[Icer3107]

So many times I have complained about the horrors of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access and Turbo Pascal and Typing Mario (does anybody even know what that is anymore?). Education is a complete mess. There’s a particular sentence that I think needs more emphasis:

"I noticed a recurring theme. Hackers would bring up anecdotes of playing around with BBC Micros in their spare time, learning C in their spare time or building basic command-line games in their spare time."

How do they think they are helping us children by stuffing us with hours upon hours of mindless work, following instructions on textbooks almost verbatim, whether it’s Computer Science or Math or Chemistry or Literature? Students are only allowed to interpret a literary work as the teachers see fit, only allowed to play with chemicals on paper in their own imagination, only given dull Math problems and a few certain “tricks” to solve them, and, yes, of course, only allowed to complete computer projects that involve Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Access. I don’t hate you, Bill Gates, but your office suite is killing me. There has to be change. Only the best of the best will be able teach him/herself the basics of IT while survivng high school (and K12 and higher education in general); the rest will just lose interests even though they have tremendous capabilities. Not to mention how it gets lonely once in a while.

[dfxm12]

How do they think they are helping us children by stuffing us with hours upon hours of mindless work, following instructions on textbooks almost verbatim, whether it’s Computer Science or Math or Chemistry or Literature? This is because it is too hard to grade otherwise. I agree with you, it stinks, but the first step to solving a problem is understanding it. We “need” these types of assignments to gauge the progress of the students. Maybe the instrument is wrong, but all things considered, it’s the best we have. Ideally we’d have more teachers to reduce class size & these teachers will have the skills to make children explore. Instead, we have standardized tests that only really measure how well you can prepare for standardized test.

[drivingmenuts]

The politicians who fund our schools demand results so they can get elected/re-elected. The numbers they need can only be obtained through standardized, modular testing. It's a vicious cycle.

There are schools that eschew the standardized, rote methods of learning. But they produce people like Cory Doctorow, who is a writer/speaker/etc. and doesn't produce anything terribly useful. Well, except for thoughts, books, etc. - things that do not follow measurable standards. But certainly no iPhones, yet.

We will have to flip the whole teaching scheme on it's head in order to sort this out, and it will be painful. Teachers will have to be valued more than engineers and politicians (since the teachers produce little engineers and politicians) and we'll actually have to trust them to know enough and do their job. Possibly even pay them more.

Until then, it's square pegs in round holes all around.

NOTE: I am not Cory Doctorow nor would I even know him if he laid a hard, sharp thought on me in a crowded room. But he did go to a liberal school in Canada.

[anamax]

> The politicians who fund our schools demand results so they can get elected/re-elected.

You write "demand results" like it's a bad thing.

It isn't. If we're not getting "results", why bother?

Of course, which results we're talking about matter. I'll pay for some results but not others.

> The numbers they need can only be obtained through standardized, modular testing.

Not true.

We tried the alternative, namely "trust the teachers". We got crap results.

That said, a kid who can read a crappy standardized test is better off than a kid who can't. I mention that because we have hundreds of thousands of kids who can't read.

If you can't measure it, how do you know whether you're doing it?

[jbooth]

He should've written "demand statistics", that would make his point more clear. Did you not get that from what he was writing?

Also, when did we get "crap results" with "trust the teachers"? Was there some point in the past where we were using standardized tests, abandoned it in favor of 'trust the teachers' and watched them turn out a bunch of lazy hippies?

[anamax]

> He should've written "demand statistics", that would make his point more clear.

That's a different point. Since there is no shortage of folks complaining about demand results, it's reasonable to assume that he meant what he wrote.

Besides, why is demand statistics wrong? Why don't you think that we should know how well (or not) things are going?

> Also, when did we get "crap results" with "trust the teachers"?

Trust the teachers is what we did before the current testing mania.

> Was there some point in the past where we were using standardized tests

Huh?

> abandoned it in favor of 'trust the teachers' and watched them turn out a bunch of lazy hippies?

Trust the teachers seemed to work for quite a while. Then we noticed that it wasn't working.

Are you claiming that US education worked better right before the testing mania?

[jbooth]

I'm claiming that you can't just say "oh we had some big downturn in educational quality so we're adding tests to insure that teachers do their job right".

Some amount of quantitative results measuring makes sense in any situation. But remember, whatever you measure, that's what you get more of. Kloc, issue tickets, or standardized test scores. I'd say in all cases it's important to leave a lot of leeway for professional judgment along with the thing you're measuring.

[Wilduck]

It's good that we've recognized many of the problems with education. However, simply recognizing them isn't enough. I think that in this post you've highlighted the next step.

I'd love to see a slew of articles that talk about different testing methods rather than all of the articles we see about different teaching methods. These articles are interesting, but are accompanied only by anecdotal evidence that the different methods are doing any good. It's not that they aren't, it's just that we can't measure it.

[pjscott]

Actually, if the goal is to gauge students' progress and make grading easy, you can get that same effect with periodic short quizzes and occasional exams. There are loads of college classes that do this, and make homework assignments optional. Loading students down with vast busywork isn't necessary for tracking and easy grading.

I think the main reason why students get lots of busywork is because it feels like diligent teaching, and it's relatively easy. Cynical of me, I suppose.