Why I’m Homeschooling My Kid in Science Next Year
It’s no surprise to me that Colorado’s public school system is not good. I mean, I’m a product of the Boulder Valley School District and I can tell you first hand that it’s not great at preparing one for college, or anything for that matter.
So, it shouldn’t come as a big shock to me that I need to pick up the slack for what my sons are NOT learning about science in school.
My first experience with just how bad things were occurred back in the early 1990’s. I was giving a presentation to some 5th graders when I asked the question: “When did the United States first land a man on the moon?”
No one raised their hand. In fact, most didn’t know we had ever been to the moon, and of those that did know, a substantial fraction doubted that we were there at all (parents were probably moon-landing-hoaxers).
And I have a TON of stories like that.
Fast forward to this last school year. My 7th grade son is a very good student, gets A’s in just about everything. He LOVES science, especially astronomy (imagine that) and he and I have great conversations about what the universe is like and what it’s like to be a scientist. He eats that stuff up so I know he does his best in his science class.
Yet, throughout all of last year, his grade in science was C-. In every report card.
Photo Credit: Lost In Scotland
Technorati Tags: astronomy education, becoming an astronomer, csap, homeschooling, no child left behind
He was devastated because he knew how important science is to me and he always thought he knew science better than all of his classmates (and I agree with him, I’ve met some of those kids. Let’s just say critical thinking doesn’t come naturally to them).
Getting that C- consistently really took a toll on him, he couldn’t understand what was going on. He really knows his stuff and always scored well on tests.
Naturally, I talked to the teacher to investigate.
It turns out my son IS a good student, DID understand the material and WAS way ahead of the other students in his comprehension of the material.
BUT, he couldn’t organize his science notebook.
“I’m sorry, he can’t organize what?”, I asked.
“His science notebook. He failed the notebook checks. They were worth 100 points each, almost 80 percent of his grade.”, the science teacher calmly explained with a huge smirk on her face.
“What does that have to do with science?”, I asked, but by then I knew what was going on and that I wasn’t about to get anywhere. I left the teacher conference furious.
I’m all too familiar with this kind of teacher. She was a stickler for organization. All materials had to be inserted in the notebooks EXACTLY and each item had to have the name in a certain place, with the information outlined EXACTLY as specified.
Now, I understand the need to teach kids organizational skills, I really do. But to make it 80% of a grade?
What this teacher really wanted was the students to do all of her work for her. She didn’t want to have to search through reams of paper to try and figure out what the student knew. She just wanted to open the notebook and start checking off the existence of items, each containing the proper words so she could get through the grading as fast as possible.
She wasn’t the slightest bit interested in whether or not the kids learned anything, only that the notebooks were in proper order.
This isn’t all though folks, not by a long shot. I mean, I could let that go if that were the only issue because he would get a different, and hopefully more competent teacher next year.
But in Colorado, all students are required to take the Colorado Student Aptitude Test (CSAP), as part of the Leave Every Child Behind Act. This means that all school year until March, but especially from January to March, my kids are getting immersed in that test. The teachers do NOTHING ELSE but teach that test.
Then, after March, when the pressure is off, the teachers pretty much coast through April, May and the first part of June. This is the only time when my kids have a real chance at getting a useful education, and it’s wasted because “Whew, we’re done with that test.”
The CSAP is the only thing that is actually measured, so everything else, like the actual education itself, is ignored.
I simply cannot allow my kids to come out of the education system in Colorado without learning basic science and developing their critical thinking skills. As a parent, I take full responsibility for my kids education, so I’ll do it myself.
So, every Tuesday and Thursday of the next school year, I’ll be pulling my then 8th grade son out of class for his last period (along with his friend and three other homeschooled students) and teaching them science.
How can I do this? Why would the school let me take the boys out like that every week? Because so long as the boys are in class for a certain percentage of the school day, the school gets the credit for them and they get paid. The principal told me that’s all they care about: getting paid. I could do whatever I wanted with them in science as long as they met certain minimum knowledge standards.
Standards they do NOT hold themselves to, by the way.
No problem though, I can meet those just by spending one hour in front a telescope with them.
The two days I’ll have them at home will be spent teaching, discussing and working on science topics with assignments to do on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I picked those two days to meet because of the seemingly infinite number of three day weekends the kids get in school for ‘planning days’ and other holidays. This would minimize any missed days due to that bullsh*t.
So now, I get to spend the rest of my summer planning a science curriculum for my son and his friends. You can bet it’ll be heavy on astronomy, but I can guarantee you that, based on what I’ve seen so far, they’ll be WAY ahead of their classmates by the time I’m done with them.
And I couldn’t care less about the state of their goddam notebooks.
Sigh, Another parent with a few gross misconceptions. You said:
“This means that all school year until March, but especially from January to March, my kids are getting immersed in that test. The teachers do NOTHING ELSE but teach that test.”
And also:
“Then, after March, when the pressure is off, the teachers pretty much coast through April, May and the first part of June. ”
First of all. No day in a school, especially a middle
school is ever ‘coasting.’ Thanks for putting down all hard working teachers.
Second of all, yeah, it sucks but you are told: Every student has to pass the test or you get fired. What would you do? That’s great your son is really smart, but you know what? Thanks to parents, politics, and admin, every student who isn’t as smart as your son is still in my class, and If I don’t get each one of them to pass the test I lose my job.
Sure, there are teachers out there that saw screw the test and teach how you would like your son to be taught, but they’ll quickly get fired and replaced by someone who can produce better test scores.
In short, way to be another parent blaming it on the teacher. Why not take the time to understand school politics before you blame the hard working teacher.
As for this particular teacher, yeah 80% is rough for a notebook grade. All the same, you’re no better for putting the rest of us down and saying we “coast.”
Spend a month as a teacher and your eyes will open to a whole new world.
PS:
Yeah my periods and commas are messed up and so is the world saw and say.
Good thing I don’t teach English.
I don’t remember much from any of my science classes from K through 12, other than what I was taught seemed reasonable and validated my extracurricular experiences in learning about science and the world in general. I was always interested in science because it made more sense than business or politics, and was internally consistent, and held truth as the ultimate goal. My dad was interested in science and engineering, not so much in sports, and thus so was I. Methinks part of the problem is that it’s the other way ’round in many households.
Tony, I agree with you about the notetaking. 80% is ridiculous; 20% would make sense. Notetaking is a valuable tool as long as it doesn’t interfere with learning the material. I soon discovered I couldn’t pay attention to the lecture and write at the same time, so notes had to go. I then discovered that if I paid attention to the lecture, read the book, and did enough homework to convince myself I knew what was going on, I had no problem learning the material, and hence, passing tests and quizzes. I also discovered the more math and science I learned, the more I could rely on the underlying patterns to synthesize answers to particular questions, rather than memorizing each and every thing. This really paid off in college physics and calculus, and the realization of the underlying organization of the universe became somewhat of a religious experience for me. My faith is in the truth of Universe, not in the words of some Bronze-Age text written by people whose motives have been lost in time.
But I digress. The point is, I learned enough in school to get me by in spite of the overlay of bureaucracy inherent in any organization. Actually, that aspect also was educational, preparing me for the real-world dichotomy of what’s expected vs. what’s important. The other important thing I learned was grammar. This is a fundamental tool for any activity more sophisticated than flipping burgers! Does anyone teach this any more? Honestly, reading Internet posts is often like fingernails on a blackboard! PROOFREAD, PEOPLE! It’s “a lot”, not “alot”!
The bottom line is, it’s parents who have primary responsibility for the way their kids turn out, not schools. It’s parents who inspire the basic direction their kids take in life, or neglect to do so and leave them drifting, rudderless. Parents (like Tony) can exercise a surprising degree of control of their children’s education. My wife all but specified which teachers our daughter was assigned to in elementary school by being active in school activities, and frankly by being a good politician. Hey, it’s survival of the fittest. If the good teachers get a lot of attention from parents, that provides valuable feedback to the administration at performance review time.
But parental influence is more than explicit help with homework and homeschooling. It’s what you’re interested in, what magazines you have lying around, what books are on the bookshelves, what side trips you take on family vacations, what’s on the TV. Honestly, if you’re not genuinely interested in a thing, you’re kids won’t be interested in that thing either. And, the most important “thing” is the love of learning. Curiosity is the root of all learning and self-improvement. If you sit around like a lump on weekends, your kids won’t be motivated to learn in school or anywhere else.
As far as schools go, we need to insist on excellence at all levels. Fund smaller class sizes, insist on and pay for excellence, that’s what I say. Do more with less. Guest lectures from working professionals. Require one semester of theatrical training of all teachers so classes aren’t as dull as dishwater. Think out of the box. If a teacher has a good idea, admin should get the hell out of the way and let them get on with it. Teach combo classes that belong together, like calculus/physics. Institute competent guidance counseling (I didn’t know the difference between an engineer and a technician until it was too late!), again with help from working professionals. Teach practical life skills, like how to balance a checkbook. Put some thought behind knee-jerk political correctness so as to return to a climate of basic human dignity. I could go on, but I don’t want to piss off too many readers.
Background stats: I’m 55, retired non-degreed engineer, and a product of east-coast public schools, no unusual educational timing or family circumstance. Other than a fascination with cosmology and philosophy, I’m about as white-bread as it gets.
My mother took me out of the California school system for part of the day to teach me reading. My mother was a certified teacher and made sure she did it for enough hours that they didn’t get their money. The fact that I lived outside the United States for a few years helps me now that over half of my coworkers in my R&D group are not citizens of the US. You have to tutor your own children in every subject if you don’t want American idiots. And my children’s teachers tell my children that teachers are underpaid.
Knight:
I laughed out loud when I read your comment. Tony wants to take complete responsibility for one class, and your response is that the students will be socially isolated when they get to college. Really?
My daughters were homeschooled from 5th and 3rd grade (respectively) on. One is in college. The other is a high school junior –still homeschooled– and is dually enrolled in classes at a small college nearby. They’re both well-balanced, high achieving, active in extra-curriculars, and popular amongst a crowd of other kids their own ages. For example, their birthday parties each had 80+ kids in attendance this year, all of whom are polite to adults, kind and supportive of each other. When my youngest daughter’s volleyball team plays locally, I have to arrive early in order to get a seat in the bleachers; her friends pack the stands in support. My kids love to swing dance, and have been interviewed by a top 5 radio station in town (Detroit) about a weekly dance they help host each week in a nearby suburb. They read Kierkegaard, Machiavelli, Hemingway and Proust and Potok. They love to write (and they’re pretty good at it). They managed to do well in math and science classes. By the way, their science curriculum is not creationist-based; I’ve seen some of that stuff, and it’s appalling.
And all the while, they’re some of the least socially isolated teenagers I’ve ever known in 16 years of working full-time with teenagers. I wonder how they managed to do that…..
My guess is that Tony’s kids won’t be isolated, either. May I suggest that your comments betray that you’ve swallowed some propagandist’s bait, hook/line/sinker? Maybe Tony would allow you to attend this science class, too. Critical thinking is part of the curriculum, after all.
Thanks for sharing
To everyone here complaining: Are you actually willing to help make a change, or does your concern about this topic begin and end with message board bitching?
Why yes. I did and will also do the same for my grandchildren.
Have you?
I homeschooled all our children right up to high school. I did it only for academic reasons. The teachers in our elementary schools are very good, but…. They have 30 plus kids in each classroom. Also a 5th grade class might have some kids performing at the 2nd grade level and others at the 8th grade level. Add in the behavior problems and what is a teacher, even a very good one, supposed to do.
My youngest is now in7th grade and will go to our local high school. I am worried about this as our local high schools have recently embraced the Gates Foundation’s philosophy and money. So now all AP classes are being eliminated and the honors classes watered down. They want the smarter and highest achieving kids in the same classroom as all the others. No more “segregation” of the top students in their own, more challenging classes.
I write at length about this on my web site. I write about it in the local papers. I go to the school board meetings. I talk to as many other parents as I can. I have tried to contact the Gates Foundation. All to no avail. Money talks, not necessarily common sense!
-Will
I would have to guess that your son’s poor grade is not just about the poor organization, I bet there are plenty of kids doing better than him with worse notebooks. The real reason is because he knows more than the teacher and corrects her in class, he notebook is just her excuse to make herself feel more powerful than a 7th grader.
I got out of high school 2 years ago – and yeah, it sucked.
To me, the ONLY reason a child should fail a class is because they don’t know the material. Who cares about how they organize themselves? It might work for them.
Not only did I hate notebook checks, but I also hated projects that were a large percentage of your grade (some classes, a project was 50%).
So if you skip this ONE project (or don’t do good on this ONE project) you’re screwed. You can get A’s on everything else and still fail. Not because you don’t know the material, but because you didn’t do/messed up on ONE project.
There’s a lot of smart people I knew that used to skip assignments because it bored them. They knew the material, but suffered because the work bored them.
School should be about educating, not about who can turn in the most assignments. If it is obvious the kid knows the stuff – then pass them.
And get rid of that standardization garbage. I’m not ’standard’.
I dissagree….truely, its great that your son knows science very well.
but part of being in the classroom is learning rules, and part if part of those rules involves organizing your science notebook, then your son needs to learn how to create his science notebook.
if the teacher put out a syllabus at the beginning of the year that said “80% of your grade is organizing your science notebook” then your son NEEDS to work on organization.
science is more than just facts and knowledge….I’m a professional geologist, and I can tell you that keeping field data, notes, and all scientific information (journal articles, etc…) organized is a KEY COMPONENT to being a successful scientist…
a good scientist knows alot of science, but a great scientist knows how to keep his ideas organized, how to research and look for information he/she needs, and how to compile that data into coherent reports/journal articles/field notes/etc…
I don’t understand. I live in NJ, and we have the aptitude test, and my teacher’s never eve mentioned the test EVER (except a month before just to remind us that if you’re not a junior, you get to sleep in for 3 days).
I’m sure that you or any parent passionate enough to homeschool your child will do a good job of it – the investment couldn’t be more important to you, and the teacher-student ratio is wonderful. I wish you all success!
However I’m not much persuaded by this post. It seems reasonable to me for teachers to require students to present their work in an organized manner. Organization and coherence are basic requirements for academics and employment.
I don’t mean to be hard on you or your child, but you say that he failed his notebook checks, and failed them all year long. How bad did the notebooks have to be to fail? How little improvement would have been needed to make pass? How could he have managed this all year long without your noticing? And was it just the “C-” that caused this – would you have left him in school if he had made a B?
I don’t doubt that the teacher could have been a prick. But I would be surprised if her standards were unreasonable – there’s just too much blowback for expecting a lot from students (child get a C-, dad pulls him out of the school system). I strongly suspect that a bit more attention and effort could have bypassed this whole problem.
Again, I’m not trying to be hard on you or your son. You should have a great year, and I wish you all success.
This is why Canada trumps the US on education.
Sadly it’s not just some teachers but the books used in the classes. My son was in 5th Grade last year and their Math book covered the largest burrito ever made in Mexico… but not how to divide fractions. I had to show him how to do it so that he could complete his homework. (Yep. They had problems where you had to do it but did not show the method.)
I was home schooled from 7th – 12th grade and have been asked every time the subject is brought it up if I feel like I missed out on something. No.. I still played sports, I am by no means socially inept, I had plenty of friends etc. I will say that many of the parents and children that I met through various programs who were home schooled were strict, scary, reality shrouding fanatics and thankfully my mother saw right through all of that and opted away from the insanity and helped me get in touch with what I wanted to do and accellerate in areas that I think many people don’t really see until they are in their mid twenties. I’m 23 years old now. I went to college and I have been a graphics designer for the past 7 years. I am successful in the industry and I think that anyone who can dedicate themselves to their children properly in this situation will quickly realize that it’s not so unnatural.
We homeschool all our kids, and for science our 8th – 12th graders are using the Apologia.com curriculum, which is written by a science PhD with help from other science teaching pros. The kids love it, and I love it because it’s a solid series of courses that are easy for the kids to use and learn from. They have both book and DVD portions.
Best of luck! If you’re having similar problems with math, check out the terrific math courses at teachingtextbooks.com.
This is a function of the universities too. The education department at most universities promote the belive that you don’t have to know what you teach. The do this because the department is given money for the classes they teach. If future teachers took science classes that would take money away from the education department. So, most science teacher don’t even qualify for a minor in science.
I learned this the hard way. I was a part-time high school teacher for 2 yrs. I was a science major but took education classes to keep my job. I quite to get my Phd. I left that job with a odd feeling that I had been right when I was in school, most teachers were idiots.
The great teachers are the ones that love the subject and are still learning themselfs. This is why I loved my science profs. They still knew what it was like to suffer to learn something new or to think in a new way.
This story angers me so deeply. I’m so sorry your son has to go through this.
I’m a practicing engineer. I’ve got my MSEE, BSEE, and an BA in Physics. I also had a terrible 8th grade science teacher who was a stickler for notebooks. I went so far as to get an F for a quarter because I organized my notebook as I saw fit, graded homework in back, current things in front, notes in the middle. The way I had done for my entire life as an A student. She had things setup for her convenience: graded homework in front, then current work, then notes, in back.
It was so demoralizing that the rest of my grades started slipping. I was so furious. My parents were confused. The school guidance counselor was confused. It was blamed on my parents and their divorce. The school wouldn’t take any credit and I was too shy to say anything. Luckily, my curiosity ran deep and I had all of high school to get things back on track, now with renewed vigor.
Years later, when I was in college, I ran into her in a grocery store. She asked me how things were going, and I rattled off my story; Ivy League school, engineering, things were good, and, “no thanks to you. By the way, are you still teaching junior high or have they forced you into retirement?” Then I paid for my groceries and left while her jaw was still hanging.
Your son is lucky and you’re doing a wonderful thing for him.
I do not understand why people are saying that public school teachers are underpaid. I don’t have a problem with good teachers getting paid well, and I understand that teachers look after kids for 12 years, but they are vastly over compensated, IMHO.
It seems to me their primary focus is their compensation. This article has sprung so many comments about how bad our school system is and, it is so bad, that people have to pull their children out of public school. Given this, why are we even paying anything to these teachers?
I saw a comment saying that teachers are lucky to get 28k a year. This commenter is merely cherry picking. I have a problem when people pick the lowest amount that a teacher might get, (like what a 1st grade teacher would get in the first year), and then post it as though all teachers get that much. This is not true. High school teachers in Oregon get $50,000+ a year, plus 3 months off each year and many more days off for holidays, snow days, and Christmas break. Their retirement fund is second to none, and they get medical benefits. Again, in Oregon, 92% of all the money that goes to the schools goes to payroll (most of THAT goes to the teachers).
After looking at the ridiculously poor quality of public education in general compared to the incredibly generous overall compensation package for the public teachers, I don’t understand why anyone would think that they are underpaid.
Again, if teachers were doing a bang up job, I suspect most people wouldn’t complain about their pay.
They are hugely underpaid. You know how you can tell? They’re all idiots. I say triple or quadruple the pay immediately. Guess what’ll happen in 3-5 years? The idiot teachers will all be janitors, shoved out by smart, well-educated (in a REAL field, NOT education) go-getters.
Increase teacher pay I say; the quicker the better, the more the better.
cdj,
Then why is it that even though the money going to teachers has increased dramatically over the years, that we still see a poor quality of teaching? Paying them more money is not going to solve the problem. History shows us that paying more doesn’t work. Look at the American Auto Industry.
Alex – whether one calls the increase in money going to teachers “dramatically” increased is a matter of opinion. Objectively, I’d be surprised if median teacher income is over $60k – ie, lower middle class. I say triple that right now. Yah – there will be a couple years of idiots getting a lot of money, but you gotta start somewhere. Smart folks’ll catch on real quick that there’s excellent money to be made in teaching, in addition to all of the other good things about it.
In a few years, if median incomes are in the 150k range, pretty much every “education” major will be gone, replaced with smart people. That’ll take care of easiest part of the education problem to solve. It’ll be harder to deal with the crappy parents.
Wow, I’m from Vancouver Canada. I have some minor complaints about our school system (mostly in how they are teaching math, my youngest is in Grade 4), but nothing along these lines though I always think they should do more science. My stepson is in 4th year science at the university, UBC, and was very well prepared from high school. By the way, UBC draws huge talent worldwide for its commitment to research and has spun off numerous companies that have gone on to provide thousands of jobs and investment. It is a huge benefit to our community, so not only are your kids not being taught your society is not benefiting from their future talents. We also keep religion separate. Here teachers are not allowed to show any religious or cultural bias to the point of absurdity sometimes (like not doing a Chinese Lantern Festival and instead calling it Fall Days even though we have a large Asian community). But like Tony I do not rely totally on the school system to teach my kid. We do lots of science experiments at home and watch tons of science and nature programs. I too assume it is my job to keep her love of science alive. It’s just about teaching our kids the world – it’s a pretty interesting place. Oh, and I am an English major, so you don’t need a science background yourself to teach basic science, just curiosity about the world, knowing how to look up stuff and maybe a subscription to Discover:) I won’t be able to help her as much as she gets older, but the foundation will be there.
Money will not help. Making the teacher know the material the are teaching will!
You can apy out a ton but if you tell them it is ok that they don’t understand the subject matter this is what you will get.
lol! You’re one of the ones who would be weeded out.
Here is one more perspective:
October 5, 2007
For immediate release and distribution
Vaccine Autoimmune Project Publication
When 1 in 150 is really 1 in 67
By Raymond W. Gallup and F. Edward Yazbak, MD, FAAP
Since February 2007, news outlets have widely publicized the fact that recently released figures by the CDC have estimated the prevalence of autism and autistic spectral disorders at a NEW high of 1 in 150. In this report, VAP’s co-founder Ray Gallup and Dr. Yazbak examine the most recent United States Department of Education statistics and reveal that the 1 in 150 estimate is outdated by five years. They report that the present prevalence of ASD may be as high as 1 in 67.
We at the Vaccine Autoimmune Project are saddened and concerned to see the latest Department of Education figures. We are also concerned about what is to come. It is evident that, 1) our medical authorities are more interested in defending vaccination programs than controlling autism, the most devastating and real epidemic we have faced in a hundred years, and 2) our wealthiest and largest autism association is giving little attention to the role of vaccines and vaccine additives and preservatives.
_http://www.vaproject.org/yazbak/1-in-150-is-really-1-in-67- 20071005.htm
_
Raymond Gallup
highnoon@gti.net
F. Edward Yazbak, MD, FAAP
tlautstudy@aol.com
Vaccine Autoimmune Project (VAP)
http://www.vaproject.org
Barbara Labrecque
Butch Labrecque
Ray Gallup
Now, autism is not the only factor in the situation we face: it is more like the “Canary in the coalmine” that would stop singing and drop dead in time to warn the miners to get the hell out and to ventilate the mine of suffocating gasses before returning. The job of the CDC and Dept of Ed seems to be to drape a cover over the cage to hide the dying canary warning us.
“Interesting Times” to be living in. Good that some of us home school children & self educate ourselves, more or less. The system is not all wrong: just needs taking with a large pinch of garlic salt.
George
Hi, I’m a recent high school graduate and I can relate this story very strongly. I was a product of the public school education system and then graduated from a private school my last two years of high school. While science is no doubt very important, another one of equal, if not higher, significance is mathematics. I can personally attest that in my county alone, the so called advanced classes in mathematics only covers about 1/3 of the standard classes at my private high school. Can you guess which third was only covered? The portion on the spring accountability test. What’s more shocking is that, when it comes time to go to college, these students with a highly diluted education show off A’s in “advanced” classes and have no problem getting in. Once in college, they are so far up shit creek, by the time they realize they never had a paddle, they’re out of college or pursuing an education major. Education in the country is quite startling and it seems that the people in charge of teaching the children are quite apathetic to their job and only care about their paycheck. As for myself, I plan on getting my Bachelors of Science in Aerospace Engineering, but at times, I am questioning my abilities and future from the poor foundation of my pre-college education.
I agreed with your point that testing isn’t the best form of education and that teachers are forced to teach the test. I also disdained the pedantic types of teachers you describe. Finally, I laud your effort to invest in your kid’s education. Kudos.
But I couldn’t help but notice you blame the teaching profession for ‘teaching the test’ and the principle for caring about making his school financially solvent. This blame is ill-placed. Both are charged with those duties. If you believe that either groups entered the teaching profession to complete either charge, you don’t understand market economics. That is, they obviously would like to be living up to the high standards set by yourself and others, but cannot because of the pressure on them.
The up shot: don’t blame the players when the game is rigged, please. I’m sure most of your son’s teachers are decent people.
Now that I’m homeschooling my learning disabled daughter (7th grade), she can actually have a social life and fully participate in a sport that she loves. She learned nothing in school, despite special ed services, so evenings were spent with me teaching her what she should have learned during the day. No time for any social life. She got picked on in school because she couldn’t get the material. So no real social life at school either.
For those of you who homeschool, what science curriculum do you use? Any favorite publisher?
This sounds very familiar. Probably because where I live (Florida) does the same thing. Except our test is called the FCAT. We are not taught anything useful. We are taught what is on the FCAT test. That’s the only thing they care about because the better students do, the more they get paid. I am very upset because I do not think I am learning what I need to know to be successful. Standardized state tests need to be abolished because they are taking away from student’s education.
Tony,
I have experienced some of the same issues with my son, and he is now in 4th grade.
In 3rd grade, they introduced the assignment book. It became a huge focus for his teacher to have them fill it out… to the point that it became a distraction. Yes, organizational skills are excellent to have, but 3rd grade is a bit ridiculous to start expecting these kids to fill one out. What was the big push? Because this teacher had been a middle school teacher. She expected middle school habits out of 3rd graders. Most of the time, she didn’t care if the assignments were actually done, so long as the assignment book was filled out. It became very bizarre.
I take issue with how basic English grammar is taught, as well. I had to provide quite a bit of secondary teaching at home because the concept of such basic things as nouns, verbs, and adjectives were not being taught correctly. The teacher taught “down the middle,” and the bright kids would get finished and be bored while the kids who were a bit slower were left behind, and yet they were not understanding the basic concepts. No one could move on until everyone got it…. a result of NCLB. So, once everyone had a basic understanding, they moved quickly to the next topic. My son was one of the brighter students (honor roll), but there were things that he needed help with.
Unfortunately, his homework was not reflective of his deficits. Instead, everyone’s homework was the same, every single day. It didn’t matter if this child really needed to focus on reading but was doing well in math. He or she still had to do 3 math sheets every night but would not receive a reading assignment.
We also had an experience with this teacher where the children and parents were not provided a “syllabus,” if you will. The children were told to write spelling words five times each every night. The first night, my son wrote his spelling words… and received a zero. Why? Because they weren’t written in a column instead of five times on the same line. The next night, he wrote them in a column…. and received a zero. Why? Because they were too close together. The next night, he wrote them again, in a column, and spaced out… and received a zero. Why? Because there were smudges on his paper (he was so nervous about it, that he would chew on the end of his pencil, the eraser would get wet, and then his erasures would smudge). It was ME who pointed this fact out to him. By this point in time, we were in a battle for him to write his spelling words at all. Why? Because he said he would “just get a zero, so why bother?” Indeed. We did have him do them anyway.
The focus of his class began to center more on organization than the actual subjects being taught, at which time I addressed it with the school. The teacher backed off… for a while.
I also began to carefully grade his papers myself. On almost every paper that things were marked incorrect were really correct. For example, he had written furniture, and the teacher had marked it wrong and written “furnature” in the margins as the correct spelling. 4×9=36 was marked wrong, and 32 was written in red as the correct answer. By the time I went to the next parent-teacher conference, I had a stack of papers with things marked as incorrect that were correct and vice versa. When I confronted the teacher with it, I was told that (a) her key was wrong (who needs a key?), (b) that she had a high school intern helping her, or (c) that she wasn’t feeling well on that particular day.
I understand those mistakes. The problem I had is that she would not correct the papers and the kids were being given incorrect information.
For me, it is a personal issue because I deal with the written/spoken word every day in my job. However, I think it is important for people to be able to express themselves coherently. I finished my degree last year (after being out of school for 20 years and going back to college), and there were classmates who could not even form a coherent sentence, their spelling was atrocious, and the sentence structure left much to be desired (one classmate did not use periods or commas in an entire paper… just double spaces).
I don’t know the answer. I just try to supplement my son’s education at home and feed his desire for knowledge. He self-educates that way, and it keeps his interest in certain subjects. I have also considered homeschooling, but I have declined to do that for now. It may happen in the very near future, however, if things do not change.
Oh, and the teachers “teach to the tests” here, as well.
In Re: Jason’s and my comments:
Richard Feynman went to one of the two high schools that I attended ( before I left at 15 to save my sanity, and went to university). When he won the Nobel Prize in physics, he came to give a talk.
The principal started by fishing for a comment about how great this school was.
Feynman replied: ” It was a repressive, authoritian, mediocre nightmare– I survived, but two other friends MORE TALENTED THAN I WAS, were completely destroyed.”
Today, I just got back from a research conference on Riemannian Geometry. It was interesting to note that the most talented researchers there did not arrive with notepaper–and took NO notes.
You would have liked the conference Charles! One speaker has found a new definition of global mass in general relativity–which obsoletes the Hawking, Bartnik and ADM mass definitions! History in the making! Science is SO Exciting.
I may not sleep tonight!!
I loved his talk–I didn’t take notes.
The history of notetaking:
In tbe middle ages–before printing, books were so expensive and rare that the university chained them to desks and only the faculty
could consult them.
The teacher copied the book into his notebook–then copied that copy onto the equivalent of a blackboard. Then, the students copied the copy–of the copy–into their notebook, and went home to repeat the process at their village school.
That is: Notetaking was a method of publishing, not a method of learning.
Today–with all the books, and internet sources etc., notetaking is a vastly overstressed skill.
Albert Einstein was terribly disorganized–and admitted he was a terrible notetaker–and he cut
classes–and he loathed authority. BUT, he created general relativity!!
“School requires of a student, the obedience of a corpse!”–A. Einstein.
Well done! The U.S. school system is a joke and should be completely rejected by all responsible parents, except perhaps, at the University level. Let children learn at home. The State only wants to brainwash your kids and make them passive and compliant citizens.
I just realized that the most notebook-happy teachers I remember from middle and high school were not in the sciences, where keeping good lab notes is truly important, but in history, geography and, of all things, English. I especially remember hours of after-school detention catching up on my English notebook, an outline of the textbook posted in daily chunks on the blackboard. None of us learned real, college-style notetaking, just rapid copying. If you never got fast, (if, for instance, your hand cramped up after five minutes of scribbling), you stayed after school. Then, in my case, it all had to be recopied from the rough notebook into the one that was handed in to be graded on completeness, format and penmanship. Those students who went on to college must have been profoundly shocked when they encountered traditional lecture courses that didn’t have time for verbatim copying. This madness is most of what I remember of middle school, along with hearing the principal terrify my mother by waving the word “ineducable” in her face and threatening to have me shipped of to the retard dump. BTW, most of the science classes in that middle school were taught by the Home Ec teacher. You can imagine her approach.
Unfortunately we live in a society that has become more concerned with conformity than ingenuity and intelligence. (I don’t mean testable intelligence, I mean the raw ability to learn and apply knowledge.) The truly exceptional people are required to at least pretend to conform or they are ridiculed or ignored. As a side note if there are any English teachers that still tell students to use a comma at every pause… STOP NOW! A nice college writing instructor will mark them as errors of punctuation. However, I met one with a pet peeve about it that tore a student’s paper in half and threw it in the wastebasket.
I’ll admit it. I’m a science teacher who grades notebooks. But not like this. Organization MAY be important, and for those kids that are struggling and have a bad notebook I give advice and let them turn it in again, maybe having a better notebook (or taking notes at all) will help them. I insist on some sort of planning calendar as well, to organize assignments, increasing the chance that they will do them. For those kids with A’s and a bad notebook, or no planning system…well, I just leave that grade blank. Their brain *IS* their organization system and I’m not going to ruin it for them.
cdj,
It would seem to me that people who care more about money will be attracted to teaching rather than those who actually care. If you do something you like, you shouldn’t care about how much you make. Don’t get me wrong, there is a bare minimum that is needed to survive, but you should be doing something that you like, not something that pays really well that you don’t like.
Taking your child out of class seems like a dramatic knee-jerk reaction. Why not augment his experience with schooling at home ?
As for the teacher’s notebook obsession – yup, seen that before. Lived the pain of inflexible people in authority. Guess what, its an important life lesson.
He’s going to be forced to deal with it many times in the future. Try turning in an incomplete tax form – that’ll cost ya.
Have a great idea and turn in a disorganized patent application – denied.
Or write an incomprehsible scientific paper – nobody will listen to your ideas.
Better to be able to confidently work with/around these types of people and situations than let them send you running “home to mommy” !
Wow, great read! Good luck- I think your son (and the other kids) will be much better for it. The main reason? Your PASSION, and the desire to actually TEACH them and enable them… My sister is a teacher and even she is sometimes disheartened by the lack of motivation of other teachers. Living in CO myself, I am curious what city has a school like this! Or should I infer that you still live in the Boulder area?
Sadly, most schools systems and grades are completely meaningless, such as the 80% for a notebook.
Going to school in Louisiana was no better during my time spent in school. I was always considered to be a “smart kid” On standardized tests I was consistently 99% percentile at worst. Tests? Usually an A or a B if the class really bored me. However, my grade point average for high school as below 2.5. How does a smart person end up with such bad grades? More often than not the lazy teachers would assign big projects are a significant portion of their overall grade. Coming from a relatively poor home, I often times couldn’t afford flashy lettering and other expenses to make my posters visually appealing. Despite how informative said project was, often times the lack of visual beauty would lead to a poor score on said project, and an overall lower grade. Often times I would see other students, that didn’t learn a damn thing in a class end up with a better grade me only because they shelled out a lot of money come project time.
I had an English class where we had to make model planets, and purchase a certain type of craft plastic to make blow up buildings. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but in retrospect I fail to see the relationship of either with learning English.
Despite my actual comprehension of what was taught, and ability to prove it time and time again by acing exams, my GPA consistently suffered due to lack of money spent. This has affected me because my GPA was so low, I was undesirable by most colleges, and did not qualify for scholarships I needed to afford college.
The schools have produced people who will blindly follow authority wherever it may lead and that is the point. The primary lesson is obedience. the ability to think criticaly marks you as the enemy, when it comes to the status quo the last thing on earth those in power desire is a critic! Self motivated students are not well prepaired to be docile employees. These are the FACTS of the mater, any other model is a head in the sand.
This video is good for perspective and overview so you don’t get caught in some type of regional myopia. 20/20 TV show, 40 minute program on “Stupid Schools.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfRUMmTs0ZA
We landed on the moon? Yayyyy!!!
Ok.. as a student myself.. I find that it is not about organization skills. It is about giving the less”educated” students a chance in the class. If they cant pass by science, they can pass by some silly notebook. I am certain that this is what happened. Some of my classes used to do this to raise grades so the teacher will look better in the upper officials eyes. Organization is always a plus and I as well think it is silly.
I’m currently a science student in the UK, and I feel that the curriculum here tests data regurgitation skills rather than actual science.
I look at old O-Level books with much more challenging science, which I enjoy reading in my spare time.
I want you as a science teacher :D
i didn’t read all of that cuz im drinking and busy but it seems home schoolings the best idea or a better school i was lucky in school as i had a teacher that loved science so tried to teach as much of it as possible to us
About a week ago my teacher wrote all the presidential candidates on the board, followed by their race and gender, and asked us students who we wanted to win, based on this information.
He asked us to express prejudice, in a classroom.
That same teacher referred to the “good lord” when explaining how he has become successful.
He also told an African-American student that he was “one of those black people that make the others look bad”. Not a single student questioned this, they only laughed and returned to ridiculing a foreign kid about his language,who happened to be smarter than all of them.
I could tell you more stories like this, or I could tell you how this sh*tty school system forced me to teach myself, and how I was unfavored by my teachers for questioning them and wanting to understand why they did things like this.
My school counselor and the school mediator know of my plans to drop-out, and I know not of any plans to be taken against me. They merely suggested I stay, so as not to waste my talents…
Poor education is a far more sad story than you know. I hope your students realize and appreciate the gift you are giving them as much as I would.
supporter of the cause,
Jacob Castillo