Morris Dovey wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:

What did you personally learn in the public schools school other
than
to read and write and do sums that was of any real value in later
life?
I learned that language was important - that while a thing said
one
way might get me a fat lip, if said another way it might open the
door to friendship. I learned that a really good idea that I
couldn't
get across to someone else when it seemed important to me wasn't
any
better than no idea at all. I learned that language was an
essential
part of problem statement and problem solving, and that it could
be
variously used to produce tears, laughter, sympathy, animosity, or
cooperation.

And you learned these things from teachers? Or would you have
learned them anyway as part of growing up?

A lot of this was put into words for me by teachers before I'd have
worked it out for myself or gotten it from peers.

I learned that French and Arabic both have nuances and built-in
perspective twists that my native English does not, and that
poetry
and precise thoughts do not always translate well from one
language
to another.

In what public school in the United States are Arabic and French
taught?

Not in the US, although the school program was modeled after New
York
State's curriculum. Don't kids in at least some NY and NJ public
schools have the opportunity to learn other languages? I'd be
astonished if kids in south FL, TX, AZ, and NM don't have the
opportunity to take Spanish. The teacher for both languages was
Lebanese (and the only non-American teacher in the school).

The public schools in Florida, Virginia, Louisiana, and California, at
least when I was there, offered _no_ languages until high school. The
Louisiana Catholic parochial schools taught French from first grade
on, but no Spanish. I do wonder sometimes how my life might have been
different if I had been able to stay in the Catholic schools--note
that I am not Catholic.

In high school the Spanish teachers were not native speakers and were
marginally competent, which, combined with the starting in high
school, meant that most of the students learned "Queiro ir al cuarto
de bano" (should be a tilde on that n") and that was the end of it.

New York and New Jersey might be better. They would have had to work
at it to be much worse.

I learned that language is closely coupled to culture and I
learned
that there are cultures different from my own, and that culture is
the lens through which we see the world - and that different
cultural
lenses
reveal different realities when viewing the same objects and
events.

That's nice, but again I want to know where this incredible
American
public school is located.

The US component of that particular experience was at Richwoods
Community High School in Peoria, IL. It's a good public school with
good teachers and probably had better than average course offerings.
I took a really interesting Projective Geometry and a (really
difficult for me) Qualitative Analysis chemistry course there. Hmm -
as I recall, they also offered French, German, and Spanish to fill
in
on your earlier question on languages in public schools.

OK, that is a very, very unusual public school.

I read and discussed the statements of ideals and principles of my
own
culture, and somewhat of others. I learned a bit about how what
might
be good manners at home might not be so elsewhere.

You discussed? In an American public school?

You bet.

We sat quietly and regurgitated whatever the teacher told us, no
matter how stupid it might have been.

I learned that history was more than names and dates and places -
that
it's actually a compendium of cause and effect for different
groups
of
people in different contexts - that it's a record of what has
already
been tried and under what circumstances and with what consequences
over the long haul. I learned that there are a lot more ways to
get
things wrong than there are to get them right, and that it might
be
really important to not repeat some of the mistakes.

In an American public school you learned this?

An exceptional history teacher, no? IMO, we could use more like him,
and I wish my kids could've taken /any/ course from him.

Well, you begin to see the problem. I don't deny that there must be
_some_ decent public schools out there, but I never attended any. The
two good teachers in the ones I attended were constantly battling the
system.

I learned in sixth grade algebra class that everything that had
come
before was neander and that learning algebra amounted to a leap
into
the world of power tools for the brain. I learned about 'knowns'
and
'unknowns', and how to determine if/when I had enough knowns to
solve
a problem.

Algebra in the sixth grade?

I think so - but sixth grade might've been Plane Geometry with
Algebra I in seventh. It's been a long time.

Geez, we got geometry in the 9th.

I learned that matter consisted of atoms, and that different
elements
have different properties, and that those properties matter - that
lead isn't good for bridge beams, nor plutonium for eyeglass
frames,
and that aluminum and copper are good conductors of heat. I
learned
that 'more' isn't necessarily better, and not to throw scraps of
sodium metal into
the waste crock.

Always useful, not throwing sodium into the waste crock. In what
public school in the US did you learn strength of materials?

Didn't - at least not as such, but I do remember talking about
"groups" in the periodic table and discussions about general
properties of elements. I think I'd have enjoyed more specific
coursework, but at that point I probably didn't have enough math to
handle it.

Again quite different. The teacher might have said something about
groups but if she did it was one of those
"memorized-regurgitate-forget" deals. Certainly never explained why
anybody should care about those groups.

I learned that transparent materials have angles of refraction and
critical angles, and I learned that light goes really fast and
that
nothing in our ken goes faster. I learned of the happiness of
energy
and the sadness of entropy, and that time is, indeed, a dimension
that must
be accounted for in all actions and their equal and opposite
reactions.
I was introduced to the laws of thermodynamics and bid a sad
farewell
to fantasies of perpetual motion machines.

And how have you used that knowledge since?

Wow. It was the foundation for almost all that I learned later - and
gave me the confidence to tackle all kinds of problems about which I
started out knowing far too little. That's exactly what's been
happening with the solar stuff recently - and even randite Tim might
get a kick out of my weird engine that runs (limps actually, but it
/will/ run) on sunshine to do direct conversion of radiant energy to
mechanical.

Good that you managed to hit on a field in which you could apply
_something_. Most people need to know about potics like they need a
hole in the head.

I've gone on past midnight and need to stop for sleep, but there's
more - a /lot/ more - and it's all been useful.

It sounds to me like you have had a far, far different education
from
most Americans.

I don't know - I think I was just lucky enough to have had a
succession of really good, caring teachers who somehow managed to
convince me that there were real and important connections between
what they were teaching and real life.

Which is far, far different from what most of us got.

When the educational process
breaks, it's seemed to me that the lack of that connection has been
the fault line.

Most of the teachers I encountered were career teachers who had never
actually done anything else and housewife wannabees killing time until
they found a victim. The superstars were two ex military who served
in WWII, one as a Marine DI and the other as an AAC instructor pilot.
They both taught you like your life depended on it and knew why you
needed to know what they were teaching. The rest just droned on
regurgitating the book, or some other book, not even recognizing when
they told a whopper.



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--John
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(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)