Dumb educational trends

[Spy Car]

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".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK. For me, you win!

 

Bill :D

[OnTheBrink]

I missed the ITA thing. But, I was reading before I went to school, so maybe that's why.

 

And, I liked the open concept classes. I went to open schools from 3-6th grades and don't remember it being particularly noisy. No more noisy than the kids slamming doors and running up and down the hardwood stairs in my elementary school that was a traditional school building. I liked the amplitheatre-style area where my 6th grade teacher would read to us after lunch. I liked the dividers on wheels that could be shifted around. I liked "tote trays" where I kept my supplies. I thought it was cool!

 

I do have vague recollections of outlining my words in spelling to see what shape they made. I had no idea why we had to do that; seemed stupid to me. And, I absolutely hated "social studies" as well as those stupid SRA PowerBuilders. And, "contracts". If we met all the goals on our contracts, we'd get A's. Unnecessary pressure, imho. The goals weren't based on skills, they were based on how far you could get. Like, getting to the Brown level in the SRA things. Dumb dumb dumb.

[Tap]

Mine is the opposite of most. I regret that they taught us metric conversions and then got rid of it. I use metric at work and it is soooo much easier than American conversions. So much of the world is learning the American language why can't we give up our silly 16/16ths=1in 12in=1ft=1/3 of a yard. BLAHHHH. :confused:

 

Metric makes soooo much more sense! If it wouldn't have been such a disservice to my own kids, I would have taught them metric only and tossed American conversions.

[IsabelC]

Lots of curriculum changes. We learned printing writing in grade one, traditional cursive in grade two, back to printing in grade three, then a new style of semi-cursive in grade four. Times tables to 12 in grade two, then back to 2, 3 and 4 only in grade three.

[LaissezFaire]

In my 2nd grade class our teacher had three grouped tables. She separated the class by behavior. Good kids at table 1, OK kids at table 2 and bad kids at table 3. If you had to use the restroom you got your name on the board and sometimes had to forfeit your recess time. I had a bladder problem and so my name was always on the board and I never was 'good enough' for table 1.

 

Scarred me. for. life.

 

I can still remember her demoting people to the bad table. It actually makes me tear up to type this.

[anabelneri]

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.

 

 

Oooh, I used Touch Math starting in 1st grade. I sadly still use the stupid touch points. Do you know how hard it is to do Differential Equations when you are still trying to add using touchpoints? I failed out of my math minor because of that (there were other issues too, but Touch Math definitely had a huge negative impact!)

[asta]

I'm suddenly realizing that I'm in a different age bracket here than I thought...

 

The only thing that I can really identify with is the "do your math, sign up for and stand in line for the answer manual" thing.

 

You know, the one that (mysteriously) was only ever available to a select clique of kids. The rest of the class (just as mysteriously) ended up with Cs...

 

 

a

[MSNative]

File Cabinet Math! I'd forgotten the year I had to do that. Ugh. What a waste. I remember doing all of the tests the first week and then having the teacher tell us that you couldn't do that. You had to go thru each of the worksheets.

 

Dioramas - I think truly this is one of the reasons we homeschool. I cannot stand dioramas. I know stupid group projects and pointless time consuming projects have already been mentioned, but my visceral hatred of dioramas forced me to single them out. Another stupid one that must be singled out - videotaped group projects. We had to do them for foreign lang and math. Not useful projects, mind you. Humorous projects. To this day, all I remember about one year is one kid singing Mary had a little lamb in French.

 

How 'bout getting rid of achievement grouping? Worst trend I've seen and I don't see it ending. Or at least not until we can get rid of the no competition thing.

 

Had never seen ITA. Yikes.

[TravelingChris]

Actually videotaped projects is one thing I hate about one of my daughter's homeschool coop classes. She keeps coming home with group projects, many of which involve videotaping. We don't own a video camera so it always means driving her somewhere else. Not what I thought the class was going to be. SHe finally wised up and for the classes festival day, she only chose activities that can be done with no additional work for me. SHe will be cooking with a classmate who lives in our neighborhood and she can walk to her house.

[NicksMama-Zack's Mama Too]

 

*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:

 

Great skill to learn.....if you want to assemble ransom notes...:tongue_smilie::tongue_smilie:

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

I guess DOD schools in the 70's didn't try many new things. I don't remember anything unusual. Mediocrity was the worst of my education. I do know that I got very little grammar training through my whole 12 years in public school. I also remember being light years ahead of my peers in reading, Dick and Jane was sooooo boring.

[NicksMama-Zack's Mama Too]

[\QUOTE]*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:

 

Great skill to learn.....if you want to assemble ransom notes...:tongue_smilie::tongue_smilie:

[Sahamamama]

My niece -- I am not making this up -- my niece went to her first day of Kindergarten at the local public school. The students were each given a blank piece of paper and a pencil, and told to write about their summer vacation. :001_huh:

 

My other pet peeve: Invented (or "Creative") Spelling

[lollie010]

My niece -- I am not making this up -- my niece went to her first day of Kindergarten at the local public school. The students were each given a blank piece of paper and a pencil, and told to write about their summer vacation. :001_huh:

 

My other pet peeve: Invented (or "Creative") Spelling

 

This is one reason why I wanted to hs. The thought of it kills me. My ds is extremely creative and can give excellent oral narrations, but OMG if someone asked him to do that I think he would hide under the table for the next 12 years. It would traumatize him. The K moms around here are thrilled with it and use it as an example of how "advanced" the K programs are. I hold my tounge instead of ranting about how a child can possibly be expected to do something that they have not yet learned to do.

[Jan in SC]

My favroite memory of open classrooms is from 5th grade. All the students would sit in the middle of open space while the four teachers in our unit would yell at us to wear deodorant because we all made the area smell terrible. This happened every Wednsday afternnon. I think it was part of social studies!

 

I am extremely aware of odor to.this.day!!!

Edited April 9, 2010 by Jan in SC

[hsbaby]

Touch dot math!! To this day I can't do simple addition without visualizing those stupid dots in my head. It definitely hindered my speed in later years. Worst way to teach math...ever!

[ChrissySC]

1. Decoding words - Not to be confused with phonics! No spelling anymore.

2. One day for multiplication sets - They are finished with multiplication in two weeks! Where oh where did the math go?

3. No reading class - free reading only.

4. No grading - The children get a number 1-4 based on how much was covered in the classroom.

5. With free writing, journaling, no reading, no phonics, etc., when do they start any English or Language Arts study?

6. One set of lesson plans - Teachers do not create lesson plans. Plans are handed to them.

7. Handwriting? No handwriting on lined paper. They begin on white blank paper and continue until third grade. Cursive lasted two weeks - never to be seen again. Fourth grade types reports and papers - without keyboard training. <giggle> How many parents are typing reports?

8. Computer testing in grades K-3. Can't hold a pencil but can use the mouse?

[Chris in VA]

Reading thru the thread, I can see that so many really good educational ideas start out fine, then devolve over time to become travesties of their former selves, and end up doing more damage than good!

 

For example, I have no problem allowing a young child (k-1st) to use invented spelling (IS). A mom friend said it best when she was discussing this with another mom who was really worried about it. She said something like, "I didn't like it, either, until I saw what my child was writing and compared it with another child's writing, one who wasn't allowed to use IS. My child wrote fearlessly, with complex sentences--she wrote all that she wanted to. The other child only used the 3 letter words she knew how to spell and couldn't express herself at all."

 

The part that gets corrupted is the EDITING that comes after the story or report is written. Write, Edit, Rewrite, Publish. IS is part of the process. It's not the whole process! Phonics and spelling are supposed to be taught alongside IS.

 

The best classroom app I've seen involved teaching sequential, logical, spelling alongside of writing. Some of the spelling words were part of the lesson, and some were drawn from the words the child misspelled and needed to edit.

 

Like so many things, combinations of philosophies seem to work best. Whole language wasn't designed to completely blow off phonics, but that's what ended up happening. Invented spelling wasn't supposed to go beyond a certain age, but that's what happened. Open classrooms weren't designed to be the rather horrendous places they devolved into--but that's what happened.

 

I am so glad I can homeschool, but I'd also love to have complete control of a classroom. Maybe the trick is to get in on the trend at the very start when it is still pure, and combine it with the knowledge that has been proven to work. Many times new strategies are designed to correct problems seen in the older ones. Too bad there is so much all or nothing thinking out there.

[Renee in NC]

My 16yo (10th grade in ps) read some book about someone taking a journey that changed their life. For the final project, he had to write about a "journey" he had taken that had changed his life profoundly. His response, "Changed my life?!?! I am *15*, what kind of life changing journey could I have had?!?!?!"

 

He made something up.

[Sahamamama]

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

 

I had the same French teacher for 8th and 9th grades. She used to say, "It's Friday, who wants to work on Friday?"

 

She would turn off the lights, lie down on the windowsill, and put on some ethereal music. Then she proceeded to lead us in guided visualization and meditation exercises. So much for learning French. :glare:

[Sahamamama]

Oh, and those self-taught spelling folder programs from the 70s. You get a folder (say, yellow-level), work through all the words with your "partner," put the folder back in the file box, pull out the next folder. You move up the color levels. My classmate, Christine, and I worked through the whole box. After that, we were told to read, because we had "finished spelling." In third grade.

[Sahamamama]

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

 

:iagree:AND, as we're moving along on this little home school journey, it seems to me, as the parent/teacher, that the most EXCITING aspect of math (or any other subject) is when the student DOES "get it," when the light bulbs DO come on. My daughter is "learning her math facts," true, but the main focus of our time spent on math is building her understanding of what is happening in the process. I compare that growing ability -- to know what to "do" with the numbers in the story problem, for example -- to what I see in other students learning more by rote. These latter students MAY be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, IF you set up the problem for them. But they don't know what to DO to get to that point. They don't understand the operation needed. For example, when we do comparison subtraction -- "Beth has 12 goldfish. Bill has 8 goldfish. How many more goldfish does Beth have than Bill (or how many less does Bill have than Beth?") -- students not taught to think about what that question is asking don't know what to do. They usually add.

[Perry]

Like so many things, combinations of philosophies seem to work best. Whole language wasn't designed to completely blow off phonics, but that's what ended up happening.

 

My understanding is that the founders of whole language were hostile to phonics instruction from the very beginning. Here are some quotes:

 

"Phonics is incompatible with a whole language perspective on reading and therefore is rejected."

Watson, D. (1989). Defining & describing whole language. Elementary School Journal, 90, 129-142.

 

"Children can develop and use an intuitive knowledge of letter-sound correspondences [without] any

phonics instruction [or] without deliberate instruction from adults." (p. 86) Weaver, C. (1980).

Psycholinguistics and reading. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop.

 

"Phonics is incompatible with a whole language perspective on reading and therefore is rejected."

Watson, D. (1989). Defining & describing whole language. Elementary School Journal, 90, 129-142.

 

"Reading without guessing is not reading at all." Smith, F. (1973). Psychology and reading. New York: Holt,

Rinehart & Winston.

 

"It is easier for a reader to remember the unique appearance and pronunciation of a whole word like

'photograph' than to remember the unique pronunciations of meaningless syllables and spelling units"

(p.146) Smith, F. (1985). Reading without nonsense: Making sense of reading. New York: Teachers College

Press.

 

"Sounding out a word is a cumbersome, time-consuming, and unnecessary activity. By using context, we

can identify words with only minimal attention to grapho/phonemic cues. The message then seems clear: we

should help children learn to use context first." Weaver, C. (1988). Reading process & practice: From

socio-psycholinguistics to whole language. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

 

"Matching letters with sounds is a flat-earth view of the world, one that rejects modern science about

reading." (p. 371) Goodman, K. S. (1986). What's whole in whole language. Richmond Hill, Ontario: Scholastic.

 

"Phonics, which means teaching a set of spelling to sound correspondence rules that permit the decoding of

written language into speech, just does not work." Smith, F. (1985). Reading without nonsense (2nd. Ed). New

York: Teachers College Press.

 

"Carefully controlled vocabulary and decontextualised phonics instruction are incompatible with meaningful authentic texts." Goodman, K. S. (1989). Whole language research: Foundations and development. The Elementary School Journal, 90, 208-221.

 

"We might offer students some phonics hints at an appropriate moment when they are writing and aren't

sure how to spell something." Newman, J.M., & Church, S.M. (1991). Myths of whole language. The Reading

Teacher, 44, 20-26.

 

"The worst readers are those who try to sound out unfamiliar words according to the rules of phonics." (p.438) Smith, F. (1992). Learning to read: the never-ending debate. Phi Delta Kappan, 74, 432-441.

 

 

Whole language started with Goodman and Smith.

[littlebug42]

My niece -- I am not making this up -- my niece went to her first day of Kindergarten at the local public school. The students were each given a blank piece of paper and a pencil, and told to write about their summer vacation. :001_huh:

 

My other pet peeve: Invented (or "Creative") Spelling

 

 

My oldest daughter started K with a non-K12 virtual school. She had an assignment to write a paragraph including rough draft, editing, final copy. She had not yet even learned the components of a sentence other than starts with a capital letter and ends with a period. I quit that day.

[Perry]

My 16yo (10th grade in ps) read some book about someone taking a journey that changed their life. For the final project, he had to write about a "journey" he had taken that had changed his life profoundly. His response, "Changed my life?!?! I am *15*, what kind of life changing journey could I have had?!?!?!"

 

He made something up.

My dd had the same exact assignment. Ridiculous.

[Renee in NC]

My understanding is that the founders of whole language were hostile to phonics instruction from the very beginning. Here are some quotes:

 

 

 

 

Whole language started with Goodman and Smith.

 

I think most people are using "whole language" and applying it to the "look-say" method. They are different. "Look-say" (like from the Dick and Jane readers) was not intended to be used separate from phonics.

[LizzyBee]

Outcome based education

 

No recess or rest time in a full day kindergarten because there's not enough time!

 

And about the open classrooms. My dad helped build (but not plan :-) the city of Columbia, MD, one of the first "planned cities." All the schools had open classrooms and they were a dismal failure. Ten or so years later, our rural county built a new middle school and, since all the trends came to our area late, they jumped on the bandwagon and built it with open classrooms. Why they couldn't learn from Columbia's mistake, I'll never know. My youngest sister went to that school and it was so awful that they built walls during the very first summer break.

Edited April 9, 2010 by LizzyBee

[Hathersage]

My 5th grade teacher thought it was a good idea if her students used the math textbook on our own. So, there was a sticker chart and a sticker for every assignment done. Everyone else could see how far along everyone else was. This made me more unmoviated, because there was no way I was going to come out anywhere near the top. So, there was no teaching of math that year. If you got stuck, you got stuck. lol. No moving on.

Edited April 9, 2010 by Hathersage

[Chris in VA]

My understanding is that the founders of whole language were hostile to phonics instruction from the very beginning. Here are some quotes:

 

"Phonics is incompatible with a whole language perspective on reading and therefore is rejected."

Watson, D. (1989). Defining & describing whole language. Elementary School Journal, 90, 129-142.

 

"Children can develop and use an intuitive knowledge of letter-sound correspondences [without] any

phonics instruction [or] without deliberate instruction from adults." (p. 86) Weaver, C. (1980).

Psycholinguistics and reading. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop.

 

"Phonics is incompatible with a whole language perspective on reading and therefore is rejected."

Watson, D. (1989). Defining & describing whole language. Elementary School Journal, 90, 129-142.

 

"Reading without guessing is not reading at all." Smith, F. (1973). Psychology and reading. New York: Holt,

Rinehart & Winston.

 

"It is easier for a reader to remember the unique appearance and pronunciation of a whole word like

'photograph' than to remember the unique pronunciations of meaningless syllables and spelling units"

(p.146) Smith, F. (1985). Reading without nonsense: Making sense of reading. New York: Teachers College

Press.

 

"Sounding out a word is a cumbersome, time-consuming, and unnecessary activity. By using context, we

can identify words with only minimal attention to grapho/phonemic cues. The message then seems clear: we

should help children learn to use context first." Weaver, C. (1988). Reading process & practice: From

socio-psycholinguistics to whole language. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

 

"Matching letters with sounds is a flat-earth view of the world, one that rejects modern science about

reading." (p. 371) Goodman, K. S. (1986). What's whole in whole language. Richmond Hill, Ontario: Scholastic.

 

"Phonics, which means teaching a set of spelling to sound correspondence rules that permit the decoding of

written language into speech, just does not work." Smith, F. (1985). Reading without nonsense (2nd. Ed). New

York: Teachers College Press.

 

"Carefully controlled vocabulary and decontextualised phonics instruction are incompatible with meaningful authentic texts." Goodman, K. S. (1989). Whole language research: Foundations and development. The Elementary School Journal, 90, 208-221.

 

"We might offer students some phonics hints at an appropriate moment when they are writing and aren't

sure how to spell something." Newman, J.M., & Church, S.M. (1991). Myths of whole language. The Reading

Teacher, 44, 20-26.

 

"The worst readers are those who try to sound out unfamiliar words according to the rules of phonics." (p.438) Smith, F. (1992). Learning to read: the never-ending debate. Phi Delta Kappan, 74, 432-441.

 

 

Whole language started with Goodman and Smith.

 

Wow. I stand corrected.

I was taught in college (yep, 1981-1985, right in the thick of WL) that phonics "didn't work." I remember one of our texts was called just that: Why Phonics Doesn't Work. It had to do with the short term memory being unable to hold so many pieces of information--by the time kids sounded out letters through a whole word, they'd forget the first part. Not true, of course.

But the way I was taught to implement it was to point out the phonics stuff--guess I was not taught pure WL! lol

Live and learn.

[mrsdrcook]

I would have to say open class rooms tops mine. My public school looked like a spaceship from outerspace. The roofs had to be repaired every year. $$$$ They were very loud and hard on us ADD folks who are distracted by every hall walker going by. I could go on... Suffice it to say we are skipping the public/government school experience for our girls.

[Caribbean Queen]

Journal topics like, "If you could be any type of insect, which one would you be, and why?"

 

I don't want to be a bug. I cried a lot in second grade.

[Spy Car]

Journal topics like, "If you could be any type of insect, which one would you be, and why?"

 

I don't want to be a bug. I cried a lot in second grade.

 

It worked for Franz Kafka :D

 

Bill

[AuntPol]

I really don't recall anything really bad from my elementary years. I got a good foundation in the basics though it was not very inspired. The only major issue was the lack of gifted services for those that were ahead and tutoring my peers in 6th grade because I had done 6th grade when I was in 5th (was in a 5/6 class).

 

The only other was no history until high school and we never made it past civil war and only covered bare basics. I don't remember much science until 7th grade.

 

Physics was a waste of time, partly due to the fact that I had tuned out of school by then and partly due to it being taught by football coach. I don't remember anything but painting the letter on the football field.

 

From my kids being in school:

Whole Language -no phonics

No instruction to the kids who are ahead

No spelling (Creative spelling is okay in writing in early grades IMHO but you need to teach spelling)

No grammar (and teachers not even being able to speak correctly)

Social studies

No history but black history and the same black history every year for 6 years.

No books allowed that did not feature black people or animals.

No memorizing of math facts

New math -teach concepts too early in crazy ways and then move on before mastery

Kids who have mastered math facts on their own being required to draw out circles to show math in 4th grade because many of the non-gifted could not.

Meaningless time consuming projects to be done at home.

Lots of group projects in which a gifted kid was paired with 3-4 other kids and expected to do all the work. I happen to like project based learning if it's a project for individual child and has meaning.

No scientific method until 6th grade

Standing at attention to black national anthem being required but not required (or even suggested) for US national anthem.

Standards based grading

Grades pulled out of behinds -for example: My son passed the district level reading test (it only goes to 4th or 5th grade level!!) first week of first grade. In 2nd grade, he got a 3 (average) for reading. His teacher had never assessed him (told me she wasn't allowed since he had previously passed all levels) and never assigned him anything for reading but she just graded him a 3 so she could show improvement later. He finally got a 4 in last quarter but he never read to her or with her or did anything to do with reading that year except read books from home while others had lessons.

No competitions or awards except an award to best minority student (in a school that is 80% minority).

Feel good awards in which kids are awarded because they have 1 good day out of 180 but kids are good 180 days ignored.

No acceleration but "differentiation" but no teacher could tell me "how" they differentiate but only that they do it.

No handwriting.

No cursive (because it's not on the test, even though it is a standard)

[Ester Maria]

I went to one of those stubborn traditional schools that refused all modern methods and new pedagogy. The result is that I received a superb education compared to children involved in various experiments.

 

Off the top of my head - and I didn't read the whole thread so I'll probably be repeating what other people wrote before - some of the really dumb educational trends would be:

 

1. "Metodo natura" for classics - my personal pet peeve. I think I've ranted about this on these boards enough, but I'll repeat in short :D - the idea that you should learn classics outside of their cultural context the way you learn modern languages is not only a LOT less efficient than traditional methods, it's also a form of blasphemy to the fossilized cultural heritage (because "alive" Latin and Greek you teach become syntactically and lexically conlangs and get removed from their initial cultural context) and a really dumb idea to indulge kids who already don't think enough. Seriously, some good ol' grammar, dictionary and texts won't hurt them too much. Less fun, but way more efficient.

2. The idea that schools should be daycares for children who "develop the whole child" and "deemphasize the academic component". I start swearing when I heard these idiocioes. NO, schools should be academic institutions, not playgrounds where learning is secondary. And yes, it should be like that from first. grade., not only in better high schools.

3. "Political corretness" in choice of literary, art and music works analyzed. In my opinion, schools should focus on the CANON, on tradition, way more than attempting to redefine that canon to make it include all the women and minorities that didn't make in. Once the canon is redefined in a culture, then we'll talk differently. But it's not schools that should be doing it, and it's not the process that should be forced.

4. Including pop-culture in schools. I start shivering with cold rage when I see children dealing with Harry Potter and hip hop in schools, as if they didn't have enough of that in their free time.

5. Exclusion of the study of classics from most schools. You know, education is a system, you can't really exclude culturally significant fields as you feel like.

6. Project-based learning.

7. Shift of focus from text to image and "non-verbal learning" and other ridiculous concepts which are only an excuse to read less and, consequently, think less.

8. DOING arts instead of studying history of art. Most of the "creative work", in my opinion, are free time activities, not school work. History of art belongs to school, NOT drawing past the elementary level.

9. "Creative writing". Spare me that one.

10. "Every interpretation of a text is a legitimate one."

11. Extremely superficial literary analysis on a high school level, with focus on context rather than text and biographical reading into texts. When I worked in academia there were every year fights about who is going to teach freshmen (department of literature), because nobody felt like explaining to a bunch of relatively mature students that text doesn't equal its context and should be approached totally differently than what school taught them.

12. Foreign language study through artificial dialogues and images rather than through literature, work on text and actual discussion. Removing of literature from foreign language classes. Focusing on "tourist level" knowledge. Lowering of ALL criteria.

13. "The kids should never, God forbid, memorize more than ten lines. It's hard."

14. "All opinions on all subjects are legitimate. You have no grounds to claim what you claim, you can't argument your claims, but hey, that's okay cause it's alllll eeeequal buuut diiiiferent". PC. ****ed PC.

 

I'll think of more. :D

(We didn't have open classrooms. I almost choked when I first encountered that concept. Totally weird and very dumb.)

[MomtoCandJ]

Wow Aunt Pol I think you just described the public school in my area, except the huge focus on sports. As if all of the students are going to get football scholarships!!!

[TravelingChris]

Aunt Pol, I had a friend in college who went to schools like you describe. She was a white Jewish girl but lived in a poor neighborhood and went to a majority AA school. SHe learned black history, but not accurate history. SO she came to college thinking that Montana was a primarily AA state. How did she get such a misconception? Why, the only cowboys she had ever heard about were black cowboys and these history books or the teachers always portrayed them as being in Montana. They also didn't ever talk about anything else to do with Montana pass the Cowboy era. She lived on the East Coast and had never traveled very far at all so she really didn't know any better and she was math and science oriented so never bothered to check out any history books. I can just imagine the shock of some of her fellow students who may have joined the AF and got stationed in MT.

[Mergath]

8. DOING arts instead of studying history of art. Most of the "creative work", in my opinion, are free time activities, not school work. History of art belongs to school, NOT drawing past the elementary level.

 

9. "Creative writing". Spare me that one.

 

14. "All opinions on all subjects are legitimate. You have no grounds to claim what you claim, you can't argument your claims, but hey, that's okay cause it's alllll eeeequal buuut diiiiferent". PC. ****ed PC.

 

 

I completely agree with the majority of this, especially 14. The idea that if a child really feels something, well, it must be correct is part of the reason each generation is becoming successively more stupid, imho. It's a lot less taxing to feel something than it is to learn something. I wholeheartedly agree with 8, as well. I managed to go through thirteen years of public school education, and never once did we study art history. It took me years to learn to appreciate and understand art. We spent plenty of time making paper turkeys on Thanksgiving and coloring paper eggs on Easter, of course.

 

I have to disagree with 9, however. If no one had bothered to spend their time writing, there wouldn't be much for us to study now. ;)

[MomtoCandJ]

Don't know about other schools in the South or in any other district in Georgia but the school district we are in believes that the South won and yet everything else is based on black history.

[Ester Maria]

I have to disagree with 9, however. If no one had bothered to spend their time writing, there wouldn't be much for us to study now. ;)

I always sound more fervent than I actually am. :D And ironically, I've taught Comparative Literature.

 

Now, if I were to speak less fervently and elaborating more, it's not that I really think that no creative writing or art has any place in schools - it's the focus that I'm talking about. I'm all for "written expression", and practicing that expression. I just see little point in insisting on the type of writing which cannot really be critically approached at that stage (children are small, psychologically vulnerable if you start to give them some serious criticism on their art and writing, etc. - I mean a lot of adults are like that too, we usually CAN stand being criticized for not knowing something well or deep enough, but it's hard to hear criticism about your own creation), as opposed to insisting on more concrete types of written expression (descriptive and explanatory, then later argumentative essay writing, for example). It's only a matter of focus, it was my mistake not to make a "disclaimer" about that so somebody can really read in my post that I hate artistic expression - I don't, I just don't think "express how you feel" should be emphasized at schools at the expense of "express what you think", and I see that, as you wrote, schools are becoming more and more places to "feel" and to be entitled to all sorts of ridiculous interpretations and opinions (NOT backed up) than places to "think" and learn. We've dangerously switched the focus. One of the reasons why we have mentally and emotionally unstable youth is because of that, in my opinion.

[K&Rs Mom]

Really, no one has yet pointed out that the ITA symbol for the /oo/ sound in book looks like, well, booKs? :tongue_smilie:

 

I agree with whoever mentioned the pop culture trend. Not only is it stupid, it tells kids that anything not currently on TV should be considered out of their reach, or not meant for them.

[Dmmetler]

Exploratory ONLY math, where kids are expected to discover concepts with manipulatives, but are given little or no guidance to do so. Connected Math comes to mind. You end up with middle school kids who still count on their fingers to add.

 

Touch Math. Useful for students with disabilities who need it, but if used for everyone, you end up with kids in algebra who are drawing dots and counting for every single number.

 

Math via memorization only.

 

Really, almost any trend in teaching math that doesn't move from concrete-visual-abstract in some way, but stays on one level almost exclusively.

 

IPA for reading. Instead of teaching kids to read using the alphabet and phonics we actually use, let's teach them using this strange phonetic alphabet that corresponds to the sounds. IPA may be useful for learning to sing convincingly in a language you don't speak or for speech pathologist or linguists, but it fails in teaching 5 yr olds!

 

Standardized testing being the ONLY evaluation that counts. This is what made me SO relieved to get out of teaching. Nothing wrong with having that test as one piece of data, but that's all it should be! (I have a comic/blog on Facebook, and here's my album on standardized testing

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ari-Cloudie-and-Chaos-The-Perpetual-Aquarium-Fan-Page/108559225832795?ref=nf#!/album.php?aid=11605&id=108559225832795 )

[Crimson Wife]

Anybody else remember learning to sing along to badly done cover versions of pop songs during music class? La Isla Bonita by Madonna, Take on Me by A-Ha, How Will I Know? by Whitney Houston, Fly Like a Eagle by Steve Miller Band, We Are the World, etc.

 

Three guesses when I went through school :lol:

[helena]

I haven't read the other replies yet, so I don't know if this one was mentioned.

I was beside myself when the schools took away left handed scissors! I felt like I was being punished. At the same time people would always comment on how interesting or cool it was to be a lefty. I couldn't wrap my head around it.

[Marylou]

Doing away with Dodgeball--one of the most enjoyable games on earth!

[Perry]

Doing away with Dodgeball--one of the most enjoyable games on earth!

 

My kids' middle school just call it something different, but they still play it.

I'd be glad to see it go. Hated it!

[LauraGB]

Grading on a curve. Ugh.

[Strawberry Queen]

How about writing personal response essays? We had to do these for grade twelve departamentals. Basically, you had to take their question or statement and then bring in relevant quotes from literature that you'd studied. Doesn't sound too bad so far. Well, you also had to make it apply to your life. :001_huh:

 

The only way you could get good marks was to make up some heartfelt drivel about the complexities or emotional problems in your life and how they relate to literature. I hated this! I had problems in my life, but I didn't really want to share them with my teachers. I hate the aspect of teaching that asks for the child's personal emotional life to be open to public discussion. This is why I also hate journals. :angry:

[Chris in VA]

My kids' middle school just call it something different, but they still play it.

I'd be glad to see it go. Hated it!

 

That would be...

 

BOMBARDMENT!

[Ester Maria]

Grading on a curve. Ugh.

I KNEW I had forgotten something important.

This is one of the dumber ideas, I agree.

[Rosie_0801]

I agree with whoever mentioned the pop culture trend. Not only is it stupid, it tells kids that anything not currently on TV should be considered out of their reach, or not meant for them.

 

I remember being at Tafe and a young 17 year old who identified as Aboriginal overheard us talking about Magna Carta. "Did that happen more than a hundred years ago?" she asked. "Uh, yeah," we said. "Oh, well what's the point of bothering with that? If it happened more than a hundred years ago, it's no use." Then she sniffed and walked off. I thought that was a very peculiar thing for a woman of her social position to say.

 

Rosie