Hear No Evil
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If public schools are doing such a great job today, why are so many children now in charter and private schools? Or are now being homeschooled?
Apparently, many parents are not satisfied with their children's education?
At the heart of Prager's piece, is a muted appeal for a return to a more classical form of American education. Children should be taught STEM classes, but for society to function well, children have to have so knowledge of how America was founded and why, including some background on more of the Founders than just Washington and Jefferson. That also includes the Judeo-Christian and Western values that shaped their thoughts and writings...Those concepts do include what is right, what is wrong, and where those concepts come from.
He also postulates about communism and its inherent Evil nature. In order to define Evil, he has to have some precept of good.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Hear No Evil:
Most of our schools teach almost nothing of importance
Mathematics
Yeah sure fine there.
English literature, history, music,
Uh, okay.
You have kids in public school, that's true. I went to public school, and I work with people who are products of public and private schools. Also my dad was a career public school teacher as was my grandmother.
STEM classes? More or less pretty good. I think on the whole, they do alright.
And I would also say that things do happen in arts and humanities classes. You definitely do stuff. It can be a lot of work.
But most of it's worthless nonsense to get you to test well. It's not in any way helpful. Arts and humanities education in public school is a fucking joke.
@Aqua-Letifer said in Hear No Evil:
But most of it's worthless nonsense to get you to test well. It's not in any way helpful
The conundrum: I agree that teachers are shackled to test scores. The question becomes how do we measure academic proficiency and progress without standardized testing?
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Hear No Evil:
Most of our schools teach almost nothing of importance
Mathematics
Yeah sure fine there.
English literature, history, music,
Uh, okay.
You have kids in public school, that's true. I went to public school, and I work with people who are products of public and private schools. Also my dad was a career public school teacher as was my grandmother.
STEM classes? More or less pretty good. I think on the whole, they do alright.
And I would also say that things do happen in arts and humanities classes. You definitely do stuff. It can be a lot of work.
But most of it's worthless nonsense to get you to test well. It's not in any way helpful. Arts and humanities education in public school is a fucking joke.
@Aqua-Letifer said in Hear No Evil:
And I would also say that things do happen in arts and humanities classes. You definitely do stuff. It can be a lot of work.
But most of it's worthless nonsense to get you to test well. It's not in any way helpful. Arts and humanities education in public school is a fucking joke.
I'll digress a little - It's funny, our high school had what was always described as an amazing music department, but as somebody who's played an instrument pretty much my entire life I had some real issues with the way it was run.
It was well known enough that when the former head of music retired, Wynton Marsalis turned up unexpectedly and played at his leaving concert - there's even a video of it on YouTube.
However, so much of it was based on needing to play in the school marching band, and there was this attitude of 'either you do an absolute shit ton of music, or we don't want you'. My kids both stopped music after middle school as it was too much.
When I was a kid, music was fun. I played in a county orchestra, but mostly I had a good time. My son suffered such major anxiety trying to fit in with the High School plan, that we felt it was better for him to drop the subject.
I don't know, is this a good approach or not? It looks great here, but I think there's more to it.
Link to videoI was only joking
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Hear No Evil:
But most of it's worthless nonsense to get you to test well. It's not in any way helpful
The conundrum: I agree that teachers are shackled to test scores. The question becomes how do we measure academic proficiency and progress without standardized testing?
@Jolly said in Hear No Evil:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Hear No Evil:
But most of it's worthless nonsense to get you to test well. It's not in any way helpful
The conundrum: I agree that teachers are shackled to test scores. The question becomes how do we measure academic proficiency and progress without standardized testing?
In my opinion, it's very much a "pull the goalie" kind of solution. Yes, it would work. No, it's not something anyone will ever do.
Hire teachers who are capable of making the right determinations without standardized tests. This worked for quite a few centuries.
You can keep the testing for the science/engineering stuff but I honestly don't see how you can test arts/humanities with anything other than essays, in which case you're back to personal judgment calls.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Hear No Evil:
And I would also say that things do happen in arts and humanities classes. You definitely do stuff. It can be a lot of work.
But most of it's worthless nonsense to get you to test well. It's not in any way helpful. Arts and humanities education in public school is a fucking joke.
I'll digress a little - It's funny, our high school had what was always described as an amazing music department, but as somebody who's played an instrument pretty much my entire life I had some real issues with the way it was run.
It was well known enough that when the former head of music retired, Wynton Marsalis turned up unexpectedly and played at his leaving concert - there's even a video of it on YouTube.
However, so much of it was based on needing to play in the school marching band, and there was this attitude of 'either you do an absolute shit ton of music, or we don't want you'. My kids both stopped music after middle school as it was too much.
When I was a kid, music was fun. I played in a county orchestra, but mostly I had a good time. My son suffered such major anxiety trying to fit in with the High School plan, that we felt it was better for him to drop the subject.
I don't know, is this a good approach or not? It looks great here, but I think there's more to it.
Link to video@Doctor-Phibes said in Hear No Evil:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Hear No Evil:
And I would also say that things do happen in arts and humanities classes. You definitely do stuff. It can be a lot of work.
But most of it's worthless nonsense to get you to test well. It's not in any way helpful. Arts and humanities education in public school is a fucking joke.
I'll digress a little - It's funny, our high school had what was always described as an amazing music department, but as somebody who's played an instrument pretty much my entire life I had some real issues with the way it was run.
It was well known enough that when the former head of music retired, Wynton Marsalis turned up unexpectedly and played at his leaving concert - there's even a video of it on YouTube.
However, so much of it was based on needing to play in the school marching band, and there was this attitude of 'either you do an absolute shit ton of music, or we don't want you'. My kids both stopped music after middle school as it was too much.
When I was a kid, music was fun. I played in a county orchestra, but mostly I had a good time. My son suffered such major anxiety trying to fit in with the High School plan, that we felt it was better for him to drop the subject.
I don't know, is this a good approach or not? It looks great here, but I think there's more to it.
Link to videoThat's awesome.
Yeah, fun needs to be the motivator, and unfortunately a lot of music curricula forego fun for work, which, what's the point then?Regarding the fact that our humanities education is ridiculous, here's one of many fundamental lessons no one teaches about writing, or the arts generally: call it perspectives or contexts or whatever you like, but right about the age of preschool, you start to intuit that there are different layers to reality. When you see your great-great-grandmother's teacup on the kitchen table, you see the pretty thing that has the fun colors, but also the dangerous thing that causes mom to yell at you if you pick it up.
Writing is important because storytelling is the only mechanism by which you can communicate all these different layers simultaneously. Nothing else can do that at the same level.
And it's inherent. You have to study math and statistics in school because they're incredibly useful tools, but they don't come naturally. Meanwhile, the average three-year-old can understand a story about talking animals they've never heard of. And they'll understand it so well that after awhile, they'll start creating their own.
The bible is storytelling. Stupid-assed CEO all-staff pep talks are storytelling. Ads and newspapers are storytelling. Cultural shifts and politics are shaped by storytelling. Learning it makes you good at interviews, resolving conflicts and giving your existence more agency. Alongside math, it's just one of those things that holds the world up.
But no let's keep pretending it's just about expressing your teenage feels and "being creative," whatever the fuck they think that means.
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Music ed, concert and marching bands...
Nobody really wants to do marching band. Practice starts in August, fer Gawd's sake. Nothing like packing around a tuba or a set of quints in 95 degree weather. And while high school might get away with duplicating a show, that ain't happening at the collegiate level. At that level, the music drops on Monday, first rehearsal is Tuesday and all steps and music are down dead cold by Friday afternoon.
But marching bands can help drive budgets, because they are so visible.
Concert band is the fun stuff. More time to learn. More time to practice. More forms of interesting music. And you don't sweat as much.
So I understand the reason to do the former to get to the latter.
