Speed-teaching

Speed-teaching

I watched an education segment on USF, Create. There a high school student was teaching how to write an equation that defines a slopping straight line. The teach took about 15 minutes. I was at first impressed. After I realized what had happened, I was greatly unimpressed by the disingenuous teach.

The presentation had been speeded digitally. What should have taken at least an hour spread over a few days was compressed into minutes. I learn fast, but not that fast. I think it was beyond anyone’s ability to learn. I could follow the student teacher because I had already learned what was being taught; for me, it was a review.

The speed reminded me of when I was in a speed-reading class at Midland High. We would scan down a page and flip it. Books would be read at an astronomic speeds and comprehension was supposedly high. I realized that it had been a fraud after I became an educated adult.

There are several factors that could be supporting speed-teaching:

1. Students are in a competitive environment where learning is a measure of intelligence. Those that learn the quickest and the most gain superiority. That reminds me of my nephews. Both of them went though a phase where they were encouraged to read books. They reasoned that reading more books was better than just reading a few. So they would announce periodically the number of books that they had read: 10, 32, 105 etc. They both were socially promoted and graduated from high school. (Mom was a math teacher and Dad was on the school board) One dropped out of community college the other graduated from a recreation college where he majored in mountain climbing.
2. Administrator can lower the cost of education an individual student if they can do it quicker with a non-certified student of about the same age that is paid usually nothing. And, student, parents and even Stephen will be impressed. I really was at first.
3. Most short attention span student would like it. Then they can get onto doing what they really want to do and that is not understanding how to write and algebraic equation. How many of them are interested in the ‘Y’ intercept?

The bottom line: I am not impressed with speed-teaching regardless of who is doing it.