Seeking straight A's, parents push for pills

"Linda Gore" wrote:
http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

AGAINST SCHOOL

How public education cripples
our kids, and why
By John Taylor Gatto

{....}
Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education..... breaks
down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic
functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent
enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:

Gatto's opinion about Inglis's opinion is no more relevant to modern
education than Inglis's opinion is.

And Inglis's opinion wasn't relevant at the time, since in 1918, the
percentage of kids that went through secondary education was so small
as to not serve any of the following functions usefully except
possibly the 6th one, since in fact those with a secondary education
and male WERE the elite.

I suspect that someone reading Inglis's book for himself would find
that Inglis is merely advocating his particular concept of universal
secondary education in a society that had nothing close to it.

And indeed, when I go looking on the net for something other than
Gatto's ideological pontifications on the matter, I find:
http://edtech.connect.msu.edu/search...sp?propID=1660

and we see that his big contribution to secondary education was a
progressive way of teaching Greek and Latin with an eye towards
education in the classics. Since in fact almost no one in modern
schools studies Greek and Latin with an eye towards education in the
classics, clearly Inglis's ideas came and are long gone. Furthermore,
in the context of a classical education, his six functions have
considerably less sinister implications.

But it is a little hard to tell what Inglis actually said, since Gatto
adds so much ideological buzz that one can only guess:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits
of reaction to authority.

This of course is standard in a classical education. You have to
first master what the authorities have said before you are considered
even minimally qualified to analyze for yourself.

This, of course, precludes critical judgment
completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting
material should be taught,

We're talking Greek and Latin classics here. They are taught not
because they are "interesting" or "useful", but because in those days
they defined that standard of being an "educated person".

because you can't test for reflexive obedience
until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring
things.

Secondary education is not higher education, but especially in those
days was preparatory for that higher education. Reflexive obedience
is what society expected of a junior scholar.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity
function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible.

Again in the context of a classical education, which presumes that
there is an ideal education in which all kids learn identical
material, this makes sense. Of course "conformity" is Gatto's
interpretation, because he despises conformity.

People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who
wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

Since those in secondary classical education were not the peons of the
labor force, it would be better to analyze conformity in terms of
having a uniform standard of education for entrance to higher
education (which of course was also far more uniform than it is now,
with much more focus on general education, especially in the early
college years).

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each
student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence
mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent
record." Yes, you do have one.

In other words, secondary schools were a gateway to determine who
should go to college, and who should stop at the secondary level,
where they necessarily will serve a lower role in society since they
don't have the highest level of education needed to serve the highest
roles. Pure meritocracy, in other words. Again in the context of
secondary schools being primarily a source of college preparation and
teacher preparation (teachers did not necessarily attend college, but
probably most attended high school), standardized education was not as
negative a concept as it would be considered now.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been
"diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as
their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further.
So much for making kids their personal best.

Certainly in 1918 public education was entirely for public purposes,
not for personal purposes. The colleges were only for certain kinds
of education of certain people. Likewise the secondary schools.

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to
Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the
favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously
attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the
unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments -
clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively
bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little
humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down
the drain.

Social Darwinism was big in 1918. By 1940 it was in disrepute.
Otherwise, his explanation is repetitive of the prior two points -
differentiation and direction IS selection.

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules
will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of
the kids

Those attending secondary school.

will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how
to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed
in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might
never want for obedient labor.

[Yawn]

Gatto's ideological nonsense never fails to convince me that only
nincompoops could take his analysis at face value. He repeatedly
misrepresents the positions of others, taking things out of context
(usually without adequate cites, and often as above, paraphrasing it
to suit his ideological argument so that one couldn't match what Gatto
said to what Inglis said if you tried. For example, in other passages
where Gatto refers to Inglis, he calls the 5th point the "hygienic
function" which is probably the word Inglis used. But Gatto doesn't
have the intellectual integrity to let Inglis's words speak for
themselves, he has to say it in his own words, and therefore remove
any pretense that Inglis's ideas are involved.

In short, like all of Gatto's writing, ideological bull****.

lojbab

In article ,
"Tori M" wrote:

Please tell me: do you really mean that it took months for you to learn
how to solve 3x+4y=x*27 for x? Or was it -- as Herman suggests -- that
the difficulty was turning problems in words into algebraic form?

Both. I am not sure that I could do a word problem for even simple Algebra
even today.. I understood most levels of math until that year. Our class
was the first class that teacher had a hard time with learning th basic
equasions. Some of the kids caught it but we spent a good 1-2 months
working on chapter 3 I believe it was.

I'm horrified. And I'm pretty sure your teacher was lying; either that or
your *previous* teacher needed a good flogging for not preparing you. Words
fail me...

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

Both. I am not sure that I could do a word problem for even simple
Algebra
even today.. I understood most levels of math until that year. Our class
was the first class that teacher had a hard time with learning th basic
equasions. Some of the kids caught it but we spent a good 1-2 months
working on chapter 3 I believe it was.

I'm horrified. And I'm pretty sure your teacher was lying; either that or
your *previous* teacher needed a good flogging for not preparing you.
Words
fail me...

She had 2 classes of Algebra 1.. after the first 3 months the other class
was far beyond us in math.. I think the other class was 8th graders that
tested into 9th grade math. I believe this because my best friend was in
that class and she was further ahead.

Tori

In article ,
(Herman Rubin) wrote:

I still do not see the need for so many years of English,
which is largely literature, usually chosen to be
politically correct propaganda.

Because culture is transmitted largely through words. If you don't know the
words *and the context*, you are a stranger in the culture. Our broadsheet
recently quoted Abraham Lincoln as the *source* of "A house divided against
itself cannot stand" which indicates to me that some journalists need *more*
English Lit, not less!

And we are all waiting for your proof that English Literature works are chosen
to be PC propaganda. I note also that you have failed to limit to
jurisdiction.

A reading course SHOULD be first. How are we communicating
here?

Just yesterday, on another newsgroup, there were some
postings in French. Some of them had some problems
with conversion, but could be fairly well read, and
the others were as usually printed, which I read well.
My one-year French course was in 1941-42, and I have
read little French except mathematical since then.
But I found this quite easy, and there was no use
of mathematics in it.

I suspect this varies a lot by person. Dad speaks English much better than
some of his friends. He also understands Lehar's operettas after merely
living in Budapest for a few years in the 1940s, and that's with no formal
study of Hungarian. However... receptive language, particularly written
receptive language, is easy. It is much harder to produce acceptable written
language, let alone spoken.

the ability to read and understand newspapers and
general adult (non-specialist-oriented) literature,

You are assuming that what is written is capable of
being clearly understood; this is rarely the case.
What is behind the biases of the authors? Also,
they do not know enough to understand much of it.

This is hardly favouring your case. Surely proper education would strive to
produce citizens who *can* write clear material, recognise biases and have a
good body of knowledge? Maths only helps with this in tangential ways.

Have you seen applications for awards based on scholarship?
I got put on that committee, and I saw lots of them, with
formally clear sentences, saying nothing.[...]
So they had learned
to write what was essentially fiction, instead of being able
to recognize their ignorance.

IME only the truly knowledgeable believe themselves ignorant. Here's an
example which is probably specific to my cultu the truly eminent academics
at my Uni were happy to be known by their first names. The inferior ones
insisted on being called "Doctor" (they were new PhDs; nothing higher than
that).

and how to learn,

People do not learn the same way. How can you teach
someone how to learn?
snippage
The teachers will have to learn this. They cannot imagine
someone who learns like me, or in fact like any gifted
child; they are all different. I have no idea how I came
to learn the way I did and do, nor can I really explain it.

There's an entire field of endeavour about this, and it seems that there is
only a finite number of learning styles. They vary according to the learner's
personality and the nature of the material. For example, to learn a practical
skill (eg, stripping down a motor, or cutting hair), the instructor should
show how it's done at normal speed, then go through it slowly, step by step,
then have the students attempt it themselves. Omitting the normal-speed
demonstration is counterproductive: students need to see the fluidity of
movement (and indeed the "step-by-step" demonstrations often miss steps!).

Gifted students do learn in different ways from average students. You might
also be a visual-spatial learner, given your field.

What teachers can do for the good students is let them
go ahead as fast as they can, and not try to teach them
how to learn.

This works for the gifted, in their field of interest, if they have not been
put off learning. I do not know if it will work for Tori in algebra!

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

In article ,
(Herman Rubin) wrote:

Music may be interesting, but useful?

Depends how narrow your definition of "useful" is. Note that music is used
therapeutically in hospitals and amongst intellectually disabled people. I do
not think bringing joy to people is a small thing.

Also, does taking
music in school improve this? If you play an instrument,
probably, but otherwise?

IMO school music should include a fair bit of music history and appreciation.
We used to have 40 mins for music each week; you can't learn to play an
instrument in that time.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

Herman Rubin wrote:

I also question the utility of English literature, unless
you are going to discuss that literature.


Well, discussion is the core of liberal arts, IMO.
(And, as far as rigor, literary critism might be going
in the direction of philosophy in its logical sense, I
believe, or is trying to do so --I just saw a reference
to a book on the philosophy of feminism.)

But, here's another example of the utility of English
literatu Dr. Rubin writes a book, non-fiction or
fiction, describing a math classroom as he would
like it to be taught. Perhaps he could just outline
ideas, or perhaps he could write a story where
an intelligent student was not able to make a
difference in the world because she was not
properly taught the concepts, or something
like that.

That would be much easier and possibly more
sobering to read than the many letters on this
newsgroup, which, while they are quite
enlightening and entertaining at times (and
a sort of literature in themselves), are also
repetitive, disorganized, and don't seem to
lead to many clear suggestions of solutions.
The existence of such books might also
encourage discussion from educators
or at least mathematicians everywhere.

C.

In alt.support.attn-deficit Herman Rubin wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

I repeat; one can be a good mathematician and be
very poor at arithmetic. How many do we lose by
the present extensive use of computation as a
criterion, or even as a diagnostic tool? A bright
child was classed as "not mathematically strong"
because he could not quickly blurt out answers to
routine questions, although he could understand and
know what to do with complicated problems.

It was a requirment at my school that you had to pass basic arithmetic
before being allowed to go on to do advanced maths. Everyone inlcuding
me was very worried about this because there was a severe danger that
I'd fail the arithmetic, because I made so many mistakes, but I was
very good at maths. After a lot of intensive practice and working up
my checking skills I just managed to scrape through the arithmetic.

I went on to win numbers of prizes in maths.

I later became a computer programmer, which (in those days) involved
doing a lot of arithmetic in different bases in order to interpret
"core dumps" (prints of memory contents). That was in the days before
the invention of electronic calculators. Years of that practice turned
me finally into a good arithmetician who rarely made mistakes.

--
Chris Malcolm DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

In alt.support.attn-deficit wrote:

But so far as I know, Calclulus offers
nothing practical for day to day life for ANYONE. Ditto physics.

Lack of understanding of very basic Newtonian physics kills a lot of
car drivers. For example, car drivers who when driving at high speed
decide to make a quick steering correction and flip the car over into
cartwheeling down the road. And if you don't understand the basic
physics of skidding and steering you have to be taught the rules of
how to control a skid, because your intuitive reactions to a skid will
make it worse instead of recovering control. Speaking more generally,
a failure to understand the simple physics of speed, acceleration, and
braking, lies behind a great deal of the risky behaviour you see every
day on the roads. Even if it's an emergency and worth taking risks to
carve through the traffic, there are much safer ways of doing it than
the way most drivers in hurry actually do it.

Then there's those cyclists who grab the front wheel brake to slow
down when cornering, an extremely common cause of cycling accidents
which nobody who understood elementary physics would make.

Another example is novice rock climbers who instinctively pull
themselves into the rock when scared of losing their grip, thereby
losing the force vector which gave the friction grip to their feet,
and they fall off.

People up trees with saws doing a bit of branch pruning in their
gardens often have easily avoidable accidents because of an ignorance
of basic physics.

And sailing boats! You could write a book about the injuries the
physically ignorant have suffered on yachts! But I'd better stop there
:-)

--
Chris Malcolm DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

"Herman Rubin" wrote in message
...

Music may be interesting, but useful? Also, does taking
music in school improve this? If you play an instrument,
probably, but otherwise?

Music teaches timing, meter, fractions, counting, grouping, cooperating, and
a whole multitude of other things. Children who are involved in a quality
music program do much better in math and science than children who are not
involved in a quality music program.

Chris Malcolm wrote:
In alt.support.attn-deficit wrote:
But so far as I know, Calclulus offers
nothing practical for day to day life for ANYONE. Ditto physics.

Lack of understanding of very basic Newtonian physics kills a lot of
car drivers. For example, car drivers who when driving at high speed
decide to make a quick steering correction and flip the car over into
cartwheeling down the road. And if you don't understand the basic
physics of skidding and steering you have to be taught the rules of
how to control a skid, because your intuitive reactions to a skid will
make it worse instead of recovering control. Speaking more generally,
a failure to understand the simple physics of speed, acceleration, and
braking, lies behind a great deal of the risky behaviour you see every
day on the roads. Even if it's an emergency and worth taking risks to
carve through the traffic, there are much safer ways of doing it than
the way most drivers in hurry actually do it.

Then there's those cyclists who grab the front wheel brake to slow
down when cornering, an extremely common cause of cycling accidents
which nobody who understood elementary physics would make.

Another example is novice rock climbers who instinctively pull
themselves into the rock when scared of losing their grip, thereby
losing the force vector which gave the friction grip to their feet,
and they fall off.

People up trees with saws doing a bit of branch pruning in their
gardens often have easily avoidable accidents because of an ignorance
of basic physics.

And sailing boats! You could write a book about the injuries the
physically ignorant have suffered on yachts! But I'd better stop there
:-)

None of which would be taught in a class teaching mathematical
physics. In those classes, the student spends his time trying to work
with equations. For some people, they MIGHT be able to intuitively
translate an equation of motion into a concept of real world effects,
but for most it is neither trivial nor intuitive to turn the laws of
motion into the stopping distance for braking a car.

lojbab