am a professor of mathematics and science in this school less and less public. I read and hear opinions on the daily circus built on nothing, uninformed judgments about students ("more ignorant"), young ("careless, fall back on their 'interest', while we, in our times, or, by choice," violent, able only to destroy ... "), teachers (" uneducated ", idle, do the bare minimum, unprofessional ... ah, yes," have three months of vacation and work eighteen hours a week, those! "). Subisco shoot ministerial increasingly tangential to the real problems of education and culture and envy little thoughts of right-wing press. Sometimes I am tempted to publish a post that articolatissimo documented and clear away the tuttequeste (false) banality. Then, the despair, anger, boredom of hearing the same old people (me included) the usual speeches, and I give precedence. So the reader, well that goes a handful of people who already think like me. This, then, is not a well documented post, just a bunch of impressions, observations and news which probably connected the right way would help to form a picture. I'm happy to make it available, maybe sooner or later he found the taste of ricoporre this mosaic.
1) My students di prima media (e non solo) non sono in grado di disegnare le mediane e/o le altezze di un triangolo di cartoncino. "Nemmeno io" direbbero molti adulti. Certo, detto così pare difficile. Ma si tratta semplicemente di fare un triangolo in cartone e di tracciare tre righe che dai vertici raggiungano la metà del lato opposto o che formino angoli retti con quel lato. Suona già più facile, vero? Ho proposto questi esercizi dopo aver fornito definizioni, esempi alla lavagna, aver dettato le istruzioni (la ricetta, insomma) e guardato più volte insieme a loro le figure del libro. Risultati patetici: le perpendicolari formavano angoli di ogni genere meno che retti, le mediane dividevano i lati in parti vistosamente ineguali. Dopo essere passata tra i banchi stile maestrina con la penna rossa e aver commentato e corretto i maledetti triangolini, ho invitato i ragazzi a rifare l'esercizio e ho ottenuto… risultati fotocopia dei precedenti. Come se non avessi parlato.
2) La mia collega di lettere ha letto con gli alunni della mia classe seconda una paragrafo introduttivo di storia. Dieci righe che non comunicavano informazioni nuove, si limitavano a riassumere osservazioni del capitolo precedente. Le parole di significato ignoto alla stragrande maggioranza della classe erano più di una per riga. A non conoscerle, oltre ai ragazzi di madrelingua non italiana erano italiani veraci. Da studi ormai già antichi, se un breve capitolo contiene più di cinque parole veicolanti significati NUOVI the pupil does not include the more general meaning of the text. In these ten lines were not new concepts ...
3) Students in high school where I teach in the area (outskirts of Turin), according to some of their teachers, do not identify the cause-effect, and they're doing wrong with the time orientation (which event came first , in which century, before or after Christ?) Yet these relations are targets of educational activities targeted since kindergarten ...
4) The number of students with learning (specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, severe difficulties of logical order) has substantially increased, such a class. "Oh Okay. 'It's disabled students (disabled already defined, and before that, carriers of hc) ..." you say. No, they're just people who have ASD but obtained average scores "normal" in a number of specific tests that the layman would call "intelligence." Once they were a very low percentage. Maybe once went undiagnosed. Perhaps they were listed as disabled. Maybe today is much less expensive to classify DSA (for them there are no support teachers so they do not cost a penny to the state) and allow the full cost of the class teachers. Perhaps, instead, something - in the past experiences of these young people - made them more vulnerable to this kind of noise.
5) It seems, from recent studies that there is a close link between disorders such as dyslexia, lack of logic and so on. and lack of experience manuals, (we would say to implement them), children in preschool. As if to say that if they did not play with the earth, messed with pebbles, cardstock, glue, build things with blocks and Lego, then they will miss a fundamental quid.
Now, I do not make illusions about neither me nor my colleagues on. I have known, in the many years spent teaching, insensitive and incompetent teachers, people who, like many others who do different jobs, he pulls a living. But I also met many, very many, teachers who give their souls for how to improve teaching. Following courses (including too many unnecessary courses, "you never know"), participating in projects, discuss methods, results and ways to evaluate with other colleagues. In my school a large number of teachers is currently involved in such activities. As I said the other night, in despair: we (the majority of us, at least) IS ALWAYS BETTER to teach. On the other hand doing the same job for decades, almost all or at least improve a bit '. And then there are the "young". It may seem incredible, but there are young graduates who choose to teach. They do not accept the job as a fallback, they would do it well. Of course, thanks to Forbes Tremonti Gelmini and the cat's paw of many loro sono stati buttati fuori dalla scuola, ma posso dire con soddisfazione che qualcuno resiste. Esiste, anzi. Così, mediamente noi miglioriamo.
Ma loro, gli alunni, continuano a "PEGGIORARE".
Vorrei illudermi che sia soltanto la mia ottica distorta di insegnante veterana a crederlo.
Ma temo che non sia così.
