A friend of mine asked for suggestions on how his English teacher could improve her teaching. Well, it kind of evolved into this rambling reply regarding my first few thoughts on the school system.
Here is the massive message I sent, totally unchanged from it's first draft.
My thoughts on the school system are MANY AND VARIED, but my viewpoint boils down to this:
Firstly, compulsory education is kind of bullshit. No matter how old you are, you should have the right to choose if you do or do not want to do something.
Secondly, all educations should be set up like college is: if you want to go, you go. If you don't, you don't.
Thirdly, regarding college: There should be no "required classes". If I'm going to college to get a piece of paper that says "Yes, good on you, you know lots about maths", then why should I be required to take an English class (and vice versa).
Fourthly, testing is not, never has been, and never will be an accurate way to measure if learning has taken place, or if you have knowledge of a certain subject.
Fifth, (and this is more of a collective social consciousness type-thing), there needs to be NO STIGMA AROUND WHAT CLASSES/SCHOOLING/COLLEGE/LACK-THEREOF YOU CHOOSE. On the flipside, there needs to be a general consensus that if I'm home/un/private/public schooled, that does not mean that I am anything other than a human being. Do not assume that I am a genius, or that I have no social skills, or that I am stupid, or that I have no thoughts of my own, or any of those things.
Sixth, respect. Now, I'm not talking about the mouth-shut-listen-to-me-while-I-am-talking kind of respect for teachers, but more along the lines of I-am-a-person-you-are-a-person-respect.
Seventh, safe space. Create one, enforce it. If someone's breaking the safe space, get them either A: spoken to about it or B: removed from the space.
Really, there's only two of these that your teacher-person can do anything about, and that's the last two. I'm going to go into a bit more detail on each of them now.
Respect: the thing is, I think a lot of teachers think that the students should respect them purely on the grounds that they are The Teachers. In reality, all this hierarchy crap is just that, crap. If you are expecting respect without wanting to give it back, that's just not going to work. I seriously doubt that in a teacher's personal life, they expect respect without giving respect in return. Bottom line, your students are people, same as you, no matter what age they are. Treat them like you want to be treated. Don't be an ass based on age or supposed classroom hierarchy.
Safe Space: this kinda falls under the umbrella of respect, but since this is super-crazy important, I'll say it again. Please, if you ask your teacher to do any one thing, ask her to make sure that her classroom is a safe space for everyone, including and especially lgbtq+ students. If she can educate herself about making sure she's not making unintentionally hurtful comments, and if she can make it damn clear that anyone who does is going to be spoken to about it, and that she won't tolerate that kind of crap, all the better for EVERYONE.
~Whimsy
lol this went kind of TL;DR. Sorry about that. WE HAVE FEELINGS TOGETHER.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the things you say for the most part. But I think if you gave kids the choice of going to school vs. not... most wouldn't go. And that's NOT a good thing imo. I might be misinterpreting you, but having that much freedom would DESTROY some kids's ability to function in the world and set them so far back. Some things we are taught in school are necessary to be a not-stressed-out, functioning, productive person. And some people just plain need the structure, but won't go unless they have to. You turned out great and you are awesome and you have a thirst for DOING and LEARNING. 80% of the people on my Facebook page would be struggling through hell right now if they hadn't been forced to go to school.
I think things need to be restructured, for sure (the public school system does SO MANY USELESS THINGS), but doing away with compulsory education altogether? I can only really see disaster in that. It's like saying, "hey kids, you can eat vegetables and awesome things that are good for you, or you can eat french fries and cheese whiz all the time." Gurl, if I'd been given a choice I would have had three heart attacks by now and I wouldn't know how to add numbers. I also wouldn't know all the neat stuff I learned about history and I wouldn't be able to appreciate classic literature anywhere near as much. It's because I was FORCED to do things that I discovered all kinds of awesome in the world of academia. I'm a stubborn Taurus, so sometimes it takes someone shoving something in my eyeballs for a while for me to see that it's a good thing.
I agree specially with the respect and safe space part, though. I think those things are totally essential and I like your assessment of each of those things. Also, testing. Some of us just suck at those, no matter what we do, and it has nothing to do with our intelligence. And some people are just wizards at test taking. All learning styles should be acknowledged and the school system needs to be changed in that regard. I'm not sure HOW to change it to cater to different learning styles, but I'm sure someone smarter than me has ideas.