User:Fasten/Education
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Q: You suggested that schools are an important place to make a difference?
A: You can teach ethics much better in school but without better possibilities to apply ethics in your daily life many people will not be able to apply their knowledge to their lives. The phrase "Am I my brother's keeper?" also refers to a failure to educate your peers.
Q: What can be done in schools?
A: Many teachers in Germany don't get enough respect from their pupils anymore. I would suggest that you need to teach your pupils the value of education with a set of tools.
One important mechanism you could make use of is that teachers could be allowed to expel trouble makers from class regularly. Just throw out who cannot be brought to obey the most basic rules and allow them to play football (soccer) all day, with the regular sport lessons or in a special sport lesson for trouble makers. You could also require assistant teachers to join the trouble maker lessons, either already before throwing anybody out of class or in the special sports lesson. An assistant teacher is the opposite (complement) of a prankster: A pupil who assists a teacher, instead of playing pranks on him or her, which is, of course, much more useful. If a pupil has played enough football he or she is going to understand that something is going severely wrong for him or her. This way you get rid of the people who are not present anyway, even when they are in class. You can make all the effort necessary to help trouble makers outside of regular classes but you cannot tolerate them in class. Sport lessons can be used to teach Kant's Categorical Imperative, if you have some assistants at hand who know how to do that, preferably much higher grades. Trouble makers could also be required to reapply to their class, or another class of the same or lower grade, to be admitted again. A class could reject or admit a trouble maker with a democratic vote. Discussions about such a vote could also be very educational. A trouble maker rejected by one or all classes could have some very educational discussions with teachers and parents trying to help him or her to reapply, but who, unfortunately, could not overrule the rejecting classes.
Q: The Abiturstreich (a traditional prank after the final exams) would be the suggestion that pupils after the final exams would be incredibly useful as assistant teachers (e.g. in a voluntary educational year, similar to the voluntary social year?)
A: And April Fool's Day is the opposite of being helpful towards each other. At the same time it is funny and a hint that you want to doubt some of the information you receive. A voluntary educational year for secondary school graduates might be desirable as an offer to show positive social behaviour. This could be combined with the offer to work in another country, of course. Depending on your point of view you might see this as voluntary but an ethical obligation anyway.
Q: Removing trouble makers makes the remaining class less hyperactive and raises the respect for the teacher, because he or she can throw people out of class suddenly. The teachers I remember were reluctant to do so because there wasn't really any place where they could send a pupil without neglecting their duty of supervision.
A: The in-tuition that teachers have to bear undisciplined classes is a complement: Teachers need to be able to dynamically adapt to the ethics of their current group of pupils. That includes that teachers occasionally might need to break the rules they are trying to teach, for educational purposes.
Q: So the teacher needs to be able to tell the pupil: "See what I can do, if I don't restrain myself?". What next?
A: Be unfair.
Q: What kind of pedagogy is that?
A: Let the pupils build a fair society. That's a good way to teach them that they want a fair society and to appreciate and protect it. You can allow them to experiment with democracy and change the rules they see as unfair. That can start with unfair marks for individuals and, if the pupils don't object, lead to marks being assigned openly by rolling dice. If they still don't object to that the group could receive written notification (preferrably from the supervisory authority of the school, not the school itself) that they have to repeat the class. If they don't object to that you can put them on a bus and send them to an army base to dig trenches, or something similar.
Q: Aren't school marks sometimes a sensitive subject without drawing further attention towards the topic?
A: That's a very good reason to have it sorted out properly until school marks become relevant for university admission (matriculation). If pupils feel they need to take care of fairness, and not only fairness of their own marks but everybody's marks, and have a school or grade parliament that can elect representatives, there can be a democratic decision making process that establishes a process for appeals when marks are considered unfair. The teachers would most probably reject any concept that increases their workload significantly by requiring verification by a second or third teacher immediately so the appeals would have to be delegated to higher grades or assistant teachers who would, in turn, require some form of compensation for their work from the class or grade that is delegating appeals to them (e.g. general maintainance work for the school, like cleaning or refurbishing)
Q: Electing class representatives is common in Germany but they do not have many useful tasks.
A: Electing a triumvirate that has to act in consensus is a better choice than electing a single representative and, of course, you can make them much more useful. The triumvirate could, for example, be allowed to expel pupils from class and send them to the soccer course for failure to adhere to the agreed upon rules of the class. All decisions of the triumvirate could require written form in the class-register and signatures from all three members and would then be enforced by teachers and assistant teachers, unless overridden.
Q: What is that good for?
A: They learn responsibility and conflict resolution early. You might want to give every elected representative an additional introduction, outside regular hours, in conflict resolution. The knowledge can then be applied inside the class to solve conflicts. The class would also be asked to give itself a code of conduct, which might, for example, require the representatives to intervene in case of brawls or mediate in case of dispute. A group of mediators could also be elected by the class with the expressed purpose to mediate any kind of dispute arising on school premises and the class representatives could be the first instance to unseat mediators early (on consensus of the triumvirate). Assistant teachers could act as advisors to mediators but refrain from intervening themselves (unless this seems inevitable) to increase the learning effect. You could also require mediators to keep a diary of noteworthy activities.
Q: Shouldn't assistant teachers help to teach the class and keep it attentive?
A: Conflicts that arise during a lesson could be silenced by the teacher or his or her assistants but may still require mediation later on. The voting on the code of conduct could be preceded by one or several homeworks where pupils develop their code of conduct in small groups and subsequently discuss their drafts in class. One important design issue could be, for example, if mediators should have executive powers and if so, what procedure may lead to use of executive powers. Another issue could be if the pupils are willing to earn a small amount of sectoral currency from social institutions and pay it to their class as a school fee. This could be slightly similar to the Creativity, Action, Service component of the international Baccalaureate. The payment could later be redeemed with a deposit for every single pupil, according to the collected average, but in educational currency, possibly donated by graduates. In higher grades the concept could slowly mutate towards a parliamentary democracy with separation of powers, political parties, election campaigns and, hopefully, binding election pledges. A teacher might explain separation of powers in social science and then ask the pupils to redesign their democratic system to accomodate their new insights, otherwise the school board would refuse to negotiate with them, which could be a deadlock situation towards admission to the college/university preparatory high school grades 11 to 13 (or 10 to 12), if the pupils allow it to happen.
Q: You suggest to allow pathological situations?
A: If pupils can be sure that they can ignore everything because sooner or later every problem will be taken care of by their parents' protest you get at least some pupils who get through school drifting along. That is the exact opposite of what you want. You want to raise adults, not children.
Q: What happens if only a small number of pupils try to solve the problems and the bulk drifts along?
A: You can make special arrangements for the pupils who try to solve problems, which might involve switching schools, in extrem cases. You can also arrange unfair admissions to college/university preparatory high school grades until the bulk wakes up and negotiates with the school board to prohibit and revoke the practice. The rule for admission could come with a silly rationalization like "every teacher can pick one to three assistants who get immediate admission to college/university preparatory high school grades". A rule like that could be enacted every year for class 10 by a preceptor who, strangely, wouldn't stop thinking that it was a very good solution and had always been done this way. You would need to attend a voluntary evening event to notice it, though. In case of little attendance the preceptor might decide that is was easiest to just put all attendees on the list and not to make too much fuss about it.
Q: That reminds me of Arthur Dent, who has to go to the cellar of the local planning office with a torch to find the demolition orders for his house on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".
A: Indeed? That can probably be taken too far. Another advantage of the triumvirate is that you can represent ethnic groups, if that is a necessity at a school. The democratic process inside a school could be extended to elect representatives for a local district parliament of several schools in the same school district or city that could take care of organizing summer schools and student exchange programs with schools in developing countries. Student exchanges and mutual aid could also be organized by an independent pupil's parliament with a school's twin schools. An obstacle to joining a district parliament could be that every grade who wanted to be represented would need to organize the election outside regular hours and the whole process would be voluntary, starting out with forming political parties, deciding on programs and releasing at least one printed issue of a pupil magazine prior to the election. The reward of joining could be that appeals could be delegated, in extreme cases, to the supervisory authority of the school, which would only negotiate with the representatives from a district parliament. The supervisory authority of the school would also be able to send school auditors on request and after prior consultation with the representatives of the district parliament. The reason for this acceptance would be that by organizing summer schools (especially for the weaker pupils who need remedial instruction) and by contacting schools in developing countries the pupils would have gained support from a stronger authority. If your precedent is to help the weaker, you get help from the stronger.
Q: That would be an application of the Categorical Imperative? According to Kant you could wish for that behaviour to be universally applied?
A: Yes, you want pupils to educate themselves, to learn to solve conflicts and to understand Kant's Categorical Imperative.
Q: Interpretation of novels, which is common in the school subjects german and in the first foreign language (often english) in the college/university preparatory high school grades, is related to understanding and decoding pilingual metaphors, as for example in The Memoirs of a Survivor, which I did read, but of course I couldn't decode it?
A: You can do that, of course, but novels can also help to teach and observe ethics. You don't need the YHVH language at all to do this; it may even be insufficient in more than one way. Novels that create complicated imagined scenarios allow the pupils to develop an ethical position towards concepts and problems they have not yet experienced and a good teacher can also use that to assess the ethical stance of his or her pupils. A good way to do this is to allow pupils to make decisions in the role of characters from a novel. A novel can be the introduction to a scenario in which pupils have to make logically and ethically challenging decisions. This can be in the form of writing missing passages for a novel, of writing letters between the characters or of roleplaying. Realistic and logically consistent fictional universes are helpful in determining the general conditions for such scenarios, if not placed in the real world. Text adventure games are a mutation of this as the games often require fast, interactive responses they do not promote well considered actions and the challenges are most often logically simple and silly. Advanced computer models of simulated worlds can aid in the creation of useful fictional universes, however.
To make scenarios sufficiently interesting it seems advisable that pupils should have a choice from a broad range of scenarios, covering different areas of interest. Classes or courses could form smaller groups, headed by assistant teachers, to work on a novel and scenario of their choice. New scenarios could also be written by older pupils explicitly with the goal to teach logically and ethically advanced problems to younger pupils. This would avoid the problem of analysis or even solutions being available on the internet and at the same time allow to teach the older pupils to design subtle logically and ethically advanced problems for educational purposes. Schools could keep lists of recommended introductory novels and request pupils to keep a journal of the novels they have read, without obligation to read a certain novel. The novels should be available from a lending library in or near the school, of course. Voluntary service in the lending library would be one possible social activity in school, by the way. Service in the library (or reading room, as E-paper books will not require libraries anymore) could amount to being available for all kinds of questions, advice and homework supervision.
Q: I can't seem to remember analyzing ethics, except in Animal Farm. (There was a subject ethics , as a replacement for religion, but unfortunately I can't comment on what was wrong with it as I can't remember anything about it. The point would probably be that this is one of the most relevant subjects and you want to think about how you make people remember it.)
A: I was only explaining how not to do it. If you are keen for people to apply advanced ethics above legally required standards habitually, in their everyday lifes, you might want to teach the mental vocabulary in a way that makes it easily accessible. That might include formulating personal ethics and invite people to reflect on their adherance to their own ethics, which is the idea of confession, by the way. That could also include developing the means to comment on adherance or non-adherance to published ethics of others. An adult may, of course, develop all the required skills by him - or herself but that means leaving it to chance, which isn't the most reliable teacher, especially when the underlying probabilities may be depleted. Pilingual teenagers and adults may be accepting an advantage over their peers here which could be seen as unfair.
Q: Teaching ethics is a precondition to independent learning?
A: It's not exactly a precondition but it helps a lot. You could keep pupils in classes while they haven't qualified to leave regular classes. Once they have qualified they could be allowed to learn in libraries, computer rooms and reading rooms or prepare and hold lectures for each other. By evaluating the quality of each other's lectures pupils would also motivate each other to be good lecturers and, of course, to prepare good lectures. Pupils often develop much less sensible scales to rank each other, so this could create some useful competition for pupils who feel the need to rank each other. School marks applied by a teacher seldom accomplish this but that does, of course, not mean that teachers shouldn't assign marks; there could even be dependencies between marks assigned by pupils and marks assigned by teachers. The pupils could, for example, evaluate lectures according to different qualities, like speech, presentation, research, moderation and adaptation to audience and a teacher could use that evaluation as input for assigning marks, while remaining free to ignore the evaluation. The grades for qualification could be 8, 9 and 10 (in the german system), or whatever you consider adequate.
Q: Isn't the eighth grade too early for this?
A: Few pupils in the eighth grade would already qualify but the few who did could be allowed to try, in individual school subjects and under tuition and in the custody of assistant teachers, of course. If the rules for being allowed to learn independently were sufficiently draconic pupils wouldn't risk their freedom for the usual pranks and with sufficient verification of success pupils wouldn't get harmed by staying out of class while too inexperienced to learn independently. The effect would be that classes would shrink and the teachers would have more time to teach the remaining class. Also the pupils would notice that the class is shrinking because some of them have progressed and are allowed more freedom. That would be a strong positive motivation to follow. Classes could also be allowed to vote here because the ensuing discussion could also be very educational and reveal some insights for the teachers. Pupils who tried to use their elbows too much would need another lesson about Kant's Categorical Imperative and, maybe, some practical case studies.
Q: Another frequent problem is that pupils get bored in school. Can pupils be motivated better before they are qualified to leave classes?
A: If you put 20 to 30 pupils in the same room with a single adult as the sole supervisor pupils learn that there is much time where the teacher is busy and there is no obligation to do anything useful, often there isn't even an assignment, except listening. Assistant teachers from higher grades can participate in lessons were group work is possible or where the teacher needs additional supervisors. A good motivation for the assistant teachers would be that a bad assistant could be returned to the class system him - or herself. Assistant teachers could also verify homework before, during or after a lesson.
Q: Sometimes pupils lack a challenge, either very good pupils or pupils who found out that they don't have to strain themselves in order to get through school with sufficient marks?
A: You could counter this trend early if you allowed pupils early to pick up individual topics they cared about and to leave their classes in the corresponding subjects, possibly for a limited time and with an assistant teacher to mentor the effort; they could work separately or in groups and prepare lectures on a topic in school and outside school. A pupil or group ahead of the class in knowledge on that specific topic, could then hold lectures on the topic in several consecutive lessons on the subject, or in specific courses that could also be attended by other classes and teachers. This could include creating and verifying homework exercises and giving individual explanations to pupils who needed them. It would also be an early possibility for a teacher to keep track of the disposition of a pupil in the role of a teacher. An important side effect would be that young pupils who lectured about their favorite topics could learn to be teachers early. With assistant teachers to deal with troublemakers and secondary tasks and, at least for some of the time, pupils to hold the lectures the teachers would have much more time to care for and to observe the quality of the education of individuals and also to keep track of their disposition and social behaviour, which could be seen as an important goal for a teacher. A qualification to be allowed to prepare lectures would be that a pupil has shown sufficient understanding of the current topic, while the rest of the class needs more lessons on the current topic.
Q: What qualifies to leave regular classes?
A: The qualification for leaving regular classes would preferably contain the three conditions that somebody has learned to educate him - or herself, can solve conflicts by him - or herself and has understood Kant's Categorical Imperative to a certain degree. You might also require somebody to have been an assistant teacher to lower grades already. Somebody who doesn't strive to gain these additional qualifications would just remain in the regular class until grade 10 and not be admitted to the Gymnasium (german for college/university preparatory high school) without voluntary repetition of grade 10.
Q: What is the idea behind having pupils as assistant teachers beyond having more but less qualified teachers at little to no cost?
A: The actual teachers have more time to be pedagogues instead of being mere lecturers and the pupils that become teachers learn responsibility for others and they learn to be teachers. You might want to promote the latter by assigning a distinct group of pupils to each assistant teacher for an extended period of time where he or she is partly responsible for their education. Having at least one pupil that is, at least, three years older, one assistant teacher from the graduating grades and at least one teacher of choice (not necessarily the class teacher) as clearly stated contact persons and mentors for each pupil could also be a goal that would promote community. Choosing the class teacher as a contact person/mentor might be an indicator for lack of socializing, as the class teacher is a kind of contact person by default.
Q: How do you encourage people to learn independently?
A: A possibility is to make intentional mistakes. These can lead to previously designed proof by contradiction situations or simply contradictions in knowledge. Sometimes finding such mistakes could require knowledge that has not yet been tought, so finding such a mistake would indicate that a pupil is educating him - or herself successfully. When the class reaches a given standard of knowledge such mistakes would have to be resolved openly, of course, if no pupil discovered the contradiction. This is quite similar to the news item on biodiesel made of cats. Every sane adult knows it doesn't make sense to feed gras to a cow, kill the cow and feed it to a cat and then kill the cat and feed it to your car when you can grow rapeseed instead of gras but if you meet somebody who doesn't get it you have to educate him or her, not ignore the person. Of course this is sometimes refused by people who don't want to be lectured but that can be resolved if you are any good at mediation. If you are not, educate yourself. Accepting knowledge from others or accepting the need to discuss convictions is another useful attitude that needs to be tought in school, together with the skills to verify the offered knowledge. Very little of this happens in a lesson where the teacher transfers mere knowledge to moderately bored pupils. A possible strategy is to teach two classes opposing models on a topic where both are half true and half made up, but consistent, and then let them resolve the issues in small groups and a following podium discussion and record the podium discussion so that the recordings can later be discussed in lessons about rhetoric, social skills, logical fallacies, and democratic procedures. Pupils who don't need to discuss the erroneous models because they already saw through them ahead of time could be silently hired by the teachers as mischief-makers and promote erroneous combinations of the models. You might want to forget about the school bells for arrangements like this and announce an undetermined end, maybe followed by lessons that can be dropped entirely, with the teachers of that lessons joining the event. Rigid time schedules can be taken too far. The recordings of podium discussions could also be made available to parents.
Q: In this manner there might be much less time for the accumulation of knowledge?
A: Knowledge alone isn't that valuable. The important skills in the information society are locating, verifying, discussing and applying knowledge. Even though that sentence didn't mention ethics it should be obvious that ethics precede all of those. Also your teaching strategies are often inefficient because your pupils are badly motivated and forced to progress at the same pace, when they could be much more efficient once they have mastered self-motivated learning at their own pace.
Q: Germany has a system of courses instead of classes after grade 10. Is this compatible?
A: You could allow pupils to gradually leave classes and learn self motivated. A pupil might leave the class only for some school subjects at first, where he or she is especially qualified to learn self motivated and some courses could, of course, be useful past grade 10. Languages, sports and applied ethics might be more suitable to be tought in courses, and, of course, courses can be organized as lectures held by teachers alternating with lectures held by pupils, too. A pupil free to choose might still prefer to attend a different lecture, even one of a different grade, or do some research in the library instead.
Q: Keeping track of the individualized education of a pupil could get difficult?
A: If you have a formal collection of all the preconditions in knowledge a pupil might need to have to follow a lecture every lecturer can post the preconditons for a lecture ahead of time and pupils will know what preconditions they meet. You can also categorize lectures and courses by the knowledge areas they are intended to cover and require pupils to have attended lectures or courses that cover a sufficient amount of a knowledge area to be allowed to apply for an exam in that area. Every pupil could keep an individual diary of his or her education for this purpose, which could also contain autodidactic and extracurricular education.
Next Page: User:Fasten/Education2
- ↑ Which had only just been introduced as a new elective subject (similar to the new mandatory subject ethics in Berlin today)
- ↑ The idea behind this concept is sometimes claimed to be analogous to university lectures to prepare students for university. The relevant skills for university are, however, self-motivated learning, the ability to analyze and discuss knowledge and to educate others, which the course system does not address by itself. The illogical claim is typical of the YHVH language and translates to "What you want is to prepare students for university; now what is it you need to do - and it is not ... a system of courses that resemble university?". A further hint that this is a valid YHVH statement is the apparently underlying believe in the power of vague analogies.
