Orac beats me to commenting on today's depressing New York Times story about NCLB. It seems that, faced with strict "No Child Left Behind" requirements in reading and math, some schools are shifting things around so that their low-performing students take only reading and math:
Rubén Jimenez, a seventh grader whose father is a construction laborer, has a schedule typical of many students at the school, with six class periods a day, not counting lunch.
Rubén studies English for the first three periods, and pre-algebra and math during the fourth and fifth. His sixth period is gym.
Because God knows, we wouldn't want anybody miss gym...
Now, granted, the only students affected are the lowest of the low performers, and not too likely to be future Nobel laureates in the physical sciences, but this is really a terrible message to send. It's not just that this devalues science, it also devalues the kids affected-- what this is saying is that the school doesn't really care about them as people, or about getting them the skills they need to make a better life. All they care about is that they do well enough on the test to keep the money coming.
I don't usually go in for conspiracy theories, but the claim that the real purpose of "No Child Left Behind" is to break public education so badly that everybody will agree to discard it looks more plausible with every new story about its effects.
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Most child researchers and teachers agree gym is vital to the curriculum - not just due to the health benefits, but in letting the little tykes burn off the energy that distracts them from class.
Anyway, I'm not certain that throwing lots of English and Math at these kids is a bad idea - its certainly required for, oh, learning science...
Games (the UK name for "gym", since "gym" implies a gymnasium which is rarely the case in the UK) never did me one iota of good - moreover, it gave me a complex and made me feel inadequate as a person because I looked like a tremendous retard in front of everyone else. I will fight to the death anybody who claims any benefit in doing sport to children who don't want to do sport.
Physical Education (what you call gym) has already suffered at the expense of NCLB. PE may evoke bad memories (myself included) but considering the epidemic of obesity in schoolage children, cutting PE is just as bad as cutting science.
I think what bothers me is the lack of recognition that history is something that students can read to reinforce reading lessons (it ain't all just literature that one has to comprehend, in fact the ability to read nonfiction correctly and (later) willingly is rather important), and that science is an application of maths that can help it have a meaning that it doesn't when its in the abstract of arithmetic lessons.
just "more reading and more math" by themselves aren't going to increase abilities. one increases the ability by broadening the skill, by applying it outside of the place where it was originated.
Insert "science' wherever the (apparently) physically challenged Thomas puts "games," "gym," or "sport" and you will see how empty his argument is.
No one should have to learn math because I foundered on long-division.
Silly.
The fact some individuals are lame at any particular thing is not an argument that the thing itself is worthless or should not be generally appreciated..
Sound mind in sound body, as some historical idiot once said.
The task is to get the Englick/Maths skills in at the early stages so that we can create physicists who dunk a basketball while trash-talking in iambic pentameter.
I have a dream. ;-)
Todd: Physical Education (what you call gym) has already suffered at the expense of NCLB. PE may evoke bad memories (myself included) but considering the epidemic of obesity in schoolage children, cutting PE is just as bad as cutting science.
I would buy that, if I thought that gym classes had any real positive effect in fitness terms. But, really, I don't think they really do any good. I mean, a class period is maybe an hour, less time to change clothes before and after. That's barely enough time to get a good workout, if you just hop right into some fairly intense activity, and go all-out for the full time.
That's not what I remember of gym class, though. I remember an awful lot of standing around waiting while everybody took a turn at some activity, or while rules and procedures were explained. The number of times I got any real exercise in gym class was pretty small.
Now, that doesn't mean it's necessarily worthless, any more than the fact that most people never do much with algebra means we shouldn't teach math. But I have a hard time accepting gym as being as important as any of the academic subjects-- particularly for the students we're talking about here. If they're anything like the low achievers I remember, gym is probably the highlight of their day.
Joe Shelby nails the reason why dropping science and history is short-sighted-- history and science both force students to apply their reading and math skills, and also give them a reason why they should care about reading and math. Adding another class of "reading" in the abstract, or "math" in the abstract isn't necessarily going to produce results, if the students don't also see some purpose behind learning those skills.
Now, you might need to put those students in a separate history or science track, covering less material, but providing a greater emphasis on their weak points (teaching history with fewer names and dates, but more colorful anecdotes, for example). But just leaving those subjects out entirely is foolish.
As the spouse of a teacher with more than a decade in the classroom, just allow me to note that I full well expect to be paying for private school within the next 5 years. I say this as a parent who lives in what is arguably the best public school system in the US (Fairfax County, VA). She teaches for said county.
The thing I remember from Physical Education is how little education took place. They never really even explained the rules of the games we were to play, never mind any advice on strategy or technique. We apparently were Just Supposed To Know.
It is deplorable that the 'elimination' of Science and History is one of the unintended consequences of NCLB. As a former Science teacher, I have experienced students knocking on my classroom door asking me why they can't be in Science and how they hate 2-3 hours of Math and/or reading.
I question the value of 2-3 hours of reading or math. If support classes are indeed working, I would probably NOT have minded the elimination of Science and Math in favor of these extra hours of Math and Reading. But having seen first hand how these hours are instructionally "wasted" makes me fuming mad.
People assume that reading and mathematics cannot be taught in Science and History and I beg to differ. Since most students intrinsically love Science [especially in the middle school], reading and writing is NOT as painful nor mathematical calculations such a punishment.
If we are taking about middle school science [which i taught for years], i believe that sacrifing it is NOT the answer to helping students gain proficiency in LA and Math. How about looking at the real cause- poor instruction perhaps?
"don't usually go in for conspiracy theories, but the claim that the real purpose of "No Child Left Behind" is to break public education so badly that everybody will agree to discard it looks more plausible with every new story about its effects."
"Our Nation is at risk.... If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
With these opening statements the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued its devastating April 1983 report on the condition of education in the United States.
Can things have gotten so much worse since 1983 by accident?