Thread: The loss of basic skills in school

Originally Posted by Jimbo

And since I lecture maths and stats, there aint no way they can take my notes down on a computer during lectures.

Perhaps you should teach them LaTeX? Also, capacitive touch screens with a stylus work wonders.

Maybe I'm a bit biased. I co-own a company that develops and implements educational technologies.

Originally Posted by geauxtig3rs

Perhaps you should teach them LaTeX? Also, capacitive touch screens with a stylus work wonders.

Maybe I'm a bit biased. I co-own a company that develops and implements educational technologies.

My grad students get taught it; for undergrads it is a waste of my time in all but a few cases. And even if I did teach them LaTeX I really do doubt that they'd be able to keep up during a proof, for example. Maybe it's just me, but even after 20-odd years using TeX it still takes me longer to type it than it does to write it. And then you have the extra complications of the "best latex editor" wars (tricked out Emacs is undoubtedly the winner, but people insist on muddying the waters....).

I am not having a go at you, but how exactly is a touch screen with stylus in any way different (in a physical sense) to a student actually taking notes with a pen and paper? Yes, their notes become electronic (assuming you have decent recognition software that works with math - a very big "if" and if you know of one that does not require copious post-conversion fixing I would love to hear about it). However, they then spend the next 2 hours fixing the recognition stuff-ups, during which time they have either forgotten or lack the wherewithal to deduce the correct equations anyway!

I do agree that technology is advancing, and that there is an onus on teachers and academics etc to move with the times to accommodate and incorporate these technologies into the "learning experience" for students. However, there is also an onus upon the students to accommodate and incorporate the teaching methods of the "knowledge facilitator" into their armoury of learning skills.

It is my firm belief that the student/teacher relationship, particularly at University but I guess the same thing applies to a lesser degree at school level, should be a partnership. It is not necessarily an equal partnership and nor should it be - I have (and still do) worked hard and invested a lot of effort to obtain the knowledge and skills I possess, meager as they are. In my mind it is not the end-product of that process that was and is important - anyone can read what others have found out. No, what is important is the journey because in that journey you discover how you as an individual think and learn and take on information and resource yourself, and all the actually important stuff. Today's "google it" generation are given the destination and they miss out on the journey. And that is a sad indictment of both today's society and the educational system we have allowed to develop - money is all that matters, vocational degrees abound, learning for learning's sake is a quaint ideal.

My concern is what will happen to the tertiary eduction system once the "google it" generation become the academics. It is already happening. Just last week a representative from a text book company ( I have 400 students in my first year course, so I am the target of a lot of "representatives" - Universities are a lucrative business!) sent me a copy of a text and a link to a website containing the "worked solutions" to all exercises in the book. Every lecturer using this book, he said, gets free access to the solutions! My question is why do they need them? Time? - I take my job seriously and as such I am not about to just regurgitate someone else's solutions without checking them first; Ability? - if you are teaching a maths or stats course at university and you need worked solutions, perhaps you are better suited to go somewhere where your lack of skill will not be such an issue - the Finance sector, for example.

Anyway, don't get me started or I may just go off on a rant and no one would want that! lol

James.

They will only feed the ones they need. They will only educate the ones that they can control. Education today in the United States is undergoing some strange change. Education in the trades is almost nonexistent. Secondary education is only aimed at college entry that in most cases only ends in a life of monthly payments for an education that no business is willing to pay for. There's something wrong with this picture and it's not on a iPad.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

My grad students get taught it; for undergrads it is a waste of my time in all but a few cases. And even if I did teach them LaTeX I
......

Hmmm it is possible to read LaTeX in some cases where
a text book is Greek. It might teach or bridge from
Ω to English. It is the rare student that gives one Ιι
let alone two. Yet it might only make one or two μ's difference
in the long run.

RE: Loss of basic skills.

Handwriting is an important characteristic of our psychological makeup. Handwriting experts can tell much about your personality just by analyzing your handwriting.

I am a trained calligrapher and fully realize how spiritual handwriting can be. Handwriting is an art form in and of itself. It is becoming just as much of a lost art as straight razor honing. Only a scant few of us still appreciate it. Go here for beautiful writing: Folio 320r The Burnet Psalter. University of Aberdeen.

Cursive is nolonger being taught in US schools which is further evidence of the incompetence of the so-called educators running our school systems. We might also note how the US is falling in the world education rankings. My daughter is a teacher and she feels as though her hands are tied by the administrators.

Evidence abounds....................

Jerry

I'm with Jimbo. Pen and paper are still the best for taking notes.
When it comes to taking classroom notes, laptops and tablets create more problems than solutions.

Latex and other tools are useful afterwards, when you are going over your notes and turn them into understandable summaries in whatever manner you deem best for your personal study. I still did that with pen and paper, but that was onyl my preference. Latex would work there.

But for quickly taking notes, scribbling graphs and pictures and whatever in real-time, nothing beats pen and paper, unless you have an electronic equivalent which allows you to do the same, with only the added problems that are inherent in consumer electronics (data loss, theft, battery issues, software hangs, etc)

Basic skills?

If the powers that be wanted folks well educated they would make it so. Ignorant folks are easily manipulated, believe what they are told and do as they are told. They don't question. That is exactly what is wanted and that is exactly what you get.

Originally Posted by mrsell63

RE: Loss of basic skills.

Handwriting is an important characteristic of our psychological makeup. Handwriting experts can tell much about your personality just by analyzing your handwriting.

I am a trained calligrapher and fully realize how spiritual handwriting can be. Handwriting is an art form in and of itself. It is becoming just as much of a lost art as straight razor honing. Only a scant few of us still appreciate it. Go here for beautiful writing: Folio 320r The Burnet Psalter. University of Aberdeen.

Cursive is nolonger being taught in US schools which is further evidence of the incompetence of the so-called educators running our school systems. We might also note how the US is falling in the world education rankings. My daughter is a teacher and she feels as though her hands are tied by the administrators.

Evidence abounds....................

Jerry

I have mixed thoughts about cursive...
I can see why some schools want to transition to a keyboard
and ignore cursive. Yet I have been playing with an iPad recently
and the lack of a keyboard is a problem.

I can see touch screens changing schools back to cursive
on a stylus. Block letters would tap and wear the screen
when flowing cursive would be less damaging.

In ten years we will be moaning about the loss of keyboard skills.

After-all 60 wpm on a keyboard is almost common. Pen and paper
less than a third of that. The spoken word up to 140 wpm by a good
news reader. Electric keyboards top out about 120wpm.

Sadly the real bugger is computer science that teaches MS Word, Excel
and the like.

Like with everything else, I am late to this discussion. But as a high school English teacher of 15 years in a pretty good large suburban high school, I do feel I have some perspectives to offer. A few things I've noticed over the last few years:

-True, more and more students don't read or write cursive (really a problem when I'm leaving cursive feedback on essays and such)
-Student handwriting now is atrocious; teaching penmanship seems to be a thing of the past.
-Students are worse spellers than ever (even the smart ones!). I have actually heard one of the leading elementary ed. leaders in this region tell a class of teachers in advanced writing workshops that "We've got to honor their invented spelling." I kid you not, that is actually a concept in education now. What a cop-out! Then I'm still stuck with their "invented" spelling as high school seniors about to go out into the world. They can copy and paste like pros, however. I had more plagiarism this year than I have in the last 14 years together.

I remember 10-15 years ago when technology was going to solve all our problems in education. It has definitely revolutionized the field, but as I often say, though students can access a dizzying amount of info. almost instantaneously now, you can't download wisdom...

Still, all hope is not lost. I still say, even near the end of another challenging school year, that some of the best, wisest people I know are teenagers. In a lot of measurable ways, schools are much better than they were when I was going to school in the 70's and 80's, despite what people hear all the time.