Sometimes homework is the most stupidest thing ever.

[conuly]

Ana had a worksheet on verbs for today, the first one I've seen her do.

This is what it says at the top: "A verb tells what people or things do. More generally, a verb tells the action a noun or pronoun does."

1. Ana does not admit to any firm knowledge of what nouns or pronouns are, mind, but it's a subject we can work on.

2. This is far from the best definition of "verb" I've ever seen... but for first graders just beginning to learn this sort of thing, it probably doesn't matter. Except...

3. They were supposed to underline the verbs in various different sentences. And in each sentence, afterwards, we were helpfully told how many verbs were in the sentence. And almost all the verbs that Ana was supposed to identify weren't "action" verbs!

Has to (where dollars to doughnuts she's only supposed to identify "has", although the has in "she has a bed" is very different from the has in "she has to go to bed", which is the sentence she had), is (several times), will be (this is two verbs, of course), be, was.... Do and did I guess imply some action, but really, is a beginner gonna pick up on them?

Worse, some of the sentences had words that are verbs in ONE context, but not in others - "the play" and "be quiet".

The sample sentence lists "can" as a verb. Tell me, what sort of action is implied by "can"? If you're going to have them jump in with helping verbs and various conjugations of "to be", give them a better definition than "it tells what people or things do". Because when you do that, kids expect, well, to see things being done!

Instead of bothering about that, which didn't make sense to her, I told her that a verb can come after "I" or "she", and that if it comes right after "the", "a", or "an" it's probably safe to say it's not a verb. (Let's not talk about gerunds and all, okay?)

Comments

[siderea]

In the midst of all of this, there came a vivid example of the kind of thing we say in school that makes no sense, that only bewilders and confuses the thoughtful child who tries to make sense of it.

The teacher, whose specialty, by the way, was English, had told these children that a verb is a word of action -- which is not always true. One of the words she asked was "dream." She was thinking of the noun and apparently did not remember that "dream" can as easily be a verb. One little boy, making a pure guess, said it was a verb. Here the teacher, to be helpful, contributed one of those "explanations" that are so much more hindrance than help. She said, "But a verb has to have action; can you give me a sentence, using 'dream', that has action?" The child thought a bit, and said, "I had a dream about the Trojan War."

Now it's pretty had to get much more action that that. But the teacher told him he was wrong, and he sat silent, with an utterly baffled and frightened expression on his face. She was so busy thinking about what she wanted him to say, she was so obsessed with that right answer hidden in her mind, that she could not think about what he was really saying and thinking, could not see that his reasoning was logical and that the mistake was not his, but hers.

John Holt. 1964. Published in the Owosso Argus-Press Dec 7; and in How Children Fail.

[conuly]

Good quote, thank you.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yay, mighty John Holt! Y'know what, I first read How Children Fail in about 1967, because my parents had it (on account of me) and I kiped it. (I always kiped all their Child Psychology books, so I'd know what they were up to.) I was in 4th or 5th grade at the time, attending a real prison-camp of a New Jersey public school, and it totally validated my perception that School was Seriously Fucked Up.

I'd had that perception for several years, actually - in third grade I'd determined to become a teacher because I was certain I could do a better job than was being done to me - but John Holt was the first grown-up who ever admitted it was true, and explained why. He's up there on my Childhood Heroes list, along with Vance Packard, Thomas Szasz, Robert A. Heinlein and Henry David Thoreau.

Of course, when I actually became a teacher, I quickly found out that I couldn't do a much better job than was done to me, because the system was set up to herd children, not to teach them. So I jumped ship, went over to Alternative Education, found it not much better but at least with room for improvement. LOL, here in my 'advanced late youth' I guess I've become an UnSchooler in principle, though in practice I acknowledge that UnSchooling only works well in an enriched environment.

What would really work would be if we could provide every child with an enriched environment, and there certainly has been some progress made in that direction, but a lot more is needed.

Ever think, if we could get just one generation of children reared on this planet, who had all had their primary needs adequately met, we'd be good to go for the rest of our species' lifespan.

[siderea]

Yeah, John Holt and A.S. Neill are is substantial part why I am not dead. I came after you. I read HCF when I was in fifth or sixth grade, so I was reading his commentary about fifth grade math classes while I was pretty much in one; that would have been 1981.

As to unschooling and enrichment, I am possessed of the radical notion that we wouldn't need enrichment if we somehow meaningfully reintegrated children into our societies. Their environments are only impoverished because we put them in artificially impoverished environments. But that's a pretty tall order.

Ever think, if we could get just one generation of children reared on this planet, who had all had their primary needs adequately met, we'd be good to go for the rest of our species' lifespan.

Yes, often. The great bootstrapping problem.

[conuly]

We could always tackle this backwards, a la the supervillain solution: Kill off everybody (or, more kindly, sterilize everybody) and start over with lab babies!

But that's not very nice.

[siderea]

Doesn't actually solve the problem though: who would staff the lab? And how would they know how to raise those children correctly?

A generation raised (successfully!) in a lab would only know how to raise their children... in a lab. Societal solutions require societal interventions.

[conuly]

who would staff the lab?

Why, the saviors of humanity themselves, of course! Toiling diligently to give the new generation a better and brighter future!

And how would they know how to raise those children correctly?

Everybody thinks they know how to raise children correctly. That's why people keep having kids.

A generation raised (successfully!) in a lab would only know how to raise their children... in a lab.

Sometimes the price of freedom is eternal slavery to the lab.

[siderea]

Everybody thinks they know how to raise children correctly. That's why people keep having kids.

I thought it was because sex feels good, babies are cute, and they want to be loved unconditionally.

[conuly]

Well, there's that too, but if they didn't think they could do it they'd use condoms and get a puppy.