Regarding today's youth as it relates to school...

[garyrc]

Garyrc,

Nice job. I can't recall ever hearing any preachers reflecting on existentialism. I wonder how popular this is with Christians in general?

Thanks!

 

That depends on the kind of Christians.  Existentialism got a bad rep among some fundamentalist/evangelical Christians because of the misconception that all existentialists were atheists.  Paul Tillich's theology has some existential elements.  I believe Martin Luther King Jr. did his doctoral dissertation on Tillich.  I'd guess that existentialism would be more welcome in the left wing of the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish faiths than on the right. 

 

Here is a quote from Wikipedia:

 

"Notable Christian existentialists

Christian existentialists include German Protestant theologians Paul Tillich and Rudolph Bultmann, British Anglican theologian John Macquarrie, American theologian Lincoln Swain,^[8] American philosopher Clifford Williams, French Catholic philosophers Gabriel Marcel, Emmanuel Mounier and Pierre Boutang, German philosopher Karl Jaspers, Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, and Russian philosophers Nikolai Berdyaev and Lev Shestov. Karl Barth added to Kierkegaard's ideas the notion that existential despair leads an individual to an awareness of God's infinite nature. Some ideas in the works of Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky could arguably be placed within the tradition of Christian existentialism.

The roots of existentialism have been traced back as far as St Augustine.^[9][10][11] Some of the most striking passages in Pascal's Pensées, including the famous section on the Wager, deal with existentialist themes.^{[12][13][14][15]}Jacques Maritain, in Existence and the Existent: An Essay on Christian Existentialism,^[16] finds the core of true existentialism in the thought of Thomas Aquinas."

 

There are some evangelical websites out there that would call some or all of the above non-Christian, but I think the Wikipedia article is pretty accurate -- but I'm no expert.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_existentialism

Edited April 30, 2015 by garyrc

[Paducah Home Theater]

Garyrc,

Nice job. I can't recall ever hearing any preachers reflecting on existentialism. I wonder how popular this is with Christians in general?

Thanks!

 

That depends on the kind of Christians.  Existentialism got a bad rep among some fundamentalist/evangelical Christians because of the misconception that all existentialists were atheists.

I still can't even figure out what it means in laymans terms because I'm dumb like that.

[mangofirst]

I created the material from scratch and taught a graduate-level engineering course for several years whose basic premise was the synthesis of engineered systems (as opposed to natural and human self-organizing systems--the subjects of biology and psychology/sociology). 

 

I found that there was a great divide in the students' abilities for individual students to abstract and think intuitively across multiple domains, like engineering, mathematics, finance, organizational and decision-maker psychology/sociology, advertising, competitive analysis, operations analysis/management science (OR/MS), and the target domain of the system from user/developer/evaluator/supporter standpoints. 

 

When the students were asked to pull together the concepts into a candidate set of top-level design views on a topic of their choice for an individual semester project, I found deep disconnects in understanding the material in an integrated way.  Some of the student difficulties fell along lines of personality (Myers-Briggs/Keirsey), the level of experience of the students in general (perhaps correlated to age), prior educational paradigms in which they were educated in (i.e., rote or algorithmic approaches vs. liberal arts vs. abstract/integrative methods), and even what part of the world that they were raised.

 

What I've found is something called "Bloom's Taxonomy" that relates the depth of knowledge of the educational material to the levels of use of the material by the student, the highest levels of which shows synthesis and judgment of other people's use of the material, and the lowest (beginner) levels exhibits "parroting back" of the material.  A Bloom's Taxonomy-like view is useful when discussing these type of "educational failures". 

 

I think that the people who decide what students should know and how well they should know it don't have much a clue as to how to do it, and exactly what outcomes they should have for each student, i.e., education as a system design.   Even if they did, they couldn't enact these educational system designs since they are not empowered to do so.  No one is in charge.

 

If you look at the U.S. Department of Education for instance or state school boards (a subset of the world educational views) and what they say that students should be educated to do, I think that you'll understand why there is so much thrashing on this general subject area: they never actually state what the outcomes/objectives of student education should be, only a poor set of quality factors like "equality of educational experience", "appreciation for the values of the community" (i.e., things that the parents should teach their children), etc--nothing that can be used to determine whether or not the educational system itself is performing as designed. 

 

We're focused on students and educational failures, but what we have is educational system design problems, IMHO.  No one can agree on what the students should be able to do/know/understand when they graduate.

I just can't even...this is just pretty much perfect, and what I've been saying (in a completely different, less concise, more roundabout way) since I started teaching. Well, maybe. In my dream world, students wouldn't go to English class, science class, history class, etc. if we want to foster the critical thinking lauded by the common core and most likely by whatever comes next, then subject areas should be integrated. If I had the time I would plan it all out, but what with all the other million things expected of a high school teacher from the district, from the state, and on and on, it's purt near impossible. So for now I just use every "teachable moment" that comes along...quick history, science, art, and music lessons...and very rarely math :-P oh and some logic and reason thrown in willy nilly.

[Chris A]

Too many good teachers nowadays have been retiring early, and others grow weary and burn out.  The problem seems to be that no one is actually paying attention to what our educational systems are doing to the teachers themselves.  If you take out all the fun and the magical moments of getting through to the students and fill up their day with a bunch of nonsensical tasks that are in the "have to" category, good teachers will eventually find other things to do with their lives than teach students. 

 

Watching kids fail that can't "keep up" and having their lives fall apart due to at-home and ED issues is also gut wrenching.  All the good teachers that I know in primary grades work in excess of 70 hours/week and have to use their own meager income to supplement to buy consumable teaching materials that the schools will not provide.

 

There is much room for improvement in our existing educational institutions.  At some point it will change but only if their existence is threatened by newer and more effective formats--and sometimes not even then. The courts are being used to stop the natural death of inner city schools which are completely dysfunctional.  These particular schools are ready to be replaced with much better functioning educational constructs that turn out a great deal more students whose individual educations will help them live better and more productive lives to break free of their economic constraints.

 

Chris

Edited May 1, 2015 by Chris A

[garyrc]

If you take out all the fun and the magical moments of getting through to the students and fill up their day with a bunch of nonsensical tasks that are in the "have to" category, good teachers will eventually find other things to do with their lives than teach students.

 

Exactly!

 

Paul Goodman was saying this about 35 years ago.  I certainly do not agree with him on every point, but a substantial amount of what he says about education is right on, and is more so today.  A small sample of his view of primary and secondary education can be found in Compulsory Miseducation, and on the college level, we have The Community of Scholars.

[oldtimer]

 

I created the material from scratch and taught a graduate-level engineering course for several years whose basic premise was the synthesis of engineered systems (as opposed to natural and human self-organizing systems--the subjects of biology and psychology/sociology). 

 

I found that there was a great divide in the students' abilities for individual students to abstract and think intuitively across multiple domains, like engineering, mathematics, finance, organizational and decision-maker psychology/sociology, advertising, competitive analysis, operations analysis/management science (OR/MS), and the target domain of the system from user/developer/evaluator/supporter standpoints. 

 

When the students were asked to pull together the concepts into a candidate set of top-level design views on a topic of their choice for an individual semester project, I found deep disconnects in understanding the material in an integrated way.  Some of the student difficulties fell along lines of personality (Myers-Briggs/Keirsey), the level of experience of the students in general (perhaps correlated to age), prior educational paradigms in which they were educated in (i.e., rote or algorithmic approaches vs. liberal arts vs. abstract/integrative methods), and even what part of the world that they were raised.

 

What I've found is something called "Bloom's Taxonomy" that relates the depth of knowledge of the educational material to the levels of use of the material by the student, the highest levels of which shows synthesis and judgment of other people's use of the material, and the lowest (beginner) levels exhibits "parroting back" of the material.  A Bloom's Taxonomy-like view is useful when discussing these type of "educational failures". 

 

I think that the people who decide what students should know and how well they should know it don't have much a clue as to how to do it, and exactly what outcomes they should have for each student, i.e., education as a system design.   Even if they did, they couldn't enact these educational system designs since they are not empowered to do so.  No one is in charge.

 

If you look at the U.S. Department of Education for instance or state school boards (a subset of the world educational views) and what they say that students should be educated to do, I think that you'll understand why there is so much thrashing on this general subject area: they never actually state what the outcomes/objectives of student education should be, only a poor set of quality factors like "equality of educational experience", "appreciation for the values of the community" (i.e., things that the parents should teach their children), etc--nothing that can be used to determine whether or not the educational system itself is performing as designed. 

 

We're focused on students and educational failures, but what we have is educational system design problems, IMHO.  No one can agree on what the students should be able to do/know/understand when they graduate.

I just can't even...this is just pretty much perfect, and what I've been saying (in a completely different, less concise, more roundabout way) since I started teaching. Well, maybe. In my dream world, students wouldn't go to English class, science class, history class, etc. if we want to foster the critical thinking lauded by the common core and most likely by whatever comes next, then subject areas should be integrated. If I had the time I would plan it all out, but what with all the other million things expected of a high school teacher from the district, from the state, and on and on, it's purt near impossible. So for now I just use every "teachable moment" that comes along...quick history, science, art, and music lessons...and very rarely math :-P oh and some logic and reason thrown in willy nilly.

 

I took two years worth of interdisciplinary classes as an undergraduate.  It was taught by a team of four or five professors and was a great way to learn, replacing the need to take the individual required core courses one at a time, and taught independently.  Unfortunately it was the exception rather than the rule.  You had to be admitted into the program so only a small segment of the population were able to benefit.  I like the idea of expanding this concept to include everyone.

[mangofirst]

The use of the words 'alternative education' to descibe those curricula outside the prescribed norm cracks me up. I mean, I suppose the word works since I just defined it in the previous sentence, but when alternatives work better than the standard ways, shouldn't they then become the standard?

[geoffcb]

I've come in a bit late, I teach Maths and Science in high school, part time now. We have the same issues in Australia, but even though the horse has bolted, we try to teach numeracy in all our subjects, so students don't see this confined to Mathematics only. Once a week we work on a program called Maths Mate, where a series of problems on a sheet are given, increasing in complexity. Students must do these without a calculator! They are actually getting better, and they track their progress through the Semester.

 

Being "old school"  try to do as much working on the board without a calculator, so I try to role model how to problem solve. But most are addicted to mobile phone technology, and all lessons I have to remind students to put them away (although they are great for photos in science).

 

Once they are 14, a lot of students get part-time jobs. For those not going on to tertiary education, I'd like to see that work experience count in their results, like a "competency achieved", to be signed off by their employer. Plenty can calculate when they need to, or are interested. School contexts don't suit some.

 

Geoff