I raised two kids, and I don’t think either one of them got much out of school. My son, in particular, was shuffled through a ‘special ed’ system far more concerned about teaching kids to behave well in school than in learning to think and solve problems. I talked to both my kids’ teachers about the yawning gaps in their general knowledge, but the teachers only wanted to emphasize how well-behaved (or not) they were in class.
My son can’t solve simple arithmetic problems (like 27×50) in his head. (Can you?) My daughter got to Spanish III without, as far as I could tell, and her in a school district where over half the students spoke Spanish as a first language, being able to hold a simple conversation in that language. Her Spanish III teacher admitted to me with some anguish that my daughter hadn’t learned enough Spanish to be of any help in coaching the Spanish I students.
She still passed, though. I think she got a ‘C’. ‘C’, in California, is the grade you get for being well-behaved in class. I don’t believe ‘not having learned a damn thing in the previous year’ appears on any report card, er, Individual Education Plan.
Sure, the opportunity is there to learn, but how many kids take advantage of that, when doing the bare minimum gets you through with As and Bs? Maybe that’s California’s crappy laissez-faire public education system at work.
Without the pressure to get good grades, kids don’t challenge themselves. If people aren’t continually challenged, they get dumber. Kids come out of a system that has spend twelve years turning their potential into ashes.
And it does a really good job of it, too. Billions have been spent in making kids stupid. Kids who come out bright, challenged, knowing how to learn and capable of picking a destination and knowing how to get there, did it without any help from their school.
Games can make you smarter. Poker has lots to teach you about probabilities and judging people. Chess. Any game where excellence counts. Any game that makes you want to be better, makes you smarter.
Games that give you the same experience even if you’re crappy at it, make you dumber. I’m definitely talking about most MMOs here. Pandering for mediocrity. Succeed with no effort spent. Gold star just for showing up.
I love the idea of New York City’s “Game School“. I know exactly what they’re getting at. Challenge kids by using games to encourage kids to want to become better. If they pull it off… make the games challenging, design them so that learning is the only possible way to succeed… Use the raw elemental power anyone can get by when they a challenge, figure out how to approach it, solve it, defeat it… those are the tools that, once given, can never be taken away, apply to every single part of life, and currently are found only in sports.
Never in academics.
This could change it, if done right. Designing challenging games for these students that will challenge them and spark in them the drive to learn and never become satisfied with doing “just enough to get by”… is a far loftier goal than designing the next forgettable WoW clone.
I wish “Game School” all the success in the world, and if I lived in the area and had kids the right age, I would be right there, right now, saying, challenge my kids to never settle for just being ‘good enough’.
Maybe I seem harsh toward California schools. Maybe it was just the two school districts that ‘educated’ my children. But the only things they ever learned that they use, are things they learned from their parents. They might as well have skipped school entirely. Me? I failed Algebra I in middle school, had to take it over again, and the challenge of having to catch up to my grade level taught me that math wasn’t hard, it was fun, ended up with a 5 in the AP Calculus exam and a career in software engineering. Being challenged changed my life.
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9 thoughts on “Schools that make you smarter? Impossible!”
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I thoroughly believe that the only reason that I’m not a dumbass is because I would read AD&D books constanly and was forced to do math and logic problems while DMing. I don’t believe that I learned a thing from highschool. If you weren’t one of the popular kids, you didn’t get much from the teacher. Instead of helping you learn things, they just sent you to a class that was a dumbed down version of what everyone else was learning. ALSO when your child needs help with things, their stupid books only have questions in it… there is nothing in those books that explain how to solve a problem. What kind of f$#&%ing asshat authored these books?
Don’t get me started on the California schooling system. As someone who went from K-12 in a Southern California school districts I know first hand that they are laughable.
I can count on one hand the teachers I’ve had that actually taught me something and that made a lasting impressions. I would need 20 hands to count the games that I have learned not only small skills but life lessons from.
My kids finished up their educations (such as they were) in North San Diego County, but spent most of it in Monterey County schools. The teachers were all great people. I don’t blame the teachers. I blame a school system which rewards mediocrity by focusing on passing tests and not learning to apply learning to new situations. All “No Child Left Behind” does is put all the focus on passing standardized tests. Not doing well on them; just passing them.
Unfortunately, passing standardized tests is almost entirely useless in the real world.
Here’s a link to the site of the Institute of Play, which is sponsoring this initiative. A quote from their site:
Game design as an agent of provocation, education, and change. Hallelujah. Those words should be engraved in stone and set up atop the offices of every game development house.
These people need whatever support we can give.
There was this cat by the name of Howard Gardner that poised the theory of multiple intelligences. I didn’t learn about this in High School; I did learn about it in College. College was when I really passionately wanted to learn and actually spent time in the library because I wanted to not because a book report was due. I had to care for it to sink in. In my four years of High School all I cared about was being the head drummer, girls, being in Student Government, girls, getting A’s so my parents would be happy and I could get a scholarship, my friends, and girls.
So Howard Gardner proposed a theory of multiple intelligences that we all embody to one degree or another: logical, musical, linguistic, naturalistic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, spatial, and kinesthetic. Just to play devil’s advocate here, teaching interpersonal skills so they “behave better†(hopefully get along with others and realize when certain things are ok or not ok to do) *is* helping kids intelligence to some degree . . . especially if it was a weak point in a time in their life when it’s all about being the “typical selfish teenager.” My son is high-functioning autistic, so I’m sure he will get plenty of this “interpersonal” schooling in his future from the public school special education system.
Looking at those types of intelligence I can see that my own red-state, republican-funded learning experience lacked a push for growing positive naturalistic intelligence. I mean, I dissected a frog, but I never grew a plant. That kind of learning was reserved for those kooky boy scouts. And for my kids, if their school isn’t providing them what they need, you better believe I’m going to go to outside sources for intelligence building experiences.
A holistic approach to learning within a school system would be fantastic for me . . . I’m not sure “gaming school” would be that all-in-one fountain of youth for holistic learning that I yearn for my own kids, but if my child did show talent and interest in those areas, and this school could crack that shell of “non-interest” and turn it into a yolk of desire . . . yeah . . . I’d enroll them.
I taught my kids lots of things. We did hikes, visited interesting places, had lots of extra things (like my daughter’s flight club, or my son’s sports), read interesting books together and made things… and these things are still with my kids. I did *my* job. I’m disappointed schools aren’t doing their jobs. Maybe making schools more relevant can help. Alternative schools always struggle, “Gaming School” is just another way to try and engage kids and make them own their own education.
My son was diagnosed emotionally disturbed with clinical depression. So yeah, getting him to learn to behave in school or other social situations was a big step, and the patience and understanding of the special ed teachers and staff was amazing.
But even once he got over that, teaching him academics was no sort of priority at all. If you wanted an education, you had to be “mainstreamed”. It’s hard to do that with a second grade skillset. Now he is an adult with no skills and a high school diploma that means nothing. If only there were games that could get him to want to learn for its own sake… He has always done well at games. Or a school that could engage him in that way… instead of one where sleeping through math classes was acceptable behavior.
I don’t envy any parent who has to struggle with the special education system. My son isn’t mentally retarded. He can learn as well as anyone else. And yet the school had just one box in which to place all special needs kids, and all he had to do was take the occasional standardized test.
One thing that kids and parents have today that they didn’t have in the past is . . . dun dun dun . . . the Internet. More specifically websites like http://www.ratemyteachers.com. At least with this communication you can get a grass roots feel for some of your children’s teachers or sound off if a teacher is exceptional or a waste of skin. (Of course, the teachers may not be where the problem is so much as, as was mentioned earlier in this thread, the books or the classes being offered.)
Well it’s said that public schools in general are failing their students because the TEACHERS have no incentive to be affective at their job. It’s hard to get them fired and because it’s not a competitive market – they’re guaranteed a pay check no matter how good they do their job. It’s not just California but, in my opinion, most public schools.
Where as private schools – such as the catholic school Jazzmin is in, if they don’t do a good job then the parent may well opt to take their kid to another school. So there is insentive to do a good job so that the school has enough money to stay open and teachers keep their jobs. And with schools competing against each other for students – they keep striving to make their school the best to keep the influx of new students each year.
And I think with parents paying a tuition – there is a higher rate of parent involvement in monitoring the level of education. After all – we want our money’s worth!
Half the problem is with the public school systems but the other half is with how American media as a whole portrays intelligence to children. I remember riding the bus home in high school and having kids brag about how many F’s and Ds they got on their report cards. They thought that the less they learned the cooler and more rebellious they were.
In general the media that kids consume portrays logic, reading and math in negative lights. Relationships, physical prowness, and looks are much more important to kids because thats what television and magazines tell them. As a result most kids don’t actively seek education. Even in college most students choose degrees which are easy and simply require memorization of facts. And people wonder why nowadays so many college students move back in with their parents after graduation.
P.S. Florida School System also sucks mostly because of the lack of funding thanks to over 50% of voters being seniors with no kids in the state.
Relmstein: If parents are doing their jobs properly – the media wouldn’t have so much power.