Miseries of School: An Ongoing Anthology of Accounts, True and Fictitious

[sknox]

Agreed, Dave. One of several reasons why I taught college and not high school is exactly because in college I was free to each according to my own lights. That was changing just as I retired. Nick o'time.

I don't believe in adapting to a student's learning style. One of the more important things I learned as a student was to recognize different teachings styles and how to adapt myself to them. It made me a better student.

 

[sknox]

I had a good experience. High school. One fine day, some way into the semester, the history teachers (or were they government? It's been a very long time) took some of the students aside (teachers from two different classes). They put on a movie or something and took a handful of students, fewer than a dozen, into a separate room. They chose their words carefully, but the message was this.

We are going to teach you some stuff. We can't teach everyone. Some are unteachable, some are simply uncooperative. Rather than try to find a way to teach everyone the same way, we're going ... effectively, show movies all semester ... teach them differently from how we teach you.

From that point on we learned what I imagine to be something like Advanced Placement Political Science. It's the only class I remember from that year. For the most part, my classes were a waste of time simply because I refused to participate. I knew it was a farce. To prove it, I graduated with a 1.9 GPA. Hah. I sure showed them.

I hope personal anecdotes is what the OP was looking for.

 

[Dave]

I was speaking more from the point of view of being an ex-school governor and the husband and father of teachers. When the UK brought in the National Curriculum in the 1990's and a heavier emphasis on Maths and English teaching the format was very prescriptive and the instructions were to use particular methods only i.e. one hour of reading at a set time in the morning and reading and writing taught using phonics. What works for one student is not a one size fits all, and good teachers know this very well. They should not be straitjacketed but allowed to do their jobs. Some of the best teachers at the school I was a governor simply retired and the school began to suffer following that.

My own school memories are a little dim and distant. I was bullied and my only memory of that really was when I finally summoned up the courage to face my bully and to fight back, I was the one who got the cane.

However, I think many of these very poor experiences in England that have been written about, come as a result of the Second World War. All of the most useful men either went off to war or worked as engineers in the factories. Those left to teach were men who had been broken, physically or mentally, by the earlier Great War. My father was taught during this period and I often listened to his stories with horror. (Children made fun of by teachers because they couldn't read. Books deliberately thrown across the classroom at children's heads.)

Women, on the other hand, did not have to suffer any of that. Girls Schools had some of the brightest women as teachers because it was one of the few occupations women were allowed to take up, and they did not lose their best teachers to fight in the war.

 

[Dave]

Just to add, I'm sure that kind of school experience is exactly what Roger Waters drew upon when he wrote "Pink Floyd's: The Wall." The imagery shown in one segment of the film, to the tune of "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)," is of a surrealistically oppressive school system in which children fall into a meat grinder, while singing "We don't need no education, We don't need no thought control." I do remember that my Biology teacher was vehemently disgusted with that song, and he saw it as an attack, not only on the whole teaching profession, but also as a personal attack on himself.

 

[Extollager]

I hope personal anecdotes is what the OP was looking for.

Yes, yes: one's own, those of persons known to oneself, published accounts in nonfiction writing, and even published fiction such as that of Dickens!

 

[Extollager]

Just to add, I'm sure that kind of school experience....

Here's Blake's "The School Boy"

I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,-
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn through with dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring!

O father and mother if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care's dismay,-

How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?

 

[Parson]

Just as good people can come from bad parents, so can good students come from bad schools. It happens all the time. Even more good students come from mediocre schools. In the end, it's more about the student as an individual human being than it is about institutions or even about teachers.

Sorry to be a spoil sport here, but although the above is true. It is not usually true. For example in New York students in the public school read and do math at level less than 20% of the time. At the Success Academy, which intentionally takes the students from the worst of the neighborhoods have students working at level above 95% of the time. And these schools are located right inside the public schools. The differences are STARK!! The Success Academies are regimented to an almost unbelievable degree. They are clearly very successful, but one of the criticisms of the Success Academy is that they don't make enough allowances for students to "learn in their own way." --- Letting each teacher and each student find their own way is a recipe for disaster for the vast majority of the students. I would suggest that if you want that kind of teaching we should do away with schools entirely and let each family decide for themselves how they will teach and what they will teach. ---- I doubt that works out any better over all.

If you are interested in Success Academy including some of the most valid criticisms you can listen to this podcast. Actually it is several episodes, but you can pick and choose. I would definitely listen to the first one. StartUp

 

[Scookey]

Worse than school, I narrowly escaped misery expulsion in my final year at uni. The Dean (who else to possibly play fire with) was at the front desk, bending over a student's work in front of me, top of bald head facing me... Well, what else could a conscienscious student do but polish it?
I wasn't rude enough to make contact but he somehow noticed the motion and looked up, to see my very best ever poker face. Got away with it, just....

 

[sknox]

>at level
This is the phrase that gives me trouble. At level? Human beings have levels? To me, that flies in the face of what it means to be human.

 

[Parson]

>at level
This is the phrase that gives me trouble. At level? Human beings have levels? To me, that flies in the face of what it means to be human.

That is the standardized test terminology attempting to quantify what would normally be considered appropriate ability and understanding for a child of a certain age.

But for a more clear definition of how these schools are failing: More than 50% (in some schools near 90%) of those inner city graduates of a none demanding elementary and secondary education in New York are functionally illiterate. Meaning that upon graduation they cannot understand and fill out things like job applications or pass a drivers test and other basic things like that.

Wonderful philosophy of education is of no use if the people who are raised under it cannot function adequately in a technological world.

 

[sknox]

>normally be considered appropriate ability and understanding for a child of a certain age.
Exactly! Be considered by whom?
It appears to make sense when it says "a child," but let's try it with "every child"
... appropriate ability and understanding for every child of a certain age.
Because that's what standardized tests are predicated upon--that *every* child ought to be at some level, that is materially and meaningfully different from some other level.

"Adequately" is also problematic. People live in a technological world (they always have, but let's leave that aside). They function. Some function better than others. There's a whole array of reasons why this happens.

In any case, I wasn't putting forward a philosophy (not a pejorative word). I made the observation that not all children are the same and not all progress in lock-step. That's an observation.

I suspect there's no quick agreement to be had here, so I'm going to duck out--@Parson is welcome to a final retort, of course!--and let this thread go back to its OP (original purpose ... noice)

 

[Hugh]

This isn't a memory of real misery at school as such (though like most I can provide some personal reminiscence), but my first days at kindergarten have always intrigued me...

Age 4 @1956. I was decidedly unhappy at being left there by mother, and at having no choice in the matter. For the first two days I remained resolutely standing at my place by the long table refusing to sit down or participate or interact in any way. On the second day the teacher became a little worried because another small boy had decided to follow my lead. On the third day (I think it was probably the third, and not the fourth or fifth) there was a turning point: the class were issued with plasticene. This interested me and I sat down and began to participate. This involvement was commented on by other children, but the teacher quickly shut them up in case I were to change my mind.

My parents remembered this differently. On my return home on the second day I assured them that I had sat down and I was backed up by my friend who lied on my behalf, but we were found out. After some discussion my parents decided that some action needed to be taken and my father took me into another room and hit me on the behind with his slipper. I don't remember this as painful as much as a loss of dignity. My parents have always thought that this physical punishment resulted in my cooperation at the kindergarten. I on the other hand have always felt certain that the punishment was irrelevant, that I only started to cooperate the moment I noticed something that was actually interesting.

 

[sknox]

I have two anecdotes that together explain why I graduated high school with a 1.9 GPA (then went on to get a PhD ... not that that proves anything other than an adequate supply of Sitzfleisch).

1. Fourth grade. At the beginning of the year I was in Portland and was doing so poorly the teachers called for a teacher conference. This was in 1959 when such things were comparatively rare. I was a student with potential, they said, but I wasn't living up to it. I didn't much care; I just remember anxiety and frustration in my parents.

Now it's the end of the year and I'm in Medford. We moved *a lot* when I was in grade school--my dad played in night clubs; two weeks here, a month there. Anyway, it's end of year and I'm getting mostly A grades and doing so well that they put me in a special advanced class for fifth grade (Anaheim, by then).

The thing is, I'm like ten years old and I smell bullsh*t. I'm the same kid. I'm not working any harder than I had been in Portland. The whole parent conference thing made little impression on me. The only thing that had changed, I saw, was the school. I have a clear memory of realizing that this grading and failing and advancing stuff was arbitrary at best, nonsense at worst.

2. High school junior. Back in Portland, where I managed to go two entire years at the same school. One day, some career advisor wonk comes to class to tell us about college. Blah, blah, blah; I'm doodling, which is what you do when you want the teacher to think you're taking notes. I remember a grand total of one thing from the blah.

Community college.

The wonk is talking about how important it is that we do well in high school, work hard, get good grades. And he mentions that there are these things called community colleges where there is no minimum GPA requirement.

Aaaand, we're out.

I just stopped even pretending. I did the stuff that seemed interesting, or where the teacher somehow managed to motivate me, but in the end I decided that none of it mattered. And it didn't. The year after I graduated high school, I paid cash money to a community college and immediately got straight A's for the first two years. Because college made sense to me. It was actual learning. It was not what I had been doing on my own, which was finding-out-a-bunch-of-stuff-about-a-bunch-of-things. Learning was a discipline. And different fields had different disciplines. Some fit, some didn't. It was great.

But the taxpayers wasted a good deal of money on me up until then. There's not an institutional reform that could have touched me. All I did was learn the basics, which could have been learned most anywhere and certainly learned in half the time. When I got older and read about how compulsory public education developed, I went yeah, of course, that explains it.

end of anecdotes

 

[Extollager]

end of anecdotes

Thank you for anecdotes. That's what I hope to see lots of on this thread.

 

[nixie]

This thread has made me think of teachers.
There are only two teachers from primary school whose names I remember.
Miss Brown, my very first teacher who on discovering I could read put me straight onto free reading and brought in Enid Blyton's Secret Seven so I wouldn't be bored by the Peter and Jane books.

Then when i was about nine there was Mr Gallagher, who had the knack of bringing history to life. He rarely used books he'd sit on his desk and tell stories, he'd also occasionally get the class to act out scenes.

 

[Extollager]

I'll bet I moved around comparably to you, sknox.

Around age ten, I began to read comic books & to draw my own. It seems to me that, for the most part, teachers allowed me to draw these comics; I wasn't disruptive, got acceptable grades, etc. A math teacher in 6th (?) grade confiscated one of my home-made comics, but I don't think he was too tough on me about it. During 6th grade I discovered Marvel comics and Tolkien and Star Trek premiered. These things became enormously important to me, confirming my creative efforts (the home-made comics, etc.) and confirming to me that the written word, in library books, could be a tremendous source of satisfaction. Probably these things contributed to my development of vocabulary, etc.

For the most part -- this is my impression -- the school figures neither commended my private activities nor censured them. That is, they were largely passive towards me. Conversely, I was largely passive towards the school; I virtually never rebelled, indeed accepted almost everything I was told and that I was told do to. It doesn't seem to me that I was forced to do a lot of stupid stuff, or told a lot of things that I could see weren't true, etc.

This sort of thing probably helped to shape my sense that, to a considerable degree, many kids just need to be left alone -- or at least, that this was true of kids of my generation, growing up without computers, smartphones, etc. Indeed, I grew up with limited TV, in the sense that there was just one TV channel where I lived -- with NBC programming. A friend's family had cable, but I don't think it ever even occurred to me to ask my parents to get it. By and large, I was content with what I had, not only as regards TV, but as regards things I owned, things to do, etc. I was more or less content with school.

In my 9th grade year I learned about Fandom, after letters of mine to several Marvel comics were printed (with full addresses, as was the custom then). Fandom -- almost entirely something, for me, conducted through the mail -- became, one could say, my center of gravity, or anyway very important. As regards school, fandom reduced the importance school might otherwise have had. Again, my teachers and even most of my fellow students seem to me to have been mostly passive about it, not censuring it or being intrigued by it. I drew a lot (not necessarily for fanzines) during school hours and read a lot; I'd have been the kid with some Ballantine, Lancer, or Ace paperback that he was carrying around and reading in slack moments, of which there were quite a few, it seems; hence I wasn't much bored by school.

So -- I don't think of myself as having been very miserable at school -- certainly not as compared to a friend who had stayed behind when I moved, just before 9th grade. I think I would say that, rather, I realized how much less happy I had sometimes been formerly, when I reached 12th grade, and especially when I graduated. But I don't remember a time ever when I dreaded going to school.

I do seem to remember dreading that I was going to see a horrible movie, around 7th grade. The science teacher had got hold of some movie that, I think, was made by the Shell Oil Company. It was about tropical diseases such as yaws and elephantiasis. My memory is uncertain, but I think I could hardly bear to watch -- though I liked "monster movies." Does anyone here remember such school movies? It seems kind of strange to me that the teacher got away with showing this, although I don't remember any of the kids seeming to have been traumatized.

 

[Parson]

I suspect there's no quick agreement to be had here, so I'm going to duck out--@Parson is welcome to a final retort, of course!--and let this thread go back to its OP (original purpose ... noice)

No retorts. We simply disagree and have likely had different experiences that shape our view. My experiences as a teacher were that the more I let people direct their own learning the less they learned of the subject I was required to teach. And I suspect nondirective teaching is a significant reason so many inner city schools fail to educate so many of their students. ----- back to the thread's purpose.

 

[Dave]

My experiences as a teacher were that the more I let people direct their own learning the less they learned of the subject I was required to teach. And I suspect nondirective teaching is a significant reason so many inner city schools fail to educate so many of their students. ----- back to the thread's purpose.

I certainly think that people learn better when they have to discover those facts and principles for themselves rather than learning by rote. If they are enthusiastic about a subject the learning will be deeper and they will retain it longer. I'm also a great believer in life-long learning. I don't think adults should stop learning after school. Higher education is about giving people the tools to learn independently and that should start much earlier if we want to educate more of the population who stop learning after leaving school.

However, we need to differentiate between elementary Maths and English where learning by rote and direct teaching to a class of very young children certainly has a place, and is possibly the only way to do that in practise; and with secondary and higher education where that kind of teaching doesn't always work, and some kids will be sitting looking out of the window instead. Young children are not able to direct their own teaching, while older children could be taught to. However, as I said earlier, one size does not fit all.

There has been much talked about in the UK regarding our schools performances in Maths and English versus those in China, where the learning is much more structured and directed to a much older age. We are being told by "experts" that we need to be more like China. There have even been TV programmes with failing UK students being sent to China. However, my daughter taught EFL in China. We went to visit her, I have visited a Chinese school and have seen teaching taking place in a Chinese classroom. The brightest and best students are sat at the front of the class and ask all the questions and perform well. My daughter was told not to bother with the students at the back of the class; that they didn't matter. This would never happen in a school in the UK. There were no special schools or remedial classes. and my personal experience leads me to dispute that "expert opinion" is valid.

 

[Extollager]

Parson and Dave, as original poster I'd say your comments immediately above might be better placed in the thread complementary to this one:

Why Is School the Way It Is?

I hope you don't mind my saying that -- it's not that the comments aren't valuable, just that I'm hoping the emphasis of this particular thread can be on "anecdotes" (in life & in literature), so that it becomes a kind of anthology that de-emphasizes commentary on education.

 

[Parson]

Parson and Dave, as original poster I'd say your comments immediately above might be better placed in the thread complementary to this one:

Why Is School the Way It Is?

I hope you don't mind my saying that -- it's not that the comments aren't valuable, just that I'm hoping the emphasis of this particular thread can be on "anecdotes" (in life & in literature), so that it becomes a kind of anthology that de-emphasizes commentary on education.

No problem. And I think I should apologize for responding to what I thought was a flawed philosophy being presented. (Parson bites his tongue, he wants to say more but doesn't.)