$40,000 per year to attend a high school that will allow you to enter your "top choice university"?

I noticed a full page ad in the New York Times on Sunday. It was an announcement from Leman Manhattan Prep School that their newly graduated first class of “critical thinkers” will “enter their top choice universities.”

There was then a list of the top choice universities their graduates were going to attend. There are about 70 of them. They include:

Allegheny College

American University

Binghamton University

Bloomfield College

Boston University

University of Buffalo

Clark University

Connecticut College

University of Connecticut

SUNY Cortland

Curry College

Dickinson College

Drew University

Drexel University

Eckerd College

Elmira College

Elon University

Eugene Lang College

Farmingdale State College

Franklin Pierce College

Goucher College

Guilford College

University of Hartford

Hartwick College

High Point University

Howard University

OK. I am tired of typing. This is just A-H.

Students pay about $40,000 a year in tuition to attend Leman which seems to be capable of getting them into colleges that would take people who were paying a lot less tuition (or maybe just went to their regular high school.)

My main point is that getting into the “college that is your top choice” is so important that people have lost all of their senses about the fact that there are 4000 colleges in the United States most of whom are willing to take nearly anyone who applies. (Also going to college may not matter that much any more, but that is another column.)

To high school students who hate high school (and to those who love it). Some things to do this summer.

Every day, high school students get to this blog by typing “high school is useless” or something similar. I worry about those kids, but I also worry about the kids who think high school is very important, who study all the time, and who obsess about getting into a “good college.”

The good news is that it is summertime. Now you can forget about school and actually learn something. The teacher is you. (Your teacher will really always be you. If others in your life can help, great, but it will still be you in the end.)

So what should you do this summer? Here are ten suggestions:

1. start a business 

This is, of course, easier said than done. That having been said, my five year old grandson, Max, ran a lemonade stand the other day, made some money and was very excited about it. Think about how people make money where you live. Think about what services are lacking where you live. Think about what people need that you could provide. Maybe your business could be on the web and sell to people like you. What would you buy from someone like you? They don’t teach how to start a business in high school. They should but they don’t. 

2 learn a real skill

What constitutes a real skill? Computer programming is a real skill. Glass blowing is a real skill. Carpentry is a real skill. Playing music is a real skill. Building something is a real skill. Pick something that sounds appealing and find out how to learn to do it. Then practice a lot.

3 play sports

Why is this important? Because sports teaches you a few very important things that school misses. One is how to lose. Another is humility. No matter what sport you pick there will always be someone better than you at it. Sports teaches you to try harder. Sports teaches you how your body works and how to make it work better. All stuff school ignores that is very important.

4 invent something

What is missing in the world we live in? Think about it. The world is constantly changing. Who will be helping make the changes of the future? Why not you? See what is wrong out there and try to fix it. Ask what you wish you had and figure out how to invent it.

5 hang out with small children

Why does this matter? Because probably you are going to be a parent some day. Schools don’t teach parenting skills. (I have no idea why not. Why do they think parenting isn’t worth teaching?) Volunteer to help take care of kids in some way. You will learn a lot about them and about yourself.

6 do some real science

Is there something you are curious about? Now is the time. Science isn’t about memorizing facts they teach in school. Science is about investigation and discovery. Science is about finding evidence and causes. Do some real science. Investigate something. Think about the health of your parents. The habits of your dog, the growth of trees, water, airplanes, cars. It doesn't matter what. Find out how they work. Figure out what might make them work better. This is real science.

7 read

Yes. Read. Sounds like something your teacher would tell you. In this case they would be right. If the only thing you read all day is texts and web sites, you are not reading. Read something complicated. Read about something that requires logical arguments, gets your mind spinning, forces you to provide counter arguments, and makes you want to discuss it with people who know more than you do. It doesn't  matter what you read about. It does matter that you think about something new in a careful reasoned way. And it also matters that you talk about what you have read.

8 learn a language

Learning a new language can teach you a great deal about how your mind works and how your culture works. The only real way to learn one is to go somewhere where they speak that language and speak only that language for a while. When you are young it is easy to learn a language. Spend the summer learning a language and you will never regret it.

9 meet someone new

I don’t mean a new person who is like all the people you already know. Find someone from a different culture, a different world, who has nothing in common with you. Find out about them. Hang out with a different group. See the world from someone else’s perspective. Everything you know about the world, everything you are most sure of, will be shaken up if you do this. This is a good thing.

10 be bored

Sit quietly. Turn off all electronics. See what happens to your mind. Let it go while you are doing nothing -- absolutely nothing  -- for an hour. You will be amazed at what happens when you shut it all down and let your mind wander. You will find out what you really think about things.

Try this stuff. It will put school in proper perspective for you.

Universities have to stop this nonsense about research and majors; Southern Utah?

As it happens I spent last week at a resort in Southern Utah (my wife’s choice.) We did various outdoor activities, sometimes with guides in a place that looked like this.

  

I spoke at length with one of the guides about his life. He is a young kid and I was wondering what his plans were. I assumed he wanted to continue to live in the area. He said he did. I asked him what else he was doing. He told me he was student at Southern Utah University and that he was majoring in botany.

I know universities pretty well, but I had managed to miss this one. What I didn’t miss was the idea that he was majoring in botany. Really?

I looked up SUU and found their botany major page which includes the following testimonial from a successful graduate.

Name: Vicki Tyler

Graduated: 2002 Double Major
Biology/Zoology & Communications/Public Relations

Current job: Natural Resources Specialist,
Bureau of Land Management

"I would put my education at SUU up against almost anyone’s! I loved the undergraduate research opportunities and feel I had the opportunity to do some research that most students only get to do at a graduate level. If I could pinpoint one thing that I really learned from ALL the professors in the SUU biology department, it was “application” - putting those things we learned to use in the real world. This alone has benefited me more than you will ever know, and has enabled me to compete for a variety of wildlife/biology related jobs. Keep up the good work SUU!"

Apart from the fact that this woman wasn’t actually a botany major, I couldn’t help but wonder how many jobs there are with the Bureau of Land Management. But what caught my eye is what she said about research. This is consistent message from all the top universities. Research is what they teach, not job skills. But SUU? Surely this isn’t a hotbed of research nor is that what their students should be learning.

When I questioned our guide about the wisdom of being a botany major if you want to continue to live in Southern Utah, he told me that his friends thought he would be better off as a chemistry major.

So I checked the SUU successful graduate page for chemistry majors. Here is the man they have up there:

Name: Joseph E. Carpenter

Graduated: Class of 2005

Current job: Graduate Research Assistant
Princeton University

"The diverse opportunities for research and rigorous academic requirements at Southern Utah University provided the training and knowledge base that have enabled me to achieve my highest academic goals."

Now, as a professor, I recognize this version of success. He got to go to Princeton so he is the best they can even think about producing. (The fact that he is still a graduate student 8 years after graduation I will ignore.)

Note again the emphasis on research. I guess SUU is just a research mecca. Somehow I missed it.

But my guide didn’t want to be a chemistry major to do research. He heard he could get a job in pharmaceuticals. Is there is pharmaceutical company in Southern Utah?  

Universities around the world are doing their students a serious disservice. They act as if the most likely and best job a graduate will get will be in research and that students go to a university in order to become researchers. This is very sad, a waste of money and a waste of human talent. There relay aren’t that many researchers, but there are a lot of unemployed graduates.

There aren’t that many employed art historians either, another possible major at SUU:

Name: Kari Elizabeth Lowell

Class of: 2010 Southern Utah University

"My experience with the art history program at SUU has opened my eyes to a new way of viewing and interpreting art from past decades. The professors in the art history department are very knowledgeable, inspiring, and personal."

Notice that this art history graduate is not employed. Why is there an art history major at SUU?

I checked one more, economics. Another success story:

Name: Jeff Dotson

Class of: 2002 Southern Utah University

Current job: Assistant Professor of Marketing, Owen
Graduate School of Management,
Vanderbilt University

"I loved my experience in the Economics department at SUU! The quality of instruction and personal attention provided by the faculty was excellent. Not only did they help me gain a solid understanding of the fundamentals of economics, they helped me develop a passion for the subject that ultimately led me to graduate school. As a graduate student I was as well, if not better prepared for advanced studies than the majority of my peers."

When I was at Yale I used to remark that Yale was in the professor training business. That is not so terrible because professors have to be created somewhere and Yale is one of those places. Occasionally, I suppose, SUU creates a professor as well. And, that is seen as a great success of the system. However there are 7000 students at SUU and there will not be very many professors produced out of that group.

Now, I know nothing about SUU. Never heard of it before. And that is precisely my point. Take a look at any university and you will hear about its excellent track record in research and how it teaches students to do research. They can’t all be excellent research places and research is not all that important to the average student. 

SUU ought to try counseling its students about job opportunities before they select a major. All schools ought to do that, but believe me they don’t. 

Milo takes a computer class and eventually will learn Powerpoint. Yippee!

My daughter sent me a report on a conversation she had with Milo last week:

My Daughter: I sent Papa a list of all the stuff you're going to learn in your computer class up through 5th grade.

Milo: I bet he hated it.

Right Milo. 

I hated it.

Here for example, is the 4^th grade computer class (which as it happens is more of less the same as the 3^rd and 5^th grade computer class):

the 4th grade year will look like this:

•                Review log-in procedures 

•                Microsoft Word

◦                                  The basics - opening and quitting

◦                                  File management & navigation - Save As + Open: saving a file properly (proper name, location, etc) and finding the file and opening it up on a different occasion

◦                                  Basic typing review - proper way to capitalize, using “Shift” for certain punctuation, 1 space between words, etc

◦                                  Practice typing - copying a document

◦                                  Formatting 1 - margins, when to use the return key, etc

◦                                  Formatting 2 - Bold, Italic, Underline, etc

◦                                  Formatting 3 - changing font size & style

◦                                  Practice formatting - using typed document & changing font style, size, bold, etc

•                The internet

◦                                  The basics of Firefox/Chrome - the buttons, address bar, tools, etc

◦                                  Searching using Google - what the results mean, pictures, etc

◦                                  Downloading pictures - proper naming and saving procedures

  

•                 

•                Combining Microsoft Word and the internet

◦                                  Inserting pictures found on the internet into a Word document

◦                                  Formatting the picture in Word - size, position, etc

◦                                  Formatting the complete document - text and pictures

•                Microsoft Powerpoint research project

◦                                  Basics of Powerpoint - how to create, format, etc

◦                                  Creating a practice Presentation with text, pictures, animations, etc

◦                                  Using the internet for research - proper searching techniques, identifying reputable sites, etc

◦                                  Taking the information gathered on the internet and creating a Powerpoint Presentation conveying what they have learned - text, pictures, animations, etc

Really?

This is computer education in the New York City Schools? We could teach kids to program you know. Or we could teach them to build apps. Or to create art. Or to build robots.  Or to create a web site. Or to create music. The list could go on and on.

But, you know what Milo learned yesterday? How to create a hashtag.

Great.

Twitter is now part of the curriculum. As far as I can tell kids have been able to learn to tweet all by themselves (for better or for worse.)

So, we can’t modernize the curriculum because of Common Core and when we can do something small, like add a computer class, it is to teach stuff like Powerpoint.  

School is getting worse all the time.

Learning and Teaching 101: Milo teaches Mira to do the cannonball

Learning and teaching are very simple really.

 Some basic elements:

1. a teacher who want to teach
2. a learner who wants to learn
3. something that can be clearly accomplished by the learner
4. a teacher who can show how it is done
5. success is obvious to everyone

we don't need learning theories, testing, teacher evaluation, or help for kids who can't learn

we also don't need classrooms

we just need one on one attention to help kids do what they express an interest in doing

until we understand that we have "schools that don't perform"

just get rid of the 'one size fits all' curriculum

Kids all over the world think school is useless; does anyone care?

People get to my column in many ways, but quite often they just type something into Google. Here is what they typed into Google this week that got them to various columns I have written about school. (The country the writers came from is listed first.):

US: how many kids hate high school

Romania: hating high school

Morocco: advice to students who hate school

Serbia: hating high school

Guam: school subjects are useless

France: why do students not like school

South Africa: school taught me of how useless aim

US: why i hated high school

Romania: why school is pointless

US: reasons why high school is useless

Kuwait: why I hate high school educational

US: i hate high schoolers

US: highschool is useless

US: useless high school classes

US: i hate high school and i dont want to be there

Canada: why high school is useless

Canada: why high school is useless

UK: why do we have education

US: how to not hate high school

US: isnt school useless

Canada: why high school is useless

US: why school is pointless

US: useless school subjects

US: school is bad for children

US: useless information learned in highschool

UK: what to do when you hate high school

Spain: hate high school

US: i despise high school

US: what does high school teach you

Canada: i hate high school

Canada: books about kids hating high school

Australia: high school for kids who hate school

Brazil: a great deal of what students learn in school these days is a waste of time

US: high school dont teach you anything

India: academic knowledge taught in high school is worthless if they don't prepare us for own decision

US: useless school subjects

I just though I’d take note of this phenomenon. While people debate Common Core, or worry about evaluating teachers, or raising test scores, or getting their kids into a good school, try to remember this. Most kids are miserable in school. We need to stop teaching the silly stuff we teach in high school and stop creating high schools that make students miserable.  Apparently we do this in most every country.

It is easy to change all this. (Amazingly the answer is not MOOCs.)

We can change it my letting kids learn what they want to learn in way that is fun. It is that simple. Technology can help with this. A reasonable curriculum could help with this. Thinking kids have a right enjoy their lives could help with this. Unfortunately, politicians who talk about reform aren’t helping nor are they trying to address the real issues. They never really worry about the kids at all. 

The people who wrote these things into Google are right. School is useless. Time to do something about it.

Letter from a teacher: thank you Arne, Bill, and Pearson for making her so miserable

Many people write to me, especially unhappy students (go here for most recent letter from a very unhappy student :

http://www.rogerschank.com/advice/I-am-17-and-I-hate-high-school.html 

and teachers who have had it with the system they teach. Here is a letter I received a few days ago: 

I believe as you do that stories have power. I teach history where story should play a more prominent role in our curriculum. I have been a teacher for 11 years.  While never a strong supporter of the public school system, I am a strong supporter of public education.  The system is killing the hope of everything this country could possibly achieve.  Public education is truly in critical condition. I am especially concerned for the minorities and those in poverty.  We do not have an equitable system, but we expect equal results. 

I read your book, Teaching Minds, with great interest. I love studying about curriculum and cognitive science.  Education, in general, is my passion.  Teaching seems to be a natural outgrowth of this, but it has not been as enjoyable as I had hoped it would be.  I have a Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Social Science with a minor in Psychology and concentration in History.  I currently teach US History at the high school level.  I also have a Special Ed endorsement. Most of my teaching has been in Special Education classrooms. I now have a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction.  I constantly think about how to create curriculum that makes sense.  Hence, your book was like taking a deep breath after being submerged in an ocean of chaos and confusion.

Like you, I grew up hating school, but loving to learn, and when my children were born I embarked on my adventure of learning about education in the hope of keeping their love of learning alive.  I dabbled in homeschooling them for a time. When they did go to school, I supplemented with a variety of experiences and believed in "unschooling."  Eventually, I began to get my degree in education with the dream of establishing an alternative school.  Now, over a decade later, I still dream of such a school, but have found myself stuck in the mire of our public school system.

I want to engage students, motivate them to learn and be self-disciplined (another skill that desperately needs to be learned). I would love the feeling that I had actually done a good job when I fully retire.  Following administration’s guidance has only led me to feel less competent and less effective than ever.  We all know we should lecture less, if at all, but what we have to replace it with is worksheets and graphic organizers that mimic the ACT.  I am required to give practice ACT tests throughout the year.  To counteract that, we also have Document Based Questions that are supposed to encourage critical thinking, but the kids still don’t care. I have lost all student engagement.  It has been most disheartening.

I would love to have the opportunity be part of Alternative Learning Places.  It is exactly what I have been dreaming of.  I plan to try and implement your ideas into my curriculum next year, if administration allows me (or I manage to sneak it in). Next year is not an evaluative year for me and I am close to retirement age, so I may go rogue.  At this point, I have nothing to lose except the boredom of my students.  I think gaining teacher support would be easier than gaining administrative support and, if we banded together, I believe we could make things happen. I am willing to help on that score, as well. Teachers want to make a difference in their students’ lives. They want their students to want to learn.  They don’t want to work hard with nothing to show for their efforts and then be blamed for the outcome of something over which they have no control.

Thank you for your book and your courage to share your ideas.  I stand with you in the hope changes can be made.  It’s time for a revolution!

I found this letter extremely difficult to read. How miserable we have made teachers (and students). Why does someone who really seems to care about her kids being excited about learning have no real way to do that?

Thank you Arne Duncan. Thank you Bill Gates. Thank you Pearson Publishing, McGraw Hill, ACT, ETS, and all the other organizations who just want a world where there are tests to take and teachers to make sure students take them.  Thank you for making it nearly impossible to make any changes because of Common Core and because of your tests. Thank you for making teachers miserable by judging them by how their students do on your tests.

I don’t what these people’s real goals are, (except making more money.) I have trouble believing they just hate kids and hate teachers. But they sure don’t care about letting kids have fun learning and letting teachers have fun teaching people who are excited to learn.