I had an extremely unusual k-12 education - homeschooled in a very rigorous fashion the entire way. There was a very specific curricula, a hard start time, along with specific hours for specific tasks. My mother has a bachelor's degree and taught at an old-fashioned private school prior to my birth. Each specific hour was for a particular subject, with some % dedicated to lecture(ish), along with some % for seatwork. So even for homeschoolers, I was unusual in this discipline and educator's background.
So. I judge that my education's implementation was neither "Chinese" nor "American (British-ish?)" (I quote these words, because I don't know that they are adequately representative). However, I think that the conceptual precepts were much closer to the "Chinese" approach. Education and learning were expected. For instance, it would have been completely inappropriate and unacceptable for me to:
- complain about clothing (I did not have clothing requirements - if I had gone to a school with a uniform, so long as the clothing was functionally adequate for the weather, it would not have been acceptable to moan about fashion).
- complain about having no say in my education. In time, I got the chance to co-design my curriculum on the elective level, but not taking Math (as an example) would have been unacceptable and not up for discussion.
- Not doing assigned work. I was expected to complete the day's assignments. Interestingly, my school day finished at around 2pm (started at 8), with the rest of the day for assignments and my own time. The goal was understanding, not memorization (beyond the obvious facts that need remembering).
- complain about dullness. There was no conception that entertainment (i.e., fun) was part of the purpose of education. It was - in a hazy and unforced way - my duty and obligation to learn. Learning was the entire orientation; if it was dull, it was dull: sucking it up and moving on was the way to go.
A portion of how I was taught was entirely along the lines that the maths teacher (Mr. Zou) delineated:
. When I first introduced Pythagoras's theorem, I decided to let the students find the proposition, prove and apply the theorem. That process is an important feature of maths teaching in China.
But a lot of students said they found it unnecessary to prove Pythagoras's theorem - knowing how to apply it was enough.
Understanding the essence of the problem was a key component of the situation. Simply turning the math (or grammar, or history) crank and having an answer falling out was not considered to be a "good" way of going, and to perform at that level was to be only adequate. It was not the expected level - the expectation was to understand the material enough to build the equation. Learning in depth was normative, not unusual. This is very important to understand. I was not pulled out of school because I was gifted and talented. I was placed into homeschooling because my parents judged that the public schools of the area were inadequate to deliver an adequate education, which includes understanding the causes of the knowledge.
This expectation of in-depth understanding was then fed into the process of curriculum selection and analysis as I shifted into "high school" grades. As I prepared for college, my parents and I cooperated in building my coursework and knowledge base. In this I believe we sharply diverged from the "Chinese" model, as I was given broad freedom to learn on my own outside of the non-elective areas.
Fundamentally, education in my youth years was part of the appropriate process of growing up and becoming a fully formed adult. Not having a deep education was simply out of the question.
I think - given my experience - that the "Chinese" have a much better handle on how to educate. Let's dissect this -
I'm used to speaking my mind in class, being bold, giving ideas, often working in groups to advance my skills and improve my knowledge.
The basic question here is - are the student's ideas worth hearing ? If the student's ideas were that good, perhaps they shouldn't be in the class. I recall very distinctly group work/group grading in college. I did not go to that class to be graded by my classmates - they were equally ignorant as I was! I wanted to learn from someone who knew what they were doing! But this also presupposes that the teacher also knows the subject adequately. Learning doesn't have to be unpleasant, but it's better to learn unpleasantly than to remain blissfully ignorant.
It looks like you were brought up with Western education and Chinese style discipline. I had much the same education as you, sans the discipline. And my father growing up had the discipline without the education.
So I find it a bit odd that you then say "I think - given my experience - that the "Chinese" have a much better handle on how to educate."
Going through point by point:
- complain about clothing
Discipline. Chinese.
- In time, I got the chance to co-design my curriculum on the elective level
Education. Western.
- Interestingly, my school day finished at around 2pm (started at 8)
Education. Western.
- The goal was understanding, not memorization
Education. Western.
- complain about dullness.
Discipline. Chinese.
The basic question here is - are the student's ideas worth hearing ?
Actually, that is rather besides the point. Being able to discuss ideas, go out on a limb, work well in groups, etc are important skills. Providing feedback to the teacher is critical in a group setting. Even incorrect ideas put forward by a student can get the other students to really think about the topic.
I would say, rather, that I was brought up on principles that emphasized discipline, along with intellectual freedom and curiosity. The implementation of this emphasized discipline as I was a young child, then shifting towards freedom as I got old enough to have useful impact on curricula development. Neither of those precisely map to the US or the Chinese norms.
"it would have been completely inappropriate and unacceptable for me to" "complain about dullness" "Learning was the entire orientation; if it was dull, it was dull: sucking it up and moving on was the way to go."
The learning was the primary orientation in my education too, but apart from mental discipline training happening with "sucking up and moving on", I wonder - wouldn't have been best if the process have been more tailored to my capabilities as a child? It's like optimizing for the underlying platform, making it less wasteful (on energy consumed on concentration).
Looking back, I think we could have heavily optimized towards what is called today 'gifted and talented' in some areas of my education. That was kind of out of our world at that time. I particularly recall drills in math and recapitulating the same subject year after year (this was entirely the design of the curriculum - Saxon Math "Original"). It's important to note that I pursued other interests after schoolwork was done, and it was usually wrapped up by 3pm after 4th grade or so. This gave me, in effect, hours of self-teaching when I got interested in a subject (or hours of Legos, fooling around outside, and reading fiction). I self-taught DOS, QBASIC and C++, for instance. It was undirected, so not as fast and as thorough as a good curriculum, but it did serve. In general (maybe 90% of the time?), however, I liked school, outside of the part where it wasn't letting me play. My mother generally chose intellectually challenging curricula (one particularly notable example would be the US history course - 3 separate curricula combined into one, one each from conservative, centrist, and progressive viewpoints), upon which I found some meat to entertain my mind.
What I can attest to strongly is this: my k-12 teaching was far closer to college and the work world than anything I've ever read about from US public schools.
Your home schooling was already then, as I come to understand it, (at least in some regards) a very good implementation of optimized teaching. This lets me with the conclusion that some of the didactic material will just remain dull for someone regardless of the effort involved from the teacher's part.
Comments
I had an extremely unusual k-12 education - homeschooled in a very rigorous fashion the entire way. There was a very specific curricula, a hard start time, along with specific hours for specific tasks. My mother has a bachelor's degree and taught at an old-fashioned private school prior to my birth. Each specific hour was for a particular subject, with some % dedicated to lecture(ish), along with some % for seatwork. So even for homeschoolers, I was unusual in this discipline and educator's background.
So. I judge that my education's implementation was neither "Chinese" nor "American (British-ish?)" (I quote these words, because I don't know that they are adequately representative). However, I think that the conceptual precepts were much closer to the "Chinese" approach. Education and learning were expected. For instance, it would have been completely inappropriate and unacceptable for me to:
- complain about clothing (I did not have clothing requirements - if I had gone to a school with a uniform, so long as the clothing was functionally adequate for the weather, it would not have been acceptable to moan about fashion).
- complain about having no say in my education. In time, I got the chance to co-design my curriculum on the elective level, but not taking Math (as an example) would have been unacceptable and not up for discussion.
- Not doing assigned work. I was expected to complete the day's assignments. Interestingly, my school day finished at around 2pm (started at 8), with the rest of the day for assignments and my own time. The goal was understanding, not memorization (beyond the obvious facts that need remembering).
- complain about dullness. There was no conception that entertainment (i.e., fun) was part of the purpose of education. It was - in a hazy and unforced way - my duty and obligation to learn. Learning was the entire orientation; if it was dull, it was dull: sucking it up and moving on was the way to go.
A portion of how I was taught was entirely along the lines that the maths teacher (Mr. Zou) delineated:
Understanding the essence of the problem was a key component of the situation. Simply turning the math (or grammar, or history) crank and having an answer falling out was not considered to be a "good" way of going, and to perform at that level was to be only adequate. It was not the expected level - the expectation was to understand the material enough to build the equation. Learning in depth was normative, not unusual. This is very important to understand. I was not pulled out of school because I was gifted and talented. I was placed into homeschooling because my parents judged that the public schools of the area were inadequate to deliver an adequate education, which includes understanding the causes of the knowledge.
This expectation of in-depth understanding was then fed into the process of curriculum selection and analysis as I shifted into "high school" grades. As I prepared for college, my parents and I cooperated in building my coursework and knowledge base. In this I believe we sharply diverged from the "Chinese" model, as I was given broad freedom to learn on my own outside of the non-elective areas.
Fundamentally, education in my youth years was part of the appropriate process of growing up and becoming a fully formed adult. Not having a deep education was simply out of the question.
I think - given my experience - that the "Chinese" have a much better handle on how to educate. Let's dissect this -
The basic question here is - are the student's ideas worth hearing ? If the student's ideas were that good, perhaps they shouldn't be in the class. I recall very distinctly group work/group grading in college. I did not go to that class to be graded by my classmates - they were equally ignorant as I was! I wanted to learn from someone who knew what they were doing! But this also presupposes that the teacher also knows the subject adequately. Learning doesn't have to be unpleasant, but it's better to learn unpleasantly than to remain blissfully ignorant.
It looks like you were brought up with Western education and Chinese style discipline. I had much the same education as you, sans the discipline. And my father growing up had the discipline without the education.
So I find it a bit odd that you then say "I think - given my experience - that the "Chinese" have a much better handle on how to educate."
Going through point by point:
- complain about clothing
Discipline. Chinese.
- In time, I got the chance to co-design my curriculum on the elective level
Education. Western.
- Interestingly, my school day finished at around 2pm (started at 8)
Education. Western.
- The goal was understanding, not memorization
Education. Western.
- complain about dullness.
Discipline. Chinese.
Actually, that is rather besides the point. Being able to discuss ideas, go out on a limb, work well in groups, etc are important skills. Providing feedback to the teacher is critical in a group setting. Even incorrect ideas put forward by a student can get the other students to really think about the topic.
I would say, rather, that I was brought up on principles that emphasized discipline, along with intellectual freedom and curiosity. The implementation of this emphasized discipline as I was a young child, then shifting towards freedom as I got old enough to have useful impact on curricula development. Neither of those precisely map to the US or the Chinese norms.
"it would have been completely inappropriate and unacceptable for me to" "complain about dullness" "Learning was the entire orientation; if it was dull, it was dull: sucking it up and moving on was the way to go."
The learning was the primary orientation in my education too, but apart from mental discipline training happening with "sucking up and moving on", I wonder - wouldn't have been best if the process have been more tailored to my capabilities as a child? It's like optimizing for the underlying platform, making it less wasteful (on energy consumed on concentration).
Looking back, I think we could have heavily optimized towards what is called today 'gifted and talented' in some areas of my education. That was kind of out of our world at that time. I particularly recall drills in math and recapitulating the same subject year after year (this was entirely the design of the curriculum - Saxon Math "Original"). It's important to note that I pursued other interests after schoolwork was done, and it was usually wrapped up by 3pm after 4th grade or so. This gave me, in effect, hours of self-teaching when I got interested in a subject (or hours of Legos, fooling around outside, and reading fiction). I self-taught DOS, QBASIC and C++, for instance. It was undirected, so not as fast and as thorough as a good curriculum, but it did serve. In general (maybe 90% of the time?), however, I liked school, outside of the part where it wasn't letting me play. My mother generally chose intellectually challenging curricula (one particularly notable example would be the US history course - 3 separate curricula combined into one, one each from conservative, centrist, and progressive viewpoints), upon which I found some meat to entertain my mind.
What I can attest to strongly is this: my k-12 teaching was far closer to college and the work world than anything I've ever read about from US public schools.
Your home schooling was already then, as I come to understand it, (at least in some regards) a very good implementation of optimized teaching. This lets me with the conclusion that some of the didactic material will just remain dull for someone regardless of the effort involved from the teacher's part.