Newsgroups: comp.edu
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ai.toronto.edu!tjhorton
From: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton")
Subject: Education (was: Becoming CAI literate)
Message-ID: <1988Feb23.045155.16293@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu (Timothy J. Horton)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 23-Feb-88 04:51:54 EST

A comprehensive answer to educational rednecks:

"Teens need less school -- not  more"
by  Frank Jones
Toronto Star, Feb 22, page C1

"I've just got the scoop on a new government report  of secondary
education.   This  report  recommends dropping the school-leaving
age to 14, closing down half the high schools in Metro (Toronto),
and allowing kids to choose which teachers to fire.  Classes will
be scheduled in the evenings, so as not to  interfere  with  stu-
dents' working hours, and kids will be paid $300 a week to attend
school.

"There I go, dreaming again.  There is no  such report  --  worse
luck.   The  only  kind of reports you'll get out of (the govern-
ment) are ones crying out for return to basics, for stricter  ex-
ams,  for  keeping  kids  in school longer.  And do you know why?
Because all these reports are written by people  who  loved  high
school,  who got top marks and sailed through to university.  And
their solution is always: everyone would be fine if everyone  was
like me.

"The latest report of this kind was produced last week  by George
Radwanski, a former editor of this paper who tells me he got good
marks and enjoyed his school days.   True  to  form,  his  report
agonizes  over  the  "plight"  or  working-class children, urging
stiffer and sterner doses of schooling.  And what  Radwanski  and
all  these  other report writers can't seem to come to grips with
is that, for most teenagers, high school is a perverse and  alien
experience involving years of boredom and frustration.

"Just think about it:  At the very time when your glands are pump-
ing  furiously  and  your  energy  and emotions are at a lifetime
peak, society plucks  you  down  at  an  uncomfortable  desk  and
force-feeds you dreary lectures on subjects in which you have not
the least interest.

"The teenage years, in fact, are a state of purgatory invented in
this  century.   In  the  past people went with relatively little
discomfort from childhood into adulthood.  Now we have this stage
of  frozen  animation  when,  in the interests of adult peace and
quiet, young people are  deprived  of  all  responsibilities  and
rights and confined to institutions of mainly useless learning.

"Then, to keep the escapers in line -- the ones either too dumb to
absorb  anything  or smart enough to see through it -- adults in-
vented the pejorative term "drop-out".

"If I quite my job, no one calls me a  drop-out.   If  I  leave a
church  I  am  not  called  a drop-out.  Only if I chose to leave
school  according  to  my   own   timetable   rather   than   the
institution's am I a drop-out.

"It is quite safe, apparently, to make any kind of derogatory re-
mark  about these "failures".  Radwanski quotes a Goldfarb survey
thus; "The drop-out in general does not think in  abstract  terms
but in terms that are visible and measurable.  He is confused and
alienated by concepts that are overly intellectualized."   Sounds
to me like a good definition of someone with down-to-earth common
sense.

"Radwanski's suggestions include starting children in school at 3
(in  other  words,  lengthening the sentence) and doing away with
streaming because it penalizes working-class kids.

"Now I know very well there are thousands of  gifted  high school
teachers  out  there who are doing everything in the power to fan
that spark of interest in their students.  And often it's  enough
to  encounter  just  one  of those excellent teachers during your
school years to open a student's eyes to life's possibilities.

"But isn't it time we recognized that for lots of kids  the spark
is  never  lit,  that  there are limits to what we can expect our
high schools to achieve?

"To start with social engineering is a very  dubious proposition.
For  most  kids  coming  from homes where learning is not valued,
it's game over by the time they start kindergarten  For  the  few
who want to break that mold, we should give every sort of indivi-
dual attention.

"Abolishing streaming would be nothing but a disaster  because it
would  turn  off the minority of students who really like school,
the super-achievers   Pretty  soon,  they'd  all  be  in  private
schools.

"For the rest, the real need is to get them  reading  and writing
and  then  get them through high school as quickly and painlessly
as possible and out into the world of  jobs;  ...  for most of us
the real interest  in ideas and knowledge  comes later,  when the
hectic teen years are  behind us.  And that's  why we should  cut
back on teenage schooling  and put even more effort  into selling
continuing  education  --  getting people back  into school  when
they're good and ready.
