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Sunday, June 24, 2007
My kids already know how to learn
"In constructivist teaching, the teacher emphasizes 'learning-how-to-learn'."
This quote is from Supporting Communities of Learners in Urban School Districts: Evaluating the Impact of the Urban Systemic Initiative on Classroom Practice.
My kids already know how to learn, thank you. Now teach them something please.
Arghhhh. I'm losing my cool. My kids were born with a natural desire and ability to learn. They're begging to learn something.
After fifteen months of looking at this every which way, the message I find that comes across the loudest--that our kids are stupid. We have to teach them how to learn before they can learn anything.
I'm ready to scream.
After all this time I still don't know what to make of it....
ReplyDeleteWe have, consistently, felt we were being given the message that our kids -- pretty much the whole lot of them -- just aren't that swift.
We started hearing that in the middle school; we didn't hear it in K-5.
We just HAVE to have administrators who are focused on content.
ReplyDeleteOur new assistant super is focused on content and learning.
That's her beat.
You hear basically NO "emo" stuff.
The result is that even when she's saying things I think are way off base - her take on tutors, for instance - the absolute lack of b*s makes it FAR less distressing.
For instance, she hasn't put 2 and 2 together on the tutoring situation here, BUT because she believes teachers should be teaching content and students should be learning content (i.e. storing content in long term memory) AND because she believes in accountability and teacher evaluations.... her perception that tutoring is simply extra-good one-on-one teaching doesn't automatically endorse the status quo.
I hadn't actually thought about how insulting "learn how to learn" is.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that's because it's not insulting when you talk about older kids.
Christopher, in grade 7, is definitely learning how to learn.
He probably still doesn't have good notetaking skills; I'm positive he doesn't know how to do research (which takes many, many years to learn)....
Learning how to learn as an advancing student actually is a good goal.
But it shouldn't be a school slogan; nor should it be the mission.
I just looked at that document.
ReplyDeleteIt's particularly wretched.
Just pure sloganeering.
I've got to get the Martin Brooks salmon in social studies lesson typed up.
True confession: Before we knew our daughter was ADD and before I knew any of the stuff going on with education, I actually thought "learning how to learn" was something worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't take me long to figure it out.
I actually thought "learning how to learn" was something worthwhile.
ReplyDeletewell of course that's the problem; it all sounds good on paper
as I say, I'm not "against" learning how to learn
What I'm against is pitting "learning how to learn" against actual learning.
The entire constructivist realm is one big fat false dichotomy.
false dichotomies are TOUGH
ReplyDeleteIt took me YEARS to figure out why "nature/nurture" is a false dichotomy (not that I know, but this idea now makes sense to me)
For years and years and years I was raising money for research & writing about research & scientists kept telling me that "nature/nurture" was a false dichotomy.
I would dutifully recite this back in articles (the term of art for this, I believe, is "regurgitate") but I just couldn't **get** it.
Finally the idea of gene expression rescued me. That was the idea I needed to bridge the two concepts.
We need a meme to get rid of "balance."
The "balance" idea is wrong, wrong, wrong; "basic skills" and "higher order thinking" is a false dichotomy.
I've been using the idea of "emergent property" to bridge the two, but I'm not sure it's right.
I'm also not sure anyone in cognitive science really knows how critical thinking and problem solving come to happen (though Jeff Hawkins seems to have an idea...)
This is why "emergent property" will have to do for the time being.
ReplyDeleteCritical thinking EMERGES.
It APPEARS.
MAGICALLY!
I may have said this before, but I'll re-mention it. I teach gifted kids K-6 and have made some observations over the last 22 years. Many really bright kids "just get it", there doesn't seem to be a "learning to learn" mentality. Many times they cannot explain how they "got it" or know it. They just do.
ReplyDeleteAlso parents ask me all the time how they can prepare their student for "harder work" when it comes. Since they don't break an academic sweat through elementary school and in some cases middle school they fear their student won't know how to "work".
It's been my observation that you cannot teach a skill that the kid does not need--is that a double negative? Most of my former students automatically seem to know what to do at the next level(sometimes high school, sometimes college) --and nobody teaches them that. Does any of that make sense?
Also parents ask me all the time how they can prepare their student for "harder work" when it comes. Since they don't break an academic sweat through elementary school and in some cases middle school they fear their student won't know how to "work".
ReplyDeleteThat’s my son! He’s finally being “challenged” in his high school AP courses. I’ve complained to our school because they are anti-gifted programs. He only received “enrichment for all” nonsense in previoous grades.
Most of my former students automatically seem to know what to do at the next level(sometimes high school, sometimes college) --and nobody teaches them that.
I’ve heard that from his teachers and guidance counselors, and from many people who just seemed to make the transition fine.
Of course, my problem has more to do with my son’s lack of desire to excel. He says he’s perfectly satisfied with B’s. Oh, well. I think we missed the bus on that one.
“Learning how to learn”
ReplyDeleteMy son often lost points when his teachers graded his note-taking skills. He used to ace the tests, but his notes were either non-existent or looked like chicken scratching.
It's been my observation that you cannot teach a skill that the kid does not need--is that a double negative? Most of my former students automatically seem to know what to do at the next level(sometimes high school, sometimes college) --and nobody teaches them that.
ReplyDeleteFor me the shock was actually needing to practice something before I learn it, and I got that in my first year of university at engineering school. My grades in the second year were shocking, I just wasn't used to making myself study. I passed by the skin of my teeth. Third year was better.
I wish that I'd been pushed intellectually beforehand so I'd earlier encountered things I couldn't understand right away.
My son often lost points when his teachers graded his note-taking skills. He used to ace the tests, but his notes were either non-existent or looked like chicken scratching.
ReplyDeleteThis is a pet peeve of mine. What is with all this teaching of note taking? I annotated my textbooks in the margin, or highlighted, or just read them. For me, the process of taking notes on written text feels like it empties my mind of what I just read (not so with lectures; I need to take notes for lectures and like to do so). My kids are the same way. When I finally convinced my son's social studies teacher to let him stop taking notes on written materials, he grades on tests went from 70's to 100%.