The Corean Chronicles
The Always-Wrong Answer
I just read yet another article on the need for education reform in the
That's because of the fallacious assumptions that lie behind their recommendations. I may not identify all of the faulty assumptions, but here's my list:
All or at least most students want to learn.
All students can and should succeed.
The responsibility for student learning lies primarily, if not entirely, upon the teacher.
Formal, classroom-style education is the only way to success in a modern technological society.
First off, speaking as someone who has taught, and coming from a family with a long and broad line of very successful teachers, I can say that very few students actually want to learn if the subject matter is difficult and if they're given almost any options or excuses not to learn. They talk about wanting to learn, but most don't want to put in the work required. This is nothing new. It's a fact of human nature noted all the way back to the time of Socrates. Most students would prefer to be spoon-fed just enough knowledge to obtain their goals.
Second, ALL students will fail at something, somewhere, if they try enough subjects, although the most able may not fail until they're on the doctoral level in a subject not tailored to their background and inclination. A small percentage of students simply lack more than very rudimentary intellectual skills; a much larger number are good at basic subjects; from then on, the percentage of success will decrease as the difficulty of the subject matter increases. Contrary to popular and political opinions, this is not debatable, but a simple fact of the distribution of human abilities and intelligence.
Students vary greatly in their levels of intellectual capability, their ability and willingness to concentrate, and in their emotional maturity. Setting uniform standards penalizes both the most able and the least able and effectively limits excellence. Equally important, given the variability in student abilities, any system or curriculum designed on the basis of universal student mastery of skills is doomed to failure, either because some students will indeed be unable to master the subject matter and under current political conditions, that is unacceptable, or in fact the standards will be so watered down that they are meaningless, or students will be taught skills by blind rote so that they can pass the appropriate assessment tests. Educational systems -- those serving large student bodies -- with either excessively high or inordinately low failure rates are themselves failures.
Third, as I've noted in an earlier blog, if the teacher is solely responsible for a student's learning, most students will take the path of least resistance and show little or no initiative. Since they will achieve little, more blame will fall on the teacher, especially if no meaningful adverse consequences from failure to learn fall on the student. The assumption of total teacher responsibility means that the student faces no adverse impacts for failing to learn and can take no earned personal credit for whatever learning is achieved.
Finally, just how many indifferent business school and college graduates, or drop-outs, do we as a society need? We need electricians, mechanics, information technicians and a whole host of professions requiring specialized on-the-job training or at least on-the-job internships. We also need people in service industries. Assuming that classroom education is the only effective form of education is a one-size-fits-all solution that serves no one well and packs too many high school and undergraduate college classrooms with high numbers of students who have little real interest in being there, and even less in learning.
The bottom line, in my book, is simple enough. If you design a system on faulty assumptions, it won't work, or not well, and the vast majority of proposed educational reforms incorporate at least one of the assumptions I've listed above.
Why do they persist? That's simple, too. It's the
There are two routes to becoming a registered nurse: the ADN and the BSN.
ADN, or associates degree nurses, are usually taught in community colleges working hand in hand with a local hospital. The focus is on skills, skills, skills, and some critical thinking. Well, a lot of critical thinking. But skills are emphasized to an unbelievable degree. The programs generally take two years after completion of all the pre-reqs, which take a year and a half at least.
BSN, or bachelor's degree nurses go to traditional four-year Universities with the traditional co-reqs and Lib Arts requirements. The emphasis is on critical thinking, management, business, nursing theories, etc. But clinical hours are lacking, and so is the emphasis on skills. It costs more, is harder to get into and teaches less practical skills wanted by employers.
And then, with degree fresh in hand, the want-to-be nurse must face cold reality. The degree is meaningless unless and until you pass the state boards and become licensed. The test is the same test for both ADN and BSN prepared nurses.
And once you have that license and start work in the hospital, you learn how much you weren't taught. But the situation is worse for the BSNs than the ADNs. The ADNs at least have some practical skills and know how to start IVs, put in foleys, and give bed baths!
But the same people who push responsibility for learning upon the teachers are also the people who think that a BSN must be more valuable than an ADN and are pushing to force hospitals to hire only BSN prepared nurses.
At the same time, hospitals pay RNs strictly based upon years of experience. A new grad with a BSN is paid the same as a new grad with an ADN.
If there's an even more confusing, convoluted system out there, I don't know of it. All I know is that on a practical level, it seems to me that the community colleges are doing a better job of preparing their students to work in the real world than the traditional universities are.
"Schools are an 18th century institution, teaching a 19th century curriculum, to 20th century students, in order to try and prepare them for life in the 21st century."
Have you come across the upper limit hypothesis? http://www.i-learnt.com/Paradigm%20home.html
: 12:13 PM<< Back to all Blog posts
