• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Should school be fun?

Iamme

Philosopher
I
Joined
Aug 5, 2003
Messages
6,215
(To the moderators: I see there is a separate "EDUCATION" forum at the JREF. Only 4,000+ posts. In my opinion, threads with little response should be consolidated into the more popular threads to generate better response. If my thread gets shifted over there, this will be akin to it being placed on the trash heap. Therefore, I'd appreciate it if you would count this as a "SOCIAL ISSUE".)

When I went to school, from 1958-1971, it was all serious. It was strict...but not overly so. Not as bad as when my parents went...but strict enough, non the less. It was like reporting to a job, everyday. And that's about what I thought of it as; some job I didn't really care for.

In high school, I went to one of the largest schools in the state. We had 3 school principles. My graduating class had about 750 in it. We had about 30 kids in each class. I was given homework quite regularly in about 3/4 of the classes. I had to do essays and term papers also, and these could range from say 15-30 pages in length. I couldn't wait to get out of there. I had enough. Never cared to go on to any more schooling after this.

There is this neighbor girl in high school that I talk to. She goes to a small school. She just *loves* going to school. Friday night she will say, "I wish Monday would get here!". I'd say, "What?!". She'd say, "I can't wait to go back to school." I'd say, "You're kiddin', right?" She wasn't...and isn't. She just loves school.

So I have pinned her down as to why. The reason is, that the kids there can talk back to and debate with the teachers without getting in trouble. This actually creates more interaction between students and teachers. There is a lot of social interaction going on with classmates/friends right in the class. It sounds to me, from listenining to her, that she gets to go to a party everyday, and on the side, they happen to learn stuff!

What might play into this, in her particular case is that she may be bigger than many of her teachers, let alone her female classmates. Me, on the other hand...I was a late bloomer and smaller than almost everyone, and perhaps there was an intimidation factor there. Even though I wan't picked, on, you still realize that there is a pecking order, and I was near the bottom.

I have been thinking about this for a while now. Maybe that's a *good* thing, rather than a bad thing (regarding it being fun at school). Maybe this helps kids stay interested in going to school. Maybe this helps kids develop better social skills as well. I think the social aspect was more overlooked.

It sure was by my *parents* anyway. All they cared about was that I got good grades. So perhaps I can't blame it all on the schools. That I was programmed by my parents to make sure I studied and got good grades.

Then, maybe it's all simply the fact that her school is small, and mine was so big, and therein lies the real reasions for the difference. That perhaps larger schools have a need to run more of a tight ship, so to speak, so things don't get out of hand.

But maybe big schools could learn something here, regarding the little schools.

----------------------------------------------------

So what was *your* view of school? Did you enjoy it? Was it just O.K.? Would you have preferred it to be more disciplined? Less? More social interaction between both teachers and students during class (not counting extra-cirricular activities)..or, do you believe that the proper place for this is in extra-cirricular activities (your sports and the various clubs)? And what role did your parents play in all of this?
 
How anyone can ever think it's a bad thing that learning be made fun is beyond me.

I think you're right on target with the little vs. big schools. With a smaller class size, everyone has more of an opportunity to interact and have a more personally fulfilling experience. When I went to a big state university and had to sit in lecture halls of 600 students, I got very little out of it. When I transferred to a small private college, classes had at the most 15 students and it was a wonderful experience. When I was teaching computer classes, the classes with 10 people were much more fulfilling, for both the students and myself, than the classes where they tried to stuff in 25 people or more.

I don't think it's so much about big school vs. little school, though. The big schools could do this if they'd simply hire more teachers and have more but smaller classrooms.
 
A reasonably well presented subject should be fun for those who can and want to learn it. If the teacher can make his presentation "fun," the material will be easier to absorb for all students. But I fear that some kids just aren't compatible with schools or book-learning and need to pursue other knowledge or find a different way to acquire it. I've encountered electronics wizards who owned only a high school diploma but had acquired vast amounts of electronic knowledge by building and tinkering with electronic gear they learned about from magazines or other tinkerers. They had little interest in theory for its own sake and needed practical applications to make it seem useful. I suppose you can find similarly inclined people in other areas as well. I expect some of us could become competent at performing surgery by watching it done and foregoing medical school altogether. At least the number of highly regarded unlicensed, unschooled doctors suggests this.
 
It takes a talented teacher to make school fun. It takes a confident, talented teacher to allow students to disagree with them. The first is rare. The second is even rarer.

It also takes students who have been indoctrinated with the idea that learning is important. Many kids have not been.

My guess is that you live in an upper middle class suburban neighborhood that is socially liberal. Is this correct? I do not think it would work as well in a poor school district or one whose parents are more stick to the facts and obey an authority.

I think that small class size is overrated especially in college. The introductory physics and chemistry classes (for science majors) had about 100 people in them. They had excellent teachers and the classes were difficult but fair. I learned a lot from them. The calculus classes had about 25 students but the teachers sucked. I learned virtually nothing from the teachers and had to rely almost entirely on the books. I scraped by. (BTW, I am a math major.)

CBL
 
In my experience as a teacher, fun can be good. Its great for writing, science, art, physEd, math. Most kids respond favourably to fun+learning.


But, you can't please all of the people all of the time.
To me, fun means various things to different people, and that is reflected in students of all ages.

The one annoying thing I find, which is maybe a reflection of society on the whole, is the sense of entitlement for entertainment. I don't think we are entitled to be entertained.

"Entertain me! This is boring!" Too bad kid/Sir/Miss, the rest of us are moving on. I don't think a teacher has to be an entertainer. The teacher, while they can use pop culture to enhance a lesson if it is related, doesn't have to dedicate every lesson for the purpose of entertainment.
 
A good teacher will engage the students, and most students will find this more "fun" than sitting there listening to a teacher drone on.

I don't know if my high school Humanities class was "fun", but it was never boring. It was the most difficult class I ever had, in high school or college, and I learned more in it than any other single class. But I don't know if I would call it "fun". There was something about the teacher that made you want to learn.

I suppose a perfect school experience is "fun" in the same way that running a marathon is fun. At the end of the day, you are so proud of what you have done that you would be willing to do it again, even though it was truly awful while you were doing it.

The key to making education fun is that you don't throw away the education part. It is true that when I play Yahtzee with my six year old, he's learning math. But he's not learning much math. If I hear that he plays a lot of Yahtzee at school, I'm going to have a complaint with the teacher.
 
A few thoughts. Why does school stop being fun? I'll start with a premise (that may or may not be true) that primary and elementary age children enjoy school and that farther down the road, that's lost. There could be a myriad number of answers to that question.

Lack of Success. Unless there's some physiological/genetic problem, everyone is educable to a 5th grade level. After that, the talent pool begins to separate. Perhaps this frustration over lack of success, lack of immediate success, or increased effort for success turns some students off.

Social status. We all know how cliquish middle school and high school can be. We also know how cruel children can be. The large school v. small school discussion can go both ways here. In a small school, the students are more likely to know each other. That could be good or bad. In large school, they probably don't know everyone. They could get lost in amenimity or they have a greater chance of finding people with similar interests.

Family Life. Middle & High school children are certainly more knowledgeable and aware of family dynamics and relationships. Perhaps stresses in this area are manifested more with teenagers

Class & Education. What value is placed in education by the family and friends. What is the purpose of education; is it for advancement? connections? or is it some abstract idea that really isn't obtainable or important. Is homework valued or is school like a construction job that ends at the end of the day? This can cause stress in the student if the expectations of the student and parents differ from the courses they wish to take.

I just think there is alot of reasons why students view school the way they do that are independent of the school itself. Anyway, just a few thoughts.
 
PygmyPlaidGiraffe said:
In my experience as a teacher, fun can be good. Its great for writing, science, art, physEd, math. Most kids respond favourably to fun+learning.


But, you can't please all of the people all of the time.
To me, fun means various things to different people, and that is reflected in students of all ages.

The one annoying thing I find, which is maybe a reflection of society on the whole, is the sense of entitlement for entertainment. I don't think we are entitled to be entertained.

"Entertain me! This is boring!" Too bad kid/Sir/Miss, the rest of us are moving on. I don't think a teacher has to be an entertainer. The teacher, while they can use pop culture to enhance a lesson if it is related, doesn't have to dedicate every lesson for the purpose of entertainment.
Click to expand...
Bingo. Thank you.

I don't care how good one's teachers are, there will still be numerous times when school is WORK, not fun, and not entertaining. Welcome to life and get over it.

I think it's great when a teacher can be personable and making learning more fun as well, and can't stand when teachers just lecture and drone on and on.....but not every subject is interesting to any given person, no matter what you do. It is THEIR responsibility to buckle up and learn it anyway.

Back to the stories...

I had an American history teacher in Penna. named Mr Fox, and if you're out there and still kicking, thank you for being one of the best. He was a very nice, personable guy, and while he didn't have many "tricks" to make it more fun, just his overall good (at times silly) nature and how he made history interesting with his genuine love of it himself and ability to present it really won students over, and is a significant part of me liking history today.
 
bigred wrote:
but not every subject is interesting to any given person, no matter what you do. It is THEIR responsibility to buckle up and learn it anyway.
Click to expand...
This is true. One of the most shocking moments (and there were many) when I was in the credential program was one of our professors told us, "you don't have to be liked to be a good teacher!" This floored me. All the teachers I thought were good, I liked. But then it made me think. In actuality, most of my teachers were good. I think the point was, do the job correctly. Don't worry about popularity.

I won't do a student evaluation. Most high school students do not have the experience or maturity to give a valid evaluation. To them, a good teacher is cool. Translation: he's funny and easy. On our campus we have two teachers with constrasting popularity. The popular one is a cornball and a terrible teacher. The kids love him because he's Jim Carey and they watch basketball all period. The less popular one teaches the advanced math courses. He's mellow with a dry sense of humor. He's an excellent teacher. The complaints about this teacher basically boil down to the difficulty of the subject matter for these students. It really has nothing to do with him. But the kids can't see that.
 
Fun in what manner?

Fun like eating a gallon of ice cream and watching cartoons?

Fun like being amused or entertained?

Fun like egging someone's house?


No, the commonly understood definition of 'fun' should not be used as a yardstick by which to measure either educational or parenting methods.

If there is enjoyment in learning or achieving, or growing up, that is great..but it should be a byproduct, not a requirement.
 
=== My view of my junior school days:

It was okay. Strict but not as stressed as today.
I coped fairly well and had no pressure.
It was a source of memory. Memory in terms of academic learning. Memory in terms of fun and events during school.
School was also an Environment.
School was, to me, an inevitable phase of life.

=== So should school be fun?

So "Yes", it should be fun, so that the memory can be enjoyable.
So that this inevitable phase of life is enjoyable.

=== Perhaps "fun" is not the right word.

May I suggest "Alive" .

=== School should be "Alive".

Not all things in school need to be fun. Can you imagine having fun "Learning" Discipline? Discipline is necessarily restrictive and not funny. Some of my most sticky and influnetial memory of school wasn't about fun.

To have passionate disciplinary master in a school inevitably brings that school alive (in terms of instilling discipline, and moulding character).

Some schools are alive with academic and/or sporting tradition.
Some alive with creativity and others alive with a nurturing culture.

Interactivity in school is about "alive" and a lively environment.
Not necessarily fun.
 
My opinion echoes those of bigred's and PPG's.

Ideally, it would be great for every student to enjoy learning. Being relaxed, interested and willing to active in your own education means learning new things happens almost osmotically. However, this would mean all students were academically inclined and enjoyed the act of acquiring new information. Far, far from the case.

I try to vary my lessons to have three different methods of offering the same skill or piece of information. Sometimes it might be simple debate or discussion. Others is actually physically doing something (cutting out, moving around, doing practical work). Or it might be reading privately.

I often have small arguments in class, where one kid whines 'This is boring'. I'll ask how they would prefer to learn it (sometimes they give me interesting insight into what they'd prefer to do), when another kid will say 'Shut up, I'm enjoying this'.

I don't think the trick is making school 'fun'. Life is not always fun; it is sometimes hard work. Making school diverse, fluid, and dynamic gets much better results. The 'fun' factor will tend to creep in more often then.

Athon
 
cbish said:
Athon,
What do you teach?
Click to expand...

Secondary school science in east end London, and some A level biology. Back home in Australia I taught secondary science (senior Biology and Chemistry) and junior maths.

Athon
 
She may have used the word "fun". But she didn't mean amusement park!

I teach at a school that uses the word "Challenge". Is the child being engaged and challenged? That means that even the smartest kid isn't ever just coasting along. Children are happiest when they are being challenged. Let's say a kid is really good at math, then great, keep them on their toes! But maybe reading is a little harder. Fine, just keep him/her on the right level. Boredom is a killer. We all have to deal with boredom in our jobs. How we can deal with boredom in a creative way is interesting. Yeah, we teach that. Time management. Really important concept. We teach that starting at age 3! Probably the most important thing we teach.

My older daughter could not wait for school. She has the kind of mind that needs to be engaged and challenged to be happy. My other daughter balks at school. But she enjoys thinking and the challenges. She doesn't HATE school. And I know from her talking to me that she gets a lot out of it.

Also, creating a safe social environment is very important. A lot of kids drop out of school because of teasing and feeling unwelcome. Having the correct social atmosphere is as important as having a good learning enviroment.

We hope to be creating leaders. Drudges will always be around, let's see how many we can get to break the mold.
 
Nice post kitty. Although I do disagree with "A lot of kids drop out of school because of teasing and feeling unwelcome" - if a kid can't handle some teasing, they should learn better social adapting skills (in fact that's one of (if not the) most important lesson kids learn in school).

I think most of the kids who drop out of school do so either because they have an extremely bad/spoiled/generally poor attitude (usually due to the family life being a SNAFU) and/or because they aren't doing well and aren't getting the necessary help to do so.
 
bigred wrote:
(usually due to the family life being a SNAFU)
Click to expand...
This is it. Coupled with the fact, that in these situations, education really isn't valued. In fact, education may actually be demonized.
 
learning disabilities big factor.

It is so hard to qualify for help, our daughter has had 12 hours of testing, and even mom and dad have to be interviewed. But before public money is spent from a tight budget, they really want to weed out any child not REALLY (in their opinion) needing the extra expensive help.

We've got around it by sending our daughter to private schools.

She is going to the public high school for a year. To qualify for their program, they are totally retesting her (we pay for private tests every year, about $800 worth, but hey, if they want to spend money we won't object). They said at a school of over 1,500 children (in 4 grades) they aim for 20 students in the special education unit. 20!!!!

She's already in, hey, she's been tested at Yale's special program for dyslexics. I have MRIs showing which part of her brain lights up when she attempts to read (the wrong part:( ).

I've done volunteer work at a prison. The number of prisoners with severe learning disabilites is incredible. They tend to come from poor school systems that let them slip through the cracks. But even at a good high school, special education can break the budget. So of course they want as few kids to qualify as possible.

This is changing a bit with "No Child LEft Behind". One of the few good things about this is that schools are seeing that unless a child is qualified as learning disabled, their poor performance will hurt the school. So more kids in learning disabled programs, even if it is just to kick up the school scores!
 
My daughter just graduated from her Middle school. Each child gave a 2 mintue speech (there were only 17 in the graduating class). One child said in his speech, "Finn, you are the father I never had...." (Finn is one of the teachers)

Each child got a hug with the diploma. These teachers stay in touch with the students for years. When one of the teachers had a retirement party, alumni flew in. My own eldest daughter came even though she was in the middle of finals.

My own daughter said in her speech, "At Hilltop I learned school is not a building, school is a journey that never ends."

I couldn't agree more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom