Oct 22 2008
Education Rant
This will mostly be a rant because I had a *difficult* class tonight and I don’t really hate teaching or children but here we go…
I get so mad at parents, teachers, the government saying that all children are equal. They aren’t. They don’t need to be. There are lots of uses for people who can’t meet the requirements of a formal education and really who is it helping to push them through and say they are competent when in fact they are less competent than Koko the gorilla. It wastes tax payer dollars and it wastes the time of the teachers who could be teaching a more globally competitive curriculum. Hell, it even wastes the time of the kids who are never going to be able to complete the basic requirements to receive a standard diploma. EVER. You have no idea the pressure teachers are under to pass students who in no way deserve it. I didn’t do it but that’s because I’m a bitch and I told my principals that if they wanted to pass a kid I didn’t think deserved it to feel free to sign their name to the kids report card but I wouldn’t alter grades….I digress.
So why is it that we feel the need to ‘equalize’ people? I know I’m not as capable in math as say Einstein and it doesn’t bother me I know the difference is in the extreme but why can’t parents/government/people just be happy with who they are. We need manual labor and just because a kid can’t do work a math problem doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a fantastic whatever.
And if you try to use that ‘all people are created equal’ crap with me I’ll snap. That just means under the law and is not literal (I actually had an ESE teacher say that to me when I said the kid would never work on grade level I almost choked her).
Rant done.
PS
This isn’t to say special needs kids shouldn’t get help if their LD is correctable but they all aren’t and making them feel bad about it instead of teaching them something they can learn just sucks all the way around. AND it isn’t just LD kids…some kids just aren’t as bright. The average IQ is 100 but ‘normal’ kids can be anywhere from 70ish to 120ish….trust me when I tell you that is a huge range of ability and trying to cookie cutter them DOESN”T WORK!
….ok….really….I’m done now.
So, does that make me a bitch?
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No, it makes you a realist.
I agree, most kids aren’t equal. But the question is, do you teach to the “average” ones, forsaking the “slow” ones and ignoring the “above average ones”?
Or do you teach the “above average” ones and forsake all the rest?
What’s sad is that the common ideology seems to be to teach to the “slow” kids and let the rest figure it out for themselves. All the while, the collective IQ of the nation is plummeting.
I’ll take realist
About who do we teach to. We have to teach to the slowest. Even my ‘honors’ classes were full of average students to the point where I wasn’t able to have the children complete truly ‘honors’ work. The average kids were put into honors to boost their parent’s pride and every year I’d see the handful of truly exceptional children get bored with school and they were the ones who slipped through the cracks.
It’s a difficult call. I have a child with Aspergers. He has problem in math. However he’s completely bi-lingual and can explain how most things work, even extremely technical things, in a way that his classmates understand easily. In Sweden they have a “no person left behind” system where the class goes at the rate of the slowest in the class, this is frustating in the extreme for those who get it, but as most kids, even ones without special needs have some class that they don’t quite grasp quickly, there’s always someone running behind and someone tapping their fingernails impatiently. I don’t know what the answer is, I don’t believe that the slow rate is fair to the high achievers, but I don’t believe pushing high achievers too fast is right either.
@katie = I have taught several students with Aspergers and it has been my experience that while they learn differently they do learn as well if not better than many average students. I wasn’t talking about them
I definately think accomadations should be made so they are able to have a productive education.
As for ‘gifted’ students….I don’t know what the answer is but I do know that the few (and really there are only a few exceptional ones) I’ve seen are harmed by our current system of education. While we may not need to push them too fast they do at least need a nudge
I’m with eclectic on the gifted issue. In my school, there was a high pressure to get everyone into the Gifted program, and almost everyone spent most of their time trying to be Impressive. (I just did my work and spent a lot of time wishing the gifted classes would actually do something interesting.) So you end up with GATE (or other appropriate acronym) classes in which the people whom the classes are for are still sitting there bored out of their skulls. I’d say we need to do something, even if all it is is more advanced busywork.
@ravyn - I’m not a big fan of busywork…both as a student and as a teacher. I would love to see more real work given though…foreign languages earlier…more advanced math classes….political science classes in middle school. Something!