Indeed, neither lecturing nor homework are beneficial. Poor teaching methods inflicted on students by the expectations of those who are not teachers.

twenty-five-ish.

Indeed, neither lecturing nor homework are beneficial. — Banno

Not agreed. This is straight rubbish.

Speaking of you United States, I don't think you realize the degree to which the state has its hands in teacher performance and how they have to teach. — Heister Eggcart

Yeah, I'm not sure that's really helping.

owever, lecturing and assigning homework is rarely bad teaching. — Heister Eggcart

Not in itself. I have enjoyed my share of lectures, and learned from quite a few homework assignments. It's not that. It's the whole being forced into a pseudo-liberal arts education where it's good that everyone be required to take a year of foreign language, geometry, civics, etc. But then you master none of it, forget most of it, and mainly do enough to get whatever grade you feel you need to have.

No real desire there to actually learn, in general.

At the high school level, at least, requiring most topics isn't bad, otherwise most students would not take anything. College is a different matter, though.

At the high school level, at least, requiring most topics isn't bad, otherwise most students would not take anything. — Heister Eggcart

If they won't take anything, because they rather be playing video games, doing drugs, or possibly earning money, then shouldn't that tell you something?

The whole problem of testing and bad schools is a problem "limited" to those who don't do well on tests and attend average to bad schools, and don't do well in them. Many parents dither over their children' difficulties. They understand that failure in school is going to be a big problem sooner as well as later. The unanswered question is: Is the failure the parents' fault, the children's fault, or the schools' fault? Everybody's fault, obviously. Hang them all.

Some children get excellent results on tests, attend fine schools, do very well in the school, and go on to college and careers, without so much as a pothole on the road to success. These children behave well in school, don't shoot each other, and spent no time in prison. There is no question here as to who is responsible for all this success: everybody -- the parents, the children, and the schools. Laurels on every head.

It seems to me that there is no intention, really, of educating the majority of students in anything but low level skills.

No one in authority in Washington, the state capitols, or the local school boards is going to admit this in public. The fiction will be maintained that everybody deserves the best education, and that schools are working mightily to provide it. Unfortunately, (truth and fiction meet here) many children are screwed before they get to school, and they stayed screwed, more or less permanently.

This is why I mentioned that schools are increasingly forced into being a parental apparatus because modern children are little shits, by and large.

It would be naive to assume that successful school children didn't have "potholes" along the way. I've yet to come in contact with any of these "successful young people" that weren't also as low-key fucked in the head as those that are strapped down in shoddy home lives and how no way up and out of any of it.

This is why I mentioned that schools are increasingly forced into being a parental apparatus because modern children are little shits, by and large. — Heister Eggcart

But maybe the approach to education is just wrong. Why do you need to pass tests and get grades? Why do we all need to be taught the same things? Is that more important than learning something interesting that will possibly be of value to you the rest of your adult life? It could be a trade skill, could be critical thinking, maybe history or philosophy if a student has interest in that, perhaps actual fluency in another language, maybe organization and planning skills.

Just feels like a lot of it was a waste of time after elementary school and before I settled on a major in college.

http://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/
Homework effect 0.29

Choose what you mean by lecturing and check it out for yourself.

Anything below 0.4 makes so little difference as to be useless.

Even if the schools are substitutes for absent parenting, it won't help. Some children's parents are sufficiently incompetent at parenting that their children arrive at school with significant language deficits that are already difficult to overcome. By 3rd grade (8 years of age) some of the unremediated deficiencies will be permanent, and will be passed on (in vivo, not genetically) to the next generation.

I guess it depends on what you mean by a pot hole. I'm calling functional illiteracy at age 16 a pothole. Low-key head fucking (pressure to become a doctor) may lead to neurotic drop outs from medical school, but that is not the same kind of pothole as ending up in prison (or the grave) for conducting a drive-by shooting.

We live in a crazy society, so many people (among the successful as well as the failures) are going to be at least somewhat crazy. It's a given. Craziness is a bigger problem for the poor than it is for the well-off. The well off get help. The poor get nothing - or maybe a zombie drug to keep them quiet.

In high school, the class that garnered the most enthusiasm was driver's education. That one had obvious real life benefit. I can't tell you how many times someone has asked what benefit geometry or algebra was. It's interesting that the answer given is that it teaches you to think, yet there was no critical thinking or statistics class, not at my high school. A stats class seems to have a lot more obvious real world benefits that could be explained to students.

In college among the liberal arts electives, it was the world literature class, because we discussed and debated the meaning of famous writings. I've noticed that with foreign language, students tended to be more enthusiastic if they were planning on visiting a country that spoke that language.

Why do you need to pass tests and get grades? — Marchesk

For those who are on the bottom of society, taking tests and getting grades is a way of gathering evidence against them that they were kind of stupid from the get go. For those who go to college, taking tests and getting grades is handy for justifying your admission to college and the benefits that flow therefrom.

In no case do testing or grades prove very much. Except that high test scores and good grades give you the pass codes that allow you to advance ahead several steps.

It isn't always the teachers' faults, though. Lots of factors go into why most kids arrive at the high school level dumb as rocks.

Ponderous number crunching that says not a thing.

Even if the schools are substitutes for absent parenting, it won't help. Some children's parents are sufficiently incompetent at parenting that their children arrive at school with significant language deficits that are already difficult to overcome. By 3rd grade (8 years of age) some of the unremediated deficiencies will be permanent, and will be passed on (in vivo, not genetically) to the next generation. — Bitter Crank

Well, I'd agree. Schools may not be effective substitutes for parenting, but schools are, nonetheless, forced into trying to be.

We live in a crazy society, so many people (among the successful as well as the failures) are going to be at least somewhat crazy. It's a given. Craziness is a bigger problem for the poor than it is for the well-off. The well off get help. The poor get nothing - or maybe a zombie drug to keep them quiet. — Bitter Crank

Not sold on this at all.

In high school, the class that garnered the most enthusiasm was driver's education. That one had obvious real life benefit. I can't tell you how many times someone has asked what benefit geometry or algebra was. It's interesting that the answer given is that it teaches you to think, yet there was no critical think or statistics class, not at my high school. A stats class seems to have a lot more obvious real world benefits that could be explained to students. — Marchesk

Kids ask this because career planning is nonexistent. Few students know what they want to do, or more importantly, what they can do, until maybe high school. But by then, it's already too late, which is why colleges are now glorified high schools because they have to pick up the slack that wasn't quite so pernicious in the culture in past decades.

n no case do testing or grades prove very much. Except that high test scores and good grades give you the pass codes that allow you to advance ahead several steps. — Bitter Crank

I'll confess to being caught up in working hard for grades at some point. It worked, but when all was said and done, I realized that really learning the material in way that would have stayed with me would have been far more value, even if I got Cs instead of As doing so.

Ponderous number crunching that says not a thing. — Heister Eggcart

So present evidence to the contrary.

It isn't always the teachers' faults, though. Lots of factors go into why most kids arrive at the high school level dumb as rocks. — Heister Eggcart

I'm not blaming the teachers, I'm questioning whether the way the system is set up makes sense, if the goal really is education.

So present evidence to the contrary. — Banno

Google is your friend, friend.

I'm not blaming the teachers, I'm questioning whether the way the system is setup makes sense, if the goal really is education. — Marchesk

Well, historically speaking, education has always had a philosophical component, which goes into my lamenting that ethics are not taught, even at a factual level, in schooling - public schooling, at least. Once you strip the ethics away, you're not left with much. It's just a poorly constructed capitalist assembly line of bad to mediocre to good resume competitions between people that usually don't even know what they want to do in life.

It's just a poorly constructed capitalist assembly line of bad to mediocre to good resume competitions between people that usually don't even know what they want to do in life. — Heister Eggcart

The robots are coming, so maybe the role of education will change.

Google is your friend, friend — Heister Eggcart

Hm. I present you with the largest metastudy of the effects of education and you dismiss it offhand and refuse to provide other evidence.

What ought one conclude?

Because it's drivel. Special snowflake education programs are a sham and an embarrassment.

Well, I want to discuss. I want folks to acknowledge that teaching and learning is more than can be specified by a curriculum and measured by test scores, and then I want space, time and freedom to be left for it to happen. It's a rather unfair question really to ask me to specify a method for achieving something that I have just characterised as impossible to specify, and set goals for.

Yes, but everyone here, with a personal qualification or two, is going to more or less agree with you. Feeling dissatisfied with the culture of standardized testing and the school-as-factory is a fairly pedestrian view. Folks' acknowledgment of your point, in a place like this, is a fait accompli. And if it's unfair to ask you to offer some way of changing things, then it's equally unfair (or meaningless) to complain about our school systems going about things the wrong way. You want it changed, but you don't want to be bothered about how to change it. So what do you want? To be recognized as dissatisfied? As valuing the right things in a world that doesn't?

Everybody agrees that education (as conducted) sucks. So, suggestions for alternatives? I have a modest proposal:

1. Sort students into 3 groups before kindergarten or first grade)

a. Children of medium to high achievers (based on schooling and employment) who will probably do well in school. High achievement program from K onward.

b. Children of medium to low-medium-achievers (based on schooling and employment) who will probably do reasonably well in school IF educational methods are adapted to student's needs. Minimum of medium achievement program fro K onward. (Curriculum content not significantly different than "a" but taught over a longer period of time. Less material will have been covered at completion.) Children who exceed performance typical of "b" would be transferred at least part time into "a".

c. Children of very low to low achievers (based on schooling and employment) who will probably have significant barriers to learning without strategic interventions. These families should be first provided family assistance by social services who have some police powers to compel cooperation. Pregnant low-achieving women, or very low to low achieving parents with children below 4 years, would be enrolled in language enrichment and child rearing instruction and support programs. If successful, these children would be sorted with "b". If not successfully remediated by age 5, these children would be assigned to option "d".

d. Children who reach school admission age with serious deficits would be given a long-term remediation curriculum and social support program. Successfully remediated children would be transferred into "b".

Most schools would only teach "a" and "b" students. "D" students would be taught in programs operated by social services agencies with the ability to compel cooperation by parents.

Like it? Loathe it? Suggestions? Your ideas?

That system already at least half-exists (except in very rural areas) through (1)private schools and (2)property prices/cost of living variations across different neighborhoods.

Probably does already at least ... "half" exist. My goal wasn't to come up with something entirely original. Rather, the goal was to separate out children who have great early-childhood educational needs which schools are not equipped to provide. Many parents will likely gladly participate in programs that help them be better parents. But if they don't feel like it, social services agencies are better equipped to "lean on" disinterested parents. They already have the authority to take neglected and abused children.

I was, and attended a school that mostly served "b" students. There were some "a" students and very few who had serious problems. Mostly the small number of problem children was a result of the family stability common in economically-healthy parts of the rural US. We must re-stableize families, which is again something that schools are not in a position to do. Don't ask them to do that.

State control of education has been the long-term model, and for better or worse, it seems to have worked well. The heavy testing mandate is coming from the Federal Government. Testing the schools to death isn't going to improve education for anybody.

Of course children's performance should be monitored, and that is one of the tasks of the classroom teacher. Teacher performance should also be overseen, which is what principals are for.

A lot of the American history I learned in 7-12 grade I learned in 7th grade from an old lady who lectured every day. It was sort of boring. We had a text book, and I don't remember much about it. I listened to her lecture away, and a lot of it stuck. Similarly, composition in 11th and 12th grades was taught in a very old fashioned style too, but it worked. Literature, biology, and math could have been taught better, but... such is life.

And you know this - how?

And if it's unfair to ask you to offer some way of changing things, then it's equally unfair (or meaningless) to complain about our school systems going about things the wrong way. You want it changed, but you don't want to be bothered about how to change it. So what do you want? To be recognized as dissatisfied? As valuing the right things in a world that doesn't? — csalisbury

So what are you saying? That we all agree we're getting it wrong, but don't talk about it unless you have a way to improve it? That makes no sense anyway, but I have already given a negative recipe for improvement, which is to stop doing what is being done to the extent of leaving some room for relationships. Leave time for teachers to listen and respond to students, and recognise the importance of this.

It's not something that doesn't happen, most of us have had a great teacher at some time, who established a real relationship with us. But the system does not value this, does not look to enhance it and does not leave room for it. So yes, I want to be recognised as dissatisfied, along with all those who agree that there is a problem. I want to get as clear as possible about what the problem is and why we have fallen into it.

What I cannot and will not do is try to prescibe relationships. It cannot be done and must not be done because that demand for prescription is the problem and stopping that is the solution. It is exactly your demand of me, that I shall provide a solution or admit that nothing can be done that is the problem. It is a way of looking at people - students and teachers that is instrumental and so dehumanising.

I am trying to teach you, to reach you, to get you to look at your own way of looking, and offering you an alternative, more human way of doing things; What do I want? I want to move you.

What grates is the proclivity of those outside education to set themselves up as arbiters. No other profession has so much external interference. — Banno

No one is outside education, unless you think it is a matter of teachers doing their thing and students conforming and performing.

If you come to service the boiler, I will leave you to it, but my daughter is not a machine, and is not to be serviced like one.