I appreciate your ability to work your kids’ education into posts.
But more importantly - could they do it?
2 Likes
Most people, even smart people, do not have the intellectual ability to do either of the things your sons are doing. Good for them and you; they must be very smart and hard workers.
I think this is a lowbar for a test. I also think it’s goofy to make it an all or none proposition. Score it like any other test.
I think it’s bad form to make kids run as a punishment. Natural consequences are logical. Unnatural consequences don’t tend to have logical outcomes, outside of the basic calculus of the economics of incentivization.
From a coaching perspective, it’s bad form. It doesn’t serve the goal of wokouts increasing performance.
Seems like lazy teaching.
But it also seems like we are missing part of the story. I hope there is more to it. Having had a child in high school (who was a mediocre student on her good days), frequently her interpretation of events and motives was suspect. I wouldn’t say she lied but the lens through which she viewed the actions of her teachers was definitely tinted in her favor.
2 Likes
They both basically asked if they could have a minute to look at the list of states.
They knew they would get 100%.
This is the company that my younger son is working for this summer…
He helped get the cars to Monterey car week and talked to the public at the booth and the Area 21 party.
Cool cool cool, I called up Einstein and he said he couldn’t.
1 Like
I mostly agree with this.
It’s mostly what you and Ike described. But it’s also about having a collection of information in your head. Both are important.
There was a movement in education decrying that rote memorization is not learning. While its true that you aren’t developing a specific critical thinking skill when you commit lists to memory, it is generally helpful to, for example, know that Ukraine is sandwiched between Russia and Western Europe.
Jim gave very engineering centric examples, and while not all of the world’s problems are solved like engineering problems (I want my lawyer to have a LOT of stuff memorized) I do have a good engineering related example. 20 years ago a had a bunch of students in Algebra II who got completely stuck when it came to reducing radicals (stuff with square roots) because they never memorized their factors. They went though a math curriculum that relied on “always having a calculator available” that they didn’t know, for example, that anything ending in a zero was divisible by 2 & 5. And even though they could “look it up in a table,” it slowed the class down, significantly.
Ultimately being an educated person is about “flexing that muscle,” all kinds of different ways, while also filling your head with information.
1 Like
Final update- The teacher told mini which state she had been getting wrong and she was able to pass with that info. It wasn’t any of the ones she guessed she got wrong - so this helped a lot.
5 Likes
She didn’t practice at home? I would have thought this would have shown her which states she was getting wrong??
If the teacher has been failing kids on this test without showing them what they got wrong, that’s an even bigger problem. Because now you’re not teaching.
3 Likes
agreed – IF the teacher doesn’t let the kid take the completed test out of the class
if she’s just claiming “nope, two wrong” that’s borderline sadistic. It would take a super clued in kid to understand she would have to replicate the test at home to find the problem states.
Exactly this. Learning involves knowing what to correct.
Teacher has some odd methods.
So what was the state she was spelling incorrectly?
I’m going to disagree here a bit. In a case where the student knows every single bit of information there’s not teaching that needs to happen.
If it were a 50 question multiple choice or FITB and the teacher didn’t give any feedback or guidance then that’s one thing.
But in this case you have to think of it like a 50 question test where the student knows each question and answer in order, they just have to fill them in correctly. And the test and answer key are replicable.
The student can take a filled in answer key at home and then practice on their own and check their work.
It seems like this particular test with this particular method can help guide the students a bit with other lessons. But I like how the teacher can put this back in the student to check their own work.
Because you don’t always get the highlighted route to fix problem in the real world.
But the caveat is this method works in this very limited example I think. Or more in similar fashions but not a lot of other subject matter.
The way in which the teacher interacts is a different story.
Pennsylvania
What, that’s an easy one, it’s PA. 
/pink/
Glad she got through the test. I still think it’s a stupid test and even more so if the teacher wasn’t telling her what she was getting wrong. How in the hell can you get the answers right if you don’t know which ones are wrong.
1 Like
Oh my lord, seriously it would take a ‘super skilled kid’ to realise they could practise the test at home?
I could have worked this out as a 5 year old let alone a teenager…
1 Like
It’s almost, almost as if you could get the list of states and check yourself? Teaching effort AND initiative a bridge to far these days…
Holy shit! She’s a high school student, taking a test in class, being graded by the, wait for it, teacher. Is it a bridge too far for the teacher to show the student the test they completed and what was wrong?
I’ve looked over things I’ve written a bunch of times and you rarely catch what you don’t know is wrong. If the teacher finally told her what was wrong, it doesn’t sound like she was given the opportunity to compare the work.
2 Likes
Exactly…
We aren’t talking something even remotely difficult, it’s a spelling test of 50 known words. I’d expect nothing less that a high school student should have the common sense to work out the concept of checking their own work for something as straightforward as this.
Obviously this approach isn’t valid for all things, especially the more complex ones but it’s a good lesson for life. Often you don’t know what is right or wrong, you need to show initiative and develop problem solving skills.
Getting a list of 50 states, trying to spell them and them comparing your result is hardly a unreasonable expectation.
2 Likes