Comments on: The main peril of factory education: boredom

By: edge of the sandbox

edge of the sandbox — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 06:56:48 +0000

I grew up abroad with old-school essays and math problems that I had to write out step by step. I always felt that multiple choice is unfair. It’s not just that the ability to recognize the name of an author doesn’t mean that the student can recall the name in an essay. Students can misread the options. When it come to math problems, students can make more than one mistake and get the correct answer without knowing how to solve the problem. If they don’t get the right answer, it doesn’t matter whether they made a minor error or don’t have the grasp of the concept; they can’t get partial credit. I can go on. The main lesson of multiple choice test, especially when it comes to humanities, is that no deep knowledge of the subject is required. You can wing it.

By: JKB

JKB — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:49:16 +0000

Of course there would be no horseless carriages, development away from hydro capable rivers would be limited, rapid movement and migrations of people would be limited, the US Southwest would be undeveloped as would LA and San Diego. Etc, etc. Much of the central US would still be farmed by horse. Oh and more land would be in crop production rather than returning to wildlands.

There would be no snail darters, salmon, migratory birds, wetlands, etc.

The steam engine facilitated the modern environmentalism by removing the river from the center of production and transportation. Not to mention creating prosperity so that many came to have the time and money to worry about nature rather than survival.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:16:52 +0000

JKB…absent the steam engine (or the internal combustion engine), I think we would have had industrialization, but it would have been limited by availability of waterpower…land on streams with water rights would have become VERY expensive. We would have even had electricity, but much more limited and expensive…probably electric lights but no air conditioning, for most people.
There’s a whole species of Left-leaning writing from the 1930s about how wonderful the world would be if the world ran mostly on hydropower and electricity…ironic, given the Left’s current desire to destroy large dams or at least never build any more.

By: Dennis Elliott

Dennis Elliott — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:05:01 +0000

Apparently, though, my English teachers weren’t that good—or was it me. Obviously I meant “exceptionally” rather than “exceptionately”, above.

By: JKB

JKB — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:25:50 +0000

David Foster,
Wouldn’t our comments make an excellent class discussion to teach about the industrial revolution?

By: JKB

JKB — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:23:35 +0000

David Foster, possibly true but until the steam engine, the size of the revolution was limited by the size of the river bank and the flow rate of the water. We could view it as that nasty old coal fired steam engine saved us from a world where every river bank was blocked by factories and every river slowed to a trickle by water wheels. The steam engine let sub prime land be used for industry leaving prime flood plain for cultivation.

By: Libby

Libby — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:52:31 +0000

One of my favorite teachers was for high school American History. He gave out these busy-work assignments that asked a detailed question for every 2-3 paragraphs in the assigned text book chapter (which he never read because I inserted many silly comments & questions into each worksheet that he never acknowledged). However, in class we did these wonderful re-enactments: stock market trading on the day of the crash (he shut down trading 20 min before he told us he would!), land negotiations between US govt. and Indians where we Indians ended up squished into a 4×4 space, attempting to establish peace among nations to prevent a world war, etc. Learned more getting sucked into the various crises than I could have ever read in a book or learned from a lecture.

By: Dennis Elliott

Dennis Elliott — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:30:45 +0000

I was fortunate to have been in grade and high school from 1950 to 1962 and teaching was somewhat different then. From the sixth grade on I had exceptionately good history teachers and was further fortunate in that I lived in the vicinity of where the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars were thought, and directly adjacent to a battlefield of the War of 1812. While I struggled with context (I found as an adult that those instances in school where I was not able to grasp concepts all occured when I was not provided with context) the major themes and specific information was endlessly exciting to me.
I have found also that, at 68 I have a far better appreciation of the scope of history (and all of those old subjects, really) and read with far more understanding and pleasure as Aristotle indicated in the quote above. Good teachers, really good ones are a treasure and should be recognized above their peers. The union push for equality of results rather than opportunity will never allow that to happen of course. More’s the pity.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:41:34 +0000

The question of why the industrial revolution happened mainly in Britain rather than in, say, France, is an interesting one. It was addressed by D S Cardwell in a book that I reviewed/excerpted at Chicago Boyz...interesting discussion thread. Innovation and Social Structure

By: David Foster

David Foster — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:35:01 +0000

A case can be made that the quintessential technology of the Industrial Revolution was not the steam engine but rather textile machinery--the power loom and the various forms of spinning machine. Indeed, Richard Arkwright's famous spinning device was called the "water frame," reflecting its original power source. A significant % of the early textile industry was water-driven. The Jacquard loom, which allowed mass production of patterned fabrics, was in its early incarnation hand (or foot) powered...this device was enormously important in the evolution of information technology. I wrote about it here...Cool Project: An Open-Source Loom