Xref: utzoo comp.edu:1610 sci.math:5180 sci.physics:5234 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!killer!elg From: elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green) Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics Subject: Re: Student preparedness Message-ID: <6435@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> Date: 16 Dec 88 06:29:25 GMT References: <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Distribution: na Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas Lines: 84 in article <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) says: > Xref: killer comp.edu:1766 sci.math:5138 sci.physics:5354 > In article <776@afit-ab.arpa> wbralick@blackbird.afit.af.mil (William A. Bralick) writes: >>For a possible solution to these problems, I suggest Adler's >>Paideia proposal. However, be prepared for some extensive >>complaints from people (students) who believe that they should >>be allowed to have electives during K-12. The notion that >>students know what they should be taught, how they should be >>taught, or what the standards should be is, of course, ludicrous. > disgusts me. I counter your snide remark about K-12 students with my own > equally unsupported claim: a curriculum that is blind to the needs and wants > of the students is blind to everything education is about. In general, in K-12, the "wants" of the students are totally opposite the "needs" of the student. I don't know about your school, but at ordinary public schools like the ones I attended, most kids were there because they had to be, not because they wanted to be... if they had their "wants", they wouldn't be there at ALL. > school applications. A good curriculum should adapt to the students, and part > of that involves teaching what the students want to learn and how they want it > to be taught, at least some of the time. As a former K-12 student (inclusive), > I feel justified in saying that your attitude toward students > disgusts me. A good curriculum should adapt to the students, in that if a student wants to do/learn things beyond the minimum requirements, he/she should be encouraged in such ventures. But most of them DON'T want to be taught, and DON'T want to learn! You obviously attended very exceptional schools, if your classmates didn't, for the most part, feel that way. I remember, painfully, my immature years in my early teens, and some of the things I did in those days. If I'd had total charge of my life and education, I'd have screwed up even worse than I did. Childhood and adolescence, by definition, mean that you don't have adequate information to make an informed decision. Believe it or not, a substantial portion of the population isn't the sort of self-directed high achiever that you proclaim yourself to be. For many kids today, the parents come in at 6pm, say "hi, kid", flop exhaustedly into the couch in front of the tee-vee, and don't say another word till the 10 o'clock news (at which time they say, "g'night, kid"). Is that any way to impart the importance of education? What kind of education does it take to be a recliner rutabaga? How are the kids going to have enough information to make an informed decision about their education? > p.s. i'm hoping someone else will take on your remarks about television I just did. Makes it harder for the parents to come home from an exhausting day at work and turn off their brain, if there's no television around. Heck, they might even notice that their kids are alive, for a change. I run a computer bulletin board for a local computer club, of which about 50% of the users are kids under 17. These are mostly bright, fairly intelligent youngsters, some of whom are better conversationalists than the average USENETter. I get the distinct impression, from various conversations I've had, that for the most part their parents growled "Here, get out of my hair", threw money at them, and that's how they got their computer and modem. Their kids are a nuisance, excess baggage, something that clutters the house and occasionally interrupts their TV viewing while they're winding down from a long day at work and can't the ingrate bastard kids stay in their room or go out to play and just LEAVE US ALONE..... And we're not just talking poor kids in ghettos, here. We're talking about, e.g., wife a nurse, father a middle manager, large $100,000 house (down here, a standard 3-bedroom 2-bath sells for $40,000), bought his kid a Fiero for his 16'th birthday, bought her kid $5,000 worth of Amiga 2000 and accessories..... and I've been over to his house fairly often, and even when they're home, they rarely talk to him! No, television isn't solely responsible for the destruction of the family (and thus the cause of many of our educational problems... "why should I care what I do in school, if my parents don't?")... but as a mass Novocain to numb the mind, it certainly doesn't help. I shudder to think of what would have happened to the last kid above, if he hadn't been bit by the computer bug and convinced (by me) that the only way he could take it to the logical conclusion was to do well in math and study CS in college (he just finished his first semester at the University of New Orleans). -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 >> In Hell they run VMS. > No. In Hell, they run MS-DOS. And you only get 256k.