzo, than ALL ought to, if they are capable of it. I sure don't have the answers, but I think a real, lasting improvement would have to involve not only the government from the top level down, but society as well: people tend to live up to, or down to, what's expected of them. And as long as students know they can "get by" with maybe only 50% effort, that's all they're going to put out. As I told the principal and some other parents at my son's school last year, raising expectations would...I KNOW it would...raise test scores overall. Not for 100% of the students, no, but for the majority, yes.
Back to the teachers: I can't imagine what it must be like, having pupils in class whose parents don't care how they perform--and this is completely aside from the outside bans on what teachers can do about it. That's what I meant by societal involvement. I have seen teachers put out HUGE efforts to try and engage their students; but so often these efforts fall flat when they're not reinforced (to say nothing of actual parental discouragement) by the parents! I say that, if an entire class has had enough lessons and opportunities for studying and asking questions, and they all still only score failing grades on a test: flunk 'em all. However, I can't imagine that this would ever be instituted as a solution on a regular basis, these days--the price would be too high. But I can't help thinking that it would take something of a gigantic impact like several years of a low graduation percentage, to shake up some of these parents into rearranging their priorities.
There have always been "pockets" (areas) where, for whatever reason, education is not considered very important. But I'm afraid that it has become more than just isolated pockets, now; it seems to have insidiously pervaded, to one extent or another, most of the country. And that is REALLY scary.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,154
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,154 |
Bear with me if I jump around. I have just read the entire thread in one go and a few comments come to mind.
1)Japanese children are still being pushed to learn things The Japanese system may have gone too far in the direction of rote learning of facts. Yes the three R's are important but learning how to learn, learning to use what you know creatively is also important. Like most things it has to be in balance.
2)Too often teachers are expected not to teach children but to raise them. A grade one teacher I know recieved a complaint from a parent that in 6 months her son had not been taught to "do as he was told" and still talked back to his mother. Small wonder that it is difficult to find time to teach.
3)Don't you have to come up before you can come down? I hadn't thought of it before but is our language declining or decreasing or mearly changing from the literary to the technical?
and finally 4)Scrabble/literati I can't help thinking that Scrabble is a much better name than Literati. The latter implies educated in the older sense of the word, well- read, well-spoken and knowledgable. Merely learning lists of correctly arranged groups of letters is like the rote learning of any other list of facts. A feat of memory but with a very limited usefulness without the ability to understand and use them creatively.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
Jackie, I think there are a lot of different disabilities with which a person can be afflicted. I've long maintained that among the worst is having idiots for parents. I think there are some really crappy teachers out there. But I don't think they're the worst problem - namely because I don't think there are that many who are utterly incompetent. In most cases, I think it's the kids themselves and their parents who share the bulk of the responsibility for academic failure. This is justified (by some) by saying that they're not entertained enough or they're lacking in self-esteem.
Zed, reference the disjunction between the connotation of the names vs. the abilities required to play those games, I agree with your comments, though I hadn't thought about it before.
I heard of a book a while back (the title eludes me for the moment) that purported that school systems were actually doing very well and that complaints against "the school system" were calculated and very politically motivated lies from conservatives. There may be something to this as our school systems are handling more people and many more people are college bound. OTOH, look at most colleges and a huge proportion of their beginning courses are actually remedial. LOTS of people are learning in college what they ought to have learned in high school. This is particularly true of community colleges (at least the ones with which I'm familiar), but in that case it's PARTIALLY mitigated (IMO) if a higher percentage of the students are older students returning after a long absence.
On the flip side, it's possible to survive by being more stupid. One doesn't need to be educated to get a job and make babies. It may not be a great job, but it'll get you by. One may not be able to prepare those babies to be learners, but that doesn't make one a bad parent. Look at "technical skills." People are learning a lot of those these days, but the vast majority of technical skill (or what falls under that umbrage) is very trivial. You need to know very little about theory to fix a computer these days. In some cases, it's an impediment. You don't need to know a lot about networks to be a network engineer. Of course, this doesn't mean that all people who fix computers or build and maintain networks are stupid. It means that one can find a job in those fields without having an immense amount of understanding of the subject. In this case, people can learn specific roles, but they don't have to understand the larger landscape. Parochialism makes for an easy life in many cases. If the world were a static place, this might even be sufficient. The problem comes that economies change, populations migrate, jobs move, skills required to function change.
k
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
Bobyoungbalt, I could comment on several parts of your message, but I'll stick with one for now - the standardized test.
I'm a very strong proponent of standardized tests. I've said this on several fora, but I don't recall whether I've mentioned it here. The problem with the tests is that the tend to get too difficult and too specialized.
There are different types of standardized test. There is the test whose purpose is to test specialized knowledge - surely those CAN and OUGHT TO BE specialized. There is the college entry test, those can justifiably have some specialized requirements, but on the whole should be general.
Then there is the Standards of Learning (SOL) type test in places like VA. These OUGHT TO BE very simple tests and should test extremely general knowledge. (Actually, I have a vague memory of saying this on here once before.) Example of a bad question: "Tobacco was brought to VA in what year?"
and possible answers were 2 years apart. This is a fundamentally stupid question to ask on such a test. (If the person who put this question on that test is still employed in the field, that alone would be sufficient to demonstrate incompetence of the current system in general.)
The fact, however, that some few of the questions on the test are stupid, doesn't change the fact that the teachers are using it as an excuse for incompetent teaching. If a student is learning what he's supposed to be learning, then he ought not to have to study to the test. Any punishment that gets meted out to the schools though should be shared by the parents. Parents whose kids do especially poorly should be required to pay higher taxes.
If there are a few items on the test that have not been covered, that's okay, as missing a few questions won't affect one disastrously. It's far better to have a penetrating insight into a small amount of material than to have no insight at all into any of it.
On numerous occasions while I was a tutor, I tried to take some effort to teach students - actually help them understand a few things instead of memorizing - and was (not rebuked, but asked not to) by the teacher. It's staggering really. (There are precious few things that actually have to be memorized in a geometry class. If you're memorizing a bunch of stuff, you're missing something.)
k
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear FF: the question about the year tobacco was brought to Virginia seems to be really stupid. The English first encountered tobacco in Virginia. I see no way achaeologists could tell when the natives first acquired it, if it were not indigeous there.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
If a student is learning what he's supposed to be learning, then he ought not to have to study to the test. Amen.
Parents whose kids do especially poorly should be required to pay higher taxes. Well now--there's an idea!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
FF, I wasn't inveighing against standardized tests per se; my wrath was directed at the practice of teaching to the test. I agree that the various tests used have their uses. Obviously, colleges need (or so they used to think) a strainer, as it were, to sift out the applicants they want to consider. It is also a good thing, I think, to monitor the efficacy of the education kids are getting at various levels, say 4th grade, 8th and maybe 11th or more frequently, not only as a meter of how well they are doing and how the instruction needs to be improved, but also so that remediation can be made available where needed. But teaching to the test must skew the results. Obviously kids will do better if they are coached all year long on the test, but are they getting the learning that they should? I greatly doubt it.
As to memorization, I agree completely with you. I had to do a lot of it and I'm convinced I'm greatly better off for it. Aside from the information it tucks away in the corners of your mind, the discipline which comes with it has, I'm convinced, a most salutary effect on learning ability. Of course, learning anything by rote is taboo anymore. I doubt if kids even have to learn the multiplication tables any more. Why should they? There are pocket calculators. God forbid they should be stuck somewhere where there's no calculator or palm pilot available. What will they do then? I go and buy produce from a farm truck. The vendors are not young. They add up your purchases and figure your change all in their head; they don't even write anything down. But the young clerks at the drugstore or the convenience stores are completely helpless, even as to making change, if the cash register isn't working or if someone else is using it.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
Bob,
I was about to say that we disagree about rote, but read further, and I think we're not too far apart.
I think memorization is a good thing. I think students should be required to memorize some things. I have an extremely poor memory. It's a long-running joke among my friends and family. Still, it's an important thing.
My point about geometry (and algebra) is that in some cases I've witnessed the teachers attempt to cram too much into the kids' heads by memories. The reason they have to memorize so much is because they don't understand the material. If they actually understood the stuff, they wouldn't need to memorize anywhere near the amount they do. And any standardized tests should be geared towards comprehension, not memorization of minutiae. It's difficult, I know, but not impossible. This is much more true of mathematics than it is for language skills, but I do suspect it's true for language as well.
Your point about the calculators and palm pilots is well-taken, BUT here's an emphasisis by counter-point even to that:
My employer buys me a fairly nice calculator. I use it at least weekly and often numerous times throughout the day. It's a nice scientific calculator, slightly programmable, with a few memories. It was under $60. They've bought me several others (which I've lost or broken) over the years. It varies over time, but I use (at a far stretch) maybe 50% of the functionality of my calculator at the current time. When I was going to tutor these students, they had $150 - $200 calculators. I wondered - what the heck could they possibly be doing that required them to use these things? There would be some trivial problem - by which I mean one could easily solve the entire thing mentally in less than 5 seconds - the kids would whip out these calculators and, after 30-90 seconds of button pushing return a completely ridiculous answer. (They didn't learn to check their answers for reasonableness either.) These same kids were complaining about the incompetence of their geometry teacher, "Why, I got straight As in algebra!" They got straight As in algebra and they don't know how to subtract a negative number? I'm sure they were thrilled with the easy algebra teacher who didn't require them to actually learn the subject. Ninety percent of the time, the problem was not a failure to understand geometry, but a failure to be able to reason algebraically.)
Now back to language. We agree reading is a good habit for kids (and adults). They need to be reading a lot of different things. Classics are very good, but I don't think they're sufficient. They need to see language used correctly and well. I don't know that I agree that Huck Finn is such a great choice. It's not a bad book, but there are better ones I think. I guess I'm opposed to controversy - not to be wishy-washy, but simply to get on with the business of learning. Tom Sawyer has the word nigger "maybe" a dozen times in the entire book. Huck Finn has it numerous times on nearly every page - hundreds, perhaps so many as a thousand references. I can undertand how some people would get irritated at this. OTOH, if people get irritated by Harry Potter in school, I think they should find another book. Get over it, get on with it, and don't get distracted from the primary purpose. The best solution is to find something innocuous for general discussion and then let students find their own books for most of their reading. They should be reading 6 to 9 books per year, every year.
k
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
For the record:
I'll be a rookie in an English department here in Chesterfield County, Virginia. In providing me with materials to study over the summer, our department head gave me books, manuals, sources of study. She gave me nothing that would allow me to 'teach to the test' that my ninth graders will have to take late spring. She also provided a teacher with whom I have met and worked this summer to help my transition from elementary music to ninth grade English. That teacher has walked me through the year in terms of curriculum--and she has never once alluded to 'teaching to the test.' We've talked about specific units of study, such as Homer and the Odyssey, Elizabethan England, Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet, and Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird. We've discussed approaches to presenting grammar and ways to get kids writing. I would be surprised--and shocked, quite frankly--if any teacher in that department approached me with ways of 'teaching to the test.'
Nearly all of my time this summer has been focused on preparing for the school year. Yes, we will have that test in the spring, and, yes, it will be based on the Virginia Standards of Learning. But the standards simply provide the framework. I understand that if my students cover the material on which the standards are based, they will have a high chance of succeeding on the test.
Let me give you one specific skill out of many addressed by the standards. Students are to write their essays with variety of sentence stucture, a mark of accomplished writing. One simple skill for helping students develop variety in composing sentences is to have them review an essay, for instance, and count the number of sentences that begin with 'The.' For weaker writers, this procedure provides a red flag that alerts them to restructure sentences that often begin with the definite article.
I do not see teaching students strategies for improving their writing as 'teaching to the test' when the point is to help students develop their writing skills. If an outcome of helping students achieve more variety in their sentence structure is that they get a higher score on the writing part of the test, terrific. Two birds killed with one stone.
As I wrote, the example of sentence variety is just one writing skill of many in the Virginia Standards. Not to teach the standards would be not to do the job for which I was hired. But there is a big difference between teaching the standards the state expects each teacher to address and 'teaching to the test.' I hope that difference is evident.
I rarely hear about some teacher somewhere in our county who is suspected of 'teaching to the test.' It greatly disturbs me that any teacher would do so. But I would hope that all of our teachers in Chesterfield meet and surpass the standards Virginia has set for us.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
I'm not familiar with your county. I understand the distinction you draw, believe it sensible, and also believe that that is the clear intent of having an SOL in the first place.
As I said previously, I'm aware there are crappy teachers out there. I had enough when I was student and I'm aware of a very few in current school systems. I also said previously that I think teacher incompetence is not significant problem - at least I don't think it's a significant problem in most school systems. By far the most serious problem, I suspect, is failure of parents and students to accept any significant responsibility for their own educations.
As for teaching to the test, I've heard a number of teachers explain to me that they had to have students memorize certain things and that the SOL forced them to teach to the test. If this is not the case in your county, I'm elated to hear it. (I suspect it's not the prevailing view even here in Fairfax.)
k
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,154
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,154 |
memorization...(has) a most salutary effect on learning ability
Like Bob I don't think memorization is bad, but it shouldn't be used to replaceunderstanding or creativity. They need to balance.
I saw a documentary of preshcool education in China. Four-year old children were painting beautiful, accurate paintings of flowers. But every painting was identical, in fact every brushstroke was identical. No blue horses or purple frogs.
You can't get anywhere without the basic memorizable knowledge. But without understanding and creativity you can't get anywhere new.
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,347
Members9,182
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
1 members (wofahulicodoc),
769
guests, and
0
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
