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Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
Why, it’s almost as though the schoolteachers of yesteryear had some idea what they were doing.
Intelligence has always been considered principally an immutable inherited trait,†said Susanne M. Jaeggi, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the paper. “Our results show you can increase your intelligence with appropriate training.â€Â
But, but, but … BELLCURVE! THOSE STUPID lower 40% NEED government to give their lives meaning!
Of course, not “government” in the form of public education, where they could use memory skills (multiplication tables, states and capitals) to increase their brainpower. No no no … John Dewey showed us all that was crap.
What?
What?
Does this mean that using your brain is good for you?
My son’s teachers beg to disagree. What makes you smarter is unearned self-esteem and an immutable belief that you can’t do it on your own.
Apparently, my education (where the only electives were shop and home-ec)was just plain stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Uh-huh. That would definitely be me.
The fact that education used to be about preparing individuals for the real world seems to have gotten lost somewhere between basket weaving and “…ist” studies.
I just wish that my teachers were as clueless as the new millenium teachers. Then I might not be so pissed about so many things.
How many more times can I wish that my IQ was 80?
Black and white, baby. It just seems that it would be so much easier if I didn’t worry about whether I spelled a word wrong or not.
Because, ya know, it doesn’t make any difference anyway, does it?.
Spelling is another one of those meaningless rote memory thingies. Meaningless. As long as you know how to find the correct spelling … right.
I’m rather partial to this one, because I am challenged in the spelling departement.
Clarification:
I am sorry if I sound like I am demeaning teachers. I appreciate them very much, and my intent was not to point a finger at them.
My problem is with the definition of “education” these days.
Hi, carin.
Sorry, but spelling correctly is not “meaningless rote”
It is one of those myriad tiny little things that make up true self esteem. Unfortunately, the “new” approach to self esteem is that someone else can give it to you.
Bzzzzt!
Nishi moment!
I was joking, LD.
As a home educator, I do a lot of those things that are downplayed in too many public schools. Classical education, it’s NEW AGAIN.
Renshaw lives!
I honestly don’t know how effective the reading curriculum was when I was in first grade — I’d already been reading for three years when I got there. I do remember being impatient with the other kids when they would read out loud. And I seem to recall I stopped being called on to do that fairly early on.
I was so proud of myself for having learned to read when I was three. Then I found out this gal I was seeing also learned to read when she was three. I had to do something about that.
I married her. That’ll show her.
Heh.
Don’t get me started on reading curriculum … honestly, you don’t want me to go on (and on and on) about that.
Like McGehee, I learned to read long before I went to school, so I have no idea what they taught there. I figured it out myself, somehow. I don’t know how I did it, but I remember being pissed off not knowing what all that stuff inside books was. I eventually won a staredown with one, I guess.
It was never a problem with other kids, only with teachers. I vividly remember the two last-straw moments that turned me against school, both related to my leet five-year-old reading skillz. They happened on the same day, at a school supposedly for little geniuses.
First, we were asked to offer words in a certain vowel-consonant-vowel pattern, and the list was already long when the teacher got around to asking me for one. I remember her tone; she asked expecting me not to have an answer. I offered the only word I could think of that fit the pattern and wasn’t up on the board already. She didn’t know the word I gave. She asked the kids if they knew it. They didn’t. (One of them told me later that she did, but she was afraid to say so.) She asked me to define it and didn’t accept my definition. Then she led the class in a derisive laugh at me for making it up.
Later, I was reading something aloud, and she cut me off with the interjection of an upcoming word I was about to say — my mouth was open already — that she presumed (not honestly, I’d say now, and felt then) I couldn’t parse. It was “farenheit.” (My favorite book when I was five was by Carl Sagan. I had “farenheit” handled.) She blurted it. (And to this day, in my mind, that word sounds bitchy.) I paused, a long pause, said “I know that” like I was saying “I’ll stab you in the fucking face,” stopped reading, never “participated” again, and became a bad student (with good grades), that very instant, forever.
Thanks, Mrs. What’s-her-ass. (That I don’t remember.)
Probably not — it’s bounded, if not set — but you can give it habits. If I have kids, I’ll make sure they’re mad at books and despise teachers, too. It works.
Sort-of related, the Cyc project.
Of course, it doesn’t help that Doug Lenat has given us a unit of bogosity.
I pestered my mother into teaching me. My wife’s mother taught her too, but I don’t know if it was pestering or her mom’s being/wanting to be a teacher. (She outgrew wanting to be a teacher after being one.)
From Patrick’s “bogosity” link:
I originally read that last word as blogodynamics.
Which, when you think about it…
I still do all my basic math “as gaeilge” (in Irish). When I’m overwhelmed I tend to blurt out “Chotto matte kudasai!” When I’m at Publix, grocery shopping, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” will usually come to me before bread, milk, etc. And a Charles Trenet song (Boum!) is currently playing in my head, and won’t stop.
So, that rote learning thing, mixed bag, IMHO.
I taught myself my times tables by staring at the long row of numbers my teacher kept under the blackboard. It kinda went like this:
“Okay, six. One six is six. Now, one, two, three, four, five, six…we’re at twelve. So two sixes is twelve. Now, one, two three…”
Eventually, I came to realizations such as
“Hey, the nines form a neat pattern! 09, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90! It’s like two slides of numbers put together, except one off.”
God only knows what the teach was yapping about while I was doing this.
Smirky: I do the same thing when calculating tips – ‘ten percent is move the decimal one over, then add half of that to make fifteen for the base, then what I think needs to be added after…’
psycho: Sounds like you had a bad teacher, my old first and second grade teacher praised us for using words, writing words that were different, such as ‘trousers’ for ‘pants’.
You have to have basic information memorized before you can actually think about anything, be it words, mathematical computations, or anything else. It is a basic stepping stone to the application of knowledge. Aspire, Acquire, Apply.