Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsri!utegc!utai!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!manis From: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: Re: education Message-ID: <876@ubc-cs.UUCP> Date: Mon, 2-Mar-87 13:56:54 EST Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.876 Posted: Mon Mar 2 13:56:54 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 3-Mar-87 03:49:49 EST References: <213@fornax.uucp> Reply-To: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis) Distribution: can Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science Lines: 38 John Chapman asks what turns bright, inquisitive kindergarten students into dull adults. Here are some reasons which I've encountered in my experience as a teacher, both at the secondary and post-secondary levels: 1) Society in general prizes passivity. Advertising, television, videos, and movies, all of which children are exposed to for longer and with more immediacy than school, encourage a ``consumer'' philosophy which is alien to creativity and curiosity. (Mavor Moore in last Saturday's Globe & Mail had an interesting column on ``media education''). 2) Schools are often places where a child's creativity is not really encouraged. Teachers who keep their kids in line generally rate higher with administrations, and a teacher who does make the effort generally faces extremely limited resources for field trips, books, etc. As well, many teachers don't really understand how to enhance their students' creativity (while still teaching the basics of the subject). I speak from experience on this subject: I did a teacher training program at SFU about 13 years ago, and the major things I learned were: (1) erase the blackboard completely before you write on it, and (2) make sure that you have your attendance book up to date at all times. I did take an outstanding philosophy of education course, but it wasn't required, and many of the students didn't seem to benefit from it. 3) Parents often don't care about their children's learning. Parents often don't do anything when a child is doing poorly in school, or tell their kids, "never mind, I was never any good at math either". I once encountered a grade 11 academic student who had never learned how to do fractions! Tell me that her parents were taking responsibility for her education. ----- Vincent Manis {ihnp4!alberta,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!manis Dept. of Computer Science manis@cs.ubc.cdn Univ. of British Columbia manis%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5 manis@ubc.csnet (604) 228-6770 or 228-3061 "BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of 'Scientific Creationism'."