Dumb educational trends

[TravelingChris]

I started school in the late 60's and went through school in progressive districts in the 70;s. So let's start discussing bad educational trends:

 

Here are a few of mine:

open classrooms

free writing

IPI math= a moronic system where I spent most of the time waiting in lines to get my work checked or my next work assigned

 

Anyone else?

[LauraGB]

New Math.

 

ETA - Everyday Math.

Edited April 8, 2010 by LauraGB

[Charles Wallace]

I started school in the late 60's and went through school in progressive districts in the 70;s. So let's start discussing bad educational trends:

 

Here are a few of mine:

open classrooms

free writing

IPI math= a moronic system where I spent most of the time waiting in lines to get my work checked or my next work assigned

 

Anyone else?

 

WHOLE LANGUAGE!!

 

EVERYDAY MATH!

 

Project-based learning

 

Portfolios

[Chris in VA]

I actually like open classrooms.

 

I like whole language if it has phonics, too.

 

But I don't like all the projects and group work.

[Rosie_0801]

How about changing the acceptable handwriting system three times while I was learning to write?

 

Rosie

[Xuzi]

Okay, what is "open classrooms"??

[Stacy in NJ]

Okay, what is "open classrooms"??

 

Other than exterior walls, walls around bathrooms, and the walls around administrator's office, NO WALLS between classrooms. You could literally see into the room next to yours. Very noisy and distracting. Stupid, stupid idea.

[laundrycrisis]

New Math. Teaching subtraction to 6 and 7 yo's using set theory - as in adding a set of three "negative apples" to a set of seven "positive apples".....

 

Forcing 6th graders to *multiply, divide, and do decimal problems* in weird number bases that are never even used in computer science - before all of the base-10 multiplication tables have even been mastered in that class....

 

I went on to earn an engineering degree - I have done a LOT of math - I did encounter binary, hex, and octal in computer science classes - but never again encountered base 4, or base 7 math......and I never had any occasion to need to multiply, divide, or compute decimals in the other systems I did need to use - it was a pointless waste of school time.

[tex-mex]

I was in a experimental combo class of 2 classrooms merged into one (one grade level - 5th grade). It was a team teaching with 2 teachers in 1976-1977 with rainbows on the ceiling, strings of beads in the doorways, reading loft (crazy shag carpet colors) that would take the space of 1/4 of one classroom, and I recall singing protest war songs of the 60's during the last hour of school on fridays. :D Hilarious. We did lots of art, crafts, and not much academics.

[Xuzi]

Oh I haaaaaaaaated group projects in school! Mainly because I was either the one saddled with the majority of the work, or the one "left out" because the other members of my group were a "clique" and only worked with eachother and not with me, so I had to scrape up whatever "leftover" work I could find so that I could get my part of the grade.

 

Also, the "everyone's a winner!" mantra. I remember in grade school we used to have "Field Day" which was the *best* day of the year! There was high jump (complete with a huge inflatable mat to land on!), sprinting, relay races, etc. and you actually got first, second, and third place ribbons! But my last year at that school they phased out the ribbons, and now you just got "participation" ribbons that had your stats for that event written on the back (how high you jumped, how fast you ran, etc.). Sucked the fun right out of it.

[Stacy in NJ]

WHOLE LANGUAGE!!

 

EVERYDAY MATH!

Project-based learning

Portfolios

 

:D:iagree:

[TravelingChris]

Open classrooms was a trend started in the 70's where they knocked out classroom walls and made like three classroom into one giant room but still with three classes and three teachers. I have no idea what the point was. My school was supposed to have this. I went to a summer school with it. I hated it and got my parents to agree to send me to Catholic school so I wouldn't be subjected to the insanity. Let me explain that if you have even mildly distractable kids, this is torture. I was an undiagnosed mildly ADHD kid but I knew instinctively that such a situation would be bad for me.

[Snickerdoodle]

Some of the recent things I have heard about would make school a no-go for us. I absolutely loathe the idea of kids journaling (is that even a word?).

Edited April 9, 2010 by Snickerdoodle

[kewb]

When I was in 3rd grade (back in the early 70's) my year was part of the experimental Open Classroom. It was 2 classrooms with the dividing wall knocked out. We had two teachers and everything was shared. Truthfully, I don't remember much about that year except for the puppet show we put on (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer) and the fact that one of my teachers had a white streak dyed in her black hair. The next year the wall was put back up.

[TravelingChris]

I Can add to Tex-Mex post about singing strange songs. In fifth grade, we did a poetry unit and that would have been okay. The fact that we used song lyrics to demonstrate poetry could have been fine too. It wasn't. The song lyrics we got were things like Spiders and Snakes (look it up on you tube or the lyrics) and 59th St Bridge Song ( Feeling Groovy). We had an older teacher and I guess she was trying to be relevant but it just was weird.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I started school in the late 60's and went through school in progressive districts in the 70;s. So let's start discussing bad educational trends:

 

Here are a few of mine:

open classrooms

free writing

IPI math= a moronic system where I spent most of the time waiting in lines to get my work checked or my next work assigned

 

Anyone else?

 

Lack of critical thinking about technology use. In other words, if it has an electronic aspect, then it must be better than the older model (whether that was books or teacher led groups or something else).

 

I think of the many hours of time waste on a computer that was time not spent with a book or with a microscope or a magnifying glass.

 

I'm not against using computers. I do think that we tend to accept junk just because it is delivered via a computer.

[LauraGB]

Oh yeah. Fast food in the cafeteria. A year or two after I graduated several of the local high schools had McDonalds and Taco Bell (and I think a pizza chain, too) windows in the cafeteria. I don't know if they still do now, though.

[Xuzi]

Other than exterior walls, walls around bathrooms, and the walls around administrator's office, NO WALLS between classrooms. You could literally see into the room next to yours. Very noisy and distracting. Stupid, stupid idea.

Wow! :001_huh: What good did they believe that would do??

[laundrycrisis]

My entire elementary school was an open classroom !!! There were no walls in the entire main floor of the place, except around the bathrooms, music room, and administrative offices, and once special use room at the back. The only grade with walls was K, and that was in the basement, with the cafeteria. Everyone else - grades 1-5 - there were dividers between grades - but they did not go up more than 6 feet. Within each grade they arranged the desks into four different large squares "in the round". We were grouped into "teams" with color names according to our placement. (The teachers tried to hide this but we figured it out.) We rotated through four teachers - two in the morning, two in the afternoon. The desks had a space underneath that would fit a litter-box type box. We each had our own box that we carried with us when we "rotated". The rotation was done on the bell schedule, so that the entire school rotated teachers at the same time. We were under strict orders to be absolutely quiet and walk in straight lines when we rotated...because giant halls with no walls that are filled with a few hundred children get very noisy. When we worked it drove me nuts to hear the teachers for all the other classes and grades talking.

 

Open classrooms was a trend started in the 70's where they knocked out classroom walls and made like three classroom into one giant room but still with three classes and three teachers. .

[Jean in Newcastle]

SRA reading.

 

Watching "Reading Rainbow" as part of "literature" in elementary school.

[Julie in Austin]

Yep, my elem. school didn't have walls either. I remember listening to other teachers.

 

The only possible benefit I can see to this is that it would make abusive or lazy teachers known to others. But it was distracting and, I imagine, hell for easily distracted children.

[jenL]

Would you believe the elementary school my ds was supposed to attend still has open-concept classrooms for grades K-3????? The teachers/staff report that "the kids get used to it" - that's why I hear so many parents complaining about how distracted their child is or why so&so keeps getting in trouble for not paying attention! That is one of the stupidest educational concepts ever created.

 

Oh, and whole language is a joke too. :tongue_smilie:

[extendedforecast]

I started school in the late 60's and went through school in progressive districts in the 70;s. So let's start discussing bad educational trends:

 

Here are a few of mine:

open classrooms

free writing

IPI math= a moronic system where I spent most of the time waiting in lines to get my work checked or my next work assigned

 

Anyone else?

 

I just have to comment on the open classroom concept. I started school in the eighties, so I didn't know about the open classroom concept until we moved to an area where the schools were built in the 70's. My children went to a school for one year with an open concept, and it was one of the many reasons we decided to pull them out and homeschool them. I tried to keep an open mind about it, and this school is considered one of the best, but I realized that they were the best at performing well on the state standardized test. Scheduling was so rigid in that school, the teachers were required to follow the curriculum to a T, and you could walk through the halls and hear, word for word the same lesson in each classroom. I could never teach like that, and I imagine it would be difficult to teach to different learning styles.

 

Cindy

[dangermom]

My husband had the open classroom thing in 1st grade. 3 classes--90 kids!--with 3 teachers. He says it was very very noisy, and everyone got sick a lot. My elem. school built a whole new jr. high with 'pods' that had 4 connected classrooms and a central place for the teacher to work. I shudder to think what it must have been like, but pretty soon they built walls.

 

Amazingly, open classrooms are STILL being promoted as the wave of the future in some places. One of my favorite education bloggers said this a while back:

One of them tells me that her school doesn't have classrooms. They have 'learning hubs' instead. How interesting. 'What exactly is a learning hub?' I ask. She explains that classrooms were considered too restrictive, that 30 kids in a classroom was 'retrograde thinking' and so they built learning hubs which were the size of 3 classrooms instead.

 

Another teacher tells me that in his school - or should I say learning village - his classrooms don't have walls. Walls were considered too 20th century, as wallless classrooms would allow everyone to learn together.

[mammaruss]

My entire elementary school was an open classroom !!! There were no walls in the entire main floor of the place, except around the bathrooms, music room, and administrative offices, and once special use room at the back. The only grade with walls was K, and that was in the basement, with the cafeteria. Everyone else - grades 1-5 - there were dividers between grades - but they did not go up more than 6 feet. Within each grade they arranged the desks into four different large squares "in the round". We were grouped into "teams" with color names according to our placement. (The teachers tried to hide this but we figured it out.) We rotated through four teachers - two in the morning, two in the afternoon. The desks had a space underneath that would fit a litter-box type box. We each had our own box that we carried with us when we "rotated". The rotation was done on the bell schedule, so that the entire school rotated teachers at the same time. We were under strict orders to be absolutely quiet and walk in straight lines when we rotated...because giant halls with no walls that are filled with a few hundred children get very noisy. When we worked it drove me nuts to hear the teachers for all the other classes and grades talking.

 

This is EXACTLY how I remember my 4th-5th grade. We moved after that and I was SO happy that my new school had a real classroom!:D

[mammaruss]

I remember popcorn parties EVERY.SINGLE.Friday!! We watched cartoons, ate candy and popcorn--and did not learn a darn thing...:glare:

[Perry]

Open classrooms

Heterogeneous grouping for everything

Group projects

Hostility towards writing

Whole language

Reform math

Self esteem training

Emphasis on creative writing

*Meaningless time intensive projects

 

I had open classrooms in 5th and 6th grade. Awful.

 

One of those years we did a self paced math curriculum. I finished it early in the year and then had nothing to do for math for months. We also spent a lot of time learning non-base ten bases, and the teacher clearly didn't get it. I liked it, although it was a huge waste of time.

 

 

*Example of meaningless time intensive project: My dd13 is in public school this year. They are currently doing a unit on poetry. They aren't learning about any poets, or reading classic or well known poetry. Instead, they wrote 10 original poems. For one of these poems, instead of writing it out on paper or the computer, they were to search magazines for the words, cut the words out, and paste them on a piece of paper. So far my dd has spent at least three hours on this ridiculous cut and paste job, because it's hard to find words like "smashing" and "tidbit" in a magazine. The teacher told them if they couldn't find the actual word, they could cut out individual letters and spell it that way. :banghead:

[Snickerdoodle]

*Meaningless time intensive projects

 

 

Equal effort for equal grade?

[Spy Car]

Reducing math to being nothing more than the memorization of "math facts."

 

It makes no more sense that teaching children to read by having them memorize "sight words" from flash-cards, but it seem to be the current mode of math education in some quarters.

 

A "dumb" trend.

 

Bill

[Penelope]

Self esteem classes

guidance as a subject :lol:

group projects

pre-K

full day kindergarten

20 minute lunches that are really more like 7 minutes to actually eat

vending machines in the school

[Joanne]

SRA reading.

 

 

 

I remember these! With the progressive colored tabbs?:lol:

 

But I don't like all the projects and group work.

 

I just turned in extra credit in my Career Counseling class. I don't need it. I have a very solid "A". But 30% of my grade is a group project. I HATE GROUP PROJECTS. I hate having any percentage of MY grade rely on others.

[WiseOwlKnits]

Group projects

"Collaborative learning"

New Math

Whole language

 

Yep, that about sums it up.

[Rosie_0801]

I absolutely loathe the idea of kids journaling (is that even a word?).

 

Oh yeah. I never did think of a way to tell the teachers that I didn't think my personal life was any of their business. I had to take the passive aggressive approach of writing really lame things.

 

How about the great idea that teachers have to be qualified? In prep (your K,) I was sitting on the floor of the staff room with a biscuit tray and some coloured magnets, learning to read music. The next year, the not-a-real-teacher was booted out because he wasn't qualified as a teacher. He was only a member of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In grade one, I was sitting in my classroom during music time, scowling, and singing "Juicy, Juicy, Green Grass." A serious insult to my six year old intelligence, though the others seemed to like it.

 

And worksheets that pretended to teach but really only tested what you knew already. I was great at the geography worksheets, as would anyone else be who had a map of Europe on their bedroom wall and an atlas on a shelf they could reach in the lounge room.

 

Rosie

Edited April 9, 2010 by Rosie_0801

[Saille]

Oh yeah. Fast food in the cafeteria. A year or two after I graduated several of the local high schools had McDonalds and Taco Bell (and I think a pizza chain, too) windows in the cafeteria. I don't know if they still do now, though.

 

OH, I am nodding my head off. We had "McDonald's Day" once a week in Jr. High. And I have a friend whose kid just got an announcement for an anti-obesity program at school along with a coupon offering a Krispy Kreme doughnut for every A on her report card...these were in her backpack on the same. day.

 

I have this theory that the initial proponents of whole language were all people with very thorough phonics training who were comfortable teaching phonics in context without a workbook...then teachers started learning whole language *instead of* phonics in teacher training programs. And suddenly we were all remarking, "Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?"

[jujsky]

The "point" of open-classrooms is sooooooo far-fetched. I seriously think the people who came up with the concept were on drugs at the time -- heavy ones too! Supposedly students will subconsciously "absorb" what they hear floating over the partial walls of the other classrooms and it will help them learn and retain the material.

 

My junior high was set up this way. It was horrible! It was so difficult to concentrate on anything with noise everywhere. It was hard to learn and retain the information I was getting in my class with all the noise, let alone subconsciously absorb material from other classrooms. Load of horse-poo if you ask me!

[Medieval Mom]

Social Studies instead of History :tongue_smilie: I don't think I learned any history until I was in college!

 

My ps school wasn't like this, but I know of several TODAY that promote "creative spelling" for the children. I.E. They don't correct or teach spelling :confused::confused: A friend of mine talked with her 7th grade boy's English teacher about it. She shrugged, and replied, "Who needs spelling? They have spell-checkers on their computers." :scared:

 

I agree about the endless, pointless, group work activities. Bleh! :banghead:

[kalanamak]

I started school in the late 60's and went through school in progressive districts in the 70;s. So let's start discussing bad educational trends:

 

 

I was ahead of you.

 

New math

Modules (every Thursday and Friday afternoon you signed up for a class to be in FOR 20 MINUTES, and then you moved onto the next one. Absolutely no learning for those afternoons).

Eliminating any language but Spanish and French (my sister did the system 20 years before me and there was German and Latin).

The whole school rotating around The Jocks and sports.

No attendance, so that the parking lot was a constant stream of noise of kids coming and going.

[Margo out of lurking]

Other than exterior walls, walls around bathrooms, and the walls around administrator's office, NO WALLS between classrooms. You could literally see into the room next to yours. Very noisy and distracting. Stupid, stupid idea.

 

Yep, this is what dh had, along with whole language. He can't spell his way out of a paper bag.

 

That's what convinced me to choose the Spalding method for my kids. My schooling was much more structured, and we even had the Morrison-McCall tests back in the early 70s--along with four years of California history, but at least I can spell!

[katemary63]

Other than exterior walls, walls around bathrooms, and the walls around administrator's office, NO WALLS between classrooms. You could literally see into the room next to yours. Very noisy and distracting. Stupid, stupid idea.

 

I went to this kind of school in 6th grade. It was terrible! The teachers hated it and no one could hear what anyone else was saying. It was LOUD! It was a BRAND NEW "state of the art" building and all the parents were begging to get their kids into that school that first year. They were begging to get them out the year after that. My parents got me out. Within a few years, they put up real walls. It was a dismal failure.

[tatertotschool]

I went to elementary school in the 80s. I never memorized basic arithmetic. I counted on my fingers. No one bothered to tell me otherwise, or to show me otherwise. When I taught 4th grade about 10 years ago, the school was using something called "Touch Math". It was awful, just like counting on your fingers- but with dots and this cute little template taped to your desk. Had I just been encouraged to memorize it, I would've been better served. Thankfully, my 3rd grade teacher insisted I learned my multiplication tables.

 

Speaking of the open classroom, I toured the most expensive preschool that people just gush about, stand in line in order to ensure their child gets into the program, and was horrified to see these short walls all over the place. When I asked about it (it was LOUD in there) I was told "they get used to it".

[happi duck]

I.T.A.

http://www.smecc.org/ita.htm

 

In first grade during the seventies, we were our school district's guinea pigs for this program. Instead of learning to read using the conventional alphabet we spent a year learning the Initial Training Alphabet. Surprise, surprise...switching over from ITA to the real alphabet was no easier than just learning to read the real alphabet from scratch.

 

In the meantime, the schools and the public library spent money buying children's books re-written in ITA.

 

We were the first and last ITA class.

 

My mom taught me how to read at home.

[Jan in SC]

Open classrooms!

 

There are four elementary schools that are still open classrooms in our district.

 

I didn't think serving french fries, milk shakes and doughnuts ala carte to middle school students was a good idea. (I did eat them, almost every.single.day.)

[lollie010]

I.T.A.

http://www.smecc.org/ita.htm

 

In first grade during the seventies, we were our school district's guinea pigs for this program. Instead of learning to read using the conventional alphabet we spent a year learning the Initial Training Alphabet. Surprise, surprise...switching over from ITA to the real alphabet was no easier than just learning to read the real alphabet from scratch.

 

In the meantime, the schools and the public library spent money buying children's books re-written in ITA.

 

We were the first and last ITA class.

 

My mom taught me how to read at home.

 

Checked out the link. All I can say is HUHHH! We have medical malpractice and legal malpractice. IS there a such thing as educational malpractice?

[Aggie]

Social Studies instead of History :tongue_smilie: I don't think I learned any history until I was in college!

 

My ps school wasn't like this, but I know of several TODAY that promote "creative spelling" for the children. I.E. They don't correct or teach spelling :confused::confused: A friend of mine talked with her 7th grade boy's English teacher about it. She shrugged, and replied, "Who needs spelling? They have spell-checkers on their computers." :scared:

 

I agree about the endless, pointless, group work activities. Bleh! :banghead:

 

And this starts in K when the kids have to "journal". One school called it "kidspell". ugh

 

History....cramming Theentirehistoryoftheworld into one year. How much of that is actually learned/retained?

 

Did anyone else have "puzzle" projects? Each kid takes a part, studies it, then reports on it. For instance, a class project on Africa. Each kid takes a country, then the "puzzle" is put together at the end of the unit when each kid teaches what he learned. Awful.

 

When I first started teaching, "positive reinforcement" was big. If a kid did something good, we had to write his name on the board. And ignore any bad behavior. I can't believe I went back for the second year.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

This is a little bit like the way letters are printed in 100 Easy Lessons, although ITA goes much farther than just printing sh and th as one connected symbol. Trying to "spell" vowel sounds using odd combinations seems like a horrible idea.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Reducing math to being nothing more than the memorization of "math facts."

 

It makes no more sense that teaching children to read by having them memorize "sight words" from flash-cards, but it seem to be the current mode of math education in some quarters.

 

A "dumb" trend.

 

Bill

 

My second semester physics instructor required us to begin almost every problem solution with F=ma . Unfortunately for us, this meant that we weren't just solving simple cannon ball or collision problems by deriving the answers, we were attempting to do this with much more complicated topics. No standing on the shoulders of giants or learning equations for us.

 

When his wife had a baby and he took leave for a few weeks, we had a substitute instructor who was trying to figure out why the whole class was getting pretty much every problem set wrong. He told us to use the formula. We asked, what formula, because we didn't even know that there were basic formulas that applied.

 

Twenty years ago and the experience still bugs me. We ended up neither learning the application of well established formulas nor understanding how they had been derived and why they worked. And probably set many of us up for failure in the following years' required electrical engineering and weapons systems courses because we has such poor foundations in the physics behind the engineering courses.

[bluemongoose]

I missed the open classrooms...but I still got:

 

Whole Language

 

Creative Spelling and also Creative Grammar. I was taught that it was so important to be a great "creative" writer and that correction would kill my creativity. Great! Now I can write, I love to write, trouble is nobody can read it!

 

No Competition allowed. Everybody is a winner.

 

Group Projects

 

Puzzle Projects

 

File Cabinet Math- This was a file cabinet of Math packets (run off worksheets stapled together) that got progressively more difficult. The idea was that everyone could work at their own pace through the cabinet. Great in theory, but there was never any instruction. I have to hear something and then try it to get it to stick. So, I would get most of it wrong and then the teacher would circle my incorrect answers and give the packet back. I was not expected to redo it, nor was it ever explained to me. I could have answered each problem with a smile face and it would have been the same.

[AngelaNYC]

I was one of the guinea pigs in this this ridiculous, horrible reading "experiment". Thankfully I was transferred out of this 1st grade class and placed in the top track where words were normal. I could already read and this made me cry every day. I mean, honestly, WTH?

 

 

The Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA)

The Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA) spelling system was designed by Sir James Pitman (grandson of the man who devised shorthand) to help young children learn to read more quickly.

 

 

There are 44 characters in the Initial Teaching Alphabet...

 

It uses the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet and another 14 characters to represent sounds such as "oo" and "th". Sentences written in ITA are all in lower case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ITA was introduced into selected schools in England in 1961. Both the children (and their parents!) had to master the use of the expanded alphabet in all of their schoolwork. Of course, ITA was only was only an interim solution to reading and writing and consequently, after the age of seven, the proper alphabet had to be learnt!

 

Many 'learning to read' books were produced in ITA and a popular series was 'The Downing Readers".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[AngelaNYC]

I.T.A.

http://www.smecc.org/ita.htm

 

In first grade during the seventies, we were our school district's guinea pigs for this program. Instead of learning to read using the conventional alphabet we spent a year learning the Initial Training Alphabet. Surprise, surprise...switching over from ITA to the real alphabet was no easier than just learning to read the real alphabet from scratch.

 

In the meantime, the schools and the public library spent money buying children's books re-written in ITA.

 

We were the first and last ITA class.

 

My mom taught me how to read at home.

 

OMG. I thought I was the only one who knew about this. I was in NYC in 1976 with this. Where were you? (and we've never forgotten this. Isn't that interesting? Still shaking my head and rolling my eyes after 35 years).

[cathmom]

I was one of the guinea pigs in this this ridiculous, horrible reading "experiment". Thankfully I was transferred out of this 1st grade class and placed in the top track where words were normal. I could already read and this made me cry every day. I mean, honestly, WTH?

 

 

The Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA)

The Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA) spelling system was designed by Sir James Pitman (grandson of the man who devised shorthand) to help young children learn to read more quickly.

 

 

There are 44 characters in the Initial Teaching Alphabet...

 

It uses the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet and another 14 characters to represent sounds such as "oo" and "th". Sentences written in ITA are all in lower case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ITA was introduced into selected schools in England in 1961. Both the children (and their parents!) had to master the use of the expanded alphabet in all of their schoolwork. Of course, ITA was only was only an interim solution to reading and writing and consequently, after the age of seven, the proper alphabet had to be learnt!

 

Many 'learning to read' books were produced in ITA and a popular series was 'The Downing Readers".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is one of the most frightening things I've ever seen!