Open Thread: On the Value of Your Own High School Learning
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I haven’t done an open thread in a while - still chewing on that last one on “designing your dream 1:1 school elective”. But here’s a question that’s been nagging me for a while, and that I’ve wanted to put to as many people out there that will weigh in. Because I can’t tell if my case is normal, or the exception.
It has to do with this: of my four years of high school education back in the late ’70s, here is the “knowledge” I remember:
Psychology Class:
“Functional Fixedness” is what I’d now call “inside-the-box thinking.” People with functional fixedness don’t realize, for example, that with a candle, a match, and a fishing hook, you actaully have a “wall-mounting kit.” (Melt the wax on the wall and embed the hook in it. Let it dry and solidify. Voila: hang a picture on the hook.) I never watched the old TV show MacGyver, but whenever I heard about the cool things he could jimmy with the random objects at hand, I always thought: “MacGyver gets functional fixedness.”
Story: A guy knocked on my door once asking for a coathanger. He’d locked his keys in his car. I went out with him to help. The lock peg was one of those chrome deals with no lip or head - nothing for the coat-hanger to grab on to. And the chrome was too smooth to offer traction to the hanger. I pulled the chewing gum out my mouth, fixed it on the hook of the hanger, and sure enough, it grabbed that chrome peg and pulled it up, unlocking the car door, in a second flat. Thank you, MacGyver. And thank you, high school psychology class.
Oh. I remember genotype and phenotype, too. And phrenology. And something about Freud. And Maslow’s Hierarchy.
English Class:
I remember writing an essay on the Iliad based on my reading of the Classics Illustrated Comics version. And getting an A. I remember “Et tu, Brutus?“ I remember writing some lurid report on the serial killer, Son of Sam. (It was fun trying to get the horror of being his victim in the opening paragraphs. That I remember that is noteworthy. This was 1977.)
Social Studies:
I remember absolutely nothing from high school social studies. I didn’t fall in love with history until far into college.
Math:
I remember finding geometry fun and easy. I remember failing Algebra because I skipped too much school.
Science:
I remember nothing from high school science. And I’m trying to right now. Something about cells, mitochondria, metastasis, cancer. Something about kingdoms and phyla and other taxonomic categories.
Art:
I remember making a block print. I remember having a painful crush on cheerleader Cheryl Newman, who always sat with me, but whom I was too shy to pursue. But I digress.
Physical Education and Health:
I remember absolutely nothing. Oh wait: four food groups. And I am what I eat.
I’m really trying here.
Other Disciplines:
If I took any other classes, I’m darned if I remember them at all.
Valuable Life-Skills I Learned in High School:
Don’t hate me. I can’t think of one. Other than “Fight bullies early, or suffer them for years.” And “Friendship is pretty important. It gets you through the high school years.”
So my question for this open thread: What value did high school have for you? What knowledge do you a) remember at all from all those hours of studying and testing? and b) find useful today? Expand if you like.
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“I remember nothing from high school science. And I’m trying to right now. Something about cells, mitochondria, metastasis, cancer. Something about kingdoms and phyla and other taxonomic categories.”
It’s so sad to read such a thing. There are soooo many people out there who have the same memories, or lack, of school science, and yet it is a scientific training that helps a sense of curiosity mature and provides it with the tools to evaluate evidence, figure out how a candle, a match and a fishing hook might not be such a good choice for hanging a framed picture on the wall and even realizing that the cohesive forces that exist between gum and metal might be exploited in opening that car door.
I do understand that a lot of people switch off in science class, but they’re missing out on pulling together quite a formidable arsenal of knowledge, logical prowess, and a basis for a potent curiosity by so doing.
db
David Bradley’s last blog post..Six Degees of Separation
David Bradley
4 Feb 08 at 8:50 pm
David, I agree with you - it’s terribly sad. My “science” category is full of posts attesting to my respect for science now, for all the reasons you mention and more - but my high school experience clearly didn’t light the match.
That’s really why the question in this post interests me, as I said in the beginning: am I the exception, or the rule? How much from your 4 years of high school do you remember, find useful, etc?
Clay Burell
4 Feb 08 at 9:20 pm
What I do remember and treasure about my high school experience was the lack of “high stakes testing”. I’m not trying to be serious - it’s just that I fondly remember not having to be tested so much, talked to about testing, and scared of failing a state test. Funny thing is that I graduated in 1990 - the first year NJ implemented the HSPT test that has now morphed into the HSPA under NCLB. Even though I took the est, we were never worried about it, or drilled in classes, or thought about not graduating.
I also remember being one of the fattest kids in the school. (Don’t pity me) One of my gym teachers referred to me and my best (also fat) friend as “the bookends”. I laugh about that still.
Nice thread.
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Michael Parent
4 Feb 08 at 9:31 pm
We do five years of obligatory high school in the UK age 11-16 and then two years of optional “sixth-form college”. I cannot say I remember precise details and would no doubt fail 90% of my exams were I asked to sit all those subjects again today. But, I did three foreign languages and can get by in those (just about), history is a bit vague but I still recall the basics, geography, chemistry, physics, and biology, I hope that gave me the grounding to get me where I am today. Maths (ditto, although I doubt I could do differential equations without a lot of revision work), computer science gave me a decent grounding even if it was in the era of steam-driven mainframes and micros. I also did geometric and engineering drawing and could probably still knock out an ellipse or an Archimedes spiral from first principles. Oh, yes, and English language. Well, I earn my living as a writer so I must have remembered at least some of that too.
I get your point though, I think most people unless they persist in academia don’t necessarily take much from high school. Maybe it’s the higher ed that helps make it more concrete, and perhaps that applies mainly to those who study fact-based sciences rather than the arts or more humanities-led subjects which are more about creativity, expression and opinion.
db
David Bradley’s last blog post..Who Do You Work For?
David Bradley
4 Feb 08 at 11:42 pm
I went to high school in a large surburban high school in New Jersey in the mid-1980s.
I learned many things. The things I learned OF VALUE were:
Social Studies: Took a course called the Institute for Politcal and Legal Education (IPLE). Changed my life I learned how to ask good questions, to debate, to chair a debate, to think on my feet, to do pointed research, and to write. The course was taught as a year long simulation where we role-played members of Congress. Powerful.
Phys Ed: I learned how to swing a golf club and hit a golf ball. I learned the rules of ultimate frisbee. I consistently ran a mile in under 8 minutes.
English: Learned to appreciate British literature, especially the Canturbury tales, Beowolf, Picture of Dorian Grey.
Humanities: Read Melville, looked at Rembradt and Van Gogh, learned meditation, and watch Casablanca for the first time.
Math: I remember no formulas, but I was able to do fine on the math sections of the SAT, GRE, and GMAT, so I must have retained something.
(The following was crossed posted on http://plethoratech.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-would-be-different.html)
I often think back on my own schooling experiences, the teachers I had, and the learning activities they planned. I went through the same suburban public New Jersey system for all my years K-12. This system gave me enough background that I was able to go off to college, obtain an undergraduate and then two advanced degrees, continue working on a third, develop and advance in a career, start a family, and provide a decent life for them.
Hmmm. Isn’t that what we want for all our students?
By my count, I had 32 assigned teachers 9-12.
Virtually all of them cared about and liked their students. That’s a good place to start.
I can also remember lots of “teacher centered” instruction, with them at the front of the room at the board, informing us (and sometimes entertaining us) while we took notes and put them in our Trapper Keepers. Homework was chapter questions, readings from novels, and math equations. Assessments were tests (multiple choice, short answer, essay, “show your work!”), book reports, essays, diorama projects, and presentations. We did debates, watched films. Sometimes we worked with partners or in groups. Sometimes we worked by ourselves. I remember some of what I learned. I don’t remember lots too.
Has much changed in 25 years?
Here is my key question from this post: Based upon the schooling I have described, I believe that my life has been a good one thus far. With maybe the exception of some life skills (sewing, cooking, auto repair) I have been able to face most of the challenges and situations that have come my way.
If my teachers had used some of the technology tools available today back then as part of my learning, would I have been better skilled, any more prepared for life, more satisfied, or happier as a result?
I don’t think so.
How about the rest of you? Do you suppose thins would be any different in your present if your schooling were different? (And…would you change were you are now if you could?)
It all comes down to this essential idea– The teaching and learning you have is effective and sufficient if it is meeting the needs of the students, the parents, the community, and the future roles they might be destined for….and all those parties are continually reflective to see if this is the case.
Barry’s last blog post..Parody is the sincerest form of flattery: Do You Care?
Barry
5 Feb 08 at 1:32 am
David, you’re right about foreign language: I took a year or two of French, and though I still can’t speak it, it helped me decode many, many Latinate words I encountered in academic texts in university. So studying French, while it didn’t make me a French speaker, did make me a better reader. And when I went to Paris 20 years after high school, I was able to understand much more than you’d expect, after all those years of dormancy.
I’m still not convinced that, for me, that added value justified the opportunity cost of those four high school years. But it helped to remember the French class, anyway.
The funny thing about the other skills you mention with language is that honestly, I was reading and writing like a maniac outside of school. I had a reader and writer inside of me despite school. What did I read? Marvel Comics, Tolkein, Herbert’s Dune series. (And don’t be fooled by the cultural bias against comic books: Stephen Krashen cites linguistic analysis of Marvel Comics diction that shows it equals a sophisticated newspaper, so for language learning and vocabulary acquisition, it serves just fine. The graphics only help give contextual clues that lower the frustration level the same unfamiliar vocab would have w/out the graphics. Comics make for good literacy development, in short. And visual.)
Writing? Even in my teen years, I wrote massive letters to anybody who would read them. Ten, twenty, thirty pages. I loved writing. It brought me flow. And the readers of my letters liked them too.
–The point of all the above is this: I’m not sure I have high school to thank for making me literate or developing me as a reader and writer. I’m not sure, in fact, that it wasn’t getting in the way of that by diverting my energies into stuff I didn’t care about and would later forget - the point of this post, somewhat.
I just wonder if we shouldn’t shorten the school years and let people enter the world younger, so they can pursue their own questions, rather than the ones high school prescribes for them.
Clay Burell
5 Feb 08 at 5:41 am
Sadly enough, being a Grade 12 graduate this year, one would think I would be able to list much more than you, Clay, or the others. Alas, perhaps high school has almost always, from an educational standpoint, been a waste of time.
Whereas elementary is teaching you fundamental skills you will need for the rest of your life - reading, writing, simple math, etc. - high school attempts to refine these skills or sometimes elaborate on them. Maybe it’s just not necessary.
I remember the Art teacher never taught art at all, and just let students wander around and do nothing. Or, sometimes he would say, go take some pictures, without even a mention of the grid system that can dramatically improve one’s pictures and overall view of the world through a lens.
I remember arguing with the French teacher over the purpose of a course that was nothing more than a constant drudge through reading French literature, or perfecting the grammar of the language. Unfortunately, there were no French books on technology - my main interest at the time. Furthermore, grammar is such an overall boring waste of memory space.
I remember running every week in P.E. around the block. Haven’t really done any physical activity as intense for about three years and I’m still just as healthy. Oh, I think the only time P.E. was fun was when we did these one on one fighting contests to get a ball to your side of the mat. And dodgeball of course.
I remember pissing off the Tech Ed teacher when a plainly stated that nobody had any clue about Ohm’s Law and how to calculate the wattage of some circuit. It was true though, nobody could answer his dumb question.
I remember also pissing off the English teacher when he tried to get us to do ac rappy improptu “play” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We were supposed to memorize lines. I didn’t memorize them and just brought up the book to read my part. Such a complete waste of time. We had already read the odd play, watched the movie, and it’s not like this was an actual play with sets or whatnot - it was going in front of the class to say some lines. The teacher had no inspiration at all and didn’t really deserve to still have a job - damn unions. And no, I’m not a great fan of Shakespeare.
I remember arguing with the Math teacher that quadratics and beyond should not be necessary curriculum since they have no application in general life unless one becomes an engineer. He could’ve even give me one example of where a regular person would need to know that stuff. And it’s quite clear - both you and I, and many other adults I’ve spoken to, have forgot this complex math. They don’t practice it in regular life so they forget it. Required math should stop at simple algebra.
Okay, perhaps I have a bit more detail than you Clay, but it’s still the same story. High school is a waste, and I would argue a dehabilitating time, that is poorly shaping teenagers - youth that should be motivated visionaries ready to take on the world.
Paul Hillsdon’s last blog post..Nature Matters in Surrey?
Paul Hillsdon
5 Feb 08 at 6:46 am
I graduated in 1989, so maybe I remember more. Let’s see:
English class: I remember The Scarlet Letter and writing an essay about it which my teacher praised to the skies and read to the class. The weird thing is that that essay was the FIRST time I really “got” essay writing, and I knew that when I was writing it. It was a sudden eureka moment. Hey! I can do this! I was pacing with my outline up and down the hallway, really into it. I still have that essay, along with many other writing samples because my Texas school district kept a writing folder from 6th through 12th grade & gave it to us at graduation. I really appreciate that.
In that class, I also learned that writing fiction was a whole different ball of wax. After the essay she was so proud of me that she encouraged me to enter a short-story contest, and my entry was, shall we say, sub par. I’m definitely a non-fiction writer.
I learned the Maslow’s hierarchy thing in sex ed. Don’t ask me why. My sex ed teacher was a pompous bitch, who spent most of her time telling us how “actualized” she was. Spluh.
I remember failing algebra in 9th grade, not because I skipped class, but because I plain DIDN’T GET IT. In college algebra I ended up leading a study group (up at the board, like the little teacher I was) and making almost 100% on every test. I’m convinced that physiological brain growth is required for mastery of some skills, and think I’d have done better in math if I’d been allowed to go at my own pace.
I remember plenty from science. I loved biology. I remember studying genetics and making “babies” with a partner by flipping coins and making probabilities about what our “baby” would be like.
I remember another sudden eureka moment in psychics class. I loved that class, in spite of all the math, (again, this was three years after the algebra horror.) It was an extra credit question, which I don’t remember, but I remember the answer: a perpetual motion machine. I remember it because I figured it out all by myself. (although I don’t think I called it “perpetual motion machine,” but “a machine that would never stop” or something like that.) In that same psychics class, I remember the Rube Goldberg project, which was a nightmare because my partner and I put it off till the last weekend. It would’ve been a cool assignment, though.
I also remember that I HATED HATED HATED chemistry. It was the only class I ever cheated in. It wasn’t required, so I dropped after a few months.
That’s all for now! Good question, Clay!
Taylor’s last blog post..In Answer to Your Question,
Taylor
5 Feb 08 at 7:29 am
@PAUL: Thanks for putting a fresh voice in the mix. You nail my nagging suspicion: maybe it’s just not worth it. You made me laugh with your running around the block example. Leave it up to schools to turn into scheduled “assignments” something that teens would be doing anyway, and far more often, if they weren’t nailed to desks and school bus seats eight hours a day.
@TAYLOR: I don’t know where all this is going, but have wanted to ask the question for a long time. Of course we’re going to come out of four years in an institution with a few good memories and experiences. But what memories and experiences of equal or higher value would we have from four years spent outside of our current mainstream system(s)?
Clay Burell
5 Feb 08 at 7:51 am
“But what memories and experiences of equal or higher value would we have from four years spent outside of our current mainstream system(s)?”
I think I’m more than qualified to answer this one.
I left the “traditional” school setting for online learning three years ago. While I’m still “in the system”, I’ve definitely wiggled as much out of it as I can, while still getting a grad diploma. That meant procrastinating a *ton*, and instead of doing the standard 8 courses a year (for a total of 24), I did maybe 5-6, and am currently seeking Independent Directed Studies credits for all the work I do on the side outside of school.
My first six months out I did nothing and sat on my ass in front of the computer, lost and without any specification ambition.
I got a job at McDonald’s (of course!) afterwards, worked there for a good 10 months, mixed experience overall, but learnt so many skills that I would never have gotten out of school. Met a bunch of various great people, and made some good (at the time) money as well. Did studies on the side.
Now, when I was supposed to be in Grade 11, started going to a youth group to replace the social aspect I had gotten from Mickey D’s. That year (2007) is when things really started heating up.
I’ve always been well connected online, but 2007 was when I went “global” - used my tech knowledge on a local scale with a ton of success.
In 2007 I: went to three youth leadership conferences, co-founded a citywide youth leadership council, co-ran a youth forum and a transit forum (TransitCamp Vancouver!), met a bunch of the local tech people through meetups and mini conferences, went to local public lectures on urban design and to a weekly local comedy show, did a 2 week trek on the Greyhound by myself across Western Canada staying with various people I met IRL and online, started a very successful local blog covering transit and politics - which led to me being on the radio, being quoted for several newspaper articles, and I’ve been written up about (a profile) in the community paper - and I’ve launched two minisites and written three long documents outlining different proposals for the community surround sustainability and transportation.
Trust me, it was a whole heck of a lot more fun and engaging, doing what I wanted, than spending that time in a classroom for 6 hours, Monday to Friday, for 10 months.
Paul Hillsdon’s last blog post..Nature Matters in Surrey?
Paul Hillsdon
5 Feb 08 at 8:07 am
The most useful classes I took in high school were Latin (great for vocabulary and deciphering Super Bowl numbers) and typing (which makes my life at the keyboard so much easier).
In our parochial school system, there was no time set aside for phy ed classes, although we joined CYO softball and basketball teams in our home parishes.
Best high school memories center on school dances and attending sporting events.
Two unforgettable moments: being chosen for a part in the school play (Amaryllis in the Music Man) and receiving new of a college scholarship - the first and only time I was ever called to the principal’s office.
English was easy, Algebra my favorite Math (loved to do the problems like puzzles), Science boring. Most meaningful Social Studies project: making scrap books with news clippings about the JFK assassination.
I felt secure, relatively successful, and graduated eager to move on to college and new adventures.
It wasn’t the best time of my life, but it was a good time.
diane
diane’s last blog post..Growing Up Online: The Province of Teenagers
diane
5 Feb 08 at 8:49 am
Geez, you had psychology in high school…?
Stephen Downes
5 Feb 08 at 8:58 am
High school - argh.
I spent my entire high school life ducking anything that had to do with speaking and writing. My essays were typically read to the class as the “don’t do this” example. I took 4 years of Latin because you never had to talk. I remember none of it.
I took one art class and was relieved to find out that there were actually rules for art (like perspective). I was pretty sure up to then that it was just something that you had or you didn’t. Even though I still wasn’t very good, it gave me hope that I could at least learn something.
Thank goodness for math. Especially algebra. I just understood it without trying, it just all made sense at first glance. Science was more of a mixed bag, I never really understood chemistry or biology, but I was a good test taker so I skated by those. Physics was the most fun and I remember a lot of it. I still remember lots of algebra too.
Luckily someone explained to me that there was this thing called engineering that was like the good parts of math and physics and you got to solve problems. So that’s what I majored in in college. Lucky for me, because college math (where I thought I belonged) is mostly theoretical. That would have been a disaster.
I also learned to program computers in a summer school program (funded by the NSF). That’s probably the one thing I learned in high school that completely changed my life. It gave me the confidence to tackle any kind of problem where even if I didn’t know how to solve it, I could figure something out.
sylvia martinez
5 Feb 08 at 10:33 am
Interesting question and responses.
I remember a lot of the learning experiences more than I do facts or information. I can recall debating the effects of Reconstruction and being forced to argue the opposite side from what I thought. That was a useful experience in perspective, research, and debate. There were some wonderful lessons like that throughout those four years, but, like you, very little else has stuck with me. I’ve always assumed that what I learned in high school was important for college, but who knows. I actually enjoyed high school and learned a lot during that period, just not so much of it from official classroom lessons.
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Jenny
5 Feb 08 at 10:43 am
Let’s see–memories of 9th grade are focused on the social stuff, how much I hated all my teachers, marching band, and how pointless algebra 2 was.
10th grade– geometry proofs were fun, chemistry was a waste of time, ap european history was the most amazing class ever (all sorts of bits stick in my memory, and formed the foundation that I added to with an eclectic mix of courses in college), english I remember reading Heart of Darkness and Kafka and Othello and discussions, writing weekly papers and conferences with the theme reader, and more marching band.
11th grade– I remember a lot from physics, actually, but in very general terms, ap US I mostly remember singing songs like “solidarity forever” and seceding from the class (complete with a constitution, and no, it was not a class activity, I was THAT bored), precalc I is a fuzzy haze, english I remember reading and writing satire and arguing with the teacher about how his interpretation of the end of Gulliver’s Travels was wrong and also how much I hated Kafka.
12th grade–I don’t remember much calc anymore, sadly, but the basic concepts behind it have stuck, ap gov’t & pol I mostly remember debates in which I argued the socialist point of view just to make things more interesting, english I remember reading Dickens, Macbeth, Lear, and watching Ran. I also vividly remember the creative writing class, the several art classes, and the several music classes I took rather than a 4th year of science, and of course the marching band show.
Oh, and French. I actually remember more French than I thought–I’m taking a Spanish class right now and I keep finding myself talking in French (or worse, a mangled combination of French and Spanish) without even realizing it. (French has definitely been helpful with decoding latinate words, too!)
So…something? The stuff I find most useful is the history, because despite all the history I learned in college, it forms the backbone of my historical knowledge, which I need to teach history. The writing, both from my English and creative writing classes I find useful. (I wrote a lot on my own, too, but the sheer amount of writing-revising-rewriting I did in high school made that process automatic by the time I got to college.)
The thing about high school is that I’m convinced that it could be more useful and lead to more lasting learning. It just doesn’t seem to.
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Penelope
5 Feb 08 at 10:53 am
Half an Hour: What I Learned In High School
5 Feb 08 at 11:07 am
Often when I talk to my colleagues about what they remember from high school, it is the experiences like the field trips, sports tournaments, when so and so barfed in math class etc that we remember. It’s the connections that we make, for good or bad, with other people–students and teachers–that we’re most likely to remember.
I’m interested in Paul Hillson’s comments; he talks about how conventional school was so irrelevant and it sounds like what he is doing now is so much more authentic. How many of our students would like to be doing something similar to Paul? How many teachers would like to be in a position to mentor students like Paul?
I teach at a Distributed Learning (DL) school where our students do on-line courses and paper based correspondence style courses. Many of our students are what you might consider home-schoolers, but they are doing their home-schooling within the public school system.
Many of my students are afforded excellent opportunities to explore what really matters to them. Unfortunately, I’m tagging along after them like the curriculum police trying to ensure that they meet all of the prescribed learning outcomes for their courses. It is even worse if they are taking a provincially examinable course. I struggle with a way to ensure that my students are getting a sound education without taking away from the authentic learning that they are doing.
Claire’s last blog post..How to turn ?Me Vision? into ?We Vision?
Claire
5 Feb 08 at 2:19 pm
I’m an occasional visitor to this site, mind if I add mine even if I’m not teaching high school? Not sure whether or not to thank Clay for a question that distracted me from a backlog of grading
High school: a mostly extra-curricular awakening, but definitely useful in retrospect as I’m now confronted with my 7th grader’s homework problems (most recently recalled useful item: the Pythagorean Theorem).
As I rework the list, I’m struck by the cleavage between experiences that did belong to me, and those that were mere ambient noise…
• Social: Slam books; Year Books; Notes intricately folded with the little pull out flap, printed or written in cursive* angled neatly right or left; Combinations to best friends’ lockers; Clove cigarettes; Pot or crystal; Strobe lights; Bumper sticker “Mom thinks I’m at the movies”; Mods, Punks, Surfers, Druggies, Geeks, Artists, Musicians, Drama Club, Cheerleaders, Football games attended not in order to watch football (Pep rallies mandatory); Snow days spent downtown with friends; Hours on the phone; Anorexia; Portland Film Festival; M in 9th, different M in 10th, then first true love D in 11th and 12th (major falling out over differences relative to a Woody Allen film: I am not making this up).
• Music: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Prince, Madonna, Violent Femmes, B-52’s, Billy Idol, The Police, Dead Kennedys, Chopin, Paganini, Puccini, Saint-Saens, Bizet, Bach, Mozart, Bartok, Beethoven, Copeland, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Brahms.
• Literature outside the classroom: e.e.cummings, Blake, Shakespeare, Cather, Austen, Joyce, James, Hemingway, Dellilo, Bellow, Vonegut, Burgess (plus brief biography phase: Mozart, Chopin, Proust + a book called “My Life as an Autodidact” or some such—preaching to the choir).
• Academic:
Science: Turned on to biology by a fantastic 5th grade teacher, loved it in middle and high school, too. Remember: the pungent smell of formaldehyde, the little fish I found in the belly of a bigger fish (lunch!), dissecting the cow’s eyeball (cornea, iris, pupil, retina), testing my own blood type (though I can’t recall what it is), and the science fair where one of my classmates won a national prize for inventing an insulator for hot-water heaters! Liked the experiments in Chemistry, a kind of ‘cooking’, adored cell theory and absolutely everything about heredity, but could never get the darned light bulb to light up in Physics.
Art: craftsmanship, photorealism, pencil, pastel, acrylic, oil, and then for a month at Interlochen: printmaking, metal-smithing, and figure-drawing with a live model!
English: Poetry memorization and recitation in class (and afterwards, the teacher: “Very nice, C, but why choose such a sad poem?”) Essay on Salinger, first foray into naturalist writing. Little did I know this would become my special field. Sentence patterns in AP English with Mrs. Craig, one of the best vehicles to writing I ever got on. 5 on AP English exam for essay on Portrait of a Lady. Extra-curricular: Old Globe Theater in San Diego + Discussions with my mother and with Mr. Field, my mother’s college philosophy professor and family friend for as long as I can remember.
History: Ditto Clay’s comments.
Math: Algebra: satisfying; Geometry, less so, except for right triangles! Graph paper.
Spanish: piece of cake, ski sits the same number of minutes I was late to class.
*For Penelope from one feeling like a fossil at 36: An Apologia to Cursive. Typescript gives students the false sense of neatness and precision in a narrative world marked oft by sloppy thinking and copy-paste. Plagiarized ideas and prose are a constant problem in college writing. A colleague (French medievalist) once told me she requires hand-written papers on the basis that the student who plagiarizes might actually internalize and thus learn from a copied idea. I recall from erstwhile college days exams written out by hand, and final papers typed on typewriters only after hours of toil scratching in circles around the margins of a handwritten page, all physical traces of the mind’s activities and discoveries as it is screwed up tight in the imaginary interstices between, as Foucault says, ‘le livre et la lampe’. The big invention when I was in college was self-correcting typewriter ribbon. My first memory of a word processor is circa 1992: a term paper on Lukacs that I’m sure Clay remembers. Today, some of my research on 19th century French lit centers on manuscripts and the genesis of great works: it’s the study of a kind of word ‘processing’ that leaves traces of itself for posterity, allowing for archeological digs into the way literature thinks and writes itself. A material link to the flesh and blood, sweat and tears of authors I live and breathe by.
Thanks for bringing up a topic of interest. Love your name, by the way, my almost 4-year-old is a Penelope, too!
Carmen
5 Feb 08 at 2:48 pm
Carmen-
I actually type first drafts, print them out, mark them up like your worst red pen nightmare, and then retype them. There’s a level of thoughtfulness for me in writing by hand that doesn’t exist on a computer screen. However, I type so much faster than I write that I prefer to type the rough draft so that I can just “go with the flow.”
I don’t think we disagree all that much… I still find value in handwriting and reading script. I just think that about half the time spent in elementary school teaching it should be spent teaching keyboarding. (My “digital natives” have abominable keyboarding skills. Maybe that’s why they copy paste so much?)
Penelope’s last blog post..Calvinists more likely to Cheat
Penelope
7 Feb 08 at 7:31 am
@BARRY You ask, “If my teachers had used some of the technology tools available today back then as part of my learning, would I have been better skilled, any more prepared for life, more satisfied, or happier as a result?”
I would argue “YES.” Teaching students that, through technology, they can learn and connect and create from and with the world, instead of just the teacher and classmates, would equip students to see the world as their classroom.
I hear you on the value of getting degrees so you can get a good job, but that’s not all I want education to be. The William Farren video in the post above this one points to more important things, to me, than giving students a pathway to a better paycheck in an unsustainable lifestyle.
Clay Burell
8 Feb 08 at 6:58 pm
[...] http://beyond-school.org/2008/02/04/open-thread-on-the-value-of-your-own-high-school-learning/#comme... [...]
What do kids actually learn in school? « TESOL for Young Learners
10 Feb 08 at 7:43 pm
Penelope:
“I just think that about half the time spent in elementary school teaching it should be spent teaching keyboarding. (My “digital natives” have abominable keyboarding skills.
–Agreed, if you teach them this skill together with a little bit of rigor. Do you find yourself repeating to your students as I do: “It’s an international convention to begin the sentence with a capital letter and to end it with punctuation!”
And I concur with a previous comment that “typing” was one of the most best classes I took in high school, in terms of its far-reaching use value.
You wrote: “Maybe that’s why they copy paste so much?”
–I’m wagering this is as often related to sloth as it is to frustration over the sheer quantities of information out there that students have to wade through (plus a sense that they have nothing new to add)…
But I digressed from the original question, and have to come down in favor of preserving the traditional classroom with, yes, get ready for this shocking news: a TEACHER at its center!
The following relates to post-secondary learning, thought I’d send it along fyi. I like that the now de rigueur student-centered-classroom is mitigated by the research…
http://amps-tools.mit.edu/tomprofblog/archives/2008/02/845_the_paradox.html#more
Carmen
13 Feb 08 at 7:38 am
@CARMEN: I don’t see how the article you linked to supports teacher-centered pedagogy. Maybe you read the full report?
In any case, aren’t you skeptical about the types of tests that define what intelligence is, and define it in this research?
Here’s an interesting counterpoint from Forbes Online, that says, in essence, “It’s better to suck at standardized tests and excel at project-based (non-teacher-centered) learning” (full article here ):
Clay Burell
13 Feb 08 at 1:43 pm
@CARMEN: and P.S. - as a guy who’s spent five years teaching in Shanghai and two in Seoul, I can tell you that it’s true, the Asian students study harder and excel at math and science. But in general, when it comes to imagining, creating, and innovating, they’re very challenged. Call it personal experience as research.)
Clay Burell
13 Feb 08 at 1:45 pm
It isn’t just because the student-centering of pedagogy is today’s zeitgeist that I’m skeptical about its benefits. I’m a teacher of the last wave, too, a graduate of a fairly rigorous West-Coast teacher-training program, and have my own set of experiences and empirical evidence to guide me. It is all too evident from 14-years of college teaching in the humanities that my finest first-year students are those that come from private high schools that haven’t (yet) thrown in the towel on teachers or equated scholasticism with pedantry. As for standardized testing, does anybody really believe it represents the only measure for intelligence? Who is it that said, “What, after all, is intelligence, but kindness?”?
But you seemed to be asking what people got out of school with a view to debunking the validity of formal schooling, and the devil’s advocate in me wants to ask: If this global networking model which you’re enthusiastic about helps lead to greater intelligence, happiness, creativity, self-reliance, independence, citizenship, and freedom (any more so, say, than any other cultural enrichment project run out of the schools), if it has some tangible benefits in other words, does this mean we need to throw out all our old models, even while it is clear if not from the feedback you’ve gotten then from a longer history of scholastics that the relationship between the docile pupil and judicious preceptor can in fact be a very positive one? The irony and I daresay hypocrisy in all this is that none of the proponents of student-centered pedagogy truly plan or even want to get rid of the teacher.
I have an emotional attachment to things artisanal and to a ‘renaissance’ conception of education, and if I became worried reading Penelope’s comments on the lack of use-value for cursive writing, it is because one could argue, along similar lines, indeed along lines recently pursued by the upper administration in my university, that Latin or Physics are no longer ‘viable’ because their practical implications aren’t self-evident in the modern, economically-driven era. Students would rather enroll in business, international relations, pre-med or law, thus these programs aren’t worth their weight in instructional staff and should be done away with.
It seems like I’m digressing, but I see a connection between this utilitarian line of thinking and the (rather more utopian than utilitarian) idea that children (ok, young adults) possess the judgment, savoir-faire, and wisdom to educate themselves (not sans guidance, I think you’re saying?). If the savvy manipulation of modern technology in the name of global citizenship is the ends we seek in an education, I might be willing to concede the point. But this “reach out and touch someone” learning is most emphatically not what I want to see at the center of curricula for my children. If it has become abundantly apparent (I’m speaking of my own family now) that we must to one degree or another home school our children to fill in the colossal gaps in the Stateside public educational system, by no means am I willing to forego the teacher on the one side and hand the reigns over to the World Wide Web on the other. Admiration, mimesis, humility: all these are good things, and they come out of the teacher-centered dynamic and move the student to great works.
Wouldn’t you say the Forbes author engages in the very rhetoric he claims to decry in the anti-American discourses and attitudes of some Europeans? Too shrill to be trustworthy.
Clay, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t intuitively understand all you’re experimenting with or exactly advocating for, but I trust your diligence and integrity will lead to interesting and I don’t doubt valuable results. Regards, Carmen
Carmen
14 Feb 08 at 2:24 pm
Carmen,
Nobody is saying “get rid of teachers” here. Move them from the front of the classroom, though - and possibly, just possibly, move students from a teacher-controlled or system-prescribed curriculum in order to allow students to learn when and in what directions they are ready to learn - that’s a thumbnail sketch of what I mean by “student-centered.”
To me, the argument is most interesting when it asks, “At what point does a student have the basic skills necessary to then move into more individualized pursuits?”
That’s why I asked about the value of high school years. For me, they didn’t justify the investment of time. I didn’t become interested in anything academic until I hit my 20s, my beloved Shakespeare, Homer, and Everything Else included. I suspect any development in literacy in my adolescence had very, very little to do with those four dubious years of classroom attendance. Worse, I suspect I would have read and written - and thus developed - more had I not been forced to spend so many hours and days and years in high school.
As for the side-trip into 21st century networking, creation, collaboration, and so forth - pioneer territory indeed, no denials.
But for the millionth time, networked learning is something I’m teaching only in an elective class. I can’t see ways to do that right now with academic stuff like my AP Literature classes.
And for the millionth and first, it’s really something to be understood by experiencing it. I’m sure you’ve met a good number of people in your academic life through more traditional means - the conferences, maybe emails, and the old list-servs of the 90s.
But the explosive shifts in thinking, dialoging, socializing, and collaborating via blogging, social bookmarking, social networking, and digital telecommunication (Skype), podcasting, on and on - those blow all previous realms of possibility out of the water.
Socially, intellectually, creatively, and professionally, it’s a world and a skillset the next generation will need to understand. It’s the new “book” for a post-Gutenberg age.
Gotta go now. Thanks for the push
Clay Burell’s last blog post..Podcast: With Dean Shareski on _Natural_ Global Collaboration and Networked Learning
Clay Burell
14 Feb 08 at 5:12 pm
I learn almost nothing in my classes at school. I learn about how to deal with other people–which I will do for the rest of my life–but I come to school 8 hours a day, and only take small disciplines with me, and maybe a fact or two that will disappear from my mind forever. I hate wasting my life on a lot of this stuff, because you know that it’s not going to do anything for you in later life. It may help you deal with stress, but I don’t know if it’s worth it. Although, I do have to say–having said high school may be pointless in some ways–I don’t condone dropping out.
Kaelie Curbxstomp
Kaelie Curbxstomp’s last blog post..Intimidation At Its Best
Kaelie Curbxstomp
16 Feb 08 at 3:19 am
I used to day dream in school so after reading your post I tried to check what I remembered from high school and was surprised to realize that I remember more than I thought, not in all areas but still.
High school is remembered mainly as a period of being bored most of the time except for occasional days that seemed more alive in my memories than others.
cup beans
18 Feb 08 at 8:18 pm
Dangerously Irrelevant: The Square Pegs
23 Feb 08 at 6:06 am
What did YOU learn in HS? - Blue Ridge High School Class of 1984
23 Feb 08 at 11:33 pm