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All Kids are born geniuses,but are crushed by society itself - Michio Kaku
DaltheJigsaw
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Though as a stickler for accuracy he was saying that all kids are born scientists, but their curiosity is crushed.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
I just went through a training that was a reminder to me since I have studied some of this before. But a major point was praise vs encouragement. This is HUGE not just for kids, but to understand the dangers in saying 'good job' all the time. It has to do with the distinction of praise which is based on the judgement of the person saying the praise, as compared to encouragement which leaves the judgement to the person recieving.
So praise is something like 'good job on that science project, you are very smart'
(what exactly was the part praised? kid feels need to 'be smart' and takes fewer creative risks)
Encouragement sounds like 'Wow, your science project has many details in the presentation and your model. The body and legs look just like the lunar module. How did you do ____?"
(the kid knows what specifically you noticed, they are encouraged to talk about their project and what they learned, more able to keep natural curiosity)
Okay this whole 'praise isnt the best thing' can REALLY push some buttons for people, especially those of us who work with kids. But the research and my own experience supports it. If you want to check it out try to not say 'good job' for a day but instead just point out positive factual things. You can PM me or have a conversation here if I have not wandered too far off topic (if the same info on the video is in printed form I would like to read it)
The other argument is what is the purpose of education? Modern schools developed during the industrial revolution to turn out fodder for the mills and factories while enabling the odd clerk or scribe to be identified and sent to his correct position in the system. Dickens' Hard Times is a good example of this kind of school. To be frank I think we have a relatively good compromise at the moment, we just need the bits on the fringe - libraries, evening schools, distance learning and access to information - to keep going in order to allow people to follow their own interests outside the system.
What is education really in this society? How much is it a filtering mechanism and how much about actual learning - my physics teacher took the time once to explain how a laser works - he was kind of like that - there was mass objection from the class as it wasnt covered by the syllabus - I still remember that class and how lasers work (though the rest have blurred together into obscurity).
In a society driven by greed and gain, the next generation are brought up to participate and keep the system going... it makes sense when you consider it from a gain perspective but very little sense from a human progression point of view.
By the way, and I say this as someone who has worked with kids for a long time - it's often not the schools that stifle kids, but the parents. Kids go to school and come home, where in a lot of cases they are shuffled around to so many extra-curricular activities that they can't keep up. Some parents are so busy trying to "build a genius" that they ignore natural abilities and natural limitations. I have a teen I work with now who's out every night, plus weekends, at different activities: yoga, cooking classes, dance classes, math classes, art classes, karate...you name it. Her parents say they're trying to make up for the public system by giving her more opportunities. Good intentions, but the poor kid (13 yrs old) is exhausted and just wants to watch tv. The horror of it all --- what if she turns out to be average?!
Okay I have a middle kid who never really learned that sometimes things like the school system or the world is what we need to adapt to instead of having it customized for us. So while I have agreed with this POV for a long time I am seriously questioning some of it now. Which may not relate at all.
I still think the praise/encouragement point is valid, it is possible with 2 kids or 30, possible by parents, teachers, anyone really. It is a hard thing to learn at times but it does affect our kids.
Back in the late 1970s, I was teaching earth science in Maryland where it was a 9th grade subject...as it apparently is for Kaku's child (based on the child taking a Regents exam...presumably in New York State...where I began my career). Continental drift/plate tectonics was in the curriculum, and Maryland (as well as Virginia) were quite ideal to study the phenomenon. The landforms were classic examples of what you would find in a region where plate tectonics had been active (for example, the horst and grabens of the fault block region in the area of Thurmont). The rocks were classic examples of what you would find in the old subduction zone (basalt, for example). And so, as part of my graduate program in teaching earth science, I developed a lab activity designed to lead students to be able to identify the various geologic provinces in Maryland, how they related to plate tectonics. And ultimately, they would be able to actually identify the boundary of the subduction zone, the major geosyncline, etc. I went around Maryland from the Atlantic Coastal Plain to far western Maryland and core of the Appalachians and collected extensive rock samples. I took photographs of the various landforms in each area. I prepared topographic maps. Etc. To be immodest, it was really quite impressive work, and turned quite a few heads at the university.
As a lab, in a 9th grade classroom, it was rather a flop. Because -- and here's where I believe Kaku gets it wrong -- these 14 year-olds didn't have the background in the basics of geology to be really able to conceptualize plate tectonics, and particularly not to be able to conceptualize it in the field. Kaku makes light of the lab identifying minerals using Moh's scale of hardness, doing the scratch test, using 10% hydrochloric acid to test for calcite, etc. It was in our curriculum, and yet, these kids couldn't comfortably identify basalt, granite, limestone, sandstone, etc. So that part of the lab on plate tectonics went over their head. They had read about fault block mountains and peneplains, etc. But that was not the same as looking at a topographic map and photo and being able to visualize it. And trust me, to get to the point where one can really have a grasp of plate tectonics takes far more basic geology than one learns in a 9th grade course in earth science, or for that matter a first year course in physical geology at college.
I am sort of reminded of my geomorphology professor, for whom I was a grad assistant. Computers were just getting into college geology labs, and one day he was at the computer and quite engrossed with something. "Come over and look at this." I did, and the printer was spewing out some rather exotic looking profiles. "What is that," I asked. "It's the profile of a hillside in a glaciated area." By that time I had done a fair amount of field work in the glaciated areas of western NYS, and I said, "I've never seen a hill slope that looked remotely like that." "Oh, you're right," he responded. "None exist. It's just a conceptual exercise." Okay. Fine. But not for Kaku's 9th grade earth science student.
Back in the mid 1960s, there was a movement in earth science education to develop ESCP -- the Earth Science Curriculum Project. It was quite cutting edge. I hated the textbooks, because they had no factual information. The texts were all about posing questions. One day, for example, you would pose a question to the kids: "How could we identify how plate tectonics affected Maryland?" And for one 45 minute period the class was supposed to sit around and discuss how they might go about solving such a problem. The problem was, the kids didn't have the background to do so, so you would often not get to the second step -- creating a lab based on some kid's idea. It was rarely very practical, although it was more like real science.
We like to pretend in science education. We pretend that the labs we do are examples of how scientists work. Yet, we give kids the "purpose", the list of materials, the step by step procedures, they write down their observations that are totally predictable, and they come to the only conclusions possible based on how we adults set up the lab activity. That's not how science works. But it is how 9th grade earth science works.
To me this seems like a way we were able to learn about a subject while using our creativity and imagination.
How many class periods did you spend on it?
This was 30 years ago, I'm glad I remembered that much. A day or two I think?
It kind of gets down to, which do you want to teach -- your content, or kids. I'm not so sure you can successfully do both. If you teach to the imagination curiosity of kids, then your content is going to be very superficial, and not address what is needed as they move into college.
@ImmersedOne It sounds like you needed to be in a gifted kids program.
It's still going strong. Alternative schools, progressive schools, can range from the radical (Summerhill has little in the way of structured classes, IIRC) to the more conventional, in which there are structured classes and curricula like in any school, but the selection of study materials may not be standard. For example, a friend of mine attended a progressive school that was college-preparatory. In Latin class, instead of reading classical texts, they read Winnie-the-Pooh in Latin. Alternative schools can be found in the public school system in some states, and in private schools as well. (I understand those labels are reversed in the UK; what we call public schools are called "private" there.) Generally they allow for more creativity and student-directed or independent work.
Leon, you may enjoy reading the book, "Summerhill", by A.S. Neill, to get a feel for the alternative school concept.