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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Shiri Dori writes:
> Well, duh! Why in the world can't teachers tell you, at least *briefly*, what
> uses there are for X - (2Y pi r squared) in real life? Huh?
In my experience, the teachers who fail to convey the usefulness of basic
concepts just don't have a good understanding of how they are actually used.
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that not many people are willing to give
up an engineer's or a researcher's salary to teach in an overcrowded, poorly
administered school system. Since teachers salaries are so much less than
those of professionals with similar levels of education, you don't get many
teachers with much experience applying what they teach to anything but
teaching. Not that money is the most important thing (as I've mentioned in
other posts), but what with required testing and all sorts of distracting
disciplinary restrictions on students and now the perception of the danger of
violence (which seems to be fostered to some extent by the reactions of school
administrators), lots of other more noble reasons for becoming a teacher are
negated as well. (Forgive me, I know all about run-on sentences, but I choose
to use them anyway. In any case, that monstrosity isn't technically a run-on,
it's just a hideous compound sentence. I could diagram it for you if you want.)
I personally would love to teach, but I'm afraid that even if I got a teaching
certificate I wouldn't be able to be an effective teacher in the prevailing
administrative atmosphere of American public schools. I've seen too many
frustrated teachers to want to subject myself to that.
> PE is a bad issue with me.
I have mixed feelings about physical education. One one hand, since leaving
High School I've really learned to enjoy excercising. I inline-skate as much
as I can when the weather's good, and I just love the feeling of being
exhausted in the evening. But school PE was a daily horror house for me too.
I think it's mostly because PE is all about competition and machismo. The less
physically gifted kids are always put down and embrassed. There's supposed to
be something about good sportsmanship (try to unisex that word) but it seems
that the only people who learn that lesson are the ones who come in last.
And what's with the thing where they expect you to know all the rules and
strategies of baseball, football, basketball, soccer etc. And if you don't, you
just get kicked around for screwing up all the time? It would be rediculous if
math classes worked that way (and I'm not saying that it doesn't, sort of).
In that PE made me feel ashamed of my body and it taught me to think of
physical fitness as a bad thing, It was less than useless. But doing away with
it altogether would be bad for kids who need some physcial activity to release
tension during the day. Then there's the whole sportsmanship and comaraderie
and positive body image/self confidence which PE could impart if it wasn't run
by jocks and homophobes (oop, that's tellin')
Anyway, I managed to get out of PE in high school on account of I was taking
too many science and math classes to fit it into my schedule. So the last time
I hid behind a bank of lockers to don a PE uniform I was the shortest, thinnest
kid in the eigth grade.
> (I was that kid that's always chosen last when you pick teams. I mean,
> ALWAYS.)
>
> -Shiri
Dude! We should have been in the same class, then maybe I could have been
second-to-last sometimes. Of course the worst thing about that choosing teams
thing is that your only friend in PE, who of course is just as bad at sports as
you are, is always second-last chosen, and you end up on opposing teams.
-Phil
AKA "OK, fine, that one."
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Idle Ramblings
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| (...) That is one of my major *major* beefs from the normal schooling system. They teach you things which definitely might turn out to be useful; but do you hear the teachers ever mentioning that? Not in my current school. One of my favorite and (...) (25 years ago, 20-Apr-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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