Not if they are punished for it, and students in America are routinely [edit: punished] for any attempt to learn outside the confines of a narrow curriculum. Students routinely lose points for answers that are not based on what they were taught in class, even when their answers are correct and their techniques are logically sound. A student who is bored in class will be in big trouble if they skip class and spend their time learning independently.

The problem is not that students do not wish to learn, but that our education fails to prioritize learning and actively discourages it. A student who wants to learn will be just as poorly served by the education system as a student who has no interest in learning. The only students who succeed are those who have mastered the art of compliance, as the primary purpose of American education is to produce compliant people.

As a public school teacher, I strongly disagree with your opinion. I suspect your opinion has been formed based on a relatively small sample size. I'm sorry your experience was poor, but you simply don't have to data to implicate tens of thousands of schools.

I do agree with one tiny piece of it, however: the biggest crime you can commit in an American public school is insubordination. No amount of intelligence or work ethic will save a student who refuses to do (or stop doing) what faculty and staff ask.

I don't disagree with this policy because it's a simple matter of safety. My school employs slightly fewer than 200 faculty/staff. We have over 2000 students, most of whom are physically stronger. If students won't do what we ask them, it gets Lord of the Flies in a hurry.

Such a blatant attempt to muddy the waters of the discussion does not help your position.

I've been teaching CS for more than 15 years; the brilliant but unconventional student is literally who I work with all day. betterunix's choice of language brings to mind many dozens of students I've taught over the years.

It's the "I'm smarter than them and I can see the Game is bullshit but they get rewarded for blindly following orders and I get in trouble if I want to learn" trope.

(Apologies to betterunix if I've misjudged you, but I've seen it SO MANY TIMES I'm probably not wrong.)

The thing is, yes, some of what students are being asked to do in public schools is bullshit. I try to minimize that in my own classroom, and I literally teach seminars to other teachers trying to convert them as well.

But basic compliance is absolutely necessary. Your average public school is not a police state. Asking students to complete a worksheet, even if it utterly lacks value, is not a violation of their fundamental human rights, and you are not a brave free-thinker for "standing up to The Man."

Schools absolutely DO NOT make a goal of "produc[ing] compliant people." It's just that the average student must comply in order for public schools to work at all. And if that's in place, then we can try to actually teach something worthwhile.

Basic compliance is necessary for what? Here you are, claiming that the goal of school is not to produce compliant people, yet you claim that compliance is "absolutely necessary" in a school. You are claiming that time-wasting assignments with no educational value are a necessary thing for students to work through, because at some point you might be able to teach. How about just skipping the things that you admit are pointless, and just teaching?

"the average student"

If you are willing to acknowledge that some students are different from others, that some students have different needs than others, why not grade talented students differently? If you have a student who has clearly mastered the material of the course, to the point where your assignments and lectures are just wasting their time, why not give them an A and then teach them more interesting / advanced material? Why demand that students who are not in need of your instruction be just as obedient as those who would be lost without you?

"You are claiming that time-wasting assignments with no educational value are a necessary thing for students to work through."

I am absolutely not saying that. I had hoped your reading comprehension was better than that.

I said: "asking students to complete a worksheet, even if it utterly lacks value, is not a violation of their fundamental human rights." I stand by this statement. Note that I am not in any way advocating time-wasting assignments.

Time-wasting assigments may indicate a poor teacher. However, refusing to do them and/or skipping class is more a reflection on the student than the system.

Regarding your final paragraph: there are a LOT of assumptions there based on how you think I run my classroom. You have assumed incorrectly at almost point. I do literally everything you suggest in my classroom.

Edit: here's evidence of that from a couple of years ago [1]

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2093221

Now, as for my reading comprehension, the way I read what you wrote is this: students should do as they are told because compliance is necessary for a school to function, even if they are told to work through a time-wasting assignment. I am still not sure that is the wrong way to interpret what you are saying. What I see in your comments is the idea that it should be entirely the teachers' responsibility to ensure that students are learning, and that students should just do what their teachers command regardless of whether or not they actually learn anything from it (feel free to correct me if this is not your view). Thus a student who does not bother with pointless exercises that have no educational value is just as wrong as the teacher who gave those exercises, regardless of whether or not the student is learning in lieu of doing their official assignments.

For what it's worth, if I had you as a teacher back in high school, I probably would have done well, at least based on what you said elsewhere.

Except for when you said I "approach school like prison." :)

"On the other hand, I am not sure how you can defend the idea that a student who fails to complete a time-wasting assignment should be punished, which is what you seem to be saying."

In my opinion, a student who doesn't complete a time-wasting assignment ought to expect to receive a grade of zero on that assignment. I think either fewer or more consequences would miss the mark. I'm not sure if you would consider this "punishment"; I would not.

I think we're missing each other because we're using the same words but with different definitions.

I don't consider failing to complete a worksheet (time-wasting or otherwise) to be a matter of compliance. Notice that in my original comment I used the word "insubordination", which is important.

(I do think that there's a place for requiring a specific method. When I give my kids programming assignments, I sometimes restrict how they're allowed to complete the program. If I say "You must use a while loop", and the kids uses a for loop, there's no credit, even if a for loop would be better. I gave you this assignment because I want to MAKE SURE you can solve it using a while loop. Sometimes my curriculum requires me to make sure you can solve the equation using "completing the square" even when other techniques might work just as well. I think I'm justified in not giving points if you don't complete the square.)

I'll use a different example: in my school, hats are prohibited by dress code. (This is a dumb rule.) If I am walking through the halls and see a student wearing a hat, I ask him to remove it. If he removes it, we are good. He has "complied" with my perfectly legitimate request. If he refuses to remove it, we have a problem. He is insubordinate, aka "non-compliant".

I maintain that this sort of compliance is ABSOLUTELY necessary. I don't make very many outright demands of my students ("Johnny, I need you to sit down.") but when I do they damn well better comply.

Now, as I've said, I much prefer to let natural consequences rule the day. But some students want to break rules and then ALSO avoid the consequences of those rules, and that's what I object to. It's like, you understand that Rosa Parks was arrested, right? She didn't just refuse to move to the back of the bus; she also gracefully accepted that she was going to get arrested for it, too. And that's why civil disobedience works.

In the case of a "completing the square" worksheet, I think it's justified to not award points for getting the correct answer if the method wasn't what was specified. If my curriculum prescribes that "students must demonstrate mastery of solving equations using completing the square" (which would be a bad curriculum, agreed) and you refuse to demonstrate that you can do that, then I can't in good conscience award you points. And if you're a dick about it, then we may have an insubordination issue on top of it.

So it's not as simple as just ensuring students are learning. Sometimes we're required to make sure they can get their answers in a specific way.

To give a real example from my classes: I think object-oriented programming is WAY overrated. But I have to teach it. When I do so, I apologize to the kids for making them do it, because OOP doesn't make sense for the small programs they're using it on. Using OOP for a 50-line program is almost always BAD design.

But when I ask kids to write Tic-Tac-Toe in an object-oriented way, and they turn in a perfect but non-OO solution, they get zero points. And if they try to argue with me about it, then we're getting into disrespect territory.

I suspect that this is what happened to you. You got into a lot of power struggles with teachers. (Those teachers were probably also bad teachers, which is only partly related.) Then you got tired of fighting about it and just started skipping class. But you didn't hate the curriculum, just the methodology.

So, to deconstruct: "Thus a student who does not bother with pointless exercises that have no educational value is just as wrong as the teacher who gave those exercises, regardless of whether or not the student is learning in lieu of doing their official assignments."

A teacher who gives exercises with no educational value is the most wrong.

(Important caveat: you probably are not a perfect judge of which exercises have educational value, because 1) you had a bad experience, 2) some of your teachers were bad and treated you badly, so even if the assignments were okay in and of themselves, they were received badly, and 3) you didn't do some of them anyway. Like, who knew that eating kale could improve your eyesight? You'll never know if you don't eat it.)

A student who cares about learning is better than one who doesn't, even if one does assignments and the other doesn't.

A student who doesn't care about learning but completes assignments anyway is probably slightly more likely to succeed than a student who DOES care about learning but refuses to do classwork. This is a shame, but statistically true.

Always remember that Rosa Parks would never have accomplished anything if she had run from the cops.

And finally, for what it's worth, I have the following sign posted in my classroom:

The Best Students in my Class

* Ask questions until they understand deeply * Want knowledge more than grades * Accept consequences gracefully for their choices * Don't quit (They have grit.)

Universal, portable public education vouchers, payable to any educational institution the parents select. (A portion of the standard voucher could be payable to the parents themselves if they wish to homeschool and can maintain a satisfactory inspection record. I wouldn't complain if such an inspection regime were very strict: it's public money.)

Some public schools would close overnight; they would literally empty the instant that their customers had any choice at all. Others would struggle for a few years before either closing or improving. Other public schools would have to add staff and buildings. Some private schools might grow more selective. Other private schools might just grow. We'd also see online providers expand and innovate, which will be good news for those who spent high school in their own lockers.

The top-down thing hasn't worked, and even TFA agrees with that. It's time for the people at the bottom, the customers, to have a choice.

The problem with your analysis(IMO at least) is that you believe that learning and doing well on tests are mutually exclusive. While i do agree that these tests do direct students on a direct "compliant" course that does not in any way mean that those student striving to do well and if so learning by themselves would go in opposition to these exams. If anything learning on the side should only make these exams more mundane as they are a "minimum requirements" exams.

Students learning on there own and striving to do better is never punished. Saying they are punished would mean the answers they are provide are technically right but graded as wrong.

All I have to speak of on this are my personal experiences but i was never in a situation where my provided answer was counted wrong even if i used a different method as taught. Unless the specific exam was to test a particular method, in which case it would be given points taken off yes, but I believe thats warranted.

The problem i believe you are speaking to is strict adherence to specific exam related curriculum. In which case I completely agree that this is the wrong direction to go, but at the same time I dont believe a student wanting to learn or learning outside of school would be negatively effected by these exams.

Also i am in no way saying a student should ever skip school to learn on there own.

Well I am a counterexample to that statement. I was punished year after year because I spent my time learning instead of doing my homework.

"Saying they are punished would mean the answers they are provide are technically right but graded as wrong."

Yes, that is exactly what happens, especially in math courses. Answers that are not only technically right, but which show a serious of logically consistent steps leading from the question to the answer, but where the steps diverge from what the teacher taught the student to do, are often marked as "wrong" or worse still, marked as "right" but with a point taken off for using a different technique. It happened to me on more than one occasion, and it happened to friends of mine.

"Also i am in no way saying a student should ever skip school to learn on there own."

Why not? If the goal of school is to educate students, does it really matter if a student attends class to learn or skips class to learn the material on their own? Does it make a different if a student skips class to learn, and then comes to the teacher outside of class to ask questions? Why is sitting in a classroom so important that we must punish students who fail to do so?

You were punished for not doing your homework, not because you spent your time learning. Just because you made these two things coincide for you does not mean that they have to.

For your second point yes this is a problem, but its more a problem with the teachers then what was mentioned in the article. And as i pointed out in my previous comment this depends on what the teacher is testing over. If they just want you to get the right answer(which is usually not the case) then yes it is wrong to count of for using a method other then what they taught. But if they are testing you over the method that they taught then yes you should get points taken off.

IMO this directly depends on the level of schooling. If you are in college and you are paying for your education you should have every right to come when you want. But at the same time if its part of the teachers grading is attendance then you as a student have the choice to ether follow it or not. You should be required to attend classes.

If you don't need to go to class to learn then go take all the ACT's and SAT's you want and get yourself into college without them and stop whining. Otherwise go to school.

You always have a choice.

After one particular social studies class, in which I had finished all the work, I opened my reading book. In our English class, you read any (approved) book you wanted to and took comprehension tests afterwards. You accumulated points and you had a goal to meet as one particular assignment (e.g. reading skill level of X meant you had to score 300 points, whether you got that in 10 books or 50 that was your choice). I reading that book and got a silent lunch for it. Apparently the correct response to finishing all your work early was to do nothing for that particular teacher. For the other teachers in that same group (math, science, English) reading your book was the approved thing to do after you finish your work.

Assuming, of course, that the volume of homework is sufficiently low to actually leave time or mental energy for anything else. I am not sure that is something that we can just assume, although I will admit that I did not really bother to find out how long my homework would have taken in middle school. Really though, the punishment for not turning in homework is handed down regardless of whether or not students spent their time on something with more educational value, and that is what I think is wrong here. Doing your homework is more important than learning; if doing homework coincides with learning, that's good, but there is no requirement of that or even any consideration of the possibility that the homework might have no educational value.

"If you don't need to go to class to learn then go take all the ACT's and SAT's you want and get yourself into college without them and stop whining. Otherwise go to school."

Of course, colleges also demand to see your high school transcript, and top schools will reject students whose high school GPA does not meet a certain threshold, so what you seem to be portraying as a student's choice is not much of a choice at all. High school grades can have consequences years later; when I was an undergrad, I went to MIT to ask about their graduate program, and they stopped answering my questions as soon as I mentioned what college I was attending. I had top marks on the SAT and SAT II exams, but without a report card to back that up I was not accepted to a top tier university. I am by no means alone in this; I met plenty of other people like myself in college, and this sort of story can be heard elsewhere.

It is not a matter of whining, it is a problem with the approach we take to education. Students who "play the game" get ahead; learning the material is secondary and on its own it gets students nowhere (on the other handing, forgetting the material at the end of the academic year or gaining the minimal understanding needed to receive a high grade is not punished or discouraged). Disobedience means closed doors, regardless of whether or not a student has mastered the curriculum they were supposed to be taught. If this sounds like the rest of life, well, that is exactly the point of school right? To prepare students for life -- both by teaching the skills needed to survive, and by teaching students to abide by the rules of the system they will be expected to live in.

Yes indeed. Part of school is socialization. You say it like it's a bad thing.

"if doing homework coincides with learning, that's good, but there is no requirement of that or even any consideration of the possibility that the homework might have no educational value."

Do you really believe that the teachers aren't trying to make the homework useful? That they are just trying to waste kids' time? Do you know any teachers as an adult?

No, teachers are not trying to waste students time with homework, at least not that I am aware. Yet that does not mean that the homework cannot be a waste of time for a student. The problem is that in a typical American school, a student whose time would be wasted on homework will be punished for failing to do that homework. Homework may have no educational value for a student who already understands the material, but such students are generally expected to complete the homework anyway. The penalty for not doing homework is given regardless of the educational value of the homework; hence a student who has top marks on every exam/written assignment, who is tutoring other students in the class, can still receive low or even failing grades.

I have a lot of sympathy for you, as a student who did as little homework as I could get away with or a little less. Lucky for me that exams were more important back then. I might have more trouble nowadays.

Well sure; people overcome all types of adversity to learn, produce, and excel in the world. A child from the ghetto may strive to succeed and go on to be a chess grand master, this does not mean that we should go building more ghettos to produce chess grandmasters.

Learning despite misguided education policies will occur, but it's not a legitimate defense against criticism of the policies.

So some kids don't have adequate "drive" or motivation. Should they be dismissed because of it? They are kids! Some kids need more encouragement and support, and we should be helping them succeed (truly succeed, not be socially promoted), not saying "well you aren't trying hard enough, you deserve to fail." Do not worry- they will get that plenty as an adult. The purpose of school is to prepare kids for adulthood, we shouldn't be dismissing them because they aren't prepared already.

Another bone I must pick with your 'they they don't want to learn' argument comes in the form of an experience I had repeatedly while in school:

    Sequoia: I understand and have memorized the formula, but WHY does theorem XYZ behave thus?
    Teacher: Sequoia, that's a great question, but I've got 30 other students I'm trying to just get to the baseline- I really can't devote time to advanced discussion of this topic when some kids are struggling to just pass the test.

Yes, I could have looked it up on my own but that's not an argument for school- I could look it up on my own without school. Saying "go learn it yourself" is tantamount to saying we don't need schools.

EDIT: Changed double quotes to single to make clear that I'm paraphrasing "...any student who wants to learn will learn. Students have to WANT to do well ...over the last few decades this drive to do well has pretty much evaporated." with 'they they don't want to learn', not quoting directly. Sorry jug! The other uses of double quotes are legitimate: I'm not ascribing the statements to anyone in particular.

Basically, rote learning is undervalued by a lot of education experts. It's a great foundation for higher-order learning. The problem is, when you learn by rote you don't really learn why. It's a good hack to build a foundation, but it isn't worth much by itself.

If No Child was getting kids up to a baseline, which created a foundation for later learning, it would be OK. They'd be able to read, write, and do arithmetic, which would let them tackle the big questions later on. Unfortunately, it's just a stepping stone for more rote learning. Most of them are never going to learn to use their knowledge in a flexible way (solving difficult unseen problems with it), they are just going to memorise the basic steps required to pass the test.

It's like trying to build a house out of nothing but a foundation.

"Well sure; people overcome all types of adversity to learn"

My post does not even remotely touch on diversity, not that its not a worthy discussion as far as education goes its not what i am speaking about.

"Learning despite misguided education policies will occur, but it's not a legitimate defense against criticism of the policies."

I never once defended the current policies, in fact i specifically said "Our schooling systems have there faults, large ones"

This I have the most issues with, you even made up a quote about me.

"So some kids don't have adequate "drive" or motivation. Should they be dismissed because of it? They are kids! Some kids need more encouragement and support, and we should be helping them succeed (truly succeed, not be socially promoted), not saying "well you aren't trying hard enough, you deserve to fail." Do not worry- they will get that plenty as an adult. The purpose of school is to prepare kids for adulthood, we shouldn't be dismissing them because they aren't prepared already."

We SHOULD encourage our kids and we SHOULD support them, thats my whole point. You mis quoted me saying "well you aren't trying hard enough, you deserve to fail.". This could not be further from what my whole post was about. My post had nothing to do with trying, it has to do with wanting. I also NEVER said that anyone "deserve to fail", what im saying is that our kids should be allowed to fail, to know what its like to fail.

"The purpose of school is to prepare kids for adulthood, we shouldn't be dismissing them because they aren't prepared already."

Passing students who have not learned what they need to is not preparing them for adulthood, its doing them a disservice by putting them into a situation they are equipped to handle all in the name of being politically correct.

"Another bone I must pick with your "they they don't want to learn""

Again you miss quote, miss represent and say exactly opposite of what im trying to say. So i will ignore the entire rest of your argument.

>> "My post does not even remotely touch on diversity"

Neither does the grandparent. Adversity != diversity.

Your first sentence is a little awkward in that light.