What will be the price to our future?
I used to think I was fairly intelligent. I have two college degrees and will be beginning law school in just 3 short months. But I learned today that things have changed since I was younger, and that "intelligence" is now measured in drastically different ways.
I was helping my 14 yr old daughter with her math homework today. Math has always come easily to me, in fact in grade school I was skipped ahead to high school math. Anyway, as I was helping her, she kept telling me that I was doing it wrong. I was getting the correct answer, but apparently the correct answer just isn't enough these days. Now there are actually correct methods to follow to get that correct answer. And regardless of whether you get the correct answer or not, if you do not follow the process that the teachers want, then you get marked incorrect, even though the ultimate solution is correct. So now the schools are dictating the way our children learn.
Thanks to the MCAS exams, which is what the state of MA uses for aptitude tests, our children are no longer allowed to find the best way for them, as individuals, to learn material. They are no longer free to think for themselves and determine what makes sense to them. They are taught, essentially, that there is only one correct way to find a solution to any problem. So much for the notion of "thinking outside of the box". What exactly will these methods teach our children about survival in the real world? How are we as parents to teach our children to forge their own path in life if they are taught from kindergarten on that there is only one "right" way?
I want my children to do well in life, and I want them to discover the methods of learning that make the most sense to them respectively. Each individual has their own style of learning, and it is about time that our school systems remember that, because in forgetting that, they may very well be limiting our children and what their futures may hold.
There is never only one way to approach a problem, and by limiting the scope of possibilities in this fashion, the future looks bleak indeed. Just think what this world would be like and all the technology that would not exist if individuals were not allowed to think freely and engage in some creative problem-solving.
I used to think I was fairly intelligent. I have two college degrees and will be beginning law school in just 3 short months. But I learned today that things have changed since I was younger, and that "intelligence" is now measured in drastically different ways.
I was helping my 14 yr old daughter with her math homework today. Math has always come easily to me, in fact in grade school I was skipped ahead to high school math. Anyway, as I was helping her, she kept telling me that I was doing it wrong. I was getting the correct answer, but apparently the correct answer just isn't enough these days. Now there are actually correct methods to follow to get that correct answer. And regardless of whether you get the correct answer or not, if you do not follow the process that the teachers want, then you get marked incorrect, even though the ultimate solution is correct. So now the schools are dictating the way our children learn.
Thanks to the MCAS exams, which is what the state of MA uses for aptitude tests, our children are no longer allowed to find the best way for them, as individuals, to learn material. They are no longer free to think for themselves and determine what makes sense to them. They are taught, essentially, that there is only one correct way to find a solution to any problem. So much for the notion of "thinking outside of the box". What exactly will these methods teach our children about survival in the real world? How are we as parents to teach our children to forge their own path in life if they are taught from kindergarten on that there is only one "right" way?
I want my children to do well in life, and I want them to discover the methods of learning that make the most sense to them respectively. Each individual has their own style of learning, and it is about time that our school systems remember that, because in forgetting that, they may very well be limiting our children and what their futures may hold.
There is never only one way to approach a problem, and by limiting the scope of possibilities in this fashion, the future looks bleak indeed. Just think what this world would be like and all the technology that would not exist if individuals were not allowed to think freely and engage in some creative problem-solving.
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I've never bought into the theory of teachers as especially good people. They're just people, like the rest of us. And sometimes they need to be told that they, and their methods, are full of shit. (When they are, which is not always)