velvetpage (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
velvetpage) wrote2008-12-07 07:06 am
velvetpage) wrote2008-12-07 07:06 am
Entry tags:
A quote and a reply
This is from Piet's journal, still screened over there because he's getting a better night's sleep than I am, on the education thread from a few days ago. I don't think ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
professormass will mind me reposting his comment, and I'm pretty sure oakthorne won't mind being referenced in it, either. I'm leaving it unlocked because those gentlemen aren't on my friends list and have a right to see this. And I'm posting it here because, until Piet unscreens the comment, I can't answer it over there. :)
First,professormass's comment:
Something occurs to me (and I apologize for butting into the conversation -- as you know, velvetpage, I'm keenly interested in education):
The sweeping generalizations and the arguments against making those generalizations are missing a key point — the education system must address generalization, because it's trying to work for the mythical "average student," casting a net that catches as many kids as it reasonably can. The exceptions will always and must always be the issue. No bureaucratic system can account for the wide variety of learning styles present in the complexity of human nature.
People oakthorne and myself are exceptions. So, yes, much of pyat and velvetpage's arguments hold water, with the percentage of the population who aren't exceptions.
I think that the biggest point of difference I'd have with them is what percentage of the population represents exceptions to things like "
A middle-class person who doesn't get that education might be able to keep their middle-class status with a job that doesn't require it", where "requiring it" is a highly subjective thing, in most cases. My field, for example, routinely requires anywhere for 6-12 years of degrees, diplomas and certifications; I have none, and still operate at an executive level.
A friend of mine, a schoolteacher, told me that he thought the percentage of exception was something like 1%. I think it's more like 25%.
Modern school systems have almost always served the needs of the majority. When pyat says "it's getting better," I read, "it's serving a broader swath of the majority."
There will always be exceptions to the rule. After having done much research, I'd tend to say that public education has succeeded in catching a slightly broader swath than when I was trapped in the system. I don't think it will ever catch all the exceptions.
So, really, the question is: what to do with the exceptions? What safety net can be cast for people like oakthorne and myself? Can one be cast?
Now my reply:
Arguably, Piet and I are exceptions, too. As I believe Piet stated somewhere else, he was identified “gifted” but nearly flunked out several times, getting by with barely-passing grades. I was at the opposite end – I excelled with so little effort that I spent much of my class time in elementary schools with a novel open under my desk, because I was bored silly. And yet we managed to make system work for us, in our own ways.
That said, you’re right – the education system works best for the people who test out as average and slightly above-average in intelligence. It generally works all right for those slightly below-average, because they’re able to access extra help that is sent their way, and it often works just fine for those at the top of the intelligence scale because they learn to play the system. But for all the special placements, resource help, gifted classes, and what have you, that the school boards put in place to cast that wider net, there will always be those who don’t quite fit it. Most of those will benefit by taking everything they can out of the education system and then going their own way. But the fact that it doesn’t work for them doesn’t diminish the value of education overall; it only speaks to the need to address individual needs as broadly as possible, or as you say, to cast a broader net.
In terms of the number of kids with a diagnosed exceptionality (at the top or bottom – this number includes gifted) you and your friend are both wrong: it’s between ten and fifteen percent, statistically. But the school board makes concerted attempts to catch most of those within their net.
I believe my school, and for that matter a fairly large chunk of the schools in Ontario (not all, yet, but we’re moving that way) are doing a better job of this than ever before. I now routinely teach to four or five different levels in my classroom at a time. I have smart kids who are feeling challenged and rewarded, and I have low-average and below-average kids who are learning as fast as their brains will let them, and the kids in the middle aren’t being forgotten, either. I have a learning-disabled gifted kid (neither of those are official diagnoses, the first because his parents don’t want him labeled and the second because the LD got in the way of the intelligence testing when we did it) who is enjoying school for the first time in his life. I’m teaching him to game the system – how to get what he needs from it as he goes on to grade six, what it’s important to do, what can be ignored – because there’s no reason this kid can’t succeed at the highest levels and get the kind of career you only get through education. (He wants to be a lawyer.)
Part of the reason he’s going to make it is that nobody’s telling him that school isn’t important, or that many people can succeed without it, or that the system is out for its own benefit. Those things are true some of the time, but they’re not helpful overall. They’re excuses for people who did not succeed within the education system. Some of the time, those who didn’t succeed within the system manage to succeed outside of it, as you and oakthorne have done. More often, that is not the case.
And here we get to the crux of the matter. I’m quite willing to admit that school doesn’t work for everyone, and that some people succeed just fine without it. What I’m NOT willing to admit, and indeed will argue against with all the force at my command:
1) that this is the rule for most, even for most of those we would classify as exceptions;
2) that the existence of holes in the net in any way diminishes the value of the educational system;
3) that teaching the conclusion we’ve been arguing against (that advancing your education through traditional channels is a worthless endeavour) is going to help the people who take the lesson to heart;
4) that in fact, people who hear that lesson and learn it well stand an equal chance of succeeding at their various endeavours in life, as measured by the level of control they have or can access over their own workplace and community, as those who remain within the educational system.
Please note that I think it’s possible to enter the education system at differing points and still succeed within it. A child who is homeschooled until high school often ends up doing better when they finally do access formal education, in large part (I believe) because their parents took a very active interest in their education and made sure that they understood the value of an education – traditional or otherwise. But sooner or later, most people who succeed at the highest level they’re capable of, do it by making use of some facet of the education system.
So, to answer your question: I think the net that is catching more and more kids still has something of value to offer to the exceptions, especially the exceptions at the top of the spectrum. The clearest evidence of this is the fact that three exceptions have now come forward in this journal or another, to argue their case. They've done it with varying degrees of rhetoric, but they've all done it with a good grasp of written English. Put simply, they're attacking the educational system with tools that they accessed through an educational system. It didn't fail them as far as they say it did. (Yes, I include you,professormass, in that assessment.) The higher up one goes in education, the smaller the net the system is attempting to cast, for exactly the reasons you've stated - not everyone needs it. For an adult, the choice to work within the system or circumvent it (or simply ignore its impact) is a choice. There should be (and are) mechanisms in place to help those who wish to access that system but are having difficulty doing so. But the onus is on the student to take what they need from the system - not on the system to offer whatever the student needs. The focus shifts further and further away from the responsibility of the system and more and more towards the responsibility of the student. The student who either fails at that responsibility, or decides not to take it on, needs to take a hard look at where the problem was. Many of them cut their own hole in the net.
professormass will mind me reposting his comment, and I'm pretty sure oakthorne won't mind being referenced in it, either. I'm leaving it unlocked because those gentlemen aren't on my friends list and have a right to see this. And I'm posting it here because, until Piet unscreens the comment, I can't answer it over there. :)First,
professormass's comment:Something occurs to me (and I apologize for butting into the conversation -- as you know, velvetpage, I'm keenly interested in education):
The sweeping generalizations and the arguments against making those generalizations are missing a key point — the education system must address generalization, because it's trying to work for the mythical "average student," casting a net that catches as many kids as it reasonably can. The exceptions will always and must always be the issue. No bureaucratic system can account for the wide variety of learning styles present in the complexity of human nature.
People oakthorne and myself are exceptions. So, yes, much of pyat and velvetpage's arguments hold water, with the percentage of the population who aren't exceptions.
I think that the biggest point of difference I'd have with them is what percentage of the population represents exceptions to things like "
A middle-class person who doesn't get that education might be able to keep their middle-class status with a job that doesn't require it", where "requiring it" is a highly subjective thing, in most cases. My field, for example, routinely requires anywhere for 6-12 years of degrees, diplomas and certifications; I have none, and still operate at an executive level.
A friend of mine, a schoolteacher, told me that he thought the percentage of exception was something like 1%. I think it's more like 25%.
Modern school systems have almost always served the needs of the majority. When pyat says "it's getting better," I read, "it's serving a broader swath of the majority."
There will always be exceptions to the rule. After having done much research, I'd tend to say that public education has succeeded in catching a slightly broader swath than when I was trapped in the system. I don't think it will ever catch all the exceptions.
So, really, the question is: what to do with the exceptions? What safety net can be cast for people like oakthorne and myself? Can one be cast?
Now my reply:
Arguably, Piet and I are exceptions, too. As I believe Piet stated somewhere else, he was identified “gifted” but nearly flunked out several times, getting by with barely-passing grades. I was at the opposite end – I excelled with so little effort that I spent much of my class time in elementary schools with a novel open under my desk, because I was bored silly. And yet we managed to make system work for us, in our own ways.
That said, you’re right – the education system works best for the people who test out as average and slightly above-average in intelligence. It generally works all right for those slightly below-average, because they’re able to access extra help that is sent their way, and it often works just fine for those at the top of the intelligence scale because they learn to play the system. But for all the special placements, resource help, gifted classes, and what have you, that the school boards put in place to cast that wider net, there will always be those who don’t quite fit it. Most of those will benefit by taking everything they can out of the education system and then going their own way. But the fact that it doesn’t work for them doesn’t diminish the value of education overall; it only speaks to the need to address individual needs as broadly as possible, or as you say, to cast a broader net.
In terms of the number of kids with a diagnosed exceptionality (at the top or bottom – this number includes gifted) you and your friend are both wrong: it’s between ten and fifteen percent, statistically. But the school board makes concerted attempts to catch most of those within their net.
I believe my school, and for that matter a fairly large chunk of the schools in Ontario (not all, yet, but we’re moving that way) are doing a better job of this than ever before. I now routinely teach to four or five different levels in my classroom at a time. I have smart kids who are feeling challenged and rewarded, and I have low-average and below-average kids who are learning as fast as their brains will let them, and the kids in the middle aren’t being forgotten, either. I have a learning-disabled gifted kid (neither of those are official diagnoses, the first because his parents don’t want him labeled and the second because the LD got in the way of the intelligence testing when we did it) who is enjoying school for the first time in his life. I’m teaching him to game the system – how to get what he needs from it as he goes on to grade six, what it’s important to do, what can be ignored – because there’s no reason this kid can’t succeed at the highest levels and get the kind of career you only get through education. (He wants to be a lawyer.)
Part of the reason he’s going to make it is that nobody’s telling him that school isn’t important, or that many people can succeed without it, or that the system is out for its own benefit. Those things are true some of the time, but they’re not helpful overall. They’re excuses for people who did not succeed within the education system. Some of the time, those who didn’t succeed within the system manage to succeed outside of it, as you and oakthorne have done. More often, that is not the case.
And here we get to the crux of the matter. I’m quite willing to admit that school doesn’t work for everyone, and that some people succeed just fine without it. What I’m NOT willing to admit, and indeed will argue against with all the force at my command:
1) that this is the rule for most, even for most of those we would classify as exceptions;
2) that the existence of holes in the net in any way diminishes the value of the educational system;
3) that teaching the conclusion we’ve been arguing against (that advancing your education through traditional channels is a worthless endeavour) is going to help the people who take the lesson to heart;
4) that in fact, people who hear that lesson and learn it well stand an equal chance of succeeding at their various endeavours in life, as measured by the level of control they have or can access over their own workplace and community, as those who remain within the educational system.
Please note that I think it’s possible to enter the education system at differing points and still succeed within it. A child who is homeschooled until high school often ends up doing better when they finally do access formal education, in large part (I believe) because their parents took a very active interest in their education and made sure that they understood the value of an education – traditional or otherwise. But sooner or later, most people who succeed at the highest level they’re capable of, do it by making use of some facet of the education system.
So, to answer your question: I think the net that is catching more and more kids still has something of value to offer to the exceptions, especially the exceptions at the top of the spectrum. The clearest evidence of this is the fact that three exceptions have now come forward in this journal or another, to argue their case. They've done it with varying degrees of rhetoric, but they've all done it with a good grasp of written English. Put simply, they're attacking the educational system with tools that they accessed through an educational system. It didn't fail them as far as they say it did. (Yes, I include you,
professormass, in that assessment.) The higher up one goes in education, the smaller the net the system is attempting to cast, for exactly the reasons you've stated - not everyone needs it. For an adult, the choice to work within the system or circumvent it (or simply ignore its impact) is a choice. There should be (and are) mechanisms in place to help those who wish to access that system but are having difficulty doing so. But the onus is on the student to take what they need from the system - not on the system to offer whatever the student needs. The focus shifts further and further away from the responsibility of the system and more and more towards the responsibility of the student. The student who either fails at that responsibility, or decides not to take it on, needs to take a hard look at where the problem was. Many of them cut their own hole in the net.
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The only exception to that is that people at the very top end of the intellectual spectrum often do most of their intellectual learning outside school because they're so far ahead of the level at which the school system teaches. I could produce English prose that could have been readily confused with an adult's by the time I turned nine. I did not learn that in school, even though I was in gifted classes. (They were often too easy.) I learned it by reading; by having intelligent, articulate parents who had intelligent, articulate conversations with me; and by using my precocious natural aptitude to apply the knowledge gained by reading and listening. Many gifted kids, particularly ones whose parents give them ample resources, self-educate. So the exceptions you describe did not necessarily learn to write through the educational system.
Ultimately, I don't think the education system served me well. I had some teachers who nurtured my giftedness, but success in educating me would have required identifying and treating my disabilities as well. Hence my currently being a eighth-year undergraduate with a C average.
Other point. From what Piet's said about himself, and from his having underachieved so much while being identified gifted, he probably should've gotten an ADHD assessment. (And the stuff you and Piet said about Elizabeth being daydreamy and Claire being hyper, combined with ADHD's tendency to run in families, makes me wonder a bit about your kids on that front, though Claire's not in school yet and Elizabeth's too young and bright for people to care about her daydreaming.) I'm very very big on people being assessed for stuff when they're underachieving or otherwise having problems and it's not clear why, as you can probably imagine from my experiences.
Such assessment seems to happen more than it used to, but still not nearly enough nor in a timely enough manner. From what I've been told, kids don't necessarily get referred for assessment if they're underachieving but not actually well below grade level, there's often an unconscionably long wait for assessment (two years, which I've often heard of, is enough to cause permanent psychological damage), and kids' even GETTING an assessment is almost completely at the mercy of their parents. (I believe there are circumstances in which teachers/Children's Aid can force it, but I'm not sure that's frequently done, and it should be.)
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I guess...it's just that I was a high achiever through high school, you know? I graduated with a 94% average in my top six (out of ten or eleven) OACs. But I always felt that I wasn't achieving as highly as my intelligence should have enabled me to. I mysteriously had trouble handing in assignments. I was the queen of procrastination. I had trouble getting good at musical instruments because I couldn't get myself to practice. I was late for everything. My mom was always bugging me about cleaning things up, taking too long for things, making people late, etc. But I'm not sure OTHER people would have thought I was underachieving significantly--except for one teacher who clued in about what might be wrong with me in late high school, but kept it to herself because she didn't think my mother would agree to have me assessed and she thought it might not be worth it to have me dealing with that in the middle of IB anyway. I found out when I came back and visited her at the start of my second year of university, I told her what was going on, and she 'fessed up to me.
And the thing is, I felt SO guilty for all of it, and I became unable to distinguish when I was and wasn't trying because whenever I was trying and didn't succeed, people said I must not be trying. It was really psychologically damaging to grow up undiagnosed, even though my academic underachievement didn't become serious until university.
I'm not saying Elizabeth is or will be in the same situation as me. I mean, I've never even met her; I can't possibly know. I just say this to caution that it's not just lack of achievement that can justify assessment--general, pervasive life problems that cause hassles, get the kid repeatedly nagged by authority figures without major improvement ever happening, and may be attributable to a recognized disorder also deserve assessment, in my view. Whether Elizabeth has or will have such problems, I don't know. That's up to you and Piet to judge.
Also, please tell me if it bothers you when I say things like this. I find you harder than average to "read" emotionally on the Internet. (Not your fault; it's just a quirk, but it makes me worry that I may offend you without knowing it.)
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THIS. You could be describing me with this. The difference for me was that in 7th grade, my science teacher noticed what was up and how I liked to fiddle with stationery-type items and tried an easy, small intervention first: she wrote a note to my parents asking them to purchase me a planner. We went to Wal-Mart and I picked out a small planner with weekly and monthly calendars. Yes, I would probably open and look at my planner more often than was necessary, but it was sort of a good type of distraction. Every time I opened the planner to mess around with it, all my assignments were right there in my face because I'd written them down. I didn't need to pay that much attention in class anyway. I know that would not have worked for a lot of students--people who truly needed medication for a disorder, for example--but it worked for me. By the time I got to college, I was so good at managing my own shortcomings that I graduated there with honors as well.
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My Palm Pilot worked well until I lost it. Oops.
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Two absentminded nurses! We should be Intarweb Friends!
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But the worst is dosage calc, because it is online. No immediate feedback so WAY too easy to learn a formula backwards. I see the tutor about it, tomorrow.
Oh, and A&P lab. I look in that stupid microscope and I'm like what? What kind of cell? A REALLY SMALL ONE, LEAVE ME ALONE. And terrified of the oral muscle exam I have in two weeks. :(
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As you know, you can't pin it all on the system without including the parents in it. My ability to volunteer (and make my face known) on top of knowing WHAT to advocate for has made the educational experience for my gifted son so wonderful. Of course, the support of the people who are GIVING him that education makes it possible, but if I didn't push, they wouldn't understand him as well, or know what is up.
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And really, the system should be set up to respond to kids' needs well enough that activist parents aren't necessary, because otherwise kids whose parents aren't conscientious, VERY well informed, and willing to be pushy suffer. If MY parents weren't enough to get me an adequate education, the vast majority of other kids' parents wouldn't be either. Children's education shouldn't be at the mercy of whether they have parents with your outstanding level of knowledge and willingness to push hard to get your kids what they need.
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http://www.vitalsounds.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=5
Very expensive, unfortunately. And supposedly the MP3s I have aren't as effective, but if you'd like, I could zip them up and send them your way and you can tell me what you think?
My son's therapists loan them out to us. And you're supposed to listen to them with headphones, without any sort of bass boost. (Because as you noticed, it is the high pitched stuff that is a problem.)
The CDs have weird, random sort of chirps and whatnot in, and volume changes (not enough to blast your ear of course). You're supposed to listen to them, on random, so your brain doesn't know when to expect the chirp or whistle or tweet or change.
There seem to be other kinds of similar CDs and MP3s, but I know these because the occupational therapist we use has been trained in the use of these CDs. (she knows which ones go best with certain sensitivities, how often to use them, and so on.)
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And something I've meant to say re: Elizabeth's apparent boredom: if she was active in class before and is not now, it's possible (haven't heard this mentioned as an explanation so far, I don't think) that she may well have had the experience many of us had, namely, that we were told to "give other kids a chance to answer questions," so we stopped bothering.
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