Pattern—to first question. In my country, schools and teacher in schools are judged formally or informally by pass rates. Universities, not much, and university lecturers would only be investigated if there was serious concerns about incompetence or unfair exams.
As I said, my discomfort is with tone that teachers are doing it wrong and all teachers are bad.
Eg “It’s fine if the kids aren’t paying attention to what you’re teaching, why are you trying to teach 20 kids at once anyway?”
Well, because as teacher, you dont have a choice.
eg “Have it run until 1720”. So how many hours a day do you think teachers should be working then? Every teacher I know is at school early, home late and working through the evening. No wonder they burn out. This does not strike me as remotely realistic.
I am concerned that teaching is ineffective, that classroom failure has serious downstream effects. The harms here: Well frankly, I am not convinced that teacher demanding your attention is a harm. Fact of life in a society that needs educated people.
Of course. It does seem like that problem should be fixed at a different level. I also think that if you keep increasing past the number 20 indefinitely, eventually the idea one teacher will do will become ridiculous, and things will have to change greatly to even begin to handle such a situation.
I had a few classes (well before uni***) that didn’t (often) revolve around lectures or powerpoint presentations*, instead work was largely done out of a textbook. And the teacher answered questions/helped people who were struggling. (Sometimes several people had the same question, and so it switched to being covered for the class.) But that is a particular teaching style, and it seems like it’s going to work better for some subjects**** and some people.
*They were seen as a tool for covering a lot of info quickly, but in a way that was suboptimal for students (attention) for long periods of time**, and were used when necessary but not otherwise.
**The longer a lecture, the more this is an issue.
***I remember it worked well for a coach teaching a topic, and was better than the some classes that weren’t run that way.
****A class that involves reading books will, of course look at least a bit like this—in or out of class.
Living in the modern world means that a child really needs to learn to read and write/type. For many children, they would much rather be outside playing. Me and my children were motivated and reading before arriving at the school gate. We “suffered” the harms above to some extent unnecessarily but for many, many of classmates, some from homes with no books, learning those basics was tough. They certainly werent going to learn it at school without restricting their liberties. The harms suffered in that were well and truly compensated for by the critical life skill of reading.
Helping with a dyslexic, I see the school in no way able to cope with current staffing. They really want you to pay for outside school programmes with one on one teaching. Effective if you can afford it, but well beyond the means of many families.
Children mostly caring about playing outside sounds like a perspective from another time.
Children care about being able to use their phones in various ways. They text with their friends. They play computer games where being able to read is useful.
Or maybe another place. Extremely unusual for kids here to have phones in first 4-5 years of schooling. And much as my dyslexic relative would like to read what a computer game is saying, it doesnt inspire the hard work needed for learning to read. Not fun compared to other screaming around with a ball.
Children became grown-ups 200 years ago too. I don’t think we need to teach them anything at all, much less anything in particular.
According to this SSC post, kids can easily catch up in math even if they aren’t taught any math at all in the 5 first years of school.
In the Benezet experiment, a school district taught no math at all before 6th grade (around age 10-11). Then in sixth grade, they started teaching math, and by the end of the year, the students were just as good at math as traditionally-educated children with five years of preceding math education.
That would probably work for reading too, I guess. (Reading appears to require more purpose-built brain circuitry than math. At least I got that impression from reading Henrich’s WEIRD. I don’t have any references though.)
200 years ago was different world—reading wasnt required. Ask anyone who cant read as an adult how tough that is. The 10% with dyslexia need intervention fast.
Pattern—to first question. In my country, schools and teacher in schools are judged formally or informally by pass rates. Universities, not much, and university lecturers would only be investigated if there was serious concerns about incompetence or unfair exams.
As I said, my discomfort is with tone that teachers are doing it wrong and all teachers are bad.
Eg “It’s fine if the kids aren’t paying attention to what you’re teaching, why are you trying to teach 20 kids at once anyway?”
Well, because as teacher, you dont have a choice.
eg “Have it run until 1720”. So how many hours a day do you think teachers should be working then? Every teacher I know is at school early, home late and working through the evening. No wonder they burn out. This does not strike me as remotely realistic.
I am concerned that teaching is ineffective, that classroom failure has serious downstream effects. The harms here: Well frankly, I am not convinced that teacher demanding your attention is a harm. Fact of life in a society that needs educated people.
Of course. It does seem like that problem should be fixed at a different level. I also think that if you keep increasing past the number 20 indefinitely, eventually the idea one teacher will do will become ridiculous, and things will have to change greatly to even begin to handle such a situation.
I had a few classes (well before uni***) that didn’t (often) revolve around lectures or powerpoint presentations*, instead work was largely done out of a textbook. And the teacher answered questions/helped people who were struggling. (Sometimes several people had the same question, and so it switched to being covered for the class.) But that is a particular teaching style, and it seems like it’s going to work better for some subjects**** and some people.
*They were seen as a tool for covering a lot of info quickly, but in a way that was suboptimal for students (attention) for long periods of time**, and were used when necessary but not otherwise.
**The longer a lecture, the more this is an issue.
***I remember it worked well for a coach teaching a topic, and was better than the some classes that weren’t run that way.
****A class that involves reading books will, of course look at least a bit like this—in or out of class.
Living in the modern world means that a child really needs to learn to read and write/type. For many children, they would much rather be outside playing. Me and my children were motivated and reading before arriving at the school gate. We “suffered” the harms above to some extent unnecessarily but for many, many of classmates, some from homes with no books, learning those basics was tough. They certainly werent going to learn it at school without restricting their liberties. The harms suffered in that were well and truly compensated for by the critical life skill of reading.
Helping with a dyslexic, I see the school in no way able to cope with current staffing. They really want you to pay for outside school programmes with one on one teaching. Effective if you can afford it, but well beyond the means of many families.
Children mostly caring about playing outside sounds like a perspective from another time.
Children care about being able to use their phones in various ways. They text with their friends. They play computer games where being able to read is useful.
Or maybe another place. Extremely unusual for kids here to have phones in first 4-5 years of schooling. And much as my dyslexic relative would like to read what a computer game is saying, it doesnt inspire the hard work needed for learning to read. Not fun compared to other screaming around with a ball.
There’s no reason why children have to learn those skills in the first 4-5 years of schooling. The important thing is that they learn them.
Ok, I am curious, if they dont read or write in first 4-5 years, what do you expect them to learn in those years?
Children became grown-ups 200 years ago too. I don’t think we need to teach them anything at all, much less anything in particular.
According to this SSC post, kids can easily catch up in math even if they aren’t taught any math at all in the 5 first years of school.
That would probably work for reading too, I guess. (Reading appears to require more purpose-built brain circuitry than math. At least I got that impression from reading Henrich’s WEIRD. I don’t have any references though.)
200 years ago was different world—reading wasnt required. Ask anyone who cant read as an adult how tough that is. The 10% with dyslexia need intervention fast.