thoughts on school

[deird1]

Competence is not a straight line.

I have no particular reason to post about this right now. But it's something I've thought about a lot before, and it's in my head today, so...


My first primary school seemed to think that competence was a point. (Which they were wrong about, by the way.)

They had a list of Stuff That Grade 2 Kids Can Do, and they assumed that all the kids in Grade 2 were at the same level. Hence my mother having to fight tooth and nail to get them to realise that WE COULD ALREADY READ. NO REALLY. STOP TRYING TO TEACH MY KIDS THE ALPHABET, AND LET THEM READ NOVELS.


My second school was much better: they thought that competence was a line. (Which was an improvement over school 1 - but they were still wrong.)

In the middle of the line are all the average kids, who are at the standard level for their age group.
On one end are the stupid kids, who need remedial help.
On the other end are the clever kids, who need extension activities.


I was a clever kid. I needed extension activities. And my school, being helpful, provided me with plenty of extension activities, extra-tricky maths, extra-awesome reading, and so forth.

What they didn't realise was that I needed remedial help.


I was a clever kid. I was at the top end of the line; clearly I couldn't be at the bottom end too.

So very logical. So very blind.

This is how I got through 13 years of school without a single teacher realising that I didn't know how to do homework, or how to do assignments, or how to study. Not one teacher realised that competency is not a straight line, and that it is perfectly possible to be very very clever and also in desperate need of remedial help.


I'm still rather annoyed about that.

Comments

[velvetwhip]

I know. Education isn't any better here, I am sorry to say.


Gabrielle

[me-llamo-nic.livejournal.com]

I'd say I had pretty much the opposite problem. I got the remedial help, but then people assumed I wasn't capable of being clever. I think I was done a bit of a disservice in being prompted toward the path of least resistance because I was one of those remedial help kids; average was good enough.

[deird1]

One of my friends had that problem.

She once wrote a brilliant essay, and got a D-minus for it - because clearly, as a remedial student, she must have copied it from somewhere. *fumes* I ended up storming in and yelling at the teacher - and I was a good student, so my word could be trusted where hers couldn't...

Schools suck, a lot of the time.

[nimthiriel]

I had vaguely similar problems, but I think it was dealt with a lot better by my teachers and even my parents to an extent.

My parents did get me into remedial programs (KUMON for English, a maths club after school in primary school, etc). I was also recommended for those "gifted" programs by my teachers. Unfortunately, this didn't really carry over into secondary school (apart from a science extension program in yr7, which kinda rocked) and I was, to a great deal, left to my own devices.

I think the best thing my school did for me was to not allow me into the accellerated maths program and to completely steam-roll my mother when she tried to insist that I should be there.

Yes, I was smart enough to be there. Fortunately, my maths teachers were aware that I would not have coped. They also gave up their lunch times to provide extra help to students, which I took advantage of occasionally.

I was also fortunate enough to have a friend who was very, very organised! So we'd share the research, I'd fix up all the English (she was ESL) and she'd figure out how to present the damned thing :-p

As a teacher, it can be hard to figure things like that out. I do tend to try very hard to focus on how my students go about doing things, but it's not easy. In a normal setting, you have 25-30 kids whose individual needs you need to try to be aware of and cater for, and in a secondary school you might see them for an hour or two per day. It's a flawed system as far as getting to know the students, particularly if they are shy as you just don't get to have those conversations with them as often as you should.

I'm lucky that, this year, I have the same groups for both maths and science so I was able to build up some relationships where I could give them tips for test technique and study habits, even in a group of 50.

It's still hard though, mostly because I still don't know how I study best, let alone how someone else might as my mother thought that there was only one way to study and learn. I just know a few bits and pieces of good advice which I can thank my own teachers for, and I'm still trying to build on that knowledge.

[(Anonymous)]

I thought I was stupid at the end of primary school because I got some of the remedial help I needed. My grade 5 and 6 teacher didn't help because she made us copy paragraphs off the board and do twenty basic maths questions before doing more advanced math. This is not useful for a child with high comprehension levels but very slow hand writing. I'm also quite sure that an attempt was made to explain this to her.

[mauvedragon.livejournal.com]

Arg that anonymous comment was me.

[(Anonymous)]

*Hugs* Right there with you sweetie...now I read my reports and just go "WHY did no one put that all together?" Kerith

[curiouswombat]

I can sympathise - I realised when I got to university that I had not really been given info at school to help me cope with independent study.

My daughter, one of the best students in her year at school, had only a 'low-side of average' reading speed and both school and S2C and I really didn't do much to help her speed up - everyone just assumed that the more she read the faster she'd get. Then she found she couldn't keep up with the reading schedule for her History degree and had to learn new techniques at that point.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I agree with this so much. I was always at the top of the class, clever, etc., etc. But, um, I'm in grad school and I still haven't the slightest idea how to do projects. I guess a few have gotten done. But anything that requires long term planning? No, nothing. And this was even true in elementary and high school. E.g., I'm great with science, but could never, ever do science fair projects. I was able to get by, generally, on writing convincing reports the night before. I could procrastinate on 95% of things and somehow do the other 5% in a flurry that I don't quite recall. I write well enough to get by on not actually being able to do anything that requires planning or diligent work. I still can't, really. And I'm not convinced it's some deep intrinsic flaw that can't be remedied (though I mean, sometimes I look back and think, wow, I can't ever be a scientist, I'VE NEVER DONE A GOOD SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT), but it's like I'm fifteen years behind where I should be and resources aren't exactly great for making that up.

[watchingtheaeroplanes.blogspot.com]

This resonates with me. I'm exactly the same. I think part of the reason I'm doing grad research in Arts rather than Science is that it's easier to do that sort of thing, despite being extremely strong in maths/science in school.

[a2zmom]

I think most schools are illequipped to deal with kids that fall outside of the norms.

I remember back when Aaron was in 8th grade, his English class had both the parents and the kids read the same book. They then had a discussion with both the parents and the kids about the book. My husband is the one who read the book and attended the discussion. When he came home, he told there was one kid who was disruptive, kept calling out things and was a general pain. Then there was this other kid who had these amazing insights into the book -much more advanced than all the other kids.

Both kids, of course, were Aaron. Not suprisingly, we used to get phone calls about him constantly. But after the complaints, they'd end it with "but he's so bright that in the long run he'll be fine." Huh? Then don't call me to complain.

Fortunately Aaron was able to figure out how to study once he got to college since I don't think he ever really bothered prior to that.

[klme.livejournal.com]

I got 100% for my year 8 Maths exam. Topped the year level. Got put into the top Maths groups for ever more.
And then found myself very close to failing year 11 Maths because I was totally unable to understand the work. I'd been memorising and rote learning Maths since Primary school, and by year 11 that just didn't work any more. You needed to understand how to do the work, and I didn't have a clue how you went about that.
No teacher ever picked it up or explained it to me.

[libco.livejournal.com]

I feel ya'-I was on academic probation throughout college until I learned to "work" If I get it or can read it I'm fun but but studying is HARD and I never really had to do it before. No research no problem but I was never good at things that required slow and steady.

[(Anonymous)]

taylor_serenil @ lj.com

I thank my parents for getting me into accelerated math (4 years of HS level math in 2). It's the only class that required me to have any study skills (beyond cramming and spitting information back out) while I was in junior high and high school. If I hadn't done that, I might have ended up flunking out of college, because my small town school system did not teach me how to study.

(And I got very bored and developed something of an attitude problem because of that. For example, my junior high English teacher told me "you're obviously not putting any effort into this class" and my smart-aleck answer was "why should I, I'm getting an A". Which was true, but about as disrespectful as I could get without actually swearing at her.)