[kenberg]

 barmar, on 2020-July-08, 20:19, said:

I was in high school in the late 70's, and I don't think they were common then, either. I think they became more common in the 80's.

The only health-related class I remember was sometime in 5th or 6th grade they had an evening assembly where they told us about how our bodies would be changing during puberty. I'm pretty sure they had separate sessions for boys and girls, and I recall my father going with me. I assume it must have been optional, as I'm sure many parents would have preferred to deal with it (or not) at home. I'm pretty sure it was the first time I'd heard the word "masturbation".

My older daughter was in 8th grade in the early 70s. At some teacher/parent discussion I learned that they would be discussing sexual matters in class. I had no problem with factual discussion, but I expressed wariness about any plans for instruction about what they should and shouldn't do. I was assured that would not be part of the teaching.


Giving advice puts the teacher in an almost impossible position, or so I think. At one extreme I recall a push for sexual encouragement, summarized (probably jokingly) as "Sex before eight, before it's too late" and at the other extreme there is the expectation of virgin brides. maybe even virgin bridegrooms. As a senior in high school, 1955-56, I took psychology. In 1950s St. Paul sexual matters were close to forbidden in high school courses, but the teacher did advise "No matter how modern a young woman might believe she is, she cannot really be happy about having a sexual relationship outside of marriage". Ok, it's a bit simplistic, but it could be understood as "It's serious stuff, don't approach it frivolously". This is another teacher I liked a great deal. To see just how much sex was avoided even in a psychology class, he suggested that for a term paper I research and write about Freud. I said "Who is Freud?". The name had not come up in our lessons.

In my introductory post on this thread I said "It might be useful to recall our own younger years, the good and the bad, in thinking of what might work." When I was 12 or so I checked out a book from the school library called Mythology that included a story about a bathing goddess Diana. I just looked it up on the wik and although I had mis-remembered some of the details, I had the general idea right:

Quote

The myth of Diana and Actaeon can be found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The tale recounts the unfortunate fate of a young hunter named Actaeon, who was a grandson of Cadmus, and his encounter with chaste Artemis, known to the Romans as Diana, goddess of the hunt. The latter is nude and enjoying a bath in a spring with help from her escort of nymphs when the mortal man unwittingly stumbles upon the scene. The nymphs scream in surprise and attempt to cover Diana, who, in a fit of embarrassed fury, splashes water upon Actaeon. He is transformed into a deer with a dappled hide and long antlers, robbed of his ability to speak, and thereafter promptly flees in fear. It is not long, however, before his own hounds track him down and kill him, failing to recognize their master.^[1]

I was an easily frightened child and this really upset me.

Anyway, I sometimes think educational experts totally forget their own childhoods as they give advice. In this time where we have to cope with severe additional problems, care is needed. Learning just how the world works is not easy.

[Elianna]

 kenberg, on 2020-July-08, 15:52, said:

Times change. In HS in St. Paul, 1952-1956, we did not have health classes. At least the boys didn't. I think the girls might have had some health things included in some general class. Cooking, sewing and monthly cycles, or some such. I very seriously doubt that they told the girls anything that they did not already know. .

I remember some Sex Education lesson in 5th grade, where they told us that HIV/AIDS is passed through anal sex. It was very memorable, because as one might be able to guess, I had no idea there was such a thing as anal sex. They didn't actually use those words, but the lesson was basically anti-STDS, and was explaining that a condom was always important against STDs, and that the cells in the anus were more permeable than in the cervix. This was 1990 or thereabouts.

ETA: I don't know if they said it and I just missed it, but I didn't learn that to get a sexually transmitted disease, one's partner must first have it. I definitely walked away from this lesson with the idea that sperm became HIV/AIDS if it was transmitted anally. I have no idea when I unlearned that, but probably that 9th grade health class mentioned above.

 kenberg, on 2020-July-08, 15:52, said:

There is the theory of teaching and there is the practice, what is actually done. Many of my memorable teachers were a bid odd, certainly including that Spanish teacher. I seem to fit in pretty well with odd. But some of yours seem downright crazy.

I think that it might have to do with being in LA? In a smaller town, if one is "downright crazy", one really stands out, and if that person goes somewhere bigger for college (like to become a teacher), that person might feel freer and less watched, and thus stay in the big town. So I wonder if LA attracts more "interesting people" because of that dynamic. That and the idea of being a star actor, of course.

[kenberg]

I have been thinking (and yes, that's always a danger). We have added something like $800 [correction $600] per week to unemployment benefits. We have sent money to people to stimulate the economy. We have used money for small businesses to keep people employed. It's time to use some money to help with this school problem. As a starter idea, how much would it cost to outfit every kid with some really fine protective equipment? If the answer is 200 or 300 dollars per kid, or400 or 500, that's far less than the cost of other things we have been doing. Of course we would have to have this stuff available. But we could manufacture it, or at least we could have if we had gotten started earlier. We produced a hell of a lot of tanks in the early 1940s on short notice. Not the same, I know, but it seems like the main problem is one f leadership. No surprise there, of course. Our leader thinks name calling is a policy. rocket Man, Sleepy Joe, and now Kung Flu. There, now I have dealt with it, I have found a good slur. Kids need to learn. no kidding. But they also have to be safe, whether it's safe from polio when I was growing up or safe from covid.

Covid does not give in to bullying and name calling, intelligent planning is needed. Too bad that's not a trait of our current president. Very too bad.

After this rant, I supply a link that discusses the problems many are wrestling with.

https://www.washingt...1dc8_story.html

[barmar]

 kenberg, on 2020-July-13, 07:54, said:

Covid does not give in to bullying and name calling, intelligent planning is needed. Too bad that's not a trait of our current president. Very too bad.

Well, he hasn't tried name calling on COVID-19, unlike how he treats his detractors. His strategy for this is simply pretending it isn't a problem. Unfortunately, that's just as ineffective.

That's the thing about facts: unlike fairies, they don't care if you believe in them or not.

[Elianna]

 barmar, on 2020-July-13, 15:00, said:

Well, he hasn't tried name calling on COVID-19, unlike how he treats his detractors. His strategy for this is simply pretending it isn't a problem. Unfortunately, that's just as ineffective.

That's the thing about facts: unlike fairies, they don't care if you believe in them or not.

I don't want to repeat what he's said, but he HAS tried name-calling. Didn't seem to work.

[y66]

My local public school system (Arlington, Virginia) is offering two options: (1) hybrid in-person/distance learning or (2) full-time distance learning. There is no full-time in school option. Parents have until July 20th to choose. Option (1) is the default for parents who don't choose. School officials will make adjustments as the health situation changes. This feels like a sensible approach to me. Schools in public health districts that have a decent test/trace/isolate capability may have more options but I am not aware of any public health districts in Virginia that have such a capability or of any credible plans by Trump, DeVos & Co. to help solve this problem.

[kenberg]

 y66, on 2020-July-14, 06:27, said:

My local public school system (Arlington, Virginia) is offering two options: (1) hybrid in-person/distance learning or (2) full-time distance learning. There is no full-time in school option. Parents have until July 20th to choose. Option (1) is the default for parents who don't choose. School officials will make adjustments as the health situation changes. This feels like a sensible approach to me. Schools in public health districts that have a decent test/trace/isolate capability may have more options but I am not aware of any public health districts in Virginia that have such a capability or of any credible plans by Trump, DeVos & Co. to help solve this problem.

A reasonable approach. I am thinking the students will have to take some responsibility here. We can expect more of a 16 year old than an 8 year old. I mentioned before that we should think back to our own young years. Of course I remember being 16 better than I remember being 8. Here is an example.

In high school we had read Julius Caesar and Macbeth. We were put in groups of 4 or so students each, and told we should choose any Shakespeare play other than those two, read it outside of the classroom, and then, as a group, write an essay on the play that we chose.

Our group chose The Merchant of Venice.

Why? I had a phonograph that played LPs and I had discovered that the public library had records of various plays, and this was one of them. We sat around in my bedroom listening to the play and wrote up our essay. My point is that the teacher gave the assignment and then read the essay, everything in between was done by us.

How to apply this? I was thinking of Hamilton. It's now available on Disney Plus , the cost is low, many perhaps already subscribe. No, I am not claiming Hamilton is equivalent to Hamlet. But students could be given the assignment to watch it, probably enjoyable (I have not yet seen it) and then further assigned to pick out a couple of pieces of it and compare it with history.. I hear that it pays pretty close attention to history but whether it does or doesn't, this could be a good assignment. As with my assignment, the teacher does not have to be hovering all of the time.. Maybe a group of 4 could get together in someone's house to watch it, maybe they would have to watch it on their own and discuss it on Zoom (or its equivalent) but it seems to me that something like this is workable.

Would students cooperate? Some would, some wouldn't. But that's life. Something about horses and water comes to mind. When I think back on my teenage years I think I could have coped with some difficult school issues. Social issues might have been a bigger problem. I don't mean just dating, surely that would have been a concern but I also enjoyed tennis, swimming, working on cars, etc. and doing it with other people. I could read a book on my own.

Anyway, some thought is needed.

[y66]

 kenberg, on 2020-July-14, 09:04, said:

In high school we had read Julius Caesar and Macbeth. We were put in groups of 4 or so students each, and told we should choose any Shakespeare play other than those two, read it outside of the classroom, and then, as a group, write an essay on the play that we chose.

Good idea. People think succeeding today is all about technology but it's really all about communicating and figuring out how to learn new skills in a rapidly changing world. Even the guy who fixes our appliances says this. So does his wife.

We have a public school program here for grades 6-12, now in its 48th year, where "student choice is the central focus". "Students must decide how to use their time wisely to meet their obligations. The amount of “unsupervised time” increases gradually from grade 6 to grade 12. To make this offer of freedom work, the school trusts the good intentions of its students, and students learn to reciprocate with a sufficient degree of personal responsibility". Two of our neighbors' kids go here. I suspect they miss the social dimension and interactions but I don't think their education is suffering. Although schools like this one are the exception, and not for everyone, gearing school to teach kids to take responsibility for their education is essential IMO.

[kenberg]

i see that Trump has now backed off from kicking out foregn grad students unless they take at least one f2f class.

https://www.washingt...age%2Fstory-ans

Among the very very many objections I have to Trump is that it is pointless to discuss what he says on Monday because it will change by Wednesday or Thursday.

I don't ask that people who voted fro him apologize, i have done stupid things in my life, but I do ask that they make it clear that they will not be doing it again. I once scaled up the side of a brick wall that extended out over the Mississippi River, and, for a while, could not see how to go either further up or back down. This was stupid but (a) I was about 10 and (b) I did not do it again.

Oh. I found a way to make it up the rest of the wall.

[kenberg]

https://www.washingt...pensive-option/

Quoting Aeschylus might not be the best start but she makes some good points. An important one:

Quote

So far, our priorities have mainly taught my kids that this is the lesson: "Schools aren't essential, Mom!"

The thrust of the article is that while better choices earlier would have made re-opening the schools a lot easier, we now have to realistically deal with the mess that we have. I like that she sees 16 year olds as different from 10 year olds. "Older students, though, should be thought of as adults for purposes of planning the pandemic response." Ok, it is not realistic to say that a 16 year old is fully adult but I think it is realistic to expect a good deal more from this older group than from younger ones. We have to explain to them that we have a mess and we cannot do all that we wish, so we will need their cooperation and assistance. They are young adults, or apprentice results, or something like that. They are no longer children. And a 10 year old is different from a 6 year old. We are in a mess. That's plain, that's obvious, we will need help and cooperation.

[pilowsky]

The main purpose of schools is to provide child-care so that parents can be productive in the economy.
Knowledge is what the person acquires from those around them. If they are lucky, the people around them are skilled at helping them acquire tools to gain knowledge. Stuffing knowledge into people never works.

One of Australia's largest schools is the (https://www.assoa.nt.edu.au/) School of the Air in Alice Springs. It covers an area as big as the continental USA. I've been there. It only has 120 students. It could be bigger. Most tertiary campuses also provide distance education. When I was in one of my schools (we moved a lot - I went to 8 different schools before University) it became so dull that we reached an agreement with Mrs B. that as long as we passed the weekly test three of us could study in the library. Her Husband taught me algebra at university. Bridge has never been better since it's been a distance sport.
When I listen to sleazy politicians attempting to justify massive school re-openings, knowing full well that this is simply so that they can 'get the economy rockin', and save their cosy parliamentary sinecures it makes me reach for a bucket.

These people have no shame. They would throw their parents into a fire for a dollar.

This is what it means to live in a failed state with no adequate health care for all.

What is the collective noun for a group of people that believe that everything will just get better if you pray? A Republic?

[kenberg]

 pilowsky, on 2020-July-18, 07:31, said:

The main purpose of schools is to provide child-care so that parents can be productive in the economy.

Certainly not the way I saw it or see it. I realize that it sometimes comes to that for some people but that is very much too bad and I don'y think that the rest of us should adopt the view of the worst among us.

Quote

Knowledge is what the person acquires from those around them. If they are lucky, the people around them are skilled at helping them acquire tools to gain knowledge. Stuffing knowledge into people never works.

Here I might come a little closer to agreeing.. I learned a lot from working on cars in my teenage years. Read and plan before picking up the wrench, for example. Still, my knowledge of word history as learned outside the school walls came from seeing Quo Vadis. A fun movie for a 12 year old, I still vividly remember Peter Ustinov as Nero, but I learned more in school.

I can be as cynical as the next guy but I did find school useful. And sometimes frustrating. Of course I come from a different era. Child care was done by mothers. I could list some exceptions, but largely that's the way it was. Eg we rented out the very limited top floor of our house to Marie and her two daughters, but my mother watched the kids while Marie worked.

At any rate, certainly working parents have serious problems to solve if schools don't open, but I regard it as extreme to say that the purpose of schools is tp provide child care so that the parents can be productive in the economy.
Child care is a problem. Absolutely. That's a different statement.

[barmar]

 kenberg, on 2020-July-18, 09:37, said:

Certainly not the way I saw it or see it. I realize that it sometimes comes to that for some people but that is very much too bad and I don'y think that the rest of us should adopt the view of the worst among us.

While he may have been exaggerating a bit, I think there's plenty of truth in what Pilowksky said. When I was growing up, and I'm sure it was true for you a generation earlier, most families had a father who went to work, and a mother who stayed home and took care of the house and kids. If the kids had to stay home for any reason, there was always Mom there to watch over them.

But those days are long gone. Many, if not most, families now have both parents working, or just have one parent (who obviously needs to work). School is needed as both an educational institution and as a form of day care.

[y66]

From David Leonhardt at NYT:

Quote

The coronavirus is so widespread in the U.S. that many schools are unlikely to reopen anytime soon. Already, some large school districts — in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, suburban Washington and elsewhere — have indicated they will start the school year entirely with remote classes. Yet many parents and children are despondent about enduring online-only learning for the foreseeable future.

So it makes sense that the topic of home schooling is suddenly hot.

Parents who never before considered home schooling have begun looking into it — especially in combination with a small number of other families, to share the teaching load and let their children interact with others. Some are trying to hire private tutors. One example is a popular new Facebook group called Pandemic Pods and Microschools, created by Lian Chang, a mother in San Francisco.

Emily Oster, a Brown University economist who writes about parenting, has predicted that clusters of home-schooling families are “going to happen everywhere.”

Of course, many middle-class and poor families cannot afford to hire private tutors, as my colleague Eliza Shapiro pointed out. But there is nonetheless the potential for a home-schooling boom that is more than just a niche trend among the wealthy.

Consider that the population of home-schoolers — before the pandemic — was less affluent than average:


By The New York Times | Sources: Census Bureau, National Center for Education Statistics

Eliza told me that she thought many families, across income groups, were likely to consider pooling child-care responsibilities in the fall. Children would remain enrolled in their school and would come together to take online classes in the same house (or, more safely, backyard). In some cases, these co-ops might morph into lessons that parents would help lead.

As for high-income families, they may end up having a broader effect if a significant number pull their children out of school and opt for home schooling. “We could see a drain on enrollment — and therefore resources — into public schools,” Eliza said.

As Wesley Yang, a writer for Tablet magazine, asked somewhat apocalyptically, “Did public schools in major cities just deal themselves a deathblow?” And L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, a professor at New York University, recently told the science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer that any increased privatization of education was likely to “widen the gaps between kids.”

It’s too early to know whether home schooling is more of a real trend or a social-media fad. But the U.S. is facing a dire situation with schools: Remote learning went badly in the spring. The virus continues to spread more rapidly than in any country that has reopened schools. And, as Sarah Darville points out in an article for the upcoming Sunday Review section, the federal government has done little to help schools.

No wonder parents are starting to think about alternatives.

How can school districts respond? Jay Mathews, a Washington Post education writer, has a suggestion: Superintendents should abandon trying to devise a single solution for an entire school system.

“Let principals and teachers decide,” Mathews writes. “They know their students better than anyone except parents, who would just as soon get back to work.” His column includes specific ideas he has heard from teachers.

One of the ideas Mathews writes about is a variation of the one posted above for kids to team up on assignments which I suspect savvy teachers have been using for decades and are planning to make good use of in the months ahead.

[kenberg]

 y66, on 2020-July-23, 07:06, said:

From David Leonhardt at NYT:


One of the ideas Mathews writes about is a variation of the one posted above for kids to team up on assignments which I suspect savvy teachers have been using for decades and are planning to make good use of in the months ahead.

. The Jay Matthews article has many suggestions, many make sense. I;ll quote one that I would vary a bit.

Quote

If some classes are scheduled at school, why not try more art and music? There is no way in these circumstances we're going to make much progress in reading, writing and arithmetic. Why not do something fun and cut down on no-shows?

I agree with the spirit but a few points:

1. I see no reason that progress, even significant progress, cannot be made in "reading, writing and arithmetic".
2. Art and music are not just for fun. they are important. I say this as as a former child who worried he would fail 8th grade because he could not draw a good tree.

But let me modify it a bit:

Yes, it would be very hard to get the kids, many of them, ready for the usual standardized exams.So back off on standardized exams. I am not all that fond of standardized exams anyway, but make sure the kids are moving forward in these areas rather than backward.

Music: Yes, in elementary school we sang. But we also learned about measures, major and minor keys, time signatures, 4/4 time, 3/4 time and so on. Try them on following the 5/4 time of Take Five, for example.


I am thinking Jay Matthews, and more importantly teachers parents and kids, might respond well to the general idea that time should not be wasted, but maybe we go easy on the standardized exams.


A note about reading and about exams for testing reading ability. I did very poorly on a vocabulary test that I was given in high school. Did I not read? Yes, I did. I subscribed to Hot Rod, I read most issues of Motor Trend, I eagerly awaited each month's issue of Scientific American, I bought and read various books discussing galaxies. Words such as carburetor, differential and photon did not appear on the vocabulary exam. My parents spent a lot of time fishing on Minnesota lakes, as did I until I hit adolescence, so I would have scored well with works like walleyed pike.

Kids want to learn. We need to have some faith in them and we need to give them some direction. We should go easy on some of the exams. I am not saying exam-free learning, just keep the exams in their proper place. I believe Elianna teaches. I hope she and others will comment on some of the ideas in Matthews article. I gather that many of his suggestions came from the teachers.

[akwoo]

 kenberg, on 2020-July-14, 09:04, said:

Would students cooperate? Some would, some wouldn't. But that's life. Something about horses and water comes to mind.

I think one difference between when you went to school an now is that what you wrote isn't good enough anymore.

We're not in a society where there are lots of jobs for people who are not well-educated but willing to work with their hands. We're also not in a society where people who are not well-educated can generally meaningfully participate in public discourse.

We can have different opinions about the school reforms promoted and in some cases mandated by the No Child Left Behind piece of legislation - I even have contradictory opinions about it myself - but simply reflected in the name is a recognition that this the attitude you described won't work for our society. (I have a pet theory unsupported by any actual evidence that the impetus for NCLB was the Army - the ultimate mass employer of grunts - telling politicians that they needed better educated recruits.)

Of course, what you wrote is also true, and I don't know what to do about it.

[Elianna]

 kenberg, on 2020-July-23, 11:30, said:

I believe Elianna teaches.

Not anymore. I basically retired (but not officially - slightly too young) when I moved to Switzerland.

I think that this is a giant mess. Clearly, the best solution is to hire more teachers and set up portable classrooms to help with having smaller classes for social distancing, but this is not a realistic solution. Even if districts had the money, there's not that many teachers willing and able to supplement the staff at a place. If I were a legitimately retired teacher (65+), would I want to put my life on the line? Quite likely not, and I think that my husband would have serious things to say, even if I were.

The one positive about everyone learning from home is that April 2020 was one of the first Aprils in a very long time with no school shootings. Pretty grim statistic, no? Doesn't make me eager to go back to teaching in the US, to be honest.

Anyway, haven't read the linked article yet - if I have time in the morning I'll come back and post comments.

[johnu]

 kenberg, on 2020-July-13, 07:54, said:

I have been thinking (and yes, that's always a danger). We have added something like $800 [correction $600] per week to unemployment benefits. We have sent money to people to stimulate the economy. We have used money for small businesses to keep people employed. It's time to use some money to help with this school problem. As a starter idea, how much would it cost to outfit every kid with some really fine protective equipment? If the answer is 200 or 300 dollars per kid, or400 or 500, that's far less than the cost of other things we have been doing. Of course we would have to have this stuff available. But we could manufacture it, or at least we could have if we had gotten started earlier. We produced a hell of a lot of tanks in the early 1940s on short notice. Not the same, I know, but it seems like the main problem is one f leadership. No surprise there, of course. Our leader thinks name calling is a policy. rocket Man, Sleepy Joe, and now Kung Flu. There, now I have dealt with it, I have found a good slur. Kids need to learn. no kidding. But they also have to be safe, whether it's safe from polio when I was growing up or safe from covid.

Covid does not give in to bullying and name calling, intelligent planning is needed. Too bad that's not a trait of our current president. Very too bad.

After this rant, I supply a link that discusses the problems many are wrestling with.

https://www.washingt...1dc8_story.html

Who could have known that schools would come back from summer vacation and start again in August and September? Does this happen every year?

[Elianna]

 Elianna, on 2020-July-23, 14:44, said:

Anyway, haven't read the linked article yet - if I have time in the morning I'll come back and post comments.

I read it. The suggestions sound reasonable. But still not a substitute for having kids in class. Khan Academy has videos for every math subject. Kids don't learn solely from that, they learn by interacting with other kids. The suggestion of having kids speak on the phone to each other sounds good, but how are you going to explain (3x+1)(x+5) over the phone to someone who already doesn't get it from the video?

[kenberg]

 Elianna, on 2020-July-24, 04:19, said:

I read it. The suggestions sound reasonable. But still not a substitute for having kids in class. Khan Academy has videos for every math subject. Kids don't learn solely from that, they learn by interacting with other kids. The suggestion of having kids speak on the phone to each other sounds good, but how are you going to explain (3x+1)(x+5) over the phone to someone who already doesn't get it from the video?

Thanks, and I generally agree.


One memory from my high school years: There was this kid, Lug. We were in the same algebra class and, later, the same metal shop class. He wasn't hopeless at algebra but I was netter and I helped him. I wasn't hopeless at metal shop but he was better and he helped me. But, and this supports your point, both the algebra teacher, Mrs. Swann, and the metal shop teacher, Mr. Wilkins, were good teachers. So the help we gave each other was around the edges, not central.

But we are in a real mess. The objective has to be to use the time productively. We have to accept that it won't be what we would hope for. I think what I like best about the Matthews article is that it seems to accept this reality and tries to see how to deal with it as best we can. And he is open to ideas.