Grovelling apologies for the unfunny typo - I'll try for accidental
humour in future.
(Tho' the spillchucker archly informs me I got two words wrong there
- bloody murkin spelling I will not do).
I hear your pain. In my present final year Philosophy class, about
half the students should be there. The other half are ballast,
although they do provide the number to allow the class to run. They
range from one who is bright enough to be doing first year Philosophy
in parallel at the best University available here (at least the
toughest to get into) in an accelerated program to a couple who
simply have no idea what is going on. To have to explain Plato's
analogy of the Divided Line three times today in excruciating detail,
knowing that at least three students will never get it and four or
five are now bored witless is rather dispiriting. So when the smart
ones disappear behind their laptops and may be doing something
entirely different, I choose not to notice. I hate the waste of their
time though - at both ends of the spectrum.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 22/08/2008, at 7:34 PM, Moose wrote:
> Andrew Fildes wrote:
>> This being a High School, getting the useless sods to WRITE THIS
>> DOWN! was about the only hope of anything sticking on he way through.
>>
> First, thanks for the typo. I just noticed some in my last posts.
> Maybe
> it was better when my own posts didn't come through to me. :-)
>
> One of the things that has annoyed me for most of my life, and become
> particularly bad where I live of late, is the tendency to cater to the
> poorer students.
>
> The amount of repetition and boredom I had to live through in high
> school was appalling and depressing. An hour spent being forced to
> pretend to pay attention to the attempted dissemination of material I
> read and retained in the first few minutes was just painful.
>
> Not all classes were like that. What would today be called the AP
> classes were better. Chem was first rate and biology not bad. And I
> had
> one good and one simply outstanding English teacher. Still, the amount
> of time spent - wasted, sitting to repetition and crap was appalling.
>
> One teacher was cool. The State required one to take courses in
> American
> History and Government. Everybody took them and there was no
> separation
> of classes by academic capability. This guy couldn't let me skip the
> classes, but he did let me sit in the back and read or study other
> things, as long as I kept up with the work and did well on the tests.
>
> When I discovered that I was about to meet the State graduation
> requirements half a year early, I skipped a class to run to my
> counselor
> and get the paper work going. He tried to talk me out of it, talking
> about all the cool advanced stuff I could take. I couldn't believe
> it! I
> wanted OUT!! When I started Cal the next semester, I thought I'd died
> and gone to heaven. Sure, there were boring lecturers and silly
> classes
> where one could learn the whole semester's material in a couple of
> weeks. But you didn't have to go to them, just turn in the assignments
> and take the tests. And there were some great classes, including some
> that forced me to work seriously to keep up, which never happened in
> high school.
>
> To make sure "No child is left behind", we make sure that many
> children
> are left behind their potential
>
> A. Pissed Moose
>
> (No, I haven't been drinking.)
>
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