Homework 42

I think the concept of tracking classes is a healthy one; but it's important to know where to draw the line. Being in a tracked class, I can attest to the power of assembling students who are close in academic range to one another. I would put myself in the 50th percentile amongst my classmates, so being behind some, but ahead of some as well. When grouped with people who can understand the material when I myself may not necessarily grasp it completely, I feel myself encouraged to work harder to get a better grasp on the material. However, I feel that to mix classes too largely would throw off the balance; there would be a certain rift in the formula, with some students so far behind they give up, disheartened by the 'smarter' students, and at the same time, the 'smart' kids are so far ahead they aren't feeling challenged enough. I feel that tracking works best by isolating the highest percentile and grouping them together, with a max of a 10% difference. By this I mean grouping children from between the 99th percentile to the 89th percentile, and so on, and so on. By maintaining classes with students withing reachable intellectual range of one another, growth is not only encouraged by teachers, but truthfully sought after by the students themselves. Tell a smart kid that they aren't quite as smart as their peer, and they will strive until they feel that it is no longer the case. Same goes for any kid who is in the same grouping.

Blog 41

I am attempting research into the eternal questions that all parents invariably face; is it ultimatley better to put my child in a private or a public school? Parents are told to weigh the options, looking for what they feel would be best appropriate for their own kids. Personally, I came into public school at 8th grade, having a solid 8 years in a parochial private school. (Well, actually two parochial private schools) I know the essential gist of ow these two systems can operate, and so I understand the selling points that come with both of them.

My internet research turned up some interesting articles;

http://www.publicschoolreview.com/articles/5 - an article that chooses to focus on the balance of pros and cons in both systems

http://www.greatschools.org/find-a-school/defining-your-ideal/private-vs-public-schools.gs?content=59 - a somehwat shortsighted, yet relevant article focused more on the reasons why the debate is even a debate

I recently read an article in Page 11 magazine in this past Sunday New York Times that, while not relevant to my research question, was still an interesting perspective on schools. I wasn't able to track it down online, but essentially the article spoke of a legislator in one of the western states who proposed getting rid of the whole senior year of high school. The journalist who wrote the article was heavily biased towards the concept of getting rid of the "unnecessary" year and generally heavily opposed to teenagers in general. I somewhat agree with the idea of only three years of high school, but at the same time, I understand the opposition. (The idea was met with overwhelming disdain) To leave high school friends beind is no easy task for a high schooler, and senior year is the buffer that makes it easier. This is the last time we all spend together, so why not make it last?

Blog 40

Interviews With People About School (No Imaginative Title today.)

Interview With P. McCarthy (Dad)

Do you think that students get a better education from a private institution or a public one? Why?

Private. Less children in a classroom, the private school system have more resources, and therefore better equipped to provide. Public schools are to tied by bureaucracy, and while they may be fantastic individually, they fall down together.

How important do you value education for your children? To what lengths would you go to achieve the best possible level of education?

On a scale of 1-10? 10. It's not the lengths that I would go, it's the lengths my children are willing to go. Parents don't educate kids, they just put them in a position where they can be educated.

What do you think of homeschool?

I thinks it's highly impractical. Somebody then has to be at home, and that person has to be better educated in most disciples than ordinary teachers.

I think kids that aren't self motivated, for them it doesn't matter what school they go to. They're either intellectually curious or they aren't.

Can you make a kid intellectually curious?

not that i know of, schools offer a various selection of branches of intellectual curiosity, and its up to the kids to find them interesting. A certain amount of that has to do with what you do with your kids as they are young, ie reading to them or something.

If it would present a better opportunity for students to learn would you move?

provided that they were self motivate,d I would absolutely move. I think that tuition also shouldn't be a barrier from preventing kids from reaching their maximum potential.

What material do you think is the best to teach students?
Should they cater to an individual interest?

schools should have a well rounded curriculum, broad-based. at least for high school level, and college becomes the place where they can choose their own individual paths.

What do you think of the broad based material that we all tend to learn in high school? what kind of relevance does it hold for you, an adult out of college?

you can have a conversation with anyone; you dont have to be like duh. it makes you articulate and able to hold up in conversation. the stuff that is important lasts, the stuff that gets used lasts.

Get schooled

Good song to listen to about school - Signal the Riflemen by Say Anything

Questions
1.) Why do we put so much faith in teachers to show us how to do things 'properly', even though they are truly only students of other students?

2.) Why don't we learn about what's relevant to our lives personally? Why do we sit through hours of muck instead of getting life teachings?

3.) Why don't teachers secede that they are learning at the same time we all are? Why not admit that they haven't actually got it all figured out?

Ideas
1.) School is really just a place to herd youth together in a single place in order to subject to the vicious opinions of the board of education.

2.) School is also a place where we can unite with one another under a common banner, where we can find a common enemy and good friends.

3.) A place where if you lock in and focus on success in the system, you can do wel and later on in life get a good paying job and stable living.

Experiences

Done With cool

Cool, like we from the monkeys, has evolved over time. James Dean was your now-cliché leather jacket style cool. Guns N' Roses were the edgy, hair-band rock lifestyle cool that is still so popular in rock music. Kid CuDi is the new-school class clown and pothead cool kid. While these different examples have certain separating factors, the most important part of their 'cool' pose is that which they all have in common; they perform the role of unique individuals who say screw you to 'the man' in order to do 'what they love'. The trend of being edgy and rebellious has been the universal slogan for cool regardless of what movement it was. From the Greasers to the Hipsters of williamsburg Coolness has, despite generational gaps, remained largely unchanged by the times. The same general ideas of cool that were held 50 years ago are still maintained, and we only see more and more aspects being tacked on to the 'cool' cork board. Examining trends of cool in the past and comparing them alongside views held today, we might be able to get a look at where cool came from, and even where its going.

My closest tie to the generation immediately prior to my own for me is my father. Having conversations with him about what life was like for him growing up gives me some minor insight into what it meant to be cool as a teenager growing up in fairly rural Ireland in the 70s. He was alive at the right time to catch the flame of the punk movement across western Europe. Bands like the Sex Pistols were gaining their fame and causing quite a ruckus for the old Catholic folk in Ireland. dad recalls times that he'd overhear other parents talk furiously about the punks who came through town, playing shows literally on trash can lids and beaten up instruments, almost for the simple sake of making noise. It was an outlet for teen angst like there never had been, and it was an embodiment of cool as we've seen it before; pretending that you don't give a fuck, that you run your own life, that you don't have to take shit from anyone....at least until you get to be 30, settle down in a respectable field, and put your 'rock days' behind you. Cool is a fickle beast, only around as long as you are young enough for it to be considered a 'phase'.

The concept of cool in the past was direct rebellion against the previous generation. Your parents were working-class stiffs, and you wanted to break out of their mold as much as possible, so that means that you had to act as different as you could from them. You had the hippies, son of 'war heroes', then punks, sons of once hippies, then there was a grunge movement, and a hip hop movement. What we are left with is a current generation of people descended from groups who have been through their own variations on what they found cool. Of course, their are always a few catches. I myself am the son of parents who were influenced partially by the punk craze in europe, but who eventually migrated to America. my parents had, whether they know it or not, a sense of exploration and need to be different that was at least partially instilled in them by what they were subject to in Ireland. The full extent of the evolution of cool is in families who have lived in america for generations, families who have had their members in many of the historical cool periods.

Take an example for the sake of argument; family living in suburban california in the 60s; their teenage child is heavily swayed by the hippy culture, something that was heavily congregated is california at the time. That teenager grew up to eventually cast aside his hippy inclinations and 'settle down' with a family. (let's say they moved to New York to settle.) His child, by now the late 70s or early 80s, will be heavily influenced by punk rock and hair metal music, giving him a new mentality that is more aggressively 'fuck the man' than the hippies would have been. At the same time, he could be influenced by rap and hip-hop music, still carrying a very aggressive sense of removal from societal normalcy. He grows up, again likely settling down with family and kids, then his kid grows up in the 90s. The early 90s was the Kurt Cobain period; grunge, the kind of apathetic, subtly rebellious tones of angsty teenagers. Punk was still strong at the time, but it was growing more angsty as well. Everyone had problems they wanted voiced, and found the voice in this music. I would say that this is the first example of a mold that is half-complete; they weren't entirely sure of who they were or even wanted to be, and this might have helped ease the turmoil they all felt.

Those specific people are still growing up, but those who have already have the kids of my generation, and we are exposed now to a lot of pop music, a lot of it centered on drugs and sexuality, with people like Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi, and more. We have perhaps less guidance than nay other group, and more cool memes to choose from. If I had to label our cool group it would be the indie ages, where everyone wants to jump on the indie bandwagon and show how edgy and different they are. We are a time of hipsters and parties in Williamsburg, of wearing cardigans and dress shoes with plastic neon glasses, of trying to be cool in our difference, without realizing that we aren't the first to try it.

To conclude, in some sort of cliché wrap-up sentiment, we're just like we have always been - looking for some recognition where everyone else just sees anonymity. We want to stand out, be bold and daring, but not necessarily isolated. We want to be loved and appreciated by all, while claiming we want none of it. Except we don't realize that James Dean did it first, or at least did it best the earliest, and we can't bring a fresh approach, because at this point, it's all scripted.

Take 3, and action....

Triangle comments

To John
Thesis: Cool is a role, and we are but actors on a stage, performing not only to an audience, but to ourselves as well. (I also thought i got some idea of frustration in your words.)

1.) We think that being 'cool' is being different, approaching life differntly, with new perspectives. However, coolness in itself, the quest for it, kind of limits ourselves to only what we see and percieve as cool. There are no new perceptions in cool, only borrowed ones.

+ I thought you might also want to add that the perspective on cool changes based on what group you perform to.

2.) Corporations see profit in coolness; they hunt down the mask-wearers and take the masks to sell. After some time, they find ne things to hunt after, continuing in an endless cycle

+ an example would be very strong here

I liked it a lot, altogether. I would only say that you might want to approach it a little calmer than you seem to now - you sound vindictive.

Cool, like we from the monkeys, has evolved over time. James Dean was your now-cliché leather jacket style cool. Guns N' Roses were the edgy, hair-band rock lifestyle cool that is still so popular in rock music. Kid CuDi is the new-school class clown and pothead cool kid. While these different examples have certain separating factors, the most important part of their 'cool' pose is that which they all have in common; they perform the role of unique individuals who say screw you to 'the man' in order to do 'what they love'. The trend of being edgy and rebellious has been the universal slogan for cool regardless of what movement it was. From the Greasers to the Hipsters of williamsburg Coolness has, despite generational gaps, remained largely unchanged by the times. The same general ideas of cool that were held 50 years ago are still maintained, and we only see more and more aspects being tacked on to the 'cool' cork board. Examining trends of cool in the past and comparing them alongside views held today, we might be able to get a look at where cool came from, and even where its going.

My closest tie to the generation immediately prior to my own for me is my father. Having conversations with him about what life was like for him growing up gives me some minor insight into what it meant to be cool as a teenager growing up in fairly rural Ireland in the 70s. He was alive at the right time to catch the flame of the punk movement across western Europe. Bands like the Sex Pistols were gaining their fame and causing quite a ruckus for the old Catholic folk in Ireland. dad recalls times that he'd overhear other parents talk furiously about the punks who came through town, playing shows literally on trash can lids and beaten up instruments, almost for the simple sake of making noise. It was an outlet for teen angst like there never had been, and it was an embodiment of cool as we've seen it before; pretending that you don't give a fuck, that you run your own life, that you don't have to take shit from anyone....at least until you get to be 30, settle down in a respectable field, and put your 'rock days' behind you. Cool is a fickle beast, only around as long as you are young enough for it to be considered a 'phase'.

The concept of cool in the past was direct rebellion against the previous generation. Your parents were working-class stiffs, and you wanted to break out of their mold as much as possible, so that means that you had to act as different as you could from them. You had the hippies, son of 'war heroes', then punks, sons of once hippies, then there was a grunge movement, and a hip hop movement. What we are left with is a current generation of people descended from groups who have been through their own variations on what they found cool. Of course, their are always a few catches. I myself am the son of parents who were influenced partially by the punk craze in europe, but who eventually migrated to America. my parents had, whether they know it or not, a sense of exploration and need to be different that was at least partially instilled in them by what they were subject to in Ireland. The full extent of the evolution of cool is in families who have lived in america for generations, families who have had their members in many of the historical cool periods. Take an example for the sake of argument; family living in suburban california in the 60s; their teenage child is heavily swayed by the hippy culture, something that was heavily congregated is california at the time. That teenager grew up to eventually cast aside his hippy inclinations and 'settle down' with a family. (let's say they moved to New York to settle.) His child, by now the late 70s or early 80s, will be heavily influenced by punk rock and hair metal music, giving him a new mentality that is more aggressively 'fuck the man' than the hippies would have been. At the same time, he could be influenced by rap and hip-hop music, still carrying a very aggressive sense of removal from societal normalcy. He grows up, again likely settling down with family and kids, then his kid grows up in the 90s. The early 90s was the Kurt Cobain period; grunge, the kind of apathetic, subtly rebellious tones of angsty teenagers. Punk was still strong at the time, but it was growing more angsty as well. Everyone had problems they wanted voiced, and found the voice in this music. I would say that this is the first example of a mold that is half-complete; thye weren't entirely sure of who they were or even wanted to be, and this might have helped ease the turmoil they all felt. Those specific people are still growing up, but those who have already have the kids of my generation, and we are exposed now to a lot of pop music, a lot of it centered on drugs and sexuality, with people like Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi, and more. We have perhaps less guidance than nay other group, and more cool memes to choose from. If I had to label our cool group it would be the indie ages, where everyone wants to jump on the indie bandwagon and show how edgy and different they are. We are a time of hipsters and parties in Williamsburg, of wearing cardigans and dress shoes with plastic neon glasses, of trying to be cool in our difference, without realizing that we aren't the first to try it.

Argument 3: Cross-examining those older ideas with the current ideas.