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"Unmindful of the lessons of educational history, regardless of the universal rules of logic, they proclaim the validity of untested theories and untried ideals, and denounce as traitors and maligners all who do not agree with them.
It was so comfortable to imagine that, thru interesting reading and thru story-telling and thru counting the petals of flowers and the legs and ears of animals, and writing about them, children could learn arithmetic, and composition and grammar, and that those tiresome drills to which old-fogy teachers and superintendents pinned their faith could be neglected with impunity! Hence thousands of teachers followed this new will-o'-the-wisp. The results were most deplorable."
William Henry Maxwell
On a Certain Arrogance in Educational Theorists
February 1914
We're closing in on a century since Maxwell was brave enough to call out the "educational theorists" and yet, here we are in very much the same place. I find it ironic that the pedagogy schools of education and public school administrators laud as progressive, cutting edge, and 21st century was outdated even one hundred years ago.
Ed schools have institutionalized the arrogance that Maxwell found "most deplorable". The poor man must be spinning in his grave.
on a certain arrogance, part 2
8 comments:
What a terrific quote!
Ironically, the hallmark of educationists seems to be an inability to learn despite constant talk of "learners" (which has taken the place of pupils and students, it seems) and "lifelong learning."
On another note: It is possible to search for blogger comments via Google. I am not sure for how long a comment must have been posted before it becomes searchable. I point this out because Catherine once regretted that comments are not searchable.
From 1895: "All those schools that threw out the spelling-book and undertook to teach spelling incidentally or by word-lists failed, and for the same reason that grammar, arithmetic, geography, and other branches, cannot be taught incidentally as the pupil or the class reads Robinson Crusoe, or any other similar work. It is an independent study and as such should be pursued."
Google link: http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC01039395&id=VzI22y4kp-4C&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=%22spelling+book%22+date:1876-1900&as_brr=1
I also link to it from my history of reading instruction ( http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/historyofreading.html ), another sad story of how unmindful we are of the lessons of educational history.
We can search Blogger comments?
wow!
Thanks for letting me know.
Great find!
Taken in contemporary light, Gaylen Alessi's findings have another interesting twist. Whereas school psychologists used to ignore the contributions of curricula, teaching, and administrative factors to learning and behavior problems, they are now strongly championing the response-to-intervention (RtI) concept. RtI is predicated on the idea of ensuring that students receive powerful instruction as a baseline condition and supplemental instruction if they are not making adequate progress with just the baseline instruction.
That change represents a substantial turn-around for school psychology, to be sure. A good feature of this change is that school psychologists will not have to spend time conducting psychological assessments--IQ tests and the like--that provide precisely no worthwhile information about curricula and teaching. Now the psychologists will become active members of the teams deciding what should constitute the baseline and supplemental curricula, teaching procedures, intervention strategies, and so forth.
So, schools now need school psychologists who have expertise and skill in teaching. Does anyone know of a professional training program that graduates school psychologists with those requisite skills?
Does anyone know of a professional training program that graduates school psychologists with those requisite skills
Try the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
here
PT/DI experts are in charge.
Whoops, that link didn't work -- not sure why.
It's thechicagoschool.edu.
"powerful instruction as a baseline condition and supplemental instruction if they are not making adequate progress with just the baseline instruction."
"powerful instruction"?
How does this work when you have Everyday Math saying it's OK to let kids master material whenever they feel like it? In the old days, schools had yearly baselines and if you didn't meet the baseline, you didn't go on to the next grade. This was a baseline for content, skills, and motivation. This doesn't answer the question of why the child didn't make the baseline, but schools now just pass kids along and assume that the issue will resolve itself naturally (with Math Boxes). They pedagogically deny that it could be their fault. They deny the existence of a baseline. They deny responsibility.
NCLB does form a baseline, but it's very low. In our state, it's used to evaluate schools, not individual kids. NCLB is a copout. It allows schools to meet requirements but still not provide "powerful instruction". NCLB might form a safety net, but many view it as a sign of good teaching. It isn't. Any baseline cannot be viewed as a sign of good teaching.
So, psychologists will help define "powerful instruction"? Without any linkage to IQ or the individual child, how is this done? This sounds more like "minimal instruction". Psychologists will run into big problems when they move from the individual to making group policy decisions.
This relates to a main theme I have been pushing for years; education based on individuals rather than statistics. I can understand that the government wants to improve averages (statistics), but this comes at the expense of indivual educational opportunities. As long as education is based on statistics, the affluent will provide the needed opportunities and the poor will get the baseline, which some might call "powerful instruction". It's nice that psychologists will add some real science to the debate, but it's not the solution.
Years ago, I had a discussion with a member of our school committee who really liked the idea of IEP's for all students. I thought it odd at the time because she was a major proponent of mixed-ability, child-centered learning. I guess she thought schools could have it both ways. Differentiated Learning sounds nice, but most schools use it as cover for their fundamental belief in mixed-ability learning. As I mentioned long ago, our school started calling is Differentiated Learning instead of Differentiated Instruction because the teachers don't instruct and they want the kids to take responsibility for their learning.
How can psychologists set a baseline for instruction when schools do not believe in instruction? Will it be a baseline for instruction just to meet NCLB?
What's missing from this discussion are parents and their opinions of what constitutes a good education for their individual children. I emphasize the word opinions because this is not the domain of ed school graduates or psychologists, who now seem to be playing the statistical baseline game.
I would rather see psychologists stick with the individual. I'd rather see psychologists define what is an expected learning level for individual children. But what I would really like to see is schools assuming that all kids can get into Harvard (no matter what a psychologist says), not that all kids can get over the minimal NCLB requirements, or what they call "all kids can learn".
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