Did you like school? (Or, if you're a student now, do you?)
I'm reading Daniel T. Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School? It's totally readable and very interesting, and I'll post a review when I'm done. (I've also joined a reading group to discuss it, over at Dangerously Irrelevant; if you've been wanting to pick this book up, a book club might give you the kick in the pants you need.)
When I posted the title of the book on my Facebook page, one of my Facebook acquaintances replied directly to the author's question, writing,
"Same reason we hate boring movies ... no engaging, nothing to relate with. For starters ..."
Now, Willingham's responses are quite a bit more subtle. He's a cognitive scientist, and his explanations of why we like to think but find it difficult are intriguing. But my acquaintance's response got me thinking.
When it came to school, I WAS engaged. I DID relate to the material, whether it was geometric proofs or chemical reactions or novels. But I didn't like gym, because I'd didn't like running around, and I had trouble in a few academic areas - history seemed like a dry list of facts about politics, and the ultimate goal of studying physics seemed to be understanding how a carburator works. (I'm now well aware that neither of these things is true, but school was capable of reducing them to that.)
Did you like school? How about the classroom, specifically - if you liked learning in school, why? If you didn't, why not, and what could have made it more enjoyable? What about your children - how do they feel about it? Have they told you why, or do you have an inkling?
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Martha Nichols
Emily Holleman
Holly Robinson
Thomas Rogers
Cary Tennis
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1. the topics are myriad. From evolutionary biology to the history of social movements in America to globalization. This is a function of the degree, I suppose, being many disciplines.
2. my peers are intellectually minded and grown up. The program is selective and because the students express themselves well and love to think and research, we can get beyond basic problems that hinder some programs. Most people seem to be about my age, give or take a few years. That would be 47.
3. the professors treat me like an equal.
Most of these just can't happen in third grade. Alas.
However, I was well into adulthood and attending seminary before I truly understood that teachers were supposed to have been teaching me something, not just trying to catch me out over something I didn't know. That may have been a function of being a smart, well-behaved kid in a big class, but the roles seemed unnecessarily adversarial, at least like a friendly chess game in which the teacher and I were on opposite sides.
Most of my children have liked school, or at least they never balked at going. The one who was the most dissatisfied was the brightest; he didn't understand why he couldn't do things that interested him rather than sitting around waiting for his class to catch up, and he wasn't as interested in the social aspects of school as most of his siblings have been. We let him graduate a year early and sent him off to college, where he did fine. With most of my children, the real education mostly happened at home. My kids weren't the target audience of their overworked teachers. For that reason, all of my older children have loved college.
A disturbing note has crept into the reports I get from kids, though. They no longer feel safe at school. There's more bullying, more outright violence, and less supervision. Teaching is just a much bigger job than it used to be, and our kids suffer for it.
Now think, I was in the top 5-10% and praised all the time, but still barely liked school. How much would it suck to show up everyday, get critized, get bad grades, not understand, etc...?
If school is only moderately palatable for the top of the class, it must be hell on Earth for the kids who are failing.
High Lonesome: I wonder if the difference now is that there is more awareness of bullying, and therefore more reports. I was bullied quite badly in school, and for my best friend, it was even worse; many of my friends say they were bullied as well. Most of us didn't tell anyone, at least until it became extreme. Is it worse now, I wonder, or do we just talk about it more?
I thought college would be better-- I pictured myself participating in fascinating discussions about deep topics. That didn't really happen until grad school.
When I started teaching college freshmen, I tried to make the class like what I would have wanted: student-centered discussions of topics. It was horrible. Pained, bored silence while the students stared, embarrassed, at their feet. It was like pulling teeth. If I asked someone what they thought, they took it as an attack, where I was trying to call them out and embarrass them. I'm still trying to find ways to involve the students and draw them in to the discussion without them feeling like I'm putting them on the spot.
I'm hoping this book I'm reading will give me some clues as to how to stimulate students' curiosity. Why are some students bored? Is it because they're not being challenged, or because they're being asked to do things they don't have the background knowledge to accomplish? How can I reach the students who don't want to speak up in class but have things to say?
I've found that "student-centred discussion" needs to be very structured. I usually get students to write some notes or discuss things in small groups before we have a class exchange. This helps with the "put-on-the-spot" syndrome. But some students simply don't want to engage with the material - or any material, it seems - and figuring out why is one of my greatest challenges.
Was it the social aspect or the learning aspect you hated the most? Or were the two interrelated?
One thing I've found that works pretty well is to have them write down their thoughts on a topic and turn them in, and then I read them to the class, without saying who said which thing. It seems to break the ice-- if the class finds a comment interesting, they'll jump on it, and it spares the shyer students the anxiety of being singled out.
I do that too; I sometimes put their responses on overheads and we go through them. Sometimes it starts discussions, but even if it doesn't, they look like they're thinking and processing others' ideas, and they ask questions, which I guess is pretty close to discussion in itself...
I enjoyed teachers who let me work on my own (I don't work well in groups), who explained things clearly, who didn't read at us (as opposed to letting us just read the damn chapter ourselves), I even enjoyed dry topics if they were given an interactive and interesting spin. In secondary education, I hated gym class because it made me sick (I'm not a very athletic person), I abhorred health class (I can't believe they even had the gall to call it that - it was social life class and I couldn't stand it) because it was insulting to my intelligence and we learned almost nothing in that class, I didn't enjoy home ec because I am a horrible sewer and the teacher was not very helpful, though the cooking classes were sometimes fun (but I hated working in a group, especially when they made ME do the dishes while they ate!)
In college and grad school I got to choose my classes, and I learned from my other school experiences to choose classes I would enjoy. Did I always enjoy them? no, but nothing is perfect. Learning isn't always easy. At the time I said I couldn't stand school (I was burnt out), but I actually wish I could go back. I enjoy learning, and I could do that there. The one thing that was disheartening was a lack of counsel regarding direction. If only I knew then what I know now.
The beginning of every semester is an instant reset button.
Problems are well-defined and known to have solutions.
Most of what you're asked to teaches you something.
The people you meet for the most part know what you know.
Of course, these things may not seem appealing to people who haven't been burned out experiencing the opposite.
I liked teachers who challenged me, and seemed to enjoy what they were doing. Bored teachers were fair game for pranks and any shortcut I could find to making the grade. Mind you, that's easy to see in retrospect!
I was lucky to have a Grandad who told us bedtime stories about history - made it come alive, so it wasn't about what year something happened, it was about the people/places/situations that made something happen.
I think college is more manageable with ADD because you're not in class all day every day, so it is easier to focus. Plus, frankly in college your professors aren't trying to program you - ex. history and poly sci didn't try to portray the U.S. in the most favorable light which made the courses more interesting.
In college, my first few years were bad, but when I finally decided to make an effort, I enjoyed it a lot more. Grad school, after a few years of working was a dream. 1) the tasks were concrete and the solutions defined, unlike in the real world; 2) I could work whenever I chose, meaning I got my laundry done in my down time, as opposed to being at an office where no non-intellectual chores get done when your brain needs a rest; 3) results were prompt and concrete; 4) what you had to do to get a particular result was well-defined.
I think more kids would like school if they had the right attitude. For a long time, I assumed homework was a chore, so even when I ended up interested, I had delayed and was left with little time.
Plus, I HATED typing. Rather than just backspacing, I'd have to apply the white-out (which only works for one layer) wait for it to dry, backspace retype. On a computer, I can backspace without interrupting my train of thought.
In college, my first few years were bad, but when I finally decided to make an effort, I enjoyed it a lot more. Grad school, after a few years of working was a dream. 1) the tasks were concrete and the solutions defined, unlike in the real world; 2) I could work whenever I chose, meaning I got my laundry done in my down time, as opposed to being at an office where no non-intellectual chores get done when your brain needs a rest; 3) results were prompt and concrete; 4) what you had to do to get a particular result was well-defined.
I think more kids would like school if they had the right attitude. For a long time, I assumed homework was a chore, so even when I ended up interested, I had delayed and was left with little time.
Plus, I HATED typing. Rather than just backspacing, I'd have to apply the white-out (which only works for one layer) wait for it to dry, backspace retype. On a computer, I can backspace without interrupting my train of thought.
Now that I'm in my second go at college, I'm still ahead of the others, but I do my work quickly so that it's done. I don't hate it. I don't feel challenged in the college I attend, so right now I'm just getting it done so that I can get that Associate's and attend a school that hopefully will challenge me.
I loved school, or loved it when it was done right. I'm a foreign service brat, so I attended a bunch of different international schools. One, in elementary school, relied on rote memorization, with tons and tons of spelling and arithmetic problems every night. We didn't do labs, discuss novels, or analyze current events; instead we memorized dates and maps. It was awful; my brother was especially miserable and I think that experience turned him off of school for the long-term. He loves reading and the news, and blossomed in chemistry and botany classes later on, but there's something about being in a classroom and working off a syllabus that just repulses him, and he thinks it's because of the school we went to when he was in grade 3.
That one mind-numbing year aside (after which my parents tutored us at home until we moved to a new school), I LOVED my classmates, and the atmosphere--kids from all around the world, plus the schools were small, so there was very little bullying (almost none, actually), and lots of camaraderie between the students and teachers. The curriculum was also awesome--since these were international schools that cater to a geographically-diverse audience, we studied a very broad and not-always-Western curriculum. We learned about all the various regimes during the Cold War and how the rivalry between the U.S. and USSR played out globally, which explains so much about the world today, and didn't cover the American Civil War to death as my American friends had to (which really explains very little except for American politics). We read Hafez, Kayyam, Hemingway, and Achebe, but (thank god!) not one word of Jane fucking Austen. Math, chemistry, physics, and biology are pretty universal, but it seemed like they made an effort to discuss applications more than formulas. There was also a MUCH bigger emphasis on math and science, and their applications than my American friends seemed to have, which I like. It was pretty shocking to come here and hear people talk about global warming or evolution with virtually no understanding of the science behind it. I'm so glad, and fortunate, to have had those concepts thoroughly explained by teachers whose goal was to make us the best world citizens we could be.
With regards to school per se, and not one specific experience, I liked it when they taught us how to apply stuff rather than "study this so you'll do well and can go to uni." Chemistry was fun because you really understood how potholes form in roads or why salt in the cooking pot makes water boil faster. I have always been an academic misanthrope and hated working in groups, but understand why it's necessary. In real life, you do work in groups, all the time, so those kinds of experiences were good for teaching a valuable real-world skill and making me do things I didn't like.
I didn't like how homogeneous the classes had to be. Since the elementary schools I attended were so small, kids who were reading well beyond grade level and kids who could barely string together a sentence were all stuck in one classroom, which meant teachers were usually stuck teaching to the bottom; it was frustrating for some students (but probably a relief for those kids who took a bit longer to pick things up). Luckily though, most of these teachers were able to group us based on ability within the classroom, and it worked out. I do think, though, that SOME sort of tracking system, a very flexible and informal one, is a good idea, to keep the higher-achieving kids from being bored and frustrated and the slower learners from feeling bored and humiliated. Also, what's up with the handwriting? I hated taking cursive (which I never ever use), and I resented being lied to--in the horrible school mentioned earlier, we had to learn cursive because "in the next level, you will have to write all your papers and assignments in cursive." That was blatantly false, since in the next level we typed all of our papers and could hand in our assignments in whatever writing style we liked so long as it was legible. Same thing with drug education--you don't think you can fly and jump off a building when you smoke weed. You just don't. You might inhale an entire pizza, you might laugh your ass off at the dog chasing her tail, you might get arrested, and you definitely shouldn't drive, but enough with the fucking horror stories. We're not idiots.