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cimoreneLast night's lecture (course for classroom assistants), the second from a Special Education teacher, was mostly about the national guidelines for building local and school-level curricula/course of study.
The teacher talked about leveling and how it was abolished entirely in Finland in the mid-1980s, all the way from elementary school up to high school (where the Finnish system splits into entirely voluntary technical schools and academic high schools). Even reading and maths are integrated for the whole class and Finland also has no what she called "elite" (or inherently leveled) schools. There isn't money to truly provide special needs children with THEIR education all the way throughout the country, which has many rural areas dotted with tiny rural schools with as few as 2-3 teachers and 15-50 students. Imagine, then, how little provision is possible for children of above-average intelligence. The lecturer admitted to me that these children are frequently not provided for; the ideal is that the teachers are meant to look at each individual pupil's level and provide them with more to do (or less to do, and more help), but the only REQUIREMENT is that the basic curriculum be taught in a certain way to everyone (except for special-needs students for whom a formal process provides exceptions).
God, I mean, just imagine how boring (I suspect, though, given that Finland has some of the best education in the world going by tests and so on, that it's actually still less boring than my childhood was). I was bored, and many many people are bored even in advanced classes (even primary school classmates who IQ-tested into the special weekly "Gifted and Talented" additions, as they were called in Alabama, but then didn't make the performance-based cuts to the top advanced levels of English, History, and math in middle school at grade 6).
There is no question that a child of above-average intelligence is in less need of help than a child with learning difficulty. Of course, the resources of society should be aimed at the latter, because the former is just bored, and the odds are, has the intellectual resources to find something else to do, and keep themselves occupied. But that's not to say that the deeply-ingrained habit of utter boredom and superiority imprinted on these children by inadequate primary school doesn't harm them! I actually didn't realize until the last several years how much it harmed me, but I am starting to think now that it was a lot worse for me than I suspected.
I am so accustomed to boredom, so used to it from the first day I transferred from a private Montessori school in New York to the Alabama public schools at age 6, that it didn't even occur to me until last night's lecture that the AIM of schooling is actually not only to "challenge" every pupil (a platitude I've often heard and which, let's face it, is problematic and in many cases not actually meant) - but to keep them occupied. The infinite variety of ways to occupy yourself "After you finish your work" was so familiar to me that I sat dazed and confused for several minutes while the lecturer talked about the ways classroom teachers can and do try to provide extra material and assignments for the above-average so they don't just sit twiddling their thumbs! "Isn't thumb-twiddling an essential, indeed, the MAIN point of school?", I thought at first.
I estimate that from age six when I started reading my own novels in class (first with Babysitter's Little Sister, quickly on to Babysitter's Club and Nancy Drew and thence to YA and adult fantasy from my parents' library), I was never without several personal books brought to read per day in my extra time, and I typically finished at least one per day all the way up through 7th grade, which was the first time I encountered classes I couldn't get through even if I kept reading the entire time the teacher was talking. I still remember the staggering force of my epiphany, in 7th grade "social studies" (really world history) that not only could I be engaged if I listened to the teacher only instead of reading while listening with one ear, what she was saying was actually complex enough to require more than one ear's attention to understand! Through high school, I was still able to finish a novel in a day to a week reading only in the time after I finished my work; but in primary school, I probably spent a good 50%-70% of my school hours reading.
And, hey, I have just fully realized the magnitude of that. Because... that is wrong. That is FUCKED-UP. And that should be obvious - should have been obvious to a long string of teachers who kind of weren't doing their jobs, not that it was really their fault with the utterly inadequate resources given to public education in Alabama.
The teacher talked about leveling and how it was abolished entirely in Finland in the mid-1980s, all the way from elementary school up to high school (where the Finnish system splits into entirely voluntary technical schools and academic high schools). Even reading and maths are integrated for the whole class and Finland also has no what she called "elite" (or inherently leveled) schools. There isn't money to truly provide special needs children with THEIR education all the way throughout the country, which has many rural areas dotted with tiny rural schools with as few as 2-3 teachers and 15-50 students. Imagine, then, how little provision is possible for children of above-average intelligence. The lecturer admitted to me that these children are frequently not provided for; the ideal is that the teachers are meant to look at each individual pupil's level and provide them with more to do (or less to do, and more help), but the only REQUIREMENT is that the basic curriculum be taught in a certain way to everyone (except for special-needs students for whom a formal process provides exceptions).
God, I mean, just imagine how boring (I suspect, though, given that Finland has some of the best education in the world going by tests and so on, that it's actually still less boring than my childhood was). I was bored, and many many people are bored even in advanced classes (even primary school classmates who IQ-tested into the special weekly "Gifted and Talented" additions, as they were called in Alabama, but then didn't make the performance-based cuts to the top advanced levels of English, History, and math in middle school at grade 6).
There is no question that a child of above-average intelligence is in less need of help than a child with learning difficulty. Of course, the resources of society should be aimed at the latter, because the former is just bored, and the odds are, has the intellectual resources to find something else to do, and keep themselves occupied. But that's not to say that the deeply-ingrained habit of utter boredom and superiority imprinted on these children by inadequate primary school doesn't harm them! I actually didn't realize until the last several years how much it harmed me, but I am starting to think now that it was a lot worse for me than I suspected.
I am so accustomed to boredom, so used to it from the first day I transferred from a private Montessori school in New York to the Alabama public schools at age 6, that it didn't even occur to me until last night's lecture that the AIM of schooling is actually not only to "challenge" every pupil (a platitude I've often heard and which, let's face it, is problematic and in many cases not actually meant) - but to keep them occupied. The infinite variety of ways to occupy yourself "After you finish your work" was so familiar to me that I sat dazed and confused for several minutes while the lecturer talked about the ways classroom teachers can and do try to provide extra material and assignments for the above-average so they don't just sit twiddling their thumbs! "Isn't thumb-twiddling an essential, indeed, the MAIN point of school?", I thought at first.
I estimate that from age six when I started reading my own novels in class (first with Babysitter's Little Sister, quickly on to Babysitter's Club and Nancy Drew and thence to YA and adult fantasy from my parents' library), I was never without several personal books brought to read per day in my extra time, and I typically finished at least one per day all the way up through 7th grade, which was the first time I encountered classes I couldn't get through even if I kept reading the entire time the teacher was talking. I still remember the staggering force of my epiphany, in 7th grade "social studies" (really world history) that not only could I be engaged if I listened to the teacher only instead of reading while listening with one ear, what she was saying was actually complex enough to require more than one ear's attention to understand! Through high school, I was still able to finish a novel in a day to a week reading only in the time after I finished my work; but in primary school, I probably spent a good 50%-70% of my school hours reading.
And, hey, I have just fully realized the magnitude of that. Because... that is wrong. That is FUCKED-UP. And that should be obvious - should have been obvious to a long string of teachers who kind of weren't doing their jobs, not that it was really their fault with the utterly inadequate resources given to public education in Alabama.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:39 am (UTC)I went from being top ten of my high school graduating class and never having had to apply myself to anything ever, to failing out of my first year of college. Granted, some of that was due to illness and depression, but also...I tried to be a Physics major, which I thought was a wonderful idea despite the fact that my (rural, public) high school had never even offered basic Physics. I always had some Impostor Syndrome going on because I knew I never actually worked at anything, and then suddenly I couldn't coast anymore and I crashed and burned and it all felt validated. I felt like taking my transcript and waving it in front of my parents and teachers and telling them, "Look! I always told you I wasn't smart, I'm just good at faking it, and here's proof."
Most of my close friends and I were "TAG"-ed (Talented And Gifted) from early elementary school, but there was never an actual program set up to serve TAG students. Math was the one exception, and I think my high school actually turned out a few very successful math-oriented college students. Most of our teachers would tell us that they would have some "additional work" to keep the more advanced students challenged, but they very rarely followed through with it. I don't blame them; they were overworked as it was.
Right now I'm still kind of hitting the wall and attempting not to quite flame out. I don't know how to stop telling myself that if I can't get an A+ without breaking a sweat, I might as well give up entirely.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 09:08 am (UTC)But at the same time, I'm still in school and this whole thing, all the baggage and anxiety and self-defeating thinking and habits of avoidance and procrastination and sabotage, it's too real and immediate for me to talk about.
When it's becoming too much for you, I recommend taking courses just for fun. Do something where you honestly could not care less what grade you get, or if you get any credit, just do it for the joy of learning, and remind yourself that you love learning, you love stretching yourself, and reading is fun!
Get a job. It's all right to take a bit longer to get through college/grad school if you're working, and the wonderful thing about a job is that you don't have to worry about your studies while you're there, you get to hang out with people who don't care about academia, but value you strictly for being you and a good and dependable co-worker, and your boss sets the criteria for success; in the real world, success is anything that's serviceable and performed quickly enough that you can move onto the next task in a timely manner. Very relaxing! (Everyone says you should get a job which ties in to your major, and which will look good on your curriculum, but I think the more different the better.)
Do sports/some other hobby. Something which will serve as a therapeutic break from school, and will give you an experience of success and joy.
If you can't study, find someone to tutor. Be a total slacker tutor! It's all right if you're doing it for free. Show up to your study sessions unprepared, but bring the materials. Then help your classmate organize his/her notes, write an outline, look up definitions, all that stuff. True, it can make attending class even more excruciatingly painful, but give yourself permission to daydream/doodle/read.
If it gets really tough, it's better to take break than wear yourself down. Take a semester or two off, and do something you've always wanted to do. Not sit at home and watch day-time tv. That's what happens if you flame out. No, travel! Take a time-consuming job! Volunteer!
I don't know if any of these suggestions help, but it's what I wish someone would have told me when I first started college.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 02:18 pm (UTC)But back in high school, I managed a pretty good outlet with
When it's becoming too much for you, I recommend taking courses just for fun. Do something where you honestly could not care less what grade you get, or if you get any credit, just do it for the joy of learning, and remind yourself that you love learning, you love stretching yourself, and reading is fun!
We only had four 98-minute class periods per day, and I took art both semesters of senior year. The teacher gave me permission to ignore her assignments and do my own independent project, so I was entirely absorbed in drawing the pencil portraits of people that I was interested in for one quarter of the school day all year long. That trance state, which managed to turn off my anxiety over everything else, was probably a big contributing factor in saving my sanity. When I tried that in college, though, the teacher made us start with exercises in simple perspective, which was so utterly boring that I dropped the class after 3 weeks. Also, only meeting once per week really wasn't useful. On the other hand, I did a once-or-twice-weekly off-campus dance thing with a big crowd of vegetarian-food-eating hippies, and that was actually quite effective.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 04:12 pm (UTC)This time, everything will work out much better. We are prepared!
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 10:11 pm (UTC)I took a course at a vocational school once. It's one of the best things I've done in my life, I really, really loved it.
You aren't there to excel or live up to some unrealistic perfectionist ideal, you are there to learn skills that will help you make the world a better place. It's a great feeling.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Dec 2009 11:01 pm (UTC)