Text 7944, 161 rader
Skriven 2006-09-08 22:39:00 av Robert E Starr JR (8413.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Orion CEV...Apollo St
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* * * This message was from Charlie Edmondson to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * *
*
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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@MSGID: <4501e7c1$1@news.cadence.com>
@REPLY: <0001HW.C127194B03E049C5F0407530@news.verizon.net>
Amy Guskin wrote:

>>>On Fri, 8 Sep 2006 12:30:05 -0400, Charlie Edmondson wrote
> 
> (in article <45019a8d$1@news.cadence.com>):
> 
> 
>>Carl wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"Charlie Edmondson" <edmondson@ieee.org> wrote in message 
>>>news:45004e23@news.cadence.com...
>>>
>>>
>>>>Carl wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>My daughter goes to a school where every teacher is given a school 
>>>>>supplied cell phone and every teacher is reachable to any student until 
>>>>>10 PM.  The kids are expected to have every single assignment done ON 
>>>>>TIME.  If they're having difficulty with a problem they can call the 
>>>>>teacher and either go through the problem with the teacher then or make 
>>>>>arrangements to spend some time outside of class to go over the problem 
>>>>>after class.  No homework, no credit.  My daughter missed one assignment 
>>>>>her first year.  Her grade dropped form an A to a C because of one missed 
>>>>>assignment and she had to work like crazy to get her A back.  She hasn't 
>>>>>missed another assignment. The teachers almost always pass back the 
>>>>>graded assignments the next day.
>>>>>
>>>>>If a student is in any extracurricular activity, they are expected to 
>>>>>maintain a B average or better.   If their grades drop, they must stop 
>>>>>the activity.  Every kid is expected to take a foreign language.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Ah, yes, as a student this would be my idea of hell... ;-)
>>>>
>>>>I was a very different student than the 'typical' student.  I hated 
>>>>homework, and thought it the stupidest thing on the planet. "If you 
>>>>couldn't learn it during the school day, what will doing 50 identical 
>>>>problems help?"  And, since I typically got it the first time, I was just 
>>>>spinning my wheels doing all that 'stuff', so I didn't do it!  I still got 
>>>>A's on all my tests, so why should the teacher care?  I personally see all 
>>>>this present emphasis on homework as more of a "Make the parent think we 
>>>>are doing something" effort, than a teach the kids something effort.
>>>>
>>>>And, if I had been required to take a foreign language, we would have had 
>>>>a Columbine in the '70s!
>>>
>>>
>>>I have to confess that I hated homework and found school pretty easy too. 
>>>That was part of the problem; the school could have pushed me harder and 
>>>given me something challenging enough that I couldn't breeze through it.  I 
>>>took AP courses... but those were voluntary and I oculd just as easily not 
>>>bothered if I wanted to.
>>>
>>>For most kids it's not just the actual homework; the discipling of doing it 
>>>that also has benefit.  It's easy to breeze through HS, but I knew a lot of 
>>>freshmen in college that suddenly had to learn new study habits.  Some 
>>>didn't.
>>>
>>>Homework also allows a teacher the opportunity to judge how much a student 
>>>is struggling much earlier.
>>>
>>>I'd much rather annoy bright kids with a little extra work than just let 
>>>kids do as much as they feel like doing and risk letting them fail.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Ah, but instead of annoy the bright kids, what you do is p-o them, so 
>>that they refuse to study, they become depressed, and you get columbine, 
>>or any of several other problems as these kids decide to focus their 
>>energy elsewhere.  I didn't get a choice as to whether I took AP 
>>classes, they either assigned me to them, or they didn't.  I was happy 
>>that I DIDN'T get the AP geometry class, as the teacher there was in the 
>>'reams of homework' division, which would have flunked me.  I was glad 
>>to be in all the AP English classes, where they at least got a chance to 
>>teach me something I didn't already know (I was reading at a 12th grade 
>>level in 3rd grade...)  I spent my time in AP chemistry correcting the 
>>teacher when she mis-spoke, and generally drove her crazy.
>>
>>But, I also had ROTC, Chorus, and Speech to keep me occupied, so no 
>>fireworks errupted! <<
> 
> 
> To attribute the events of Columbine to smart kids being forced to do dumb 
> homework is a gross simplification, at best.  I was a smart kid, tested 
> outside the bounds of everybody else's IQ in the school repeatedly, reading 
> at an insanely young age, etc. etc., and hated doing homework.  And often 
> _didn't_ do it.  And was smart enough to make up plausible excuses (the 
> difference between the smart kids and the rest is that the smart kids can cut

> class and not do homework and _not_ have it cause them to flunk out).  But 
> because of the structure of the school system at the time, I didn't have a 
> choice: homework was part of the curriculum, so it still was assigned to me, 
> no matter how much testing proved I didn't need it.
> 
> But -- and here's the important part -- I didn't come into school with guns 
> and kill my classmates and teachers.
> 
> If a child is getting their emotional and intellectual needs met elsewhere --

> home, the library, the internet -- and is generally healthy and well 
> adjusted, doing homework meant for "the IQ 100s" isn't going to make them 
> freak out and embark on a killing spree.
> 
> I ignored that the first time you suggested it, Charlie, even though I found 
> it offensive and not very funny.  But the fact that you repeated it tells me 
> that you seem to think there's a real point there.  I'll have to respectfully

> disagree with you on that.
> 
> Amy
> 
Ah,yes, Amy, but I didn't JUST mean homework...

That is a part of it, and like you said, I was ASSIGNED homework even in 
the dark days of the 60s and 70s, but generally, I either did it during 
class (or the next class) or ignored it.

But, the homework issue is just part of things.  Like I said, I also had 
ROTC, Chorus, Speech and a lot of other useful things to occupy my time. 
  One of the things that I have seen is the substitution of homework, 
assignments, and other 'required' classes and activities, so that kids 
don't have electives like music, art, etc. to keep them out of trouble. 
  Now, I caused plenty of trouble during my high school years (even my 
senior year when I was officially a Jesus Freak) but for some reason, 
the PTB never knew about it (or at least, that I was involved!)

And I am sorry that you find the fact that there are CAUSES for school 
violence, and that some of them are the alienation of kids in our 
schools.  Our schools are more and more sterile indoctrination centers, 
where any mention of values (Christian or otherwise!) is anathma (sp?) 
and where meeting artificial test scores and performance appraisals are 
much more important than actually learning things.  Instead, we 
substitute meeting 'standards', assigning huge reams of homework to 
teach 'discipline' and otherwise go into little circles making 
meaningless noises for actually teaching students that, there are things 
worth knowing and worth doing for their own sake, and not just because 
"We told you to!"

So, I don't apologize, not on this one, to you or John.  I didn't mean 
it for humorous hyperbole, I was being honest.  I know what I would have 
been capable of back then if I had gotten seriously p-o'd.  I didn't own 
guns, and didn't make explosives, basically because I didn't feel the 
need.  But I do empathize with some of these kids, and the hassles they 
go through.  I was just more creative...

Charlie
                        
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