The Glade 4.0

Aizle demonstrates the biggest problem with all levels of education in the United States, from kindergarten through graduate school. There is an attitude among students and parents that the learning process goes something like this:

Enroll in class.
Get passing grade in class.

Our schools are full of students who are sitting around spinning their wheels. They've never figured out how to learn, because nobody has ever forced them to. We blame every failure on the teacher, so that we can escape having to acknowledge our own shortcomings.

I have had good teachers. I have had terrible teachers. Absolutely everything I have ever failed to learn in my entire life has been my fault. Until someone comes to that realization and accepts responsibility for their own learning, they're just farting in a windstorm. Education is self-improvement. You are the only person that can make you better.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

There's plenty of blame to go around. Your children are not different from ours. Your school system is different from ours. Why do Canadian children do better academically than american children when given standardized testing?

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Perhaps, and this is a wild and crazy idea, Canadian parents aren't blaming every failure of their children to learn on the teachers. In essence, this would make your children distinctly different in that they aren't growing up internalizing the message that their academic failures are someone else's fault.

I will repeat: Absolutely everything I have ever failed to learn has been my fault. There are no exceptions to this. It did not matter whether the teacher I had was excellent or terrible.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I would bet Canadian schools don't educate to the lowest common denominator.

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Canadians kids are just smarter, duh?

It's not a lowest common denominator problem. Most of that talking point is just another manifestation of our desire to shift the blame of own failures as students on other people. There are plenty of opportunities for intelligent and motivated students at all levels of education. Our students are lazy. I speak as someone who has been in precisely that position. Even when I was in the much reviled public school system that teaches to the lowest common denominator, there were plenty of opportunities for me to come out with an excellent knowledge base if I were even remotely interested in putting some effort into my own education. If you check out teenagers, you'll find plenty of smart kids who are erfectly happy to coast by making perfect scores on easy bullshit. As adults, we'd rather ***** about the lowest common denominator than admit we were lazy.

We have a problem on all levels of education, this includes university education and graduate education. Students expect that they should know material by virtue of having gotten a grade in a course, yet the way they get grades is copying solutions, "cramming" for tests, and riding on the coattails of one person in group projects. In another thread, I pointed out that I specifically used education rather than intelligence, and that is because it takes an enormous amount of time to figure out ways to get through a college course with a minimum of work. It also takes a little bit of smarts.

The problem is that when they copy solutions, they do it on autopilot with their brains shut off. When they cram for tests, they are committing material to short term memory. When they ride on the coattails of an active group member, they aren't making connections about how to apply what they've been taught. Learning requires an active participation, and students expend a great deal of effort engaged in passing a course without such active participation. It comes from the misconception that passing a class means you have learned. It does not.

Later on, when students are required to recall material they were supposed to have learned, they get upset and offended. They are forced to come face to face with the fact that they learned little to nothing in that course they passed with an A or B, and they don't like it. Not knowing makes them feel stupid, and having it pointed out to them that they're supposed to have learned it two semesters ago makes it worse.

We confuse sitting in class or reading topics on the internet with learning. I can teach until I'm blue in the face, but I can't make anyone learn. They have to do that themselves. Teaching and learning are two different things. They're related, but they're different. Teaching is when I open up the contents of my brain and lay them out for you. Learning is when you stuff that into your own brain. I can't do anything about that. It's not my brain. I have no control over how it operates.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

If this is true, what was the point of the teacher in the first place?

Maybe in your neck of the woods. In Cleveland Public Schools where my mom has taught for the past 20 years now they have done away with special ed for everyone except ED kids. Which means you have retarded kids mixed into the classroom with your gifted and regular students.



It is worse than that, for 4 years my mother taught a class whose sole goal was to teach the students how to pass standardized tests. It was not a math class or a reading class, it was a class on how to answer the questions pertaining to math and reading.

For the first 10 years she submitted failing grades to her school's administrator who would change them to C's because if you have too many kids who fail then your school is flagged as underperforming and you got your funds cut. For the last 10 she hasn't bothered to fight it and the lowest grade she gives is a D.

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If you open your mouth, or pick up a pen, it is your responsibility to be coherent to your audience. If, as you say, you are merely pointing the direction, you still must do so in a coherent fashion. Moreover, and this depends both on the audience and the setting, you cannot simply point the way if it unreasonable for the audience to be able to jump through those hoops to get the information needed to justify your statement.

It's is equally absurd to say that responsibility falls 100% on the student as it is to say 99% on the teacher.

To introduce concepts and motivate to learn, but above all, babysit Eric while mom and dad work.