Wednesday, July 04, 2018

An Observation About Schools

From a commenter on Joanne's blog:
I’ve always said all a good teacher needs to teach is a stick and a patch of dirt… and I’m a techie.

Proper education requires the factors – a competent teacher, willing students, and a suitable curriculum.

Big policy makers like to focus on curriculum because that’s the only thing they have power over right now. They tried to improve teacher quality through certification and evaluation, but failed.

What they won’t do is truly look at student responsibility because doing so would violate cultural taboos in the education world. Sadly, though, like a stool, no matter how solid two legs are, without a third the stool will still fall.
I've said it for years--schools are a microcosm of our society, and we have some "issues" in our society.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:11 PM

    I can't remember any article on improving schools in the last few years that mentions the responsibility of the students and parents. It's as if we are supposed to make up for that huge part of the equation, over which we have NO CONTROL! I am entering my 32nd year of teaching HS English and when people ask what has changed the most in those years, THAT is the change that has had the most negative impact.

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  2. Anonymous10:14 AM

    In Bad Students, Not Bad Schools, Robert Weissberg provides the following weighted formula:
    academic achievement = intelligence (8) x motivation (4) x resources(5) x pedagogy(4) x instruction(4).

    Note that if any factor equals zero, achievement is therefore zero; very non-pc but sadly true.

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