I either failed the test, or passed it. I imagine it depends on your point of view. The test results indicate whether you are officially approaching your good-until-date, your use-before-this-milk-carton-date, or – if you will – your expiration-date. Like age. Getting older. Old.
It’s a pretty simple exam. Sit down in front of the television, remote in hand, and settle on a program. If you cruise right past dramas featuring handguns and arrests, then bypass the forensic science shows, reality (of any ilk or invention), awards presentations, sports (or mock sports), cartoons, game shows, shopping channels, religion, or news (including the many offerings disguised as news…).
What’s left?
Presumably, my list overlooked something, but I’m imagining that the only thing remaining is the show that features someone on a stage talking to a group in a lecture hall. Sort of like eavesdropping on a classroom. Like a professor on a stage, in a spotlight, speaking in a normal tone in passing along information without trying to take orders for a product.
Ooops.
I passed (or failed) the age test by landing on the TED talks. I’d heard the term, but wasn’t really sure what it referenced. As it turns out, TED is Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The talks have been going on for years, but have been popularized by their availability on the internet.
If I have an excuse, may I claim John Legend? He was the host for the TED talk on education tonight on PBS, and as a thoroughly engaging singer/pianist, it was a part of the sugar that made the medicine go down. I say “part” only because I found the topic (and the guest speakers, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates) engaging.
My kids aren’t kids anymore. My only vested interest in US education is on behalf of my granddaughters. My opinion hasn’t changed from those years when my own were in the system.
There is no inference here that I have any answers.
All the rankings worldwide place the US waaaaaaay down the list on proficiencies regarding math, reading, and science education. There wasn’t really a debate, but I recall shooting my mouth off (I generally keep that part running, but the mental mechanics of age and accumulated wisdom have kept the mouth-backfires to a relative-minimal amount in recent times) while out to dinner with my son and one of his friends.
He might have been one of our friends before my musing on the US education system. I came away thinking I had shot my own friendship with him right out of the water. His field of academic study was education, and his aspiration – as I recall – was to become a teacher. I made some disparaging comments about American schools, teaching, and the apparent failure of the US system. Linear thinking, I said. And that was the final straw.
Our friend stood up and excused himself, polite to a fault. He expressed dismay that he couldn’t continue as a part to the conversation and left. It had to have been out of respect for the old geezer shooting his mouth off. Looking back, I imagine I would have been belligerent enough to get myself firmly involved in a heated debate. I respect him for leaving, if only for his ability to perceive that my ideas and conclusions were firmly entrenched.
I was questioning the system.
The reason that I’m recalling a simple chips-and-salsa-evening so many years ago is this: tonight’s TED talks program on education was focused exactly on my point. Something isn’t working in the schools. Hasn’t for a long time.
Some kids learn. Others drop out. One system fits all. Or mis-fits all.
Before our collegiate-buddy stood up and left, the point I was trying to make had to do with teachers. Not just the teachers, though. It was more about the way that teachers will either make the best of the situation or settle in to present information to be learned by rote. Here is the formula for US learning (in my opinion): Conclusions that are presented even before questions can arise.
I sell books, including mysteries. The only reason those mysteries sell is because the readers have a curiosity about who-dunnit. If each page included the sentence “So-and-so did it, please memorize this fact as you will be tested on it later,” I don’t believe I’d sell too many of them.
The media’s news providers have already figured this out. It doesn’t work to preach to the public what they “need to know.” News-users gravitate to locations that provide information that they “want to know.”
This blog has gone on entirely too long. Apologies.
I’ve failed (or passed) the age-identifier. The program was certainly interesting to me, in the same way I enjoy discussing authors and their works with my guests. People have told me, straight out: I like a book that entertains me and still lets me learn something.
People want to learn things. It makes us feel more intelligent. We all would love to be smart. Those two things aren’t exactly synonymous. We all know people who can learn more things a lot faster than we can. But we all can learn. Some of us learn more easily by visualization – some need a hands-on approach. Some have limitations. A few don’t suffer that handicap.
Watching the TED lectures tonight provided partial vindication for me. When it was finished I realized I wasn’t the only person who thought the public school experience was suffering. This isn’t an “I told you so” sort of essay. There’s no feel good aspect.
Our kids need to be able to read. They don’t need books from my store. There are the public libraries, Kindles, iPhones, and Nooks. Reading is the basis for education. Even if your field of endeavor is science or math, you gotta be able to read the book for its theories, facts, and equations.
There are great teachers out there, and I assume our friend is now one of them. They are the ones who realize that – sometimes – there is more than one correct answer to a test question, and when the parent argues the point with the teacher (who may or may not concede), it is just as much in defense of a student as it is an accusation against the system.
The Mentalist. CSI. Even as far back as Monk, using the curious-detective TV references as they keep our interest – the way the schools should.
In paraphrasing the quote from 17th Century English philosopher Francis Bacon: Regarding the truth, there is always one instance of the sign post that points toward it.
If those sign posts are those angular pieces of wood pointing road directions and suggesting mileage to the destination, it is easy to imagine them spun around in 360-degrees.
Still.
One degree must point to the truth. And the truth, I am still convinced, is that the US public education system, in general, continues to fail our children and grandchildren. Read to your children. Find a fun book and read it over and over and then… Ooops, here is the radical in me: Divert from the actual text on some page and make up your own next sentence.
If your child questions you at that point, then rest assured, you are doing a great job in your position as a teaching parent.
The soapbox is back in the corner, so come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street
Broken Arrow, OK
