Edutainment

[zoelife111]

When and how did our education system become so blighted with this all-pervasive "edutainment" idea

Teachers should be offering an education. Education requires working and effort, and deferred gratification. Instead, we are supposed to be all singing, all dancing "edutainers", churning out spoon fed, flabby brained school leavers, who have never in their lives had to nurture or develop any type of intrinsic motivation to do anything.

These boards are full of parents complaining that their children are "bored", but what do the parents do about it? How about instilling a bit of discipline, or work ethic?

And as for the G an T parents, they can be the worst of all. Have you never heard that old adage "only fools are bored" - so true!

[user789653241]

It is sad to see another teacher against parent thread. We are not enemies.
How can they not get bored if they are forced to do something they have mastered already and not allowed to move forward?

But as for my ds, he won't complain. He is well behaved and do the given work quietly. Only time he complained in the past was he was made to practice times tables on computer day after day, while teacher was teaching other children.

[zoelife111]

it isn't a really a teacher against parent thread, it is more a teacher against education system thread. And the parents who fall into the trap of demanding that teachers entertain their offspring, which is also down to the education system advocating this joke.

[user789653241]

I don't like the people who uses boredom for the reason their children are misbehaving or disruptive. I don't want teacher to entertain, I want them to teach. And most parents just want what's best for their children.

[Dovahkiin]

I don't imagine that parents who complain about their children being bored see 'entertainment' as the answer, surely? I would have thought that most parents would be perfectly happy with engaging and appropriately challenging lessons. But I suspect you are talking about the parents whose children are badly behaved in class and claim to be 'bored' to cover up for the fact that they are not engaging with the lessons due to the effort required in, well, focusing, listening, thinking. Then, yes, supportive parents who encourage their children to be intrinsically motivated by academic progress would be the ideal, but surely generating at least some of that motivation should be the responsibility of the teacher?
I would be somewhat concerned as a teacher, however, if my lessons were being labelled 'boring' by a number of parents.

[kesstrel]

When and how did our education system become so blighted with this all-pervasive "edutainment" idea

When education professors decided they didn't need any evidence to support the following ideas, before making them standard educational dogma in English-speaking countries:

1. All children naturally love learning (all kinds of learning) And therefore if they are not enjoying their learning and behaving well, it must the teacher's fault, for not making the lesson sufficiently "engaging".
   
   
2. Since children are able to learn to walk and talk "naturally", and without effort, it therefore follows that all learning can be natural and effortless in this way.
   
   Of course, in reality, children as they grow naturally develop narrower and more focused tastes and interests, and thus will inevitably find some subjects less interesting than others. And we are evolutionarily programmed to learn to talk, whereas much of what is taught at schools is due to much more recent cultural development, and therefore requires effort and practice to learn.

[user789653241]

When my ds was learning about rocks at school, he wasn't bored but completely uninterested. So when they had mini test, he got 2 out of 5.
When I heard about it, I searched some resource and showed him this video,

www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/mit-k12/mit-k12-biology/v/rock-cycle

And he now understands the difference and more interested in rocks.

I don't think teacher needs to entertain, but they can make learning much more interesting than just teaching them facts. But then I can also understand they have too much to plan and do already.

[kesstrel]

Irvine I don't think anyone is arguing that teaching should be "just facts" and dry, but in a lot of schools it goes too far in the other direction, with too many games and not enough requirement to actually work. This is fine for little ones just starting out, but it gets more and more worrying when children get older and large amounts of time are being used unproductively in this way. Then they start GCSEs and don't understand that they really do have to work hard now, not just in class but outside of it. They aren't in the habit of doing it, and they end up having to cram at the last moment and perhaps end up not doing well. My daughter's schools were like this, and I have read plenty of teacher blogs complaining about similar approaches in their schools, where it is the school managers making them waste time and teach ineffectively in this way.

[user789653241]

kestrel, ok, I may have completely misunderstood what it was all about! Sorry.
Yes I totally agree with what you are saying.