Show, Don't Tell.

[Milk-Drops]

A concept I have understood from literature is the concept of show, don't tell. The concept is that its not enough to tell your audience of something happening or being important, the author should demonstrate the importance of the events.

I noticed something in our society that could really use this device. Teaching. In my days of schooling, I was always asking the teachers of why do I need to learn this or that? Most of the time I would just be told that the lesson was important. I noticed that this never worked and many of my fellow students agreed. For us, and most people, it tends to be that we learn things easier if its important to our lives. For instance, most guys concentrate on how to pick up girls or look cool, or focus on a sport or activity that interests them. These things tend to be very important in a high school setting. This can also be shown for the girls as well. The said tasks immediately show repercussions and rewards. A lot of teaching today deals less with the importance of the lessons and examples, and instead focuses more on cramming a lot of information for the sake of testing.

My hypothesis is that this is why kids and teens don't care about school. Its not the subject matter, but how the subject matter is taught. Kids don't care because it doesn't seem relevant. What are your thoughts?

 

[AirDancer]

I agree with you, Meatballsub: It is how the subject matter is taught. It's also how relevant the subject matter is presented. And heaven help the student who has a monotone-speaking teacher in an overly-warm classroom after lunch.

Many teachers in challenged schools have turned their teaching style upside-down & have found innovative ways of teaching their subject in order to get the students engaged....to make the subject relevant to the students.

 

[TOG]

I agree, up to a point. If you want kids to learn something, you have to give them a reason to learn it. But telling them "it's important" probably isn't the best way. Besides, that isn't always true. A better way of getting them to learn it to convince them that it's interesting and fun. When I was in elementary school and junior high school, I hated math and, unsurprisingly enough, I wasn't doing to well in that subject. Everybody told me math was important and that I had to learn it, but that didn't help. Then, when I was in the 9th grade, I had a math teacher who managed to make math fun. She would give us math puzzles to work on at home. When I started having fun with it, math became my favorite subject and I started making straight A's. To this day I still love math.

The TOG​

 

[Claudya]

Meh I thought we should pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge...

 

[TOG]

Meh I thought we should pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge...

Knowledge on it's own is pretty useless. You can know that a tomato is a fruit, but that won't help you unless you also have the wisdom not to put tomatoes in a fruit salad.

The TOG​

 

[Claudya]

Hehe, I love the tomato and fruit salad example.
Anyway, the "knowledge for knowledge's sake" is what they told us at school. Putting knowledge to use and gaining wisdom by doing so would come by itself in time, they said. For many people it worked out that way.
To be honest, when I was in school I and they didn't always bother to explain to us why we'd have to learn all the algebra or chemistry or... why did we have to do gymnastics in our sports classes? Seriously... gymnastics??? But I was usually motivated by trying to get good grades and gaining knowledge so I could show it off to impress people.

So I was motivated to learn, alright. Yet I have a very different problem now. I feel like I could learn and get good at almost everything. But I can't imagine I could ever be usefull. Maybe I would be able to chose and pursue a carreer if they'd shown us that knowledge can be practically usefull and improve the world. But I still only pursue knowledge and not usefullness.

 

[Milk-Drops]

I agree with you, Meatballsub: It is how the subject matter is taught. It's also how relevant the subject matter is presented. And heaven help the student who has a monotone-speaking teacher in an overly-warm classroom after lunch.

Many teachers in challenged schools have turned their teaching style upside-down & have found innovative ways of teaching their subject in order to get the students engaged....to make the subject relevant to the students.

I love reading stories where teachers have figured out a way to teach students in troubled areas. What I found the most disconcerting when I was going for an education degree, was that the programs barely even touches my main point. The program is centered around forcing as much into a child or teenager's head as possible. Its mind boggling.

 

[Milk-Drops]

I agree, up to a point. If you want kids to learn something, you have to give them a reason to learn it. But telling them "it's important" probably isn't the best way. Besides, that isn't always true. A better way of getting them to learn it to convince them that it's interesting and fun. When I was in elementary school and junior high school, I hated math and, unsurprisingly enough, I wasn't doing to well in that subject. Everybody told me math was important and that I had to learn it, but that didn't help. Then, when I was in the 9th grade, I had a math teacher who managed to make math fun. She would give us math puzzles to work on at home. When I started having fun with it, math became my favorite subject and I started making straight A's. To this day I still love math.

The TOG​

I definately agree that math is a hard subject for many people to both understand and teach. Its great that you recieved a teacher that understood how to make it interesting. The same thing happened with me and biology and art. I didn't get either subject outside of animals are cool and I like pretty colors until I met some teachers that shared a passion. Now that is a rare treat many don't get.

 

[Milk-Drops]

Hehe, I love the tomato and fruit salad example.
Anyway, the "knowledge for knowledge's sake" is what they told us at school. Putting knowledge to use and gaining wisdom by doing so would come by itself in time, they said. For many people it worked out that way.
To be honest, when I was in school I and they didn't always bother to explain to us why we'd have to learn all the algebra or chemistry or... why did we have to do gymnastics in our sports classes? Seriously... gymnastics??? But I was usually motivated by trying to get good grades and gaining knowledge so I could show it off to impress people.

So I was motivated to learn, alright. Yet I have a very different problem now. I feel like I could learn and get good at almost everything. But I can't imagine I could ever be useful. Maybe I would be able to chose and pursue a career if they'd shown us that knowledge can be practically useful and improve the world. But I still only pursue knowledge and not usefulness.

I think the biggest problem is that most education programs aren't teaching utility, but trivia. Its an accomplishment for states or countries to be able to say that their students can do math at a specific level, read at a specific level, and repeat trivia, etc. Its actually quite odd considering that critical thinking and utility are subjects that massively suffer in modern education.

 

[Claudya]

I think the biggest problem is that most education programs aren't teaching utility, but trivia. Its an accomplishment for states or countries to be able to say that their students can do math at a specific level, read at a specific level, and repeat trivia, etc. Its actually quite odd considering that critical thinking and utility are subjects that massively suffer in modern education.

Yeah, that's really true. Critical thinking wasn't most of our teachers' priority. Those skills are kind of "soft", they can't be meassured very well. There's probably no way to create a standardised test for critical thinking. So utility, creativity, and critical thinking weren't on the curriculum because you can't give grades for that and thus those are poor measures for students' and teachers' accomplishments.
Some of our teachers, thinking about my history teacher in particular, did a good job at challenging our ways of thinking. She had us "role play" (i.e. take their stance in a debate, or write diaries and letter from their point of view) people like nazis, monarchists, anti-democrats, communists, holocaust survivers, holocaust bystanders...
Those exercises taught us how understanding history is about understanding people that were basically like us, just under different social/economical/political conditions.
But most of our teachers were lazy.

The German school system has a big weakness, students are send to different school according to their abilities when they are only like 10 or 11 years old. So for the well achieving kids (which I was one of) from 5th grade on until graduation after 12th or 13th grade learning is only about learning academical knowledge and skills in order to prepare us for our future academic career. So kids attending those higher education schools are usually motivated to learn stuff even if they don't see any immediate use for them other than getting good grades. There's not much utility included, unless you count things like foreign languages, telling different styles of jazz appart, using condoms correctly or coding software as "utility"). Kids that attend "lower" schools have classes on healthy nutrition, cooking, house keeping, manual work, and writing job applications besides math, english, history and all that. They probably learn more usefull stuff.

Things that I wish we'd been taught in school because I need them for life but still haven't figured out at age 30 include
- how to make friends with someone and maintain or deepen a friendship
- how to keep one's appartment clean and tidy
- how to control and regulate one's own emotions
- how to be punctual for appointments
- how to find purpose in life
- how to be an altruistic person.

 

[OhFarouk]

Isn't Missouri 'The Show Me State'?

I think I've seen the motto on Missouri number plates.