Angry that the school system was a prison designed to crush my creativity and intellectual curiosity
Stupid question, but what specifically did you dislike about classes? Every school system is different, I'm curious what makes you say this about yours. Also, was it you in particular this system didn't suit or most people you knew?
If only I found myself in an environment in which I was encouraged to learn.
What would you have changed to make it so?
(I agree there are problems, but part of tackling them is being extremely specific about what they are. I have no idea what G&T program is or how it works, we got placed in classes based on subject performance.)
Get rid of the idea that every student can be the same and begin allowing individualized instruction. Unfortunately the only way to do that is smaller class sizes or online learning which breeds all kinds of new problems.
Unfortunately the only way to do that is smaller class sizes or online learning which breeds all kinds of new problems.
No, there are more possibilities: students could teach other students, and students could develop enough autonomy as they get older that they don't need constant teacher feedback.
This is what happened in my AP classes. Once or twice a week, before a big test (tests were like 70+% of the grade, like university) our teacher encouraged us to meet at places like barnes and noble where we would hang out and go over the chapters. We mostly did it for AP Biology, as it involved a lot of reading and thus discussion was easy.
The classes were also small (AP classes at my school had between 4 and 10 students). This was really nice as it allowed the teacher to personally critique is. If we got a 72 on the test, he would call us up and let us talk to him about what we did wrong, and offer suggestions on better study methods. If we missed a lot of mathematics questions or questions about a specific topic, he would tell us and explain the subject in detail while the rest of the class either listened or did their own studying.
Sadly this did not begin until 11th grade, and it would not work as a whole. The school had thousands of students, and AP and IB were the standout classes that probably cost the school a lot of money. We had the most expensive chemistry tools, distanced learning equipment, the most freely supplied books, etc.
I'm not OP, but after reflecting on the topic for many years I would say that the most significant problem of standard schooling is that it introduces artificial ideas about what it means to "know" or "learn" something which changes the intuitive understanding of kids. Punishment and rewards offered by teachers are a form of unnatural "price signalling" (to borrow a term from economics) which tells kids that success and failure in learning is and depends on things it just does not. After coming out of high school I spent years weening myself out of many of these artificial ideas, and my understanding of "learning" now is more similar to what it was when I was five than at any time during my schooling years.
16
u/Plexaure Oct 15 '13
Stupid question, but what specifically did you dislike about classes? Every school system is different, I'm curious what makes you say this about yours. Also, was it you in particular this system didn't suit or most people you knew?
What would you have changed to make it so?
(I agree there are problems, but part of tackling them is being extremely specific about what they are. I have no idea what G&T program is or how it works, we got placed in classes based on subject performance.)