Hacker Cinema
High School
1969 · Film · documentary · 75 min
Directed by Frederick Wiseman
What really happens inside the walls of an American high school? Famed documentarian Frederick Wiseman answers that question in this peek inside Philadelphia's Northeast High School, where students constantly clash with teachers, and teachers wage their own battle against the administration. Delving into the everyday struggle teachers face to discipline their unruly charges, the audience is offered a glimpse into the highs and lows at an urban public school.
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>His methods were in keeping with his approach to philosophy: he did not lay claim to any special authority and instead of expounding facts and theories he asked his pupils questions and left them to work out the answers for themselves. When Hermine happened to see him at work she marvelled at his capacity to hold their attention.
It sounds that he, quite before anyone else, had discovered the secret of teaching. Frederick Wiseman, a famous documentarian, produced a couple documentary films titled High School and High School 2. The first documented a typical suburban high school in the US. The second documented an experimental high school in an urban, low-income, predominantly Latino neighborhood. The second school was notable in that it went on to produce the largest proportion of students to not only attend college but to finish and acquire 4-year degrees in the nation. The 'experiment' they were trying was quite simple - every single class, regardless subject, was centered totally around critical thinking. No teacher taught by fiat. They served instead to aid and guide students as they explored the concepts being taught through relentless questioning, all including the teachers bound to the rational method.
It's unfortunate that this method of teaching demands a tremendous amount of integrity and knowledge on the part of teachers. I don't know that it would be particularly difficult for someone invested in the endeavor, but for a teacher used to ruling like a mini dictator and able to punish students for questioning their edicts it must be intolerable.
There were 2 documentaries produced by famed documentarian Frederick Wiseman called High School and High School 2. In one, a group of average students are followed through a typical high school in a middle class predominantly white area. In the second one, a group of students are followed through an experimental high school in a predominantly impoverished area with mostly a Latino population. The 'experimental' nature of the school was that every single class, every last one, was completely restructured to center around one thing: critical thinking. Teaching by fiat ('this is how it is because I say so and I am the authority') was banned. Every bit of teaching was through asking questions and having them answered, students challenging teachers on an equal intellectual playing field (unequal in specific knowledge of course, but equal in capacity to reason and challenge assumptions).
The experimental school produced the highest proportion of students to go on to receive college degrees (not just attend college, but finish) every seen in the country. The results were absolutely amazing and tremendously good. But... it's harder for teachers to teach that way. They can't plan ahead. They have to know their subjects inside and out, not just read off of a lesson plan. If a student asks a question that the teacher can't answer, the teacher has to admit it and try to figure it out with them, which many teachers are not emotionally mature enough to participate in alongside an adolescent. It gives a great deal of power and agency to adolescents, and our society is obsessed with stripping adolescents of every iota of control over their own life and denigrating them as much as possible. So widespread adoption of such schooling cannot gain much support at all.
The documentaries also did a good job showing how the "traditional" schooling methods broke the 'spirit' of adolescents and sucked the love of learning and figuring things out right out of them, turning them into disinterested husks of human beings, while the experimental school left them as vibrantly full of a love of life and learning as they entered it. Such things are of course difficult to measure and generally distrusted by our "pleasure is a sure sign of hidden dangers" mentality.
The problem isn't that these people can't use computers. It's that they can't THINK. They do not understand what critical thinking is, or how it works. They do not know how to approach problems or explore solutions. They don't know how to do it with their computer... or their car, or their vacuuming robot, or their television, or their oven or their relationships or any thing in their life. They don't understand why the world is the way it is, they don't know how to figure it out, and they generally think that trying is a suckers game.
You mention that there are always 1 or 2 kids a year who have already picked up programming or know how to build a computer... I think I would live for them. I was one of those kids, and I would be so excited for them that I would bury them in whatever help they needed.
For the other kids, I'd put aside the computers for a bit. I'd teach them critical thinking, because it's really the only skill they need to learn (see the documentary "High School" by Wiseman for an excellent example of how reformulating every single class as being centered around critical thinking led a poor latino high schools students to accomplish the highest percentage of students to attain college degrees in the nation... while preserving their youthful exuberance for learning).