Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

huh?

''Gives the saying ''he only had an 8th grade education'' a whole new meaning, doesn't it?!''

You call that a sentence?

You can't even pass the exam!

Missing the Point

It's not clear whether or not you read the article posted above. The point of the article, which includes quotes from education professionals from the late 1800's and early 1900's, is that our current educational system is designed to make sure students DON'T learn, so they can easily fit into the mold required of big business. Educated citizens don't easily follow orders and instructions, especially when they don't make sense.

Our educational system is failing because it was intentionally designed to fail.

Your posting seems to indicate you believe in and, in fact, value a classist society. Why shouldn't all children, who are naturally curious, be allowed to succeed and learn?

I do agree that Taft doesn't have the answers. No politician does - politicians also want compliant citizens who simply follow orders or instructions.



By PLSD resident

paste the link & reserve a copy

http://webpac.columbuslibrary.org

Title to search for: The World is Flat

By closet philosopher

I Read It

I read the article you suggested, which I found very interested. I also went to the web site the author of the article suggested, and am in the process of reading the entire book that is posted there.

The theme of these materials is that our American educational system, both public and private, is geared to turn our curious, energetic youngsters into mindless, conformist drones who will accept their lots in life, and perform without complaint in the increasingly mindless jobs that our economy offers them. Our schools ignore the fact that kids learn at different rates, and have different talents and abilities. Moreover, the true geniuses -- the Einsteins -- often tend to have been rebels in school who paid little attention to the boring and useless stuff they were offered in school.

I think the 8th grade test you reproduced probably was intended as an example of how mindless schools were in the 19th century. I doubt many of us could answer those questions, not because we are stupid, but because the questions are stupid.

I think there certainly is something to the materials to which you have directed us. Schools ought to foster and encourage the native curiously with which most kids start out in school, but often do precisely the opposite instead. Schools also do overlook the different rates at which kids learn different things, and do misdiagnose simple boredom as ADD. My daughter, who is studying to become an educational psychologist, believes that most kids who are on drugs for such conditions today were indeed misdiagnosed.

The problem with learning, in our society and perhaps in our entire world today, is that it is too passive. Kids don't learn because they are ''schooled.'' Kids need to take an active role in the learning process. They need to explore, to ask questions, and to put things together and work them out for themselves. In a word, kids need to learn how to learn. That way they will remember and, more importantly, be able to use what they learn.

That having been said, however, I'll bet most educators share that concern. As a college professor, I certainly did. Most of the better teachers I've known as colleagues, or have had as instructors, have as well -- and that includes thousands of teachers. However, we haven't always been able to do that, in part because of the size of classes. As a college student, my classes often had enrollments of several hundred (although, as a professor, I seldom had more than 45 in a class -- and that was at a public university).

Law school and graduate school were both, for me, very much learn to learn experiences. It is impossible to study the law any other way. It is so massive, complex, growing and changing that the most one can learn in law school are some basic concepts, issues and procedures, and how to spot issues and develop answers. I've been able to function as an attorney on that basis for 22 years, even though there is no law that I studied that has not changed, and the volume of reported judicial decisions has about doubled during that time. So I guess law school worked for me. And I found graduate school at Princeton totally engaging and active.

If we could only bring that spirit into our elementary and high schools and, to some degree, even into our undergraduate college classes. Believe me, there is no conspiracy to avoid doing that. We just haven't found the answers yet.