What topics should be included in education?

[EdgePenguin]

The is a cluster of Montessori schools in my area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education

Its a model where the child directs their own education through investigation. It sounds like what some of you are suggesting.

My personal addition is Latin. I learned it at school, and found it very rewarding, and gave me a good grasp of European languages. At present, a Latin qualification is a sign of having gone to a 'good school' and is thus seen as a badge of elitism. I think this is a great shame; state schools ought to offer it.

[KestrelLowing]

The is a cluster of Montessori schools in my area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education

Its a model where the child directs their own education through investigation. It sounds like what some of you are suggesting.

My personal addition is Latin. I learned it at school, and found it very rewarding, and gave me a good grasp of European languages. At present, a Latin qualification is a sign of having gone to a 'good school' and is thus seen as a badge of elitism. I think this is a great shame; state schools ought to offer it.

I really like the concept of Montessori, but sadly I don't think that straight Montessori will prepare students for living in the current world. Honestly, we're a world of schedules. I'm feeling so stifled right now because I have to be at work at a specified time and leave at a specified time. I'm used to college where I have maybe 15-25 hours each week that are fixed, and the rest of the time I can do my work whenever I want. Even though I'm easily working 60+ hour weeks in college (I have a part time job and a fairly challenging major), I prefer it to the 40 hour a week rigidity I'm experiencing now. I grew up in a standard public school, so I can only imagine what people who learned in Montessori must feel when entering the workforce.

But one thing about Montessori I really like is the focus on having multiple ages in the classroom, particularly when small and not much direct instruction is given. If it starts that way, then the road is paved for students to continue being in mixed age classes - hopefully based on topic mastery.

[Magnanimous]

I had 2nd and 3rd grade in elementary school, then transferred to public school... Which worked very well, since it got me interested in learning then trained to follow schedules.

[lutzj]

We had a running contest among the members of my AP english class. Whoever could get the highest grade on an interpretation of literature or poetry while arguing that it was about Jesus won.

We had something similar, always attempting to railroad class discussions into how the author contemplated "loss of innocence." Captain Ahab, for instance, spends most of Moby-Dick attempting to regain the innocence he lost when his body was mangled by the white whale. A Separate Piece Peace was one giant innocence-losing clusterfuck, by the author's intention, so we had to up our game by suggesting that the school lost its innocence when Phineas became hurt or something.

[cjmcjmcjmcjm]

The is a cluster of Montessori schools in my area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education

Its a model where the child directs their own education through investigation. It sounds like what some of you are suggesting.

My personal addition is Latin. I learned it at school, and found it very rewarding, and gave me a good grasp of European languages. At present, a Latin qualification is a sign of having gone to a 'good school' and is thus seen as a badge of elitism. I think this is a great shame; state schools ought to offer it.

I really like the concept of Montessori, but sadly I don't think that straight Montessori will prepare students for living in the current world. Honestly, we're a world of schedules. I'm feeling so stifled right now because I have to be at work at a specified time and leave at a specified time. I'm used to college where I have maybe 15-25 hours each week that are fixed, and the rest of the time I can do my work whenever I want. Even though I'm easily working 60+ hour weeks in college (I have a part time job and a fairly challenging major), I prefer it to the 40 hour a week rigidity I'm experiencing now. I grew up in a standard public school, so I can only imagine what people who learned in Montessori must feel when entering the workforce.

But one thing about Montessori I really like is the focus on having multiple ages in the classroom, particularly when small and not much direct instruction is given. If it starts that way, then the road is paved for students to continue being in mixed age classes - hopefully based on topic mastery.

Responding to both these posts.

I did not like how predictable my HS education was, and I had one of the more interesting schedules then. I do like the freedom that the bizarre schedules of college give and have exactly zero desire to work on "real world" time. If we spoil more people with flexible schedules, maybe we will force them to realize that they can make their own living through innovation instead of working on someone else's terms.

At my HS, when I was there, they offered French, Spanish, and Latin. The vast majority of students took Spanish, with Latin far more popular than French. I've heard that they used to offer German, Japanese, Russian (before the only HS-level Russian teacher died), and possibly Greek before budget cuts neutered the language department.

[MadParrot]

Where I live (queensland, Australia), maths and english are compulsary through high school (as they should be), but maths splits up in the senior years (grade 11+12).

English however is one subject for everybody* - and I wonder if a system like that would work well for senior English? It might get a bit of a 'fluffy' reputation when the sterotypical-engineer-types are asked to analyse poetrey, and perhaps then they're less likely to try. Could they learn better communication at the more practical level? (like a basic maths ).
Junior Years : Every does basic english, writes reports, reads books, gives speaches, analyses poems.
Senior Years :
* Literature English: Literature, Poetry, movies reviews, creative writing. - Speeches, essays and reports on hardcore english analysis.
* Applied English: Research information, technical reports, write instructional text. - Speeches, reports on 'practical' non-fiction topics.

The same basic skills would be covered (public speaking, formal writing, persuasive writing, comprehension), but in a way that might seem more useful for the (senior) student.
(And for bonus points, organisase a debate between both courses about the assignent of some imaginary government funds for science education or the arts )

[Dr. Diaphanous]

PE should have the emphasis taken away from sport. It should be there to bring students to a minimum standard of fitness - sport training should be an elective. Weightlifting and circuit training perhaps twice a week, with minimum standards that can be tested out of.

Should that be tested just like any other subject, but a physical test instead of paper?
e.g run around this field; you get an A if you take 6 minutes, B for 7 minutes ...
and lift this barbell, A grade for 40 kg, B for 35 ...

It sounds slightly wrong, but I'm not sure why.

[Lucrece]

Because some people are simply better at physical tasks due to size advantages, or upbringing. Some people just run/play soccer/have better hand to eye coordination than others, and people will resent being graded on likely tasks that they might not be inclined to be good at.

Then again, that's the current case with intelligence. Some people are just better and we like to pretend that everybody can be more or less equal in performance if enough work is put into it. You can look at some people perform a task and just know that you won't manage what they do, because there's such a thing as being naturally good in tasks like speech and charisma and mathematical aptitude and memory for subjects like history.

I guess an important skill in life is learning to overcome or mitigate your shortcomings, whether you are to be blamed for those shortcomings or not.

[Nem]

Topics to be taught in education. Well; reading, writing, basic arithmetic. Beyond that, I don't think any topic should be mandatory - though all topics should, ideally, have teachers available.

Ideally you'd run most of school through a clubs' system that hooked onto activities that people would be likely to do in jobs. Have faculty overseers for clubs that knew who to get in to teach particular skills, rather than bothering teaching everyone everything, regardless of their interests or skills, in a sort of academic shotgun.

Teach skills, not subjects, is, I guess, the idea here.

What the author says the text says is what the text says. I can say Harry and Draco were just actually bickering closet cases in Harry Potter, and that Snape was just sexually frustrated, but if J.K. Rowling says otherwise, it's her authorship and vision that stands as true. How can you even say that the author's explanation of his creation is just his "opinion"? Will I suddenly have license to call whatever you post on Facebook, blog entries, and autobiographical notes as just "opinion", that I have just as valuable a claim to interpreting what your text is about as you -- the guy whom the text wouldn't exist without -- do?

Yes, you do. I can clarify what I was trying to say - what I meant by the text - but at the end of the day words don't just say what a person wants them to mean. If what I say convinces everyone on my friends list that I support something I don't, that just means I've expressed myself poorly - not that my words suddenly said something else. Words and devices hook on to experiences and examples in life, and that's what drives their meaning - not what someone unilaterally decides to say their meaning is.

We're using culturally defined standards, that everyone has a hand in creating, in an attempt to communicate our meaning. And, given that our knowledge of these standards varies with our own experiences, sometimes the attempt fails. Sometimes what we say isn't what we mean. And even on the, rare, occasions where we've said precisely what we mean, what people understand is not always what we said.

Some people are just bad communicators.

A writer can, of course, say in an interview or a commentary that a character in a book has whatever properties they like. But that does not make that part of the story, or part of what the story says. It just makes it part of what the writer has said - which may or may not get integrated into the meaning that the character has for any particular person.

If the author writes 'war' and means 'peace,' then the author needs to buy a dictionary. Regardless of how much the author protests to the contrary, what the text said was war. And it's no different with larger, more ambiguous passages of text. The number of words does not change the situation, it just introduces more possibilities for error.

Now, that said, there's a clear difference between the statements:

'I did not like the Character of Iago,'
'Iago represents unlikeable character traits,' and,
'Iago was not written to be a likeable character.'

One is a statement about the reader's response to Iago, one is a statement about how the way Iago is portrayed would be responded to in our society, and the other is a statement about the author's intent. Only the last one does the author really have any special knowledge of that would make their word of any more worth than anyone else's.

If J.K. Rowling decides to say that Snape wasn't just sexually frustrated. And I say that he is. Well, there's a very good chance we're just talking about two different things. There isn't actually a Snape that we're both talking about. Characters aren't real. They're just things we imagine in our heads when we read. And pretence to the contrary is just semantic convenience.

I can say that I imagine Snape as sexually frustrated, and she could say that she tried to write Snape not to be sexually frustrated - but the only argument we'd be likely to have where we'd both be talking about the same thing would be if we were both talking about how what she wrote was perceived by wider society, and in that conversation the author does not enjoy a privileged position.

[Ormurinn]

We don't educate the young merely so they can be productive workers and add to our GDP or build us useful things. We also seek to instill in them abilities to deal with the world, and pass on our way of dealing with the world. We as a society find art valuable, so we pass on that appreciation of art, and we pass on the abilities needed to understand and appreciate it. I'd also like our engineers and botanists to understand The Canterbury Tales and Their Eyes Were Watching God.

The primary purpose of education should be to ensure that the young can do useful things. If an individual wants to expose themselves to culture then good for them, but it's unfair to saddle the taxpayer with the bill for their hobbies.

And a pet peeve - if you're going to make people study poetry, give them some Kipling and Tennyson - get them to read The Wanderer or Dickens. Things that are really culturally relevant, not postmodern nihilistic third-wave feminist drivel. Just ban Carol-ann Duffy

Uggghhh. Setting aside my hatred of Kipling and Dickens, I'll take this on.

Poetry is large, it contains multitudes (c wut i did thar?). I'll first note that all your listed examples are English, white, and men. (Assuming, reasonably, that The Wanderer was told by men.) If all your taught is "classic" poetry, then you're woefully limited. It will only reinforce the idea of poetry people have, that of it being rhyming, in certain meters, and little odes to love or nature or some great battle. Teach them e.e. cummings so they understand that poetry has no boundaries. Teach them William Carlos Williams to teach them how meter and verse can be used, played with, and broken appropriately to great and beautiful effect. Teach them Sylvia Plath (because she's awesome and) so they understand that poetry can be about despair, rage, and mental illness. Teach them Amiri Baraka so that they know how poetry can express things far beyond what classical poetry did.

Of course teach them Tennyson and Shakespearean sonnets as well, but if we only ever taught the classics, then we would have all just learnt Homer and Virgil. T.S. Eliot broke drastically from poetry traditions of his day, and is now considered a classic in his own right. (RoberII is right, The Waste Land should be a final exam.)

We're approaching this subject from different angles. I think if you're going to force kids to learn poetry, they should learn things that are culturally relevant, give some knowledge of their history, or teach life lessons. Every child should read If for instance - it's consistently voted the nation's favourite poem, and people are garuanteed to come across it in some form or another - and it has an important and uplifting message. Beowulf,The Wanderer, and Deor are all important historically and culturally, and a comparison of the old and modern texts would provide an important lesson in where thye language they speak came from. Kipling, Tennyson and Dickens are the bedrock of British literary culture - things they wrote were relevant a hundred years ago, still are today, and will be long after modern poetry is forgotten. I don't see why them being White and English (as the majority of people writing poetry in english have been historically) and male is a mark against them.

I've got no problem with modern poetry being taught as a lesson - for the people who elect to study it. The English GCSE lessons I was forced into were full of uninspiring navel-gazing prose and a constant emphasis on every culture other than the English one that produced the language I was supposedly studying, but if thats the choice of some students they're welcome to it. In compulsory English I still stand by the position that students should learn a small selection of historically significant poems, relevant to their own culture.

PE should have the emphasis taken away from sport. It should be there to bring students to a minimum standard of fitness - sport training should be an elective. Weightlifting and circuit training perhaps twice a week, with minimum standards that can be tested out of.

Should that be tested just like any other subject, but a physical test instead of paper?
e.g run around this field; you get an A if you take 6 minutes, B for 7 minutes ...
and lift this barbell, A grade for 40 kg, B for 35 ...

It sounds slightly wrong, but I'm not sure why.

Nope, thats right. Probably different standards for boys and girls, and an exemption for the disabled but thats about it. And have it be pass/fail rather than graded. High-achieving students have the option to take sport electives after all. Theres a big problem with physical fitness in England, and more P.E lessons is presented as the answer. Thats a fallacy in my opinion, because the kids who don't want to be active are no more active in P.E lessons. I had to put up with my fair share of gormless fielders and glassy-eyed wingers. Make P.E about children obtaining a minimum physical standard and you can maintain their health more effeciently and in less time - and as a plus, the police, army and fire service might be able to return to their old physical standards while maintaining the same recruitment levels.

[maydayp]

I think I definitely said this in my original post, but I hate that PE is graded. In my PE we had skill testing, like you had to be able to serve a volley ball into the right area, or do a lay up and get the ball through the hoop (basket ball). and things like that. When all it should have been about is how much effort I putting in, how good I was at being a team player, and that's all.

I wrote an essay on the problems I have with PE in gr.12, I really hope it did something to improve how it's taught at my old school.

[omgryebread]

We don't educate the young merely so they can be productive workers and add to our GDP or build us useful things. We also seek to instill in them abilities to deal with the world, and pass on our way of dealing with the world. We as a society find art valuable, so we pass on that appreciation of art, and we pass on the abilities needed to understand and appreciate it. I'd also like our engineers and botanists to understand The Canterbury Tales and Their Eyes Were Watching God.

The primary purpose of education should be to ensure that the young can do useful things. If an individual wants to expose themselves to culture then good for them, but it's unfair to saddle the taxpayer with the bill for their hobbies.

No, the primary purpose of education should be to ensure that the young can operate in society. Education is when we instill our culture and the appreciation of it. Even when you're teaching "useful things" you're instilling that culture. You're saying "it's important to think logically, to be able to calculate things yourself, to understand the water cycle, to know physics."

We're approaching this subject from different angles. I think if you're going to force kids to learn poetry, they should learn things that are culturally relevant, give some knowledge of their history, or teach life lessons. Every child should read If for instance - it's consistently voted the nation's favourite poem, and people are garuanteed to come across it in some form or another - and it has an important and uplifting message. Beowulf,The Wanderer, and Deor are all important historically and culturally, and a comparison of the old and modern texts would provide an important lesson in where thye language they speak came from. Kipling, Tennyson and Dickens are the bedrock of British literary culture - things they wrote were relevant a hundred years ago, still are today, and will be long after modern poetry is forgotten. I don't see why them being White and English (as the majority of people writing poetry in english have been historically) and male is a mark against them.

Firstly, how are you saying modern poetry will be forgotten. You realize that people in Dickens's time were probably saying that Shakespeare will be remembered long after Dickens was forgotten, right? (I wish.) Hell, important critics like Thomas Rymer didn't like Shakespeare at the time. The fact that you've listed poets important to English culture without listing T.S. Eliot shows how impossible this distinction is to make. Again, there's a logical extreme to your position that everyone in Europe should only be reading Homer and Virgil. Of course you're not advocating that, but I don't see where you can reasonably draw the distinction.

Also worth noting is that the view of education as mono-cultural is on it's way out. Most educators will acknowledge the importance of teaching a second language, and world history. In a world where our young will inevitably be exposed to those from other cultures, isn't it important for them to have at least a basic understanding of such? Raising patriotic little nationalists is all well and good for another era, but if the next generation appreciates the great tradition of Arabic poetry, so much the better for our world. I hope that a fair number of people in the diplomatic corps for western countries has a passable understanding of the works of Han Yu.

I've got no problem with modern poetry being taught as a lesson - for the people who elect to study it. The English GCSE lessons I was forced into were full of uninspiring navel-gazing prose and a constant emphasis on every culture other than the English one that produced the language I was supposedly studying, but if thats the choice of some students they're welcome to it. In compulsory English I still stand by the position that students should learn a small selection of historically significant poems, relevant to their own culture.

Why teach modern science, but not modern poetry? I'll use my knowledge of plant anatomy even less in the future than my knowledge of William Carlos Williams.

Finally, to pick out something from above in particular.

I don't see why them being White and English (as the majority of people writing poetry in english have been historically) and male is a mark against them.

Because "culturally relevant" has been code word for White and Male for a long time. Teaching them exclusively in school is a strong way to keep them as the only culturally relevant poets. Firstly, it's not true. You're ignoring important poets like Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Bronte sisters (fun exercise. Ask people to name the Bronte siblings, and the one they're least likely to know is Branwell. Followed by Anne.) It means that even if they aren't culturally relevant (they are) they never will be. It also means your reinforcing to students that important things are the things done by White Men. I'll note that I didn't mention any nonwhite English poets. That's because I don't know of any, which is probably indicative of the problem.

Nope, thats right. Probably different standards for boys and girls, and an exemption for the disabled but thats about it. And have it be pass/fail rather than graded. High-achieving students have the option to take sport electives after all. Theres a big problem with physical fitness in England, and more P.E lessons is presented as the answer. Thats a fallacy in my opinion, because the kids who don't want to be active are no more active in P.E lessons. I had to put up with my fair share of gormless fielders and glassy-eyed wingers. Make P.E about children obtaining a minimum physical standard and you can maintain their health more effeciently and in less time - and as a plus, the police, army and fire service might be able to return to their old physical standards while maintaining the same recruitment levels.

If you want to make people participate in P.E., you could force them to by testing. All you're going to do is create a resentment of exercise that will last. Running around and lifting weights is boring as fuck. Sports are not. Again, school is not just about shaping students into appropriate automatons to perform their career, it's about instilling a love of learning, and culture, and yeah, physical activity.

Grading in P.E. (or even pass fail) is also really hard to do. I don't have a physical disability, but at 4'11" and 90 pounds, I would have had a lot harder a time meeting minimums for running or weight lifting than the average girl. School is also about colleges, colleges don't care about P.E., so schools aren't going to include it in the GPA, so it won't matter too much when students blow it off and don't bother to pass. In other words, even setting aside the difficulty, it's not going to fix the problem.

[Ormurinn]

I think I definitely said this in my original post, but I hate that PE is graded. In my PE we had skill testing, like you had to be able to serve a volley ball into the right area, or do a lay up and get the ball through the hoop (basket ball). and things like that. When all it should have been about is how much effort I putting in, how good I was at being a team player, and that's all.

I wrote an essay on the problems I have with PE in gr.12, I really hope it did something to improve how it's taught at my old school.

Should you be graded in maths, not on your ability to find solutions, but on how hard you tried?

[Dr. Diaphanous]

Intellectual and athletic attainment are both the result of the amount of practice you get (and the quality of teaching) building on an innate ability level.
What's the fundamental difference between

Naturally unathletic body vs. Naturally low intelligence
Poor hand-eye coordination vs. Poor at calculating the gradient of a graph
Poor stamina vs. Poor understanding of French grammar?

(That's not a rhetorical question: what is the difference?)

[maydayp]

I think I definitely said this in my original post, but I hate that PE is graded. In my PE we had skill testing, like you had to be able to serve a volley ball into the right area, or do a lay up and get the ball through the hoop (basket ball). and things like that. When all it should have been about is how much effort I putting in, how good I was at being a team player, and that's all.

I wrote an essay on the problems I have with PE in gr.12, I really hope it did something to improve how it's taught at my old school.

Should you be graded in maths, not on your ability to find solutions, but on how hard you tried?

in math I have a calculator. I have notes, I have (out side of tests) all day to complete my assignment. And in the math classes I took I got points for attempting the work.
also there is a reason to learn math, for most people, they will use at least the basics, usually more. Most of the population do not need to be able to do a lay up so accurately they get the ball through the hoop every time. in math you also have the option to take a level of math (at least where I live) that determines how hard it is. PE didn't.
And truthfully, math and PE are completely different things. PE is about team work, getting exercise, and effort. Yeah it`s about learning how to play sports, but not everyone has that natural ability to aim a ball to an exact spot. And you can't really teach it either. Not like you can Math.
If all that were getting measured was how you improved or maintained your physical fitness level, your ability to express your knowledge of specific exercises (verbally or physically), team work, and effort, I'd be fine with it being graded. but when you tell some one that not only do they need to be able to do a lay up, they will get 0 if they don't make a basket, then it's not fair. you aren't testing them on their ability to do the lay up, you are testing their ability to get the ball in the hoop. And for something people might not regularly play, not fair.
Math, well you are constantly building on you knowledge of math through the class, eventually you are split into levels based on your ability to do the math. You have a helper(calculator), you have notes, and you deal with it for 3+ months a year rather then 1-3 weeks a year. If nothing else you can cheat. I feel that it`s easier to get help with, since you can go online, or ask some one else for help. not so easy to get help for sports (IMOP), some one online can`t tell you what you are doing wrong, nor can some one via phone.
also for myself there are some key things.
I have poor hand eye coordination. My glasses actually make it worse (but I can't see well without them, so its a rock and a hard spot situation) because it basically moves things by making them smaller. I had untreated asthma, so I couldn't keep up with the most athletic kids in my class (I tried though.). I and other people in my class have poor arm strength and had a hard time getting the ball to the hoop, though we could preform everything else perfectly.
math, well actually, I can't learn math easily either. I have to be in the class, I can't go online or phone some one for help (I've tried). I'm still surprised I passed. But I did the work tried to follow the instructions, and some times got the right answer. But that's what math is about.
and actually yeah, I think you should be graded by effort as well as the right answer for math, no only if you get the right answer crap I've had before or anything. But then again I also think the teacher should see it so they can hopefully spot where the kid is stuck and get them help, before it gets too far. Otherwise they should just drop the requirement of showing work.

[Ormurinn]

Firstly, how are you saying modern poetry will be forgotten. You realize that people in Dickens's time were probably saying that Shakespeare will be remembered long after Dickens was forgotten, right? (I wish.) Hell, important critics like Thomas Rymer didn't like Shakespeare at the time. The fact that you've listed poets important to English culture without listing T.S. Eliot shows how impossible this distinction is to make. Again, there's a logical extreme to your position that everyone in Europe should only be reading Homer and Virgil. Of course you're not advocating that, but I don't see where you can reasonably draw the distinction.

I've obviously not exhaustively listed every poem that should be taught, but lets, for example, take a look at the poems I had to know to pass my GCSE

Spoiler:

Edward Kamau Brathwaite: Limbo
Tatamkhulu Afrika: Nothing's Changed
Grace Nichols: Island Man
Imtiaz Dharker: Blessing
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Two Scavengers in a Truck
Nissim Ezekiel: Night of the Scorpion
Chinua Achebe: Vultures
Denise Levertov: What Were They Like?
Sujata Bhatt: from Search For My Tongue
Tom Leonard: from Unrelated Incidents
John Agard: Half-Caste
Derek Walcott: Love After Love
Imtiaz Dharker: This Room
Niyi Osundare: Not My Business
Moniza Alvi: Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan
Grace Nichols: Hurricane Hits England
Storm on the Island
Perch
Blackberry-Picking
Death of a Naturalist
Digging
Mid-Term Break
Follower
At a Potato Digging
Catrin
Baby-sitting
Mali
A Difficult Birth, Easter 1998
The Field Mouse
October
On The Train
Cold Knap Lake
Havisham
Elvis's Twin Sister
Anne Hathaway
Salome
Before You Were Mine
We Remember Your Childhood Well
Education for Leisure
Stealing
from Book of Matches, “Mother, any distance greater than a single span”
from Book of Matches, “My father thought it...”
Homecoming
November
Kid
from Book of Matches, “Those bastards in their mansions”
from Book of Matches, “I've made out a will; I'm leaving myself”
Hitcher
Ben Jonson: On my first Sonne
William Butler Yeats: The Song of the Old Mother
William Wordsworth: The Affliction of Margaret
William Blake: The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found
Chidiock Tichborne: Tichborne's Elegy
Thomas Hardy: The Man He Killed
Walt Whitman: Patrolling Barnegat
William Shakespeare: Sonnet 130 - “My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun”
Robert Browning: My Last Duchess
Robert Browning: The Laboratory
Alfred Tennyson: Ulysses
Oliver Goldsmith: The Village Schoolmaster
Alfred Tennyson: The Eagle
Gerard Manley Hopkins: Inversnaid
John Clare: Sonnet - “I love to see the summer...”

First, note the massive preponderance of dross. No, seriously, that many poems, and they don't have room for Charge of the Light Brigadeor If. But we have room for Limbo? Thats ridiculous, I hope you'd agree. Theres a whole module of poetry devoted to appreciation of other cultures, and not a crumb given over to the English. No poetry from the ancient times of our country, no time given to Keats or yes, T.S Elliot (It does at least have a pre-1914 segment that was given a footnote in the exam - and reading those poems was much more rewarding. We never studied them in class, because the majority of marks came from the "Poetry from other cultures" Module). That is a list that's been put together without any consideration of the cultural worth of it's constituent parts - and I'm not aware of any other GCSE syllabuses being significantly better.

Also worth noting is that the view of education as mono-cultural is on it's way out. Most educators will acknowledge the importance of teaching a second language, and world history. In a world where our young will inevitably be exposed to those from other cultures, isn't it important for them to have at least a basic understanding of such? Raising patriotic little nationalists is all well and good for another era, but if the next generation appreciates the great tradition of Arabic poetry, so much the better for our world. I hope that a fair number of people in the diplomatic corps for western countries has a passable understanding of the works of Han Yu.

I'm certainly not against teaching foreign languages (Though they definately shouldn't be compulsory) Or even foreign poetry (a specialist subject, of course). When you're talking about the bare minimum level of cultural understanding though, forgive me for believing that in English lessons, children should learn English culture. Why is it the better that we should allow our culture to be erased? Your dig at "Patriotic little Nationalists" is cute - but I'd rather a nation be bound by shared bonds of culture and kinship than atomised, without heritage, unbonded to their folc.

Why teach modern science, but not modern poetry? I'll use my knowledge of plant anatomy even less in the future than my knowledge of William Carlos Williams.

Because modern science is better than ancient science. The reverse is true for poetry.

Because "culturally relevant" has been code word for White and Male for a long time. Teaching them exclusively in school is a strong way to keep them as the only culturally relevant poets. Firstly, it's not true. You're ignoring important poets like Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Bronte sisters (fun exercise. Ask people to name the Bronte siblings, and the one they're least likely to know is Branwell. Followed by Anne.) It means that even if they aren't culturally relevant (they are) they never will be. It also means your reinforcing to students that important things are the things done by White Men. I'll note that I didn't mention any nonwhite English poets. That's because I don't know of any, which is probably indicative of the problem.

Again, I didn't make an exhaustive list of culturally relavant English poetry, and there would certainly be women poets on there. That you don't know of any nonwhite English poets isn't indicative of a problem, It's indicative of the fact that the vast, vast majority of English people throughout history, and thus English poets, have been white.

If you want to make people participate in P.E., you could force them to by testing. All you're going to do is create a resentment of exercise that will last. Running around and lifting weights is boring as fuck. Sports are not. Again, school is not just about shaping students into appropriate automatons to perform their career, it's about instilling a love of learning, and culture, and yeah, physical activity.

Grading in P.E. (or even pass fail) is also really hard to do. I don't have a physical disability, but at 4'11" and 90 pounds, I would have had a lot harder a time meeting minimums for running or weight lifting than the average girl. School is also about colleges, colleges don't care about P.E., so schools aren't going to include it in the GPA, so it won't matter too much when students blow it off and don't bother to pass. In other words, even setting aside the difficulty, it's not going to fix the problem.

Im advocating Physical training so as to minimise the time that children need to spend in P.E while simultaneously maintaining their health. If you found sport fun, you could take it as an elective. The ability to test out when you reach a minimum standard makes it even easier for students to get it out of the way and ge on with their lives.

The second half of your argument makes just as much sense if you're talking about literacy, watch:

Grading in P.E. English (or even pass fail) is also really hard to do. I don't have a physical developmental disability, but at 4'11" and 90 pounds, Due to Dyslexia I would have had a lot harder a time meeting minimums for running or weight lifting literacy standards than the average girl.

And if anything, Physical wellbeing is more important than the ability to read well.

As an aside, I know of a guy who got in to a reputable University to study Biology based on his grade in A-Level P.E, and lets not even go into athletic scolarships

[RoberII]

English is not a language tied to any particular culture - there's the issue of colonization for one, and of English as a lingua franca for another.

And to say that modern poetry is worse than old poetry is absurd. There is nothing more pathetic than the Romantics fawning over flowers and nightingales and so on.

[Zamfir]

English is not a language tied to any particular culture - there's the issue of colonization for one, and of English as a lingua franca for another.

That sounds slightly off to me. If you live in a particular part of the English-speaking world, then surely for you English has special ties to a particular culture (or cultures), namely the ones near you. That's the main reason why you are studying the language, not the other people elsewhere who have their own equally valid ties to the language. For me, the Dutch language is tied to the country, history, cultures around me in the Netherlands. If Brazilians spoke Dutch as well, the first tie for me would still be to the Netherlands, with Brazil as a secondary interest.

There's a also a kind of global English-speaking culture, but that's heavily tied to the US by sheer numbers alone, with more Brits in the historic sections. It might perhaps become a truly untied global culture in a few centuries, but I personally don't think it's anywhere near that point.

[KestrelLowing]

The PE grading thing is really difficult for me because I HATED PE throughout K-12 while I was pretty decent at most academic things.

I just always felt that I was so far below everyone else when it came to PE that I could never catch up. I wasn't even overweight or particularly out of shape. It is really just that my gross motor skills are horrible. Thankfully all we were graded on in PE was that we showed up, dressed, and tried, although we did have to take tests to see if we had improved.

But the main reason I believe PE shouldn't be graded on ability is that there is another outlet for being athletic - sports. While I know many recent cutbacks have caused many people to not be able to afford sports, there is another place for skills to be honed and celebrated.

Also, in the grand scheme of things, how many people need PE in their day-to-day lives? Sure, we all need to remain fit, but I do nothing I learned in school to keep fit. Instead I walk, hike, rock climb, swim occasionally, kayak/canoe, etc. We learned nothing about these in school (understandably). Instead we learned all the team sports - something I hated because I was always letting down my team, and I never had the opportunity to just work on getting better myself. I was always just picked last. There are also no 'special needs' PE classes. I'm sure I would have qualified for them if they existed!

However, the average person will use basic math and language skills all the time. Sure, when you get into more advanced things, whether they will be used is debatable, but everyone needs to balance a checkbook, be able to calculate tax, communicate what they need to their boss, have a basic understanding of the government, etc. to live their lives in any sort of decent way.

[Ormurinn]

The PE grading thing is really difficult for me because I HATED PE throughout K-12 while I was pretty decent at most academic things.

I just always felt that I was so far below everyone else when it came to PE that I could never catch up. I wasn't even overweight or particularly out of shape. It is really just that my gross motor skills are horrible. Thankfully all we were graded on in PE was that we showed up, dressed, and tried, although we did have to take tests to see if we had improved.

But the main reason I believe PE shouldn't be graded on ability is that there is another outlet for being athletic - sports. While I know many recent cutbacks have caused many people to not be able to afford sports, there is another place for skills to be honed and celebrated.

I always had similar feelings with regards to my capabilities in maths. I understand that a lot of people (and this forum seems to be overrepresented in this category) really hated P.E - but I wonder how many of them started working out, or played sport in their spare time? I filled whole notebooks with derivations and practiced manipulating polynomials in my free time, and now I'm pretty close to getting a decent A-level in maths, and hopefully going on into a science-based career.

Also, in the grand scheme of things, how many people need PE in their day-to-day lives? Sure, we all need to remain fit, but I do nothing I learned in school to keep fit. Instead I walk, hike, rock climb, swim occasionally, kayak/canoe, etc. We learned nothing about these in school (understandably). Instead we learned all the team sports - something I hated because I was always letting down my team, and I never had the opportunity to just work on getting better myself. I was always just picked last. There are also no 'special needs' PE classes. I'm sure I would have qualified for them if they existed!

However, the average person will use basic math and language skills all the time. Sure, when you get into more advanced things, whether they will be used is debatable, but everyone needs to balance a checkbook, be able to calculate tax, communicate what they need to their boss, have a basic understanding of the government, etc. to live their lives in any sort of decent way.

“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.”

A good section of people will get by in their lives using nothing more than primary-level maths and english skills. Most of the adults I've grown up with fall into this category - skilled tradesmen, factory fitters, and other blue collar workers. Thats not to denigrate their intelligence at all - but their formal education in maths and language far exceeded what is actually necessary in their daily lives.

At GCSE in the U.K (compulsory), you were tasked with solving quadratics, algebra and logarithms. I'm very glad for my education in these subjects, but its an education most people dont even remember after leaving school, and that is utterly useless to them.Most people use the physicality that could well be developed in P.T training literally every minute of every day. People with more lean body mass lead healthier lives, and you always want strong men in a crisis. Most blue-collar workers will use physical strength daily, few will ever use any more mathematics than basic arithmetic.

We have an obesity crisis in the U.K currently; http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/2 ... ager-wales
so the last thing we need to be doing is reducing the emphasis placed on physical ability.

We expect our children to be literate and numerate. Expecting a minimum standard of physical fitness also isn't unreasonable

[KestrelLowing]

....

Oh, I wasn't saying we should take out PE, I'm just not sure about the grading.

And, at least for me, the problem was more that the things they taught in PE were not something that you could just go off by yourself and practice. Either you didn't have the equipment, or someone to do things with. For example, I could have never practiced weight training as they taught it in school because I didn't have any of those machines. Now, perhaps this means that weight training instead should focus on things you can do at home, but I think that's a difference to many academics - typically you're given most everything you need to do math or science at home (text books, notes, etc.)

What I wish could happen is to drastically expand PE in public schools. I currently go to college where 6 half-semester classes of PE are required. But, the nice thing is that they're really varied. You can do the typical team sports, but there's also Pilates, swimming, bowling, archery, Aikido, racquetball, rifle, skating, social dance, yoga, outdoor adventures (hiking, canoeing, rock climbing, etc), skiing, etc. Personally, I took bowling, pilates, swimming, social dance, outdoor adventures, and water aerobics and I actually enjoyed most of them and due to them, I am still pursuing "outdoor adventures", swimming, and pilates. I also felt that thought those classes, I actually improved from beginning to end - something that didn't happen in K-12 PE. I realize that most of this is completely not possible, but it's nice to dream.

[Ormurinn]

Oh, I wasn't saying we should take out PE, I'm just not sure about the grading.

And, at least for me, the problem was more that the things they taught in PE were not something that you could just go off by yourself and practice. Either you didn't have the equipment, or someone to do things with. For example, I could have never practiced weight training as they taught it in school because I didn't have any of those machines. Now, perhaps this means that weight training instead should focus on things you can do at home, but I think that's a difference to many academics - typically you're given most everything you need to do math or science at home (text books, notes, etc.)

Yeah, we need to change P.E. Thats what I was advocating - change it to P.T - you can practice push ups, chin ups and sprints at home to make the grade if you need to - and weight training equipment is very cheap - I got mine from a skip. Everyone in the country, without exception, should know how to squat, deadlift and press.

I don't understand your opposition, I'm talking about making it easier for the majority of people to actually get out of compulsory P.E early if they want to, and minimising the time spent in P.E by focusing it on physical fitness, not sports.

What I wish could happen is to drastically expand PE in public schools. I currently go to college where 6 half-semester classes of PE are required. But, the nice thing is that they're really varied. You can do the typical team sports, but there's also Pilates, swimming, bowling, archery, Aikido, racquetball, rifle, skating, social dance, yoga, outdoor adventures (hiking, canoeing, rock climbing, etc), skiing, etc. Personally, I took bowling, pilates, swimming, social dance, outdoor adventures, and water aerobics and I actually enjoyed most of them and due to them, I am still pursuing "outdoor adventures", swimming, and pilates. I also felt that thought those classes, I actually improved from beginning to end - something that didn't happen in K-12 PE. I realize that most of this is completely not possible, but it's nice to dream.

... And here we diverge. Those are all splendid activities, and I'm really glad you enjoyed them. But they should be done out of your own pocket - not placed as a burden on the taxpayer. P.T pays for itself by lessening the number of fitness-related illnesses, while I doubt outdoor adventures has much demonstrable benefit to society (Its benefits to you, i'm sure, are innumerable.)

[KestrelLowing]

What I wish could happen is to drastically expand PE in public schools. I currently go to college where 6 half-semester classes of PE are required. But, the nice thing is that they're really varied. You can do the typical team sports, but there's also Pilates, swimming, bowling, archery, Aikido, racquetball, rifle, skating, social dance, yoga, outdoor adventures (hiking, canoeing, rock climbing, etc), skiing, etc. Personally, I took bowling, pilates, swimming, social dance, outdoor adventures, and water aerobics and I actually enjoyed most of them and due to them, I am still pursuing "outdoor adventures", swimming, and pilates. I also felt that thought those classes, I actually improved from beginning to end - something that didn't happen in K-12 PE. I realize that most of this is completely not possible, but it's nice to dream.

... And here we diverge. Those are all splendid activities, and I'm really glad you enjoyed them. But they should be done out of your own pocket - not placed as a burden on the taxpayer. P.T pays for itself by lessening the number of fitness-related illnesses, while I doubt outdoor adventures has much demonstrable benefit to society (Its benefits to you, i'm sure, are innumerable.)

Oh yeah, I know it would never work as they're waaaay to expensive, but like I said, I can dream (I think the diverse things would help people learn what things are actually enjoyable to them and that they'd be more likely to continue doing those activities and therefore have a better fitness level thoughout their lives.)

And sorry, I didn't realize you were advocating for more of a PT type thing - missed that somewhere

[Ormurinn]

Oh yeah, I know it would never work as they're waaaay to expensive, but like I said, I can dream (I think the diverse things would help people learn what things are actually enjoyable to them and that they'd be more likely to continue doing those activities and therefore have a better fitness level thoughout their lives.)

And sorry, I didn't realize you were advocating for more of a PT type thing - missed that somewhere

I was mulling over the expense argument, particularly with regards to Outdoor activities, and it got me thinking that the main barrier to a lot of people could be that tresspass laws keep them off the land. The U.K is fortunate enough to have a lot of publically-owned parks, but they're a long way away from most people. The majority of the land around where I live is owned by a hereditary land baron, and lies fallow. They're just empty fields he uses to speculate on land prices. If that space was open to the public, maybe there'd be more outdoor activities going on? I know landowners are obliged to have public footpaths in certain situations - but from my own experience, this isn't well enforced.

Thats completelyt off topic wrt education, as I say, just a thought I had.

[Zamfir]

I was mulling over the expense argument, particularly with regards to Outdoor activities, and it got me thinking that the main barrier to a lot of people could be that tresspass laws keep them off the land.

This might be a bit of an illusion, because the lack of crowds and development makes land look extra attractive, if it's near a population centre. But once people enter the land in numbers, it quickly loses much charm. Especially if no one pays for cleaning and maintenance.

By historic standards, even our more rural towns are large and dense population centres, often surrounded by miles of half-built-up lands. It's logistically very difficult to provide uncrowded outdoor land within a short distance of most people.

Urban life comes with relatively little natural exercise, and schools reflect that. I guess pushups or weights training is one to deal with it, indoor activities that require very little space. It's interesting how many activities on Kestrel's list require either a specially designed space in an urban environment, or leaving the urban zone.

[Ixtellor]

P.E. is also an opportunity to learn social skills, competition, and team work.

While some people might not value competition, it is a way of life in the USA as well as the animal world. You will be competing with other humans for limited resources.

[KestrelLowing]

P.E. is also an opportunity to learn social skills, competition, and team work.

While some people might not value competition, it is a way of life in the USA as well as the animal world. You will be competing with other humans for limited resources.

Yes, but there are other ways of learning all of those if it wasn't covered in PE. I, for one, couldn't have cared less about the competition in sports - and even thought that people who did were stupid, but you were going down if you thought you could best me in Lego Robotics or reading speed! So I think that learning those crucial skills of teamwork and competition, as well as social skills only works if the students are at least semi-interested in the subject. So for some, it will be fantastic to learn all this stuff in PE, for some, they won't be able to.

[Ormurinn]

P.E. is also an opportunity to learn social skills, competition, and team work.

While some people might not value competition, it is a way of life in the USA as well as the animal world. You will be competing with other humans for limited resources.

Yes, but there are other ways of learning all of those if it wasn't covered in PE. I, for one, couldn't have cared less about the competition in sports - and even thought that people who did were stupid, but you were going down if you thought you could best me in Lego Robotics or reading speed! So I think that learning those crucial skills of teamwork and competition, as well as social skills only works if the students are at least semi-interested in the subject. So for some, it will be fantastic to learn all this stuff in PE, for some, they won't be able to.

You're not competing against other student's directly in most subjects though. Usually the only way to do so is to tell everyone else your grades to show off. Which makes you a bit of a twat.

[cjmcjmcjmcjm]

I remember getting the required HS gym classes out of the way by doing them over the summer and never thinking of physical activity again (OK, moving vibraphones to your practice site did count, but still…). There was lots of awful warm-ups and such. Luckily, for the second semester I had to take it, I'd been in band long enough for the percussive masochism to set in, so I didn't bitch about it as much as the other students. Either way, it seemed callisthenic warm-ups followed by team sports wasn't an effective way to convince non-athletic students to keep active. I'm also a firm believer in exempting students involved in athletics from the general PE classes.

[KestrelLowing]

You're not competing against other student's directly in most subjects though. Usually the only way to do so is to tell everyone else your grades to show off. Which makes you a bit of a twat.

Oh, completely true. Although that does bring up one of those other things that just stick a thorn in the side. Why is it ok to show off your athletic abilities and be the star player, but not ok to show of your academic abilities? Although that's off topic For me, it was an extracurricular (FIRST LEGO League) that allowed me to do that.

[Zamfir]

off topic answer:

Spoiler:

Boasting about your athletics is also unpleasant social behaviour, but with more stamina in bed to compensate.

[Puppyclaws]

Maybe my experience differs from the norm, but students in my experience were/are competing with each other in terms of grades, both at the high school and college levels. And it was certainly acceptable (to a certain extent) for people to brag and be proud of their school-related accomplishments. People actively sought out what grades other people got on tests in high school, all the time, and were fairly actively competing for the highest weighted GPA. In college, I never reveal my grades if not asked, but I am always asked by the people around me.

Drifting a bit off-topic...

Spoiler:

I don't really think it's different from sports; it's OK to be happy with what you've accomplished, but if you go around talking about how amazing you were in the football game last week you look like just as much a jerk as if you talk about how you did so awesome on those tests everyone else failed and they were such a breeze for you.

Also, "pride" often shows a bit differently in high school and undergraduate education. In sports, nobody cares how you prepared; it's about on-field performance. In HS/college, people constantly brag about how hard they studied, how they pulled an all-nighter or only slept for three hours a night all last week, how they had seventeen things to do last night and they banged out that paper in an hour and they STILL got an A on it, etc. etc. etc. It's different, but people do it all the time and it seems to be totally acceptable.

Which brings me to P.E. and back on-topic: I don't think we need it for competitiveness' sake. The way that I am competing with other people in real life for "resources" (to use Ixtellor's term; I think it's kind of silly when your basic needs are all met to talk about things in these terms, but whatever) is far more similar to the things I have done in difficult academic courses than to anything I ever did in competitive sports. I happen to love sports and sport competition, but I feel they should be elective rather than mandatory.

[Lucrece]

P.E. is also an opportunity to learn social skills, competition, and team work.

While some people might not value competition, it is a way of life in the USA as well as the animal world. You will be competing with other humans for limited resources.

Or it could stunt those social skills if you happen to be the kind of kid teams pick last and begrudge having on their side. Of course, marginalization in athletics happens to be a perfectly acceptable social standard while people enjoy deriding those uppity nerd cunts for thinking themselves better than everybody else and having no social skills.

[induction]

uppity nerd cunts

that's a good name for a band.

[Роберт]

uppity nerd cunts

that's a good name for a band.

.tumblr.com

[cjmcjmcjmcjm]

Spoiler:

Also, "pride" often shows a bit differently in high school and undergraduate education. In sports, nobody cares how you prepared; it's about on-field performance. In HS/college, people constantly brag about how hard they studied, how they pulled an all-nighter or only slept for three hours a night all last week, how they had seventeen things to do last night and they banged out that paper in an hour and they STILL got an A on it, etc. etc. etc. It's different, but people do it all the time and it seems to be totally acceptable.

I really don't get people who brag about their poor time-management and/or educational masochism. My usual response is usually some variant of "Why would you do that to yourself?"

[Dr. Diaphanous]

I think it would work to give everyone the choice, starting in the first year of (secondary school /middle school), or maybe the second year so everyone gets a taste of what each option before choosing. You could choose either sports (basketball, football, and rugby) or fitness (cross country running, sit-ups, weights). Or maybe have three slots per week where you do one sports, one fitness, and choose one (so no-one completely misses out on a facet of physical education).

For other subjects, you get to choose a number of subjects (8?) plus compulsory maths & English, starting at an appropriate age (12?).

I also think there should be more and earlier dividing of students into ability groups. I think I would have benefited from accelerated science and languages with the smart kids, and remedial music and sport from the retards who couldn't catch a stationary ball.

[KestrelLowing]

Spoiler:

Also, "pride" often shows a bit differently in high school and undergraduate education. In sports, nobody cares how you prepared; it's about on-field performance. In HS/college, people constantly brag about how hard they studied, how they pulled an all-nighter or only slept for three hours a night all last week, how they had seventeen things to do last night and they banged out that paper in an hour and they STILL got an A on it, etc. etc. etc. It's different, but people do it all the time and it seems to be totally acceptable.

I really don't get people who brag about their poor time-management and/or educational masochism. My usual response is usually some variant of "Why would you do that to yourself?"

Spoiler:

It's a way of protection. See, I spent so little time on this that even if I do get a bad grade, it's totally justified. If I just had the time, I'd be a genius.