Education and Wunderkinds

[afroakuma]

The recent sight of this article about a young American prodigy brought me back to this topic.

How does this happen, this process that takes a child with talent and turns them into an academic juggernaut? Who, what, where and when are the leg-ups that it must take to rocket such a child from reading at age 1 to high-school calculus at age 7 to university graduate at age 14? How are they being raised, such that their development is streamlined into being little more than a brain with flesh baggage?

Though I hold high hopes for kids such as these, I also hold envy, and perhaps pity.

The story of my own educational journey is an epic tl;dr - so I'll summarize: I was born a reading prodigy at a time when it wouldn't land you on Oprah or Ellen or the like. Whatever other competencies I may have had, the basic realities of Western education made sure that I could never do what this child has.

How this girl managed to do what she did, I will never know, because the true human interest of the prodigy story, the part that tells of the wunderkind journey itself instead of a mere recitation of milestones, is not and will not be reported. What I do know is that conventional education systems are doing a disservice both to the best students, who must contend with busywork and a drag-me-down environment; and to the weaker students, who must deal with a barrage of scheduled tests and projects regardless of the actual state of their readiness, and similarly must fend off the "new-and-improved" ideas of student teachers, the calendared need to succeed and the fact that curriculum and special interests will force them, time and again, into subjects that they have neither talent nor interest in and away from fuller pursuit of their true interests and competencies.

What I do know is this: she could never have done what she did in this environment. Between busywork and projects, the curriculum of the standard Western education system simply cannot be passed through in such a short amount of time.

What are your thoughts on the state of, and flaws in, current educational methods where you live? For the sake of discussion, let's try to keep politics out of it.

[THAC0]

What are your thoughts on the state of, and flaws in, current educational methods where you live? For the sake of discussion, let's try to keep politics out of it.

Uhm.

As a teacher, I am not very impressed with the education system in the U.S.

I really can't say more without getting political, so I'll leave it at that.

[Coidzor]

Wunderkind are generally freaks of nature and due to their awkward socialization are less than trustworthy for positions of authority due to their worldviews and those around them.

Even a genius should be mature before being given responsibility or anything truly dangerous.

Now, if we figured out what it is that unlocks such intelligence, well, I'd be all for actually intentionally creating a large peer group of geniuses, but as it stands today with their numbers being what they are, wunderkinds are tragic figures which fill me with apprehension about their moral development.

I truly feel for the gross potential for the emotional health of such children to be damaged, potentially irreparably...

[pendell]

I was actually offered a scholarship to the University of Arizona when I was about 12. I didn't get it, becuase my parents felt I wasn't prepared for that socially or emotionally. I spent the next six years in gifted/talented classes in school gritting my teeth and counting the days.

What made me different from other kids was A) I was born on the right side of the IQ scale (135 -- not quite genius, but still pretty smart) and B) I read a lot. I went down to the local library and read, a lot, on anything and everything that caught my interest. Comic books led me to WWII comics led me to WWII history led me to general history led to me sleeping through history classes and still getting college credit in high school; I was simply that much further ahead than other kids, purely on my own initiative.

Later, I taught as a substitute teacher across all levels, included gifted & talented. They were a joy to teach. I would say the main difference between GT and normal classes was that, while the normal classes were full of people who were interested in socializing, the GT classes had kids who were *interested*. Not only were they paying attention, so far as I could tell they were actively pushing beyond what I was teaching them to learn on their own. Just like I did when I was their age.

So I would say the thing that makes a child prodigy are A) inherent capability (gotta be pretty smart to start) B) motivation to learn on his/her own C) opportunity to do so. There are probably kids in the ghetto who have A but need B and C.

B is especially a problem, because the peer group I ran with as a kid actively discouraged academic achievement as sucking up to the teacher. Peers want you to look and act like them, and since the kids I grew up with hated school you were expected to also. Failure to do this meant kids waiting for you after school.

I broke out of my peer group because I've always been socially outcast -- by the time I was eight or nine years old I couldn't care less what my peer group thought. I had accepted outcast status and all that entails. This freed me to reach the level of my competence without reference to what other kids thought of me. I wound up spending even more time in the library.

I gotta agree with the previous people, though, about GT people. As a rule, the very things that made us push beyond our peers made us ill-fitting social rejects. We make good technicians, good doctors, good researchers, but we don't make good politicians or good leaders -- unless it's NewTech where a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates can flourish. But the fact that we had to learn to stand out from the herd -- actively fight against it to achieve our status -- makes us an ill-fit in the herd. The herd looks to people just a little bit more capable than themselves for leadership. But folks like me are just so far off the scale the herd doesn't accept us. So different am I from my peers that for a long time it was hard to think of myself as really human.

Heh ... that was more true in high school. Now that I'm in a tech field where my brains and expertise are valued, I find that I'm more leader than outcast. Life is much better now than in high school when the football captains and the prom queens were on the top of the hill.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Myshlaevsky]

Stuff

That was a pretty interesting read. I can't really comment on the topic in question, because I'm Scottish and there seems to be a strong emphasis on the American education system.

I will say that every time I read about American schooling, even before high school, it always appears to be cliqued to the point of cliché. I never experienced any of these problems in my high school.

[Eldan]

I agree with Sharikov: I mean, I only know the american school system from TV, where it's obviously overdone and from a few comments by americans on fora such as these. But still... is there so much social pressure?
I know social pressure from school, of course, but after about 6th year, i.e. age 12, that pretty much stopped. People paid attention in class and it was much more about class spirit than beating up the smart kid. (Which was a very strong theme earlier in school. I was beaten up pretty much twice a day the first six years.)

[Cyrion]

I think that one of the major issues we have with education in the US is that school has largely become an episode of institutionalized babysitting. Even though we inflict more standardized tests and No Child Left Behind (one of the most disastrous educational policies around from an outcome perspective regardless of the political agenda), we really have very low expectations of our students in both behavior and achievement. This is a social issue that we won't be able to solve with legislating more tests and higher achievement. Oversimplified for clarity: We don't discipline our children at home, we can't discipline them at school, we won't fail them because it might bruise their precious little egos... and so they don't really get a lot of value from school; academic preparation is poor and socialization occurs at a pier level but not at a societal one.

/rant off

[Telonius]

Some of the flaws of the educational system are the very same flaws that mean you can never get a pair of shoes that fit you exactly. In any system where you have lots and lots of people, and you have a limited amount of funds to spend, you have to cater to the average in order to maximize your return. That means that whenever costs dry up, people on the high and low ends of the spectrum get hosed.

A true "Wunderkind" can be amazing, but also amazingly expensive to teach. Consider: there might only be three or four of this kind of student in a whole county. To set a curriculum for those three or four, you'd have to hire an entirely new staff member to teach it. Result: 4 students get a great quality education. But for the cost of that additional teacher, you could have added a standard class teacher. Result: smaller class sizes for the entire class, so maybe 50 students get a better education. If you're an administrator who's in trouble for students failing out of school, it's easy to see which choice you'd make in allocating funds.

(Students on the low end of the spectrum have this issue as well, but (iirc) the US has federal laws mandating Special Education for them.)

Even if you do manage to score enough funding to have a Gifted program, there's also the issue of identifying which students really qualify as "special." What if the test score cutoff is 95, and you get a kid who scores a 94? (Or had parents who didn't want him in the Gifted program)? He stays back in "regulars" with the rest of the "herd." That student will likely excel, but be bored out of his skull. On the other hand, he'll have to learn the social skills necessary to get along with the rest of his classmates. He'll also learn how to appear not to be bored out of his skull - a skill I can guarantee will be useful later in life when he has to attend mandatory company meetings.

Personally I think that many of the problems that "smart kids" face have as much to do with their own attitudes as with external factors. If you start thinking of yourself as better than the "herd," the "herd" will not respond well. You're not better than your classmates, you're smarter than your classmates. There's a big difference. Recognizing that difference is an important part of making sure people don't want to beat you up.

Case in point: In my job, I have recently dealt with two Nobel-winning scientists recently. (Names removed to protect Tel's career). One of them, I would love to deal with again. I would drop the other into a volcano without hesitation, regardless of the social benefits and scientific progress this person has caused.

[pendell]

I think that one of the major issues we have with education in the US is that school has largely become an episode of institutionalized babysitting. Even though we inflict more standardized tests and No Child Left Behind (one of the most disastrous educational policies around from an outcome perspective regardless of the political agenda), we really have very low expectations of our students in both behavior and achievement. This is a social issue that we won't be able to solve with legislating more tests and higher achievement. Oversimplified for clarity: We don't discipline our children at home, we can't discipline them at school, we won't fail them because it might bruise their precious little egos... and so they don't really get a lot of value from school; academic preparation is poor and socialization occurs at a pier level but not at a societal one.

/rant off

I don't think anyone in American schools is happy with the status quo.

If you're a bright kid, you're in schools that aren't really much help. You learn to do it on your own or you home school.

If you're on the other side of the curve -- goodness gracious! Some of the trouble people have getting into those programs and keeping them funded is astounding.

If you're a teacher, you hate the schools because your hands are tied five ways from Sunday by legal restrictions, red tape, and by the occasional smart aleck kid who plays the system because he knows he can.

If you're a parent, you hate the schools because they seem to be giving your kid a substandard education, or he's getting beat up, or ...

Bottom line: I don't know of anyone who's really happy in American schools, in any role. But changing it for the better isn't easy.

If you start thinking of yourself as better than the "herd," the "herd" will not respond well.

In my case, I thought of myself as an ordinary joe and couldn't understand why other people couldn't do the things I could do. I didn't put on airs or act arrogant or otherwise be a jerk. I still got picked on, beat up, and otherwise had my life made a living hell because I didn't fit in.

Recognizing that I *am* a touch more intelligent than average has made it easier to get along with the rest of humanity, not less.

It's very hard to distinguish 'more intelligent', 'more talented' and 'more skilled' from 'better'. The herd doesn't make that distinction. If you consistently turn in grades better than the other kids, it doesn't matter what your attitude is .. you're going to be a pariah.

The choices I found myself to be faced with was A) pretend to be dumber than I was in order to fit in or B) just ignore what my peer group thought and continue to do well at those things I could do well in.

I chose, for the most part, 'B'. Call me arrogant and proud if you choose. I still think it's a better choice than -- as Lewis once put it -- having the tall stalks of corn bite off their own heads in order to Be Like Stalks.

Case in point: In my job, I have recently dealt with two Nobel-winning scientists recently. (Names removed to protect Tel's career). One of them, I would love to deal with again. I would drop the other into a volcano without hesitation, regardless of the social benefits and scientific progress this person has caused.

Yeah. I agree with this completely. Just because you're smart doesn't give you the right to be pompous, overbearing, and treat other humans as scum. Learning to treat everyone with the dignity and honor and love humans deserve is a good lesson for everyone, intelligent or no.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Myshlaevsky]

If you consistently turn in grades better than the other kids, it doesn't matter what your attitude is .. you're going to be a pariah.

See, I never, ever experienced this. I was never a pariah because I excelled academically.

[pendell]

Fascinating.

I'm curious ... how did your school handle bullies?

In my school, the playground was run by a young man who had the misfortune of a truly awful home life -- he once showed me a gift he had from his father, a little silver belt buckle with the inscription "the world is made of sh*t" -- coupled with being bigger and stronger than everyone else.

Well, that's a problem.

The bigger problem is that the people whose job it is to prevent abuses did nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to stop him.

So I tried fighting back. And got my head handed to me repeatedly.

So I tried going to the teachers, and was branded a tattletale.

So I sucked it up, pretended to be his friend, and ran with his pack. And I handed over my best friend to be beat up by him and his gang.

And I survived.

My best friend -- Sean Pace -- did not. I found out that the day after he was beat up, he'd been run over by a car and died instantly.

And now that I'm grown ... I do my best to put those days and that way of life behind me.

My experience is not unique by any means.

I point you to
Please Stop Laughing At Me , by Jodee Blanco. She went to school in New York. I went to school in California. And yet our experiences, for all that, are nigh identical.

And no, neither of us were arrogant or thought ourselves better than other people. We were just trying to survive in a world gone mad -- gone mad, IMO, because those whose job it was to stop little petty kiddy tyrants did nothing.

Now that I'm an adult -- and I've worked the other side of the fence -- I suspect the teachers knew full well what was going on, but knew the kind of hassle involving lawyers and such it would take to actually do anything about it.
Here's an example of bureaucracy at work. And an illustrated PDF .

Solving any problem in the system can take years. Given the kid would be out of the school in three years anyway (this is a grade 1-3 primary school), better just to suck it up and let it go.

I'm curious as to what Telonius' experience is. Is your experience first-hand? Or merely deduced from observing smart people once they're fully grown?

Mine is first hand.

Here's a thing, as well: IMO arrogance and pride is a sickness that's on both sides. Yes, smart kids can get arrogant about the fact that they're smarter than average. And the flip side of that is that being smart -- even if you do nothing offensive -- can still spark feelings of envy and hatred in people who want to believe they're better than you, and can't stand the evidence that you might just have skills and abilities they don't have. You don't have to do a thing -- they'll still hate and resent you.

I know, because I've been on both sides. I'm only above average, but I've encountered real genius. I've felt envy and hatred to those who were smarter, and sneering contempt for those less intelligent. I'm working on both those issues, because at the end of the day we're all humans together.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Yora]

What are your thoughts on the state of, and flaws in, current educational methods where you live? For the sake of discussion, let's try to keep politics out of it.

In germany, it's impossible to seperate education from politics.

When germany was made a federal republic 60 years ago, someone thought it would be a good idea to have each of the (now 16) states handle education as they want it, without much meddling from the federal government.
Back in the 40's, that may not have been such a bad idea.
But today, it's completely normal for children to move to another state once or twice during their time in school. And from my friends at university, almost no one made his school graduation in the same state where our current university is located. And germany is now transfering to a university system of bachelor and master, and those of us who want to get a masters degree will most probably do so in a different state from that where he got his bachelor degree.
And still, every state is free to design their own educational system without regard to the system of any other state.

It's not as horrible as it might sound, but if someone graduades from school with the qualification to go to university, you really have no idea what they know. Because every state has different rules what you have to know to get
the degree. It's always the same degree, but it can mean greatly different things.
But apparently we're having a low intensity political crisis in germany, where almost everyone really hates the government, but all politicans seem to be afraid to lose even more votes if they propose a change, that might not get the peoples approval. And education is one of the more delicate issues. So education in germany is BIG politics!

[Trog]

I did find the story interesting. I hope that the girl featured in it can go on to do great things and not just stay in school for school's sake. Filling your brain with knowledge is useless if you do not put it to good use. That said, there is room enough within most colleges to put high intellect to work to better humanity. Hopefully she will be able to make such discoveries and contributions.

As to intelligence, there are many ways to measure a person's development in a mental sense - many different types of intelligence, that is. Dancers are said to have a greater sense of their own movements, New York cabbies have been shown to have (on average) a larger than average hippocampus - the portion of the brain which keeps track of spatial relationships or something like that (basically either as a result of their job or as a result of being exceptional in that arena in the first place they are able to better navigate/recall the streets of NY). And there is social intelligence as well - charisma, if you will. Granted, being famous can give one an artificial boost in this area from the standpoint of others... and I don't even know if there is a way to test that... though popularity (or a general overall opinion) amongst one's peers is a good gut read I suppose, though that's not a very scientific measurement.

Basically I look at intelligence like the point buy system in DnD. You have a "pool of points" you can "spend" to raise up certain levels of intelligence while others suffer. It's much more complicated than that, of course, as there is brain chemistry involved and the whole nature-vs-nurture debate. And I imagine some people will get more "points to spend" than others but again I couldn't say why this happens.

I think even if one possible root cause is found for the type(s) of intelligence(s) the girl in the article has it probably will never come down to just one root cause. My gut tells me that there are always multiple causes for everything because, frankly, the world usually isn't so simple that complex phenomenon develop from one root, but instead come from many.

As to the American school system and cliques, a portion of the perception of cliques dominating school life comes from fiction... which falls back on the simplistic (and oh so very teen) idea of cliques as static and popularity as defined by which clique you are in.

A portion of it also comes from the fact that people can only ever be friends with only so many people. If you want to label any particular friend group a clique I think you are taking a very narrow view of it as many people within certain "cliques" have friends outside of them. Expand this idea to every individual within a clique and you begin to see how it is partially dependent on the perception of the individual, particularly those outside of the group they see as a clique.

And part of it comes from the fact that sometimes groups of friends can be close knit and difficult to get into for whatever reason. Anyway, none of this has much to do with the actual education received at any given school. Unless the teachers are so base (and frankly stupid) as to base grades upon cliques. Which, again, I think is largely a teen-perpetuated myth. Most teachers don't have time or care enough about cliques or a given student's social life to base grades on them.

Social pressure happens a lot to all teens, regardless of the setting you put them in. It's a developmental phase of some sort. *shrug*

[Myshlaevsky]

Stuff.

Your story is pretty extreme by the standards of my school. I do recall a story about a girl in the local private school who had killed herself because of repeated bullying, but that was a degree of magnitude greater than anything that happened where I was.

Most of the people who would be classed as bullies at my school largely associated with themselves, I guess. There was continual teacher presence and we had one teacher in particular who was insanely agressive towards any perceived attempt to start trouble. Plus, everyone at my school had the option to leave at 15 or 16 and a lot of the substandard or antisocial students took it.

I did find that document link pretty shocking, but I'm not sure how exceptional it is. In the educational system I was raised in, the only real ways a teacher can get fired is through hitting a student, sleeping with a student or not registering a student properly. And hell, my art teacher had ran off with my history just after leaving school, and another of my teachers had left his wife for a senior student a few years back, and was still employed.

Maybe it's related to the size of the school concerned. How many students were at your schools? My year was roughly 150 pupils, and the school in total had perhaps 900 or 1000.

[afroakuma]

Some of the flaws of the educational system are the very same flaws that mean you can never get a pair of shoes that fit you exactly. In any system where you have lots and lots of people, and you have a limited amount of funds to spend, you have to cater to the average in order to maximize your return. That means that whenever costs dry up, people on the high and low ends of the spectrum get hosed.

These aren't the kinds of flaws I'm referring to, though. I mean the base, rote and limiting processes forced on students via Western education systems.

A few examples from the former excised essay:

Busy work. In first grade, we had pages and pages of "math" where the objective was to be given an arbitrarily large number (a few hundreds) and convert it into tally marks. Over and over and over again. The concept is a simple and useful one, but when you get the children to do pages and pages of these blank tree shapes, filling them with tally marks numbering in the 400 and 600s, you're not teaching - you're napping. These weren't teacher worksheets, either - these were pages in the mathbook.

Projects. These wunderkinds must not only skip whole grades, but they must be exempted from standard scholastic tasks. Project presentation eats into class time, often without giving anything of value to the class, and is often quite impractically time- or resource-intensive for the students considering its value as a learning tool. Further, some such tasks actually detract from the material at hand, giving marks for art and construction over relevant information. This is, of course, to allow those with alternate skills to apply them to their mark, but I don't understand why my science project should get the same mark as the jock's - yes, he built a more attractive model, but he also thought the scientific name of the arctic wolf was "Zool." Ten points if you figure out how he reached that conclusion. Say that they provide valuable collaboration skills - not the case. Group work lets the weak sponge from the strong, and group "conferences" devolve into social chatting almost instantaneously. Say that they provide valuable self-instruction or study - but they don't, since students need to choose their own topic, so nobody comes out with the same info. They are, in a sense, large-scale busywork, with an added sense of legitimacy.

[Myshlaevsky]

These aren't the kinds of flaws I'm referring to, though. I mean the base, rote and limiting processes forced on students via Western education systems.

A few examples from the former excised essay:

Busy work. In first grade, we had pages and pages of "math" where the objective was to be given an arbitrarily large number (a few hundreds) and convert it into tally marks. Over and over and over again. The concept is a simple and useful one, but when you get the children to do pages and pages of these blank tree shapes, filling them with tally marks numbering in the 400 and 600s, you're not teaching - you're napping. These weren't teacher worksheets, either - these were pages in the mathbook.

This is crazy and ridiculous. I've never had to do a task this repetitive in school.

Projects. These wunderkinds must not only skip whole grades, but they must be exempted from standard scholastic tasks. Project presentation eats into class time, often without giving anything of value to the class, and is often quite impractically time- or resource-intensive for the students considering its value as a learning tool. Further, some such tasks actually detract from the material at hand, giving marks for art and construction over relevant information. This is, of course, to allow those with alternate skills to apply them to their mark, but I don't understand why my science project should get the same mark as the jock's - yes, he built a more attractive model, but he also thought the scientific name of the arctic wolf was "Zool." Ten points if you figure out how he reached that conclusion. Say that they provide valuable collaboration skills - not the case. Group work lets the weak sponge from the strong, and group "conferences" devolve into social chatting almost instantaneously. Say that they provide valuable self-instruction or study - but they don't, since students need to choose their own topic, so nobody comes out with the same info. They are, in a sense, large-scale busywork, with an added sense of legitimacy.

I always found projects kind of a drag, too, but all our senior projects are entirely solo so significant time was never taken up on group stuff. We generally only got things like this when we were ahead of the course curriculum anyway. I won't concede that it is simply "not the case" that they do not instruct collaboration skills, either.

Again, there seems to be a real meanness about the American educational system in the way it is often described to me.

[Telonius]

Ten points if you figure out how he reached that conclusion.

Oooh, I know the answer to that one. Zool. is short for Zoology, which was the word that was next to the picture of "arctic wolf" he found when he was looking for it.

Projects and group presentations do have a purpose, in that many corporate decisions are made on the basis of such presentations. Presentation work is a practical skill. If you do it well, you get noticed and get promoted. If your manager doesn't know that Zool isn't the scientific name of the arctic wolf, they might not look it up to check. A good manager - or a good team member - will be able to check up on things like that, but it's not required for individual success. (Overall organizational success is another story). Depressing, but pretty true.

[Om]

I have to concur with Sharikov in expressing mild bafflement as to the US education system and some of the stories/students that emerge from it. My own school (in Ireland) certainly had its various groups/cliques but absolutely nothing comparable to those that apparently blight schools in the US. The most popular kids were usually those who academically excelled but by virtue of their social skills rather than intelligence or sporting prowess

Similarly such vulgar rote learning exercises as you describe is totally alien to my own school experiences

Projects. These wunderkinds must not only skip whole grades, but they must be exempted from standard scholastic tasks. Project presentation eats into class time, often without giving anything of value to the class, and is often quite impractically time- or resource-intensive for the students considering its value as a learning tool

Funnily enough I did absolutely no presentation during my school years, only to be subjected to several such classes/modules in college. The ability to not only process information but also present it in a coherent and, yes, attractive manner is priceless

[Moff Chumley]

I am in the unfortunate position of getting less-than-remarkable grades (GPA of 3.0) while still being a complete nerd. I guess because music and playing music is so much more important to me. I get **** for it, sure, but I've never been beat up or anything.

[Toastkart]

In addition to points mentioned already, I think overcrowding is also a significant issue. I graduated 8th out of 536, with a total school population of 2300+. There just were not enough teachers compared to the number of students.

I also think part of the problem is in the lecture style format. It's a very passive style that for the most part doesn't encourage personal participation, active engagement, or initiative.

While I was an undergrad, I worked with one of my professors on a low-level research project on Problem Based Learning. Having experienced a partial PBL style class (one day was lecture, one day was PBL), the difference was incredible.

Problem-Based learning encourages active participation, learning how to learn, and group collaboration. Instead of being in a random group and trying to figure out how to make a project work the week before it's due, you're working together in a small group from the start of the semester until the end of it. There's a lot of research involved, which means you're learning how to find credible sources of information rather than throwing together a few internet links from the first google search page.

Group work lets the weak sponge from the strong, and group "conferences" devolve into social chatting almost instantaneously. Say that they provide valuable self-instruction or study - but they don't, since students need to choose their own topic, so nobody comes out with the same info. They are, in a sense, large-scale busywork, with an added sense of legitimacy.

The term you're looking for is social loafing

[Quincunx]

If nothing else, group-work assignments provided an excellent way to filter out which teachers could be safely ignored. Much like those worksheets, it was the opportunity to practice in classroom time the skill which was not taught in classroom time. (When I did cross paths with a teacher who first taught the skill and then devoted the rest of the class time to practicing it, as well as lending an eye to the work to be sure each student had grasped the basics, the difference was astounding. The identical format of worksheets wasn't "busy work" any more.)

[Tequila Sunrise]

What are your thoughts on the state of, and flaws in, current educational methods where you live? For the sake of discussion, let's try to keep politics out of it.

I went to grade school in a small rural New York school and I recently spent three months teaching English in a small Korean private school. In both cases I noticed a pervasive and consistent problem: there are quite a few kids who simply have no interest in learning, and they distract both the teachers and the kids who do want to learn. Usually these kids are of the middle school variety, when hormones and self-differentiation are really kicking in.

In high school I wrote a paper for my government class that basically boiled down to "When a normal kid creates discipline issues in school, we should send them to work at McDonald's for a month and then let them come back to school. By then they're likely to have the motivation to shut the frak up and learn." Of course middle schoolers are too young to legally work, but getting the bad kids out of the classroom and then motivated to come back and buckle down would do wonders for our educational standards.

[afroakuma]

This is crazy and ridiculous. I've never had to do a task this repetitive in school.

Alright then. How about having to complete word searches? Draw line graphs? Redundant math exercises, chemical structures, or in-class textbook reading?

Virtually every educational tool has a purpose in small doses, but it's all too easy to see when and where enough is enough, and it comes at students in oversupply, reducing instruction time by occupying it with rote, repetition and process. By high school the teacher's method of assessing whether or not you have read the material should be an assessment of your comprehension, not a guarantee by having you in the classroom under his or her nose with the book open. Not only is it handholding in a particularly crass and juvenile fashion, but it's also an unproductive waste of students' and educators' time.

I always found projects kind of a drag, too, but all our senior projects are entirely solo so significant time was never taken up on group stuff. We generally only got things like this when we were ahead of the course curriculum anyway. I won't concede that it is simply "not the case" that they do not instruct collaboration skills, either.

You were lucky, then. In every collaboration I was part of, some, if not most, of the group members, would use allotted time to chat, and only at the end would tasks be delegated.

Oooh, I know the answer to that one. Zool. is short for Zoology, which was the word that was next to the picture of "arctic wolf" he found when he was looking for it.

Yep. Didn't care, didn't try to care. Same mark as me, because artwork is apparently as valuable to the scientific process as presentation and fact.

Projects and group presentations do have a purpose, in that many corporate decisions are made on the basis of such presentations. Presentation work is a practical skill.

I agree wholeheartedly - provided that they are used in such a fashion. In most of my experiences, especially with group work, one of two things happened: either the teachers paid lip service to the idea of building presentation skills by enforcing an "everyone has to speak at least once" rule without regard to eye contact, tone of voice, audience interaction etc.; or this was ignored entirely and one person was made spokesmonkey. Individual or pair presentations are often better, but still chew up class time in a ludicrous fashion for what may well be negligible gain.

In the science project I discussed above, each presentation went over the habitat, diet (and by diet, I mean herbivore, carnivore or omnivore) of the animal in question, and scientific name, as well as a bit of trivia. The biggest chunk of presentation time was spent explaining the construction of the model; relevant, perhaps, to an architecture or art class; completely irrelevant to any sort of scientific education, and a major waste of time when multiplied by 27 students.

[THAC0]

I'll admit it, sometimes I give my students "busywork." However, if I do, it's done for a reason that might not be immediately clear to my students.

Even word searches serve to familiarize students with terms, and in a classroom setting you are going to have a wide range of not only ability and skill but background knowledge.

Additionally, if my class of 25 or, less pleasantly, 35, is doing these worksheets or whatever, I have time to do individual assessments or work with students that need extra help, or with students doing more advanced work.

[Jalor]

I've also been crapped on by America's school system. Here's my story, 100% true and free of BS.
---
I was reading at 14 months, and writing about a year after. By the time I went to preschool I was reading books; most American children can't even spell their own name when they start preschool. Preschoolers in America are 4 years old.

I don't actually remember my first day of preschool, but my parents remember quite vividly that I dragged myself into the car afterward, readied an early prototype of my cynical manner, and said "We learned blue today, Dad". They taught us colors, or to be more accurate, color. The teachers gave me strange looks the next day when I walked in with several books, sat down to read, and stopped only to go to the bathroom. One teacher, clearly looking forward to embarrassing this rude little pest, asked me some complex question regarding whatever stupid bull**** we did that day. I got it right, and she called my parents and suggested they get my IQ tested.

Back than I was not a well-adjusted kid. Not that I'm well-adjusted now, but back then I resorted to screaming and violence instead of sarcasm. Somehow, the examiner managed to nail a Berserk Button of mine and I stormed out of the room with the test half-finished. He later informed my mother, and I didn't find out about this until last year, that he scored what I did finish. Assuming every unfinished question was wrong, I had an IQ of 175. I took a second test, and kept my cool long enough to finish. Not one question was wrong. All I know is that my IQ is around or above 190. To be "gifted", you need 145 0r 150.

Fast-forward to second grade. I sit in class for six hours, doing stupid **** like word searches and the like. I am now reading chapter books. I can polish off any given assignment in the first few minutes and then just sit down and read. I have yet to learn anything I didn't already know from Schoolhouse Rock! or The Magic School Bus. I am already playing complex PC games like Total Annihilation (a game difficult enough to deter many adult gamers).

Fast-forward to fifth grade. Still learning nothing. I had a private tutor for a while, but she moved away. My parents are lobbying for me to skip a grade and go into 7th grade next year. The school has not skipped a student ahead a grade in 35 years. They insist that my current workload is fine; after all, I receive an extra packet of questions and worksheets each week. Needless to say, I don't make history.

Now I'm a sophomore. Being in a prestigious magnet program in high school means, apparently, spending 50% of my science classes coloring pictures and doing word searches. Neither my social studies nor english teachers can explain an assignment coherently, let alone teach well. I am lazy, cynical, spiteful, unmotivated, and crude. My IQ seems to have translated so excellent logical thinking and a brilliant grasp of game theory, neither of which can help me pass math tests I never studied for or social studies tests on material we never learned.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
---
My elementary school was part of a minor controversy a few years later, because of their treatment of an autistic child. None of their semi-trained quasi-professionals knew what to do about him, so they locked him in a dark, empty classroom far from any in use and let him out for lunch and dismissal. For all their trouble, they got a slap on the wrist and several nasty letters. Nobody lost their job over it. It sounds like dystopian fiction, but it's true.

So, um, yeah. Unfortunately, most of the descriptions of American schooling in this thread are right on the money.

[Flame of Anor]

I am exceptionally intelligent (though not in a freakish way like the article's subject); however, I have not been ready in other ways to go to college until about now, when I am approximately the usual age. A good friend of mine--some of you may have heard of him, David Dalrymple--is also exceptionally intelligent, and has already graduated from MIT though a year younger than I am. It really all depends on the person.

[Myshlaevsky]

Alright then. How about having to complete word searches?

Never bothered.

Draw line graphs?

Yeah, okay, this one was kind of annoying. Still, there were always people in the class who got them wrong and it featured in pretty much every assessment at some point. I guess I could see a point to this one even though it was dull.

Redundant math exercises

Pretty annoying, but there was no 'cap' on progress in our maths class, so once you were fine with one process you'd just skip ahead to the next.

chemical structures

I don't know how often you had to do this but it wasn't a major feature for us. You'd do it when you filled in your experimental notes but not many other times.

or in-class textbook reading?

I wasn't too bothered by this, because you'd just end up reading ahead or picking up another textbook to read. It wasn't great, but it was better than having nothing to do.

Virtually every educational tool has a purpose in small doses, but it's all too easy to see when and where enough is enough, and it comes at students in oversupply, reducing instruction time by occupying it with rote, repetition and process. By high school the teacher's method of assessing whether or not you have read the material should be an assessment of your comprehension, not a guarantee by having you in the classroom under his or her nose with the book open. Not only is it handholding in a particularly crass and juvenile fashion, but it's also an unproductive waste of students' and educators' time.

Eh, school presence is mandatory. Now that I'm thinking of it, it was pretty rare for us to have a class where we weren't required to do some kind of test at the end of it.

You were lucky, then. In every collaboration I was part of, some, if not most, of the group members, would use allotted time to chat, and only at the end would tasks be delegated.

Well, yeah. This happened in my groups too. However, these projects were rarely major events or curriculum required so it didn't really matter how much work went into them. We'd usually by ahead of the curriculum timetable when we got assigned something like this. You could say the teacher should have gone on to teach something beyond the level of the course but I suspect you'd be very hard pressed to get that done. In the senior (read: real) projects this wasn't an issue, because you spent most of your time in the labs alone. At this stage we're talking about a class of 4 or 5 people, too, all of whom generally have a decent interest in whatever is being taught.

I realise I'm not exactly disproving your points here, I'm just saying that I don't consider it that massive a problem. I can see why these things existed, I can understand the perspective of the course designers and teachers and I can see why it's hard to change such a system.

I personally would be in favour of streamlining my own educational system by a year or two, but less sure about increasing the existing fast track systems for prodigious students. Even though there were often times in my school life when I had already met the required standards or otherwise had very little to do, I never really felt bothered by it. On the contrary, you seem to have felt very limited and frustrated.

[PersonMan]

I've...sort of had some of the busywork problems mentioned, a large portion of it being ITSEP(Indiana statewide tests at the beginning, middle and end of each school year-starting this year only at the beginning and end, woohoo!) preparation. The problem was getting math packets multiple pages long(this was in 1st-2nd grade, by the way)to prepare for a test...Which I finished in half the time. I usually ended by sitting around with nothing to do, since they didn't allow us to read once we were finished.

Once I went into the "X classes"(Apparently the more politically correct name of G&T), however, a lot of this changed. There wasn't as much busywork, with the exception of my 7th grade math teacher. He teached via lecture-and being especially good at math and a very quick learner, I discovered the book's three-sentence explanations much...easier to digest. So I would read the math book's explanation, do the homework(every day, 10+ problems usually, all in the book, only five of them being graded at all ) in class and then doodle/draw/read/whatever. It was actually one of my favorite classes, all because of the teacher's inefficient methods of teaching.

The rest of the classes, however, managed to avoid this. I found out how different the X and non-X classes were by being in a normal class for a year. Basically the same, except for the sheer lack of will. If the people had stopped all their messing around and focused, they wouldn't have been all that far behind the X classes...Which, I've found, aren't challenging but...Well, I don't like to be constantly challenged at things, and it's still pretty nice...

[afroakuma]

I'll admit it, sometimes I give my students "busywork." However, if I do, it's done for a reason that might not be immediately clear to my students.

But is it "busywork" or actual busywork? Is it process learning or is it mere rote? Does it have real teaching applications or are you using it to shut them up?

Even word searches serve to familiarize students with terms, and in a classroom setting you are going to have a wide range of not only ability and skill but background knowledge.

Crossword I might agree with you. Staring at a page of random letters, not so much. I see the educational application of the former.

Additionally, if my class of 25 or, less pleasantly, 35, is doing these worksheets or whatever, I have time to do individual assessments or work with students that need extra help

And from what i know of you, I trust that you do. But take the tally marks example above. There's no excuse to assign so pointless, redundant and unhelpful an exercise to students in any event. If one or two students are struggling bad enough to hold back a class of 25, then the system needs to do better by those one or two individually, instead of merely slowing down the class.

I can appreciate the difficulties of proper teaching; my father is a former high school teacher and my mother teaches in elementary. However, in my day, each school year had a fixed amount of time, and wasting it might mean a few students needing to fall back a year. Nowadays, where that is unheard of, the future advances like a juggernaut. Any waste of in-class time is a waste of in-class time. A waste of instructional time and resources. The value of a teacher is in their humanity, their adaptability to the capabilities and needs of their students as pertains to the curriculum and to social and educational development.

Yeah, okay, this one was kind of annoying. Still, there were always people in the class who got them wrong and it featured in pretty much every assessment at some point. I guess I could see a point to this one even though it was dull.

My point, though, is that once you've mastered the process of the line graph (which is not that complicated) you don't need to do ten or twenty more to prove it. This is when you advance into problems, and then combinations of the concept with earlier concepts.

If there are students struggling with this material (and I know there are; I had to tutor one) then the answer, as I have observed from a first-person perspective, is not rote busywork. If you ask a student to do the same essential problem twenty times and she is capable, then you're making her do busywork. If you ask a student to do the same essential problem twenty times and he is incapable, then he'll merely prove that fact twenty times over. This is dangerously close to Einstein's definition of insanity. A different approach is needed for these students, and giving them rote homework that will impact their mark is knowingly condemning them.

Does the school system provide different levels for different capabilities? In some cases, eventually - but they're here now, and while they are it is necessary to do the best by them.

Pretty annoying, but there was no 'cap' on progress in our maths class, so once you were fine with one process you'd just skip ahead to the next.

Alright; so what happens when you're done? What do you do then? Do you have to stay in class? Pay attention to lectures? It's just as frustrating. Is everything in the textbook? Is there something the teacher needs to explain?

It might work for a few or even several students, but there will come a very definite point where you will hit a wall. At best, you can use the time to catch up in other classes.

I don't know how often you had to do this but it wasn't a major feature for us. You'd do it when you filled in your experimental notes but not many other times.

When we hit the relevant units, we would do pages and pages of them.

I wasn't too bothered by this, because you'd just end up reading ahead or picking up another textbook to read. It wasn't great, but it was better than having nothing to do.

Yes, but what a waste of in-class time! The book is always there. The educator, not so much.

Well, yeah. This happened in my groups too. However, these projects were rarely major events or curriculum required so it didn't really matter how much work went into them. We'd usually by ahead of the curriculum timetable when we got assigned something like this. You could say the teacher should have gone on to teach something beyond the level of the course but I suspect you'd be very hard pressed to get that done. In the senior (read: real) projects this wasn't an issue, because you spent most of your time in the labs alone. At this stage we're talking about a class of 4 or 5 people, too, all of whom generally have a decent interest in whatever is being taught.

See, now I'm starting to wonder what kind of setup you were in. The smallest class I was in at public school was Honors Physics, grade 12. Twelve students, due to the legendary loads of busywork, general difficulty and corresponding lack of interest. All other Honors classes had at least twenty students. You'll forgive me for saying so, but I'm thinking your experience might be relatively above par.

[Myshlaevsky]

Stuff.

Well, I'll bow to your greater experience in regards to problems such as the line graph. The teacher would always attend to the underachievers in this regard and I guess I'm still naive enough to assume the presence of a teacher is doing something.

I also think you could well be right about my experience being above par. I've said twice now how harsh the complaints about the American system seem to me and this is probably the explanation.

You'd usually get to leave early or catch up on other work if you got particularly far in my maths class. When you talk about a waste of in-class time, I'm not really sure what to say. I could have covered our yearly courses in a couple of months (less, maybe - I probably did not do even that), so it's hard to differentiate between dull-but-associated and just dull. My academic record at school was very high, but my output of work was very low because I would only bother doing out-of-class work if it meant failure if I did not. The grade you earn here is entirely dependant on your final exam so as long as you complete the compulsory units there is no downside to this course of action. I can imagine it being annoying for a teacher, but I got on with most of mine's pretty well so it didn't seem like they were too bothered.