[narfstar]

The reason math is one of the most difficult to teach is you can not use a lot of fun things. I have taught other things. Algebra is NOT fun. All the contivences to make it fun or relevant don't help the learning. I have tried but it boils down to you have to sit down, shut up and do the work. Practice, Practice, Practice is the only answer. I will say that I am an ambulatory teacher working with the students at their desk and allowing a lot of peer tutoring. I normally teach the at risk Algebra students but I found that all benefit from my teaching each lesson as if they do not remember anything previously taught. I also take the time to explain the reason behind the steps and break it down to the basics. Since I do the at risk I can not say I lose many because they were already lost before they got to me but I have to feel good about those who I help make it. Students who never thought that they could do algebra doing algebra is a good feeling. Then there are the kids who are doing algebra and doing it well but insist that they can not do it. They are so used to not being successful they can not accept their success. I get so sick of hearing idiots talking about competition to improve schools. Yeah take all the kids with parents who care and cheer because your charter/private school does better than public schools that have to take every kid. Like the NBA vs Jr College that's real competition now isn't it.
Gotta get my book written and hopefully published.

[Yoc]

I don't envy your job Narf.  Not at all.
Good luck with the students and the book!

[misappear]

Narf,

A little off topic, but I had to add my agreement with you.  It's not the kids--they can be influenced and molded.  The parents are the key to education.  If a kid comes to school with a respect for learning and supportive parents who check homework and ask questions, you'll have a success. 

I taught Spanish for a couple of years.  Little Johnny tells me he can't get it.  His parents tell me he can't get it.  Bulls#&t.  What's there to get?  Memorize a bunch of words and some rules and your done!  Little Johnny doesn't want to do the heavy lifting and the parents let him get away with it.  Pity

Don't get me wrong.  I like teaching my English classes based off popular culture.  I proposed the approach at first just trying to find something that kids could understand.  They can't read Poe, or even Conan Doyle.  They'd have to look up every other word!  But that's public education that I'm speaking about here.  There are private, parochial, and charter schools that are doing a wonderful job teaching classical education without the tricks because the parents, students, and teachers are all on the same page. 

You have to understand, I'm and old geezer-geek.  When I was a kid back in the 1960's, I couldn't wait to get together with my friends on weekends and jump the bus headed to the book store.  We'd go there, leave for a while to eat, and go back again.  We'd spend hours just browsing.  Now at 55, I still do the same thing!  Once every ten days I run to Borders, then Barnes and Noble, then Half Price Books, then I hit the local used book dealer, and after several hours return home to justify why I need all this stuff to my wife. 

I think I was trying to make a point here, but I've lost my train of thought.  It sucks to get old.

--Dave

[Yoc]

LOL, I'll go out on a limb here and guess Dave has more than a 'few' books in his collection!

[narfstar]

It seems the most active comic poster are over 50 me included. It was the wonder of growing up in the SA. We got captured. Now if the kids get captured it is by the movies not the comics. I still remember 23 years ago turning a non reader into a big reader by showing him cuss words in a scifi book. There was a series of "action" books called The Rat Bastards. Extreme violence that turned some other boys on to reading. My Lancer Conan series fell apart not just because of poor binding but I shared it with the students. Granted I knew enough about the community to get away with this and it was a different time. Yes it was a different time because it would not work now. The language and violence on TV and video games is so bad that the shock value of seeing it in print would not be there. Once again no need to read because of a quicker easier fix.

[bchat]

I still remember 23 years ago turning a non reader into a big reader by showing him cuss words in a scifi book. ... Extreme violence that turned some other boys on to reading. ... The language and violence on TV and video games is so bad that the shock value of seeing it in print would not be there.

Whatever happened to getting people to try comics because of the quality of the stories or artwork?

My feeling has always been that people who are able to appreciate comics for what they are don't need to be "sold on them",  they need to be EXPOSED to them.  When my wife and I started dating, I was a big comic geek and she had never picked-up a comic in her life.  Nevertheless, she would tag along as I went from one comic store to another nearly every Saturday, and to my favorite store every Wednesday for the new books.  She didn't ask why I loved comics and I didn't pressure her to start reading them, but eventually, on her own, she would check them out until one day she started buying them.  She didn't buy books that I got, she was buying titles that she liked which I didn't read.

[misappear]

Narf raises a great point concerning the current substitutes for reading.

I have, on many occasions, wondered whether teaching 20th century pop culture is presenting our shared culture to high schoolers as subject or trick.  I am comfortable saying that we here are readers, but it is much more than that.  We absorb books, comics, movies, TV, radio, and pulps.  We compare styles.  We analyze content.  We admire craft.  We respect the past and those who have gone before us.  We have passion that we communicate to each other.  It's Geek culture that I'm happy to be wrapped in.

The kids I see everyday don't have a grounding.  They have their toys and diversions, which I must point out were given to them by our generation!  In our zealousness to give our children happiness, we've dulled their curiosity and trained them to desire flashy, transient diversions with very little substance.  There are plenty of kids who still read and get involved in things of more significance.  The bulk, or the "average" kid just moves from trend to trend.  Talk to a kid who is headed for drop-out status and they'll tell you they just don't care.  They have no idea how they'll survive or what kind of minimum wage, dog poop job they'll get, but they still don't care.  They've been trained by their parents to not care.  

It's sad.  Believe me folks, it's abolutely true.  Our generation let this happen.  I think we did it while thinking we were being nice and kind.

Is there an upside?  Sure!  There are plenty of young people who read, who respect, and who learn.  They're busy people.  They don't live the way we lived all those years ago.  It's neat to see them paging through manga, listening to their tunes on ipods.  High school boys reading Twilight because all the girls are.  Interesting stuff.  

If you ever doubt the effect that parents attitude has on the molding of a child's belief system, I submit to you that there are Chicago Cub fans who are under 18.  

--Dave

[narfstar]

Very well put Dave. I agree. YES the parents have created the problem in trying to be nice. They did not create a sense that everything will not be all right if they do not do something to make it all right. It goes back to always allowing the kids to win at games and using bumpers on the alleys of bowling lanes. It has created a false sense of winning.  The upside is also that kids mature. I dropped out of high school. I eventually matured. I have seen that many kids do mature enough to make something of themselves and it often has nothing to do with how they did in school.

[John C]

Minor disclaimer:  I'm in a peculiar spot, in this discussion.  I teach graduate courses, so I'm not at a "real school."  I'm also near enough to New York City to get regular news from there, but far enough that my schools were blissfully untouched by their idiocy.  So it's arguable that I don't really know what the heck I'm talking about.

Minor warning:  I'm jumping from topic to topic almost at random.  I'll try to edit it together, but chances are that'll make it even more confusing.  And I apologize for that in advance.

That said, beyond parents, there's also usually the school board.  They seem to hate the idea of parental interaction.  I've even heard Columbia (where all hare-brained educational theories arise--it's like Buffy's Hellmouth, but for stupidity, I think) people suggest that the increased focus on homework and after-school activities is to keep the parents' activity to a minimum.  And don't forget training the parents early by claiming the kids for earlier and earlier preschool!

I disagree a little with you, though, Jim.  My parents were very much the precursors of today's "let's wrap everything in Nerf so nobody can possibly ever be hurt" helicopter parents.  My mother would--I kid you not--try to change nursery rhymes on me (and later my sister), because she didn't want me hearing about kids falling down or guys being thrown down stairs.  And of my peer group, I'm the only one really willing to fail at things.  I'm not saying that your completelly wrong, but I'm not sure it's as easy to put our fingers on the specific reason.

(Incidentally, regarding algebra, I haven't specifically tried it on a class, but have you considered making use of an engineering perspective?  Y'know, bringing ideas in specifically to solve a problem?  When I used to tutor the "pre-pre-calculus" course, I generally worked off of John Roebling's notes from his design of the Brooklyn Bridge and similar things.  Granted, I was at an engineering college, and only catching the students after they were taught the topic, but I generally found that it was more useful and even fun to teach the concepts as they arose in the course of solving the problems than trying to build/bridge from arithmetic to calculus.)

But for reading, BChat has it right, I think:  Exposure is the key to any desire to learn.  My parents read constantly on every topic, and they would read along to me (y'know, primitive phonics-like, with the finger pointing to the word being spoken).  The result was my reading history books and novels (and the occasional computer book--I'm a bit younger than many of you) by kindergarten, and I still tear through books of all sorts regularly.

Incidentally, my parents are both high school dropouts with no interest in going back.

After all, why did kids pick up on Harry Potter when, just a year before, very smart people were predicting the end of the written word?  Why are those kids still reading the Twilight books and other things?  Somewhere along the way, reading became "in," with nary a celebrity-starring poster or even a single taxpayer dollar spent to do it.  Sure, they're crappy books, but is "The Scarlet Letter" any better?  "Billy Budd"?

(Sidenote:  Whatever you think of Hester Prynne and company, go find anything else by Hawthorne.  His entire output is fun and interesting, and almost entirely kid friendly.  You'd never know they were written by the same guy.)

I would, by the way, encourage anybody interested in these issues to check out John Taylor Gatto's work, particularly "The Underground History of American Education."  I don't agree with his specific conspiracy theory scenario (in which he blames key gatherings of people for dumbing us down and partitioning us for some elitist dystopia), instead favoring a more systemic approach (i.e., nobody has responsibility, so of course the goals have gone down the toilet), but the details and analysis he provides are amazing.

And in honor of the original topic, I see that he even released the (enormous) book online:

http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

If you're wondering where you remember the name, he was New York City's teacher of the year a kabillion times, including the time he made national news by using his acceptance speech to condemn the school system for failing so many students and then resign.

[Yoc]

Never heard of him but you gotta like his sense of timing and passion for the subject if that's how he ended his career!

-Yoc

[John C]

If you don't have time to read the book, here's basically the centerpiece:

http://www.educationrevolution.org/iquit.html

The New York Times ran the speech as a fairly prominent article, as I recall.  And yeah, passion fits the bill.  "I teach how to fit into a world I don

[narfstar]

I believe I got that link and checked it some awhile back. Still it was not in my bookmarks so I bookmarked it.  Pat Robertson suggested the dystopian conspiracy theory for education 20 years ago. I can not say I completely disagree. I think the possibility of it actually being planned hit me when I read the MICRA comic book maxi series. That and having been raised where many of my mothers side of the family fit the mold make me wonder. There is a "desirable/undesirable" subculture that requires intoxicants and sex and little else. This group gleefully populates and creates more worker drones. It is well established that the ignorant do populate fastest. When society has evolved to "highly skilled" and "unskilled" as the only forms of labor with no need for a middle class you have the dystopian society with its inherent benefits to the aristocrats. To hell with the rest. Is it planned or just happening on its own. Either way it does appear where we are headed. The states keep increasing the requirements to force social promotion without an education or dropping out without an education. Either way we are creating an uneducated masses. I would like to hope my book could help stem the tide but if they ignored Gatto what chance do I have.

John the current Tech Geometry and Tech Algebra course are built around that premise. The kids just are not well behaved enough to tackle this type of thing as a group/class. To many that are not interested disturbing the rest. The nature of those types of classes. Whenever something "fun" or active is tried there are those who ruin it and little is gained. Have to resort to sit down, shut up, and do your work. Fewest distractions. Sad but true.

[John C]

Pat Robertson suggested the dystopian conspiracy theory for education 20 years ago. I can not say I completely disagree.

I agree that we're heading way down the wrong path (though I don't actually find anything particularly "deficient" about the various subcultures), but the conspiracy doesn't hold water for me when I look at someone like Henry Ford.  He's as much a robber baron as the rest of his industrialist peers, and would certainly be part of any such conspiracy, but he also encouraged (demanded, in some cases) his employees educate themselves, be part of their community, and go to church.

My impression instead is that we did too good a job (especially post-war) building an industrial economy, but no longer have any industry.  So instead we have layers of useless bureaucracy (managers, receptionists, assistants, and so forth, which in many cases is just a welfare check where you dress up during the week--I say this having been two out of those three things) just to make the population seem busy.

Of course, now we have new problems, as every behavioralist can latch on to a school and use the kids for social engineeriing experiments.  With no target in mind, where's that going to end up?  Nowhere good.

I would like to hope my book could help stem the tide but if they ignored Gatto what chance do I have.

It's probably a matter of finding the audience and (I hope) pushing out solutions.  As I mentioned, I think that's where Gatto's failing is.  Having exposed the problems inherent to the system...how do we fix them?  And by "fix," I really mean "replace," but that sounds too scary.

I see it as similar to the economy.  We can see the problem:  The private banks create money for little (or no) cost, and lend it to us at interest, so there's never enough money in the system.  But short of "wait for the collapse of civilization and hope there's someone smart but not greedy waiting for us" isn't a solution.

(Incidentally, you'll give us a heads-up when the book's available, I hope.)

John the current Tech Geometry and Tech Algebra course are built around that premise. The kids just are not well behaved enough to tackle this type of thing as a group/class. To many that are not interested disturbing the rest. The nature of those types of classes. Whenever something "fun" or active is tried there are those who ruin it and little is gained. Have to resort to sit down, shut up, and do your work. Fewest distractions. Sad but true.

Definitely look through Gatto's book.  I desperately want to know what his classes were like, because he's had the supposed worst of the worst of New York's school system, and never faced a long-term discipline problem.

It's true that there are kids (and I do believe that schools are designed in a way that cultivates those kids) who want to break the process and avoid learning.  But on the other hand, what happens when there's no big mean disciplinarian to rebel against?

Heh.  It reminds me of a friend, a little tiny blonde girl, who was a city teacher for a year, and they assigned her the "special education" classes.  On the first day, some gigantic cretin threatened her, so she walked right up to him and dared him to hit her.  The kid bolted, then apologized the next morning.

(Actually, the story's less striking if you know that she's a well-trained fighter in numerous arts, so the kid wouldn't have had a chance, so I certainly wouldn't suggest a plan like that to anybody else.  But he certainly wouldn't have known the trouble he was in.)

I guess at this point, I'm just rambling, but it's definitely an interesting topic, and I really do want to see an improvement in the field.  Consolidation and layers of bureaucracy certainly isn't it.

[misappear]

Maybe I'm being naive here, but I don't think very many people have intellectual epiphanies in the classroom.  Mastery in a given field may occur after the traditional school experience as one finally has the time to devote, unemcumbered by the continual cycle of presentation-memorization-testing in other areas, to that high interest subject. 

That young people often turn their backs on "learning how to learn" academically is probably my hot-button issue. 

I'm not a fan of the layer of bureaucracy present in American education, but I still feel the focus of reform is on the wrong target.  For example, as teachers, we are given the mantra that urban school children do not find educational curriculum engaging or relevant.  Rather than insist that urban ghetto culture be held to account, educators attempt (ultimately in vain) that programs and alternate instructional models be inplemented.  As drop-out rates keep rising and students turn their backs on education, the cycle of remediation continues, never having the courage to stop and demand accountability from the parents and caregivers. 

Yesterday, 7 summer school children were shot at a Detroit bus stop, apparently by gang members.  Detroit officials responded to the community by saying that school would be in session as normal today.  This tells the community that there is nothing we can do, that we must act like everything is normal because gang culture can not be brought under control.  Those drop-out gang members are someone's children, for God's sake.  Someone who failed in every way as a parent and guardian. 

How can we even begin to "blame" education when we tacitly allow gangs, drugs, and murder as a cultural alternative to education?  Gatto taught the worst of the worst?  How did those children come to be the worst of the worst?

[narfstar]

Yes  Yes and Yes

Yes I offer solution and yes it does mean replace what we have. It is time to throw the baby out with the bath water we have already drown them.

Yes real education seldom happens in the classroom. I continue to promote that you can learn all the math/algebra you need for auto mech/shop/etc in auto mech/shop/etc