Article: 'An A student regrets His grades'

[sprinkles]

Interesting article.....

 

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/an-a-student-regrets-his-grades/article7359620/comments/

 

thoughts?

 

I agree that grades shouldnt be so standardized because it puts those who are smart but not 'school' smart at a disadvantage...and it really is about 'playing the system' in school...but how could we evaluate students if not in standardized tests? :/ And how could we make sure students aren't falling behind if we take Finland's system of not testing students until they are teenagers? :/

[Head Squeeze]

Thanks for sharing. It was really interesting.

[lolelol]

First we need to get better teachers. One of the first things Finland did to fix their public education crisis 30 years ago was to make it mandatory that all school teachers must have a master's degree. Anyone can get a bachlor's degree, barely passing, go to teacher's college and become a school teacher. The requirement of having a masters will at least filter out those that were crappy students themselves. How much respect can one have for education if they weren't great students themselves, really? Oh and let's not forget how much of a joke teacher's college is. A teacher was telling me about his experience at UofT's teacher's college in the early 90s... the day he almost quit was when their assignment was to go out into the field and collect air (or some stupid s*** like that, I forgot) as an educational exercise. He told me some of their textbooks were like colouring books written for young children. Obviously that's one anecdote but I believe him and I think it shows in the quality of teachers I've come across in the public education system.

Aside from the structural changes, I think content should also be changed. I really don't think an emphasis on "problem solving" questions will fix anything with students. The problem solving questions (or any question that requires a decent level of critical thinking) are the ones that are routinely answered incorrectly on tests, while the regurgitation questions are the ones that everyone gets. What distinguishes the "smart" kids from the average or dumb ones? I say it can be reduced to the emphasis placed on knowing facts from day 1. The smart kids are nothing more than the ones that figured out how to critically think by themselves. Obviously things like geography and history (you know, the stuff you won't ever need to use or even remember for that matter) are important as general knowledge, but it's not nearly as important as the ability to think and problem solve, and logic. These things can be taught... but they're really not. There is very little emphasis on this, and the conspiracy theorist in me tells me that whoever designs education wants you to be stupid because then they can manipulate you with three word slogans and nonsense campaign ads. That's besides the point. The transfer potential of critical thinking is worth 10X its weight compared to brain dead fact memorization like the order and birth dates of the first 20 prime ministers (let's drill nationalism into the childrens' heads, says my conspiracy theorist lizard brain). Everything operates under the basic principles of logic and reason, things that philosophers have categorized since the beginning of civilization, and every kid should be exposed to these things. Logical fallacies run deep in so much of the things average people say on a daily basis, and I think these are the things that should be taught to children (I'm sure I've been falacious more than once in this post, ma bad blame it on the Canadian educational system). Same applies to language.

I think european society as a whole is much more liberal and open to change compared to north american (especially american) society. For god's sake they put intelligent design in biology textbooks in some american states, do you actually think those guys are going to suddenly say "oh this educational system isn't working, we must change it somehow". Nope those parts of this continent are unsalvagable. The reason Finland did so well is that they revolutionized their educational system to the fullest extent of its meaning, tore it down and started from scratch. Can you even start to imagine that here? We're way too traditional.

The way I see it is Finland got around the vicious cycle of ineffective teaching, students failing and subsequent lowering of standards by just focusing on education and not allowing that middle step to happen. The article's right about kids focusing way too much on doing well on the test rather than actually learning something. Mind you by the way, that even though a child can fail in Canadian public education, until high school you actually get pushed to the next grade, much like Finland (the only difference here is that Finland doesn't have any tests at all). I'm actually not sure if this is such a good thing since the students that failed and got pushed on to the next level are probably even more likely to keep failing than if they were kept back.

Also let's be honest here, the highest average in my graduating class was 95%, and we had some smart m****. Like 12 people got higher than 90.

The school down the street had multiple people with 99s, dozens of people with 90s.

The school lower down the street was also like mine

Standardization might need to be a thing, it's not fair that the dude that went to the high school where teachers hand out marks like candy gets to win 16 scholarships while the kids in my school got nothing. It also makes it more fair in university, where you don't have an influx of kids from varying degrees of highschool difficulty and content, requiring half of first year to be wasted catching everyone up to the same level. My high school biology teacher arbitrarily decided to skip the evolution unit because she liked biochemistry more, everyone from that class that ended up in biology got screwed over. A bachlor's degree is reallistically 3-3.5 years or new learning, I think we could graduate much more educated BSc's if highschools were a little more well kept.

[apache]

ilol, i don't regret my grades, only because i knew my science classes were mostly a bs game anyways, even the head of teaching of a major dept in sciences here and me had a closed door discussion about it

 

i remember trying to talk philosophy with my classmates and them thinking i was crazy, or even how modulating so and effects so and so, forget pharmacokinetics or **** like that, god forbid actually thinking through a problem...

 

honestly, i had quite a few profs who could easily test it, my organic prof who i became good buds with always tested concept, giving novel compounds and questions that required process, rather than rote memorization, that he once told me on the bus he had to relearn because it had been so long since he ever used those reactions... other biases exist, the bias for certain types of learning modalities, like, some are better giving presentations, others more artistic, perhaps a videography on a topic, lol, the behavioral biases are the worst, im sorry, the fact that i dont take your word for granted, challenge ideas, as in what k-12 teachers taught, think its juvenile i ask to leave the room, don't enjoy getting up at 8 am, doesn't mean i could never do university... thanks 5 hs teachers, luckily i had a wealth social teacher who taught us to think for ourselves, showed non-curriculum material that helped you understand the relevance of the application of why u were learning this... hmmm, funny 50s and 60's to 90s and even 99 on social diploma, quite an improvement for one semester... guess personality and passion do matter, lol... lets say those smart kids in hs would love to have a 3rd of my cv, because passion carries much further than aiming to please

 

Interesting article.....d

y

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/an-a-student-regrets-his-grades/article7359620/comments/

 

thoughts?

 

I agree that grades shouldnt be so standardized because it puts those who are smart but not 'school' smart at a disadvantage...and it really is about 'playing the system' in school...but how could we evaluate students if not in standardized tests? :/ And how could we make sure students aren't falling behind if we take Finland's system of not testing students until they are teenagers? :/

[apache]

bang on, my kids are never going to a public school, ever... lol, some idiot chump telling me i didnt belong in a university, im embarassed for takin

g him seriously, since he wasn't one of those wow youre awesome teachers, more the you were the cutoff edmission to ed... nice 2.3, not that that's bad, but don't use your respect i have for u because i believed becoming a teacher was hard to parlay me into thinking im stupid, cause well, 2.3, **** ive never even gotten a b in 50 (near that) courses... in 4 yrs i might add... i think it was because uni let me leave class to use the washroom when i wanted, lol

 

First we need to get better teachers. One of the first things Finland did to fix their public education crisis 30 years ago was to make it mandatory that all school teachers must have a master's degree. Anyone can get a bachlor's degree, barely passing, go to teacher's college and become a school teacher. The requirement of having a masters will at least filter out those that were crappy students themselves. How much respect can one have for education if they weren't great students themselves, really? Oh and let's not forget how much of a joke teacher's college is. A teacher was telling me about his experience at UofT's teacher's college in the early 90s... the day he almost quit was when their assignment was to go out into the field and collect air (or some stupid s*** like that, I forgot) as an educational exercise. He told me some of their textbooks were like colouring books written for young children. Obviously that's one anecdote but I believe him and I think it shows in the quality of teachers I've come across in the public education system.

Aside from the structural changes, I think content should also be changed. I really don't think an emphasis on "problem solving" questions will fix anything with students. The problem solving questions (or any question that requires a decent level of critical thinking) are the ones that are routinely answered incorrectly on tests, while the regurgitation questions are the ones that everyone gets. What distinguishes the "smart" kids from the average or dumb ones? I say it can be reduced to the emphasis placed on knowing facts from day 1. The smart kids are nothing more than the ones that figured out how to critically think by themselves. Obviously things like geography and history (you know, the stuff you won't ever need to use or even remember for that matter) are important as general knowledge, but it's not nearly as important as the ability to think and problem solve, and logic. These things can be taught... but they're really not. There is very little emphasis on this, and the conspiracy theorist in me tells me that whoever designs education wants you to be stupid because then they can manipulate you with three word slogans and nonsense campaign ads. That's besides the point. The transfer potential of critical thinking is worth 10X its weight compared to brain dead fact memorization like the order and birth dates of the first 20 prime ministers (let's drill nationalism into the childrens' heads, says my conspiracy theorist lizard brain). Everything operates under the basic principles of logic and reason, things that philosophers have categorized since the beginning of civilization, and every kid should be exposed to these things. Logical fallacies run deep in so much of the things average people say on a daily basis, and I think these are the things that should be taught to children (I'm sure I've been falacious more than once in this post, ma bad blame it on the Canadian educational system). Same applies to language.

I think european society as a whole is much more liberal and open to change compared to north american (especially american) society. For god's sake they put intelligent design in biology textbooks in some american states, do you actually think those guys are going to suddenly say "oh this educational system isn't working, we must change it somehow". Nope those parts of this continent are unsalvagable. The reason Finland did so well is that they revolutionized their educational system to the fullest extent of its meaning, tore it down and started from scratch. Can you even start to imagine that here? We're way too traditional.

The way I see it is Finland got around the vicious cycle of ineffective teaching, students failing and subsequent lowering of standards by just focusing on education and not allowing that middle step to happen. The article's right about kids focusing way too much on doing well on the test rather than actually learning something. Mind you by the way, that even though a child can fail in Canadian public education, until high school you actually get pushed to the next grade, much like Finland (the only difference here is that Finland doesn't have any tests at all). I'm actually not sure if this is such a good thing since the students that failed and got pushed on to the next level are probably even more likely to keep failing than if they were kept back.

Also let's be honest here, the highest average in my graduating class was 95%, and we had some smart m****. Like 12 people got higher than 90.

The school down the street had multiple people with 99s, dozens of people with 90s.

The school lower down the street was also like mine

Standardization might need to be a thing, it's not fair that the dude that went to the high school where teachers hand out marks like candy gets to win 16 scholarships while the kids in my school got nothing. It also makes it more fair in university, where you don't have an influx of kids from varying degrees of highschool difficulty and content, requiring half of first year to be wasted catching everyone up to the same level. My high school biology teacher arbitrarily decided to skip the evolution unit because she liked biochemistry more, everyone from that class that ended up in biology got screwed over. A bachlor's degree is reallistically 3-3.5 years or new learning, I think we could graduate much more educated BSc's if highschools were a little more well kept.

[medigeek]

bang on, my kids are never going to a public school, ever... lol, some idiot chump telling me i didnt belong in a university, im embarassed for takin

g him seriously, since he wasn't one of those wow youre awesome teachers, more the you were the cutoff edmission to ed... nice 2.3, not that that's bad, but don't use your respect i have for u because i believed becoming a teacher was hard to parlay me into thinking im stupid, cause well, 2.3, **** ive never even gotten a b in 50 (near that) courses... in 4 yrs i might add... i think it was because uni let me leave class to use the washroom when i wanted, lol

 

If you're in a decent area and the schools in your area are somewhat decent, then public schools are the way the go.

If your kid is smart, they'll develop much better interacting with people of all different classes... more of a real life experience than a filtered one.

[apache]

i see your point, but i dont mean the pretentious school for the overprivelaged, something very similar to adhd charter schools, basically, way more open ended and flexible, with way more student input in their learning.

 

i guess my public education sucked, so i may be biased, lol

 

If you're in a decent area and the schools in your area are somewhat decent, then public schools are the way the go.

If your kid is smart, they'll develop much better interacting with people of all different classes... more of a real life experience than a filtered one.

[thehockeykid]

I dont think much of the school system. **** just memorizing stupid facts, prob solving, and writing fancy essays. I hated highschool how all the teacher pet wanna bes would get high grades. I do not want to help my teacher stay after class to clean up or some other bs. i also hated how teachers would keep pushing their views onto me

-grade 8 teacher:daughter of a holocaust survivor: would not shut up about it, keep making confrontations so personal.

-drama teacher: would hate me for not having passion for acting

-english teacher: talking about how shakesphere's characters are so real yet his real life (students) aren't real. getting his online Phd in english, big deal

-french teacher: barely spoke french...

 

Fire these lazy teachers, yet the union makes it so dam hard to fire them. also whats with all these getto kids at my former high school seriously, asking for bus money, skipping school, hanging out by the vending machines asking for money. if i had kids i would put them in montessori school.

 

I achieved a high gpa yet i dont feel like i want to do more university. i feel like i already proved myself so they should just stop making me jump through hoops.