Re: [Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
Re: An interesting article about Public Education Also, age-based separation. I've stumbled upon convincing-sounding complaints about that in the past since this thread began.And, if the sudden upsurge in inter-generational conflicts in the past few years is any indicator, this is actually quite bad.Back in ye olden days, teenagers were respectable apprentices learning how things work in the adult world by virtue of spending their not-free time there.Nowadays, teenagers and adults occupy radically different worlds, from which they say mean things about each other. Except one of them has power over the other.This is bad, because people are supposed to learn from people who already know things. So instead of 80s and 90s kids learning from 70s and 80s kids, they are all learning from each other, an overworked teacher who can't possibly give everyone individual attention, and books that may or may not be all that useful.Only slightly better than the blind leading the blind, to use an idiom. Mo st people (or people who can see, anyway) learn from watching people who already know what they're doing. If no one knows what they're doing, well, I suppose we'll know those books well enough to build giant fansites about them, anyway.(Compare apprenticeships to today's unpaid internships. Notice that today's interns are ten to twenty years older than pre-industrial apprentices. If reinstituting apprenticeships sounds like child labor disasters waiting to happen, there's such a thing as regulation, possibly even somewhat enforceable in some places. THe point is that we spend too much time developing our own societies while being force-fed information that we may or may not use, and now we're stretching that out longer and longer, and now oops: Generation X Vs. Millennials, and no one understands each other or has a job.)But like I said, this is just stuff I've come across in the past week or two. It's technically testable, but good luck with that.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=162967#p162967 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
Re: An interesting article about Public Education Yes, this is an interesting discussion. I believe that we should be taught what we will use in our lives. Yes, reading, writing and all are much needed, but also, in elementary school, we be made to understand why we need education, why knowledge is important, and all. In middle and high school, then, we would know why its necessary to do our work and to consume as much knowledge as we need. Also, I agree that standardized tests are simply stupid. Some people read more slowly than others, which isn't too bad, and a timed test may make someone nervous or just scribble down a selection letter just to get through it, and make worse than if the person wasn't timed.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=162964#p162964 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
Re: An interesting article about Public Education Hi.Yes, interesting discussion indeed.It's interesting to get different views from different people.I did not agree with some parts of this article although the main thing that stood out to me was the fact that yes, the schools are controlled by an authority figure which dictates what everyone should do, kind of like a mini dictatorship.As for the extracurricular activities, I can see where you're coming from turtle power. I think they're kind of pointless but that's just me.Also, the thing that gets me is they threaten to take them away if you don't make good enough grades.Honestly, that's another thing they put too much emphasis on are grades and standardized test.Yep, the school system has its flaws.I guess we could go back and forth arguing and discussing this until the end of time, or at least until the end of this system. Though, I've suspected school is the beta testing center for communist rule. Maybe that's true.Yeah, I just wanted to share this and get some comments about it.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=162139#p162139 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
Re: An interesting article about Public Education This discussion is far more interesting than the article itself, which I found to be bland, something I've heard a thousand times before. It's not edgy, and it's not new--I'd bet that lots of kids have thought this very thing for centuries. In fact, there's a website that I took much pleasure in reading in my cynical teenage years, and it's still up and running.http://www.school-survival.net/index.phpI think that the author has a few valid points, but they're lost in his delivery.First, getting rid of extracurriculars would never fly in the US. Kids are way too dependent on them. And what's wrong with recreation, anyway? As an adult, if you're going to work from 9 to 5, you'll need some way to unwind when the day is done. If kids weren't allowed to play sports or participate in student societies, they might never learn that it's ok to reward yoursel f at the end of a hard day.now, I do think that school-sponsored sports are entirely too competitive, and that's something that needs to change. Teaching kids, especially elementary school kids, that they're worthless unless they always win is extremely wrong.Second, many children come from undesirable homes. Maybe they participate in extracurriculars because their parents are abusive, or are fighting, or are just not there. And maybe the kids don't want to deal with that. The author would disapprove of my logic, but I think that anything that keeps a kid from being hit is preferable. And, yes, social services should be doing more to prevent that, blah, blah, but since that doesn't happen, and they're off wasting their time doing pointless bullshit like snatching babies away from otherwise healthy blind parents...And, yes, I know I'm generalizing there too, but I hardly think that playing sports or being in student council is a sin.Are students often taking on more than they can handle? Yes, it happens. And some parents simply can't afford to either drive to the activities that their child wants to participate in or can't afford to help them get the supplies. But, in the former case, that's something the parents should be teaching their child how to do, and in the latter, the child needs to learn that they can't have everything they want. There's nothing worse than spoiled brats who never grow up and just become big, blubbering spoiled adults.I agree that there are lots of people who are shortchanged in the public school system. Gifted students, disabled students, poor students, etc. And a universal approach to education is doing a terrible job at finding an individual's strengths. There is also entirely too much emphasis on standardized testing. The implication seems to be that if you don't do well on them, you'll never go anywhere in life. That is wrong. But that� 39;s not any individual school's fault. Rather than blaming teachers or disruptive students for every flaw, the government needs to change how they educate youth. That won't happen, because they see a system running semi-efficiently, and they shrug and say it's not their problem.There are a lot of problems in schools that can screw someone up irreparably that weren't even addressed in the article, which should have taken precedence. Bullying, rampant drug use, and overcrowding are just a few that come to mind. But that's really not the schools' fault, either. Parents do much, much more damage than any teacher could ever do, unless we're talking about something like sexual harassment, which is another thing that should have been mentioned in the article.The thing is, there are jus too many problems to tackle at once. Some problems are too uncomfortable to be tackled. Oh, there was one part of the article that genuinely made me snort in d isgust. That guy thinks that sex education is babysitting? Please! Just because some parents won't discuss that with their kids doesn't mean the schools do a good job of it. Abstinence-only education, which is still the most common form it takes, has been shown time and time again to fail miserably. And increasingly important issues, like homosexuality, transgenderism, and even just being comfortable enough to take charge of your own body are glossed over. Or, worse, things are done like what happened at my high school, which was a school for the blind, but still. What happened was, I think we might have read an article in Seventeen magazine or something similar about embracing your sexuality, and that being gay isn't a sin and all that good stuff. Then, no lie, the very next health class, we were given a big project to do about AIDS. I remember it involved making posters and plastering them all over the school. What kind of ass-backwards, insulting, outdated message is that sending?!URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=162107#p162107 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/c
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
Re: An interesting article about Public Education I was skeptical of the article before I started reading it, based on everything else on the page. Then it sounded like standard "smart person dissing the school system in a nonspecific way without suggestion implementable improvements".Wyvern, your post reminded me of a paragraph in a blog post. I then looked up said post, realized pretty much the entirety of it other than that paragraph could probably trigger half the people reading, and now I'm just going to paste the section in question instead of a link. I think this dates from my time as a schoolteacher. When I was a student, I hated all my teachers and thought that if they just ditched the constant repetition, the cutesy but vapid games, the police state attitude, then everyone would learn a lot more and school would finally live up to its potential as “not totally incompatible with learning, sometimes”.And then I started teaching English, tried presenting the actually interesting things about the English language at a reasonable pace as if I were talking to real human beings. And it was a disaster. I would give this really brilliant and lucid presentation of a fascinating concept, and then ask a basic question about it, and even though I had just explained it, no one in the class would even have been listening to it. They’d be too busy chattering to one another in the corner. So finally out of desperation I was like “Who wants to do some kind of idiotic activity in which we all pick English words and color them in and then do a stupid dance about them??!” (I may not have used those exact words) and sure enough everyone wanted to and at the end some of them sort of vaguely remembered the vocabulary.By the end of the school year I had realized that nothing was getting learned without threatening a test on it later, nothing was getting learned regardless unless it was rote memorization of a few especially boring points, and that I could usually force students to sit still long enough to learn it if and only if I bribed them with vapid games at regular intervals.Yet pretty much every day I see people saying “Schools are evil fascist institutions that deliberately avoid teaching students for sinister reasons. If you just inspire a love of learning in them, they’ll be thrilled to finally have new vistas to explore and they’ll go above and beyond what you possibly expected.”To which the only answer is no they frickin’ won’t. Yes, there will be two or three who do. Probably you were one of them, or your kid is one of them, and you think everything should be centered around those people. Fine. That’s what home schooling is for. But there will also be oh so many who ask “Will the grandeur and beauty of the fathomless universe be on the test?”. And when you say that the true test is whether they feel connected to the tradition of inquiry into the mysteries of Nature, they’ll roll their eyes and secretly play Pokemon on their Nintendo DS thinking you can’t see it if it’s held kind of under their desk.I don’t think I used to be an optimist. I think I used to be a narcissist. I figured that when I was a teacher, everything would work out, my kids would be kind and attentive, my lessons would stick, and there would be no behavioral problems or if there are they would quiet down after I give them a friendly talk about why attention is important. I felt like the Universe owed it to me to have everything work out. I didn’t realize on a gut level that kids could just not cooperate.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=161907#p161907 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
Re: An interesting article about Public Education hi,I agree with this article herewhat I have to say though is that everyone's school experience is subjectivehere in turkey, we focus alot less on extracoricular activitiesthough the education system is differentI generally find that those who disrupt the class the most are the lazy students who get all 0s and don't study in adition to obstructing other people's learninghere i'm talking about serious disruptionlike students having totally unrelated loud conversations with one another while the teacher is teaching the lessonor walking around the class etcimho schools should sort people based on there grade levelpeople who have generally high grades should be put into different classes with similar people and the people who don't study or disrupt lessons should be put in different classes so they don't disrupt the lessons of those who are actually trying to learnURL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=161898#p161898 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
Re: An interesting article about Public Education Something tells me this person may have been a gifted student when in high school. gifted students end up doing exceptionally well in school...most of the time. The problem lies that thi sperson was not challenged enough in school and found the assignments useless and boring, even though he or she does not realize that not everyone around him is as smart. Gifted students are sometimes found to get bored in class, and begin to disrupt it or just skip all together. This is usually why most schools have programs for gifted students to learn outside of school on trips, to keep them educated and entertain as school is something that will turn useless to them real fast. And this person sounds like this is what happened to them. However, I question his mental capability with the way he refered to students with learning challenges as idiots. And generalized that all disruptive students as stupid. In my experience, all the disruptive s tudents in my class were the most intelligent and experienced students there were. They had knowledge in advanced concepts and flew through tests when they decided to take them. yet, they happily disrupt the class for others to entertain themselves, not caring that these classes actually do have an impact on students. As well, he lacks any evidence of his findings, and doesn't seem to link to anything. As well as generalizing way too much, which opens huge flaws in his argument. My group of "robots" as he would refer to us can easily destroy everything he said and watch as all the things he tries to hide behind either does not exist or can be turned against him (Or her, ack, need to stop assuming people are always male). I kind of also have a thing against gifted people or those who exhibit this type of attitude to the school system and people they blame that hold back people's education, mainly the special needs student. I had an incident wheee this 12 year old protogy bumped into my older brother who was a monster and began belittling him as he knew my older brother was a special needs student. His mother was nearby and was about to make a move to shut him up, but I probably did something that would kind of have gotten me arrested. My older brother has a lot of neurological and emotional illnesses, and can easily get distressed and began crying. I quickly ran up to the kid before his mother did, raised him up into the air, and most likely scared him to death. I reminded him that he was probably being the biggest dumbass in this entire room, trying to mess with someone who could easily destroy him and most likely not suffer harsh consequences. I also remind him that as smart as he was, he's an idiot in the true world, lacking any real skills that would get him through the world as he was one of those students that thought sc hool was useless and began to slack off. I also reminded him that special needs students are not retarded or stupid, they were just not as lucky as this so called gift to the world, who began peaing himself most likely, and needed special ays to let them not feel different, as well as not be discriminized. I lastly told him the reason the school was treating him so well in that gifted program thing was that if it was not for the school's attempt to satisfy his learning, he would be a useless piece of shit, even worse then the one he was yelling at as he would have the ability, just be too fucking lazy. This ended with me dropping the kid, him turning to his mom and getting the beating of a life time from her. Again, many people who complain about the school system and the students are really out of touch with what's actually going on. They ignore many other factors that could be causing difficulties, and over generalizing. They a ssume everyone has the ability to be as smart as them, and those who are not are who are running the schools and holding everyone else back. This is wrong, cruel, and makes them look like egotistical ass holes. honestly, if these people ran the state, they would approve such practices of ewegenics, and be highly prone to being racist and discriminatory. (well basing this on how the author of that article was referring to people) Again, this is obvious from this writer as they referred to students who disrupt classes as idiots. Those that should not be allowed to go to school. My advice, if you have a problem with the school system, strive to try to promote change for the better as honestly there is a lot of improvement that needs to be done. but don't be like the robots who find life too difficult or too easy and just fall on poking fun at the system everyone else uses. do something revolutionary, or is that to o hard for this person to do. In short, get a fucking life. People strive to get one, that is why they use the tools provided by life to achieve these goals. Fine you honestly did not need to use it, but others do. Again,
Re: [Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
Re: An interesting article about Public Education hi.I'm going to have to strongly disagree with this article. I know some very smart people that have graduated from high school and college, and it's because they made a huge effort to do well in school. Teachers are trying to teach students what they think will benefit them in later life. And you can't say none of this stuff will benefit me, because at one point or another it might.And then there's all this crap about favoring online classes over actually going to school. While I kind of like online classes, I am very much opposed to them taking over public education, mainly because I think it is good for people to get out of the house rather than sit in front of their computer doing an online class all day. Secondly, this will increase the unemployment rate, which is already extremely high.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=161692#p161692 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
[Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
An interesting article about Public Education Hi.So, I came across this article.http://montalk.net/conspiracy/39/the-ho … -educationWhat do you guys think?Personally I agree with a lot of this stuff.I'm interested to know what you guys think of this stuff.Any comments are welcome.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=161690#p161690 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
[Audiogames-reflector] An interesting article about Public Education
An interesting article about Public Education Hi.So, I came across this article.http://montalk.net/conspiracy/39/the-ho … -educationWhat do you guys think?Personally I agree with a lot of this stuff.I'm interested to think what you guys think.URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=161690#p161690 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com http://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
