I meant you should wait before posting
I know.....
The point is that the internet is already used to support learning in and out of school....it doesn't need to replace or supplant school.
UKIP move up to third in polls....
- Thread starter spudbynight
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I know.....
The point is that the internet is already used to support learning in and out of school....it doesn't need to replace or supplant school.
Indeed, I could imagine the current population of the UK voting for the nazi party if they lived in post war Germany
Soldato
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Well sadly Dr Asimov is no longer with us.
What makes the boring stuff boring? I've never come across any subject where the whole class found one thing boring. Come to think of it i don't think i've come across many that everyone found interesting. Anyway, if not everyone finds it boring then it can't be a property of the subject, it must be some other factor. Either the teaching environment, the context, whatever. I find it far more likely that it is to do with how a student best learns information. And no matter how you learn you'll learn better if you're interested.
If a subject is important enough to have to be taught to everyone then doubtless they will come across it in their research, yes? You're only interested in sports? There is no way that you're not going to learn, and indeed want to learn, the maths behind it. You're interested in writing? That leads to history, to art.
That in itself is one of the main problems with the current system. Human progression and knowledge is forced into these little bubbles, you learn one then move on to another. There is no interaction between them. In reality knowledge is not confined, it is broad and connected in such a beautiful way that the school system will never come close to helping us to comprehend. You can meander in any direction you want and at some point you will come across all that can be considered 'basic knowledge' because surely that must be the very definition of basic knowledge. Knowledge that should be known by all because of it's universal application.
I wish I had your rose coloured spectacles permabanned.....because what you just described has no relation to reality.
Somethings you need to know....what if a kids doesn't like maths..he finds it boring....what then, hey don't worry learn someting else, not as if knowing how to count and do artithmatic isn't important or anything.....don't like english....thats ok, grammar and sentence structure..who cares about that, I know learn what you like instead....it'll come to you in time.
Or not as the case may be.
A kid likes sport, he will do the sport..he will ignore the maths behind it.....
A kid likes writing....he will write about the stuff he is interested in, probably games, films or superheroes..... not much more, I doubt he will be learning shakespeare, or the history of art, not to any degree that would make it actually viable.
You said it yourself.....kids will meander all over the place, learning very little in the process and by the time that they may have come across that basic knowledge, they will probably be past the age where it would do them any good.
You will end up with a generation of kids with heads full of useless and fragmented information and little else.
School is about learning those basics....not meandering about hoping to fall over them.
Somethings you need to know....what if a kids doesn't like maths..he finds it boring....what then, hey don't worry learn someting else, not as if knowing how to count and do artithmatic isn't important or anything.....don't like english....thats ok, grammar and sentence structure..who cares about that, I know learn what you like instead....it'll come to you in time.
Or not as the case may be.
A kid likes sport, he will do the sport..he will ignore the maths behind it.....
A kid likes writing....he will write about the stuff he is interested in, probably games, films or superheroes..... not much more, I doubt he will be learning shakespeare, or the history of art, not to any degree that would make it actually viable.
You said it yourself.....kids will meander all over the place, learning very little in the process and by the time that they may have come across that basic knowledge, they will probably be past the age where it would do them any good.
You will end up with a generation of kids with heads full of useless and fragmented information and little else.
School is about learning those basics....not meandering about hoping to fall over them.
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Soldato
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The whole point is that it isn't fragmented. How you learn now is fragmented. In order to defragment you have to fill in the gaps between those bits of knowledge. Without knowing how it fits in or where it comes from you can never truly understand what it is.
You mean the school system that is nothing more than an assembly line for the deeply stupid majority of children? (I dont just mean lack of knowledge, i mean pure intuition and self thought, both of which are killed in the school enviroment with the pointless teaching for exams problem we have).
If a child is seen as "hyperactive", usually the ones with some of most curious ideas, we stuff them full of anathaestics to calm them down because the system in place only caters to the weak willed and easy to manipulate, the perfect little workforce.
No it is not hocuspocus, it is a dire shame.
I am not defending the current school emphasis in target driven examinations.....simply not advocating replacing it with a laissez faire attitude to a childs education that replaces schooling and teaching with the internet and freedom to do whatever they choose.
Children simply do not have the self discipline, determination, foresight, maturity and basic skills required for that kind of freedom......that is what university is for....once you have learned how to learn of your own violotion and have the skills, maturity and basic knowledge to do so effectively.
Children do not have the self disipline or maturity to recognise or care that their knowledge is fragmented or not....in most cases they will simply not care and by the time it registers that it might adtually be important it will be too late.
There is no way you can state that allowing a child to learn whatever he want will naturally create a structured unified pathway to knowledge......you will have to go a long way to convince me that your average kid will choose to have anything to do with Algebra, Statistics, Geometry, Physics, Chemistry or any number of subjects other than the bare minimum needed to do whatever it is they want to do.
In most cases you will have a generation of illiterate poorly educated 16 year olds wondering what to do now......
Also teaching is not fragmented, curriculums are designed to give a structured pathway to each subject.....learn to walk before you can run basically.
Whether GCSEs are stringent enough or whether the emphasis on exam results is right or wrong, you cannot seriously propose that allowing children to learn what they want, when they want will actually be an improvement.....
Kids will simply not do what you are proposing.....they will just mess about, choose the easiest pathway and learn as little as they can get away with so they can play Crysis and gossip about the neighbours daughters boobs.....
Children simply do not have the self discipline, determination, foresight, maturity and basic skills required for that kind of freedom......that is what university is for....once you have learned how to learn of your own violotion and have the skills, maturity and basic knowledge to do so effectively.
And that is the reality, not your rose tinted interpretation of it.
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Soldato
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It's not about self discipline, it's about the natural development of the human mind.
Children need structure, without it they will not reach their potential as they lack the self-discipline, maturity and the basic skills necessary to attain that potential effectively.
What is the natural development of the human mind....can you define that to any degree?
Don't forget that the intellectual, social and personal development of an individual doesn't stop when you leave school....school is there to give you the tools with which to continue that development yourself, now you have reached (hopefully) a level of basic competence and are armed with the knowledge and skills that are required to forge your own pathway.
The internet simply will not do that for you.....it is simply a tool that can be utilised both at school and individually to supplement a structured education program, it cannot effectively replace one....at least not until the student gains the requisite skills, maturity and self discipline to take responsibility for themselves and the educational pathway they wish to pursue.
What you need to do is address the way kids are taught, remove standarisation, remove struct adherence to national target driven curriculums and allow the teachers to teach.....judge the teachers on their results, not the schools on theirs, and allow a certain amount of interaction, allow a certain amount of freedom, allow children to progress at their own rate.....but not allow the kind of free wheeling approach you are suggesting...it will fail as certainly as the authoritarian approach would.
Remember they are children, not mini adults.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/aero.htm
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********. School nowadays is about passing examinations in one subject. Schools are shying away from teaching critical reasoning and objectivity.
I disagree with Perma's idealistic view of self learning, because it wouldn't work. However, I also disagree with Castiel's view of what schools, nowadays, do.
Perma did make a good point though about classes being more interrelated with each other. It would be a very useful teaching aide if you could resonate mathematics with physical education and that with biology and so on. I feel that curriculum nowadays is far too separated and students don't appreciate the relevance of it outside of a classroom.
I disagree with Perma's idealistic view of self learning, because it wouldn't work. However, I also disagree with Castiel's view of what schools, nowadays, do.
Perma did make a good point though about classes being more interrelated with each other. It would be a very useful teaching aide if you could resonate mathematics with physical education and that with biology and so on. I feel that curriculum nowadays is far too separated and students don't appreciate the relevance of it outside of a classroom.
I haven't given any view on what schools these days do, other than disagree with national curriculums, standarised testing, target driven exam teaching and GCSEs in general.
That is what school is there for....that is not to say that all schools actually effectively give that though.....
Some do however, normally the Grammar and the Independents, those who are not beholden to national curriculums and have a level of autonomy over there methodology.
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We don't have grammar schools up here.
I'd still disagree that schools are trying to complete that objective, and I'm not even sure if schools set out to complete that objective in the first place - especially in England.
The pursuit of league table positioning (again, something that we don't have in Scotland) seems to be far more important to a school than providing the skill-set to the pupils which you claim.
Maybe I'm just unfairly sceptical of modern schools though? Ho hum.
I'd still disagree that schools are trying to complete that objective, and I'm not even sure if schools set out to complete that objective in the first place - especially in England.
The pursuit of league table positioning (again, something that we don't have in Scotland) seems to be far more important to a school than providing the skill-set to the pupils which you claim.
Maybe I'm just unfairly sceptical of modern schools though? Ho hum.
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Maybe if more people who would vote for thewm actually DO vote for them then they'd actually get somewhere. Your attitude is self defeating.
Sometimes things are not all about what a minority of Scots want you know....
To be honest, the Tory's are going to be quite unhappy with the rise of the UKIP.
As with FPTP this kind of breakaway of the anti-EU right into a second party will do quite allot of damage to the Tory's come election time.
As much as I hate the Tory's, I don't want the same situation to happen (but in reverse).
Over the years the left vote has been split between the Lib-Dems/Labour/Green party's - now the Lib-Dems have committed political seppuku judging from the polls the ex Lib-Dem voters have moved back onto Labour.
If the right vote splits into UKIP/Tory then the current lot will wish they voted for AV.
Either way, it's bad news as I don't want Labour in power without any viable opposition (which splitting the vote could cause) - the last thing anybody needs is any party in power without a functioning opposition.
Yet another case for a full proportional representation.
As with FPTP this kind of breakaway of the anti-EU right into a second party will do quite allot of damage to the Tory's come election time.
As much as I hate the Tory's, I don't want the same situation to happen (but in reverse).
Over the years the left vote has been split between the Lib-Dems/Labour/Green party's - now the Lib-Dems have committed political seppuku judging from the polls the ex Lib-Dem voters have moved back onto Labour.
If the right vote splits into UKIP/Tory then the current lot will wish they voted for AV.
Either way, it's bad news as I don't want Labour in power without any viable opposition (which splitting the vote could cause) - the last thing anybody needs is any party in power without a functioning opposition.
Yet another case for a full proportional representation.
They're also in favour of a federal UK, which would be a very democratic thing indeed.
Most of us are not in favour of independence up here.