Dallas Clayton on Empowering Kids' Minds

reply to post by mikegrouchy


Hey, I'm a big supporter of Khan Academy, I've learned a lot from him.

That's not the direction of subsidized public education in the United States, though. It is, as usual, more money, more control and more mandates.

The real bad actors in this struggle over education are the moneyed interests who already have their claws deep in the Department of Education.

Just because most of the readers were shattered into disgruntled individuals, but unlike most of their peers didn't give up and started educating themselves instead, does not mean that the ancient Greek method of the Choir is inherently bad. I thought the enlightened individual understood that when judging something new, to be careful least they squash something before it bears fruit.

The teachers union, the Textbook profiteers, the Boards of Education; the ones who _have_ been pillaging and destroying education, the ones who _have_ been destroying knowledge, the ones who _have_ been substituting debate for learning, are the very same people who want everyone to fear and politically reject the solution. Common Core has the potential to completely solve society into full graduation. Where the word graduation actually means something.


What we have here is
fear mongering by the very money
that gave us the destroyed education system
we have right now.
They are scared
they are going to loose access to the money.



Here is the skinny on what "The States" are doing to us, while vilifying the Gates Foundation.


30k views
People are quiet in the audience,
He exposes major corruption in the state education budgets.
the truth is not popular.
"The guys at Enron would have blushed." -Bill Gates




Tech companies are constantly analyzed,
and we hear about it.

Where is the Main Stream media on State budgets,
why so much silence on the topic. Which includes
Education and the Department of Education.

Now suddenly we are told who to fear and what is wrong. It's weird, I don't like it, kill it before it reproduces. All the voices are raising up in condemnation. No one is offering alternatives. No real solutions. Just who we should fear, and how. I smell organized resistance. And the whiff of corruption moving in an act of pure self preservation. All the degrading things being said about Common Core prove two things to me. They don't understand Common Core enough to actually criticize it, and everything they are saying = bad is probably the very thing the moneyed interests are guilty off all this time. It's the oldest trick in politics. Accuse your rival of that which you yourself are guilty.

Common core isn't accusing anyone of anything. It is achieving unheard of results. Don't judge by appearances.


Mike Grouchy

Notheycant
reply to post by Aazadan

 

If it was a true free market there would be a vast amount of choices and price ranges. If there is a need for something it would exist without government.

edit on 2-2-2014 by Notheycant because: (no reason given)

And some of those choices and price ranges would end up as a quality equal to our current inner city schools, except they would potentially cost less and have even lower funding. This doesn't address the issue that a certain minimum standard needs to be maintained, not just in what things are covered but in what people actually learn. That's what lead to No Child Left Behind, it was a misguided attempt to get schools to force students to have a minimum standard of knowledge. The problem is that no one has yet figured out how to convince students to learn. That's what my proposal tries to accomplish by giving students the opportunity to follow an education path that interests them. Simply turning it over to the free market doesn't... sure some people will end up in better schools, but the average doesn't change so for every student who ends up in a better situation there's a student who ends up in a worse one. It's 0 sum, there's only a finite number of seats at each school.

Bassago
reply to post by Notheycant

 

What do you guys think about the current state of public education

How to help kids?

Read them stories every night from the time they are born.
Teach them to read as soon as the can hold a book and look at pictures.
Teach them computer literacy and safety before they are five years old.
Answer their questions honestly.
And never, ever talk down to them because they're kids. Just talk to them normally.

That's what I did anyway and it worked out pretty good.

Totally agree - an important part of teaching them to read early is that you're teaching them skills as a shared, bonding experience, and that reading, and learning to read, is important to you , the parent. Reading to them, and preparing them to read, every night, consistently, is a great bonding experience.

Teaching and emphasizing pre-reading and reading skills is both means and end - learning to read well is a tool that opens up reading for pleasure, which opens up all kinds of avenues for learning and thinking and experience.

And I'll bet you if you were to look at the top 10 graduates of any high school or Ivy League college, that the difference between them and the bottom or middle 10 was the ages they began reading for pleasure. You set these patterns early - before "school" even begins for most kids.

I'd also recommend setting standards and expectations - I never cared that my kid couldn't solve differential equations in first grade - but what I did care was that they learned to their capacity, and to continue to push back the boundaries of what they knew, and developed proper academic work habits - like a lot of kids of my generation with laissez-faire parenting styles, I never really learned those habits, just kind skated by - until I hit the more advanced classes in high school and college, and suddenly found I didn't have the tools to work independently.

Finally, kids need different experiences - while it's important to learn to read, to write, to do math, etc, etc, they also need playtime, to play sports, to learn to bait a hook, how to use carpentry tools, how to cook a meal, change a tire, grow vegetables, etc, etc, etc.

I think the biggest mistake made in teaching our kids is we don't teach our kids - we just leave it to other people, and abdicate our responsibility. You don't need some super-cool hippy-dippy set of books like above - you just need to be there, early, often, and consistently. Teach them to think, to be responsible, to be ethical and respectful, to defend themselves and others, and teach them the importance of being educated.

reply to post by mikegrouchy

All the voices are raising up in condemnation. No one is offering alternatives. No real solutions.

I'll suggest an alternative, let's get kids back to reading and grammar comprehension. Let's teach them real history, geography and arithmetic in grade school. Make sure in high school they at learn Algebra, Geometry, Biology and Chemistry. Then make sure they actually have to pass the tests in order to graduate. Another language skill would also be good for them and at the rate things are going it better be Mandarin Chinese or Spanish.

Like I said earlier, my kids are grown so this stuff doesn't hit my radar too much anymore but from what I've seen of Common Core it's a joke of watered down education. That's when it's even comprehensible.

reply to post by Bassago


And teach them formal logic.

What I am gathering from this post is everyone has different ideas and needs of what should be in the curriculum. What I do know is everyone is different and governments one size fits all answer makes everything mediocre at best. In the end they do nothing to facilitate peoples needs.

A true free market would provide choice and that is exactly what is lacking right now.

I've been wanting to post this for awhile and this seems like the appropriate place. My ex-girlfriend's 9-year-old daughter was doing some of her homework for this school year, (2013-2014) and in one test it said that America was exploring new forms of energy to help augment our use of petroleum and gasoline. They mentioned two new forms and they were solar power and wind power. Seems like they're just indoctrinating our kids with whatever agenda they want to push.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't humanity been using both of these "new energy sources" for thousands of years? Hasn't wind power pushed the sails of sea-going vessels and turned mills to grind corn for a long time? And haven't the sun's rays been harnessed for many different uses for ages as well? 9-year-old kids will believe anything they're told because they don't know what they don't know.

Bassago
reply to post by mikegrouchy

 

All the voices are raising up in condemnation. No one is offering alternatives. No real solutions.

I'll suggest an alternative, let's get kids back to reading and grammar comprehension. Let's teach them real history, geography and arithmetic in grade school. Make sure in high school they at learn Algebra, Geometry, Biology and Chemistry. Then make sure they actually have to pass the tests in order to graduate. Another language skill would also be good for them and at the rate things are going it better be Mandarin Chinese or Spanish.

Like I said earlier, my kids are grown so this stuff doesn't hit my radar too much anymore but from what I've seen of Common Core it's a joke of watered down education. That's when it's even comprehensible.

We are natural allies on this issue.

Where i'm coming from, my stance on the issues are complex and ever evolving. The information is based on something that started only five months ago. I saw the following video (posted below) and wondered if the common core didn't suddenly materialize in reaction to the penetration Khan Academy had already gotten in the schools. Literally like the method of corruption so commonly found in government where a contract is written in language that only one company qualifies for, and that some force was intentionally trying to pre-emptively block Khan Academy from any inroads in any other States.



Which complicates things greatly. But just like the landscape Architects learned about water flow, in Government slower is better. Common Core is pretty much a testing standard that is the fragile bitter clutch of that elusive force behind the Department of Education that has misplaced the teachers pensions and raises consistently for the past 35 years. For all you old school teachers, "I walked the line in 79."

And that is how I agree with you Bassago in being suspicious of Common Core.


Mike Grouchy

ketsuko
reply to post by Bassago

 

And teach them formal logic.

Where were you almost four years ago when I was arguing just for this.

of mathematical precision and the pleasure of discovering absolute truth

2010 ATS Thread: Critical Thinking in Geometry


Critical thinkers can gather such information from:

reflection,
observation,
experience,
reasoning,
and/or reading,
writing,
speaking,
and listening.

Critical thinking has its basis in intellectual criteria that go beyond subject-matter divisions and which inclued:

Clarity,
accuracy,
precision,
relevance,
depth,
breadth,
logic,
significance,
fairness.

Notice that logic is merely one category within a sub division, of applied critical thinking. It is not the foundation, nor is it the capstone of critical thinking. Merely another brick. The first sentence in this paragraph cannot, I think, be repeated often enough. Logic is merely one category within a sub division, of applied critical thinking.

Notheycant
What I am gathering from this post is everyone has different ideas and needs of what should be in the curriculum. What I do know is everyone is different and governments one size fits all answer makes everything mediocre at best. In the end they do nothing to facilitate peoples needs.

A true free market would provide choice and that is exactly what is lacking right now.

Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

JEAN ANYON This essay first appeared in Journal of Education, Vol. 162, no. 1, Fall 1980.


. . .

In the fifth school the majority of the families belong to the capitalist class.

. . .

Executive Elite School

In the executive elite school, work is developing one's analytical intellectual powers. Children are continually asked to reason through a problem, to produce intellectual products that are both logically sound and of top academic quality. A primary goal of thought is to conceptualize rules by which elements may fit together in systems and then to apply these rules in solving a problem. Schoolwork helps one to achieve, to excel, to prepare for life.

If one had to decipher the intention behind this
my guess would be that it was done out of some
kind of misguided benevolence motive, but re-
guardless as that may be, it happened, it was by
design ... and we are looking at the results every
where these days.


University of chicago . edu
cuip.uchicago.edu...


The linked article was fascinating
thanks for the ten minutes very well spent!


They were shining in their spent.

They were spented.

They awokeneded spented.


It's about Irregular verb conjugations
as the very clear dividing line between upper and lower class.

Infact, search engine test this string

+"irregular verb conjunctions"

Just copy paste to your favored browser.

Does anyone else see any more than 2 pages of results?

MIke Grouchy

TrulyColorBlind
I've been wanting to post this for awhile and this seems like the appropriate place. My ex-girlfriend's 9-year-old daughter was doing some of her homework for this school year, (2013-2014) and in one test it said that America was exploring new forms of energy to help augment our use of petroleum and gasoline. They mentioned two new forms and they were solar power and wind power. Seems like they're just indoctrinating our kids with whatever agenda they want to push.

Well I would stop here and weigh a different part of the equation. Perhaps this is how they are conditioning the kids to equate "new" with "good" and the solar windmills are just for the hippies. Unfortunately this, also in my opinion, is more tragic. There were plenty of us agitating for solar back in the 70's when Stanford Research Institute had a group put them on the market, but there was nooooo money to be found then. Oh nooooo. Not when the panels lasted as long as glass. And not when a way had just been invented to use the sun to aim the panels as well. But now that they require maintenance and have planned obsolescence and don't last nearly as long. Yeah, it does seem that the schools are teaching the kids how shamefully wasteful their parents have been. A quite nasty bit of blame shifting if you ask me.


Mike Grouchy

reply to post by Notheycant



How appropriate your reference to the 2006 movie Idiocracy. I've been a so-called conspiracy theorist (realist) since before the Internet came into being. I've watched us slipping into an Idiocracy for decades. As bad as it seemed to be getting, in 2006 the movie seemed a bit far-fetched. It's quite amazing how far we've come in just eight years since the movie. If you have not watched any of Mark Dice's YouTube videos, they are worth a look to see just how dumbed down Americans are. Heck, voting Obama in for a second term is proof enough at just how uninformed and blind most people are.

We mostly homeschooled our son, who just turned 18. He went to public school a few times, out of curiosity more than anything, and partly to see his friends there. He always decided to switch back. 17 years ago, when my wife and I looked at the blank stares of the zombies coming off the high school bus in the afternoon we decided our son would never become one of those kids. Thank God he did not. He is awesome, smart, creative, and still has a great relationship with us. When he did go back to public school he always tested well beyond his peers and was always in all honors classes. He's an incredible musician with a hundred interests, but mostly loves to make incredible music with the computer mixing in vocals and his instruments too.

Instead of more school like Obama wants for kids, they should have less school and more time to explore the world on their own. Our son is a sponge and is constantly learning about everything. To be honest, with the exception of a few classes for English, math, and a few science courses. He learned a lot on his own. We used a lot of online materials too, like Khan Academy and others. There is so much available for a child to explore. We made sure we could work at home during these years too. Our son always had both his parents nearby, which is of great benefit too.

I'm convinced that public schools serve the state more as an indoctrination and brainwashing facility than a place of learning. We are not going to see it fixed any time soon. We have a truly nefarious leadership that does not want our kids to be self-reliant or intelligent. If you have not read or watched anything from Charlotte Iserbyt, I highly recommend you do. This woman's story will be a revelation to most people. it will open your eyes to exactly what we are up against and why we are where we are now.

free market would bring competition making schools want to produce better results they would have to show and give parents more of what they want their children to learn to gain more popularity in their school the more schools that the government have their hands on the more that school is pulled into a more controlled government way of learning,free market schools give parents more control again

You can't have a trillion dollar industry with people being seen as soul doctors, the highest mental authority and how to be well. It can't exist next to a church, one has to be the strongest and science will win in the long run. The entire industry depends on weak disempowered minds which also goes well with the schooling system and corporate life so the citizen can be lead easily and doesn't grow a mind of his/her own and leads. To further ensure the citizen doesn't need to make up their own mind, there's a society full of specialists whose opinions can be adopted. Even though it would make sense to start homeschooling with less jobs available and the internet I'm sure a few thought of how this could be empowering since there is less dependency on the state and it's services. No parent can expect a child to grow up in such a society and have a strong mind.

It is one of the reasons I believe other countries will become more succesful, they are better equipped coping with misery and have access to the technology the west does or will have at some time.

reply to post by Notheycant

I think that yes, most people on a daily basis are learning - I don't know if that is because of schools...

reply to post by mikegrouchy


Yes, formal logic is definitely a plus, as is geometry - I learned a lot about proofs from Euclid's Elements. The other class that taught me a lot about arguments in college were two philosophy courses that dealt with the philosophy of the good life as well as, more specifically, forming logical arguments.