Seeking straight A's, parents push for pills

On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 20:25:41 GMT, "toypup"
wrote:


"Herman Rubin" wrote in message
...
Some people have complained that certain courses get
grades above 4.0. This is to get "straight A" students
to take the honors courses instead of the weak stuff;
the honors courses are still lower level than the
regular college preparatory program before WWII.

How do you know that?

That's been Herman's mantra ever since I started posting on
misc.education. He believes this, but since his evidence is barely
anecdotal, I don't think his opinion is valid. Imo, the honors and ap
courses my children took were quite rigorous.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Dave L. Renfro wrote:
Raving Beauty wrote (in part):

I PLAYED THE GAME long enough to get straight A's to graduate
HS with honors, and gain admission and graduate with honors
from a first rate University, --then, gain admission to
an exclusive grad school, then, obtain my professional
credentials, etc.

I don't understand how making vague and non-specific claims
about your background is supposed to carry any weight. I can
appreciate you not wanting your personal information archived
in usenet posts for anyone to see, now or several years from
now. However, you should realize that in this situation
all we have to go on is what you post. And frankly, your
posts do not provide very much support for the statements
you made above.

The only reason I'm bothering to say this is because
I was reading this thread and, all of a sudden, you
jumped on nimue's back for no reason at all.

Thanks. Man, this ng is incredible! I have never been so supported in my
life.

To be honest,
I thought you were a teenage troll at first, but your
posting record suggests otherwise (in this regard, at least).

Dave L. Renfro

--
nimue

"As an unwavering Republican, I have quite naturally burned more books
than I have read." Betty Bowers

English is our friend. We don't have to fight it.
Oprah

Quoting a self-acknowledged member of the teaching profession,
anonymously posting into a public Usenet group.


nimue wrote:
I didn't vote for those ...

... assholes ....

ξ:Ð*) ξ:Ð*)

ξ:Ð*)

ξ:Ð*) ξ:Ð*)

ξ:Ð*) ξ:Ð*)

ξ:Ð*) ξ:Ð*) ξ:Ð*) ξ:Ð*)
ξ:Ð*) ξ:Ð*)

.... nor, I suspect, did any of my colleagues.

Thank you.

... That made my day.

Cordially,

Raving

(Herman Rubin) wrote:

There's a grain of truth in some of this except this one


Writing all your essays?

One of the big problems teaching school is to have enough time for
students to actually write and have a teacher with enough time to read
what they've written, critique it and have it rewritten. My dad's
rule of thumb was that things should be revised seven times - while
that may not be required now that revisions are so much easier on
computers, writing still requires work. So IMO, there are
insufficient real writing opportunities in school.

This is not new - I only remember writing a few essays when I was in
HS, and in senior English, the teacher had us grade each other's work
instead of grading it himself.

If one or two satisfactory essays are written, what
is the purpose of the rest?

IMHO it is not possible to learn to write a satisfactory essay just by
doing 'one or two'. It takes lots and lots of practice. I consider
myself to be a reasonably good writer, but I would never say that I
had learned so much about writing that I could not benefit from doing
more of it.

Getting an A
average on tests and quizzes?

Do you not take into account improving during the term?
The first time I taught a class, a student got a good
A on the final, much better than earlier. I learned
then that it is the end result which should count.

I'm not sure about this. I did take a class once where there was a
pre-test with 40 questions, and I got one wrong on it. When I took
the same test after the class, I got two wrong. Both were still an A,
but I did wonder what learning had been accomplished.

Actually in this particular case, the course that I should have had
didn't have enough people signed up for it, so I was put into a class
that was one where I had already mastered the material. (It was a
class that was mandated and paid for by my employer so I had little
choice.) I did learn things, because I always do. But it would have
been better had I been in the other class.

On 8 Sep 2006 22:05:04 -0700, wrote:


But my main point is that I saw over the course of my time there, a
steady decline in the quality of students, a steady decline in
creativity and risk-taking, and a steady increase in grade-mongering.
(I was in history, and I TA'd and taught dozens of classes and had
hundreds of students.) I don't know if this trajectory is totally or
even partially due to the change in grade policy, but it was very
noticeable.

I agree with your observation. It's hard to tell what made the
change, but it is certainly there. This seems to be especially true
in competitive private prep schools, btw. Several teachers I know
actually have students in high school who are motivated by things only
elementary school kids would have been interested in back when I went
to school and in fact only very young students were motivated by the
external sticker rewards that these kids want along with their grades
nowadays.

I truly think that it's because in most schools today, we have decided
to use external rewards for everything from behavior to learning and
the kids are thus demotivated towards any internal discipline or
internal goals. I have to say I agree with Alfie Kohn about how this
has affected our schools and our society.

And just to add -- I still have plenty of bright, motivated, engaged
students who are clearly taking the class for more than a grade. I
also have plenty of engaged, bright students who love talking about the
material and have interesting and insightful things to say, but who
don't do the work and are not getting As. I haven't found that what
grade a student receives *consistently* corresponds to their
intellectual curiosity.

Agreed, My favorite class to teach (other than preK) was honors
Geometry, but I had students of all varieties in those classes from
the young girl who came into the class after 6 weeks of a *no-teacher*
section (we had a section open that was taught by subs while the
admins fought with the central office), worked her tail off and got a
B for the class, to the sisters who would take proofs home and argue
about them and work with their cousin and then come in with different
proofs and want to know who was correct, to the boy who was brilliant
in algebra, but had problems with logic and thought he knew better
than the teacher when it came to his proofs who failed the class and
ended up taking a dumbed down geometry without proofs for graduation.
It has always been a challenge and the grades do consistently
correspond to the love of learning, imo.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Raving wrote:
Quoting a self-acknowledged member of the teaching profession,
anonymously posting into a public Usenet group.

Uh, it's kind of well known that teachers as a whole do not vote Republican.
It's hardly shocking news.


nimue wrote:
I didn't vote for those ...

... assholes ....

?:?) ?:?)

?:?)

?:?) ?:?)

?:?) ?:?)

?:?) ?:?) ?:?) ?:?)
?:?) ?:?)

.... nor, I suspect, did any of my colleagues.

Thank you.

... That made my day.

Cordially,

Raving

--
nimue

"As an unwavering Republican, I have quite naturally burned more books
than I have read." Betty Bowers

English is our friend. We don't have to fight it.
Oprah

On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 15:41:22 -0400, Bob LeChevalier
wrote:

"Linda Gore" wrote:
There is NO chance that persons who had to sacrifice EVERYTHING, most
especially their conscience and morals, just to get their degrees, then
get and keep their teaching license are not going to make damn sure their
students are forced to make the same damn sacrifices.

Feel free to not play the game. Feel free to starve. Rarely will
someone pay you for doing what you want instead of what they want.

That's life. Live with it.

Except that many of the people who don't play the game, make their own
rules, start their own businesses and do very well.

Others drop out of the *game* and live differently, but well by their
own standards even though they are not *employed* in jobs that require
them to play political games.

Admittedly, not everyone can manage this, but we should be creating
more opportunities for people to follow their true dreams, imo.

lojbab


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 20:31:57 GMT, "toypup"
wrote:

Who cares? What matters is what they learn, and
even more important, what they understand.

I have to agree here. I did not always show up to class in college. As
long as I understood the material, I was fine studying at home. If I was
having difficulty, then I would attend class to help clarify the material.

I would like to see high schools allowing this, but because they are
set up to be *in loco parentis,* they really cannot do so. By the
teenage years, we should be giving students more and more freedom
to actually learn with or without being *in* the classroom. Most high
school kids will not learn without being in class, but we really can't
compel them to learn even if they are in their seats.

What is needed is an intrinsic motivation toward learning.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On 9 Sep 2006 17:42:25 -0400, (Herman
Rubin) wrote:

If one or two satisfactory essays are written, what
is the purpose of the rest?

To improve the writing from satisfactory to excellent.

This is unlikely to happen, unless the reason for lack
of excellence is technical.

Writing will improve with practice and feedback.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

"nimue" wrote in message
...
toypup wrote:
"Herman Rubin" wrote in message
Showing up to
class every day?

Who cares? What matters is what they learn, and
even more important, what they understand.

I have to agree here. I did not always show up to class in college.
As long as I understood the material, I was fine studying at home.
If I was having difficulty, then I would attend class to help clarify
the material.

Well, I am talking about high school, middle school, and grade school.
Those kids should show up every day. I think you should in college, too,
but I can see an argument there.

When it comes to high school, middle school and grade school, I do agree the
kids should show up everyday, unless there is a good reason not to.