This is just so right on the money. We're basically torturing most high
school students. Half of Geometry, almost all of Algebra 2, and vast
portions of the sciences are of absolutely no value to the average,
successful citizen. And because so much useless information is forced
down their throats, none of it is retained, and the general population
walks around with little useful scientific knowledge, and lots of
incorrect notions of how the world works.
Students should take 6th grade math three times, rather than moving onto
algebra and geometry. Isn't it ridiculous to teach the factoring of
fourth degree polynomials to kids who can't do fractions, decimals and
percents?
Well of course it does extend to most other topics. But why don't people
care to have an integrated view of things? I propose that part of the
problem is the way the schools teach things as isolated facts. And this
almost mandated by standards that specify particular things students should
know. The textbooks break things down into specific topics rather than
integrating them. European texts are actually quite different in that they
mix the subjects together. And the typical physics course follows this
regimen.
But there is research by Feuerstein which categorizes the various cognitive
deficits that children have, and he has come up with a program to attack
them. These deficits essentially hold back people. So for example my
favorite "the inability to appreciate the need for accuracy and precision"
will tend to make students say who cares. But there is a social factor
here. Americans have the frontier mentality to contend with. In other
words the rough and ready philosophy does not obviously include the idea of
accuracy and precision in knowledge. But in reality to survive in
"primitive" conditions you need detailed knowledge of all kinds of things,
but not "book learning". And this same type of philosophy dominated
companies like Enron, who as we know acted like a cowboy.
The studies have shown that each science course decreases student attitudes
toward science. But Redish has shown that studio style courses actually
increase attitudes. So it would seem to be an educational problem. Math
courses do not seem to transfer to other areas, so there is obviously a
transfer problem.
By the way the original list may have actually been an urban legend, as it
was passed around. Some of the items are probably accurate, but others I
would say are grossly off.
When people talk about the dropout rate as if it were a new problem they
aren't looking at the historical rate. At one time the vast majority of
people never went beyond 6th grade. Even in the 1950s there were a large
number who repeated the 7th and 8th grade so they dropped out at age 16.
The result was that the entering HS students generally stayed the course.
Now they have to stay to 18, so they cause problems in HS. Would things
improve if we let them drop out at 16, but strictly enforced and
investigated what happened to students when they checked out of a school?
At one time the schools had a vocational track, but this has gone away.
When I went to HS the majority did not take more than geometry and business
math. Let us face it, not everyone needs algebra because they will never
use it. In addition if they don't have proportional reasoning coming into
algebra, they will just memorize procedures and not really understand what
they are doing. Also the current algebra courses do not improve
proportional reasoning. The Europeans have a vocational track and often
this is combined schooling and work, so the students end up with a good job.
The HS curriculum is skewed towards college only. Schools in TX now have to
scramble to create science courses to meet the mandated 4 years of science,
but it will be the same-oh, same-oh and the students will not really gain
good integrated understanding. Then of course there is the problem of
college drop outs. Just wait you too will come under the gun!
The conservative push more strict education, without taking into account the
fact that retention decreases the chance of graduation. Unfortunately some
liberals have used play as a substitute for education, and have given
"discovery" a bad name. There is some very good research which can be
applied, but both sides have now bought into incentives and whips. But
these only work if the targeted people know what how to actually improve
educaton. You can whip galley slaves and they might pull harder, but you
can't whip a blind person and make them see. This latter thing is what is
currently being done. There is a very recent case of a teacher who
committed suicide because of a bad evaluation, despite the fact that he was
very dedicated and was available for extra help. The current trend is
towards a narrowed curriculum with way too much pushing of fixed algorithms
without understanding.
The fact that this is being bungled by both sides will likely mean that the
whole thing will come apart with no resolution. There are grass roots
efforts such as Modeling which are getting good results, but now Modeling
may be endangered by lack of support.