The system you describe is similar to the one used at Sarah Lawrence and a few other liberal arts colleges and universities. There's one lecture a week, but most of the instruction is done in one-on-one meetings with students, who in turn take a strong hand in guiding where they want their education to go.
It's a remarkably effective way to teach a liberal arts curriculum. However, it requires a high level of motivation and dedication from the students, a very small teacher-to-student ratio (6 or 7/1 at Sarah Lawrence), and isn't very effective at teaching the subjects that have a concrete knowledge base that requires learning certain specific skills in a specific order, like math.
Public high schools typically have 25-35 students per class. Individualizing instruction to the degree that you suggest here would require a much larger teaching staff to reduce class sizes to a manageable size.
A better approach would be to offer supplemental classes or more advanced classes to those capable of taking them, honors or AP classes in most schools. Some schools do this and do it well. Many don't have the budget or personnel.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Lady Sage
Students need life skill classes. Teach them how to balance a check book, budget, apply for credit, buy a house, basic car maintenance... ect.
|
At the school district I worked at in California, this was called Life Skills and Family Planning, and was a requirement for all 8th graders, with parents able to opt their children out if they objected. It was a combination of sex ed, consumer science (home ec), consumer math, and psychology/sociology. It was taught by a team of teachers with a coordinator. Car maintenance wasn't included, mostly because we didn't have an auto shop.
I agree with you, by the way. Kids need these skills.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by shakran
They tried this actually back in the early 90's. It was called Outcome Based Education and it was a miserable flop. The A students got their A's. The B students got their B's. The C students got their C's. The D and F students got to keep redoing everything until they finally memorized the test and got a C or even a B. Not only did this mean kids no longer had to actually learn material, but it mean the average and above average students were cheated because they were no longer competative against the D and F students since the final grade did not indicate whether you took the test 1 or 100 times.
What we really need to do is get away from this confounded notion that all children must achieve the same success. If a get gets an F, then he gets a damn F. Unless extenuating circumstances are involved (the teacher didn't actually teach the material, or the scantron sheet was keyed wrong) then the F should stay. Period. That's what he earned. If you let him redo the test then you are slashing the competitive advantage earned by the kid who did the work and got the A the first time around. That's not fair to the responsible / smart ones.
It's up to the teacher to teach and teach well. It's up to the student to learn it. If you hold his hand through the whole damn thing then he'll get out in the real world and wonder why he keeps getting fired instead of being given a 300th chance.
|
First, I think you've gotten the wrong idea about outcome based education. At its heart, all it means is that what we teach should be based on what we want our students to know and be able to do when we finish the lesson. That's it. Start with the desired result, and teach to that. It makes perfect sense, a whole lot more sense than teaching without a specific goal in mind.
What you describe is a different technique called teaching to mastery, which involves reteaching the same information until its mastered at a certain level before moving on to the next one. It has its proponents and opponents, and there are situations in which it is appropriate, but applying it everywhere isn't very productive.
Think of outcome based education this way. A person is learning to fly. What are the desired outcomes? She needs to be able to operate the radio. File a flight plan. Taxi safely. Take off. Fly solo. Land safely. Those are outcomes, and the purpose of instruction is to teach so that the knowledge and skills needed for those outcomes can be demonstrated at a high enough level.
Another way to think of it is as a map--it's nothing more than planning where you want to go before you go so that you can decide the best way to get there.
Some of the ways outcome based education was initially implemented were ineffective to say the least. Sometimes the outcomes chosen were vaguely defined or poorly chosen, and there was a bloat that occurred very quickly, with teachers and students being responsible for more and more every year, resulting in less and less depth for anything covered.
It hasn't, however, gone away. Nearly every state has a statewide curriculum that is defined by objectives (ie, outcomes) that schools are required to address.
It's not a bad idea, it's the execution that often leaves something to be desired.