dastardly said:
But what about areas of life where there IS no alternative? It is certainly EASIER to just give Bobby the velcro and be done with it, but is that better for Bobby? More specifically, does that road lead Bobby to somewhere BETTER than he is now? No.
Please note I'm using terms like 'disability' and 'disorder' very loosely. I prefer the term 'differently gifted'. That can mean anything from mental retardation to IQ 200 - everyone has strong and weak points.
So let's say someone is a genius in math and computers but very weak in drawing and history. Currently, it's generally considered a success for any person to be average in all areas. But why is that considered a good thing? Of course everyone should be able to take care of themselves as an adult, so everyone needs to know some basics in math, history, literature, politics, logic, banking, sports etc etc etc. BASICS. Apart from those basics needed for life, everyone should be free to chose their own path. Well not stuff like being a gangster obviously, but when someone is fine with being able to count to 10 but can draw amazing images and make a living with that, well I say power to them.
But seriously, most stuff isn't that critical. It's actually even worse, because kids are often taught the most insanely useless things instead of important stuff. Around here, in elementary schools kids have to know, by memory, RHYMING SCHEMES (This shit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyme_scheme ). Yet a lot of college students don't know how to write a bank check!
There are definitely some problems in the field of curriculum development. But this issue isn't as simple as it might appear. Educational professionals have a responsibility to expose students to as many different areas as they can, in order to help that child make an INFORMED decision about which directions they'll take later in life, and at the same time we have to prepare them with that common bank of skills that basically EVERYONE will need.
But also, some of the content we teach isn't just about the content itself. It's about the thought processes, conceptual pathways, and critical thinking skills that are developed--and some of these are BEST developed in areas a child might not prefer or choose to work in.
This is a tricky balancing game. We don't want to force a child with no interest in History to take 9 history classes in high school..... but we also don't want to "sort" kids into their specialty areas too early, based on the preferences and tendencies of immature, unformed minds. If we did, do you know how many people would be majoring in Cowboy Spaceman Studies, or how many firemen we'd have?
I believe our curriculum IS bloated, but mostly I just believe it's too front-loaded. There's no reason for 8th graders to know the quadratic formula. Instead, we trim it down, focus on the basic concepts in as many different ways as we can teach them--so that students aren't just FAMILIAR with math, but they're COMFORTABLE with it. And then, later on, when a student with an interest in math goes for an advanced math class, learning the quadratic formula will be a snap.
But there are plenty of subjects a kid wants out of in middle school. If you told me (even without meaning to) that I could get out of taking social studies just by doing badly at it... do you know how many kids we'd have in that class? And we think "blah, who needs it?" But it's one of the most important things a kid can learn--how we got where we are, why things work the way they do, and their part in the shaping of government and society.
Or geometry--it's stupid to think that all day, every day, we're going to be running around comparing the various angles of a transversal. But the spatial reasoning skills they learn from manipulating the shapes are useful EVERYWHERE. And the logical thought patterns they learn by doing those "silly" proofs can be INCREDIBLY valuable to ANYONE. It's the process that's important, not the product--it just so happens this particular product is more useful in teaching that particular process. Why? Far too much research to get into here.
I don't know what your expertise is, but do you remember everything you've been taught in schools? Geography? Chemistry? Literature?
No, but the thought processes and skills I had to develop in the course of those studies have become such an integral part of me (and you), even if I can't pinpoint WHICH of those "useless" classes I learned it from. That goes beyond the curriculum itself. And, furthermore, because of those skills, I could far more EASILY re-learn all that stuff I forgot.
Maybe not every bit of schooling plants a seed that grows into an enormous tree. Very little of it, in fact. But a TON of it does plow the soil, making it easier for other knowledge to grow later. It's just so behind-the-scenes, and so integrated into us, that we forget (or don't recognize the need) to give it credit for what it actually did.
Just a sidenote: Even many adults have problems differentiating between blame and responsibility. It's even more difficult for kids: they take everything personally. So they need to be taught etc. and we're back to the parental issues.
Absolutely. As teachers, we're doing the best damn job we can. The impetus for change is 100% of the parents.
Adults can chose almost any job they want so if they want to be a professional hockey player, they can. Kids have no choice.
I'm glad you mentioned professional sports. See, there are plenty of pro athletes that believed that they could get where they wanted to go just by studying what they liked--the sport. After all, if I want to be a professional football (American) player, I just practice football, and I will be a successful pro football player. That's all I need.
Except those same athletes later prove themselves wrong. They lack the life skills, social skills, conflict management skills they need to survive OFF the field. They lack the basic math skills to tell them if a contract is screwing them over, and they have to put their lives in the hands of an agent. THEY ARE OWNED, in every real sense of the word, because they are not equipped to take ownership of themselves.
And then they end up going to jail for dogfighting, getting out, and shortly thereafter ending up a "person of interest" in a murder.
My point with all this? Metacognition is not one of our strong suits as a species. We ALWAYS underestimate what we will need to know, because some of that knowledge is so entwined with our "self" that we don't realize when we're accessing it--so we don't think we need to increase it. It's not just about learning how to adapt to sitting still and paying attention for long periods of time--it's about learning how to do what you need to do EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO DO IT.
That's the most important lesson in life, yet the last we seem to learn. NO ONE wants to pay for things. NO ONE wants to do laundry. NO ONE wants to change diapers. But we do. Why? BECAUSE that's how it works, and you need to. It's about learning how to separate "I need to do this" from "I like doing this," because they don't always line up. Kids just don't have the prerequisite knowledge to make an informed decision on what to learn and how to learn it--yet.
Of course parents are a very large part of the problem... But than again, parents use what they have learned themselves from their parents and their education. Right now, I see the whole education thing (with both parents and the education system) being a downward spiral. .
It absolutely is a downward spiral. There are far more parents than teachers, so it doesn't matter that we're frantically trying to get it to spin the other way. In order to be a teacher, I need to:
- graduate high school in the upper portion of my class
- be accepted and pay for attendance at a 4-year university
- successfully complete a rigorous degree program that (beyond just the content I teach) emphasizes a tremendous bank of knowledge on how and why people of all ages learn and how they are motivated
- apply for and secure licensure from a state board through the use of an expensive high-stakes test
- apply/interview/receive a job from a school board
- undergo rigorous evaluations several times a year to determine my qualifications
- REAPPLY for licensure every 5 years (which requires that I pay for and complete MORE schooling for renewal credit)
- Listen to parents with problem children tell me that they automatically know better than me (after all, I don't have kids!), when it's their abusive and negligent behaviors causing the problem.
In order to catch a goddamn FISH, I need a license.
In order to be a parent, I need to:
- Get a girl pregnant
And that's it. There's no course, no class, no book, not even a PAMPHLET. Where are the assurances that they know what the hell they're doing? Where are the regular, rigorous evaluations? Where are the punitive measures if they fail? Where is even the slightest proof that they have the child's best interest in mind in their decision making processes? None. It's all on faith.
And it's not getting done, which is why emotional and behavioral disorders (like ADHD) are becoming more and more common. We don't have "parents." We have kids that got old enough to have kids, and no one anywhere can do a damn thing to stop them from having more and raising them even less.
