This isn't just biology, it's school. The only time you're taught processes and methods, it's when they're busywork, and you're wasting a year memorising how to do something nobody does any more because we have computers and calculators. What you're being taught is to squash your individuality, demand and follow orders, and to seek your worth only in the approval of your betters.
But most of all, you're being kept out of the house so that both your parents can go back to jobs they don't like.
Probably not the same education system, but there are many things I no longer do explicitly that are nevertheless important for understanding the concept.
Off the top of my head, for just mathematics:
- Long division
- Calculate limits
- Curve sketching
These aren't things I do by hand any more. But if I hadn't learned how to do them, I wouldn't be able to apply them to more advanced problems.
From my extremely limited exposure to US education methods, I would concur that some algorithms are practiced in an excessive manner. But that does not mean that they are useless, even if computers can help you often enough.
Maybe you can name a thing or two that you consider "busywork [that] nobody does any more because we have computers and calculators"?
(I will note though that biology courses always stood out to me in exactly the way that is lamented in this thread - almost entirely memorizing arbitrary things.)
I would say the times tables is a good example, once you know the mechanics of multiplying 2 numbers you don't need to redundantly memorize the exact values of tables of numbers. The mechanics and how to solve for it are the important pieces to learn. Further I think it actually does more harm as it hinders the child's ability to look at numbers as placeholders and variables when they get into higher level maths. Spending so many years on the basics of mathematics could be speed up if we ensured that children fundamentally understood the mechanics and principles and then moved on to more interesting math like algebra and geometry. Where you can see more real world applications by applying them to easily solve those word problems that we all hated as children. We really don't do a good job of teaching children how to think most of it is teaching them how to memorize. It's the whole concept of cramming for a test, memorize it just long enough to get past this test, then let it fall out of your brain.
I don't even know where to start with english and literature, I just muscled thru those but man that was like death to me, just not my interest at all. It's very evident in my writing that I was not very attentive in those classes. Thank goodness for spellcheck and a very pedantic highschool friend that did not mind proofreading and shaking his head at me, after each paragraph.
The times table seems like a perfect example to me of a GREAT thing to memorize. It's only 36 facts (2 through 9 times each other, knowing that ab==ba), and from then on you don't have to do repeated addition.
You don't need to memorize the times tables once you understand multiplication, but having fluency in being able to do that makes subsequent mathematics much easier (for example, I'm not sure how you could learn algebra without having a fluent ability to do arithmetic).
I hated school as well, but I think most things we studied have a purpose. Even limits are "useless," but mind-bending enough to possibly help you develop.
What I personally didn't like was reciting mathematical rules; Being able to apply them should be good enough.
Long division perhaps does teach you how to follow a complex algorithm by hand, but it's not at all necessary for the math curriculum at any stage from K-12 up to university.
It's somewhat out of fashion because a good sense of number is just as useful for dividing by hand, and more useful for understanding what's going on (plus, you do now always have a calculator in your pocket).
Agreed 100%, I have a troubled kid in school right now, who is off the charts smart but the only thing he will apply himself to is Advanced Math, Auto Shop and his Culinary program. If it's not hands on or mechanical he just has no interest in rote memorization. School needs to fundamentally change especially for adolescent males, it just stacks the decks against the high functioning learn by doing types. I often wonder how many great minds we have lost to being store clerk (no looking down on them, its just a waste of a mind if you have it)
> School needs to fundamentally change especially for adolescent males, it just stacks the decks against the high functioning learn by doing types.
The point of school is to teach discipline and grit - the subjects in and of themselves are merely incidental. Do you really think that these "great minds" - the kids who can't sit through a lecture and half-ass everything off of natural talent alone - would be doing great things if it weren't for the evil school system getting in the way?
"Smart but lazy" is probably the most insufferable combination of character traits. Nothing else even comes close.
The problem is it is not "smart but lazy" it is a value proposition and some kids don't see the value, even if they are smart enough. The reality is many smart kids today know that even higher education, unless specifically focused is a waste of resources. The smart ones generally leave the uni for a business venture before they even complete postsecondary.
Further grade inflation and the continuing of lowering standards means that the ones that know how to game the system, can skate in general ed, pull out 2, 4.0 GPA years at community, where they get some choice in their direction, save money and then usually gain admittance into a decent school. As I said, it's not lazy it's a value proposition and in many ways the ones that don't totally wash out, don't see the value in applying their faculties to the endeavor of educating themselves the way the State proscribes.
Boot camp is for discipline and grit, compulsory education is well compulsory and you don't get a choice in how you learn, not everyone learns the same, and not everyone is lazy for seeing the emperor has no clothes. Many successful tech Founders/CEO's would meet your definition of "Smart but Lazy" but some smart people do just wash out. Maybe it's just like burnout that is so prevalent in the tech industry, yet they hit it early.
For example my youngest son can look at a fairly complex algebraic equation, and within a few seconds he can tell you the answer by calculating it in his head. It's some nearly savant level stuff, one time I asked him how does he do that and he said the equations are a painters pallet, each part has a color, he takes the color and paints a picture in his mind and that picture is the answer. I think you can imagine sitting him down to force him to learn algebra the way most of us do it, is painful to say the least. Not only can he arrive at the answer faster than us, he has to actively suppress the way he learns to learn a process he will never use in reality. He does not see the point, he already has the answer. He is not being lazy, his mind just uses the creative half to solve logic, its pretty messed up, but it works for him, so you can imagine his frustration when he has to show his work because we "The Education System" want him to think and solve the problem the same way we do. The value proposition for him is not there. My older son is the exact opposite, once he learned the mechanics of solving equations and how to apply them to real world problems like fabrication, fuel maps, etc. etc. he was hooked but he is the one that struggles in other areas, because he sees the value proposition of focusing on what he is interested in and sees subjects such as English and Literature as a complete waste of his time. I sympathize with him, because I hated those two subject as well.
Thanks for the well wishes I think they will do fine, it's just a struggle with traditional education. I help them learn the way they learn, my oldest daughter ended up an Architect she never really struggled. My Youngest daughter is well on her way in Marine Biology, my oldest boy (14) has started to venture out into classic car restoration and fabrication of custom parts and my youngest son is still to young to have a path, but he really likes robotics and programming. I work with him a lot of projects that he is interested in. They will land on their feet, just wanted to add to the conversation that there are very bright people, not getting the education they could if we ventured to understand a better way.
I come from a family that is generally above average intelligence (not claiming that for myself, just making a basic observation about my family to make the following point). In the not too distant past, my family was fairly well know in Florida for being involved in organized crime. To the extent that they got the nickname the "Mullet Mafia" because they did most of their crime under the guise of legitimate fishing and maritime operations. Some of them were pure geniuses in the way they operated their criminal cartel and only one of them did hard time (the smart ones, are not the ones that get caught). This is where the smart kids can potentially wash out to, without guidance and that is my concern. This is why I see it as a value proposition. The smarter a person is, the higher the propensity to surf the gaps.
I think student-led education is a useful model: where students have a say in what they find important and in their own education. (This applies for all children, not only for adolescent boys)
The curriculum has too much influence from adults whose goals (sometimes openly stated!) are for a compliant labour force with a reduced training cost on particular work-focussed skills.
That's at the expense of (for example:) relationship and mental health education, creative arts, critical thinking skills, financial education, talent development, practical entrepreneurship, and the idea that children can have and create value in their own right.
As such, this is regularly a complete mismatch to what's going to be useful to kids when and as they grow up, and kids often know it: even while they don't have the political power to make change.
It boggles my mind how broken the model of rote memorization to pass written tests is. School should teach you the fundamentals of how to acquire knowledge and then get out of your way. Reading, writing, speaking, logic, geometry, mathematics, and programming along with a whirlwind tour of all the good and bad ideas throughout history then pack it up. Instead we have a public babysitting service that pretends to add value when it’s probably no better than dropping your kid off at a library for the day (whether they choose to stay and read or not).
> It boggles my mind how broken the model of rote memorization to pass written tests is. School should teach you the fundamentals of how to acquire knowledge and then get out of your way.
That's utopian and a rather unrealistic, incomplete view. Education is also about imparting a fundamental shared body of knowledge as well, and it also has to deal with a very wide diversity of ability and motivation. Your proposal is pretty lacking in specifics, but what you have in mind seems to be something that's optimized to work very well with an idealized student, which would only be a small fraction of all students, and would likely do worse on average when considering all students.
> Reading, writing, speaking, logic, geometry, mathematics, and programming along with a whirlwind tour of all the good and bad ideas throughout history then pack it up.
That's a weird list. You include programming but not civics?
It’s not particularly utopian, I’m proposing reducing the number of subjects and the duration of public education which should allow for a larger share of the current educational resources to be spent on each student. This is to enable those resources to be spent preparing the student to solve problems themselves. I limited the list to a minimum of topics necessary to consume, produce, synthesize and communicate ideas and information. Programming is in there because I consider it as necessary as literacy and numeracy since it allows you to reify some of your cognition in the same way that writing notes or performing a calculation does. Civics doesn’t belong in that list because it’s not a fundamental skill, it’s not even taught in many countries. A student who has been taught to read comprehensively, communicate clearly and think critically should have no trouble acquiring that knowledge.
> It’s not particularly utopian....A student who has been taught to read comprehensively, communicate clearly and think critically should have no trouble acquiring that knowledge.
That sounds pretty utopian. Firstly, I don't think you can reasonably assume any mass educational program will reliably produce students like that, so any program that assumes that will likely fail a large proportion of its students in pretty significant ways. Secondly, your exclusive focus what you define to be "fundamental skills" and exclusion of anything that you deem "not fundamental" seems more of a personal bias than a well-founded educational program. There certainly exist bright and highly-motivated students (perhaps you were one of them) who would build on that foundation and complete their education like you assume they would, but I'd judge they're a minority. Thirdly, there's a social aspect to education that your focus on skills misses. Things like civics need to be part of the curriculum, because even if a student would have no trouble learning the subject independently, there's no guarantee they would actually choose to do so. However, the American system of government (unlike some other systems) can't function without widespread civic knowledge and engagement.
I suspect teachers are the bottleneck. They hardly have any useful skills (except keeping children in line), so they can only teach memorization which is easy to teach/grade.
Twenty years ago, my wife came out of graduate school where they learned about differentiated instruction and inquiry based instruction.
The education field is well aware of how to teach better. However, there are obstacles to the implementation.
1. Resources. Inquiry based education (where the children drive the study) requires a different student to teacher ratio than 30:1.
2. Inertia. You need a systemic change otherwise those fresh new teachers with their fancy up to date pedagogy run into #1 and principals, teachers, and students who are not ready for it.
3. Parents. Parents are also not ready for it. You have parents who want to be certain their child is prepared and ranked.
> Agreed 100%, I have a troubled kid in school right now, who is off the charts smart but the only thing he will apply himself to is Advanced Math, Auto Shop and his Culinary program. If it's not hands on or mechanical he just has no interest in rote memorization. School needs to fundamentally change especially for adolescent males, it just stacks the decks against the high functioning learn by doing types. I often wonder how many great minds we have lost to being store clerk (no looking down on them, its just a waste of a mind if you have it)
Huh... this sounds exactly like me growing up, except I took to Biology and did rather poor in Math until I taught myself Bio-centric Calculus in University and realized I actually did understand the concepts and could apply them to my desired ends.
I'd start by considering that his formal education should only account for 20% of his actual learning, and use that as a standard which allows him t pursuit other avenues (independent research and projects) outside of his schooling. Which can include College or University level courses, I personally started skipping HS altogether except for exam dates and attending University level Philosphy and Biology courses by Junior year. This wasn't without controversy despite having a cumulative 3.5 GPA.
One of the things I always told myself was that I'd buy my child, boy or girl, a non-running car of their choice as an extra circular activity by age 12 in order to have them explore their curiosity, hone their research skills, learn how to apply knowledge to an actual tangible medium and interact with other people who also identify with the same car culture and give them a 'tribe' of sorts which for males is very critical, especially at that age.
Furthermore, and this is difficult due to COVID to do in person, but I would encourage you both to watch conferences that are related to those fields and maybe take some entry and then advance classes together on Coursera or Udemy, Khan Academy and all the ED-tech platforms.
CU Boulder has a really cool entry level Biology series right now, I attended one of the instructors courses on campus for a few weeks and as person who did their under grad in Bio and then worked in a diagnostics labs for several years I wish I had that kind of instructor in my early formative years--I've only had 2 good teachers, both chemists, my whole Life in ~18 years of formal education.
In fact many of us who went through the Academia based Biology track and then turned Biohackers often wished we hadn't done it all, as it stunted our initial curiosity and sense of wonder that is essential in making luminaries and vast advancements in Science in exchange for complying to the rote learning method that yields 'good grades.'
Anyhow, I'm glad that you have made this observation in your child's life, I struggled with it a lot with my parents, but ultimately I can tell you that despite the unorthodox methods and leaving my Industry, I achieved a great deal in all of the other Industries I focused on (Biology/Automotive/Culinary-Agriculture and too a smaller degree Fintech) and was able to accomplish a lot from the wide skill-set I had developed through my years of hands-on learning. My parents are very proud of my achievements and are probably more interested in the awards I've gained as a 'polymath' in those fields than I am at this point.
My only wish being that I had something more than online friends on Newsgroups and Forums (some who I'd meet in real Life) for support to help guide me through the journey, so I hope you take a hands on approach in your son's life.
I agree with you, I augment their education and he excels when we work on Robotics, programming, Welding, fabrication and he has a love for math because very early on as I was teaching him these things, I was constantly showing him how to solve the problems at a more fundamental level with math. He learned math as a means to cut thru the red tape and as proofs, he learned the real world value of it very early on.
Some teachers can get super excited about sharing the amazing stuff that's the results of their field. Sure, there's a bit of jargon and memorization to be able to discuss the problem. You can't be amazed by the results of concentration gradients, gene expression on the formation of proteins if you think concentration means something about your eyebrows, gradients are a function of WordArt, gene was a guy who played Willy Wonka, expressions are things your face does, and protein is a number on your dad's whey powder.
If you can make students excited about using, testing, and comprehending the awesome information about their world that are just behind a minor speed bump of some jargon you need to cross, most will hurdle those difficulties as if it was effortless. The standardized tests that check whether they know the jargon will be just a wasted day that they don't get to learn more about the subject!
If, instead, you set the end goal as passing the standardized test that checks whether they know the jargon or not, they'll begrudgingly do the minimum required to not get in too much trouble. The tragedy is that kids who don't even know the bare minimum jargon are often unprepared to function as independent adults, and so the rational, fair, game-theoretic optimum outcome demands resources need to be allocated to help those more than they need to be allocated to help those who are already functional.
Also, there's the tragedy that teachers who pour their hearts into their students aren't adequately valued by society - we pay lawyers and administrators huge sums of money as if what they do is more important than what my 9th grade bio teacher did while using his weekends to crawl through the mud on bog walks to learn about sphagnum mosses and carnivorous plants with some kids he met for an hour a day for 8 months, while barely keeping his family out of poverty.
You made me exhale in amusement at this comment, because it is true to a degree.
Do you think most people don't actually mind this kind of education? I'm asking because I'm baffled this is the way education seems to work in most places and has done for ages . I also assume that something would eventually change if enough people disagreed.
Or might it be because that is still how we think about the employer-employee relationship and the latter's duties - follow orders and ignore your individuality?
Education is actually changing all the time. There are some efforts to improve it in general, improve it for selected groups (disabled) and periodical efforts to dismantle and destroy its public form entirely.
But most of all, you're being kept out of the house so that both your parents can go back to jobs they don't like.