American public school edumacationizing strikes again: for the first time, American “creativity scores” are in decline.
Gah.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html
My suggestion: if we *have* to have public schools (a massivley debatable point), then break out of the “rote” method of teaching. Strip off the extraneous bullcrap; readin’ wrtin’, ‘rythmatic, history, science, art. Anything beyond that – the wonders of multiculturalism, athletics, PC-bullcrap, self-esteem building, etc., should be done away with. And for art and science, teach not by pounding lectures into their little heads, or by piling vast amounts of homework on ’em, but by giving them creative assignments, singly and in groups. Most people learn best by doing. Science should be taught by *doing.*
Sigh.
But I suppose that would irritate the DOE and the teachers unions somehow. Probably best to home school the little monsters.
20 Responses to “The Creativity Crisis”
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I hate public schools.
“Probably best to home school the little monsters.”
Yes. I agree.
Should I ever happen to curse the world with offspring the last thing I’d do is put them through the public education meat-grinder.
Public education is one of the few areas where there is a clear return on investment. Whe you look at the countries that have excellent public education, they have a higher standard of living.
It’s also clear when you look at countries like Singapore which (education or standard of living) comes first.
The sad fact is, what makes the greatest difference isn’t teachers or buildings or textbooks, it’s involved parents. For the most part, parents today aren’t expecting their children to excel in school and that’s where we’re failing.
If you want to teach them something, teach them how to determine the difference in what they design between what is rational, or even possible, and what is irrational, or downright impossible.
Three cases I run into personally:
I suggested building a solid-fuel rocket engine… a acquaintance said with some more work on it, we could launch a satellite.
I suggested building a two-man mini-sub out of a small propane storage tank, powered by electric trawling motors*…a different acquaintance suggested using a nuclear reactor to generate the power rather than relying on batteries.
A acquaintance of a acquaintance came up with a great means of powering a cargo ship: solar arrays atop the cargo ship will be used to create electricity to break seawater down into hydrogen and oxygen and liquefy them into LOX and LH2 – these are then recombined in fuel cells to generate electricity to drive the props.
Unfortunately, others have come up with ideas a lot like that; meet Ferdinand Porsche’s “Maus” tank, where a big gas engine drives a big generator that powers two electrical motors that drive the treads:
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/maus/index.html
If nothing else this proved a great way to fill up the hull of a giant tank leaving little space for the crew despite its huge size, while simultaneously using up a great weight of strategically important copper in the generator and motor windings.
*The rocket motor did get built and worked pretty well; what stymied the sub project was transporting it around…despite its small size its displacement meant that it was going to be awfully heavy if it was to submerge, and it looked like some sort of pretty involved and strong trailer was going to be needed to tow it around and get it into the water and out again.
Part of the problem with today’s education system is voters. They want standardized tests (and to fund schools based on them). But, they complain when schools teach to the test. What do you expect when you reward them based on test results.
I have several friends who are teachers, and they complain about this. They are not allowed to teach anything but the mandated curriculum in the mandated way. People complain that our old system of teaching was designed to produce nothing but factory workers. My response is, then how did we end up with so many engineers and scientists throughout the middle of the 20th century?
As Doug said, the parents (and family) make the greatest impact on a student’s success or failure in school. If the parents love to read and learn, the child will most likely love to read and learn to.
No surprises here, this result is exactly what the political left in America have been working towards for 50 years. Dumbed down people are not citizens, they are simply property of the State, too stupid to run their own lives, much less understand issues concerning the running of a country or economy.
I know a few teachers. The ones who are not leftists are rather dull, to be honest. The teach to the standardized tests because that’s what pays off for them. It never seems to occur to any educational administrators that some children are stupid, some are brilliant, and most would rather be outside playing.
I’ll look for the reference, but some company (maybe 3M) once tried to figured out how to find creative folk. Once the testing was finished, the answer seemed to be that the difference between those employees who were not creative and those who were was a simple matter of attitude: the creative persons thought they were creative; the others did not. (Perhaps this is the origin of the idea of enhanced self-esteem for all.)
I like your approach to education, Scott, but I’d add something. I’d teach them formal logic, too, so their arguments make sense.
In the end, though, as has been said here (above), it’s the parents who make all the difference. We now have two generations of well-trained clowns who are very bad parents.
Parents don’t have much effect on schools which get their funding, and thus their marching orders at the state and federal level.
The left-wing college professors are more fun than the right wing ones (I had both), but for real fun you had to see the complete rabid froth one of my high school civic teachers could work himself into when discussing FDR.
“Frank-lin Dela-no JEWSEVELT!” He would howl, his fingers grasping the top of his podium like the claws of some sort of predatory bird as he leaned forward over it…an impression made even stronger by his bald head and huge pointed nose. 😀
Pat. we may have had members of the same family teaching us. Miss Drumwright was my civics instructor in 11th grade. She “hated” communists so much that she’s start crying in class. Communism was a major topic. I guess she consigned me to a special corner of Hell when I remarked that I thought communism was an economic theory before it was a political theory.
Well, it only killed 100 million people outside of wartime. Better a teacher who hated communism than one who thought it was just dandy.
Self esteem can be given, sure. What people forget is that for being given, it can be taken away.
Self-respect, earned by accomplishing challenging things, can’t be taken away, only given.
Jim
See? Another public education fail. Only a braindead loser would be a spambot.
> spambot.
More and more of ’em are getting through. The irritating thing is that the system is supposed to send me an email every time a message is posted… but somehow some of the spam messages get through without that email.
We tried putting our boys into public school out here in California, big mistake. We put our oldest son into the top rated public school in our area, moved so that we could do so and still stay close enough to my job, and it was a miserable failure. Our oldest was reading at 3 years old, he is going into third grade next year and has already read half the Harry Potter books, and does multiplication without issue. When he started Kindergarten he excelled well beyond everyone in the class, but he was held back by all the little delniquents (sp?) who didn’t even know their alphabet, numbers or shapes yet. We kept asking if there were any kind of advanced program we could put him into, and were told, yes, yes they would put him in the advanced reader group, and the advanced math group. They did nothing, and he started to get into trouble because he was bored, also the program was only half days, and he was used to full day programs in preschool. So after the third incident that brought him to the principal, who believed that children shouldn’t start school until they were 8 years old, we started looking at alternatives. My wife considered quitting her job to home school him, I looked at transfering him the base school, at Edwards civilians can have their kids in the base school, which is the best public school in the area, hands down, and we looked at private school. We eventually checked the Carden School near us and fell in love with it. We enrolled him and guess what, he was immediately put into the advanced groups, no behaviour problems and he excelled once again. It is worth every penny, and one of the things they instill in the kids is a sense of pride and respect. The kids rarely, that I have seen, disrespect their teachers or their peers. We saw a perfect example of public vs private school kids at one of his cub scout meetings. The scout master was out and they had a sub, and he lost control of the room, all of the public school kids went nuts, trashing the room, while the three private school boys (all of whom went to Carden), sat and behaved themselves.
Public school is a breeding ground for trash unfortunately. Now, our second son, we also enrolled in Carden, unfortunately he has not faired as well. He is also very bright, but the school just didn’t work for him, and so we have opted not to continue him there next year. We are not going to stick him in a public school though, instead, since my wife now has to stay home to care for our disabled fourth son, we have enrolled him in a virtual school, Connections Academy. He has already started some classes online and loves it and is doing great. We love the program from what we have seen, and plan to do this with all the boys once they hit high school, splitting them between different schools while they are younger depending on their requirements. That will work until/unless my wife has to go back to work, California is not a state where a single income family can thrive easily, and we make it work somehow despite a deadbeat dad who doesn’t pay child support, and a regional center that barely helps with our disabled son’s care because I work and have insurance.
School only yields what you put into it, and the public school system we use now it horrid. It is based on a 19th centry german model, that they abandoned nearly fifty years ago. Unfortunately, the teachers union has a stranglehold on the system and will not allow it to change, stagnating our children and keeping them reaching the levels they should.
Well, here is an example of some creative writing assignments I’d like to see
http://www.starshipmodeler.net/talk/viewtopic.php?p=1222062#1222062
> Well, here is an example of some creative writing assignments I’d like to see
http://www.starshipmodeler.net/talk/viewtopic.php?p=1222062#1222062
Errr… as creative writing assignments go: “Please enter your username and password to log in.” seems kinda lame.
“Miss Drumwright was my civics instructor in 11th grade. She “hated” communists so much that she’s start crying in class.”
I think she had a partially successful sex-change operation and is now on Fox News. 😉
Admin wrote:
“More and more of ‘em are getting through. The irritating thing is that the system is supposed to send me an email every time a message is posted… but somehow some of the spam messages get through without that email.”
Seconds after Scott started snoring, Raedthinn’s paw once again moved toward the keyboard…as usual, it was always the one you least suspect that will betray you…and as much as the cat liked Scott, it would do anything to feed its terrible addiction.
Again the car quietly pulled up outside; the window opened, and the little bag of catnip was tossed into the yard.
Pretending to be dozing, Fingers watched it all through slit-like eyes. She was appalled…she had to tell Scott what was going on before it was too late.
But she kept remembering what had happened to the Little Sisters when they saw something they shouldn’t have.
Sometimes that car _didn’t_ stop – sometimes it sped up.
And she knew Raedthinn suspected her too; just a few days ago he had once again hugged her a little too tight…one day soon may come the “Lick Of Death”.
> Seconds after Scott started snoring…
OK, now *that* was actually pretty clever.