🚀 go-pugleaf

This one is worth repeating.  And when you have society demanding
heterogenius classes aon one hand and government saying you must keep the
teenagers in school so they are off the streets, then you might end up
teaching to the lowest level to acomodate all these mandates.
I teach at a private school, so I am no longer a part of that system.
gheri

On Sat, 22 Apr 1995, Wes Davis wrote:

>         A new subscriber to PHYSHARE,  I entered the net during the
> conversation initiated by Donald Simanek on the inability (unwillingness?)
> of college students to think independently.
>
>         I'm a college teacher of some fifteen years who now teaches full time
 on
> the high school level at Pasadena (CA) High School.  What I observed when I
> came to high school teaching astounded me.  The educational system that
> placed the United States highest in technology is now dealing with a student
> population that mostly thinks we live inside the earth ("we would fall off
> if...").
>
>         That our students are so unwilling to think and so unable to
> abstract is certainly NOT the fault of incapable former teachers.  Rather,
> the problem seems to be that the mission of public schools is no longer
> education, but rather
> the achieving of the nation's social goals.  We are no longer, for example,
> able to separate students into high and low achievers and thereby challenge
> the more capable students.  Our charge from the educators (read
> non-teachers) is
> to "ensure that all students experience success".  In heterogeneously
> grouped classes in which a substantial portion of the students can only do
> rote, one-step operations, the entire class does only rote, one-step
> operations so that the low achievers can feel warm and fuzzy.  Very little
> critical thinking gets taught.
>
>         In my AP Physics and AP Calculus classes I often must teach students
> how to do fractions because they have been trapped in low achieving classes
> in which little was taught.  What's the solution?  I don't know.  As long as
> there is money
> in abundance for low achieving classes and no money for honors students,
> little can change.
>
>         Before teaching high school I thought I knew, because I read the
> data.  I didn't know.  Even our best and brightest are being drowned by a
> system that tends the weeds rather than the roses, because there are so many
> more weeds.  I marvel that some students succeed despite the environment.
> Meanwhile, our students still think we live inside the earth.
>
>
>
>
>                                                      Wes Davis
>