Finland is consistently top in the world in reading, maths, and science. They also don‘t educate the way most other countries do.
#RosiThornton #Unschooled #education #finland #freethechildren
Butterfinger I agree with all your posts and quotes. I'm a teacher and I would stay till I died if I'd be given the freedom to teach students instead of bowing to government. I love Socratic seminar and STEM (student lead) but those tests, that determine my livelihood, are always there. The older I get, the more I enjoy learning new ways to teach and less I worry about my job. My scores are fantastic because I lean toward student lead inquiry based learning. 5y
GingerAntics @Butterfinger I bow to your courage. I think any chance I had of deciding to work in the K-12 world died when I read Free to Learn, and this is really just confirming for me that I‘ve made the right decisions. I grew up without all the tests and did just fine. We moved right before high school to a state that couldn‘t test enough and even I could tell you I wasn‘t learning anything and the tests were a waste of time. 5y
GingerAntics @Butterfinger When No Child Left Behund was enacted and everyone had to start testing, I called it Every Child Left Behind. I know I can never bring myself to inflict pseudo-education on children and I know I will never let my own children (if I ever have them) have it inflicted on them either. You‘ve got the right idea. These folks in government that haven‘t been in a classroom since law school (back when women weren‘t allowed) need to butt out. 5y
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Butterfinger Absolutely @GingerAntics children need advocates, especially nowadays. I wish more would realize it - including the teachers. 5y
GingerAntics @Butterfinger that‘s a good word for it. Kids need advocates. If only we could get the old men in government to listen to the advocates, the people who work with kids, instead of assuming they know best. I refuse to vote for anyone who supports universal pre-k. 5y
Crazeedi The whole thing of teaching to the test is anathema. Teachers need the freedom from paperwork and tests to truly teach the children. A good teacher knows how best to reach each child, and a government that mandates has no clue. As you say children aren't being taught to think and how to look for answers to questions. 5y
Crazeedi I remember in elementary school my 6th grade teacher assigned a term paper to me! (As I was bored in the class) so I got to research and write and learned so much. 5y
Crazeedi That would never happen in an elementary classroom now 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi they don‘t write papers in high school anymore from what we can tell. It‘s amazing the number of students we get at the college level who don‘t know what a subject and verb are, who can‘t form a complete sentence. I had one kid who didn‘t know subject-verb agreement, when I tried explaining it, it turned out he didn‘t know what singular and plural meant. 🤦🏼♀️ 5y
Crazeedi @GingerAntics oh my goodness that is so very sad and tragic for our country, how can one think for self and make decisions and discover thing? I'm glad to know ther are teachers like you who care, it must be difficult jon 5y
Crazeedi @GingerAntics job, lol. I was given access to teachers library in elementary school, because I was way past the books in the regular one, and my teachers knew to challenge me when I was bored in class. So very grateful for the small public school I attended. Education needs to return to the local level and to the teachers who know their students. 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi I teach at the college level. After reading “Free to Learn” I know I can never move to K-12. I can‘t do that to kids. Teachers are so powerless now. If anything, we need to unstructure kid‘s days. Science proves this is better for them and for our future, but we keep structuring more and more. It‘s ridiculous. Even at my level, we‘re now paid by how many students pass our class. If you want to pay the bills, everyone passes. 5y
Crazeedi @GingerAntics so very sad. I'm sure you do an amazing job. I hurt for children who are not given the tools they need. 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi right now, that is every child in America. Free to Learn and this book both explain why. I think this one does a better job of laying out how the current form of education worked well for producing factory workers but is utterly useless as giving kids the tools to be successful in the post factory worker job market. 5y
Crazeedi @GingerAntics 😭 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi yeah, it‘s not good, but the people who make these decisions keep pushing education further and further into factory worker status because more and more kids stuggle to succeed in the world outside of school. They don‘t understand that they‘re going in the wrong direction, but they don‘t care enough to actually look at the science because they‘re too focused on “when I was a kid bla bla bla.” 5y
Crazeedi @GingerAntics those jobs are gone, and there will be a great struggle until people wake up and educators get back control so the children can be taught the skills they are going to need. Parents need to wake up and demand changes from the local officials and get political shenanigans gone!! 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi most parents know that politics needs to come out of schools (some like it though), but very few parents understand that the education they received is wholly insufficient for their children. Education has been the way it is since the industrial revolution. Most parents aren‘t comfortable with the idea that children should be guiding their own education and THAT is the only way to make students self sufficient and self motivated. 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi most parents are unaware that preschools are developmentally inappropriate for toddlers and actually dangerous to them and their futures. I‘d say 99.9% of people would outright reject the idea that their child should go to school everyday and choose what to do for the day instead of an adult or a politician. The idea that curricula need to be abandoned entirely is terrifying to people. It will never happen in the vast majority of schools 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi parents are more concerned with their kids doing what their peers are doing than letting their children develop naturally. It‘s perfectly natural that some kids will read at 4 and others won‘t do it until 9, and by the teen years you literally cannot tell a difference between the two kids. So a perfectly healthy child is thrown away into special ed and the early reader is actually held back from progressing naturally. 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi it‘s wholly unnatural, but most people don‘t care or can‘t accept it, so the children suffer, the adults feel the kids are getting too pampered, and everyone loses. 5y
Crazeedi @GingerAntics I couldn't agree with you more. So the ones who can excel are dumbed down, and the ones who need more help are ignored or labeled, which does nothing but give schools the money they vie for. My teachers taught each child according to their abilities, which was appropriate for that time. I didnt go to pre k or kindergarten, but i was more than ready to start school 5y
Crazeedi @GingerAntics mainly because my parents allowed me to read, and because I was given time to be a child I learned other lessons as well. How do we solve this. Is there no one in positions of influence that understands? Or are they playing fast and loose because it's all about money. Chaching, chaching?? Local local local is absolutely imperative. Children carry labels forever, and they are diminished instead of encouraged. 5y
Crazeedi @GingerAntics a radical change is needed. And sadly I don't see that happening. 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi it‘s all about money, of course. Schools want kids in their rooms because they get money for each individual kid. The tests are all contracts, so people are making money. Politicians are getting kick backs for all of this. There is no incentive to change this, unless parents just stop sending their children to schools that are part of this ridiculous system. The system will not change until parents stop buying into the current system. 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi I don‘t see it happening either, because WAY too many people believe in this system. They might disagree with all the testing, but that‘s the only part they don‘t like. They don‘t understand or care about the damage being done to students and their futures. 5y
Crazeedi @GingerAntics the money being raked in by the testing conglomerates is immoral. It is a crime against or children. 5y
GingerAntics @Crazeedi the entire system is multiple, simultaneous crimes against our children. I agree with you on that. 5y
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