Posts filed under 'Education'
One thing I will never understand is the societal choice we have made to begin medicating our children.
The individual choice as a parent? –I get that. It’s what is done now. It’s what teachers and doctors tell you is necessary. You want your child to do well and succeed–and in today’s day and age, this is the accepted way to make that happen.
But as a people what are we doing? We are deeming it necessary to medicate children who are active and curious (aka ADHD “sufferers”) into being able to sit still for hours while teachers drone on at them. We are allowing a growing number of our children to take very powerful (in some case even life-threatening) medication which effects their brain while their brains are still developing. Whether or not they were actually fucked up in the first place is debatable, but they’re sure as hell likely to be when the process is over…
Can we please stop? Seriously. These are children. Whether you believe in God or evolution, or both: they have been designed exactly the way they are for a reason. Leave them alone. Let them be. Teach them. Work with the people they are and the people they are becoming. Embrace their moods, both positive and negative. Teach them to deal with their anger, or their excessive energy, or their depression. Learn how to deal with those things yourself if that’s what it takes to teach them.
We can do this. As a people we can raise the next generation without anti-psychotic medication. I swear we can.
“i’m not crazy cause i take the right pills ever day” –jimmy eat world.
November 23rd, 2006
Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic changes. Schools should be palaces; the competition for the best teachers should be fierce, they should be making six figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.
-Sam Seaborn, the West Wing
November 9th, 2006
There is a vast disconnect between the type of thinking that we are trained for in the public school system and the type of thinking that is expected of us in real life. In problem solving research in psychology the distinction is explained by the terms ‘well-defined problems’ and ‘ill-defined problems’.
In school we are given very well defined problems. Even the most complicated question about a train departing Chicago at 6am travelling at 80km per hour while another train departs New York at….(you get the idea), is very well defined. It may be difficult, but you have all the information you need, and once you’ve gone through the relevant math course you know the steps you need to apply. The difficult part is staying focused, and applying the steps without making any mistakes.
Real life is full of a differant kind of problem. Real life is full of very ill defined problems. “Get a good job”. “Find a life partner”. “Be a good person”. “Put together a report on XYZ”. These are problems we haven’t been trained for. They are problems that don’t have prescribable answers. They are the big real, important kinds of problems.
And yet when we sat down in class for problem solving, over and over again, what did we do?
“Class Susie has 5 oranges, and she gives 3 oranges to Sam. How many…”
I have encountered these ideas repeatedly in my courses with Dr. John Vervaeke. John is the academic director at a private highschool where he’s trying to apply knowledge gained in psychology research in teaching methods
September 21st, 2006
“For years now people have been criticizing the Bush administration for intelligence failures, specifically: the president’s failure to be intelligent.”
–Stephen Colbert
August 29th, 2006
1.) It’s 10:30pm and my boyfriend calls from Montreal to wish me a good night. He tells me he’s out with a friend, and a friend of a friend and that their conversations about politics and defining yourself have been incredable; that they’ve been sitting on a patio drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and talking and being inspired, and I’m happy and can’t wait to spend time with he and his friends in Montreal.
2.) As I hang up the phone I find myself wondering again, as I have many times this week, what I’m doing right now. Sure, of course, I’m studying things I am incredably interested in. And I have a job that’s putting me through school which is pretty awesome. But these courses I’m taking 9 times out of 10 they are not connecting me with people with whom I have inspiring life-changing conversations with. In fact, the combination between my introversion and the anti-social nature of my post-secondary school of choice has left me with a staggeringly low number of friends at university–but isn’t connections between people what this whole life thing is all about?
3.) Meanwhile I study psychology and philosophy and religion because combined those are the things that fascinate me the most; but what ignites me is talking about environmental issues, population growth, and the lack of literacy and education around the world–so am I even studying the right thing?
4.) This summer I have fallen madly in love. And it’s been incredible. And it’s had me rebuilding all sorts of plans. And it has me thinking ahead toward a practical life plan involving the proper allocation of money with which to raise children and how I can incorporate staying at home for a few years into a plausible career…And that’s not the track I’ve spent most of my life thinking about.
5.) My own hypocrisy irritates me. My inability to reconcile my lifestyle with what I believe in frustrates me. I try to be patient with myself (because change is difficult), but I worry that eventually I’ll just give up, and instead of building schools in 3rd world countries, and being involved in grassroot organic food co-ops I’ll end up in suburbia driving a gas-guzzling vehicle, buying genetically-modified food at my local grocery store and raising my kids to be as materially focused as I am.
Which breaks my heart. Not even because I think that kind of lifestyle is “wrong”, but because it’s not what I want for myself, or for my kids.
But how do you fund a grassroots lifestyle?
How do you make that about face from the world you’ve been brought up in and say “Listen: this is how I’m going to live my life”?
6.) How do you get to a place where you know that every choice you’re making is not just one you can be proud of and accept, but one that falls exactly in line with the person you want to be and the changes you want to help make in the world?
It’s time to start a new year (because I am a student and my year begins in September), and these will be thoughts I will struggle with as the year goes on.
August 28th, 2006
“Peace arch international park has been called america’s most landscaped border crossing. But it didn’t look so peaceful back in 1970 when six hundred angry Canadians protested the vietnam war by storming the border and defacing the arch.
Today the incident is remembered as one of history’s rare sightings of six hundred angry Canadians.”
–Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, July 12th, 2006
July 18th, 2006
matthewgood.org is a pretty solid place to get very real human information about what’s going on in the middle east. He is posting letters and testimonies from people (most civilians) on either side. The posts and pictures are simultaneously touching and heartwrenching. I suggest looking into it. I also suggest being concious of the line between being aware enough to be passionate about what you can do to change the world and knowing so much that you feel completely helpless and defeated.
This picture of children may be across the line for me.
July 18th, 2006
I feel like there is a contract implied between a student and her teacher. The teacher will do their best to communicate information to the students and to facilitate their learning, and the students will attend class and do their best to engage with the material the teacher is putting in front of them.
For this reason I often feel very guilty when I’m not on time for class, or when I don’t pay attention during lecture. But I resent when I know that my tardiness or boredom result from what I consider to be a breech of contract on the part of the lecturer…
When I am paying up to $500 for a class I feel like part of what I am paying for is an interesting, if not captivating lecturer–any less is a breech of contract. Considering I pay money for the text book above and beyond that which I pay for the course I feel like I should be exposed to material in lecture that I could not simply have gotten from the textbook at home by myself–not exposing me to such material is a breech of contract. Finally I feel as though I should not be treated like a highschool student. There should not be more than 5 minutes (tops!) dedicated to talking to me about preparing for tests or essay writing. To spend time on this is a breech of contract: You teach me the material–I’ll worry about the test.
I’ve had two really incredable professers who taught well and gave fair tests. Two. $500 a course. …ridiculous.
July 12th, 2006
I am a yogi who respects and loves her body.
I am a research assistant who takes pride in her work.
I am a teacher who is inspired by the light in a child as he learns.
I am a friend who loves intimate conversation.
I am a student who is fascinated by new and engaging ideas.
I am a theist who believes that God’s love and acceptance are unconditional.
I am a citizen of the globe who is frightened by chemicals and awed by nature.
I am a humanist who believes honesty, acceptance and respect will save us.
I am a native speaker of English who loves the sound of new languages.
I am a woman who relishes in sexual encounters.
I am a girlfriend who is excited and motivated by untapped potentials for happiness.
I am a country-girl who believes that children need trees and canoes.
I am a daughter who wants eventually to build a beautiful family of her own.
I am a human who wants to celebrate being alive.
I am a person who believes in love.
I am a girl who struggles with internal demons that take the form of doubt, fear and existential angst. I am learning that should I choose to be I am infinitely more powerful than they are.
June 6th, 2006
While driving into Guelph so I could take the bus back to Toronto yesterday Roger and I were talking about education. Given that my brother and I both had so many problems with the public education system in such profoundly differant ways, my parents have been very actively involved in trying to get the most out of schools and determine ways they could serve students better. My brother’s inability to read and write (despite being a very brilliant kid, and student council president for his graduating class my brother is, for all intents and purposes, functionally illiterate) and teachers insistance to keep pushing him through the system anyway, has been a constant source of frustration for them.
Frustrated especially at the fact that James (my brother) is very active in extra-curricular activities at school despite low grades Roger was musing aloud that the only reason education systems (k-12) are in place is so that people can learn to read, write and do basic math. We should be able to have access to information (read) to preform our duties as democratic citizens, be able to express ourselves orally and with the written word (write), and we should be able to calculate enough to ensure we are getting paid enough, and fairly at our job and be able to oversee our taxes (basic math). Anything aside from that, he argued, is icing on the cake, and really should not be paid for by public funding.
I mulled over what Roger was saying. I didn’t agree with it. But that wasn’t the point I made when I answered him. Instead I pointed out that he was talking about a very idealistic education system. He wasn’t talking about the idealistic education system I would like to see in place (which is why I say I didn’t agree with it), but it was idealistic all the same. An education system in place to empower people to get the most out of their rights as citizens, and their employment. ….hmmm. yep. Definately not the reality of what is going on.
The fact that students who struggle with reading and writing, and never attain basic mathematic principles, simply recieve lower grades than others and continue getting passed on up through the system proves that the system is not there to provide everyone with those skills. Students to whom reading, writing and arithmatic come naturally, will of course have their learning supported by attending school, but it is support nothing more. The tragedy, in fact, lies not only with the students at the bottom of the academic ladder but also with the kids toward the top, who can read or perform math way above what is considered appropriote for their age level, and are not given adequate support to nurture and cultivate those skills. This is a system that attempts to equalize, not a system that teaches.
Any system that was actually meant to teach each individual to read, write, and perform basic arithmetic would have to acknowledge the varying learning rates and styles of individual children. It would have to be structured in such a way as to encourage independant exploration of concepts and allow for certain individuals to struggle along the way. In a system like this each individual child’s talents would become self-evident and as such, every child would be personally motivated and learn to enjoy learning. Instead, today’s system, which expects all children to move at an established pace bores some children while making other’s feel “stupid” and “behind”.
(No child should ever be forced to feel behind. And similarly no child should have it implied to them that they are ahead. Each child should be supported and encouraged to explore their interests and knowledge at whatever level is appropriote to them.)
So if our schools aren’t teaching these basic skills, or inspiring and motivating children what are they doing? Given the way they are structured, I would argue that they do little more than attempt mold every student into an easily influenced, hard-working citizen who respects deadlines and does not question authority or structure. No more, no less.
Disgusting really. There is such a profound potential for diverse expressions of brilliance in the human race…shouldn’t schools be helping to cultivate that potential?
In conclusion, Roger’s final words:
“Well you better figure out all this sleepiness stuff because you’ve got stuff to do. …
…not that you will necessarily change the education system in your lifetime, just be a catalyst. Sometimes it takes two and three lifetimes to see the changes and know the differance someone made, but if you start now big things will happen.”
yay!
p.s. Sleeping clinic appointment booked! …moving right along…
November 14th, 2005
Previous Posts