Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Blog # 2By: Seth Brownlee - Response to Ted talks
This video was great! I enjoyed watching the whole twenty minutes of it. I agree with everything that the man speaking said. I have felt this way about education all along through my college years, but been unable to say it with the precision that the man speaking used. My dad has been a teacher for the past 19 yrs so growing up I heard over and over from him how education was not meeting the needs of the new generations because it focuses on only very few parts of the total mind and imagination. I have seen friends growing up through school and now see students that I work with in feild placement that are cheated by modern educaton. They are meant to think that because they arent good in one particular subject that they are not smart and won't do good in school. It is abvious to me to see why the drop out rates are so large and why so many kids hate school. We make kids sit in a building all day and stay quiet while taking tests for three to four hours at a time. This seems like torture to me and I know it does to them too. I do believe what the speaker said, that imagination is just as important as literacy and we ought to spen just as much time letting kids use their artistic, kinesthetic, dance skills as teaching them math and reading. The speaker said that education is divers wich I completely agree with because there are so many types of intelligences that we have learned from Howard Gardiner. For we as educators to say becuase a student did poorly on a crtain test tha they are not intelligent is the worste thing we could ever do. I am excited to see the revolution that is going to take place within the next couple of years in education.
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3 comments:
I completely agree with what you said about education only focusing on very few parts of the total mind and imagination. If we want to produce well rounded students we need to teach to the whole child. Good job relating this to Howard Gardiner! I think that is definitely what he was speaking about. I am so excited to see the revolution in education and anxious about being a part of it as well!
I guess that because I am a little bit older than most of you responding to this blog, I have a different opinion. Students these days are able to take weight lifting, art, PE, health, consumer science, agriculture, vocational, business education classes (keyboarding, etc.). When I was in school, we did not have as many choices for electives. It was basically PE every day and core classes for the remaining hours. So, I think that we have made great strides in satisfying students' needs for non-traditional classes. I believe the problem lies with teachers not making the material meaningful to students and, therefore, they are not motivated to learn. I guess I am more of a behaviorist. I firmly believe that objectives should be set (no matter what class is being taught-core or elective) and the students' progress measured. I am not as stuck on everyone making an A or all the students passing the benchmark as I am with seeing progress. I think that when students are not judged by their initial grade, but by their measured progress, they will inevitably want the better grades.
I agree with you that test taking is torture, and we need to find a better way to assess our students. You are so right that many students are fearful of taking tests and they usually do not fare well. But, we cannot have a school that is not meeting the basic educational goals that we need as a society. I meet college students and graduates who are unable to spell, read, or compose a simple office memo. There are 9th graders who are performing on a 2nd grade level. I don't necessarily think that these students need one more unit of Art. (I have nothing against Art; this is just an example)
It sounds to me like you believe a lot of the same things that I have been talking about for a long time even wrote a paper on in high school. I think some are very smart people but they just cannot take a test. Why in college do they teach us all about intergration and ole Howie but when we get into real education I'm pretty sure we have to take 2 weeks out of the year to test these kids. If you like to dance I don't think you would want to sit that long.
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