These are messages I found I GEnie. The dates range from Oct, 1988 to June 1990. I have reformatted the messages, cleaned up some typos, and deleted some that seemed unrelated. ************ Category 11 Topic 2 Tue Oct 04, 1988 W.WILLIAMSO3 at 20:41 EDT Sub: Student Motivation Alright, so how do we get the little buggers to do their homework, etc., and take an interest in the subject (e.g., geography)? 56 message(s) total. ************ ------------ NPC.ARCHIVES [Paul Chernof] Reminds me of a booklet I read about teaching children who speak Black English Venacular. While most of the problems involved with these kids revolve around motiviation and not language, the booklet started with the assumption that the students would be motivated and never broached the subject again. ------------ W.FRYREAR Well, there is no obviously good method for motivating all students of all ages, right?....Wrong. Pay them. If they do well, they get paid. If they do poorly, they get fined. Doesn't have to be money, but it should be something that all of your students are interested in. Food, sports tickets, extra credit points, time off from official class activity, etc., come to mind. I use a certificate to award extra credit points for: highest score on a test, highest score on a weekly grade posting, helping out with classroom chores, most interesting class participation of the week, etc. Each certificate is worth 5 e.c. points. Save them up and 5 certificates will give a perfect daily grade. 10 will give something else, etc. Time on the computers to do fun things can also be used. Any other ideas out there? Oh, yes....don't forget the fine for poor work. If you get in their "pockets" occasionally it serves as a valuable reminder. Chewing gum in class....poor conduct.....bring gum for everyone tomorrow. ------------ A2.TYLER W. Williams, I found that making a game out of the work helps. When I was in Junior H.S. we fought the Civil War. I now have my two classes divided into four groups, north, south, east, and west. They earn points for answering questions about the news or on the information we are working on. You may also give points for bringing in homework, high test scores, bringing their textbooks, etc. I have a poster on my wall where I tally the points. I teach Special Ed. and even my hardest to motivate students enjoy the game. I have a deck of flash cards with questions from the text on it so, if I do not have a news question I am still ready for the game. We spend around five to ten minutes on it a day. The game also helps to review information. I hope this helps you. If you try it please tell me how it works out. Good luck, Leah ------------ NPC.ARCHIVES [Paul Chernof] No one technique works for everyone, but some have been found to work better than others. In use of games, quite frequently underachievers start achieving because they are suddenly motivated and not bored by the subject. In fact, it is amusing to watch those kids who have been "written off" to way outperform the usual "A" students. A warning, games can be devistating and need to be handled properly. For example, Star Power, which is an excellent game, has lead to things such as people being thrown through doors and out of windos--games engage the emotions. A good game director with excellent debriefing skills is a must (Most games are poorly run). ------------ DAWSON-PHOTO Some interesting ideas here but what about them BIG buggers? I have taught adult education for years and many students are my near my age (37) or older and are retraining for a career change. Many have their own kids. How do you reach someone who has put in 8 hours of work BEFORE you get them? Their kids play games, they don't! Maybe there should be a CAT just for the problems of teaching the older student. How do we integrate them into an environment they may have left 15 years ago? Bob Marcy ------------ NPC.ARCHIVES [Paul Chernof] I am more interested in the problems of adult students (in addition to their working during the day). I was under the impression that adult students are, as a whole, more motivated than their younger peers. Is this not true? BTW, I am more used to running games for adults than kids. At the University of Michigan I used to assist in running Blood Money as a continuing ed course for doctors. ------------ DAWSON-PHOTO [Bob Marcy] True, they are more motivated, more serious in pursuing a goal. But there are many times during a three year program when it seems to them that they are stuck in a rut. The creative juices have dried up, they don't seem to be going anywhere. If their personnal life is also causing problems then the problem of motivation does come up. I should say that the average student's age is 22-25 but quite a few are in their thirtys and some older. Its quite a mix! Bob Marcy ------------ C.WHITE10 [Charlotte] My high school students seem most motivated when I get to know them as people. I talk to them and listen, and I don't panic if they mention sex or drugs. They do what I ask more 'for me' than becasue they want to. I try to set up assignments that they have some input as to content or format (I teach English). This approach is working well in my writing workshop with students I have taught two years, but it's slow going with the ones I have for the first time. ------------ DAWSON-PHOTO Sounds interesting Charlotte. Perhaps offering them a choice of options would create a feeling of having a vested interest in the outcome. Bob Marcy ------------ RJP [Roberta] Let's include "student motivation" in our Live Roundtable on Tuesday, 9:30 EDT or 6:30 for those of us in the "correct" time zone. Just kidding folks. But We ARE having the first Live Roundtable June 27, 1989. First, under my leadership as SysOps. I expect to screw up several times running it, but with such a nice group as gathers here in The Lounge I know it will be worthwhile anyway. So tune in at 9:30, Tuesday if you're in the EAstern Time Zone. I am in New York even while we type for PC Expo. The weather is muggy, muggy and the Big Apple is as fun and crazy as ever. Best, Roberta (rjp). ------------ RJP [Roberta] SUBJECT: UNUSUAL ADVICE If you don't normally read Ann Landers' advice column there appeared one I hope you didn't miss. It was written by an inner-city high school student in Chicago. She writes cogently about how lack of proper discipline cheats the students and shatters their self-esteem. She considers how the majority of the students come from low educational and low SES home. She says the parents don't have time, resources or knowledge to provide the needed discipline at home. She contends they mature without a developed sense of responsibility and their teachers don't understand how crucial it is to teach the students discipline. If they are late in handing in an assignment, they often try to use his personal background as an excuse. Her words: "The teacher, feeling sorry for the underprivileged student, allows the student to get away with his irresponsibility. Instead of helping the student the teacher has really done him an injustice by making it easy to escape his responsibility." Then the teacher starts watering down the assignments and "The student now has a reason for lower expectations of his capacities. He also has reason to believe that HIS ENVIRONMENT WILL ALWAYS DOMINATE HIM." (emphasis mine) She speaks with some authority as her family of 14 is headed by her mother and the home is "thirsting for some sort of stability." Realistically Alma Lopez urges that the teacher be given the freedom to "discipline the student on an individual basis, provided he does so in a humane manner." I hope every inner-city teacher, administrator and schoolboard member will heed Alma's advice!! I can't think of a better gift than telling a kid his environment need not conquer him. ------------ JERRYP Wonderful. Charles Murray has a chapter on the hidden taxes: we make the poor pay by not allowing discipline in the classrooms. It may not be what is intended, but the result is to keep 'em down. ------------ RJP [Roberta] Many kids from large and chaotic families often say they don't have a place to do their homework and it's too noisy with everyone yelling and the TV and radio both going. REcommend the library. I came from a large family and retreating to the library certainly impacted favorably on me for life. Got the reading bug early because there were ALL those books to read that I didn't have to pay for. Of course it is our responsbility as teachers to make the homework meaningful and not just make work. A certain amount of plain drill is good for them in the scheme of life. I think the major point the inner-city girl was making was: DON'T LET THEM OFF THE HOOK. Make their actions have consequences and they won't become victims of their environment. Look at those who came from humble backgrounds who made it and you will find some teacher didn't make excuses for them. Kids rise to meet expectations. ------------ JERRYP Partly that's just hard work, motivating the unmotivated; but it clearly can be done, as witness Jaime Escalante. I think a healthy dose of what Glasser called REALITY THERAPY -- which, if you haven't read it, is an excellent book, by a psychiatrist who worked in the Calif. Youth Authority detention school for hard cases -- is indicated. Tell them they can flip burgers for a living. And sure, it looks good to be a coke king, but Washington is getting REAL upset on that; see the case of one Al Capone as to what happens to people who make the system sufficiently mad at them. If you can read and write and fit into the general culture it doesn't guarantee you a decent living, but it gives you a fairly good shot at it. If you can't, you're pretty well guaranteed to stay down there in the underclass, and after a while all those nice people in the welfare office aren't going to like you any more. Education can be fun, but much of it is not. The stories about bright kids bored to death in school may be true, but in my case I tried that one on my parents, and they informed me that if you don't work you die (well, actually that line is from Kipling's Gods of The Copybook Headings, but what they said is the same thing). Some parts of education are not SUPPOSED to be "fun". They are WORK. The neat thing is if you get past the early hard parts, you really can learn something that IS fun. But first you have to learn to work. That won't help all your kids, but it might help some of them, who are sick of being lied to about how much fun it's going to be, and who know the world is not a fairyland. ------------ OPTOWAVE Kids today are bored with learning because they become desensitized from the sheer volume of information hitting them from all sides, and the fast pace of the modern world. Learning becomes a force-fed survival skill instead of a passion for them. In simpler times, one could ride a bicycle to the local library and pick up that one special book, go home and read it in the backyard or a quiet room with no TV set or stereo blaring in the background, and really experience the book. It was relaxing and stimulating at the same time. Children really had the sense that there was something to be gained by learning, because there was much to be developed, and plenty of time to do it. Today, the feeling is that of overload. Everything seems to have been invented, and things move too quickly for people to keep up, so they GIVE up. They take the world for granted, not understanding it, but using its modern conveniences. Children, especially young ones, should be shown the awesome achievements of humans, and the grand scale of things that we as a species have been able to envision during our brief stay on the planet. The emphasis should be on RESPECT and WONDERMENT for the gift we humans uniquely enjoy, and that is the ability to make our imaginations become reality. Even today, there is plenty of opportunity for those who can manage to fend off the dulling and discouraging influences that abound in such a fast-paced, competitive society. It is the teacher's job to be able to create, and re-create again and again, an atmosphere of encouragement that can remain fresh even after the kids go back to the "realities" of life. Rob ------------ RJP [Roberta] Rob, I think you made your point very well. Libraries still exist I think every teacher on this BB would wish the parents of their students would make a Trek to the Mecca Library with their kids, turn off the TV. Humans tend to take the line of least resistance and Lord knows we all know teachers who themselves rely upon the Boob Tube to babysit their kids or couch potato themselves WITH the kid. Overcoming inertia? is that what we are facing? I agree that it is the teacher's responsibility to excite the kids on how science is conducted and how we got the technology we have today. On another Category (channel?) we are talking about HyperCard for the Mac. I love the way we can interface lesson stacks to Cd-ROMs, videotape, videodiscs to teach science. We will see more and more pre-packaged lessons coming out of say Optical Design Corporation, National Geographic Society, and other OEMs. Could you go more into what you mean by "desensitized" please. I am unclear on what you mean by "sheer volume of information". The phrase "white noise" comes to mind when I think of what is spewed from the radio and TV. ------------ OPTOWAVE By "desensitized", I am saying that living your life today requires you to process a LOT more information than you might have been required to had you lived before "the electronic age". It all becomes matter-of-fact, and after a while you just let it wash over you and sort of forget about the content of it, letting it bounce around in your brain randomly. That happens whenever you are exposed to overpowering stimuli for long periods. People who have injuries and disease live with pain constantly, and after a while it becomes "normal" to them, and not as noticeable all the time. They become desensitized to it. Think about how the world has changed in this century alone. Imagine if you were a student in 1900. The world was much smaller then. It was centered right in your own town. TV was unheard of (there was some work being done on TV then, but it was not known to most people). The sources of information were few, and they were much more avoidable than today. Nowdays, not only do we have radio, TV, portable media devices, advertising everywhere you turn, magazines galore, and more people to compete with in a global marketplace, but kids are now processing more information in one month than their parents ever did in their entire lives! Computers have made processing huge blocks of text, and distributing it to thousands of people, as easy as a few minutes worth of keystrokes. Here's a little method you can use to help students appreciate the scale and complexity of technological development: Bring them to, or tell them to imagine themselves in, The Middle Of Nowhere. That would be any place where no sign of humans is evident (hard to find these days :-). Woods are great for this, or even better, a flat, barren expanse of land that stretches as far as the eye can see. Don't let them bring anything except the clothes they are wearing. Now, tell them "Ok, YOU figure out how to make do. YOU develop some technology.". Well, it won't be long before they start pleading with you to get in the car and go home to the modern world. The ones who start looking around for stuff to use on the ground, rocks, etc, THOSE are the people you want to teach, because they have curiosity and imagination. Those that want to go home will perhaps have some insight into their dependence on the modern world, and it might just be unsettling enough to make them want more control over their lives. Rob ------------ RJP [Roberta] I would have to be convinced that kids are "processing more information" than their parents or grandparents did. Too many of them are washing themselves in white noise coming from boom boxes or walkmen. Are they attempting to avoid thinking by only feeling the music? Are their own thoughts alien to them? I wouldn't be so concerned if I thought they were "processing information". Stimuli is not necessarily "information retrieval." Am I being dense here? I would agree kids are over-stimulated today. I invite others to join in on this. Thanks Optowave for pursuing this further. I don't think this generation is any worse or any better than the last. I just want my kids and other kids to take advantage of the good that is offered and shun the shallow and solely purient. Kids have good sense and I think we need to give them credit for good sense. Plus we have to have higher expectations because of this good sense. ------------ OPTOWAVE "processing information" doesn't always mean doing anything useful with it. It just means that it is coming in and being sorted and stored somewhere. It can perhaps change behavior too, so that IS something to be concerned about. It is my view that today's children are worse off psychologically than children of 20 or more years ago. Drugs, teen pregnancy, suicide, and low self esteem are MUCH more widespread than anyone could have imagined 20 years ago. If you put high expectations on a child who has low self esteem, and don't take measures to remedy the problem, you will ruin that child emotionally for the rest of their life. Unfortunately, most adults aren't able to recognize this, and I've seen many children brutalized by the "shape up, you lazy kid" approach. The topic here is student motivation, and to that end, let me suggest a new approach. Instead of trying to motivate students to follow the pre-planned program written for them by the state (or whatever agency knows what's best for them), how about letting the students design the programs the way they feel most comfortable, and you can throw in the basics on a timetable that "feels" appropriate (as opposed to what looks good on paper)? Instead of using the "pushing" type of motivation, use the "pulling" type that makes them want to learn. What draws them to the other things they like? Maybe those factors would be applicable to learning too. Rob ------------ JERRYP Kids are lazy. Moreover: if there is a justification to taxing people without children in order to support the schools, it is that this is an investment in the future that will benefit all. Letting kids design their own programs will make the kids happier. It probably will do very little to help the future republic. The fact is that kids have to be made to learn. Once they have got in the habit of learning, and know they CAN learn, then one can do wonders with motivations and deferred rewards; but when I was young the reason we did our homework was that Sister would bash us a good one if we didn't. We did the homework. Now we also rather enjoyed that in an odd way; "Boy, she's mean, we really have to work hard..." was in fact something with a bit of pride in it. After all, we needed an excuse to work hard. Modern kids are not different that way. ------------ JERRYP I don't know what processing information means. Kids can do algebra or they can't. They can read or they can't. Teaching 'problem solving' in my experience means you are teaching nothing whatever. In 4th Grade at Capleville school (two grades per room, two-year Normal School teachers, not a 'qualified professional educator' within miles) we learned the principle products of Ecuador and stuff like that in World Geography; and we drew maps; and had to show where Columbia and Zanzibar and like that were on the world map; and memorized the names of the states and their capitals; and in general LEARNED SOMETHING. Information processing and problem solving have been in my judgment buzz words designed to conceal the fact that the kids aren't learning anything describable. ------------ JERRYP As to brutalization by "Shape up you lazy kid", put that baldly of course you want to run over and say 'there there you poor thing, we'll fire that monster who's threatening you'; but in fact I think that happens pretty infrequently, no? In most cases there is no insistence on learning at all. And some kids need to have it said to them. What in the world is so stressful about today's environment compared to, say, Abe Lincoln's? Or Japan during World War II and the Occupation? (I was in the US Army of Occupation in Japan, and they had NOTHING; but those kids are now the onese that are beating the socks off us. How did that happen? Was it less stressful than here? Really?) ------------ OPTOWAVE Oh, sure the kids will "learn" lots of facts if you force them to. But they will forget them in no time as soon as they leave school. If they have no real interest in the material, those brain cells will be re-allocated to something they ARE interested in. Conditioning works better on behavior than on storage of knowledge. They are two different things. You can get people to act in the same way using either fear or desire. To teach the behavior using fear of what happens if it is not done right WILL get you the behavior, but at what cost? I'm not saying at all that you should be a pushover with kids. But there are ways to get them to do what they need to do without threatening them. The only time threats should be used is when you have run out of other ideas. This is where many teachers fall short. They go right for the threats if they encounter noncompliance. Really builds trust, doesn't it? Stress. It comes in many shapes and sizes. Wartime is stressful, poverty is stressful, and yes, even WEALTH is stressful. Those Japanese kids who are doing so well in school are doing so at the expense of the health and well being of themselves and their parents. The way those kids are drilled and driven is going to catch up with them. Japan is seeing the effects of this intense work ethic right now. I wouldn't wish that on the kids in the U.S.A.. The foreign students here are just carrying over that practice. We don't want to become a Japan, trust me. Even if it means giving up some money. We should concentrate on being a better U.S.A., not a second rate Japan. If you don't see the increased stress on today's kids, I don't know how I could possibly explain it to you. Just take a look around, and don't use your adult perception of things when judging it. Compare your experiences at certain ages with those of today's kids at those same ages. The sophistication of the typical 16 year old today is light years above that of a mid-century or below 16 year old. Divorce, single parent homes, and all that stuff are more popular today too. And this is progress? Rob ------------ OPTOWAVE The other point that I was going to make is that kids are BORN wanting to learn. Kids are the most curious creatures on Earth. It's what the parents and the schools do to kids that screws them up. It's all your fault, Jerry. Wouldn't it make more of an impression on you if they used the news to help you learn the states, countries and capitals? "A plane crashed in Sioux City, Iowa yesterday. Any of you know where that is on the map? Can you tell me what the capital of Iowa is? What are the primary industries in Iowa?" Kids can tag the facts to the event. They will be able to remember Iowa because of that plane crash, and that really burns the memory into their brains. Same with the middle east. There are plenty of interesting things to learn about countries. Learning lists and cramming useless facts into their heads is not going to enrich them, it's just going to clutter up their minds with garbage they couldn't care less about. If you do that, you lose sight of what learning is all about. Rob ------------ JERRYP Well : you're concerned about 'mental health' which is something I don't understand. I once got a Ph.D. in psychology and I don't understand 'mental health'. I suspect my friend who wrote the book "The Myth of Mental Illness" may have gone a bit far; but I'm more inclined to his view than the opposite. I'm concerned about educational results. We aren't getting any. If we were debating about what to do about that last 6% of kids who graduate without being able to read, I'd be a lot more concerned about 'adjustment' and 'happiness'; but in fact it's 33% who leave the school system functionally unable to read and write. By contrast, Shelby County Tennessee in 1950, when schools were legally segregated, had 90% literacy among black and white alike. Clearly we spent less money on the segregated black schools than is now spent. Clearly we got better results. Why? As to the Japanese being just horribly mal-adjusted, maybe and maybe not; what about the Germans? They went through WW II and its aftermath, and their schools aren't engineered for failure. Or is that another of those awful places? Maybe we will be "a better USA" by continuing to shovel money into an educational establishment that by its own admission can't do the job that the US was able to do 50 years ago; maybe it will be "a better USA" when the illiteracy rate gets to 50%; but I for one tend to doubt it. I grew up during a war, when we all had to do a great deal of work as well as go to school; I'd have thought there was a bit of 'stress' in there. But perhaps not, and it was all idyllic. I sure could have used flourides and pennicillin when I was a kid, though. Wouldn't have hurt to know more about vitamins, either. ------------ RJP [Roberta] Rob, some interesting ideas you have presented here. Let's pursue a couple at a time, okay? "high expectations on a child who has low self-esteem...don't take measure to remedy the problem.." I take ait to mean to remedy the self-esteem. I don't know if you caught my posting from the little girl in HS in Chicago who said we were doing the inner-city kids a disservice by lowering expectations just because we felt sorry for them. She said we are telling them they can't do anything. That certainly does nothing for raising self-esteem, don't you think? Raising their self-expectation was her "remedy for the problem. She is speaking for her peers from their unsettled seat. "throw in the basics on a timetable that 'feels' appropriate" Do you mean feels approrpiate to the kids or those responsible for educating them? "pulling" motivation = ???? Please continue. Let us explore together. ------------ RJP [Roberta] When teaching high schoolers I let the kids have choices within a designed program. They were given options as to how to pursue skills and knowledge within a set parameter. To that extent they did "design their own programs". But perhaps that is fudging on the definition of "design." I felt it was my responsibility to determine what they needed to know just as the State committees fulfilled their responsibilities by outlining the basics to be taught in a particular subject. If the kids are designing their own programs, what was I being paid for? I thought they insisted I take that mound of Education courses so that I would be qualified to know how and what they ought to learn. As confused as I was while taking these courses it is certainly possible I didn't learn what I was there for!! (Pardon my mixing of they in the last paragraph) They = State & profs insisted I take the Ed courses. They2 = kids I was responsible to teach. (Oh, well :-)) ------------ RJP [Roberta] Rob, let me throw an iconoclastic wrench in the works here: Isn't it rather a hit and miss situation is we wait for things to happen in the news about a particular place before we introduce the geography of an area? I know you are probably using this as one example, but I have found that the classrooms that rely upon extrinsic motivation deprive the students of the intrinsic motivation. Follow me? For instance, Rob, what books intrigued you as a child? Certain books on Geography make kids want to learn about an area. Any come to mind folks? ------------ OPTOWAVE Jerry-- I don't know where you're going with this 'mental health' thing, so all I can say is that there are more kids killing themselves and each other today than at any other time. There are more kids underachieving than ever before, and they don't believe in themselves enough to bother trying. Are you saying that's a fluke thing? The example of the schools in the 1950's doing a better job is just my point. What happened? I'll tell you what happened. NOTHING happened. Schools haven't changed along with society, and they are basically the same as they were 40 or more years ago. Society isn't the same as it was 40 or more years ago. German schools are a byproduct of their socialized society. The U.S. is not Germany, not Japan, not the USSR. What works elsewhere is not always good for the U.S., and comparisons to different cultures are irrelevant. The U.S. is more free than any of those countries, and there's nothing wrong with that. We just have to find a way to make things work in OUR culture, and not import standards and practices from others. Roberta-- RE: Expectations, self esteem-- I never said to LOWER any expectations. I said you shouldn't raise them until you find out why the kids aren't doing well in the first place. Giving them a higher wall to climb, when they can't climb a short one, isn't going to make them climb any higher, and it will make their failure that much bigger. Designing their own programs means students should be allowed to decide HOW they are to approach learning the information that YOU think they need to learn. That could include computer-based self-study, guest speakers, special projects of their own design, field trips, brainstorming, video courses, work- study, books, researching and writing articles like a magazine would carry, cooperation with other schools, and the list goes on. They should be allowed to choose any and all of this, whenever they want and in any order they want. What you do as a teacher is adapt to THEIR learning curve, and throw in the basic info you want them to know when it "feels" like they are ready and willing to learn it. "Pulling" motivation is the type of motivation one has when he/she really wants to do something. With that type of motivation, people are more than willing to put in the hard work to learn. Example: If some teacher had said to me "You have to learn laser interferometry this quarter", I would have said "Oh, terrific. Like I really need that.". But, I found out that laser interferometry would help me design ultra-sensitive motion detectors and measurement systems for some projects I wanted to develop, so I was willing to do the hard work and learn it, even though I didn't exactly like it. I had a REASON to want to work hard. The "pushing" type of motivation just says "Do it because I said so, and you'll thank me for it later", and you wind up with people just barely learning, then forgetting quickly. Teacher training is not solely for the purpose of creating set-in-stone lesson plans. The best teachers I've had were those who started off with words of encouragement, adapted their style to the learning style of the class, let the class take control of their learning (always standing by to steer things back on track if things got wild), and didn't have such big egos that they couldn't accept input from students on how to do their job. The best students I've seen were those who were creative in how they went about learning. They used things outside of the school program to enhance their learning and make it more interesting and practical. Using the news to teach geography is far from "hit and miss". I see a perfect oppotunity to blend history, geography, and social issues, using the news as a study guide. It is by no means the ONLY source of info to use, nor should it be. But it is VERY effective, when it covers things that mesh with your studies. I hope I covered all of your questions. This message is certainly long enough! :-) Rob ------------ JERRYP Permit me to disagree. When I was in school, you had a real chance of flunking; and if you flunked you got held back. Nobody wanted that to happen. If Capleville school district had 30% of the kids unable to read after 3rd grade, they would have FIRED THE TEACHERS and got new ones. The teachers knew that. What happened since then? We spent a lot of money on 'research' that showed how to excuse failure, not get results. That's what happened. Life has been stressful and hard for the young for a very long time; thousands of years, in fact. Roman lads became both citizens and soldiers at age 14. Socrates went on his first military campaign at age 16. Today we have penicillin and flourides; there are a lot of things that used to bother heck out of us as kids that are no longer a big factor. Ah well. HAve it your way if you like: the reason the kids don't learn is somehow their fault, or society's fault. But if I hired a computer programmer to program a computer of a model that has been successfully programmed for many years; and my programmer failed to make the machine work; and blamed the computer; I'd fire the programmer. ------------ OPTOWAVE Ah, but if you told that programmer to run PageMaker on a Univac, and it didn't work, would you fire him, or blame the computer, or blame yourself for expecting the existing old system to meet today's needs? If we held back all the students that SHOULD be held back, we wouldn't have room in the classes for NEW students! :-) Let's just move 'em through, cut our losses, and start fresh with a new approach for the next generation. Rob ------------ RJP [Roberta] Rob I appreciate your long entries. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. However, I disagree that schools are the same as they were forty years ago. I don't know if you were in school forty years ago but if descriptions are correct schools were lectures, reading, & recitation. Is that how you picture schools today? I think you will find they are quite different. What if you find out the kids aren't doing well in the first place is because they find they can get away with doing LESS? Talk to teenagers and you will find them saying they didn't do their work better or at all because "why should I. I can talk him/her out of flunking me. I can get him/her fired if the pressure me to do more." What then? I know plenty of high-school classes where all of the suggestions you have made exist, i.e., computer-based self-study, guest speakers, special projectws of their own design, field trips, brainstorming, video courses, work/study, books, researching and writng articles like a magazine would carry" and still the kids don't learn. The thing that is lacking in these "innovative" classes is "high expectations." I spend a lot of time talking to teenage kids. Say to them they should be "allowed to choose any and all of this, whenever they want and in any order they want" and you'll find the their whenever they want ain't never. When you say a teacher ought to adapt to "THEIR learning curve"... when it "feels" like they are reading and willing to learn" and you will discover a new climate in Hades. Are you sure you are being realistic about all this? Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "their learning curve". Do you really mean learning style, e.g., visual, auditory, tactile or kinesthetic? Guide me! When was the last time you "created" your own "pulling motivation" to learn something complex, difficult and complicated over even a month's time? Was it the extrinsic value or the intrinsic value which motivated? I believe you are really saying that teachers need to show students how they will use what they are about to learn and I couldn't agree more. I believe a database could be promulgated by teachers in science, history, geography to great value. This is usually lacking in most disciplines. Let's take something like inteferometry: how would you go about introducing the concept to a neophyte at age 14 or 15? Pretend you are the teacher in charge of Physical Science and you have a class of 30-35 multiple personalities in front of you. The girls probably could care less about motion detectors; how do you proceed. Remember you are in charge of teaching ALL 30-35 not just the bright boys. I am sure we will all benefit from your effort. Thanks. Remember these 30 kids have different learning styles. I have never had a class of kids who had "the learning style of the class." Has anyone else? Just as in every classroom across the United States of America for every answer there are questions in multiple to follow God's speed! ------------ OPTOWAVE Oh, I wanted to mention that I caught the end of a program on CNN at about 4 am EDT that was either the actual CNN Newsroom service, or a promo of it. It is an educational TV service which carries all sorts of news stories and things of interest to students. I am not familiar with the specifics, but it might be an educational taping service aired on CNN late at night, or a service on its own satellite channel. Anyway, what I saw looked pretty good. The last story was about a man who teaches in GA (I think), and is basically in favor of all the things I proposed here (no wonder I like the service :-). I think seeing that story would change Jerry's mind (if that is possible at this point :-) about what is needed to educate kids now and in the future. That teacher had some very convincing arguments for using computers and giving students latitude in their educational program. I'll try to find out more. I don't remember the phone number to call for info about CNN newsroom, but if you call Turner Broadcasting System at 1-404-827-1717, they will either transfer you, or give you the 800 number for CNN Newsroom service. Or just watch CNN for a while. They run promos for the service several times a day. It's brand new, so I don't even know if it's fully operational yet, and that's why I was not sure what I was watching at that late hour. Rob ------------ RJP [Roberta] Jerry, you have brought up a very basic question: Firing the incompetent. Anyone who has taught for more than five or six years has had colleagues who were just that "incompetent". No matter how disgusted we get about these folks they stick around, oft times are promoted, and they go on "not teaching". Once someone has been around three years they usually gain tenure. The concept of tenure came to us via the Universities. The usual justification for tenure is so that a teacher cannot be fired just because their administrator doesn't like their personality. Does it seem to some of the rest of you that because of this highly unusual circumstance the whole profession has suffered? ------------ RJP [Roberta] Thanks, Rob. I left my name and number on their machine. We'll see what happens. CNN News Service. I'll let you know what I find out. Anyone else already tuned into this service? We'd appreciate your input. Guide us. ------------ OPTOWAVE The learning style of a class is like the dynamics of a crowd. People will act differently in a crowd, depending on what others are doing. With learning, that means you can sometimes use that effect to reach people who would not normally be reachable with a given teaching method if they were alone. But it's something you have to play by ear. I can't tell you to do it one way or another. You have to know your class. That's a part of your job. For the third time, expectations. It is FINE to raise them, IF you know that they are ready for it, and AFTER you provide the students with the freedom to use any method they find effective. Come on, you're not so naive as to think that my proposal would permit students to choose NOT to learn, just because it gives them freedom to use different methods, are you? I don't think so. You can "whip them into shape", and it will work (MAYBE) well enough for them to pass the standard tests, but you won't be building the innovative minds that we need in the future. If anything, we need to get away from regimented programming, and move to more emphasis on independent thinking from our students. For teaching something like laser interferometry to a class of 35 students, I would go for the impact of visual images. There are films and tapes from various universities and national labs that show stunning images of laser beams and various high-tech lab equipment. Interviews with the scientists and statistics on accuracy would add to the impact of the presentation. I would assume that people in a class covering this would have some interest, and so it wouldn't be like teaching a shop class about it. But if the idea is to get across some general knowledge about it, and not train for the field, this should be enough to grab their attention. If some students don't want to learn about it, give them something else to do on some other subject. You don't have to appeal to each learning style of each student all at once. You can always go and help somebody who doesn't get it, but if you spread your methodology a bit, you'll be sure to reach most of the kids most of the time. Science is one of the easiest subjects to teach, if you are good at demonstrations and visuals. Some of my favorite teachers were science teachers. I especially liked the funny ones. I went to a physics lecture at Rutgers, where the prof got up on one of those spring loaded "pogo" sticks (I forget what they are called, popular years ago) and started jumping around all over the lecture hall, while LECTURING! :-) You had to be there, I guess. He was not a man of muscular build, and he almost had a heart attack, but the class was in stitches! Nobody forgot a word the man said. I can remember the whole hour to this day. He did some other neat physics demonstrations too, while catching his breath. :-) Now THAT is a teacher! Rob ------------ JERRYP that's interesting. Because the teachers are incompetent, we should write off an entire generation: just as we are about to have a labor shortage. I see. Have you really thought this out? ------------ OPTOWAVE Nobody said to write them off. Just don't clog up the schools with them. That's better than keeping them around, and not giving the new kids the chance they need to make it because of the drain on resources. Job training programs would be a better place for the "pass-throughs" anyway. We'll be playing catch up for the next century if we keep 1/3 of our students back. We should be working on getting better teachers at the same time we are fixing our school programs, but there is little we can do at this point for those that aren't making it in the upper grades. The damage has been done. Roberta-- Yes, schools today are STILL primarily based on lectures, reading , and recitation. Maybe your area is different, but I've seen little else going on in the school systems on the east coast. Oh yeah, they have computers, which the teachers barely know how to plug in, much less teach about. Most of the computer and visual stuff is reserved for "special" presentations, which happen once a month at most. The younger grades are starting to pick up in this area, so there may be hope yet. Rob ------------ RJP [Roberta] Rob, your description of the Physics prof sounded just like Dr. Pournelle teaching Political Theory or Economics. Athletic advocacy it has been called by his students. ------------ RJP [Roberta] Rob, say some more about job training programs. I am sure you are aware of the resistance to such thrusts across the Nation. ------------ OPTOWAVE Job training programs should be part of the deal when an able-bodied person receives welfare money. But that's for another topic. The students who don't have the skills to work should be at least given a chance to do SOMETHING, and job training programs can give them the means to sustain themselves, so they don't have to live off of handouts from the government for the rest of their lives. I'll look for another topic to continue this, or start one. Rob ------------ JERRYP We have certainly found an area of agreement: kids must be taught to do SOMETHING. I think we differ in just how much even the 'dumbest' can be taught so long as it's expected they'll learn rather than fail (and thus the teacher is expected to produce results rather than excuse failure). But yes: one of the real problems of this era is that everyone is expected to go to college. IN rural Tennessee that was NOT the case; although the tracks didn't diverge until High School. Up through 8th grade we were all expected to read and understand poetry (in 6th grade every one in our school learned such things as Then up spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the gate: "To every man upon this Earth death cometh soon or late, "And how can man die better, than facing fearful odds, "For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods!" and quite a lot more. We got Silas Marner in 7th grade. And so forth. The curriculum was fixed, we all got through it; in 9th grade you began to take shop or academic courses; if you got through the academic program with passing grades the University of Tennessee system had to admit you, but if you didn't do academic and later wanted to go to UT then you had to gain admission. IT seemed to work. It had its problems -- this was in times of legal segregation, and the top end for the blacks was truncated although the courts were very much pressing the "equal" part of "separare but equal" and the state politicos were enough afraid of the feds ending segregation to try. But the fact is that even in the worst schools, everyone learned to read. ------------ OPTOWAVE What was the throughput of those schools back then? Can you relate it to the numbers going through the schools today? The assembly line approach seems to be in full force today, whereas the tendency toward that mode was not as strong in years past, at least in the northeast. There just seemed to be more concentration on everyone's part. Today, there are so many other places to divert your energy, and the result is a less than satisfactory effort in any one area. Rob ------------ JERRYP In Capleville we had: 2 grades per room about 30 to 40 pupils per grade one teacher per room the principal taught 7/8 grade the librarian taught 5/6 grade the only non-academic employees were janitorial and a secretary the teachers were 2 year Normal School graduates, and except for one Old Maid Schoolteacher who had lived in the area most of her life were the wives of local farmers or merchants. the library was small, much smaller than the library in my house, and most of the books were classics of one kind or another. the text books were cast off from a big city district and still had stamps in them proclaiming them to be Memphis school books (Capleville is now apparently a suburb of Memphis but in those times it was Out In The Sticks.) everyone learned to read including the village idiot, who was a girl 15 years old in 5th grade; but she could READ albeit slowly and haltingly and I expect didn't comprehend much of what she was reading. Most of the pupils were farmer kids; as the child of college educated people I was far and away the school intellectual. A valid excuse for not having homework was that the mules got out and you had to chase them all over the county; but an excuse was needed. It wasn't idyllic but we sure read Silas Marner, and Macauley's Lays of Ancient Rome, and Opportunity, and Abou Ben Adam -- I can still recite most of that -- and a lot of classic stories. ------------ OPTOWAVE How many of those students were making big $$$ selling crack during lunch? Did you all have cars? Lots of night life? :-) Sounds like a pretty sleepy little southern town. I'm not surprised you all did fairly well with your schoolwork. Have you been back there? Rob ------------ L.BERLOW It's been ten years since I taught a class, so I'm speaking now as a parent. I'm surprised (and upset) that no one has suggested that a teacher disclose and show his own motivation for the topic he or she teaches. Why should a student learn geography? Well, if Ms. X is a likeable, whole person, and she enjoys it, then perhaps there's something to it.If Ms. X is a dud, you can bet I'll turn off to geography! As for teaching adults (oh, some 30 or 40 messages up), there darn well better be a good and valid reason why they need to know what I'm teaching them after they've come off 8 hours of work. Larry Berlow ------------ CALLISTA Some input from a newcomer who hasn't read the first fifty messages in this topic. If this is out of line with what's gone before, then I apologize in advance. From the time I was in grade school until now, when I take college classes around working full time, I've had very little motivation to do the majority of the homework assigned. I'm one of those people who absorbs concepts very easily. How things work, how different parts fit together, causes, results, etc., all come to me with little effort on my part. I can listen to a lecture, or read a book, and understand what's going on just fine. But THEN, the teacher would come up with some fifty-problem exercise, or set of questions, or whatever, as homework. For people who already understand the material, there's no value added in doing an exercise type of homework assignment. I realized this, and, stubborn cuss that I am, generally didn't do the homework. I got A and B grades on tests, and did well on large projects, research papers and the like (there's a POINT to those -- you're learning something new), but I'd only turn in about ten to twenty percent of the day to day homework, and end up with a C or a D in the class. My objection to this is that I was learning what the class taught. I demonstrated that on tests, and by participating in class discussions in a knowledgeable manner, asking intelligent questions, etc. The grade I ended up with on my report card didn't reflect how much I learned. Isn't that the major point of taking a class -- to gain information, insight, skills or whatever? I realize that not everyone is like this. I don't even know if there are enough people like me to justify DOING anything... (I can hope, though... :) In college, I've discovered classes that are absolute heaven. This is when the final grade depends on a midterm, a final exam, and one or two really major research projects or papers. I can dive in and do what _I_ know is necessary to absorb the subject, and I generally come out of such classes with an A. Might junior highs and high schools present some classes in this format? This would be along the same lines as special classes for 'gifted' students. (I've been in several gifted programs, and most of them do absolutely nothing about the style of teaching, they just add enrichment-type subjects. This is lots of fun, but doesn't address the MANNER in which gifted students might learn.) Anyway, it seems that if some given group of students can learn in such an environment, then it would be to everyone's benefit to provide that environment. Students like me could concentrate on learning, rather than doing exercises, and teachers would have fewer papers to grade. BTW, most of you probably have "math classes" at the top of your head in flashing neon lights. A heaven math class, for me, is one where the teacher assigns homework, but doesn't collect it. If I'm comfortable with the concept, I'll do two or three problems just to make sure I can, then ignore the rest. If I'm not so sure about what's going on (like the first time I ran into implicit differentiation ), I'll do more problems than the teacher ever dreamed of assigning, because _I_ know they're necessary. So much for homework motivation... Any comments? Angie ------------ L.BERLOW Angie, of course you're right!!! Too much of the effort for better education is centered around seeing that kids do homework, without anyone understanding what homework is about. A child was quoted in the NY Times the other day (a gifted kid) who asked: "If two plus three always equals five, why do they keep teaching it to us?" Don't feel bad, Angie. There are lots of people who find that home work assignments don't match their needs. Larry B. ------------