The Decaying Evolution of Education...

[ChiTownScion]

My wife's little niece was born 1980. In second grade the entire year had been planned out with math homework modules. By staying up as late as 2 AM (mom walked in on her!) and literally studying under the bedcovers by flashlight, she ripped through the entire year's work by mid- October.

She's now in her third year of her medical residency in psychiatry: read into that what you will.

 

[tonyb]

Jeez. I learned to read from road signs and billboards when I was three, and actually *enjoyed* the experience. My bed time in grade school was 7:30pm, and I couldn't fudge it, either -- there was no door on the bedroom.

Among my earliest memories are of being in the back seat of the car and knowing that all that signage I saw as we motored past "said" something, and that if I wished to be more included in what this earthly existence had to offer (as I did indeed wish), it was necessary that I crack that code.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was much the same for me. I learned to recognize trademarks and logos, and associated them with the text -- I knew that the Flying Red Horse meant "Mobil," that a scallop shell meant "Shell," and so forth. It wasn't too much of a step to then figure out that the letters making up the text had meaning that could be rearranged.

I was not "read to" much as a child -- my grandmother would read to me occasionally from raggedy old copies of "Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories," but that was about it. And we didn't really have a lot of books around the house -- my mother read confession magazines, and that was about it. But we did have the phone book, and the Yellow Pages were full of logos and trademarks that I recognized, surrounded by a lot of text. And one thing led to another.

I was confused and annoyed when it became time to formally "learn to read" in school, and I would do pestiferous things like steal notes off the teacher's desk and read them aloud to the class. I'd also get thrown out of the "grown up" section at the public library when I was six, and they'd call my mother and she'd tell them to give me anything I wanted so as to keep me out of her hair. I didn't need to be "encouraged" to read, if anything I'd rather read than listen to any irritating authority figure, and it often got me in trouble. I had no use for classroom discipline or being told what and when to study.

 

[tonyb]

I had one brother about 15 months older than me and another 11 months older than him (Mom was a busy young woman). The brother closer in age to me was for his entire life (he died nine years ago come November) a nurturing type. He taught me the alphabet by using the spines of our alphabetically arranged volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia.

I can't say that I could read well before I entered kindergarten, but I knew the alphabet and I knew that the characters represented speech sounds and I knew what those sounds were. All of which is to say I don't know that school taught me to read so much as my brother and my own curiousity and abstract reasoning skills did.

It is largely on account of this personal history that I am to this day a believer in learning (and teaching) the rudiments. There's something to be said for rote learning of the basics. You just have to know that stuff so well that it becomes as mindless as breathing, as automatic as the arrival of the utility bills. We learn to read, and then we'd read to learn. Can't very well do the latter without the former.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I hated having Dr. Seuss read to me as a young kid: I thought that it was patronizing and silly. I'd much rather have accounts of the crash of the Hindenburg, the great Chicago fire, or the sinking of the Titanic read to me.

 

[ChiTownScion]

We were taught phonics when learning to read, but we were also given sheets of words with several word lists each to learn. The reading books were published by Ginn & Co. and featured Roman Catholic clones of Dick and Jane named David and Ann. September 1960 I was barely six and had to learn list One on Sheet One.. and 56 years later I can still remember the exact words:

David
Go
Up
Ann
Come
See
Mother
Oh
Father
Help
Jesus
Can
Me
Find
I
You
It
And
Run
Blue
Is


Like the US Navy described by Herman Wouk in The Caine Mutiny, Catholic parochial school education pre- 1965 was designed by a genius to be operated by idiots. Considering that our classrooms typically had over forty student each- while public school classrooms at the time typically had less than half of that- the genius was apparent, at least as far as teaching reading skills.

 

[2jakes]

^^^^^
...and enforced by mean penguins who thought nothing of whippings with a stick
and hand soap in your mouth for not remembering all the words to a “verse”.

 

[ChiTownScion]

^^^^^
...and enforced by mean penguins who thought nothing of whippings with a stick
and hand soap in your mouth for not remembering all the words to a “verse”.

The best thing that the Catholic Church did in the 1970's was to open up higher education to them. The ones I encounter today all seem to have advanced degrees and work in the real world, and turn over their salaries to their communities to support the older sisters, who seem to live very long lives. They rarely teach elementary school kids today. The ones I know are actually pretty interesting ladies.

But back then, the nuns were not educated, and so the teaching was more like what goes on at a military specialty school: teaching "by the numbers" geared toward the lowest common denominator and the mainstream kid. I'm sure that there were just as many kids with ADHD and other learning disabilities back then, but there were no special services afforded to them. I recall the dear "brides of Christ" hollering at kids who had such problems and addressing them as "morons," "dopes," and such. And then they wonder why, since 1965, over a quarter of a billion have left the Catholic Church.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There were teachers like that even in the secular schools -- my first grade teacher, whose career began in the mid-1930s, was a graduate of a "Normal School," and had exactly that sort of teaching style: the yelling and snarling, the crack across the knuckles with the edge of a ruler -- if you were really in trouble you'd get the side with the metal edge -- and the open humiliation of students she didn't like. I survived her all right -- as my mother had before me -- because of my natural disposition and the fact that she lived on my block, which sort of demystified her. You can't fear someone after you've seen her yellowed misshapen underwear hanging on the clothesline. But my younger cousin was absolutely terrified by this woman, and hid under the house every morning rather than report to school. He ended up having to repeat the first grade, with a different teacher, as a direct result of the persecution he got from her.

I don't get the people who romanticize this kind of teaching, I really don't. I suspect most of them are closet masochists who like nothing better than to fantasize about getting a good whipping at the hands of a bony old woman with a dyed beehive. I know that my experience in such "old school" classrooms had a lot to do with my negative attitude toward formal education. "Nuts to this," I'd say, and I'd huddle down in my desk and read the encyclopedia or the National Geographic when I was supposed to be paying attention.

 

[ChiTownScion]

There were teachers like that even in the secular schools -- my first grade teacher, whose career began in the mid-1930s, was a graduate of a "Normal School," and had exactly that sort of teaching style: the yelling and snarling, the crack across the knuckles with the edge of a ruler -- if you were really in trouble you'd get the side with the metal edge -- and the open humiliation of students she didn't like. I survived her all right -- as my mother had before me -- because of my natural disposition and the fact that she lived on my block, which sort of demystified her. You can't fear someone after you've seen her yellowed misshapen underwear hanging on the clothesline. But my younger cousin was absolutely terrified by this woman, and hid under the house every morning rather than report to school. He ended up having to repeat the first grade, with a different teacher, as a direct result of the persecution he got from her.

I don't get the people who romanticize this kind of teaching, I really don't. I suspect most of them are closet masochists who like nothing better than to fantasize about getting a good whipping at the hands of a bony old woman with a dyed beehive. I know that my experience in such "old school" classrooms had a lot to do with my negative attitude toward formal education. "Nuts to this," I'd say, and I'd huddle down in my desk and read the encyclopedia or the National Geographic when I was supposed to be paying attention.

Because we moved from the city to the 'burbs when I was in second grade, I spent from October to May in a public school as the local Catholic school didn't start until third grade. It was as if I'd died and gone to heaven. I did well and the teacher was a sweetheart. I really wanted to stay there, and if there's one thing that I will never forgive my mother for doing, it's insisting that I continue with parochial schooling when the local public school was so much superior.

But the public school kindergarten I attended in the city (1960) was just as miserable as anything that the penguins dished out: a teacher who was mean, petty, abusive, and just too damned old to be around kids. Dante's vilest images of hell would be too humane for the likes of her. And the kids themselves- girls AND boys- were little more than embryonic thugs. This was in a "better neighborhood" school as well. Totally racially segregated to keep the "bad people" out... so I am certain that even your current Maine governor couldn't find any of the usual suspects to scapegoat.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I don't get the people who romanticize this kind of teaching, I really don't. I suspect most of them are closet masochists who like nothing better than to fantasize about getting a good whipping at the hands of a bony old woman with a dyed beehive.

I had an online discussion with that sort regarding corporal punishment in classrooms the other day. What I found was that while I relied upon statistics, scientific studies and other evidence supporting the argument against it, the opposition relied upon anecdote and the expected, "They did it to me and I turned out okay" spiel.

The good news is that the percentage of Americans who support corporal punishment in public schools is decreasing. Public-opinion research has found that most Americans are not in favor of school corporal punishment; in polls taken in 2002 and 2005, American adults were respectively 72% and 77% opposed to the use of corporal punishment by teachers. Ref. Gershoff, Elizabeth T. (Spring 2010). "More Harm Than Good: A Summary of Scientific Research on the Intended and Unintended Effects of Corporal Punishment on Children". Law & Contemporary Problems. Duke University School of Law Review . 73 (2): 31–56.

 

[sheeplady]

I think I first got homework in 2nd or 3rd grade, in the 1980s. I definitely had it by 4th grade.

I have a friend who's eldest is just headed into kindergarten, but the mother decided it wouldn't be "academically challenging" enough, so they will be homeschooled. The eldest got pulled from pre-school when the teacher said, "it's great knowing how to read so early, but needs to learn to speak up. Here's some strategies..."

Meanwhile the two kids so shy that it takes them 20 minutes to warm up to my daughter when at their house for a playdate. (This is unusual for kids their age... today my daughter made friends with a boy within 2 minutes of meeting him at the playground.) My husband has never heard the youngest talk.

All I've been reading suggests that the point of education up to first grade or so is to have kids play, socialize, and learn about customs/ norms. Waldorf (a theory of teaching) doesn't even begin to teach reading until first grade (kids can learn on their own, but they focus on imaginative mostly unstructured play until then).

 

[ChrisB]

All I've been reading suggests that the point of education up to first grade or so is to have kids play, socialize, and learn about customs/ norms.

This was my experience with kindergarten exactly, socialization being the main purpose, with academic learning a minimal component. This is what it was originally intended for.

 

[sheeplady]

I had an online discussion with that sort regarding corporal punishment in classrooms the other day. What I found was that while I relied upon statistics, scientific studies and other evidence supporting the argument against it, the opposition relied upon anecdote and the expected, "They did it to me and I turned out okay" spiel.

My inclination is that even if that sort of person had corporal punishment, they have no comprehension that for a portion of children, school is the only place in which they can feel safe.

For kids with a severely abusive home life (be it sexual, physical, and/or emotional) oftentimes school is their escape- the only place where they can have faith in routines, rules that are not random or made on a whim, and punishments focused on correction of the behavior rather than anger of the abuser.

For those kids who are abused, they have *no idea* what they will face when they get home that day, but they start dreading it long before the last bell. Every single day. School should not be the place where these kids get beaten further.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Among all the kids I've worked with over the years, I've noticed a very real difference between those who were homeschooled and those who went to public school: the homeschooled kids, while "smart" in the sense that they know a great many facts, and in many cases they're quite well-read, are far more withdrawn in relating to co-workers and the public -- they rarely smile, they don't tend to participate in the good-natured kidding around among the staff, and they're offputtingly stiff and formal in dealing with the customers. And I find that I have to be precise and specific in telling them what they need to do -- they don't tend to think beyond the exact parameters of the assigned task. Sometimes they'll loosen up eventually, but it's always a real challenge for the rest of us to pull them out of their shells. I tend to avoid hiring homeschooled kids unless there's no other option for just these reasons -- I don't necessarily need raving extroverts, but I do need kids who come across as comfortable in their own skins and confident in dealing with others, and I have found that homeschooled kids are very often lacking in these departments.

There are several private schools in this area, including a Waldorf, a Montessori, and an "alternative" gifted-and-talented high school, and I've found these issues also to be common, to a somewhat lesser extent, among these kids, with the least issues among Waldorf and Montessori kids and the worst problems with the G&T school kids. Public school kids, while they may not be academic wizards like the private-school crowd, tend to be much more comfortable in social situations, and much more skilled at dealing with a broad cross section of the public. At least that's what a decade of dealing with kids in an employment setting has led me to believe.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have a friend who's eldest is just headed into kindergarten, but the mother decided it wouldn't be "academically challenging" enough, so they will be homeschooled.

Parents who project their own social and academic anxieties onto their children hurt their children in ways they can't begin to comprehend.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Parents who project their own social and academic anxieties onto their children hurt their children in ways they can't begin to comprehend.

Very true. Not only college educated parents who try to push a four year degree program on a kid who has no inclination nor abilities to that end, but uneducated working class parents whose own preconceptions of what higher education is about may be reality challenged.

"She's a GIRL. Why does she need to go to college? All she'll ever be is someone's wife." (This one went on to get a masters in fine arts, is teaching college, and is a several times published author.)

"Anthropology?? What the hell kind of a job will you ever get with a degree like THAT??" (I later decided to go for government/ political science- with a minor in philosophy- and it served the pre-law school end quite well, thank you very much dad.)

Or the one my wife had to deal with: "Why waste money on a college degree? You can become a nurse through a hospital diploma program that's a lot cheaper."*

Hint to parents: respect your kids' passions, talents, and judgments- then, to the best that your ability will permit and without material injury to yourself or family, give them all that they'll need - and even a little - VERY little- of what they may want.

* She got through a very rough diploma program that washed out over 75% of those who started... then went on to get a baccalaureate in nursing at one of the best programs in the nation.. and then a master's in nursing to become a dual certified nurse practitioner. While her brother- the one who because he was the boy was the focus of the lofty educational planning- is now in his fifties and still living with mom.

 

[Fading Fast]

Parents who project their own social and academic anxieties onto their children hurt their children in ways they can't begin to comprehend.

IMHO, this is very true, but also, so common that it is part of what almost everyone has to deal with as they become an adult - separating out what is true from what was presented as true but really was just your parents' opinion / what is important to you even if it wasn't important to your parents (and vice versa) / etc. as you become an adult.

 

[sheeplady]

IMHO, this is very true, but also, so common that it is part of what almost everyone has to deal with as they become an adult - separating out what is true from what was presented as true but really was just your parents' opinion / what is important to you even if it wasn't important to your parents (and vice versa) / etc. as you become an adult.

Even at a pretty young age, though, you can listen to your children. My daughter desperately wants to do ice-skating lessons, and has been asking for over a year... sometimes she'll go three weeks asking multiple times a day. She's all of 3. Now, given the fact I can afford such lessons and skate rental, the place is less than 10 minutes away, and we have the time; I have no idea why I'd say to her, "no." But some parents would choose to enroll their kids in, say, karate or music lessons even if they wanted to ice skate because the parent had deemed those better for some reason.

Now, swimming on the other hand, I insist on. Any of my kids that are physically able to will learn to swim, and I will totally force them to take swim lessons until they have graduated from the Red Cross swimming program at our local YWCA (at least in the summer). That's not so much because I want or expect them to love swimming, but because I consider swimming a safety thing.

 

[tonyb]

I can't recall ever NOT knowing how to swim, or ice skate. But then, if you came from a struggling working-class family, as I did, and spent your early years in Wisconsin, as I did, and activities such as swimming in the summer and ice skating in the winter were essentially free (lotsa cousins; lotsa hand-me-down skates), these were the things you did.

I'll tell you, though, that well-fitting skates make all the difference. The first pair of skates bought new for me made the experience much more pleasurable.