Unfortunately it isn't getting much better. We finished the section on Learning Styles and then spent a bunch of time on the theory of multiple intelligences. It is presented as some kind of serious thing, but it lists 8 intelligences and then tells us that there are many more and we should feel free to add any we think of to the list.
'Just add on more stuff if you feel like it' does not have the ring of well researched material.
It seems like the course may be trying to teach us that people have many ways to learn and excel, and hoping to get us to accept all these various ways. That goal works for me, and if they said that explicitly I would be behind it. Unfortunately they dress it up in all these half baked theories that are supported by conjecture and guesswork, and I don't much like trying to teach that to kids as though it is settled fact.
I don't want to try to force feed Pinkie Pie theories that aren't solid. I won't try to lie to her and tell her that it is actually super important that she determine what her best intelligences are. Unfortunately the way the course is structured the marks are largely based around questions like
"What is your strongest intelligence, and how can that help you in your career?"
Pinkie Pie sees this question and just stares at it. She struggles with perfectionism and she simply doesn't know what to say to this. She hasn't settled on a career, and the tool to help her figure out what her strongest intelligence is was pretty much just 'pick your strongest intelligence from a list' form. I know this is a waste of time, and so does she, without me having to tell her anything.
So she is learning sketchy science in order to make up stuff about herself so she can get marks.
It is tricky for me to navigate. On one hand there is something I can teach her here - I can teach her how to give bullshit answers to bullshit questions. After making up some stuff about her strongest intelligence, I got her to think about what her second place intelligence might be, and talk about how that might also influence her career. I was sure that even though the question didn't even hint at this, that the teacher marking it would love it.
They loved it. I am good at figuring out how to get marks. I just have to work on the 'caring about marks' thing.
I don't quite know what to do. Figuring out how to get marks is actually a hugely powerful skill in the world. It can take you places! Of course it is worthless and silly, but if you want more opportunities or just a bigger slice of the pie, knowing how to get marks is a good way to start. I have tremendous reservations about spending a lot of time and effort teaching Pinkie Pie this skill though. Do I want to spend time teaching her how to work the system? That isn't the parent I want to be.
The more I see about high school through my kid the more I remember why I was so disenchanted with education by the time I finished it myself. It seemed like a small amount of actual learning sprinkled into a giant vat of pointless busywork dressed up as something important. I think my teachers were divided between those who truly tried to do the best they could, and those who just put in the time, doing what they were told they had to. No matter how dedicated they were though, they were stuck teaching a standardized curriculum to a ton of kids in order to generate vast quantities of marks. I think the learning itself is important, and marks are a way to serve businesses in order to facilitate employee training and sorting. That isn't a thing I had respect for back when I was a teen, and my attitude certainly hasn't shifted now.
a) It is a sad, but true, fact that you need to produce BS that someone else will love to succeed in a corporate environment, and that definitely has "worth". I've done some research - you can ignore this fact, but only at the detriment of your career. :p. Maybe practicing the skill of "Realize this is a BS question, and your goal isn't actually to answer it, but to fulfill the requirement quickly and then forget about it" is a useful skil, idk? But maybe I don't know because it isn't a thing taught in school or to me by my parents - I learned stories of fighting the system to do what is right - and boy, and bad for you career :p. Not to mention stressful.
ReplyDeleteb) There must be some courses that teach actual things (Math? CS? Pick-a-science? History? English, even, at parts!) that, at worst, is still better than "we made up some stuff and now you should too!". Even if the subject matter isn't exciting, it cannot fail to feel more meaningful?
c) It is also worth learning that many adults and experts - for example, the people who were paid to produce this course? - have no idea what they're doing, and should be actively ignored. If "Learning styles" or whatever is something that is worth learning, maybe there's a better source of material?
We are having some similar issues with Naomi's online school, though of course Grade 5 is different than high school. She struggles with perfectionism too, and has trouble starting if she doesn't know what the perfect answer should be. Stephen usually gives the advice that she should differentiate between:
ReplyDelete- tasks that are actually interesting and inspiring (and put as much time and effort as she wants into those)
- tasks that she just has to do but doesn't care about (and put in the bare minimum effort to just git 'er done)
That has seemed to help a little.
Following up on Robb's comment a)
ReplyDeleteI think that how to answer these types of questions was one of the most important things I learned in High School.
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