Every year about this time I start seeing things online/news/memes about 'summer learning loss'.
They lament that it takes six weeks after the start of the new school year for kids to 'relearn' what they've forgotten.
What have they forgotten? All the useless bits of rote knowledge needed to start taking tests again.
Oh the humanity!!!!!
No one stops to wonder what the kids have been doing all summer. What they've learned. Whether they've had time to decompress and stop cramming useless things into their little brains.
The world has changed.
Not that there's ever been a particularly good reason for kids to know the principal exports of Bolivia, but now? If they need to know it for some random, dumb-assed reason, that information is only seconds away.
Tin. Gold. Oil.
Found that out in about 4 seconds. Why should a kid even need that? Anyone? And state capitals. Um. So? Easy to look up if you want to know. Unless you're traveling there or you care for some other reason, why spend three months of school time (and HOMEWORK) on memorizing them. How much useless crap are they making your kids memorize?
When people talk about 'learning loss' they're making the huge assumption that all the crap they're forcing kids to learn in school is important. That they somehow need to know all these things. And that kids who forget the useless crap are missing out on important things.
Horseshit.
Summer's the time for kids to do actual learning. To pursue things they're interested in. Did you ever stop to think about the things you learn? Why do you do it? For me, it's a wish to know things. To learn about things as they relate to me/apply to my life/just because.
Think about how you learn. Why do you do it? Why do you read? Why are you online? No one is forcing you to do those things as an adult. But as a kid, you may be a victim of public "education". You're being forced to serve your time and take your lessons as if they're all important and you won't be able to function without them.
It's one of the issues I have with colleges. Why force people to take classes that are not germane to their course of study? The old crap about it making well-rounded people is exactly that. Crap.
It's all about money. Always has been. All the way down to the Kindergarten kids. Our "educational" system exists primarily to justify its own existence.
We can do better. And one of the things everyone can do to help is to encourage their children to explore and learn and think for themselves. Not just during the summer, but all the time.
I understand why people have their kids in school.
And I've met so many wonderful teachers. People with enthusiasm and a heart for kids and a wish to make a difference.
But until we stop accepting what we're being taught as good for us and start questioning why and what our kids are being force fed, this bullshit about 'learning loss' will just be accepted.
No one seems to question the conventional wisdom. No one asks, 'who thinks this is necessary for my kid/me to know?'
Weird world we live in, isn't it?
Had a professor at UCLA once tell me that since he and many like him in my major had been hired when departments expanded, and had a few decades of tenured teaching left to do, that the universities would continue to promote my major to get students to fill the seats. But that there would be no jobs in my field since the tenured professors had no intention of quitting to make room for more professors.
ReplyDeleteWhen I looked at my first college son's course requirements, I imagined how many department heads fought to have a class or two from their departments made a requirement for undergraduate graduation just to keep students filling the seats and justify their departments funding, etc. Ridiculous.
JFS in IL
Appalling. Sick.
DeleteI know it's not a popular opinion, but I think college is a racket. A scheme to bilk millions of people out of multi millions of bucks. I know many people who have one, two, even three college degrees and not one bit of common sense. I know a few graduates I'd even call functionally illiterate. That piece of paper doesn't mean shit. All it does is help you get through HR in some big companies. That's it.
Clearly I agree 1000 percent . . . I've been continually baffled at the crap my kids have gotten for not being able to spew random facts to people upon request. As if doing do measures their entire education, overlooking the fact that, as they ask, these kids are traveling the world. *face palm*
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, you can say that all you want... but what about their social skills? :-D
DeleteThe only time I've ever needed algebra, outside of school, was when I was trying to help my kids with it! Usually, I had to call their Dad in to help.
ReplyDeleteI remember an incident from 8th grade where a kid named Clay Crim asked our English teacher, Mr. Kodesh, "Why are we diagramming sentences? When I am reading, I don't stop and say, 'hey! here's a noun! and there's a verb!' I just read. I think this is a waste of time."
DeleteThe teacher then told us how important diagramming sentences is.
I haven't diagrammed a sentence since 8th grade.
Yeah, I think I bitched about the well-rounded crap not long ago.....I agree with you about summer. Although when I was older it meant cleaning house and yard work, lol.
ReplyDeleteLIFE means cleaning house and doing yard work!! :)
DeleteI was warned yesterday that my parents will be in the area the last week of school. To add to my stress. So I will be cleaning.
And I don't know if I am well-rounded. I am round. I'm going to say that's close enough.