Screen Based Public Education
April 7th, 2011Public education in the U.S. is a weapon of mass mental destruction that has resulted in a sort of national lobotomy. Increasingly, the screens are being used to deliver the payload with greater efficiency.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Jack London was the subject in Daterrius Hamilton’s online English 3 course. In a high school classroom packed with computers, he read a brief biography of London with single-paragraph excerpts from the author’s works. But the curriculum did not require him, as it had generations of English students, to wade through a tattered copy of “Call of the Wild” or “To Build a Fire.”
Mr. Hamilton, who had failed English 3 in a conventional classroom and was hoping to earn credit online to graduate, was asked a question about the meaning of social Darwinism. He pasted the question into Google and read a summary of a Wikipedia entry. He copied the language, spell-checked it and e-mailed it to his teacher.
Mr. Hamilton, 18, is among the expanding ranks of students in kindergarten through Grade 12 — more than one million in the United States, by one estimate — taking online courses.
Advocates of such courses say they allow schools to offer not only makeup courses, the fastest-growing area, but also a richer menu of electives and Advanced Placement classes when there are not enough students to fill a classroom.
But critics say online education is really driven by a desire to spend less on teachers and buildings, especially as state and local budget crises force deep cuts to education. They note that there is no sound research showing that online courses at the K-12 level are comparable to face-to-face learning.
Research Credit: ottilie
“He pasted the question into Google and read a summary of a Wikipedia entry. He copied the language, spell-checked it and e-mailed it to his teacher.”
If my English Teacher found out I had done this, she would have given me an F.
So,I guess his diploma will be for “Cut and Paste”? What about an appropriate citation? What about the students analysis of that quotation?
This is an excellent step towards making a third world workforce.
The “cut and paste” mindset is not relegated to public schools. I teach at a private high school, and the vast majority of the students have no real concept of how to develop an original analysis of something. They don’t understand that placing a handful of filler sentences in between lengthy quotes (cited or not) doesn’t constitute writing or critically thinking. They also have a hard time taking an idea or concept beyond the narrow context that they learned it in, and applying it to something else. Should I go into their willingness to do work that is beneficial to their education, but not being directly graded? Arrrgghhh! The future that will be shaped by this kind of un-thinking is frightening indeed. I want out.
Many of us in the homeschooling world have long suspected that the intent of this sort of education is to bring about a permanent lower class of proles, The lack of real knowledge will be immediately obvious to the initiated, and will be used as a readily discernible class marker, rather like the cockney dropped “h”
I cannot imagine a better argument for homeschooling one’s children.
— cybele