Civilization more difficult than school

[AeonOfTime]

Found on Innovate:

Considering the difficulty and complexity of Civilization III, it is not surprising that students should have found the game challenging; what is noteworthy, however, is that students found this off-the-shelf computer game, which has been marketed toward a broad audience and which has sold millions of copies, more challenging than their traditional learning experiences in school.

My first thought was that Civ isn't that difficult - but then I remembered my first games and had to revise that thought. My first two games we absolutely catastrophic, but then it got better very fast.

It's nice to see that the game is such a reference for Educational purposes...

[Anaximander]

Or perhaps it is because our schools have fallen so far...

[Kuciwalker]

I doubt that, actually. I imagine many kids would find playing chess more difficult that school, too.

[Anaximander]

Naaa...schools are going down hill like a rock, but it is one hell of a toboggan ride!

[AeonOfTime]

I imagine many kids would find playing chess more difficult that school, too

Errrmmm, are you comparing Civ to chess?

What I found interesting was also the fact that some of the kids apparently preferred reading books because they did not believe in the educational value of the game...

[Odin]

Goes to show how crap our schools have become.

[AeonOfTime]

@Odin: Goes to show how crap our schools have become.

It's not only school itself, it's also that the pupils have changed - shifted expcetations and interests. I think the problem is that the teachings at school do not evolve fast enough to keep up with the pace of things.

At least that's how I see things in France and Germany, I wouldn't know about other countries.

[Theseus]

That's sort of weird... other classroom experiences, including in significantly disadvantaged areas, have found Civ to be an extremely effective tool in engaging students in historical studies.

My favorite was a few (/insert PC term) black kids who kept on trying to figure out how to get the Zulus to conquer Europe.

[Koriand'r]

lack ethics have result in

poor teachers
teaching students no real materiel. the work you do at public schools is so easy i could do my cousins work of 1 week in an hour.i homeschool
here in the US people just want the students to shut up.anythingl ess than anarchy is ok as long as they get paid.

things like pledge of allegiance being unconstitutional is the perfect example of this

more reasons but im exhasuted atm

i can annihilate anyone in my age group in chess here except for the kids that actually play chess,by that i mean compettitvly. they just cant think in the schools. and that is one of the objectives.

[Theseus]

Koriand'r, how are you in the US and showing a time 5 hours ahead of me? Are you on a military base?

Your post, in both content and execution, shows a need for more education or rigor yourself.

Welcome to 'poly.

[Koriand'r]

i know.im quite tired at the moment.sorry
i havnt fixed my gmt time yet

been at 'poly for awile

[Shogun Gunner]

It must be popular to talk about "how schools/education have fallen" I wonder how people arrive at opinions like this.

Look at school curriculums in the past 10/20/30 years. The amount of science, math, foreign language requirements have advanced dramatically.

One specific example:
In Chesterfield County, Virginia today, a typical senior will graduate and would have taken

* at least one calculus class in addition to other math courses like geometry, trigonometry, two courses in algebra, etc.
* Three years of foreign language
* three, maybe four hard sciences like Chemistry , Biology, Physics

20 years ago, a graduating senior from the same school system only needed
* three math courses, the minimum would be pre-algebra, algebra I, algebra II. No calculus required
* no foreign language requirement
* one or two hard sciences

Chesterfield County, Virginia both now and 20 years ago is considered in the top 10% of US schools. The list above is not exhaustive in terms of requirements/curriculum, but offered up that the expectations advance rapidly and that is shown in the graduating requirements and curriculums. Compare what U.S. high school students are studying now compared to 100 years ago. It's staggering the difference in both quality and quantity.

Sure, someone can complain about test scores, ranking against other schools around the world, etc. But many times those are also flawed arguments. Tests change -- sometimes from year to year. Tests are not the best measurement of knowledge and ability or even achievement.

US politicians also love to bemoan the facts regarding the typical US student compared to students from other countries. Again, it can be a flawed argument. Are the US results declining, or is the country being compared against making gains in their educational system? So would that be an educational problem/failure in the US, or perhaps a cause of alarm for stakeholders in the United States seeking to keep intellectual and economic advantages over other countries?

How do you reconcile the other articles one can find via an easy search on google about how US children are overloaded both mentally and physically (heavy books in bookbags) with the educational curriculum? Many leading sociologists and children psychologists say that children are not meeting their potential because they don't have "down time" and unscheduled time to explore other interests.

This is really the fundamental fact on the topic. Environment and home//community support plays a bigger role in the success of learning than any forced political agenda to raise test scores or a Board of Education's agenda to include "just one more course". Study after study finds that IQ isn't the driver to success, but it's environmental factors that gives people the keys to success.

Bottom line: One should take some care to examine the issue and not grab the newspaper headlines bemoaning "failing US schools".

[AeonOfTime]

@Shogun Gunner: Many leading sociologists and children psychologists say that children are not meeting their potential because they don't have "down time" and unscheduled time to explore other interests.

This is really the fundamental fact on the topic. Environment and home//community support plays a bigger role in the success of learning than any forced political agenda to raise test scores or a Board of Education's agenda to include "just one more course".

Hi Shogun, I agree completely that it is quite foolish to take those sensationalist titles like "failing US schools" seriously without giving it some real thought and looking at the problem from all sides.

One important thing to consider is also that the quality of schools varies whithin countries (e.g. Northern france vs southern france) as well as on a local scale depending on a number of financial and demographic aspects. Generalizing this by making nation-wide statistics is quite pointless, as the situations of single schools will never really be comparable to those statistics.

I was able to follow the evolution of our schools here in southern france through my own experience and that of my younger brother and sister. My sister started university last year, so I have a global view of our situation from 1993 to today: as you mentioned, the expectations and courses have been upped quite a bit to meet the new requirements of our modern life - which is fine, really...

But what I know is that if the contents to learn have changed, for the teachers to adapt to the new content AND the changes in mentality/expectations etc. of the pupils is extremely difficult. There are many who will simply not make the effort and continue teaching the exact same way, those who quit and even those who finish with nervous breakdowns (experienced all that).

All in all, it seems to me that our current school system (here in france at least) needs to give both teachers and pupils more "unscheduled time" as you mentioned too, but also provide solutions to assist pupils and teachers in learning how to cope with those ever-changing requirements and expectations.

One thing is likely not to change, however: there will always be good, okay and bad teachers - and in the case of a bad teacher, if the pupil's interest in the field (like Geography, for ex.) is not present I agree with you that the pupil's home and community play a bigger role in learning than all else.

[Shogun Gunner]

I have to run to work, so just a moment to answer. Thanks for your response. It's a thoughtful post.

Interesting that are parallels in France and US concerning education. Makes sense really, as many challenges/problems will be similiarly present in Western nations.

In the US, the teachers union is a very strong political force. Almost always, this group supports Democratic presidential nominees. Despite this, they cannot command better compensation packages as the funding for US public schools is only part Federal, part State, and largely County. So, there will be variety in funding, quality of teachers, and student achievement from region to region. That's a good point you made.

Sometimes it is hard to remove a "bad teacher" from a school. It's not quite the tenured fully protected protection a university professor will receive, but it's not easy to fire teachers. Many good and bad reasons for that.

Gotta run to work - I need more unscheduled/unstructed time! Again, thanks for the response.

[AeonOfTime]

@Shogun Gunner: Sometimes it is hard to remove a "bad teacher" from a school. It's not quite the tenured fully protected protection a university professor will receive, but it's not easy to fire teachers. Many good and bad reasons for that.

That's also a very good point... and at least in france it is a problem you will find in all public institutions. Where private companies would probaly not stand idly by for very long (their existence being at stake), our public institutions are making a rule of keeping people so that they do not make the number of unemployed climb. In part I am fine with that, I support the social role of the state - but not in such crucial areas as education.

Private schools live off the success of their pupils, so teachers have an agenda to fulfill - teachers from public schools do too, but not on the same scale... and there again failings are largely tolerated. When one of my philosophy teachers started coming to class stone drunk in the afternoons after lunch, it took the school authorities a month to take action and all he got was a transfer to another school.

But being able to make a better selection of teachers means you need to have enough teachers to choose amongst, and that is not always the case either. There are so many facets to the whole education system that there are no easy solutions - actions really have to be taken on a local scale, and the decision takers also have to know what they are doing

My uncle and aunt living in germany are both teachers in a suburb of a large german city (Köln), and they have given up completely, only passing the time to wait for the holidays. The reasons for that are manifold again: they chose this line of work primarily because they liked having a predictable and secure monthly payroll, but also because they both liked teaching. They were not really enlightened teachers, but they managed quite well at first.

About 10 years ago, the city decided to build social housing blocks for the turk community living there, and suddenly they were confronted with turk pupils that did not speak german and whose mentality was radically different than that of the german pupils they had dealt with so far. Any attempts they made to adapt to this change failed, and I can't say I blame them - they were not prepared for that.

The situation was predictable, and solutions for that kind of problem do exist - and it's not up to the teachers to provide them. The school authorities should have planned ahead by assigning teachers to those classes that know how to deal with that kind of situation. And what's more, in those 10 years the situation has not improved. That's darn frustrating if you ask me...

As bottom line, I think that a country's politics has an influence on the success of the school system, but the determining factor is the people themselves. In the example of my aunt and uncle, a fine school turned in a frustration bomb by bad planning of the school's headmaster. The human factor is not taken into account enough by far.

...but I really should get back to work myself Thanks for the nice conversation!