You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
Stranger: A real live stranger that wants to talk to me! What lottery did I win to find you?!
You: The Omegle one.
Stranger: I must tell all my friends
Stranger: You! I'm so glad I won the Omegle lottery
You: Tiz a splended Idea my leige.
Stranger: Ok I finished, friends told.
You: Good one.
You: So, what's your take on the current educational status of American high-school and middle-school students?
Stranger: Broad question-- please narrow the focus.
Stranger: Academics, achievement, testing methods, educational psychology, curriculum, what have you?
You: Do you believe the educational system of high-school students is the best possible way to educate our children?
Stranger: I believe there are plenty of things that could be done to improve it, most of which involve getting rid of a lot of bureaucracy
Stranger: Also better implementation and application of knowledge that psychology of education has afforded us
Stranger: Too often there is a gap between theory and practice that could be better ameliorated
You: Yes, I agree. One thing I think should definitely be pointed at is the lack of motivation. In my opinion students who freely teach themselves things do better than students who are forced to memorize things.
Stranger: Changing and revamping the entire system into something less structured could work in theory but might not lead to individuals capable of handling the future-- we may have a broken system but one in place is often times better than trying to recreate something from scratch and fail miserably or win gloriously...
Stranger: Yes, forcing memorization is a horrible way to teach
Stranger: Beyond mathematics, and learning proper use of language, and other integral skills, it should be more focused on the process of how to gain knowledge and knowledge sharing rather than as knowledge givers and receivers
You: You seem to be knowledgeable in this subject or is more along the lines of you being an overall intelligent individual.
You: I agree.
Stranger: I have recently had the opportunity to look at the educational system from a psychological perspective (*note my bias) however, my views have not changed much about what I believe are the problems with the system, rather I have better justification for the problems that I already believed needed to be fixed
Stranger: I would believe that any subject that doesn't require memorization of information is something that I could discuss intellectually
Stranger: or I would at least like to believe this
You: Yes, many I've spoken with have declared memorization useless. I disagree and find that memorization can be useful but it is not a useful way to learn.
Stranger: I think a better way to put it is that brute memorization is not efficient nor long-term viable. It is an extremely low level cognitive process just trying to memorize something without trying to make semantic interconnections between the knowledge structures that already exist. There are time when memorization is the only way, like learning the quadratic formula.
Stranger: I believe practicing the information will lead to better use of the information and train individuals to be able to apply the skills they learn to broader areas, but not all learning is generalizable and not all areas are able to be generalized to.
Stranger: *there are times when memorization...
Stranger: typo
You: I see, that's an interesting point of view, I haven't thought of it that way. I agree, also, a more efficient way of learning a quadratic formula could be simply taking notes using good old fashion pen and paper.
You: I'm not to keen on spelling...
Stranger: it was my typo, time versus times
Stranger: I wouldn't correct a conversation partners spelling merely my own
Stranger: If it bothered me I would merely model the behavior by spelling the word correctly and then allow them to either amend or ignore so that itwould be their choice. I often make my own spelling errors and would not expect others to be perfect, but that is just a random point that is rather tangential to our more interesting dialogue.
You: Yea, with the topic at hand grammar is relatively unimportant.
You: I recently wrote an article that is still in progress and unpublished, the Title being: The Educational Utopia. The main point is to create a free library like resource building and give students as much time as they wan't to learn about anything they wan't. It's possible there natural desire to learn could drive them to do great things as seen in history. This has the potential to fail miserably but I think it's an interesting point. Some of it comes from the unschooling idea.
Stranger: I think there is most definitely a valid point there, but the question is whether or not we are sufficiently motivating the children in our society to WANT to learn and to be able to find their own intrinsic benefits from learning rather than having to reward children in more tangible ways.
Stranger: If all children were sufficiently motivated and would motivate themselves to study a wide variety of areas rather than just a single area then it could be viable but I'm not convinced we understand what we can do to motivate children in a society so focused around instant gratification and lacking the need to go out and dive into a subject to really understand it.
Stranger: For curiousity sake: where do you intend on publishing the paper?
You:
http://www.school-survival.net/ and
http://www.launchpad.comlu.com/
You: Some interesting points come up and there are decently intelligent people there.
You: When I say publish I don't really mean submit it to an official newspaper rather get it on the net...
Stranger: Yeah, looks interesting.
Stranger: Okay, was curious what your proposed outlet was more or less.
You: I haven't exactly thought of an actual demographic I just wrote it. The actual article is in progress here:
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=21867
Stranger: Do you work in the education system?
You: Well, usually I receive negative feedback from informing people of this but I am currently in high school. XD
Stranger: I don't judge.
You: I'm glad.
Stranger: I don't believe that it is entirely viable to do school free-for-all all the time
Stranger: however I would argue that more free time with specific, but extremely fluid goals would be beneficial with the point to have open dialogue with teachers about subjects
Stranger: I don't think that this is even viable for all age groups but would need to be slowly integrated into all grade levels
Stranger: with more and more varied time leading up to the end
You: Yea, unfortunately some of my classmates wouldn't do so well if they were given the choice to roam free in a large building by them selves. The article is simply what I would benefit from in an educational institution. It was fun to write it.
Stranger: take a look at this:
Stranger:
http://www.wwu.edu/fairhaven/about/mission.shtml
Stranger: That is a specific program in the school that I attended and it is EXTREMELY open ended
Stranger: there are assignments that are required to gauge progress but no letter grades are given only written assessments
Stranger: A lot of what you described does occur in the college environment, however, assessment is necessary to give grades which are then passed on to allow for requirements to be fullfilled... without them it is nearly impossible to determine whether someone is ready to graduate or not (in the typical college environment, not specifically the program that I linked, it is an outlier)
You: That makes sense. I would probably enjoy a program like that.
You: What do you think about the current curriculum in the typical high-school. I believe the sudden change from art to math to English is not beneficial. As soon as someone gets into one subject they are forced to think in a completely different way. Seems inefficient to me.
You: It seems I've been forgetting my Question marks as well...
Stranger: I think there are pros and cons
Stranger: I attended a private high school so things might have been different in mine. We had 7 class periods on Monday, Tuesday Friday and had extended double classes Wednesday and Thursday, I think that if I had to attend some of those classes any longer I would have been bored out of my mind but the constant switching can be inefficient too if you are really getting into the topic matter
Stranger: I am volunteering at an elementary school right now working with 3-4-5th grades. They have a different system in place where they have three teachers teaching the classes and they rotate between the three teachers such that they learn Science, Math, and Literacy with all the rest of the subjects directly intermingled such as writing involved learning spelling and writing skills, reading integrated in free time givento do personal reading and write a little bit about it, daily reflections in each class to practice writing, pennmanship, et cetera
Stranger: so a higher level of integration can be done, but there are fundamental subjects that are more important than others
Stranger: And I think those at least come down to Math and Literacy
Stranger: Science is important to me because it requires abstract critical thinking which math often can give
Stranger: If one could devleop children after 5th grade that were competent thinkers, writers, spellers, and mathematically sound, then I believe that future classes could involve more autonomy of education but still require guidance in those three topics
Stranger: Math is a very lineal progression of knowledge at the lower levels and without guidance it can be exceedingly difficult to progress
Stranger: but I'll let you speak now.
You: You make strong points...
You: I suppose if we simply had longer class periods boredom would overcome the students. During abnormal schedual days I sometimes have classes that exceed an hour. It can definitely be draining.
Stranger: each student designs their own major
Stranger: mhmm
Your conversational partner has disconnected.
Search
Member List
Calendar
Help
/
Interesting Conversation.
![[Image: glorious666.png]](http://darknedgy.net/images/glorious666.png)
![[Image: 351e0yp.jpg]](http://i45.tinypic.com/351e0yp.jpg)
