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Here’s a great TED talk by a math teacher about all the math you really need:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyowJZxrtbg
Thanks Penelope! I want vocation to be at the crux of my educational homeschooling. It’s no surprise that sitting in a classroom all day making up ideas on how you will possibly “use this stuff” in the “real world” dissatisfies children.
Why stifle them by separating them from what they’ll have to deal with the rest of their lives. Vocation.
It’s not so much about math and science because I know plenty people who have degrees in those areas that can’t land a job. It’s more about teaching kids to do any job and do it will, with confidence and creatively if they need to create their own.
The link to a Scientific approach to Science Edu is fascinating: more novice like perception on physics AFTER taking an intro course. Even worse results for intro to Chemistry. Einstein would be cheering the dissemination of this information indeed! The classes actually damage our knowledge and ideas, rather than making them more advantaged and/or professional. Wowzers
I think vocational ideas might be good for some kids, not all however.
What if your child wants to be a math teacher, lawyer, doctor, aerospace engineer? You actually need a degree for most of those. (I think you can take the bar and practice law without a degree?)
What if your kids actually LOVE school? Love being there with friends? Adore their teachers? Thrive on the competition involved in ranking? And play on sports teams and excite in school spirit?
You are able to homeschool because you have had a brilliant education. What happens when your kids go to homeschool their kids, especially with the loose/lack of curriculum and structure – as in – this builds on this?
Within two generations, society crumbles. Another generation later, nobody knows how to run the generators and the lights go out in New York.
lol – just being extreme, but there really are reasons for standards and wrote learning.
With something like 2% of the school age population being homeschooled, how would your extreme scenario come to pass?
The extreme scenario is based on the extreme ideas that most kids go the homeschool or unschool route, thus extreme.
Oh Darlene, imprisoning our children by the millions for 13 years away from their families, is the extreme.
How can keeping our children with their failies be extreme?
Please, I beg of you to explore the Hole in the Wall project. Watch Gatto’s YouTube vid on Weapons of Mass Instruction, before you pass further judgement.
I don’t necessarily disagree. My point is that there needs to be choice, and there are seriously valid reasons to have institutional schools.
Anyway, interesting debate. And believe it or not, I am a serious advocate for homeschooling – attending the big conference out here in Long Beach at the end of the month.
What I do have a problem with is the philosophy that EVERYONE should do this for their kids.
My point is always that there should be choice, and it is very individualized.
Not so. It is good for ALL children globally, the learning through doing, that is. It is how every human learns actually.
We can all learn the entrance-to-college level math, science, chemistry to get into university in total of a few months as teenagers. Homeschoolers and unschoolers are by far better prepared to excel law and philosophy and democracy based fields because that is what they have experienced their entire lives.
Sports, extra curriculers, arts, etc. a open to all children regardless of school. Social environments for teenagers are sought out, often by the child.
Play is the work of children to at least about the age of 12-13. You want confident, competitive, empathetic, altruistic, non stressed out brainwashed, loving, spirited, brilliant adults- then unschool them as children.
Also, read the new issue of JUAL and research the Hole in the Wall project.
Peace, CJ
Honestly, I think that if kids are going to school they can take 2 years of vocational school for free at their community college. If you are homeschooled you can too, in my experience.
So if you graduate high school with a 2 yr degree and some experience you can go to college while making money on a good job like a mechanic or whatever rather than bussing tables only a few hrs per week on minimum wage and erratic hours.
There should be both kind of schools. Vocational and more academic, abstract, and in many countries there are – for good reason many european countries with a well-developed apprenticeship system have very high end craftsmanship and related professions. However, if the voc-ed education is done poorly it does not benefit anybody.
Date night @ Irish pub then off to see Best Marigold hotel, my husband and I have been chatting about PTs post and comments…..he says (of course he agrees with me) that he also agrees with you. When we were in the military and I went to Holland on assignment, we both remember my excitement over the way they do things edu wise: every citizen does service to their country, then either vocational, art, university edu, etc. It is a choice and a MAJOR part of the national culture.
Anyhow, we wanted to say “great comment!”
This is a great post and I really liked the article in Time magazine. Learning by doing is important and especially critical for those students who you’ll lose either because they will refuse to learn or learn a minimal amount by classroom teaching only. While reading about vocational training, it made me think we are teaching our students in a backward fashion. It makes more sense to me to engage the student in a hands-on learning environment which embraces all subject areas and then explore the subject areas in depth, as necessary, rather than the other way around which is what is done now. Learn the subjects as applicable and the context in which they are employed in the project.
I totally agree with you Penelope. And I’ve gotta say, all your photos of farm life make me want to move out of cookie-cutter suburbia and into the country. I know you guys have to drive quite a bit to get to various activities, but would you say it’s worth it overall?
“The object of education is the generation of power. But to generate and store up power whether mental or physical or both is a waste of effort unless the power is to be exerted. Why generate steam if there is no engine to be operated? Steam may be likened to an idea which finds expression through the engine, a thing? Why store the mind with facts, historical, philosophical, or mathematical, which are useless until applied to things, if they are not to be applied to things? And if they are to be applied to things, why not teach the art of so applying them? As a matter of fact the system of education which does not do this is one-sided, incomplete, unscientific.”
I am truly starting to believe that there has been no original research in education for the last century. That quote above is from ‘Mind and Hand: manual training, the chief factor in education’ (1900) by Charles Ham. He was promoting the idea of schools that incorporated manual training (vocational training) into their curriculum. MIT was formed in this fashion when it began.
The purpose was not to steer some into factories but rather to use the creation of useful objects, doing something useful for their fellow man, to give substance to the abstractions of strictly mental subjects. Beyond the using of math or science but also the familiarity with objects and the useful arts bringing alive the narratives of the classics and literature.
While some alterations might be required for today, teaching kids the useful arts is a great way to bring the book learning alive and avoid the falsity that is possible in purely mental education.
“It is possible for the mind to indulge in false logic, to make the worse appear the better reason, without instant exposure. But for the hand to work falsely is to produce a misshapen thing—tool or machine —which in its construction gives the lie to its maker. Thus the hand that is false to truth, in the very act publishes the verdict of its own guilt, exposes itself to contempt and derision, convicts itself of unskilfulness or of dishonesty.”
Amy said, “I know you guys have to drive quite a bit to get to various activities, but would you say it’s worth it overall?”
while we do not live on a farm, we do live “out in the country”, aka the cornfields of America, & we love it, in spite of the fact it takes at least a half-hour to get anywhere (grocery shopping, bookstores, fast food, YMCA, downtown, my family in the suburbs…)
What we like most is the feeling that we are out where life is really happening, but still close enough to “civilization” that we can go back into the city if we need to. At my sister’s house, you can’t see the stars at night, while all we do is step out on our back patio every evening before bed to gaze into the wide open sky. The neighbors all know my kids, so when they are absent from school, I have to explain why at the bus stop next morning. My EX comes around & everyone wants to know, Who is that stranger, he’s not from around here…?
Don’t get me wrong, there are negatives, too. Rural life has its curses, like the fact it’s mostly white & insulated from the rest of the world, so my mixed-race family stood out for a long while before the citizens got used to us. And sometimes maybe I don’t feel like explaining myself to overly nosy questions about my life. And an hour-long round-trip just to pick up some spaghetti sauce is frustrating to say the least.
All told, I’ll take my country life where the police & fire fighters know me, my kids, my husband, & all of his relatives back three generations, so that we haven’t locked our doors once since moving in. Maybe the trade-off isn’t for everyone, but it works for us.
Andi-Roo