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Originally Posted by shakran
To sum up, our education system is broken because we don't learn to learn, and because we're obsessed with what things are called rather than what they are.
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Exactly, to a point. Basically, we expect students to open their heads and we can pour in all this disjointed information devoid of context and meaning....but they had better damn well say, "under God.." when they stand up in the morning.
Now, an anecdote: I was teaching 4 graders in Columbus, Ohio. On the state social studies test, one of the pages had a map of Ohio with all its natural resources on it. The students had to be able to read the map and decide what Ohio's most abundant resource was. One student raised her hand. Technically, during the state test, we're not supposed to answer any questions, but I figured maybe she had to go to the bathroom, so I went over. She was frustrated because she couldn't find Ohio on the map.
It was a map of Ohio. I shook my head and walked away. Part of me felt like a failure because 4th graders in Ohio study Ohio in social studies. The whole year is a focus on Ohio. The cover of their book has a big map of Ohio on it. There are maps of Ohio throughout the entire book. We went over and over every single type of map there could be: political, physical, land feature, population, road, resource, etc. yet this kid still didn't know what Ohio looked like.
Talking with the other 4th grade teacher, we couldn't figure it out....he had similar problems. Why weren't our students learning? Was it us? Was it their parents? Was it the system? To this day, I'm still not positive what it is, but I do believe that parents play a huge part in the success of students.