Improving Schools
Andrew Gelman had this to say on concepts versus skills. It was certainly a technique I used in tutoring students that was extremely successful. More so because the ‘tricks’ approach to math, and some other subjects, is a dismal approach to teaching someone how to think about math. A couple days of being shown how to think about it, and the students would improve dramatically, enough to get ahead of the curve in their class. However, I agree that, ultimately, anything you learn, you teach yourself. People’s input help guide your thinking, but it is up to you to create the mappings in your brain. This is why passive learning doesn’t work, and I think everyone already knew that.
Anyway, I’m posting this because I just ran across a document one of my high school English teacher’s asked me to write on how to improve my high school curricula. I’m happy to say that most of the changes I suggested were made. However, it is more amusing to read due to all the political dancing that goes on in it which makes up for about 70% of the document (I had a VERY complicated, publicly hostile relationship with my school, to the point that my name still comes up in the local paper’s editorial section, according to my parents).
There was one thing that I noticed that was completely absent from the document, and that was access to the school’s resources for personal learning. Due to my odd relationship with the school, I could basically come and go as I please (also because by the time I was a senior, I only had two classes each day), but I was fairly unique in this respect. Otherwise, you needed a petition signed by the legislature to get into the building before the first bell. There were like 7 minutes between bells, and you got detention if you weren’t in your seat by the second one.
Like most schools, we had a library (not a great one, but it wasn’t terrible). The internet access was terribly censored (not just redundant, you couldn’t do much of any economic research as GDP triggered the filters). It was better than nothing (which, given the poverty level of my school, was probably the modal and median access level), and there were of course the books and some magazines. But the point is, you basically could not use the library! You weren’t allowed in the building before or after school except for specific activities; so, due to disuse, the library was all but shutdown during these times anyway. You had a 30 minute lunch period and 4 90-minute periods a day. Of course, you weren’t allowed to leave class to go to the library, and maybe a handful of classes scheduled library time a handful of times each semester.
This is to say, the school provided NO time for a student to learn (no, note taking is not learning)! There were occasional teachers who provided time for students to work in groups in class, but this was definitely the exception, not the rule. I doubt these policies have changed for the better (they got more and more stringent throughout my high school career. This is to say, the security environment of the campus literally pushed out many concerns for education.
I suspect the situation is even worse. My impression is that the local libraries had been shutdown, so the nearest library was at one of the two local colleges, each a solid 20-30 minute drive from the school, if you have a car and can afford gas. I’m not even sure that those libraries are open to the general public as I don’t remember if we were given special cards or what to go there when we had specialized research in a couple of my AP classes.
