Responding to stories about police and student discipline, how hard it is to sit in class all day, and how many high-school graduates are unprepared for college.
1. How much would somebody have to pay you to be a teacher in the middle school that you attended?
2. How well do you think that evolution trained the human adolescent to sit in a desk and pay attention?
3. When you were aged 13-18, how easy was it for a teacher to gain your respect?
4. When you were aged 13-18, did you only take rational risks?
5. When you were aged 13-18, did you want your friends to shut up so that you could listen to the teacher?
6. When you were aged 13-18, did you do what you would advise an adolescent to do today?
I attended a Catholic parochial school, grades 1-12, graduating in 1964. Discipline, quiet study, hand-raising before speaking, and attentiveness were part of the culture. Group work & classroom noise & turmoil were unheard of; disrespect of teachers was 100% absent.
OTOH, I was an introvert, studious child who loved school & reading, and so fit well into that environment. Few students challenged the behavioral expectations, though, in any case: our Dominican nun teachers were respected for their religious status as well as their instructor status, and the parents were paying too much private tuition to tolerate a child spending his time in the principal’s office.
1. About 120% of my current wage (I do white collar office work).
2. Not at all.
3. Pretty easily. I generally respected and admired teachers who seemed competent.
4. Yep.
5. My friends didn’t talk in class.
6. Yes. If anything, I would advise my teenage self to relax a bit more.
When I was in middle school in the ’70s, my circumstance was very odd (though I didn’t think so at the time.)
My father was the principal.
And we had PE (it was required by the state) and some amount of movement through the day. Some instructors got ignored, but many were competent and I think I thought well of most of them then and now.
Not a job I would ever take, for reasons unrelated to the questioning.
My real question – I have no doubt at all that I learned a great deal in middle school, high school, and college. Now, that was in lily white enlightened conservative Iowa (which was waaay ahead on many issues oddly) – but I am troubled to hear that many high school students today have not had class instruction on the metric system(!), clearly inadequate science, no classes on drugs and drug abuse, no classes on birth control and abortion, no basic firearms safety classes. I don’t recall any of these things being debated as courses (though the topics themselves had emotion and heat around them.)
It is true that most of the drug issues where related to alcohol rather than cocaine/meth/heroin, and that may have made things easier.
And it was (and still is I think) a very homogenous place. My father always opined that having great heterogenity of students would make things harder. Students from poor households often did poorly in school. Students from broken or unstable or “complex” households often did poorly. None of that seems to have changed. (These were all white people by the way.)
My father made everybody in 7th grade take a little bit of shop class. Which was fun at the time but looking back was largely a set of lessons in keeping your fingers and eyes intact and not breaking every tool you touched. We see examples of people lacking these skills and mindsets every day. So I guess I might argue that education was in some ways more complete.
And people go to college for four years and don’t learn a great deal? What on Earth?????
And so, from what little bit I observe, and the great deal I read, I really do wonder if both primary and secondary education has somehow regressed dramatically in the last 40 years. Or is this the never ending “kids today” nonsense that is always with us?
In more direct reply to Arnold’s questions:
I took too few risks.
Classes were generally pretty quiet, and I was the one who usually had to be told to shut up.
I would tell my self to relax, enjoy people and general and the company of women more, to NOT gain weight, to have a good pattern of sleeping, eating, exercising that was consistent throughout the year.
I would also tell my self that all that time I spent studying all manner of things was well spent, but to get more sleep.
Regarding the third link, I expect it will change once Internet Age kids start going to college. Internet access has done more than any school or library to get kids reading and writing.
1. How much would somebody have to pay you to be a teacher in the middle school that you attended?
About 75% of what I make now as a computer programmer but now one would offer that job to me.
2. How well do you think that evolution trained the human adolescent to sit in a desk and pay attention?
I would guess pretty well because people love to watch movies, TV and sporting events.
3. When you were aged 13-18, how easy was it for a teacher to gain your respect?
Pretty easy.
4. When you were aged 13-18, did you only take rational risks?
Yes! When I think back I marvel at how stupid some things I did were.
5. When you were aged 13-18, did you want your friends to shut up so that you could listen to the teacher?
Sometimes yes.
6. When you were aged 13-18, did you do what you would advise an adolescent to do today?
For the most part.
I would tell a kid today to find some hobby and get really good at it. Not only does that teach you to focus and integrate what you learn, it’s learning that leads to competence, which keeps you interested.
What you are getting in school is just memorization, and not useful skills, which leads to boredom and a desire to avoid education. Plus, you’ll forget nearly all of it. I think a standard mediocre high school actively damages a student’s mind.
Phil Greenspun probably has the best ideas about education. Turn college into a job, with regular hours and study groups and work to turn in at the end of the day. It takes superhuman will to avoid distractions today. In high school, turn most classroom time into project work. Learning physics by building a bicycle is far more intuitive than learning it from a book.
1. How much would somebody have to pay you to be a teacher in the middle school that you attended?
I am a junior high school teacher who earns approximately $70,000 teaching in a less affluent area than the middle school that I attended, so I would be comfortable making the same amount.
2. How well do you think that evolution trained the human adolescent to sit in a desk and pay attention?
Not well. From my experience as a high school and now junior high school teacher, junior high students are awake earlier in the day than older teenagers, and have more energy. I imagine that evolution trained adolescents to be active gathering food as well as harnessed for survival activities, which probably demanded constant movement and physical exertion.
3. When you were aged 13-18, how easy was it for a teacher to gain your respect? Easy because my mother instilled the value of respecting authority. With regards to your 3-axes, she is oriented towards the civilizational perspective where doing what the teacher says is civilized, and to disobey is uncivilized. Clearly, there were exceptions involving illegal and/or immoral demands. I must say that if a teacher were incompetent in providing clear, useful instruction, then I had less respect than for the teacher who provided both.
4. When you were aged 13-18, did you only take rational risks? No, outside of the classroom, I often acted according to impulse, and then processed the consequences after I experienced them. I drove too fast in high school is one notable example.
5. When you were aged 13-18, did you want your friends to shut up so that you could listen to the teacher? Yes, I did like a very quiet classroom where I could simply listen to the teacher, and complete my work. However, I have since learned that I am an introvert, and I do not like a lot of social stimulation, and as a teacher, I listen to classical music and turn the lights down during my prep hour.
6. When you were aged 13-18, did you do what you would advise an adolescent to do today? No, I have tried to give them concrete problem-solving strategies and “scripts” to approach teachers and other adults to inquire about missing assignments as well as suggestions for study techniques, and how to recover after making mistakes academically and socially. This is probably because I feel that I did not have some of the concrete strategies.
“How much would somebody have to pay you to be a teacher in the middle school that you attended?”
I grew up overseas, so it’d be tax free dollars. Not much of a comparison. I am a high school math teacher who works in Title I schools. But middle school sucks, and you’d have to pay me more to work middle school. I make somewhere between $75 and 90K, depending on whether I’ve been given an additional class.
“2. How well do you think that evolution trained the human adolescent to sit in a desk and pay attention?”
Clearly, pretty well, given that we send the bulk of our kids out into the world reading at 6th grade level or higher. Many people think education in this country is failing, but many people are wholly ignorant of what the bottom half of the cognitive scale is like.
“3. When you were aged 13-18, how easy was it for a teacher to gain your respect?”
It wasn’t, but I don’t kid myself I’m typical. In general, most teachers have about 60-70% of their kids respect. Some higher, some lower. I like to think I have the respect of most of my kids. Based on how many of them come back for advice, I think I’m doing well.
“4. When you were aged 13-18, did you only take rational risks?”
Not sure I took any risks at all.
“5. When you were aged 13-18, did you want your friends to shut up so that you could listen to the teacher?”
Most of my friends did shut up, so it’s a moot point. However, I have surveyed my own classes, particularly back when I taught algebra I mixed ability classes, and solid pluralities of my classes opined that I wasn’t kicking out kids quickly enough when they wouldn’t shut up–at a time when I was in trouble with administrators for kicking out too many kids. There are lots of kids of all ability levels who figure that as long as they are being forced to sit in class, it’d be nice if other kids could shut up.
Most teachers in high poverty environments will tell you that the really troublesome kids who are happy to be wasting everyone’s time are usually 10% of a classroom (3-4 kids).
“6. When you were aged 13-18, did you do what you would advise an adolescent to do today?”
When I was 13-18, I knew I had to put my head down and finish high school and then college. So yes. But when I was 13-18, it was possible to leave high school and get a job that paid a decent wage.
I understand that these are rhetorical questions but most of the people who opine on education simply don’t understand kids outside the top 30% (give or take). Surveying your readers is therefore pretty meaningless given the issues you’re examining.
We are setting expectations ridiculously high. We would have fewer discipline problems in the high poverty areas if we set education at a lower level and let most kids feel they aren’t wasting their time with material they haven’t a hope of comprehending. In my experience, most kids who aren’t capable of mastering algebra and sophisticated literature would nonetheless be willing to spend a few years learning useful and meaningful information. They could spend their adolescence learning how to learn, getting a sense of what it’s like to tackle a topic that they find challenging and feel a sense of satisfaction when they learn it. I also think that from a societal perspective, this time is a good investment.
So should we educate all kids to the age of 16 to 18? Yes, I think so, but most people discussing these topics are incapable of understanding how basic that education would need to be for many kids. And most people who preach internet, projects, or self-directed learning are–well, not delusional, but confused about how the lower half learns.
1. How much would somebody have to pay you to be a teacher in the middle school that you attended?
Can’t say. The middle school I attended no longer exists.
2. How well do you think that evolution trained the human adolescent to sit in a desk and pay attention?T
The human adolescent can sit at a desk and pay attention if he is properly reared and if the school insists on it. Neither is true today. He also needs a lot of exercise which he need not get at school.
3. When you were aged 13-18, how easy was it for a teacher to gain your respect?
A teacher could lose the respect of his students but did not have to gain it. The teacher was respected unless and until …….
4. When you were aged 13-18, did you only take rational risks?
Sometimes yes and sometimes nol
5. When you were aged 13-18, did you want your friends to shut up so that you could listen to the teacher?
No. Order was maintained in the classroom because the overwhelming majority of students were properly educated by their parents. It was never difficult to listen to the teacher.
6. When you were aged 13-18, did you do what you would advise an adolescent to do today?
With respect to school and education yes. With respect to my social life no.
Gotta say, I’m impressed by the general salary information provided by a couple of commenters…. I’ve been a business/securities law paralegal for 27 years now, presently working in private industry, and I gross ~$48k.
…and they say teachers are unpaid! 🙂