Michael Gove answers on Education

[PatJ]

The attitude of the student - Wow - what a hot topic. It is most difficult to change a student's attitude - especially if that same attitude is held by the student's parents.

Teachers are powerless - they cannot do very much to change the attitude of unruly students. They dare not touch them, hit them, hug them, yell at them, and with no child left behind, they can't even fail them.

If I could have my way, every classroom would be monitored by security cameras recording every action of the students so that when there is a problem, recordings of the activity in the classroom could be viewed to avoid confusion as to who is at fault. This would also serve as a useful means to show parents that, "Yes your child would do something like that - here's the video of your child doing exactly that!"

[Milfmog]

"Would 'you' go to a doctor who only passed courses with a 'C-'?"

People regularly go to see doctors who were below average in their class...

Have fun,


Ian.

[crfriend]

The attitude of the student - Wow - what a hot topic. It is most difficult to change a student's attitude - especially if that same attitude is held by the student's parents.

Some of the problem with this falls to the way that the subject matter is presented in many schools. Ideally, things would be taught in a way that relates directly to the physical world around the pupils so they get an innate feel for them; unfortunately, this is all too infrequently the case and subjects get taught in an intellectual vacuum seemingly for the simple sake of teaching them. If there is no perceived value in the lesson, who can blame the pupil for tuning out (I fell into this trap with maths in secondary school).

Teachers are powerless - they cannot do very much to change the attitude of unruly students. They dare not touch them, hit them, hug them, yell at them, and with no child left behind, they can't even fail them.

It not would be wise to get me going about "No Child Left Behind" (aka "No Behind Left"); fortunately that piece of Taleban-inspired legislation is confined to the US of A. That law was, by far, the single biggest success of the far-right in the US as it gutted the public schools' ability to properly teach -- and the first thing that one needs to do as a despot is keep the populace stupid so they won't ask "difficult" questions.

If I could have my way, every classroom would be monitored by security cameras recording every action of the students so that when there is a problem, recordings of the activity in the classroom could be viewed to avoid confusion as to who is at fault.

Cameras tend to keep everybody honest -- but at a price. We are already very much a "Surveillance Society" and are getting steadily worse with time, and despite all that surveillance we still have problems with crime (some of it custom-crafted to fit the laws that enabled the surveillance in the first place). Personally, I'd really rather not dwell in the Orwellian world that's been put on offer for us.

People regularly go to see doctors who were below average in their class...

I'd be willing to posit that after several years' time an individual's school-age test-scores become fundamentally meaningless. If it was true that the newly-graduated student would never learn another thing -- nor forget one -- then an argument could be made for such a slavish devotion to the numbers. However, human beings aren't wired that way; we learn new things all the time, forget stuff we've not used (or held dear for some reason) in ages, and form new connections in our minds between new and old as we try to make sense of the continual onslaught of experiences. The ability to adapt to one's continually-changing surroundings is vastly more important than whether one could regurgitate some random and obscure factoid on a test 40 years ago.

[Milfmog]

People regularly go to see doctors who were below average in their class...

I'd be willing to posit that after several years' time an individual's school-age test-scores become fundamentally meaningless. If it was true that the newly-graduated student would never learn another thing -- nor forget one -- then an argument could be made for such a slavish devotion to the numbers. However, human beings aren't wired that way; we learn new things all the time, forget stuff we've not used (or held dear for some reason) in ages, and form new connections in our minds between new and old as we try to make sense of the continual onslaught of experiences. The ability to adapt to one's continually-changing surroundings is vastly more important than whether one could regurgitate some random and obscure factoid on a test 40 years ago.

That was exactly what I was thinking when I made the comment, Carl. The class get's to the certificate and the certificate is a badge that allows the newly qualified doctor (lawyer, engineer, scientist, carpenter...) the opportunity to learn for real. Education should prepare people for life by teaching them how to learn and how to question and test the information they gain or already "know".

Have fun,


Ian.

[PatJ]

The operative word being "Should" --- Unfortunately, as I see it --- education has become regurgitate information to pass the test and make the school (and teacher) look good.

Memorization of facts to be spewed out to answer test questions is the lowest form of learning. The Ian, who wrote, "teaching them how to learn" has the right idea of what education is all about. Educators can teach students enough for them to: choose a field of study, enter a chosen occupation, evaluate options, but there is absolutely no way they can teach students how to deal with each and every specific event that will happen during the students lifetime.

Education is a life-long experience. And teaching students how to learn is an important part of education.

[Sinned]

I have enjoyed working in IT Development and Service Delivery for this very reason. You are forced to think. Novel activity for some and something that most have not done for a long time, if at all. Presented with a set of requirements you have to think your way to the solution and even more so if it means writing a program because you are then trying to tell a very exacting piece of machinery what you want it to do. Hopefully, and this is mostly more by accident than design, the computer actually does what is defined in the specification. When I say does what I really mean is that most often it's something close to it, not exact but close enough to be accepted by fools and those paying for it. Which means that you get another monthly salary payment.

With Service Delivery it's about incident management. An incident ( something unexpected that stops you from doing what you are trying to do ) occurs and invariably because systems are complex it's a situation that you haven't encountered before. So you have to start investigating and, using your previous experience and knowledge, try to determine what's wrong and hence what to do to fix it. Troubleshooting is also another name for this and it forces you to think ( that word again ).

I do miss it.