The New School?

                   British school bans raising hands

LONDON, (UPI) -- A school in London has banned children from raising their hands in class and teachers from calling on students with their hands raised.

"It is every child's instinct and every teacher's instinct as well because it is ingrained in us," said Andrew Buck, the school's principal.

"Some pupils are jiggling so much to attract the teacher's attention that it sometimes looks as if they need the lavatory, then when it is their turn they often don't know the answer. Boys -- and it is usually boys -- are seeking attention, so they put their hands up before they have had time to think about the question."

Buck said the same children often wave their arms in the air, but when teachers try to involve less adventurous pupils by choosing them instead, it leads to feelings of victimization, the Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

To spare embarrassment of the students who do not know the answer, the school has incorporated a "phone a friend" system, allowing one child to nominate another to take the question instead.

       And so now, we actually teach FAILURE as an option?

                                    What have we become?

Comments

[OLDCATMAN]

Is it the enitre hand or just the middle finger?

[Phoenix]

This might be the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen come out of the PC movement. So, a kid who doesn't know the answer when the teacher calls on him puts another kid on the spot? Right. So, the smartest kid in the class is 'picked' time and time again. Meanwhile, the rest of the kids feel like dumbshits. Whose brilliant idea was this? The PC-Suck-Up Brits, of course.

Little kids ARE really bad about this. It's one reason I couldn't deal with teaching little kids. High school kids aren't nearly so bad, though. I never cared - I called on kids at random, anyway. How else are you going to find out who did their work or not. Also, just for fun, I'd announce, "ALL hands up!", and then I'd ask the question. They loved this - even the slugs loved it. But then I didn't have many slugs because no one knew when I'd call on them.

One of the reason kids don't learn these days is that uncreative teachers waste time on this kind of horseshit in a classroom when they should be focusing on the material and not whose feelings might get hurt. The time taken out of instruction time to pick and choose someone to answer a question is an egregious waste of precious class time. Just call on the lizards and go study Plato's methods of teaching.

[Steel]

I think we are doomed.

[Mouse]

In my nightschool classes my instructors would ask the class for an answer to a question and always point to me and say "NOT YOU"! Makes me feel smart and embarassed! Then all the other kids come to me for further instruction because they know I know it.

[lori]

So life is imitating "art" by making the classroom a "Who wants to be a Millionaire" game? What a crock. Everybody's a victime nowadays, huh?