School days...

[fajrdrako]

From thefridayfive:
1. Who was your favorite teacher?
In High School: Mr Davidson, grade 13 English. Afterwards: John Gillingham, at the London School of Economics.

2. Why was that teacher so special?
Mr Davidson: because he treated me with respect, and because he was highly intelligent himself. Last I heard he had left the teaching profession, divorced his wife, and had become a street musician in Vancouver.

John Gillingham: because he taught me how to think about history in order to understand it.

3. Do you think teachers get paid enough?
In Ontario, yes. Not, from what I hear, in other places.

4. Do you have a favorite year of school?
I hated them all. Kindergarten was the worst; I was miserably unhappy there. Grade 13 was probably the best - I got afternoons free, and the work was interesting. But I still hated it. Bad memories all the ways.

5. If you could travel back in time and tell yourself something now that would have helped you get through school, what would you say?
"Take risks. Stop being cautious with life. Don't be afraid of what might happen. In particular, try sex, you might like it!"

Comments

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

3: No teachers ever get paid enough. They spend all day dealing with little shits persons under the age of majority

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it's hardly the teachers' fault the students don't want to be there!

Still: I think there were teachers who could have, and should have, made school a better experience for me, but they didn't. So I still hold a bit of a grudge.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I could never understand why any child wouldn't want to be there. What else is there in life that's half as much fun as learning?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

What else is there in life that's half as much fun as learning?

I always felt school was a hindrance to learning, not a help. School held me back. Often in high school, I felt I knew more about the subjects being taught than the teachers did - and I can remember various incidents that proved it. It was very difficult to respect an institution that (basically) treated me like a prisoner and didn't respect or encourage my intelligence.

There are things I learned in high school that I could not have learned any other way - calculus, for example - but I'm not sure how useful that has been to me in life, considering that I remember almost nothing about calculus now, and have not used it since high school. But passing the math exams got me through grade 13 and had the purpose of getting me into university, which was my main motivation.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I never felt as if I were a 'prisoner'. The only subjects I disliked intensely were PE/Games and Maths. If I had had my way, I'd probably now be functionally innumerate, but I managed to get a B at O Level, and was able to ditch it after that. I can't say I've ever really had to use anything that couldn't be done faster with a calculator.

I recall a few times (mostly at primary school and junior high) correcting teachers, but – especially at high school – I felt very much encouraged and inspired by the teachers, especially my classics teachers.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It sounds as if you had better teachers than I did. Not that they were all bad; but I really feel the general level of teaching quality and interest in the students should have been better.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

In fact, I rather think that children who don't want to be in school should spend an afternoon in a coal mine, so that they realise what a battle it's been to obtain free universal education, instead of sending small children off to work in factories and mines, as is still the case in some parts of the developing world…

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That might work - though we don't have many coal mines left in Ontario. Prehaps some hard work on a farm would do the trick - ?

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

There's only one left in Scotland.
But over here, the youngsters are semi-literate:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6954666.stm
Universities are complaining about texting abbreviations in essays, and apparently the use of correct spelling, colons and semi-colons is now regarded as grounds for suspecting students of plagiarism.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

the use of correct spelling, colons and semi-colons is now regarded as grounds for suspecting students of plagiarism.

LOL! Scary, very scary.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Something broke in the state education system here between 1983 and 1994. I can date it, because I left school in 1983, and in early 1996 I was teaching second-year arts undergraduates (Department of Historical and Critical Studies at a 'new' university) who did not know how to construct an essay. As someone who believes in abolishing fee-paying schools, I was disgusted that the only ones of my students who were fully literate and competent at essay writing were those from private schools.

Part of the problem was the drive to get as many young people into higher education as possible, regardless of academic ability (this was done to reduce the youth unemployment figures), and also the creation of so many 'new universities' from what had been good polytechnics, primarily teaching vocational courses.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I just came across something I'd never heard of in the US (and, apparently, Alberta), Charter Schools - that's public schools that don't come under the regular school boards but exist independently. I couldn't figure out why such a thing should exist, till I asked maaseru, who pointed out that it is because the regular public schools are so bad. Which appears to be the case.

Pushing students who are inadequately educated through the school system is obviously a bad idea (and it further devalues education), but having a lot of people without jobs or qualifications isn't a good thing either. There must be another alternative.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

The fact is that a lot of careers don't really need a degree. The situation now is that a lot of young people have degrees that aren't worth a lot, and there are graduates flipping burgers in fast-food joints, or (like me) unable to get regular work.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, that happens everywhere. And I don't see the point. Shouldn't a 'high school education' and 'a good education' be eseentially the same thing? In theory?

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Also see this on the decline of modern languages (http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,,2152712,00.html).

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

French was always compulsory in Canada, and, I believe, still is. Except in the French-speaking schools, where English is compulsory. But I feel a certain sympathy for the kids, once it's made optional - languages are difficult and usually badly taught, and if you're in a monolingual country, or online, it's easy to think "I don't need foreign languages". When you're young and feeling swampted with difficult studies, a language can be daunting.

All the more reason to do it, of course.

It seems to me that what they ought to do is to make languages much more immersive, and much friendlier - lots of watching TV in the language being studies, lots of puzzles and games and so on. Give them the flavour and the verbal ease.

Languages always seemed important to me because they were a gateway to history.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

In my day, you had to take at least one language to O Level (i.e. up to the age of 16). I did French, Latin and Greek.

The trouble here is that too many British people make the assumption that everyone else speaks English, and also that for many of them, the most 'abroad' they get are the sunbathing-and-drinking resorts in the Mediterranean, where they will eat fish and chips and drink at 'English' bars, and do nothing but bake themselves in the sun and go clubbing. That, or go on debauched 'stag' or 'hen' weekends to wonderful places like Prague, where they just get drunk and go to strip clubs.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

We used to get double-credit for a language, which was incentive to take one. Though in my high school there wasn't much choice except French, which was compulsory. I could have taken Latin or Spanish, I think.

[wijsgeer.livejournal.com]

my favourite teacher is still one of my best friends. He gave economy (as in economic theory), he held me sane during school (not sure to what extent I should call that a figure of speech) school would have been fine if all the other pupils would have gone away. I liked learning.

I don't know what I would say to my younger self. I remember an other meme where this was asked as well, but in a more general way. Then I would tel my 20 year old self to try depakine. The neurologist had that med on his list of possibles for a trial and error run. The earlier attempt 'rivotril' had worked out very badly and I didn't dare try an other one. This meant years of healthproblems I would have avoided if I had plunged in and tried the depakine then. As it was, I got it 9 years late for a different problem and it has helped me majorly on 3 areas of bad health. I might have been graduated, with a job?!?! Instead I have struggled on.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I changed my advice to myself, having thought of something I needed to hear more than what I said this afternoon.

I liked learning, too. I felt at the time that school was preventing me from learning as much as I could have learned at home with books. I think I was right, too, in most subjects - but I really needed teachers to give me guidance and help me with some subjects, like math, that I had little aptitude for.

What a shame, about the bad medicine you got when young. As far as I know there is still no medicine for the things that ailed me when I was young, like scleroderma.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I'm still in touch with my favourite university tutors, Ruth and Lorna, and with Christina, who supervised my PhD. I suppose in a spiritual/intellectual sense, they are my real mothers.

If school had been just me and the teachers, it would have been fine. it was other children, with their noxious inverted snobbery, anti-intellectualism and vicious conformity who made it hell from aged 5-16.

I would tell myself (probably) to stick with Mediæval History for the PhD, and not go into Art History. I might have had a proper academic career then. However, I would also have missed out on a lot of other things that I love, and anything I had written then about His Loveliness would now be hopelessly outdated.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

University was a wonderful experience. I stuck it out in high school so I could go to university, and it was worth every minute of it.

I got along well with some of my teachers - possibly the majority - which basically means that they didn't see me as a discipline problem and didn't give me trouble. Other students usually saw me as a teacher's pet. A few teachers (very few, luckily) disliked me and showed it.