Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
6 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/7


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Do the flaws in education discredit the discpline being taught?
Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


Message 31 of 41 (265305)
12-03-2005 5:11 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by nwr
12-03-2005 12:59 PM


nwr responds to me:
quote:
It is why teaching that the earth was flat would be using a great exaggeration.
It's more than a "great exaggeration." It's a lie. There is no shred of truth in it. None of the people involved thought the earth was flat. To even bring up "they thought the earth was flat" is to lie to the students. There is a difference between teaching Newtonian physics which is wrong at every speed but still useful because at common speeds, the discrepancy between the linear and relativistic answers are so small as to be undetectable without highly specialized equipment and teaching things such as Columbus proved the earth was round that can't even be altered later on with deeper examination but need to be discarded as fraud.
quote:
but then I was in Australia where American history received very little attention in high school.
Hmmm...I was taught about the discovery and colonization of Australia in American schools. It was part of World History and a required course. I should think that the European conquest of the world including Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Australasia would be important since it did happen and had a huge effect upon global relationships.

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by nwr, posted 12-03-2005 12:59 PM nwr has not replied

  
macaroniandcheese 
Suspended Member (Idle past 3927 days)
Posts: 4258
Joined: 05-24-2004


Message 32 of 41 (265385)
12-04-2005 1:11 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Modulous
12-01-2005 4:08 PM


my brother had a middle school history book that said that martin luther king jr had been president.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Modulous, posted 12-01-2005 4:08 PM Modulous has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 33 by Rrhain, posted 12-04-2005 4:35 AM macaroniandcheese has replied

  
Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


Message 33 of 41 (265406)
12-04-2005 4:35 AM
Reply to: Message 32 by macaroniandcheese
12-04-2005 1:11 AM


brennakimi writes:
quote:
my brother had a middle school history book that said that martin luther king jr had been president.
Evidence, please? This is sounding way too much like the various fundamentalist claims about what is being taught in schools (cf. Haeckel drawings). When you get around to investigating what is really there, you find it bears no resemblance to the original claim.
Who was the publisher? What state was this in? When did it happen? We all love to hear about these groaners, but "my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate saw the X-ray" isn't good enough.

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by macaroniandcheese, posted 12-04-2005 1:11 AM macaroniandcheese has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 34 by macaroniandcheese, posted 12-04-2005 11:54 AM Rrhain has replied

  
macaroniandcheese 
Suspended Member (Idle past 3927 days)
Posts: 4258
Joined: 05-24-2004


Message 34 of 41 (265433)
12-04-2005 11:54 AM
Reply to: Message 33 by Rrhain
12-04-2005 4:35 AM


it was either elementary or middle school but at the latest 6th grade... my brother is two years older than me so guess how sentient that makes me at the time. i think it was in maryland, montgomery county.
historical revisionism is quite well documented. i don't think it is any proof that we should not teach history in schools, i just thought i'd share cause it's so ridiculous.
jesus.
This message has been edited by brennakimi, 12-04-2005 11:59 AM

i'm worldwide bitch, act like ya'll don't know.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 33 by Rrhain, posted 12-04-2005 4:35 AM Rrhain has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by Rrhain, posted 12-05-2005 1:43 AM macaroniandcheese has replied

  
Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


Message 35 of 41 (265640)
12-05-2005 1:43 AM
Reply to: Message 34 by macaroniandcheese
12-04-2005 11:54 AM


brennakimi responds to me:
quote:
i don't think it is any proof that we should not teach history in schools, i just thought i'd share cause it's so ridiculous.
jesus.
(*sigh*)
The problem is bad enough without people making up stories out of whole cloth. Your claim is akin to "my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate saw the X-ray!" No evidence, no book, at a time when you were at best 10 years old and he was 12.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was president? Please. I can't find a single example of that in my (albeit) quick search of errors in textbooks.
Now, King was the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Perhaps you are misremembering the information that was given?

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 34 by macaroniandcheese, posted 12-04-2005 11:54 AM macaroniandcheese has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 36 by macaroniandcheese, posted 12-05-2005 1:57 AM Rrhain has not replied
 Message 37 by nator, posted 12-05-2005 8:19 AM Rrhain has not replied
 Message 38 by Omnivorous, posted 12-05-2005 9:21 AM Rrhain has replied

  
macaroniandcheese 
Suspended Member (Idle past 3927 days)
Posts: 4258
Joined: 05-24-2004


Message 36 of 41 (265641)
12-05-2005 1:57 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by Rrhain
12-05-2005 1:43 AM


nope. swear to god. pure unadulterated revisionism. some people are just dumb.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by Rrhain, posted 12-05-2005 1:43 AM Rrhain has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2169 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 37 of 41 (265677)
12-05-2005 8:19 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by Rrhain
12-05-2005 1:43 AM


quote:
Perhaps you are misremembering the information that was given?
Oh no, Rrhain, with Brennakimi, that is 100% impossible.
She has never, ever forgotten a single thing that she has ever seen, heard, read, or experienced over the course of her entire life.
She even remembers what she had for lunch and what she was wearing on April 19th when she was 6 years old.
Just ask her.
(AbE: Of course, when pressed on details regarding her perfect memory, brenna tends to remain vague and cannot manage to provide the details which would allow anyone to verify her claims. Strange that she is so confident in the perfection of her recollection despite this inability to remember the important relevant details...)
This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-05-2005 08:35 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by Rrhain, posted 12-05-2005 1:43 AM Rrhain has not replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 38 of 41 (265703)
12-05-2005 9:21 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by Rrhain
12-05-2005 1:43 AM


Rrhain writes:
(*sigh*)
The problem is bad enough without people making up stories out of whole cloth. Your claim is akin to "my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate saw the X-ray!" No evidence, no book, at a time when you were at best 10 years old and he was 12.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was president? Please. I can't find a single example of that in my (albeit) quick search of errors in textbooks.
Rrhain, I have enjoyed your outstanding posts in this thread and elsewhere, but this response to brennakimi seems manifestly unfair and unduly patronizing: no demands for citation-level documentation have been made regarding your recollections of educational experiences--nor should they be.
I, too, can recall absurdities I was taught in elementary school, even though it was more than 40 years ago, and the practical impossibility of providing book, chapter, and verse is obvious.
Can we only contribute to discussion the personal experiences we can document to academic journal standards? We would have to strike much from the entire forum.
Having served as a copyeditor, I can well imagine a weary corrector editing in the silly mistake brenna recalls.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by Rrhain, posted 12-05-2005 1:43 AM Rrhain has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 40 by Rrhain, posted 12-10-2005 3:51 AM Omnivorous has not replied

  
RobertFitz
Inactive Member


Message 39 of 41 (265822)
12-05-2005 5:00 PM


as for historical revisionists, don't even get me started on the holocaust deniers....

  
Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


Message 40 of 41 (267449)
12-10-2005 3:51 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by Omnivorous
12-05-2005 9:21 AM


Omnivorous responds to me:
quote:
but this response to brennakimi seems manifestly unfair and unduly patronizing
What's the cliche? "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." To claim that there is a textbook that indicated Martin Luther King, Jr. was President of the United States is an outrageous claim and thus, it requires an outrageous response.
Besides, I was nice the first time. I asked politely for a source and got bupkus. No title was given and the next piece of information indicates that the claimaint was at a stage in life where memories are highly suspect with regard to accuracy (memory is notoriously unreliable and the memories of children even more so.)
So, I tried to offer a way out: Martin Luther King, Jr. was president of at least one organization, and a fairly important one, at that. Perhaps this is just a misunderstanding on brennakimi's part.
quote:
no demands for citation-level documentation have been made regarding your recollections of educational experiences--nor should they be.
Incorrect, both factually and substantially. I have been called on my anecdotes (f'rinstance, people ask me where I got the E. coli/T4 phage experiment and I tell them that it is written up in my college Intro to Bio text: Life: The Science of Biology by Purves/Orians.) In my primer on thermodynamics, I point out that while all the text is original to me, the information is culled from three physics textbooks (two H&Rs and a SZ&Y).
And too, they SHOULD call me on them if they seem beyond the pale. All claims carry burden of proof and that burden is always on the one making the claim. One should never, ever feel put out by being asked for source material. If you've got the goods, why hide them?
quote:
I, too, can recall absurdities I was taught in elementary school
I don't deny such. As I said, "The problem is bad enough without people making up stories out of whole cloth." And as I said in my original post, "We all love to hear about these groaners, but 'my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate saw the X-ray' isn't good enough."
quote:
even though it was more than 40 years ago, and the practical impossibility of providing book, chapter, and verse is obvious.
Why? I kept my books.
quote:
Can we only contribute to discussion the personal experiences we can document to academic journal standards?
If you expect to be believed when you say that you have evidence the moon is made of green cheese, then yes. To say, "I remember getting into a fight at school over having to say the Pledge of Allegiance," is one thing. That's a personal experience and it isn't that far-fetched of an idea.
But to claim that a textbook indicated Martin Luther King, Jr. was president is so clearly beyond the pale that it screams out for sourcing. We already get this kind of crap with regard to creationists whining about how Haeckel's drawings of embryos which he altered in order to buttress his claim of ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny are still being used (completely ignoring the context in which such drawings are offered as well as deriding the science of embryology and what it has to say about evolutionary development).
We don't need people making shit up.
quote:
We would have to strike much from the entire forum.
And a lot of it should be. There's a problem with the "right to my opinion" attitude. It leads one to the conclusion that their right to have an opinion indicates that said opinion is worth something.
quote:
Having served as a copyeditor, I can well imagine a weary corrector editing in the silly mistake brenna recalls.
Indeed. I look at my own writing and I cringe at some of the mistakes I have made. I am notorious for dropping my nots. The phrase I want to be typing has the verb negated ("I do not like that"), but somehow the "not" makes good its escape by the time it's written down and sent ("I do like that.") I certainly understood what it was I was trying to say. Where the hell did that "not" go?
I have no trouble believing that mistakes have been made, but that is one doozy of an error and it would be nice if there were some evidence of it other than someone's vague recollection from when they were no more than 10 about a book that wasn't even theirs and never read.
Would you trust that as a reference?

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by Omnivorous, posted 12-05-2005 9:21 AM Omnivorous has not replied

  
Trae
Member (Idle past 4306 days)
Posts: 442
From: Fremont, CA, USA
Joined: 06-18-2004


Message 41 of 41 (277999)
01-11-2006 6:44 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by Rrhain
12-03-2005 5:05 PM


Rrhain, sorry for the delay in acknowledging your reply.
First I should say that I really don’t have much contact with any educators (a few partners of friends I might see a couple times a year or people I talk to in parties. So by no means do I think I have much of any clue as to what is really going on in public schools these days.
quote:
That would depend upon what you mean by "teaching to the test." If it means such as what happens in the Academic Decathlon where the Literature section is based upon a particular book, then that is a problem if all you are testing is whether or not they have read it by asking plot questions.
This is pure assumption on my part. I also live in California and my understanding is that in K-12 some funding and other school pressures are directly tied to passing state and/or district tests. At least that is what I get from the news and talk shows. ;-)
Now my education I always considered a bit on the odd side. Most of my K-12 education took place in the 1970’s. Had I graduated on time it would have been 1980, instead I took and passed the CHSPE (California High School Proficiency Examination) in 1978. Farted around in a few Junior College for 4-5 years, before getting an AA in humanities, before going on to a State University for a BA (Communications). Much of my early education was somewhat unusual (thought perhaps not so for that time), with forced bussing, various experimental education programs (a long series of teachers who were young and very much products of the 1960’s), modular education, self-paced learning. When it worked, it worked very well, but it also left me with a few rather large gaps in my early education.
In fairness, even then it seemed and seems to me that most teaching was to the test, but the test was the teacher’s more than the states, or so it seemed to me.
It is interesting to me that you brought up your library class, as my own library class is something I’ve often cited to people whenever I get into a discussion about learning. I remember at the time a little light going on when I realized teacher was teaching more of a skill or tool than yet another class of memorizing facts. In my mind the type of learning wasn’t of the same type I got in many other classes. It is that type that I would have liked to see more of in my other subjects.
I can see two main approaches used to convince people of an idea. One I think of as the scientific/logical method, the other I think of as the persuasive argument method. The persuasive argument is the method I link in my mind to lawyers, police, governments, organizations, religions, used-car salesmen, etc. The scientific/logical method would be more along the lines as used in the forum guidelines.
I realize that much of what is taught in schools is critical thinking in the sense that teachers are often ask students to analyze what is being taught. I suspect, at least it seemed to be the case in my own experience, that this is focused on more in science and math classes then other classes. I can’t imagine your students get away with simply making assertions. ;-)
I do think the curriculum could be further improved with a greater focus on critical thinking and logic to be applied to all subjects and not a subset. I see the value of tools like ”logic’ as a way to quickly flag incoming information as possibly problematic. Again, I’m not pointing fingers at teachers, I am asking if in a world where so much of the information we are asked to process is presented as persuasive arguments if our citizens are leaving school with the needed tools to properly evaluate those arguments? It seems to me that the general answer is no.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by Rrhain, posted 12-03-2005 5:05 PM Rrhain has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024