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Are your students needlessly stupid?

OK OK... this should have been EASY!




to be honest the only reason he got into Harrow was that his dad was a famous politician. He decided to go into the military though he eventually followed in his father's footsteps.

Dyslexia never held him back, or a fondness for an occasional drink.
 
As a former teaching assistant, one of my responsibilities was to grade homework. The official policy of the class was that each student should do his own work. There should be no copying from other students' work, nor should there be copying of solutions from previous years' homeworks.

It was usually pretty easy to spot the cheaters. My typical procedure was to write a little warning on the homework, to the effect of "I'm on to you; you should do your own work," and not take action unless the conduct was repeated.

Five students stood out as exceptionally bad cheaters. One of them copied homework solutions, equation for equation, from the previous semester's homework. As if that wasn't bad enough, she also copied the solutions to two problems that weren't assigned that semester (but were assigned the previous semester), and failed to provide any solution to one problem that had been assigned (but had not been assigned the previous semester).

The other four bad cheater had formed a study group. There is nothing wrong with that, but they copied each other's work verbatim, including all the mistakes. In an answer to one homework problem, all four of them made the same bone-headed mistake, which was something like: 6 + 2 = 8.2. I would have thought that at least one of them, in the course of copying, would have realized that this math was faulty.
 
One of the most dissappointing things is when a student gets lazy and fills in all the bubbles on the test "C". If its a fill in the blank test the student may put "???" or sarcastic responses for every answer.

Their excuse for intentionally failing the test is usually varied.
"Umm, I didnt study."
My tests arent really that hard. Especially if you take good notes.

"I didnt know the answers"
This is philosophy. It takes common sense and minimal critical thought. It would have been better to guess.

"My [close relative, usually a grandparent or a pet] died recently."
Honestly, there is nothing I can do. I dont have a policy to excuse students in this situation. The most that can be done is to get a Crisis Slip (or whatever theyre called) from the Counselor before you take the test, otherwise I cant excuse the test. Honestly, I've known kids who have lied about dead parents.

"The test was really really hard"
Some things dont come easily for some people. There is nothing I can do in this situation. (Its an excuse for "I'm a little dim")

"I didnt want to take it."
[Negative Tone]Now that is just pathetic.[/Negative Tone]
 
kittynh said:
Well, maybe it's the NEw ENgland accent, but orange comes out R-range.
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Wha-hey!?

The New England accent I know (and even use, on occasion) de-emphasizes r's. The-ah's a fi-ah in the bahn. Oahnge. Is your neck of Vermont the center of a crazy language bubble in space-time?

Of course, the child would learn the letter R as 'ah', which could be construed as starting 'oahnge' (or even 'ahnge', as the case may be).
 
Yahweh said:
One of the most dissappointing things is when a student gets lazy and fills in all the bubbles on the test "C". If its a fill in the blank test the student may put "???" or sarcastic responses for every answer.
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I actually prefer an empty paper to two or three pages long series of wild guesses. I don't hate anything more than having to read through a two-page answer to a question that could be answered with one or two paragraphs trying to see if the student has anything even remotely correct in it.

Many of the smaller (1-2 credit) introductionary level courses in our university are such that you can almost pass them with high-school knowledge. Almost meaning that you have to study only for evening or two to get a passing grade (though it won't be good). However, that doesn't work so well on our course. Sure, there are people who have managed to pass after only few hours of study, but the vast majority of those who try it will fail. Some do it multiple times before they realise that they have to do at least some work to pass it.
 
aerosolben said:


Wha-hey!?

The New England accent I know (and even use, on occasion) de-emphasizes r's. The-ah's a fi-ah in the bahn. Oahnge. Is your neck of Vermont the center of a crazy language bubble in space-time?

Of course, the child would learn the letter R as 'ah', which could be construed as starting 'oahnge' (or even 'ahnge', as the case may be).
Click to expand...

Actually as I'm reading "Oahnge" aloud in my mind it's pure southern. "Y'all want sum oahnge juice?" Straight out of Georgia or South Carlina.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:


Actually as I'm reading "Oahnge" aloud in my mind it's pure southern. "Y'all want sum oahnge juice?" Straight out of Georgia or South Carlina.
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Y'all got to 'ppreciate Southern Hospitality.

(I have full rights to say that. Ups to Yahweh. From the South, born and raised.)
 
I teach younger grades, so maybe I'm traiined to ask myself, "Why?" when I deal with a child that is "dim". Home situation? Learning disability? Brain tumor?(in one case the answer was YES, saved the kids life by just noticing he was regressing) or just plain not that bright.

My daughter, who has dyslexia (along with Mr.Churchill, and Walt Disney...) works harder than any child in her class. She puts in more hours for homework, and tutors for 10 hours a week on top of class time. She also tutors all summer, including an intensive 3 week 6 hours a day program. But, she writes stuff and sometimes says stuff that would be thought of as "stupid". She recently read "101 Dalmnations" as "110 Damnations". We laugh a lot.
 
I assume that you have done extensive reading on dyslexia. I know I would have done even more than I did if one of my kids were diagnosed with it.
But letter or number reversals do not seem to be at the heart of the matter. It seems to be a problem converting visual stimuli into appropriate phonological representations.
I remember going to the Bronx Zoo as a kid and seeing Great Apes as Eat Crapes.
But then again, I'm left handed.
 
I've read a lot about dyslexia. There is a ton of woowoo stuff out there too. People who claim to "cure" or "retrain" the brain. Yale down the road is a great source of good information. My daughter even went down there for a brain scan, and she uses different parts of the brain to read than your "control" child. The new tutoring includes using technology to enable the child to function better in the school and world. Rather than expecting the child to read "War and Peace", it's read to the child over the internet. TEchnology is great (if expensive):rolleyes:
 
arcticpenguin said:
Could someone please describe to me a situation in which a student would be needfully stupid?
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Hmmm....
maybe to avoid embarrasing a fellow student who was needlessly stupid? "Hey, I make that mistake, too...Frood, Froid, how am I supposed to know how to pronounce 'Freud'?":rolleyes:
 
Re: Re: Are your students needlessly stupid?

Mercutio said:
Hmmm....
maybe to avoid embarrasing a fellow student who was needlessly stupid? "Hey, I make that mistake, too...Frood, Froid, how am I supposed to know how to pronounce 'Freud'?":rolleyes:
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And I thought it was pronounced "fraud".
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
Actually as I'm reading "Oahnge" aloud in my mind it's pure southern. "Y'all want sum oahnge juice?" Straight out of Georgia or South Carlina.
Click to expand...

I guess they are pretty similar. Having lived in both the South and the North, the best distinction I can come up with is that the initial vowel sounds for the southern version is an open "ah"/"oh" sounds, while the northern version is more "ah" verging on "eh". Not much different.
 
arcticpenguin said:
Could someone please describe to me a situation in which a student would be needfully stupid?
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Needlessly Stupid:

Teacher: ... that is why philosophy is built upon logical contradictions rather than empirical hypothesis.

Student: I wanna fart.

Teacher: While you may want to fart, would you mind explaining why you had to announce that to the class.

Student: Cuz it's funny.

Teacher: I dont believe you needed to announce it. It is entirely unrelated to what we are discussing [student farts] right now.

Student: Oh man! Did you see that guys! I cant believe I timed that so good.

Aside from the grammatical errors, I think it's plain to see that the student is acting needlessly stupid.


Needfully Stupid:

Teacher: ... that is why philosophy is built upon logical contradictions rather than empirical hypothesis.

Student: What are "empirical hypothesis". Is that like the Empire of China?

Teacher: Actually, the word you are thinking of is "imperial" spelled with an "I" which refers to "conquering" or "ruling over" territory. Empirical with an "E" refers to observing the results of an action. It is related to experimentation by trial-and-error (such as putting your hand on a burner to see if it is hot or recently used).


Therefore, "needfully stupid" implies intellectual intent and/or had some relevance to the discussion. "Needfully Stupid" students want to learn. They are (or should be) no longer "stupid" but become "educated" after they pass the class.
 
Re: Re: Re: Are your students needlessly stupid?

Jeff Corey said:

And I thought it was pronounced "fraud".
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I solved the problem by pronouncing it "Sigmund"...
 
I teach computer classes to retired and seniors

Adults are generally easier to teach than kids, but this doesn't hold true with computers.

My lab is open to the general public right before class, and I have to boot out the hangers on with a great deal of firmness.

Last Friday, one of these hangers on was in a panic over an e-mail. I said: "You can go ahead and finish what you're doing, but I need the lab for my class"

"Help me!" she said.
"Whats the problem?" I ventured helpfully.
"I can't send or save this e-mail!" I walked over and glanced at her desktop. In the address line of the e-mail was an actual street address. I'm well known for being a patient, non-patronizing sort, but I found myself biting back laughter.
"You need to put an e-mail address in that line."
"Whats that?"
"You have an e-mail account, and you're in it right now. :rolleyes: In order to send that, you need to put in a user name followed by an @whatever dot com. Just like what you registered to get your account"
"But I don't want to send it now".
"I thought you said you were having difficulty sending it"
"Well, I AM going to send it, but I need to print it first."
"Do you mean you want to physically send this?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you just type it up in Word?
"Oh...thats too hard."

I found out that she had been using e-mail as a wordprocessor for some time; she refused to believe that messages were actually sent electronically. She typed out a message and printed it, affixed a stamp...that was e-mail.
 
Offhand I can think of two reasons students are deliberately stupid.

One is when the student is smart enough to know you are wasting their time. Like the earlier example of the kid that was getting 97% on tests being made to do homework: A kid that smart knows that you are wasting their valuable time, and they shouldn't be in that class.

I know I put up with way too much of that as a child. I rebelled a few times, but I should have stood up to that kind of idiocy more often and more vigorously. Oh well - it's easy to be courageous with hindsight.

The other is when the student is too dumb to understand the class content and not brainwashed enough to sit still while you waste their valuable time. Kids like that just shouldn't be in that class either.

Kids are not irrational. If they think something is worth paying attention to, they will pay attention. If they don't, they won't. The kids that are too smart or too dumb will get nothing out of the class and have no motivation to play the game.
 
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