These past couple, and coming weeks, have been obnoxiously full of visits to low socioeconomic schools in southwest Virginia… and these visits has been unbelievably eye-opening.
I have noticed that these students are being trained, not taught. They are shown how to bubble in forms, hold themselves to SOLs that are established by school boards and reject thinking for themselves. It’s disturbing.
Classrooms are composed of children from varying levels of learning, troublemakers are addressed as such and ignored. Teachers are trying, but in the system they are in…. rock and a hard place.
Once these students (hopefully) make it to the college level we, as professors, have to untrain first before we teach.
I’d rather have a blank slate. I have learned with horses that having an older horse with prior training can actually be more difficult than a green (inexperienced) horse with no training. The prior you have to work backwords before going forwards and the latter is just a blank slate, starting fresh. A new opportunity.
Similarly, this situation we’re in is like cancer. This way of thinking from their spoon-fed experiences are so ingrained in some students by the time the “doctors” get hold of them that it may be untreatable. Prevention is better. A drastic comparison? Yes. See the connection?
Prevention and early treatment is key. Why are we waiting until the later stages to encourage creativity?