Billy wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@c-61-68-245-199.per.connect.ne t.au:
Montessori would work as public education, if people really gave a rat's butt what their kids do in school. cutting class size to under 12 students per teacher isn't likely to happen, despite the spectacular results in actual learning... yeah, i'm a Montessori parent. i don't care what i have to give up (my income has dropped precipitously by over 2/3rds), the kid is staying in Montessori. he's 8. reads on a 9th grade level, maths at about 6th grade. his handwriting is atrocious however. fortunately he can do his finished reports on computer or typewriter (he has a
1946 Underwood). and he loves school... i enjoy having a child that feels competent & helpful. NCLB is about the stupidest thing to ever hit education. school board meetings here make me ill, & feel so sad for the poor kids in the local school. those are the next generation, folks. why are we teaching them so poorly? lee
Gardengal wrote: I agree it's more than just a shade issue, but it's got nothing to do with soil acidity. PLANTS DO NOT MAKE SOIL ACIDIC (capitals for emphasis)- acid soils occur as a result of the mineral content and amount of rainfall.
-----
Then I made reference to "Dr. Ela> Ingham and some of her graduate students at OSU also noticed a correla-
OTHER NATURAL PROCESSES THAT INCREASE SOIL ACIDITY INCLUDE ROOT GROWTH AND DECAY OF ORGANIC MATTER BY SOIL MICROORGANISMS.(Capitals for emphasis) Whereas the decay of organic matter gradually will increase acidity, adding sources of organic matter with high pH values (such as some manures and composts) can raise soil pH.
Kudo's from brooklyn1 must mean Dr Jekyll is in control at this time. How long will he prevail ? Mr Hyde must be chaffing at the bit I kid you not.
Oh the joy in humiliation.
NOT.
Bill who does not throw stones as I have windows. An argument can be resolved then the context can be made of no import by events. For some reason I would not have brooklyn1 at my table. Scary I wrote before.
Joe Bageant hits upon this in a recent series of lectures. This article, I believe, explains why the system of education has become as it is. It is by design, imnsho.
We are trying to do a cheap fix to a problem that doesn't exist. Even if our students can't figure out an answer on a standardized exam, they will have it memorized. Regurgitating the standardized answers on a standardized exam will make them look smart. Problem is, nobody wants to memorize. We will go to extremes to avoid the boredom of the rote memorization of disembodied facts. Upon graduation, most students will avoid taking another class. If they read, it will mostly be fiction.
formatting link
Look, most of us go to work, and we slide through the day on information that we already know. Students are always confronting the unknown at least six hours a day, five days a week. A students job is very much tougher than ours. We expect them to do it even though they are maturing at different rates and function in different environments.
We should be encouraging kids to study what interests them, because that is their motivation. It doesn't matter what it is (French doorknobs of the 16th century, water colors, baking, or kung fu) because once you learn to learn, you can learn anything. Everything connects to everything. About a month ago, this newsgroup went through all the different disciplines that relate to gardening. The list included algebra, geometry, geology, chemistry, botany, physiology, zoology, ecology, poetry, planning, tools, ergonomics, . . . The list goes on and on.
Problem is, they may not have questions about those subjects a particular student finds interesting on the standardized exams. There is nothing wrong with our students but there is a whole lot wrong with the system that they are in.
When those students who haven't been discouraged by our primary and secondary schools enter college as adults, they face a 60 hour week if they carry 15 units/semester (3 hours out of class for every hour in class), and by and large, they do a damn fine job of it, if American Nobel Prize winners are any indication.
Get off their backs and let them grow up, before we put the screws to them.
Next year, the local middle school has had to cut funding, due to a mandate to increase Phys. Ed., though the school still has soda machines and provides meals shipped in by a service....some of the shittiest unhealthful meals you'll find, yet complaints fall upon deaf ears. The DARE and TarWars programs in the community get plenty of funding, nothing for nutrition based initiatives.
One program being cut is Exploratory Science.
Precisely. And the system has been designed, and fiddled with, to produce drones. There are controls, internships, and programs in place to sort the best, brightest...and most amenable to the goals of progression of the Empire.
Yes, the ones who make it do a fine job of it, but so many are unprepared and uneducated in the process of self-education, that many fail, or are educated to the degree that they wind up only as debt-laden cogs in the wheel. How many are able to avail themselves of what is available and be able to toss a shoe into the works? Not many, because the education system is designed, from the earliest days, to mainly provide a process of socialization to perpetuate the needs of industry.
Amen. This growing up and thinking independantly is *not* encouraged by the public education/no child left standing sytem. It produces mainly industrial drones and cannon fodder. Bright minds are extinguished...only the brightest and most independant survive the winnowing process.
'Twas ever thus....
formatting link
excerpt........
In 1888, the Senate Committee on Education was getting jittery about the localized, non-standardized, non-mandatory form of education that was actually teaching children to read at advanced levels, to comprehend history, and, egads, to think for themselves. The committee?s report stated, ?We believe that education is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes.?
By the turn of the century, America?s new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn?t to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:
"Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth."
In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly?the future Dean of Education at Stanford?wrote that schools should be factories ?in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products?manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.?
The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board?which funded the creation of numerous public schools?issued a statement which read in part:
" "Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual."
In that same book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris also revealed:
"The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places?. It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world."
Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen:
"We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
I'm sorry. The above is only the pro argument for less structured learning. Obviously, reports still must be written, read, and critiqued in a timely manner, so that school isn't just daycare.
I find that time may, again, have passed me by, but as I remember it, at the age of 12 in France, students took an exam that determined whether they would be placed on a vocational track or college preparation. As you might see, this placed an incredible amount of stress on immature minds and lead to higher levels of suicide among adolescents than in the U.S. I believe that is true for other European countries as well as Japan. I don't have the time to dig up the cites that I need for this argument. Perhaps, someone more knowledgeable in this area than I, can support or refute my assertions.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.