Why the concept of a "good student" is just silly and wrong

[lemit]

I forgot to mention in my earlier post the value formal education has of introducing students to subjects they wouldn't otherwise explore and wouldn't otherwise discover a love of.

I also dropped out of college, Alexander. Well, really it was kind of a plea bargain. I could drop out, be expelled due to grades, or be expelled for disciplinary reasons. But after a year, I went back and finished my degree and even worked on a master's. (The master's was in education with a focus on educational history, philosophy, and theory.)

Years later, I was asked at various times to go to library school, medical school, and law school. I declined, but I did work in higher education for 25 years, sat on advisory councils, developed curriculae, approved grants, and researched various administrative projects.

I tell all that partly because I've been writing as if I had intuited a bunch of educational theory. I've had both formal and (much better) informal training in education. The main thing I've learned is how little I know, because education (like medicine) should be adjusted for the individual needs of individual people. Too much of the time it isn't.

So, I can pretty much figure out what's wrong with education. It's fixing it that eludes me.

The failure of the education to meet my individual needs made school more difficult for me, but the main reason I failed in school was that I was lazy. I learned early on how to write, how to give the answers the teachers wanted, and how that would absolve me of any responsibility to learn. Eventually, like you, Alexander--and like James Thurber--I just stopped going to class. I went to the library and read things I wanted to read (like Thurber, Benchley, Twain, Will Cuppy, and Stephen Leacock, who proved useful later in studying educational theory) and avoided people and responsibility.

I'd love to be able to go back and change that but I can't. What I can do is to tell students to work at learning regardless of the educational environment in which they find themselves. That is what they will need to do the rest of their lives.

Of course, anybody who participates in Hypography instead of a more gossipy site has already started that process of individual learning.

--lemit

[Boerseun]

I don't think a "good student" is anywhere as important an issue as a "good teacher".

I've had a few good ones in my life, and they really taught me the value of knowledge and learning. And then you get to university, and you're stuck in the meat grinder where knowledge is clinically turned into a salable asset.

I studied geology at varsity, and was immersed in my work and studies for all of two months. After that time, I went through all my work on my own, because the pace in class was too damn slow. I loved every single bit of it, and still do - geology is amazing. But I couldn't spend an entire year waiting for the rest of the guys to catch up before we could be tested on the material and progress to the next level. And, of course, there was bills to be paid.

So I quit, and studied information technology at a private college that allowed for fast-tracking. I also find that very interesting. Then I started working, and the next year enrolled part-time for a B.Sc. in information technology, thinking that through working, I can get to spread my studies to fill the year. I passed the first year with flying colours, but then the company convinced my to switch my studies to B.Comm InfoTech rather, because it's more to their benefit. And with dollars in my eyes, I did just that and had to repeat my first year of InfoTech with commercial subjects attached. And I hate bean counters, and bean counting in general. So, after that, I gave it up. Again. And I got completely disillusioned with the Corporate World.

I bought a farm (with my father) outside the town of Hartbeespoort in South Africa, and we invested in hydroponic tomato farming (after intensively studying it, of course ). This turned into a bit of a problem due to unforseen costs to treat our water with.

So I started my own advertising company, because apart from Geology, Information Science and Science in general, and farming, I love (and have a bent for) art.

I've been at it for a few years now, I make television ads and static newspaper ads for a few clients, and am launching my very own magazine within the next couple of months.

The nett result of all this is that I am an expert on email systems, networks, computer hardware, software (I wrote a program to do identity profile migrations between domains that our Microsoft consultants from Redmond explicitly told us was impossible), Geology, tomatos, hydroponic farming, computer-generated graphics, vector imagery, printing, publishing, video editing, scripting, etc. (pardon the modesty)

Yet I hold no single certification or degree for any of these. And working for myself (because the corporate world really, really sucks), I'm in the happy position that it's not important.

And that's my whole point.

Teachers who are good, and I mean good, will see the potential in every individual case, and modify their curriculum accordingly. Unfortunately, this is not always practical and/or possible. But they will instill a love of knowledge and learning for it's own sake, not for some far-off distant goal, to achieve a piece of paper that you can shove under some potential employer's nose in exchange of money.

I think bad teachers are way more harmful than bad students.

(Once again, sorry for the cocky valuation of my own skills... being my own boss, it's difficult to find any faults with the subject's pure unadulterated awesomeness )

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

Your problem [Turtle]is you have no guts and you are too impressionable. ...

The better part of valour is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.

[lemit]

Originally Posted by Erasmus00

I look at this from the teacher side- I have been involved in teaching college level physics courses. For me, the grade is an evaluation- it signifies a student has attained some level of mastery over course work, and to be honest, I don't care how hard working a student is, how often they come talk to me, etc. I care about the quality of their work.

An A grade signifies the student has mastered the concepts taught, and can apply them to novel problems. B is usually the student can work through some problems, but is largely limited to problem types they have seen before. They are familiar with the material, but cannot apply it in new ways, etc. If a student never studies, but can do any problem I throw at them, why should I fail them? If a student works their tail off but can't do any problems, why should I pass them?

As far as I'm concerned, a good physics student is a student who ends the course capable of doing physics.

Beautiful! I often forget about the disciplines which have a demonstrable result (even though I taught writing). Thanks for the reminder.

--lemit

[Kriminal99]

Hey lemit, what do you think the cons would be of simply privatizing secondary education?

[Kriminal99]

Originally Posted by Turtle

The better part of valour is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.

Yeah because you can't accomplish a goal if you get killed or something similar happens in a different situation... it doesn't mean you give up on the goal.

I guess you can't see any way to fight for truth in a situation like that. If so then that is where we differ. I have a comprehensive understanding of many subjects that include how and why an organization like that is supposed to work. If I see something like that, my reaction is who the heck is this fool who is using my country's resources and my tax dollars to support his ego at school kids expense, and why hasn't he been fired yet. If he refuses to be reasonable, I'd go to the administrator. then the school board, then file a lawsuit (not when I was a kid but in general) etc. If it's wrong, there is always a way. The one way that is always there is to appeal to people at large to get a bunch of guns and deal with the corrupt government.

Perhaps a bit overkill for a teacher giving you a bad grade for being right, but only because it would probably never get past the teacher's boss.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

Yeah because you can't accomplish a goal if you get killed or something similar happens in a different situation... it doesn't mean you give up on the goal.

correct. live to fight another day to quote another phrase without attribution. my goal was to graduate with honors; i did.

Originally Posted by K-man

I guess you can't see any way to fight for truth in a situation like that. If so then that is where we differ. I have a comprehensive understanding of many subjects that include how and why an organization like that is supposed to work. If I see something like that, my reaction is who the heck is this fool who is using my country's resources and my tax dollars to support his ego at school kids expense, and why hasn't he been fired yet. If he refuses to be reasonable, I'd go to the administrator. then the school board, then file a lawsuit (not when I was a kid but in general) etc. If it's wrong, there is always a way. The one way that is always there is to appeal to people at large to get a bunch of guns and deal with the corrupt government.

Perhaps a bit overkill for a teacher giving you a bad grade for being right, but only because it would probably never get past the teacher's boss.

correct again. the devil is in the details. my anecdotal incident didn't happen in a vacuum and i had to make a judgment call on the spur of the moment in the classroom. as to whether it was worth it to bring the matter to the school's administrators, i did look into it after the fact, and found this was not an isolated incident for the teacher, but he was tenured and there was no end of grief & bother that other students already suffered and were suffering trying to oppose him through administrative means. carrying a full load, working, other yada yadas, it wasn't worth my trouble.

some side notes: i was in my 30's at the time, unlike most of the students who were kids, and the teacher was in his 50's. he was a drama teacher, extremely effeminate and clearly had some issues with having his authority taken seriously. having been through a similar bruhaha with a high school drama teacher, i had some idea how things might develop.

[GAHD]

I find this kind of funny, and have my own little anecdote to add to the pile:

Back in high school I was in french immersion. THe school needed to teach all 'core' classes in french to be considered 'immersion'.

Lo and behold less than half their teachers speak french! Over half the populous is immersion! What do they do? They double up the french teachers and expand class sizes. 28-32 per class is obviously an effective way to teach high school!

Also, for math class, let's get the french major* teacher to teach that, she speaks french, she can do french math! Well as my class was proof, she could not do math. She could copy from the textbook(and could speak french like crazy while doing it!) but could not answer any questions like "why do exponents behave that way?"

So, after half the class has failed every test up to the midterm exam, I go to the principal, explain to him that everyone in my class is failing because the teacher doesn't know math. He tells me to just listen, I don't know what I'm talking about. (here is where I could have stopped, but being an ass like krim when it comes to "things being right, DAMNIT!")

I go to the school board, tell them my entire class will fail this exam due to bad teaching, and that the admin wouldn't listen to me. They will "look into it", but said in a pat the kid on the head and send him away kinda way.

Exams come. Everyone but me and the one I was tutoring fail.

Our class gets a notice there will be a new teacher inside of a week.

*I* get notice that I'm being kicked out of the school.


People don't like it when you rock their little boat.

[lawcat]

Principal problem of education is two-part. First, schools do not teach you how to think but what to think. Second, schools do not teach you how to study but what to study. The result of the system is the stratification of students. You are given the material and told what it is, then you are tested on the "how" of the material, all the way through the baccalaureate degree. Only in the graduate levels do they teach the cream of the crop how to do it--graduate students merely sharpen their natural skills.

In essence, there is very little teaching, which is why many feel that they are not learning much in schools that they would not learn outside of schools.

Schools are basically a competition in which your GPA, calss rank, etc., represent you natural capacity compared to the sample. There is no effective teaching.

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by lawcat

Principal problem of education is two-part. First, schools do not teach you how to think but what to think. Second, schools do not teach you how to study but what to study. The result of the system is the stratification of students. You are given the material and told what it is, then you are tested on the "how" of the material, all the way through the baccalaureate degree. Only in the graduate levels do they teach the cream of the crop how to do it--graduate students merely sharpen their natural skills.

In essence, there is very little teaching, which is why many feel that they are not learning much in schools that they would not learn outside of schools.

Schools are basically a competition in which your GPA, calss rank, etc., represent you natural capacity compared to the sample. There is no effective teaching.

This sounds exactly like something I would have written after my first year at college. It disgusted me. We actually had a discussion in class one day where 50 of us (that was the sub-class taught by a Teacher's Assistant - the full class was a whopping 460 students!!!) were asked what we planned on accomplishing in college and why we had come in the first place (this was a public state school in the US). I thought it was going to be an interesting discussion. Wrong. I didn't count, but I would say that about 85% of the people stated that they came to college to get the diploma. Once they had their peice of paper, they were done. Education was merely a means to an end for a lot of my peers.

I grew even more cynical and finally decided to denounce the system and quit college. I worked my butt off for a couple years and realized that I was going to be a bottom of the barrel, struggling low class person if I didn't change. I went back to school to persue my passion, but I did it better this time. I chose a school that was unconcerned with grades and more concerned with teaching you *how to learn*. The difference was night and day and I feel like a much better person from having my experiences there.

Why am I ranting on and on about this? Good question...
It comes back to some other points made in this thread. Sometimes it is the teacher's fault, sometimes it's the student's fault, and sometimes it is the system's fault. Yet, as Turtle wisely put it, "suck it up". All you can do is to discern what is best for you and appease those that hold different (or no) values.

I think there is some truth to the statement that the best student is a teacher (or a similar manifestation that says something like "the disciple can become the teacher's teacher"...can't recall the exact wording right now). Nonetheless, the heirarchy is set. A student is subservient to a teacher and a teacher holds dominion over a student. It seems silly when presented in such a candid fashion, but it's just the way it is. It makes sense logically, or at least it should.

There are those few exceptions where the student should be the teacher and the teacher should submit to the dominance (of knowledge). This can be very frustrating for a student, particularly if that student is made subservient by the teacher for whatever reason (finds the student threatening, dislikes them for whatever reason, etc.). I've been there and it is not fun.

What has worked for me (not saying it will work for everyone) is to acquiesce. It's a strong hit to the pride (at least initially), but it has worked out well for me. I've had professors apologize to me (well, three to be exact). I'm quite sure that had I put up a fight, they would not have come to the same conclusion. It's like the difference between saying "I told you so" and a quaint smile of acknowledgment. In the end, I am quite pleased with how everything worked out.