[geeks] Education

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 @ 17:26 +0000, wa2egp at att.net said:

> > Evidently, because I said the homework I had to do was busywork.
> > 
> > I didn't say all of it was, and even suggested that removing most of it
> > would allow the student to come up with their own.
> > 
> 
> I really doubt that would happen.  Most students would not do any homework
> whether they came up with it on their own or not.

So assign some *useful* homework.  

I never said don't have any at all.

I certainly came up with my own homework though, and I was hardly alone.
I just couldn't do it when buried with too much useless assigned work.

> > No, it isn't feel good, it's called learning properly.
> 
> In your opinion.

I'm talking about letting a student move forward who need to move
forward.

That's just the right thing, not a matter of opinion.

Then again, who knows... maybe you think that gravity is also just my
opinion.

> Too much homework that is given is rote (depending on grade level) and
> I know what you mean.  I never give an assignment of "memorize the symbols
> the of first twelve elements" as an example.  

[ snip ]

That's what I've been trying to say...

As far as what I mean by mastering, I mean learning the subject, and
don't know how else to qualify that.  I certainly don't mean rote
memorization.

In public schools, rote memorization skills (and a little ass-kissing)
would get you through every program with perfect grades.  At least
that's how it was where I grew up.

Those of us who lacked that skill were in trouble.

> And we go over it the next day.  I don't think that's useless.

What you described wouldn't be.  It's just that when I was in school, it
often wasn't like that.  We got tons of homework, but it wasn't useful
or used very well.

There were exceptions of course: some students risked their careers to
buck the system and teach properly.  One of my best teachers was fired
for daring to actually teach.

> > You have a wierd notion of busywork.
> 
> Yes I do.
> 
> > It's busywork if it serves no useful purpose.
> 
> Wouldn't that be homework that is given and not reviewed so a 
> student could correct their mistakes/mis-learning?

Feedback would be better, but if doing the work is useful, then it isn't
busywork.

Especially in college, I had a lot of ungraded homework.  Basically if
you didn't do it, you failed.

I did a lot of homework over the years that would have been pretty well
impossible to grade, and I would hate to have seen all assignments
reduced to only things which were easy for the teacher to grade or give
feedback on.

> Now we are getting students that feel so good about themselves, they don't 
> "have" to learn or do any work.  "I'm here, therefore I deserve an A"  
> Yeah..sure.  That is what call a "feel good" education.  

It's just yet another form of political corruption (a better term than
political correctness sometimes).

> I'd rather have a student feel good about themselves because they're
> able to solve a problem or handle some kind of challenge whether
> they're interested in my subject or not.  I see this when I go over
> homework that I assign.  

That's great, and hopefully you see it outside of homework as well,
since that's a poor metric alone.

> If you think that's worthless...fine.

No idea what you are talking about, since I never said that, or implied
it.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than
the sage amongst his books For to you kingdoms and their armies are mighty
and enduring,  but to him they are but toys of the moment to be overturned
by the flicking of a finger." - anonymous     ]