This makes my heart ache. When I think of the education I got in my working class neighborhood in the 50’s and 60’s, I want to scream. My grandchildren, in the same city school district I grew up in may as well be attending on another planet. Or not at all. And I saw it begin with my own children, when the priority became, yes, Make Lear…
This makes my heart ache. When I think of the education I got in my working class neighborhood in the 50’s and 60’s, I want to scream. My grandchildren, in the same city school district I grew up in may as well be attending on another planet. Or not at all. And I saw it begin with my own children, when the priority became, yes, Make Learning Fun. Which rules out phonics, grammar, multiplication tables, recitation and repetition, memorization of any kind (yes, I can still sing Tantum Ergum”, thanks to the mean nuns in my catechism class). But those things worked and I became literate.
Did I say I want to scream? I tell everyone who will listen, the schools can teach all the social nonsense they want, just as soon as ALL the kids have mastered the basics. No worries that THAT is going to happen.
Your ideas and suggestions are sound and once worked. Why do we always think we need to reinvent the wheel??
I think the need to constantly reinvent the wheel comes from all the incentives we have created to do so - there are entire "consulting" and "professional development" industries that exist off of remaking the wheel - not to mention the restless egos of school administrators who are always looking to justify their existence. (Even though they have no shortage of real things to do!)
Change employs the people who facilitate the change.
Also, I think the whole "make education fun" is an extension of our collective cultural idealization of "youth" and "coolness", which leads to a refusal to grow up, and therefore a desire to constantly please and appeal to children and adolescents in order to remain "cool."
"Pop culture" / "youth culture" is a cancerous infestation in our society. Being soaked in it as a young person leads to an inability to ever really grow up, which is why we have so many teachers and parents who agonize over appealing to the sensitivities of kids and being liked by them and therefore fail to ever really educate or guide them into adulthood.
We are reaping the consequences at a massive scale right now in our society.
This makes my heart ache. When I think of the education I got in my working class neighborhood in the 50’s and 60’s, I want to scream. My grandchildren, in the same city school district I grew up in may as well be attending on another planet. Or not at all. And I saw it begin with my own children, when the priority became, yes, Make Learning Fun. Which rules out phonics, grammar, multiplication tables, recitation and repetition, memorization of any kind (yes, I can still sing Tantum Ergum”, thanks to the mean nuns in my catechism class). But those things worked and I became literate.
Did I say I want to scream? I tell everyone who will listen, the schools can teach all the social nonsense they want, just as soon as ALL the kids have mastered the basics. No worries that THAT is going to happen.
Your ideas and suggestions are sound and once worked. Why do we always think we need to reinvent the wheel??
I think the need to constantly reinvent the wheel comes from all the incentives we have created to do so - there are entire "consulting" and "professional development" industries that exist off of remaking the wheel - not to mention the restless egos of school administrators who are always looking to justify their existence. (Even though they have no shortage of real things to do!)
Change employs the people who facilitate the change.
Also, I think the whole "make education fun" is an extension of our collective cultural idealization of "youth" and "coolness", which leads to a refusal to grow up, and therefore a desire to constantly please and appeal to children and adolescents in order to remain "cool."
"Pop culture" / "youth culture" is a cancerous infestation in our society. Being soaked in it as a young person leads to an inability to ever really grow up, which is why we have so many teachers and parents who agonize over appealing to the sensitivities of kids and being liked by them and therefore fail to ever really educate or guide them into adulthood.
We are reaping the consequences at a massive scale right now in our society.