response 1 of 4:

Mar 7 07:08 UTC 1999

I'd suggest you look at books by former New York State teacher of the year
John Taylor Gatto. He shows how homework is just a utterly useless waste of
time, and discusses ways he made his kids actually learn: although many
parents would be concerned about the sanity for the teacher, those parents
let him do these things, and they learned. For instance, he dropped off a kid
at a truck stop in Jersey. Gatto arranged for a trucker to pick up the kid
and drive him down the coast and back as a road trip, but the kid didn't know
that. The kid only knew that someone would pick him up, and told him to give
him a mutually agreed sign. Another time, when someone littered a soda bottle,
he called the police chief of a Jersey shore town. He made her apologize, but
then the chief took her around the town, referred her to the wastwater people,
etc.

He talks about how it only takes about 80 hours to learn the basics of math,
reading, writing, and speaking. just 80 hours. The trick is to teach 'em that
when they're in the mood: if they don't want to learn it, they won't learn
it, and will feel like you're forcing it down their throats, so they'll never
want to learn it. (That's why you have functional illiterates who can't
balance checkbooks but graduated high school.)

I'd suggest taking a look at a recent Time magazine article on the subject.
John Taylor Gatto is all over the Internet, and he's published several books,
which should be available at a good library. He has an essay titled
"Confederacy of Dunces", which is provocative and should be your first stop.
He's not an idiot, after all, idiots don't win Teacher of the Year. He later
got so disillusioned with the bureaucracy at the school that forced him to
conform that he ended up quitting. I don't know how he makes his living now.

response 3 of 4:

Jul 14 21:51 UTC 1999

the way i learn is sitting down and readin in that since:), i dont like the
schools "beating around the buch" system i dont like going over the same shit
for two days, and really dont like going through for a week, i like it when i
can decide what and how
 i learn as longs as in the end i prove i know whats needed of me.