
Disrespect in Education (2014) - luu
https://lukepalmer.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/disrespect-in-education/
======
klunger
I was with the author until the following line in the last paragraph:

"...it is not a fault only to have energy for what I care about. I don’t know
what I would have become if my gifts had been acknowledged and nurtured rather
than ignored."

This argument comes from the same privileged perspective of the "follow your
passion" line. He can only make this claim because, as an apparently gifted
programmer, he is fortunate to care about skills that are currently valued in
the workforce, if not in the confines of many school systems.

No one has energy for the things they don't care about. However, people do
their jobs regardless of whether they care about it because it is their job.
Does the author suppose anyone works as a janitor because they care about
cleaning other people's toilets? Of course not. Janitors have bills to pay,
mouths to feed etc.

Teaching students to learn the importance of doing their job, regardless of
whether they care about it, is not an intrinsic flaw of modern education.
There should arguably be less emphasis on it, and more done to nurture
student's natural talents.

However, the notion that students should not be taught at all the importance
of good citizenship, following orders and doing their job -- even or
especially if they don't care about it -- is unpalatable. To do away with it
completely, as implied, is even more disrespectful to students than the
situation he describes. It is extremely disrespectful to the people who will
spend their working lives doing things that they don't particularly care
about, and who go home at the end of the day to the things that give meaning
to their lives.

~~~
jostylr
When you come from a place of ownership of your own life, you can accept doing
whatever needs to be done.

I am a janitor with a math phd that gets to have water gun fights with kids; I
work at a Sudbury school. I am much happier cleaning toilets than being in
some BS academic department committee or grading kids and telling them they
suck. Or even worse, teaching engineering students beautiful mathematical
secrets, holding them to high standards, seeing them get there, and then
hearing from them that the time spent on my course was hurting them in other
courses. True story.

Being supportive of life is itself a fantastic reward. Being treated with
respect is what matters, not the actual work. Cleaning toilets is really not a
big deal. Being treated like a piece of crap is.

Also good citizenship is not about following orders due to fear of
retribution. It is looking at the world with care and compassion for others
and doing what needs to be done, speaking up and supporting one another. It is
about seeing the beauty in others and appreciating that. At a Sudbury school,
the halls flow with such feelings as it is the natural way that communities of
human beings bind together. That is citizenship.

And not surprisingly, when a person wants to be a part of a community, then
they can follow community rules and standards quite easily. It is in our
nature.

Traditional schools teach gaming the system, being brutal to other people.
Being excluded because of not meeting some arbitrary pointless standard is
just a crappy way of living. Humans learn from what those around them do. Are
the behaviors of teachers in traditional school the way humans should treat
one another?

~~~
japhyr
Can you describe how graduation works at a Sudbury school? Does everyone have
to meet the same requirements as in most school systems, or are graduation
requirements tied to each student's stated goals?

~~~
jostylr
Students need not graduate from a Sudbury school. They can simply age out of
it. In general, it is not an accredited diploma and so it is only if a student
wishes to do so.

But the process if a student choose to do it is to answer the question "How
has your time here prepared you for the adult world?" It is a very open-ended
question and students write a thesis on it, often submitting a portfolio of
what they have done.

There is an internal committee that serves the role of advisor, if requested.
The committee for the defense of thesis consists of staff from other Sudbury
schools who generally hold students to high standards. It is possible to not
successfully defend though one can take another chance the following year if
so desired.

We are a young school (7 years) and have only had two graduates so far. One
submitted a portfolio of pictures along with their thesis (pursuing visual
arts in college) and the other presented a cookbook (currently a chef at a
well-regarded local bakery).

The defenses lasted two or three hours. Experiences at other schools vary, but
it seems that it is quite a common experience for 18 year old Sudbury students
to pursue the graduation.

~~~
japhyr
You describe yourself as a janitor with a math phd in a fully democratic
school. I imagine janitorial work in a school that kids want to be at is much
different than janitorial work in a traditional school.

Do you end up teaching on a regular basis? I can't imagine you just stick to
janitorial work and water gun fights in the environment you describe.

~~~
jostylr
This is a school where kids have a great deal of freedom, particularly in
regards to eating. This leads to messes. I write the worst messes up to be
adjudicated by our Judicial Committee (a team of students and possibly a
staff, depending on the week), but children are inherently messy. Given the
freedom, they make more of a mess.

The age range is also from 5-18 which adds in another level of potential
messes.

I wear many hats at the school. Janitorial work is largely a few hours in the
afternoon. At other times, I am largely talking with kids and staff. I do
administrative work, I work on promoting the school, I write up some code to
help make things move smoother, I do interviews of prospective students, I
help kids with band-aids and finding lost items, etc. We are currently working
on raising capital to buy a new building which has been both interesting and
time consuming.

There is no teaching done here. Rarely I might get a question about math from
students, but those who pursue it do it on their own. They don't want answers,
they want journeys.

The life of a Sudbury staffer is one of a minimal salary. So I do teach online
at a couple of places to support my family. That can be drudgery, but a burden
I take on willingly as I need to. I do teach a course of my own design which
is a lot more to the point of what math is and it is more fun to do. But the
courses where I just teach what I'm told to teach are frustrating, to say the
least.

So I am certainly not a classic janitor. But I have known many in my life.
When treated with respect, they don't mind their job. When treated like crap,
they despise their job, as any would do. And in a nice, pleasant environment,
they do plenty of talking and their days need not be drudgery. It is about the
human environment, whether red, white, or blue collar work.

~~~
japhyr
First of all, thanks for the first hand perspective. I work in a small
alternative school that's explored a number of models, and we're still finding
the right model for us. I tell students about Sudbury schools from time to
time, as a measure of how far we could go away from traditional ed.

> There is no teaching done here. Rarely I might get a question about math
> from students, but those who pursue it do it on their own. They don't want
> answers, they want journeys.

For students who want a journey, an expert in the field can be an invaluable
mentor. I didn't learn a whole lot of programming for my dad, but he sure
helped me choose directions in my journey at key points. I imagine some of
your conversations put you in that role.

Thank you for the work you and your colleagues are doing. You are a source of
deep inspiration for many of us.

~~~
jostylr
I certainly had that idea before I started. I think we all do. And I hope it
may happen here and there. Mentoring and collaboration are to me the true
teaching models that work for humans. But interests have to align, of course.

We are still a young school with just a handful of 14+ year olds. I think in
terms of content, that kind of mentoring would happen with the older ones, if
at all. And it may take a sufficiently large pool before compatible interests
start to emerge. More than likely, older students would end up with
mentorships from external people.

But certainly the presence of a diverse set of adults being authentic about
what they do and who they are is an important aspect of this model.

If you or anyone else you reference to Sudbury ever want more information, my
email is my username here at gmail.

------
donatj
The problem as I see it is most teachers went straight from being taught to
teaching. It's a feedback loop. The best teachers I had by far took up
teaching later in life, having lived in the real world for a while. The best
teacher I ever had spent a good chunk of his life developing back ends for
restaurant POS systems. I learned so much from his real world experience.

Going straight from being educated to educating is insular. Teachers do things
because that's the way it was done to them. It's how they were taught and some
sick part of their mind liked it, so they went into teaching.

From my own educational experience there was a lot of "do this, or else" which
isn't really education, it's just conditioning. For crying out loud we know
negative reinforcement doesn't work in animals, ask any dog trainer, why would
it work in students? Give me at least as much respect as a dog, please.

~~~
japhyr
> Going straight from being educated to educating is insular. Teachers do
> things because that's the way it was done to them.

Yes, this is a problem in education. I would like to see a great deal of
improvement in teacher education programs. From what I've seen, many teacher
ed programs that claim to be challenging simply give a heavy workload, rather
than challenging people's ways of thinking about education.

There are some great approaches to education, but I don't see many new
teachers learning them. Or if they do, I see them going into schools where
they don't see those approaches being used. Then there's the political
undermining of education that's happening in much of the US.

> It's how they were taught and some sick part of their mind liked it, so they
> went into teaching.

I know there are some really bad teachers out there, but this is a pretty ugly
and useless line of thinking. Most teachers that you're referring to are
simply falling back on what they saw in 12+ years of being a student; there's
no intention to inflict on others what was done to them because they liked it.

------
kirsebaer
In democratic free schools, like Sudbury Valley School, students are free to
follow their interests without any compulsory courses or exams. In follow-up
studies, former students are happy and successful even though they were never
formally "taught" to read, do math, or write a "book report".

The typical school model was designed to control students, it is unnecessary
and even harmful to real education. Non-compulsory education is not just for
smart kids, all children have a natural inclination to learn.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOAmTaZ4XI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOAmTaZ4XI)

[http://www.amazon.com/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self-
Re...](http://www.amazon.com/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self-
Reliant/dp/0465025994/)

~~~
mercer
I agree insofar that it greatly benefitted me that I was pretty much free to
do as I pleased from age 12 to 18, and then semi-free throughout college.

But looking at my siblings and some of my friends, I hesitate to make a
blanket statement about this freedom. Perhaps everyone can do well if they're
given this freedom from a very young age. I don't know. But I've met plenty of
people who, if given this freedom in middle/high school (12+?), would not have
been able to handle it. Whether this is because they already were 'corrupted'
up to that age, or whether they have different personalities, I don't know.
But I've seen it happen.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Just because you've seen it happen doesn't mean it always happens, so I'd
hesitate to make a "freedom is good for me and not most people" statement.
Here's an anecdote with a _reference_ (still not that great I know), a 20 year
old is arrested for armed robbery and goes to jail for 3 years, later he
discovers heroin, and then much later he kicks the habit and becomes a
Saxophone Colossus
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Rollins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Rollins)

~~~
mercer
My point was merely that I _hesitate_ to conclude that this kind of freedom
works for everyone. Personally I think it works much better for many more
people than we often tend to think, so I'm actually in favor of schooling that
is more free.

------
keithpeter
_" I had assumed that I was there to learn the content and the teachers were
all just blind or crazy — I know now that I was there to learn to follow
orders, and my education is for the ones who give them."_

The OA is reading Freire [1] (see other posts on the blog). The Infed article
on Gramsci, especially the section headed 'Gramsci on schooling and education'
[2] might help further. The clue is in the separation of the two functions.

The OA was obviously able to educate himself most effectively. The challenge
is now to collect a few people like his childhood self and get some self-
organised education going outside the system. A few hours a week. Biographies
of people like Alan Kay, Feynman &c show the influence of an adult outside the
system on intellectual development. The career of Brian Harvey springs to
mind.

The OA is in a good place to start a dialogue with younger people around (say)
social network use and surveillance (see OA's google+ feed). Direct experience
of working with (say) a handful of young people will refine ideas.

[1] [http://infed.org/mobi/paulo-freire-dialogue-praxis-and-
educa...](http://infed.org/mobi/paulo-freire-dialogue-praxis-and-education/)

[2] [http://infed.org/mobi/antonio-gramsci-schooling-and-
educatio...](http://infed.org/mobi/antonio-gramsci-schooling-and-education/)

------
pitt1980
I think I had a pretty similar experience in school to the author

I regret having that attitude now

kids hold adults to unrealistic expectations, they expect them to be
omniscient (tbf adult don't really discourage this), and then become
disillusioned when they realize that isn't the case

adults are human too, they make mistakes, they're not perfect, its really hard
to figure out how to manage 30 some odd kids and figure out to best reach as
many of them as possible, if they start making homework exceptions for 1 kid,
do they have to start making them for 30 kids, how do you manage 30 unique
homework assignments? how do you balence that with making things work less
well for that one kid who would really do well with a unique homework
assignment? Its actually a hard philosophical problem

I feel I didn't have any appreciation for that when I was a kid, I wish I did
now

when you're a kid, you feel like adults are all up in your business, when
you're an adult, you realize that its a luxury to have people who are
available to turn to for help, them being in your business actually isn't that
bad a tradeoff

as an adult, you want access to people's time and experience, you often have
to pay for it

I recommend kids take ownership over your own education, the classes that are
in high school actually cover wide wide swaths of human knowledge, and are
actually applicable to all sorts of life goals

whatever you want to do in life, there are likely things in each of your
classes that apply to doing that thing

you can ask your teacher whatever you like about that, figure out how to get
whatever knowledge you can out of them

homework is actually a gift, the science of how knowledge get imbedded in you
is actually well established, you have to work with it and apply it

homework is that opportunity, even if its not perfect, will you be able to
draw on that knowledge when you're 25? how much you embedded that with
homework as a 15 year will be the factor of that

I'm rambling, but public education is a far from perfect, but its a gift, and
like all things in life, its what you make of it

~~~
qntty
_how do you manage 30 unique homework assignments?_

Well one approach would be not to require students to do homework. In my
experience, when I'm learning something that I'm interested in, there would be
no benefit to somebody checking work that I do. If I want a second opinion, I
seek it out rather than the other way around.

To me, a school that really "respected" students in the way the author is
suggesting would have no need for telling students into learning anything in
particular.

~~~
pitt1980
knowledge crystalizes when you use it

people don't like homework because its required, but its actually really
useful if you're trying crystallize what you're learning so you can use it 10
years later

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/secretlife/blogposts/the-...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/secretlife/blogposts/the-
science-of-smart-making-homework-smarter/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Numbers-Science-Flunked-
Algebra/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Numbers-Science-Flunked-
Algebra/dp/039916524X/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1428086297&sr=8-6&keywords=learning+to+learn)

[http://www.barbaraoakley.com/pdf/10rulesofstudying.pdf](http://www.barbaraoakley.com/pdf/10rulesofstudying.pdf)

later in life, its hard to get those second opinions

people let their ego's need for 'respect' get in the way of what's best for
them in the long run

~~~
qntty
Well I'm not suggesting that there be no homework. I'm just saying that
teachers don't necessarily need to worry about managing it. It seems to be
that this is one way to realize the kind of school system that the author
wants.

 _people let their ego 's need for 'respect' get in the way of what's best for
them in the long run_

I think there is more to the "respect" that the author wants than just
satisfying his ego. If respect for students leads to giving students autonomy
then it can lead to a meaningful change in the way that schooling operates.

------
adam-a
> I feel that this is a cultural phenomenon of seeing children as less than
> human, as incapable of making good choices for themselves.

I teach primary school children (aged 10 and 11) once a week. I think the
author is mistaken and using a lot of assumptions to justify a very bigoted
position.

Firstly, most children are not capable of making good choices for themselves.
This is essentially why we teach them, if they came out of the ground fully
aware and able to rationalise there would be no need for schools. My direct
experience is that some children are quite self directed and can be left to
pursue their interests and work around topics in their own way. Most children
however find a lack of direction quite daunting and will end up not working at
all if they are not given quite clear instructions.

Secondly, allowing each child to pursue their education in their own preferred
mode is unreasonable because of class sizes. I have found it very difficult to
support more than 5 or so children who are all doing different things, even if
they are focusing on a common subject and broadly similar tasks. The only way
for a teacher to reasonably teach a class of 20 to 30 or more is to give them
all the same work and teach them all in more or less the same way.

The author makes the mistake of assuming his teachers were stupid or mean.
Whenever you find yourself assuming this about other people you should take a
step back, because there are very few individuals, and certainly no broad
categories of people who are actually like this.

~~~
calibraxis
The author wrote, _" I do believe that teachers have the best intentions for
their students, and in many cases love them. [...] They truly cared about me,
I could tell. I feel that this is a cultural phenomenon of seeing children as
less than human, as incapable of making good choices for themselves."_

Please consider citing where he was _" assuming his teachers were stupid or
mean"_ — with surrounding context. Perhaps you're latching onto the least
charitable interpretation, as commonly happens when people fundamentally
critique our work?

I teach and manage, and solicit critique in both jobs. (The author seems to
point out that both teaching and management devolve into the same thing in our
society...)

As for being "stupid or mean", I'm quite capable of both, which is a concern
when I have institutional power. The most stupid/mean people seem to be least
capable of admitting it.

~~~
adam-a
The theme of the article is the author believes his teachers did not respect
him. I said he therefore must believe them to be stupid or mean, since we all
believe he deserved their respect. To sustain the accusation though:

> ... the teachers’ own internalized oppression as working class. Teachers are
> not paid well, which makes them feel bound and powerless, which is
> communicated to the students ...

Here he is implying that teachers are unhappy and take it out on their
students. This is a mean trait.

> The truth is that at this level of “real world”, math beyond basic
> arithmetic and estimation is not really useful, so any attempt to make it
> seem so will be disingenuous.

And here he believes his teachers were "disingenuous", which is also a mean
trait. He then goes on to say

> I believe kids are smart; they will not be fooled so easily.

which shows he believes he is more intelligent than his teachers, since they
didn't think kids were smart but he knows better. He also includes asides like

> they never asked what I did with my time instead of doing homework. (I
> wonder what they thought?)

suggesting he attributes to them a lack of thoughtfulness or critical
thinking.

I am open to more charitable interpretations, however I think the author is
overly critical and not in a very helpful way since his argument is so
distanced from the practicalities of teaching. I will admit that I find the
article personally a bit sharp, since I have been discovering how difficult
teaching is. And of course I have been guilty of being stupid and mean in the
past, as everyone has. However I don't think my response was
disproportionately hostile.

------
timthorn
I believe that the point of the two trains problem is not to make things
"relevant" but to develop the ability to translate from an English description
to an abstract mathematical representation.

------
ZachWick
I teach a programming elective course to middle school students (12-14 years
old); We meet three days per week for about an hour each day. Over the course
of nine weeks the students come up with a the concept of a simple game, and
implement it from scratch in python. Most of the students have never
programmed before, although some have created incredibly complex machinations
in Minecraft or other creative building games. I try to approach the course as
not an introduction to programming but as an introduction to the idea that
computers can be more than just consumption devices. There are usually around
6 students in the class (with a much longer wait-list) and invariably there is
at least one student who doesn't want to write code. So I try to aim them at
designing the game assets (images, music) or coming up with _how_ the game
should be played at a high level.

I am not a teacher by education. I do contract development work and have my
own bootstrapped start up. I teach because when I look back at my own
education, I wish that I had had an opportunity to get away from the mindless
drudgery of being "taught to a test." I also teach because I am terrified of a
world in which computers (and other electronics) are only seen/used as
consumption devices.

I don't think that I am perfect teacher, but I think that this is how all
teachers should be; Not someone who has an academic degree in teaching, but
someone who has done the actual thing that they are instructing others to do.
It is time to dispel the old adage of "those who can, do, and those who can't,
teach."

------
saosebastiao
I too am very much like the author. I have always done well on tests, but
never had much patience for tedious school work. And yes, I have felt the same
disrespect for me that the author has felt.

But the author completely missed the point of silly word problems in math
homework. They aren't silly because educators are disconnected with the real
world, and they aren't disrespecting you either. They are silly precisely to
convey the point that the words _do not matter_...much in the same way that
the name of an algebraic variable does not matter.

The Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem, the Chinese Postman problem, and the
Traveling Salesman problem are all silly word problems with a seeming
disconnect from reality. And yet huge and seemingly insurmountable problems
can be solved using them by employing a technique that is often called
Projection: You take a problem you know but can't solve and project it onto a
similar problem you know and _can_ solve.

Using this technique, not only could you take an NP-Complete production
scheduling problem and project it into a basic integer linear program that can
be solved trivially using the simplex algorithm with cutting planes and column
generation...but you could also develop the simplex algorithm itself, just as
Dantzig did.

Math teachers that formulate their homework problems in terms that are
immediately applicable to the real world may be more successful in getting
people interested in mathematics, but if they reduce their homework problems
to just those that are "real world" enough to be interesting to wandering
minds, they risk destroying the creativity to solve real world problems that
are _actually hard_. That would be a much bigger disrespect to the student
than anything the author has ever experienced.

------
serve_yay
You can choose to view everything you do not agree with as an indication of
disrespect. But is it?

Keep in mind that how you view the world reflects not only on the world, but
on yourself as well.

Another way to say it may be, if you can't see how dumb you were as a kid,
have you really learned anything?

------
crazy1van
School seems mostly geared towards the average life experience. The average
person will end up in a job where they take direction from another person.
They will work on things that don't make sense or they don't love or have
passion for.

I'm not making a value judgment on that and say it is good or bad, but
learning how to power through some crap work you dont like because someone
told you to is a good life skill. Should we design our whole education system
around learning that one life skill? No, probably not. But that skill isn't
worthless.

------
7952
I can't stand the reliance on real world problems. The genius of maths and
science is using mechanisms that are inherently abstract (and non-obvious) to
help understand the world. Surely a main part of learning about maths and
science is creating and using mental models rather than relying on your own
understanding.

------
unoti
Perhaps the most important lesson the author failed to learn in school is:
sometimes if you want to succeed and keep The Man off your back you gotta Play
The Game. Real life isn't all about the best people encouraging and helping
each other, unfortunately.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Not sometimes, nearly every student/teacher transaction in HS involves
following a scripted exercise (rote learning). This repetitive scripted
practice technique "works" the first time for some; but other students need
more repetition(these get left behind, and suffer in subjects that build upon
the missed prerequisite unit), and yet others need less (they get bored, and
the activity has a detrimental effect). But everyone gets the same amount and
covers new material at the same pace. Fortunately, there is effort underway to
refine and improve pedagogy at the HS level in the US, but boy has it been
slow in coming.

------
jqm
School is (in general) a series of humiliating, pointless, time wasting tasks
overseen by people who are usually less smart and motivated than you, and on
occasion, are borderline psychopathic.

Then you enter the workforce.....

------
mashmac2
The article ends with a challenge - "The remaining question is how?"

How can we ensure that students gifts are acknowledged and nurtured? How can
we make our subjects as relevant as possible?

~~~
EGreg
A smart way to reform education:
[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158)

~~~
Mimu
I live in France so maybe the situation is different here, but I feel like
nothing in this article solve any real issues.

~~~
zkhalique
Why? Can you go into more detail?

------
thaddaeus
What an overly dramatic article written by a whiny author. It's not
disrespect, you are no one special.

"I don’t know what I would have become if my gifts had been acknowledged and
nurtured rather than ignored." Boohoo. Two tears in a bucket. No one in this
life owes you anything. The only person that ignored your gifts was you, and
now you are making excuses for yourself. If you had worked harder in school,
then you would have nurtured your gifts.

Respect is earned, and after read that post, I can't imagine anyone worth
their salt giving the author any respect.

~~~
reddyb
I think you missed the point of the article because the author states that he
had very good scores at tests, so at least "working harder at school" wouldn't
have helped with what he is complaning about whatever it is.

However I agree that this article sounds whiny, especially when it comes to
the phrase you quoted. But if we look at the bigger picture the author is
drawing, we can acknowledge that Education is not only about college students,
it's also about students in primary and secondary school and even high school.
At these levels students won't have the critical-thinking and I-will-do
attitude you are talking about, they need guidance from the system. They need
that the system teach them how to respect themselves by example by respecting
them in the first place.

~~~
DanBC
At least part of school is to prepare students for the bullshit of the real
world.

Even ignoring the "Did you get the memo about cover sheets for the TPS
reports?" level of bullshit people still face a lot of bureaucracy at work and
school should be helping them learn ways to deal with it.

~~~
NoGravitas
Perhaps if everyone were educated in a way that respected children as human
beings, when they grew up, no one would stand for bureaucracy and TPS reports,
and we'd finally be rid of them.

