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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (34582)	4/12/1999 6:22:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

It isn't something I advocate, oh noooo, but is does seem to be an unstated desideratum of the educational community. Think on it. The idea Steve promoted - doing away with standardized tests - requires tremendous specific effort (attention per student - my engineering prejudice again - there's a number for everything!) by the teachers - an already overworked community - in order to make a very subjective evaluation process uniform enough that comparative ranking is at all possible, let alone even approaching equitable. Standardized tests make comparative ranking as easy as you want it to be. And in a world where all resources, including nice jobs, are far exceeded by labor supply, comparative ranking is the prima facie only fair way to put the pegs in the holes. Steve's answer was probably a bit glib. Some comparator will ALWAYS be needed, even if it is a subjective backroom evaluation of the candidate(s). Proposals include increasing the dimensionality of the tests, but the quantitative standardized test is here to stay. I do not like it, but I predict it.

To: jbe who wrote (34582)	4/13/1999 1:21:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Please -- let me say that automating education has an enormous potential. There are two fundamental views of education: (A) education as it is; (B) education as it ought to be. To replace education as it is, automation has only a small way to go. I will spare you the satire -- the opportunities are unlimited. Education as it ought to be reflects our views of the purposes of life and the dimensions of the future of humankind, especially our children. I hope everyone will disagree on the utility of automation in this kind of education, and will build their own varieties. Let me divide education as it is into four categories: (1)Idols of History and Tradition; (2) Idols of Science: (3) Idols of Mathematics and Pure Thought; (4) Idols of the Marketplace; (5) Idols of Beauty. Children are taught to worship these idols in school. There is nothing in school that aims at the creation of new knowledge or the production of anything of any material usefulness or value. Education is the primary social process of forcing the child into a mold -- a mold designed not by philosophers and learned people, but by school boards, elected superintendants, and boards of trustees. The molding process is executed by teachers who are overworked, underpaid, confined, often badly educated themselves, and at the upper reaches paid to engage in "research" rather than judged on their success in teaching young people. Despite educational research, little is known that convinces that there is a best, or even a reliably good model for teaching children. The use of computers in education has been opposed by many teachers (who know nothing of them themselves) but many human teachers can be replaced by multimedia machines. In category 1, if you can, read some textbooks of history and social studies or view some films used in schools. Many are written by professors of education under pressure of the prejudices of their community, rather than by scholars and historians subject to the disciplines own scrutiny. At the best these books are outdated and incomplete, at the worst they are simply lies. This is one of the most desperately defective parts of any educational system. I wish you could have studied the causes of the Civil War with me in the Atlanta Public Schools in the 1940's. It is my belief that these were the best public schools in the American South, and I later learned I had been indoctrinated, even though I grew up in the home of a progressive (integrationist) professor who had done graduate study at Princeton) and was taught American History by a determined scholar totally committed to truth. ("Wee Willie" Barr at Boys' High). The process was such that even one with the best attitude toward truth, with support at home and a great teacher, could not develop a reliable "truth" because the community was steeped in racial hatred, ignorance, and distrust. A family friend and colleague, who sometimes fell asleep on our couch because the street cars had stopped running when the bourbon ran out, was C. Vann Woodward -- a truly radical historian of the South -- later Sterling Professor at Yale who was working on his Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel, at the time. We named our cat for him "Comrade (I always thought the C was for "Comrade") Vann Woodward the Red Here's Food!". When one considers that this category contains almost everything that shapes one's social and religious beliefs, it seems reasonable to make the teachers write everything down, footnote it,and teach students to follow up and check every opinion. A networked web computer with hypertext through out would beat Wee Willie all hollow. That's about enough on History -- the other four categories can be imagined on your own, although I am sure that there are brilliant essays on each of them waiting to be written somewhere. Hey, anyone (especially Steve) do you know the relevance of the name Loudette Banzon to this essay?