Comments on: Chaos in the classroom and how to replace it with learning https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/ Thu, 11 May 2017 21:14:01 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: Wow https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489721 Thu, 11 May 2017 21:14:01 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489721 No, it just teaches them what you need to pass the test.

If teaching to the test worked, nobody would need more driving after their test.

But I guess you don’t really apply yourself to anything more than the few repetitive situations, therefore as far as your life is concerned, either it fits the very few cases you know or it isn’t real.

]]> By: MikeN https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489720 Thu, 11 May 2017 20:56:09 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489720 If the test is well done, then teaching to the test should teach students quite a bit.

]]> By: Wow https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489719 Thu, 11 May 2017 17:58:42 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489719 The problem is that the teaching is to the test, not to education.

]]> By: zebra https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489718 Thu, 11 May 2017 16:21:45 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489718 Salvatore Hepatica,

It is difficult to reconcile the idea that there are “low expectations” at the same time we hear all the complaints about testing and too much homework and so on.

I think I remember doing all kinds of fancy stuff with parts of language and sentences and so on in grammar school, but my “the good old days” is not a valid criterion for whether it should be emphasized today.

If you are a teacher, you must be teaching something– what is it?

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489717 Thu, 11 May 2017 11:44:49 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489717 In reply to Salvatore Hepatica.

The writer was teaching juniors and seniors in a high ranked public school in a state with a reputation for good schools. The problems noted here have been noted by many others and some schools have taken action on it. I’ve got a post coming out soon that touches on that.

There seem to be schools that are in such bad shape that this sort of problem would seem minor.

As to what is taught now vs the old days, I’m going to bet that educational theory and method are better now than then.

]]> By: Salvatore Hepatica https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489716 Thu, 11 May 2017 06:21:46 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489716 I don’t know who the writer was teaching, but I teach in a public school in Washington. The low expectations are growing so much lower owing to the intellectual and cultural shoddiness of our society, itself the product of dumb-down consumerism and capitalist exploitation. The chaos comes from the people themselves. Stop blaming bureaucrats and others. You think it’s them but it’s most likely you and your coddling nature, of yourself and others. In the classrooms, I don’t cry over the malcontent impolite rude clueless lazy “rebel” types but over the quiet pensive kid sitting at the desk thinking “I’m not learning anything.” And the chaos and noise around him define the cause perfectly. I saw kids the other day who had been taught 2, just 2, “parts of speech” a year since the 4th grade. More than that, I was told, was too difficult. My generation learned those in 3rd grade, all of them, and could use them and demonstrate how the knowledge was used. Most classrooms in public schools waste time, 50% or more of their time, dealing with troublesome students.

]]> By: Kayla Klahr » Blog Archive » Reflection 8: Blogging in the fourth dimension; Peter, sit up and listen https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489715 Mon, 28 Apr 2014 04:22:48 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489715 […] Image found here […]

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489714 Sat, 09 Nov 2013 15:56:44 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489714 Larry, thanks. You should write that up. A guest post here would be welcome.

]]> By: Larry Barton https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489713 Sat, 09 Nov 2013 15:24:07 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489713 I retired from a high school in northern MInnesota, Greg, and you’ve nailed it. For nearly three decades, I waged a futile campaign to eliminate or ameliorate classroom disruptions. I kept idiosyncratic attendance figures the whole time, and calculated that, for our AVERAGE high school student, annual attendance in class amounted to under 84%. Students with “perfect attendance” typically spent less than 90% of a term in the classes they were assigned to. If the classes met after lunch or before 10:00 a.m., attendance could fall to as low as 70% of the term. Add to that the constant squawking noise of the PA system, which often produced indistinguishable and irritating cacophony that echoed aimlessly around the classroom. I also taught college level and found the secondary classroom, left to the mercy of self-indulgent autocrats in the front office, to be far from conducive to learning. That learning does occur is a tribute to the teachers’ and students unrelenting efforts in the face of overwhelming interference that has been institutionalized as “public school culture.”

The political game, meanwhile, appears often to be under the control of parties who seem dead-set on destroying the public educational system. One of the handicapping decisions, as you mention, is the determination to supersede classroom instruction with more and more testing, testing that often defies logic as anything other than an attempt to sell more testing services to the school. As we say in education, a farmer doesn’t get heavier cows by weighing them more often. Thanks for an insightful analysis of the problems plaguing the average public-school teacher.

]]> By: joemac53 https://gregladen.com/blog/2013/10/29/chaos-in-the-classroom-and-how-to-replace-it-with-learning/#comment-489712 Sat, 02 Nov 2013 21:33:17 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/?p=18041#comment-489712 I disabled the PA and the phone in my classroom. During school renovations I taught in portable classrooms that were not even attached to the school building. No PA, no phone, no one wanted to visit, it was an island of calm amidst the chaos. I never got to teach in the renovated school, so far behind schedule that I retired from the portables. (I’m not complaining)

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