Comment by jon-wood
8 hours ago
> I had students that I knew were smart that I was forced to fail. They would grasp the subjects quickly when I was speaking, they would ask good questions during class...and then they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade. They were smart students, but they didn't want to be there.
Yeah, I was that student. It was undiagnosed ADHD (because nobody thinks to go send the kids who aren't literally jumping around the place shouting for an assessment, I'm ADD without so much of the hyperactivity). Put me in a classroom where literally all there is to do is getting on with the work and I'll be mostly ok, or at least give a good appearance of being so. Once I got home though I simply wasn't going to sit down and focus on doing homework, it wasn't a case of refusing too or anything, I always had the intent of doing it, but then the morning it was due would come round and somehow it hadn't happened.
Anyway, I did fine. Through some merciful coincidence the thing I was interested in doing turned out to be a lucrative career choice in an industry populated by people with the same sort of brain. That was almost entirely fluke though, it would be nice if instead of people just shrugging and going "huh, guess he's not interested in learning" we could improve education to better accommodate people who don't fit exactly down the median path.
I'd start by doing away with with homework which really is some grade A bullshit - if my employer decided to turn around and go "oh, by the way, now the work day is over here's some extra work I'd like you to get done in your own time" they wouldn't be my employer for very long. How about we instead make time during the school day for kids to sit down and do the (incredibly valuable) bit of applying what they're learning to some concrete tasks?
> How about we instead make time during the school day for kids to sit down and do the (incredibly valuable) bit of applying what they're learning to some concrete tasks?
This is great in theory, but then you have students who complete those tasks in half the time allotted, who then proceed to distract the rest of the class.
No easy one size fits all to the hw problem unfortunately.
Universal K-12 education was probably one of the greatest level-up programs that society has ever implemented. The question now, is it holding us back and how (if) it should be reformed. And reform is dangerous as there are people whose only goal is to ruin it, damned the consequences.