Posts by Jolisa
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would your lad be Woz or Jobs?
He's a bit of a style freak, so perhaps the Jobs end of the spectrum -- a resemblance only enhanced by the megalomania that comes from living, like all lucky children, at the absolute geographical centre of the universe.
(Each a different universe, I suppose, otherwise it would be a very crowded centre.)
got to meet your brother in passing over the weekend - collecting the set
Next: Public Address trading cards. With bubblegum.
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Just remembered today that my lad spent much of his second year at school in a conspiratorial huddle with a similarly disgruntled bespectacled buddy, complaining about homework... and working on the blueprints for a homework-doing robot.
I should have just rented them a garage in Palo Alto and left them to get on with it, eh?
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Can you tell me if the US schools mentioned in your post included disabled students? If so, how were they affected by the testing regime.
Ian, that's a good question. In general, students with learning disabilities/differences are better off in public schools than private schools over here, in the sense that private school kids are on their own, but public schools are required by law to provide accommodations (tutors, aides in the classroom, extra time, etc). I'm not sure how that plays out in practical terms during the actual tests, but I'll see if I can find out and let you know.
In terms of class atmosphere and daily practice, if the bright and facile (in the positive, American sense) kids are frustrated and freaking out, I can't imagine the kids who struggle with aspects of learning feel any better about it. But that's an educated guess.
You know, I am trying to imagine what it would feel like to peruse a report card that labelled me as "well below standard" if I (and my parents) knew that I was, in fact, working my hardest, and working uphill at that. Damn, that's cruel wording. Well below helpful.
Mind you, who wants to be "standard" anyway? Standard issue, bog standard... sucks to that. If I was an artsy teen or an angsty one, or both, I'd be straight off home to screenprint a batch of "STANDARD DEVIATION" T-shirts for me and my mates.
Oh wait, I was. Maybe I should. What sizes?
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Heck, any thread that invites the Philosopher's Song is a very serious one by definition. No apologies needed!
I searched in vain for limericks about Camus, despite the extremely promising rhyme scheme and topic. Perhaps our Alien LIzard can oblige? But I was relieved to discover that ol' Alber' was almost certainly not the author of my favourite sappy 70s poster.
Back on topic, from today's NY Times: teachers not just teaching to the test, but (possibly) actually doing the test as well. Whatever it takes to keep the school open: that's dedication.
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numeracy-romancer
Nu-romancer, perhaps?
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Isabel - and yet, if he were learning another language, there would be no problem at all with his written expressive ability being a year or so "behind" his reading. It's an absolutely normal progression: hearing-speaking-reading-writing.
We've got a similar dynamic going on here. Mr 8 is reading a paperback per day, while struggling mightily to write a paragraph (and yet not struggling to spontaneously craft a multi-page newspaper about exciting events). Mostly he's struggling to see why he should be writing the paragraphs, but it also does seem to be empirically difficult somehow.
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'Oh no, I'm a sugar bowl!'
LOL!
Isn't learning supposed to be fun? At least until High School, surely?
Steady on man, that's dangerous talk. We go down that path, children might stop getting depressed and anxious and all that.
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We can get information about how our child is doing compared to what they should be doing for their age, but it's bloody difficult to get information about whether our children are reaching their potential. I'm not interested in whether my children are achieving what is required for children of their age, but I'm very, very interested in whether the school is helping them to achieve all they possibly can.
Deborah, couldn't have put it better myself. If the new standards are going to track children individually, why not really track them individually?
I (anecdata-ishly) aced every single test I ever took at school, and most at university (grrr Phys110 and that Asian Geo paper, the only non-pointy grades on my transcript) but despite the occasional intervention from a particularly canny teacher, I hardly ever felt myself achieving all I knew I could.
Thank goodness for grad school, which stretched my brain until it hurt and proved that I could actually work (and fail) at the limit. On the other hand, if I'd been sufficiently intellectually yoga-cised in school, perhaps I would have stepped out of the institution sooner and actually done something useful with my skills. As it was, I stuck around until I could be sure I was actually learning something, having fully bought into the definition of "learning" and "something" that school was selling.
I can think of a handful of other folk, all of them either brilliant one-track-minders, or all-over-the-place creative thinkers, for whom school was similarly all about clock-watching, for twelve or thirteen of the most intellectually formative years of their lives. It really shouldn't have to be that way, should it?
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Just realised my teapot reference may be too obscure for younger or differently cultured readers... Think "headless chicken." But teapots are funnier.
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Is there anything in the standards which will prevent inquiry based learning?
Not wanting to channel Marvin the paranoid android or anything, but there is nothing in NCLB that actually prevents inquiry based learning either.
If you read the description on paper of our old school, you'd think it the most enlightened institution on the planet, and as recently as 5 years ago it was known around town as Montessori/Reggio-Emilia at public school prices, much sought-after by the professoriate. It was small, and had a very child-centered mission, and was run by a collective of parents and teachers.
The city, pleased with the school's success in a trial period with a small number of students, expanded enrolment and appointed a principal.
At which point the test scores went down, and the school got itself into the situation it finds today: struggling to hang onto the high-scoring children, and despite superficial continuities, a very long way from its original mission. As the original teachers retire or resign and new ones are appointed, it is becoming indistinguishable from any other struggling public school.
I think this is the clear and present danger for NZ schools: private schools are exempt from the data-gathering, high-decile schools can afford not to worry about it, and everyone else will live and breathe the numbers. Maybe not in the first year, or the second year, but soon, and for the rest of their life.
Of course, the occasional low-scoring school will bootstrap itself up by 10 or 20% and be feted and lauded and researched for its efforts. That happens here every year when they announce the test scores: some school has cranked up its percentage of students meeting the standard from 20 percent to 30 or more, and a great fuss is made in order to distract from the fact that everyone else's numbers have barely shifted.
I really don't mean to be a pessimist on this. The city I live in is in the middle of a massive school reform initiative, which is coming at the problem from a wildly disparate range of angles. Possibly too wildly, but on the other hand, the problem has become too big to ignore, so they really have to be seen to be doing something.
Others advocate alternative approaches, like charter schools. One in particular is a successful experiment in addressing the achievement gap via long school days and intensive drilling, which seems to pay off. Sometimes the answer is in fact more school! (And not just uniforms and 9-5 drilling, but sports and music... check out the guy in the Music Makes You Smarter T-shirt!).
But the overall picture remains pretty dispiriting. It would break my heart if New Zealand were to accidentally steer itself onto a similar track. Plus, my eight year old would go ballistic!