Beginning of the dull society?

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Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Sebiale »

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/ap_ ... ore_school
The plan seems to me to be a step towards the beginning of the era where we spend our entire live either learning or working for the sake of the country.
What you think?

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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Berserker »

Schools are horrid and American children are stupid on average due to a brain wiping culture. Teaching is a subversive activity and modern educational systems are devoid of meaning.
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Sebiale »

Interesting...
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Terastas »

I get why he's encouraging it, but the problem isn't that the school days aren't long enough. The problem is that the kids get bored with the material and would rather be at home playing Guitar Hero III or whatever. Obama's message to the students at the beginning of the school year was about responsibility. He has to know that you can't force kids to learn. They either want it, or they don't.

If he is going to encourage schools to run for longer days, he should also strike up a compromise and suggest that they give less homework. Homework is 90% busywork -- if he's going to make the days longer, he should take it out of the time students would have otherwise spent learning at home.
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Sebiale »

busywork
Seriously, I barely applied myself at all in elementary, junior, or high school, and still passed all my classes with A's/B's.

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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Gevaudan »

Schools need better teachers and better teaching methods, not more school. More of the same thing won't help.
It's times like these that I'm glad I go to a private school. Now excuse me while I go bash my head into a wall and study for my massive AP US History unit test on Tuesday. Ugh. :(
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Wingman »

Berserker wrote:[M]odern educational systems are devoid of meaning.
Yup, a few of my teachers even outright said that they don't care one bit if we don't remember anything they taught us. To be perfectly honest I've probably learned, and remembered, more from games, the public library, and forums than I did at school. I'd have to say that a substantial contributor to that fact is that outside of school time I could choose what to study and when, rather than dragging myself out of bed hours before I'd normally wake up, and then walking to school.

I took a biology course at the local college back in 07/08, and I loved it. Class once a week on Wednesday from 6 pm to 9pm. The teacher would give us a stack of paper a quarter of an inch thick and we'd have until the next class to get it done. Much better than shuffling from one class to another every hour, with absolutely no correlation between the subjects. It would be a lot better if the class curriculum was at least coordinated, rather that reading about WWI in History, doing something about Shakespeare in English, and then going and playing basketball after eating lunch and learning about Renaissance artists in art class.

I refuse to believe that it would be too hard to coordinate the curriculum of the classes to at least be similar, if not about the same subject or time period, when the system to do so is already in place and used to make sure the schools all adhere to the standardized curriculum. If we're learning about WWI in History class, why not learn about literature and poetry from that time period in English, and then study artwork from that period in Art class?

Eh, whatever, I don't really care as any changes they made now wouldn't benefit me in the least.
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Aki »

Terastas wrote:I get why he's encouraging it, but the problem isn't that the school days aren't long enough. The problem is that the kids get bored with the material and would rather be at home playing Guitar Hero III or whatever. Obama's message to the students at the beginning of the school year was about responsibility. He has to know that you can't force kids to learn. They either want it, or they don't.

If he is going to encourage schools to run for longer days, he should also strike up a compromise and suggest that they give less homework. Homework is 90% busywork -- if he's going to make the days longer, he should take it out of the time students would have otherwise spent learning at home.
This.

Obama's idea is correct. This method of going about it: Not so much.
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Howlitzer »

This is ABSOLUTELY the wrong way to go about it, I kid you not.

Sure, some other countries might do it...but I've seen foreign students at the school I go to. Some are genuinely interesting people. Others are far, far too driven by test scores and competition alone rather than the pure joy of actually learning something from and WITH other, different people. Effectively, while they might do great academically, what spark of creativity or interest in the world may have been there, it's gone now.

By increasing the length of the school day and year to such a degree, and increasing workloads as such, effectively you're going to make a country full of pure academic zombies, with standardized thinking styles, and very little self-guided interest or real-life knowledge of anything.

Sure, people in such an education system might do better on standardized tests and look more impressive as such on paper, but it lacks the unique quality you get when there is actual encouragement to be INTERESTED in what you are learning. Classes from 7:30am to 5:00pm, Saturday classes, and otherwise drastically increased school years and workloads might improve standardized test scores, but standardized test scores mean NOTHING in the real world if that's all you're learning towards!

If rather than increasing the time we shove academics down students' throats, and instead spend the current amount of time pushing more towards making students interested in what they are learning....rather than being academic zombies, the ones who succeed in such a system are more likely to be people who have found areas of genuine interest and pushed themselves in AND out of school to learn and do more towards those respective areas. These are the types of people and minds we want to produce and encourage in this country, the ones that truly make it great, not simply on paper. Standardized tests do not show this ... and standardized thinking does not work in the real world, since the real world is not standardized.
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Sebiale »

So does anyone in Congress hold the opinions being expressed here?
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Silent Hunter »

The problem I see with the education system here is that it's set up so you do well at the tests but the knoweldge you learn is not applied to the real world. Like Maths for example. When you do Maths, your aiming for getting a good mark on the GCSE (Our end of school qualification). You are NOT told how to apply what you learn in real life. You are not told how it can help when it comes to home repair, you are not told how it helps when measuring something to build, you are not told how to use %'s when it comes to APR and taxes. You may say "Well Silent, thats what DT/Economics courses are for", and that is partially true but the fact of the matter is, the skills and things you are being taught are not made that interesting nor are they teaching you, yourself how to use them or what to do with such knowledge. It is just about passing a test at the end of the year.

I could be totally wrong on this but this is what it felt like for me. On top that, it's pointless increasing the length when the content is what needs fixing. On top of that and this may sound pathetic, you'd be robbing even more free time between homework that needs to be done and actual schooling. People need a break too, you know.
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Shadow Wulf »

It's not just the quality of the school, teacher and learning that counts, if some students do poorly in class a lot of people are quick to blame the schools or the teachers, when really the parent probably has just as much responsibility on the matter too. You have parents who neglect their child, parents who let their kids watch too much TV or play too much video games, parents who are drunk or never spend any extra time and effort to help their kids learn. And at the end of the day when a kid doesn't do well the teacher sometimes gets blamed. Parents really need to step up on their part and go that extra mile for their kids so that they can get the best learning experience possible. Teachers have a very difficult time trying to teach 30 kids in a classroom and with some of them having their special needs or extra help in order to learn. While some teachers don't really care as wingman mentioned but their still is quite a few who really do care that the things you learn sticks with you. and try to apply to real life experience, I had plenty of teachers like this.

Silent Hunter made a point about standardize testing where they don't tell you how you this information can be applied to real life. The teachers really need to stress students the importance of having to know these things for certain careers they are looking for or some other possible future event that they may need to apply math or science into it, but a lot of times they don't bother and just say that after the test then you won't have to come back to it until semester exams.

On a side note. I'm not sure if other countries have this but a lot of states have this form of state testing that in certain grades will say whether or not they will pass the year. Here in Florida it's called FCAT (Florida Comprehension Assessment Test), and it seems that all the teachers unanimously say that half the things they are suppose to teach you for that test you really don't need to learn. I have seen some very useless questions, I wonder if what my teachers say it's true.
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Re: Beginning of the dull society?

Post by Sebiale »

My state has something similar, but it's only taken once, in junior high.
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