n's wisdom

[04:22:16] * n topples
[04:23:07] <Altruit> do you think (as a teacher) it would be fair for some students to be excluded from being scored on daily homework?
[04:23:16] <n> Hrm.
[04:23:27] <n> Excluded how?
[04:23:32] <n> Like, on what grounds?
[04:23:46] <Altruit> just not having it count towards their grades
[04:23:56] <n> If it's just random, then no.
[04:24:06] <Altruit> make it purely based off of test scores and presentations and whatnot
[04:24:08] <n> If it's due to a learning difficulty, then perhaps an adjusted system.
[04:24:23] <Altruit> What about due to disintrest?
[04:24:42] <n> It's just an entirely difficult system.
[04:24:50] <n> Because I think, if a student is capable, they should do the work.
[04:24:56] <n> Regardless of interest.
[04:25:16] <Altruit> but I remember at one point in I think 11th grade I got tired of all the homework babble from my teachers and I pulled out records from all my grades from the start of middle school to that point and I just took nothing but actual test scores and mushed them all together into one grade and it was like 97%, while my GPA sat at like 2.5
[04:25:16] <Altruit> [4:19:11 AM] Blaine: working
[04:25:16] <Altruit> [4:19:12 AM] Blaine: as
[04:25:16] <Altruit> [4:19:14 AM] Blaine: intended.
[04:25:21] <Altruit> something I wrote on skype
[04:25:40] <n> School really should be preparing students for responsibilities, too. It should be fostering their intelligences, but students should realise that we all do shit we hate.
[04:26:10] <n> Very few people work because they enjoy it. And even if they enjoy what they do, they have to do shit they hate. School is the same.
[04:26:42] <n> And I don't think it's fair to take that social lesson away from children. How they interpret it later is up to them and how they push to change that system is, too.
[04:27:03] <n> But I think school should be more practical and that the whole system needs to be revamped.
[04:28:30] <Altruit> mmm
[04:28:34] <n> Busy work is garbage.
[04:28:38] <n> It has no substance.
[04:29:25] <n> But students are going to be bored by something. They're people, their thoughts are going to be somewhere else and their minds will wander. Some will hate history, others will hate maths. That doesn't mean they should slack off because they're bored.
[04:30:41] <Altruit> why should people with functioning brains be dragged down to the mouth breathers that take up most of public schools?
[04:30:56] <n> That's another problem with the school system.
[04:31:04] <n> We're too focused on making things equal across all levels.
[04:31:18] <n> For low achieving students, middle achieving students, and high achieving students.
[04:31:31] <n> People always say 'streaming is only going to benefit some,' but the fact is that it doesn't.
[04:31:45] <Altruit> yeah but even the "gifted" classes are just grinding even more homework
[04:31:48] <n> Tracking/streaming tends to benefit all students.
[04:31:54] <Altruit> it's rarely anything more difficult
[04:31:57] <n> That's, again, the problem with the system.
[04:32:11] <n> Look at teacher training. We're not taught how to work with gifted students.
[04:32:21] <n> In fact, we're not really taught how to work with students, full stop.
[04:32:26] <n> The whole system is broken.
[04:32:54] <n> And it needs to be severely reworked to be functional. Teachers need to be taught how to handle kids on all levels, focusing on the psychology/sociology aspect.
[04:33:29] <n> And most teachers just don't get it. They think kids are going to learn more by grinding the assignments, doing worksheets, blahblahblah.
[04:33:49] <n> The fact is that kids do better with projects that have multiple aspects to them.
[04:34:30] <Altruit> I just couldn't get engaged to anything that was presented in high school besides physics and chemistry
[04:34:30] <n> From a history perspective: Kids do better when you have something that has a beginning stage (planning/research), middle (research/organisation), and an end (putting that together).
[04:34:41] <Altruit> and lo and behold, I did exceptionally well in both of them
[04:34:59] <n> That's their problem. They probably taught it badly.
[04:35:24] <n> In as much as they weren't developing teaching strategies.
[04:37:39] <n> Honestly, everything that keeps education from changing is why I'm switching fields and trying something new.
[04:38:16] <n> It's all politics and bureaucrats and morons who know nothing about it or student psychology who are making the most impact, and it's always breaking.
[04:38:28] <n> And when we see something that actually works (see: Finland), we fucking ignore what they do.