Episode 167: Back to School: Make Your Students Smarter Faster (Wed., Sept. 11, 2024)

Our country is dumber each year because less and less knowledge is taught in the classroom. Don't accept this incompetence, or what I would call it, malevolence.

Episode 167 offers ideas for making our schools more efficient, and our students more intelligent.

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Word-Wise Education
757-455-5020
Bruce Deitrick Price

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Bio: Bruce Deitrick Price is a novelist, artist, poet, and education reformer.

(For a list of literary titles, visit Lit4u.com. 
Under construction but worth a look.)
COMING SOON: "THE BOY WHO SAVES THE WORLD"
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Everybody should see the 333 Latin-English list. First published in 1985 in the Princeton Alumni Weekly; and further discussed by Princeton’s Salutatorian in 2019:   https://paw.princeton.edu/article/latin-and-latin-salutatory-lives

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Let's Fix Education explains to Americans why their schools are so bad. The people in charge prefer mediocrity because they are socialists of one kind or another. If people work together to promote real education, we'll have it.

Transcript

LET'S FIX EDUCATION     by     Bruce Deitrick Price

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Back to School: Make Your Students Smarter Faster

Episode 167        Wed., Sept. 11, 2024

The secret vice of K-12 is that few at the top are concerned with efficiency, where you teach a lot quickly. In our public schools, you will probably find few students who know more at the end of each school year than they knew on the first day.

So let's look for ways to accelerate the process.

I) CLUSTERS. I am a big fan of clusters where you teach a lot at once. (Years ago, I created a magnificent cluster where  every word is both Latin and English. 333 ordinary words, e.g.  bonus and exit. Link below.)

Here's another pretty cluster: all words that end in -LOGY, for example, geology, psychology, technology, sociology, pathology, mythology, criminology anthropology, embryology, bacteriology, cardiology, dermatology, biology and almost 100 more! (An easy way to find them is rhyming dictionaries.)

The Greeks had a word, logos, that means word, language, study, central concept. Any upscale writing in History, Science, Religion, or Philosophy usually contains a theory involving logos. Little by little, when English needed a new word, the pedants grabbed a Greek word and put -logy on the end of it, meaning "the study of.” So introduce 5 or 10 of these words that the kids might be ready for.  Then, for example, when you tell them that derma is Latin for skin, or that bio is Greek for life, the whole meaning comes immediately to mind. Knowing how these words were formed reinforces their meanings.

II) FRACTIONS AND DECIMALS. Some of the worst news about our public schools is that many schools no longer bother with fractions and percentages. Isn't that pathetic? So any sort of middle or advanced math is almost out of the question.

I suggest starting with the very simplest examples. The US dollar has 4 quarters. Each quarter is 1/4 of a dollar. A gallon consists of four quarts. Illustrate these facts with objects. Draw big pictures on the blackboard. Illustrate simple stuff simply, again and again.

A great way to teach decimals is all the timed events in the Olympics. Good runners can hit 9.5 seconds in the 100 yards. But what does it mean, 9.5? Explain that there are 10 tiny steps to go from 9 to 10, so 9.5 is halfway. That is, 9 and 1/2.

Start talking about the records for various sports. Ask students to guess what the best times are. Put up news footage or YouTube videos of people competing with a clock running in the frame. Let students explain what the different images mean.

Avoid the typical class where you try to cover a subject each day and then you move on. (That’s spiraling done wrong.) No, touch on it every day and don't ever move on. Search for how the homeschoolers teach fractions, etc. Try different ideas. At present, the schools are saying, we'll teach as little as we can get away with. Not acceptable.

III) DICTIONARIES AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS. The best way to learn a lot quickly is to use dictionaries and encyclopedias. You start with something short and simple and build from there.

One of the biggest cons in K-12 is that children don't need to learn anything because everything's on the Internet. Yes, but you have to find it. The problem with the Internet is there's always five or ten things clamoring for your attention. Younger students have no way of evaluating what should be the first choice.

When I was a kid, I loved the Columbia Encyclopedia — everything in one book. It was simple to find the main article and read that. No distractions.

You can buy used World Book sets for under $100. You can look in the Internet for Usborne Encyclopedias from England. The Smithsonian publishes a dictionary called Picturepedia. National Geographic and Smithsonian publish marvelous magazines for kids. 

K-12 schools seem determined to keep your children ignorant. There's no reason to put up with that. Relatives often ask what gifts do your children want? Knowledge.

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Everybody should see the 333 Latin-English list. First published in 1985 in the Princeton Alumni Weekly and further discussed by Princeton’s Salutatorian of 2019:  https://paw.princeton.edu/article/latin-and-latin-salutatory-lives