I received this e-mail the other day from one of my welding students at the college. My first response to his asking what he needs to make up was: Four years of high school. You would think that it would be a given that capitalization and punctuation would still be required when communicating with your college instructor. Coincidentally, an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday addressed this very issue.
"A generation of students who are unable to write or reason bodes ill for liberal democracy."
"Many employers can attest, as college instructors will too if they're being frank, that many college graduates can barely construct a coherent paragraph and many have precious little knowledge of the world - the natural world, the social world, the historical world, or the cultural world. That is a tragedy for the graduates, but also for the society: Civic life suffers when people have severely limited knowledge of the world to bring to political or moral discussions."
Additionally, in last Friday's WSJ there were a few letters to the editor in response to the Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson's op-ed about education. One item that I thought especially relevant was the following by Jon Rush:
"Missing from Mr. Tillerson's briefcase is that top down federal intervention in the public school system that started with "New Math" back in 1960 and continued with "Goals 2000" and "No Child Left Behind" has been the reason that the nation that built the technolgical marvel that we live in today in the U.S. is slipping. Before the U.S. Department of Education we had exceptional public education, but not since, and these additional mandates will not arrest our slide."
This topic was addressed in an earlier blogpost here, by the way.
Equally as relevant was this from a letter by Prof. Linda Karges-Bone:
"Teachers who would like to dig into those meaty standards need three things, none of which they currently possess and have little hope of securing: adequate time in the classroom, free from distractions, disruptions and trivial clerical demands on their time; abundant access to materials, resources, books and technology with which they might implement the standards and appropriate respect for and time to use their own creativity, ingenuity and life experiences as they differentiate those standards for our unique group of American public-school clientele."
So it still boils down to the same old thing. Tell the teachers what you want taught, give them the resources to do the job, then get out of the way. The more hurdles you impose on them, the less that's going to be accomplished - especially if those hurdles are imposed by the feds. If you were to do some type of cost benefit analysis, I'm sure you would find that once the federal government takes a hand in something, the money required goes up and the desired results go down. And with education? Not just down per dollar spent but down, period. Need some accountability without federal oversight? How 'bout the Baldridge Principles? That'll keep everyone honest.
It all seems so simple.In fact, I received an e-mail from the Department of Natural Resources announcing their upcoming education events and there was a link to the Flipped Learning site. I found this terribly amusing. Flipped learning is education that doesn't have the teacher standing in front of the class presenting the content everyday but rather the students learn much of that as homework and then classroom time is spent in small groups or one-on-one with the students. Just. Like. Shop. Teachers. Do.
6 comments:
"Not gone make it..." How true.
Exactly! Well put. I fear the day that some well meaning idiot realizes that I don't have any official "standards", and basically make up my entire curriculum with things I feel will help the students succeed in life- and then include as much math / science / english as I can.
Not that I really have to worry about ever having standards- because the well meaning idiot will just decided that "shop" is for the dark ages, won't help kids get into college or in life in general, and the entire program will be scrapped.
Several things:
1. A guy I used to work with at my last school used to always say, "They make us do it their way and then blame us when it doesn't work." Amen, brother.
2. I did flipped learning my last couple years and loved it.
3. Three months from today, we'll be waking up in Paris!
Anonymous: "How true." Boy Howdy
dorkpunch: The Wall Street Journal did an interview with the owner of the fifth largest employment agency in America. "He urges greater emphasis on vocational and practical skills training in schools, universities and junior colleges." He even mentioned welding specifically. Maybe the tide is turning back our way.
Traveling Pirate: Can't wait!
That email was probably sent as a text message from a phone. It's inconvenient to use proper punctuation and capitalization with this method. That's not an apology for the student, it's a symptom of the disease. I heard a presentation given by a man with a Phd in Engineering yesterday. He repeatedly used the "word" orientate. The term dampening was also used when damping was intended. They were not describing the action of making something wet. These were not high school students but highly trained people with engineering degrees.
I'm thinking that e-mail is kind of like wearing flip flops to the White House. You can do it, but should you? There needs to be a certain level of decorum adhered to regardless of the convenience level or technology used.
As to the wrong usage of the words, as soon as I get things orientated, I'll get back to you.
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