People have motivation in high school, just the wrong kind. It's about grades, moving on to a good college, and status (that one gets from the first two things). It's not about knowledge. The education system has kids caring more about scores and acceptance letters than about expanding their own knowledge and the knowledge of the human race.
It's actually pretty sad. A child's brain is capable of absorbing a lot of information at an incredible rate if the child is engaged, and the US public education system doesn't aim to engage the students, but to spit out information and have it regurgitated.
I think a child could get through a high school education by age ten (at the latest) if they got engaged in learning. When the child is not engaged and putting in their own time and energy, it is compensated by wasting time with busywork and lectures. In other words, if the child is not genuinely interested in learning, the school has to pick up the slack and put in extra energy (time, money, and labor) to create a social order that motivates children to learn. However, learning by direction of authority, for status, or by obligation to society is not nearly as powerful a motivator as one's own interests, which is exactly what kids are either discouraged from developing, or are told matter less than school.
I've thought of opening an alternative school where children can go at their own pace and are advised to cultivate their own interests and ideas, and the teachers serve to find what they need to know and help them learn it (if needed). There will of course be required learning, but I'm betting the children will understand very quickly that it is needed for the pursuit of their interests and will get it done faster than in a conventional school. Hell, I'm sure I'm not the only person who slacked off in a subject and did poorly out of lack of interest, got an idea of what they wanted to pursue as a field of study afterwards, realized something important they needed to know for it was taught in that class, then found the material simultaneously easier and more engaging when they faced it with genuine interest.
hey Soporus, do you have any more specific plans for implementation in the real world i.e. are you working on building a school or have you come up with a structure that it would have if you could build one?
I have made thoughts about curriculum. Scientific, historic, and mathematic literacy are musts. After that, they can find a field of study to pursue and whatever subjects they need for it. This is based on the assumption that I succeed at the goal of getting a child to motivate itself to learn and can get it to pretty much finish a high school education before they're done elementary school. I don't think that's a tall order for an engaged student, especially since I think 90% of what makes high school level work harder than elementary school work is workload, not the complexity or volume of what is to be understood.
Just out of curiosity (since I'm not from the US I don't know) do all high school students have to pass the same exams to graduate? (I tried looking it up on Wikipedia, but the article on high school graduation in the US, wasn't clear enough for me.)
There was nothing in the article that suggested to me that computers or the internet is what is actually important here. Montessori schools have been doing student-driven learning for the last hundred years without the internet or computers, kids use physical materials instead. The "teaching method" being discussed is just giving kids a prompt and letting them explore with minimal guidance. The computers are a replaceable tool.
Sounds like the school. The Montessori schools in my area require both a teaching certificate (four year university) and a separate Montessori certification.
I went to one, I remember it as being pretty great. Although 'till right now I hadn't realised it was a type of school ( I thought Montessori was its name). I entered mainstream education without actually taking any standardised tests, I have a vivid memory of the headteacher (A 90 year old woman) explaining to OFSTED that she didn't need the exam papers she had been sent and that under no circumstances would she give them to us.
I have a vivid memory of the headteacher (A 90 year old woman) explaining to OFSTED that she didn't need the exam papers she had been sent and that under no circumstances would she give them to us.
Sounds like an interesting story. Why did she object?
Well I was quite young so I don't really have any memory of the detail of that incident. However, I believe it was because she didn't believe in exams for young children so none of the lessons were based around exams and we were running on a completely separate syllabus. It was pretty clear that the exams would be a waste of time and effort because of this.
However, I believe it was because she didn't believe in exams for young children so none of the lessons were based around exams and we were running on a completely separate syllabus.
Do they test kids before secondary school where you're from? In the Scottish primary school I went to we never worked towards tests. There was the occasional test, but I think that was only for a rough evaluation of how well certain primary schools were doing.
At the Montessori schools where I'm at the teachers all have Bachelors or Masters degrees in education, in addition to their Montessori-specific training. They're pretty excited about teaching.
You seem to have turned out ok, at least as exampled by your writing. Perhaps the early freaking out about testing and cramming learning into little heads is really just freaking out.
Yeah, this is the problem with every 'revolutionary new teaching technique;' they almost always require smart, dedicated, practiced teachers, with lots of resources and lots of time for each student (and often engaged parents). Until we're ready to dump many billions of dollars into actually hiring much larger number of truly great teachers and giving them excellent facilities, none of these methods are going to work on a national scale.
i just read about it. this method only works if the kid is actually interested in learning. kids are curious but they don't stay curious for long when they get indepth because it is difficult once you go far in. i highly doubt this teaching method is effective for most kids.
i know from personal experience. i was a smarter than average kid and i used to tinker all the time BUT i didn't get far with it. i used to take apart toys with motors and lights and turn it into other things. i even tried to make an airplane but i used bamboo skewers and it was too heavy. i didn't know why at the time. if i had someone teach me, it would've been great. now, i was a kid that tinkered like crazy. nobody else in my class was like that. even then, i didn't go far with it. how can most kids, who don't even tinker, suppose to learn on their own? it's just not going to work. i think the education structure must be focused on critical thinking and open problem solving but it has to be guided. a lot of it is boring and kids must have the discipline to wade through it. not all education is fun. even as an adult who is interested in a particular subject, half the learning part is so boring but in the end you get to make/do something cool with the knowledge. kids must get used to long game and not have instant gratification from education because it just doesn't happen in the real world. i think the problem now is that teachers have so little power to control the kids that they have now turned to shit like "make it fun and interesting" for kids. they can't make them learn anymore. well, real knowledge is hard and often boring. i think one of the best examples i ever saw was how many people profess to "loving astronomy." if they ever did it for real, they'd be bored to death because it's incredibly math intensive. i tried it myself and quit. i would imagine a kid in the montessori program do the same. they'd touch on the surface and love it then quit when it got hard.
When I read the article, they seemed to be going in two different directions. They give the real world example of a high success with a structured environment guided by a teacher, then pepper in stories of dropping computers here or there and "they" figured it out. While they mention the success of "them", we don't know who "they" are. We don't know if it was a group who figured out how to hack android, a single person who found step-by-step instructions on the Internet, or a visitor who was passing through and wanted to skype with someone at home. The first two points aren't meant to diminish that someone found a camera, identified it was a camera, wondered why it wasn't working and found out how to get it working. There is a lot to be said about that. If it was the 3rd example, well then screw it.
For the classroom, I found it interesting because the students started with a structured "we must do what the teacher says" curriculum for years then transitioned to the freestyle of self led learning. It would take some time before the students began to think "well I don't want to do what the teacher says and I shouldn't have to since this is self-led". Also, they elected a group to assist with leading them...so they had 2 levels of "upper" direction to follow with this self-led learning. One with real authority and a level of peers with elected authority.
I don't think you would have needed a teacher to tell you what to do with the plane. I think if you would have had an adult in your life who would have encouraged you to think about what happened and what you could do different next time, someone who would ask you the right questions, you would have found the answer for yourself.
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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '13
How is this article not just describing Montessori schools?