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This "war of ideas" really is where it's at.I'm midway through Vicki Snider's book.
I'm in the Twin Cities, MN. Well, specifically, I'm in St. Paul, but the available educational system I'd consider taking my kid to is well over half of the greater Twin Cities metro.
There are over a hundred schools here available to a parent of grammar school or middle schools aged student. There are over two dozen high school options available. The public school system allows you to attend any public school which has space--you lottery in for the most wanted ones, of course, but usually, people get what they want. We also have charter schools. We have magnet schools. We have DOZENS of Catholic schools and at least a dozen other religious schools. We have private non religious schools. And we've got homeschoolers. Tuition ranges from 0-22k for each and every possible grade, preK to 12. I mean, from the outside, this is a mecca of educational opportunities!
And yet everywhere I go, I meet parents desperate to start new schools, pulling their kids out of schools, switching between private, public, and homeschooling mid year, and parents organizing to try and change their schools.
From the outside, it looks like madness: how can NONE of these schools fit the bill? how come NO ONE can find something that works for their kids? If parents just want what works, what is the problem? [ed.: Just like having 5 gazillion cable channels with nothing to watch! Sorry. Couldn't resist.]
For all of these so called choices, the answer is: for the grammar schools: no one here has a school that is excellent academically with a reasonable price point (and the unreasonable price points aren't always better academically either), and some of them still have (regardless of their religious ed or claim of religious culture) terrible problems with bullying, fights, and social problems in the classroom. For the high schools, almost none of them are excellent in all academic subjects. I've yet to hear ANYONE tell me of any high school that was excellent in science here, even though several offer IB and AP courses. I've yet to hear anyone say they have even moderately decent science in the grammar or middle schools, and that includes a magnet school.
Parents keep moving their kids around trying to find something that works for them, but they don't seem to get any traction. That's because, on some level, most of these parents still don't have a way to wage the war of ideas. All they can do it opt in or opt out, and hope something is close enough to work for them.
The ones who start a charter school or a private school are waging a different war--and sometimes, they fail too, because they still don't know how to HIRE people with ideas that work. While my homeschooling and charter schooling friends know about Saxon Math and Core Knowledge, none of them have heard of Direct Instruction or Precision Teaching. They are always reinventing wheels trying to find a way to hire faculty that won't make their school have the same problems as every other school they've got around them.
The war of ideas matters. More than anything else, because without it, we lose the way to communicate what it is we really want
Snider says we need "a science of teaching," and she's right.
Now that I've discovered Precision Teaching I realize we already have one; we're just not using it. Nor are we sufficiently developing it. (Snider says, for instance, that we really don't know, yet, how to teach critical thinking.)
I majored in psychology in college, and of course studied behaviorism as part of the major. When Jimmy was diagnosed with autism I learned more behaviorism and used the principles fairly effectively with him. (I would have used them very effectively if I'd learned and practiced more. Behavioral analysis with autistic kids is a major undertaking, and it's long past time for me to refresh my skills. Andrew needs managing.)
In the past 3 or 4 years, dealing with C., I've let my home-grown knowledge and practice of behavioral principles lapse. I became much more focused on cognitive science, which was my area of interest in college.
That was a mistake. My focus, now, is Precision Teaching in particular and learning theory - especially Pryor's work on positive reinforcement - in general.
I've seen big changes around here in just the few weeks since reading Don't Shoot the Dog.
When it comes to Precision Teaching, Americans haven't reached the level of a war of ideas yet. No one's even heard of it.
I'm going to start bugging people around here about Precision Teaching.
Myths and Misconceptions about Teaching: What Really Goes on Inside the Classroom by Viki Snider
A Comparison of Teacher Attitudes and Beliefs about issues Across Conventional and Direct Instructional Schools Vicki Snider and Rebecca Schumitsch (full article here)
38 comments:
Joseph Mayer Rice started to look into the science of education in 1912, "Scientific Management in Education." (Google Books: Rice Scientific Mgt in Ed)
A few good quotes:
“The number of recitations a week in a subject must be determined by the amount of time required for brain cells that have been in active operation fully to recover their strength, and again be prepared for the process of assimilation. If they are set to work earlier, they labor under unfavorable conditions, and less will be accomplished in a given time than if the recuperation had been complete.” (Rice page 59)
"When I speak of incidental instruction, I do not mean that satisfactory results might be secured if a branch were left to take care of itself. Incidental instruction, to be worthy of the name, is not a laissez-faire system, but must be as carefully planned and as thoroughly and systematically conducted as if the subject were separately taught. If the teacher, for instance, should act on the theory that, in time, the pupil would learn to write neatly and legibly just because he writes, and accordingly would accept manuscript in any form in which it was presented, she would not be imparting incidental instruction, but would simply be neglecting penmanship.” (p. 56)
“The arrangement of a school programme on a purely logical basis may involve, therefore, an enormous waste of time, for more reasons than one. In a recitation sixty minutes in length, twice as much ground can be covered, it is true, as in a recitation only thirty minutes in length; and again, in four recitations a week in a given subject, twice as much ground can be covered as in two. It is not, however, the number of ideas presented to the child, but only those assimilated, that count.” (p. 57)
Rice’s book is worth reading through. I know that I learned a subject more thoroughly when I was interested in it and when I spent little bits of time on it daily or weekly spread out over a period of weeks or months. Cramming for tests worked well for things I didn’t care to learn long term, but was not really an efficient mode of learning.
On a related note about efficient modes of learning, I took an Engineering Mechanics class where we did boardwork throughout the lesson. The instructor would teach for about 20 minutes, then we would all get up and do a problem on the board. He would correct our errors and explain any confusion. Then, he would teach a little more and we would do another problem. When taught with this method, I did quite well in a subject that did not come naturally to me. Unfortunately, I did so well I got promoted out of his class and into an advanced Engineering Mechanics class where the teacher did not teach this way. It took me a while to figure out that I really didn’t understand Engineering Mechanics, and I only ended up passing the class with the help of some friends and a lot of studying for the final exam.
Unfortunately, Rice's work as been neglected, as people in Education have been busy reinventing old bad ideas instead of figuring out the best way to teach.
On my history of reading page History of Reading Instruction , at the timeline portion about halfway down the page, I have some more Rice links from another of his books in this paragraph:
1893 - 1896: In a survey of Public Schools throughout the United States in 1883, Joseph Rice found that phonics led to better results in reading than word methods. [15] In 1895 and 1896, he gave spelling tests to 33,000 children throughout the United States. He found that the best spelling results were obtained where the phonic method was used. [16]
Precision teaching of a curriculum that doesn't value mastery of facts and skills? Our school would change it to Precision Learning.
"When it comes to Precision Teaching we haven't even reached the level of a war on ideas yet. No one's even heard of it."
I'm just trying to get them to teach history. It's not only that they are doing something poorly, they are doing the wrong thing.
Precision Teaching may work best in middle school when they start to teach real courses. Right now they put all of the onus on the student to learn the material.
I'm just trying to get them to teach history. It's not only that they are doing something poorly, they are doing the wrong thing.
Precision Teaching may work best in middle school when they start to teach real courses. Right now they put all of the onus on the student to learn the material.
I was telling the brainiest friend I have here about our visits to private schools.
Private schools - the ones we looked at - are a parallel universe, I told him.
First I said that the major difference is that in private schools the school is responsible for student achievement, not the parents or the student.
Then I said the other major difference is that private schools teach the liberal arts disciplines; they teach content.
My friend said, "That's the same thing. Being accountable means you teach different things. You teach content."
He really is a brainiac.
I simply hadn't thought of it that way (not that incisively - I had made the connection between focusing on "character education," for which the school can't be held accountable versus focusing on math or history, for which it can be held accountable).
Does accountability = "liberal arts disciplines taught here"?
It probably does, logically at any rate.
Liberal arts disciplines? I see that as a just a vague description. Is there a name given to what they do now?
I don't think public schools ever really want to be accountable for learning. When I was growing up, they would flunk kids or force them to go to summer school. This is a type of accountability, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are doing a good job. At least it kept (most) kids from getting to fifth grade not knowing their times table and creating more problems.
Now, even this is pedagogically justified with spiraling mastery. They can't fail, because they can't tell the difference between developmentally appropriate, good teaching, and needing a swift kick in the rear.
Do they do this just to avoid accountability? I don't think so. My opinion is that we have a generation of K-6 teachers who don't see education in concrete terms. They see a community of mixed-ability learners. They place social concerns far above mere facts. However, they can't just come out and say that they are lowering expectations. They have to come up with appropriate pedagogical cover. It's so bad that they even claim that it's better for all; that there are no tradeoffs.
Private schools don't do this as much because their customers come to get away from that philosophy. But they still offer curricula like Everyday Math. Ed school rhetoric runs deep and enough kids (with parents and tutors) do well that they can't tell it's their own problem.
In our school, things change in 7th and 8th grades. The reality of high school looms. There are targets to meet for math and language arts. Parents are starting to pay attention. Our school tries to be realistic and flexible. The silliness of multiple learning styles melts away to a more common sense approach. Reality sets in. By then, it's too late for many, and the school wants kids to take responsibility for the reality they created.
Our principal told me that there is a very big resistance from teachers in the lower grades to anything that sets higher expectations. (She didn't use those words.) Outside of reading and basic math, they don't want any specific goals. This is not because they don't like accountability. It's because K-6 teachers have their own view of education, and they feel very strongly about it. They say things like: "The cream always rises to the top". For the rest, apparently, what they get is developmentally appropriate, by definition.
"Liberal arts disciplines" isn't vague at all. The phrase only seems vague because 99.99% of the country has no idea what it means.
Ed schools are obsessed with "interdisciplinary" teaching, teaming, and subject matter. That is the whole point of the middle school model: interdisciplinary teaming & interdisciplinary content.
The point of the interdisciplinary obsession is to not teach the liberal arts disciplines.
Remember David Foster (I think it was David)?
He came up with the great line that ed schools want every subject taught in K-12 to be social studies or art.
Our Top-100 high school has sent out a letter saying that all students taking Honors English sophomore year will also be required to take AP World History.
This requirement has been put in place to bring our high school up to speed with colleges and universities which, the letter claimed, are engaged in a process of "blurring the disciplines."
Think about the difference between history and social studies.
Ed schools wanted to destroy the teaching of history, and they did.
They've been trying to destroy the teaching of math as a liberal arts discipline for the past 10 years at least. That's why textbooks like Trailblazers teach math as statistics, not math. Math isn't math; it's math/science.
In our 4-5 school, now, there are no assignments in ELA or in social studies.
All the assignments coming home say "ELA/social studies" at the top.
When you stop teaching ElA and social studies, and start teaching ELA/social studies, that allows you to send home 1st-person letters written in poor grammar by kids living in Bolivia.
It's not history; it's not English literature.
It's ELA/social studies.
The liberal arts disciplines:
math
science
English literature
foreign languages
history
philosophy
art
music
These are separate and distinct disciplines - disciplines meaning that experts in these fields use particular modes of analysis, inquiry, and expression. Those modes are in some cases opposed and contradictory. (History and literature are very different disciplines.)
(Not sure whether the social sciences count as a separate discipline - I'll ask Ed.)
They say things like: "The cream always rises to the top".
They say this????
Teachers say this???
out loud?
Is there a name given to what they do now?
interdisciplinary
It's another form of wholeism.
We shouldn't have "artifical" distinctions amongst different branches of knowledge.
Knowledge should be a whole; the disciplines should be blurred and, ultimately, destroyed.
Besides the issues of philosophy etc, there are logistic problems in public schools. The "inclusion" movement (which has many positive aspects) can lead to classrooms so diverse that systematic teaching and accountability for academic results is impossible. "Differentiation" is a vague term meant to suggest academic appropriateness when the real issue, for many teachers, is simply finding something that every student can actually DO. It is not uncommon to have a classroom of 25-35 students, with 5-6 LD, 2 with autism or PDD, 2 with mild cognitive impairment, 3 with behavior disorders, and another group with no label but very low achievement. In some urban schools I have been in, the number of "exceptional" students -- officially or unofficially -- has been over 50%. Typically there is no staff to support these students except in the most superficial way.
Given these constraints, it requires incredible amounts of time to provide appropriate materials and instruction to everyone in the class. When I was younger (and stupider) I actually tried to do this. I was at school until 10 p.m. every night and all weekend. Even that was nowhere near enough; I couldn't make or write or hustle up the needed resources and materials and differentiated lessons for each student.
It's impossible.
Nor is it reasonable to expect teachers to work 16 hour days, 7 days a week. Especially when it still doesn't work.
The varying needs could be addressed if schools grouped students -- not by "ability," but by instructional level, in varying subjects across grade levels, and used paraprofessionals to extend opportunities for guided and distributed practice, etc. This would not be "streaming," because many kids, if effectively and aggressively taught, make dramatic improvements, at least in some areas. One could expect the groupings to change several times during a school year.
But that would make too much sense.
ABSOLUTELY
Another keeper - will get this pulled up front.
This, again, is the community college model.
Community colleges ALWAYS give placement tests (to start).
They don't test "ability"; they test a student's place in the curricula.
And, yes, placement varies over time.
Learning speed varies with mastery of content.
palisadesk,
I agree, but I would also add that in the same classroom you also have the bright, the super-bright, and a couple of gifted kids thrown in. The LD and gifted kids are pulled out of the class right and left for this and that.
Who does the teacher teach to exactly when giving a lesson to such a hugely diverse group? The middle? The bottom? And what about the rest? Worksheets on their level? That's what a lot of "differentiation" means for a lot of kids. Worksheets on their level.
This is all because school administrations and some teachers "believe" in it. It is incredibly inefficient and frustrating to many teachers, especially ones that have a good deal of disadvantaged or LD kids.
And in the end, they're still ability grouping. They just do it in one classroom with pullouts and group work.
SusanS
"The liberal arts disciplines:
math
science
English literature
foreign languages
history
philosophy
art
music"
I think you have to include "rhetoric" as well. The ability to convince others has always been a part of classical education.
I also like to see geography included in the liberal arts.
I also want to start a movement to get rid of the nebulous phrase "social studies". I want to see history and geography named as specific subjects.
I am still trying to figure out whose bright idea it was to replace history and geography with the vague phrase "social studies". It happened sometimes in the late 20s, early 30s, I believe. A fellow called Rugg had something to do with it. But who else?
Hardly anyone recognizes the name Rugg nowadays. But in his time he was a major force. His compendia were de rigueur.
Teachers say this???
Yes. In my case, it was centered around the discussion of acceleration versus enrichment in a full-inclusion, differentiated instruction environment. My position was that this was not enough. You can't substitute enrichment for acceleration. Their point was that (basically) I was expecting too much, and that the more able kids would do fine (rise to the top). It wasn't about them not doing enough, but about allocation of resources and their desire to make full-inclusion work.
If I went into our high school and talked about a "liberal arts education", they would tell me that they do something else?
Steve - I'd love to find out what your high school would say about the liberal arts disciplines.
High school teachers are trained in the disciplines. That's the law; they have majors in the liberal arts disciplines. (btw, I have no idea where geography fits in this classification; I don't understand the term well myself.)
The "liberal arts disciplines" are what the expression "college of arts and sciences" refers to.
I bet you'd see some blank looks; I also bet you'd hear talk about how critically important it is for a high school to be "interdisciplinary."
Interdisciplinary means Kill off the liberal arts disciplines & replace them with Contemporary Stuff We Like to Talk About.
The interdisciplinary focus of all ed schools justifies showing movies in ELA.
C. has watched one movie after another this year.
Has to watch another one tonight, then write about it.
This movie has to be a documentary about science.
That's interdisciplinary teaching:
English
writing
science
movie
All in one assignment.
You will not see, in a public school mission statement, "rigorous education in the liberal arts disciplines."
Nor will you see "progressive, hands-on education in the liberal arts disciplines."
You will not see, read, or hear the phrase "liberal arts disciplines."
Naturally Ed and I spend a huge amount of time bandying this phrase about around here.
The liberal arts are fast disappearing in colleges and universities, too. Colleges are becoming vocational.
This is probably an OK definition of the liberal arts (looks like geography is included under "sciences").
Also, I'm pretty sure mathematics is normally not grouped under "sciences" (though "college of arts & letters" might put math with science...).
The Wikipedia entry is probably pretty good:
"The term 'liberal arts' is described in Encyclopædia Britannica as a "college or university curriculum aimed at imparting general knowledge and developing intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum." In classical antiquity, the term designated the education proper to a freeman (Latin libera, “free”) as opposed to a slave."
You can see why ed schools would object.
The liberal arts aren't real-world and hands-on.
The liberal arts are pretty much exactly what the ed schools have been attempting to stamp out for lo these many years.
The middle school model allows middle schools to reduce time spent on the disciplines and increase time spent on "Exploratory" courses which I gather tend to be current events discussion courses.
Philosophy of Liberal Education
I have unearthed a paper on how Rugg killed history as a discipline. Abolishing artificial divisions was the motto. The paper was written in the pre-computer era (1977). Available only as facsimile.
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/37/a1/5b.pdf
Who does the teacher teach to exactly when giving a lesson to such a hugely diverse group?
In my recent experience (all low-SES urban schools) teachers try to teach to a mythical "grade level" middle. Our data show that few students in the upper grades are actually at an instructional level commensurate with the grade they are in -- most, even those deemed successful, are 2-4 years below "grade level" if you look at actual work samples completed independently, and use norm-referenced testing to get some comparative statistics. Thus, teachers experience a lot of frustration (because kids are hard to engage, go off-task easily, fail to complete work -- etc. etc.). Some teachers "differentiate" with a variety of worksheets, others don't even pretend to try. Still others have a lot of creative strengths and get students working on multimedia projects that give every student an opportunity to produce *something*.
Frequently there is no material on the curriculum topics that the lower 70% of the class can read independently. Usually, too, the low SES schools have fewer resources (sometimes none), limited staff, and few or no volunteers.
I agree, but I would also add that in the same classroom you also have the bright, the super-bright, and a couple of gifted kids thrown in.
While in middle-SES schools I did see the range of ability in a class that included very bright or even gifted students in every class, but that is less common in the ghetto schools. Partly this is the skewing of the population distribution, but it is also a consequence of screening for the able students and referring them elsewhere. Parents also are wont to take their high-achieving kids out of the low-performing school. They arrange for the child to go to a school in a different neighborhood, or to a special program like immersion, an arts-focused elementary, etc.
When we tested our whole middle school population we found very few students who were at "grade level" and even fewer who were likely very bright or gifted. Most students who fit this description would have opted out long before eighth grade. So the high performers are rarely a major consideration for the "differentiating" teacher in such a milieu. It is more of a reality in the primary grades, but it has been my observation that primary grade teachers tend to "differentiate" readily and successfully to accommodate the varying maturity levels of young children. By middle school, the spread is so vast it can no longer be successfully addressed in a single classroom as typically constituted.
The LD and gifted kids are pulled out of the class right and left for this and that
This depends. Some schools just don't have the staff to do much pull-out. Others have resource people falling all over themselves. I have been in both types of school. It seems district administration knows which schools they can safely shortchange (politically naive or inactive parent groups a big factor).
My current school can offer almost no support or pullout. It is required by law, but it doesn't happen.
A child who is either gifted or significantly delayed will have less than 1% of the instructional time of the typical classroom at his/her "zone of proximal development." Inclusion sounds humane but actually severely cheats these kids. Their instructional needs are often not addressed at all.
Hi Doug - well as usual I'm working from a mortifyinging low knowledge base, but I think rhetoric used to be one of the "7 liberal arts" and now, somehow, is not....or has been absorbed into literature....
Obviously, I have no idea.
This is another one of those situations where I, as a parent, am in the position of trying to defend something I don't know much about myself.
I want my kid's school to give him a rigorous education in the liberal arts disciplines, delivered via direct instruction & precision teaching if possible.
This option is getting pushed and shoved right off the menu.
Remember when Scarsdale got rid of all its AP courses and replaced them with "AT" courses? (Advanced Topic)
I knew, before reading the white paper, that the justification would be that AT courses would be interdisciplinary.
I was right.
I'm pretty sure IB courses are completely interdisciplinary at this point, or getting there.
Wish I could find my notes from a conversation I had last summer with a kid who took IB courses at Dobbs Ferry. He's a math guy; he said IB math is a joke. They were writing papers and basically just b*s'ing.
For people who are interested in this, universities have in fact had an "interdisciplinary" movement that began in the 1970s and was associated with left politics of the day. I gather that the main interdisciplinary field to emerge was Cultural Studies.
Ed says the interdisciplinary idea didn't pan out, partly because the work was poor. Wikipedia's entry is probably OK.
Talking to various department chairs at conferences, Ed has found them saying they no longer hire specialists in Cultural Studies or interdisciplinary studies.
Here's an article about the problem of assessing a scholar's work in interdisciplinary fields: Assessing Interdisciplinary Work at the Frontier.
(looks like the link takes you to the front page instead of the article)
Last but not least, some of you will remember Alan Sokal's send-up of postmodernist blah-blah that was published in a journal called Social Text. The journal didn't recognize the parody, and published it.
This is the kind of thing that leads to grave questions concerning assessment and quality.
Good grief.
I should have previewed that comment.
The papers on Rugg look terrific!
it has been my observation that primary grade teachers tend to "differentiate" readily and successfully to accommodate the varying maturity levels of young children
I'm very interested - and surprised - to learn this.
How do they do it?
One reason for my surprise is the fact that the gap between fast & slow learners is largest when kids are learning brand-new material...
It IS true, though, that "the rich get richer."
That used to drive me crazy with Jimmy. The gap between Jim & typical kids wasn't so HUGE when he was little.
But every time he'd get close to catching his typical peers they would have zoomed ahead.
You can't substitute enrichment for acceleration.
Yes. Absoultely.
Their point was that (basically) I was expecting too much, and that the more able kids would do fine (rise to the top).
OH!
OK, I get it.
Yes, that's said here constantly.
This is pretty much the operating principle of the whole district.
The parents are rich and well-educated; their kids will be fine.
SES determines outcome.
Not the school.
I learned almost nothing in social studies.
I did learn some geography in Contemporary World Problems in High School, we had to memorize all the nations of Africa (I never had to learn the states in school. When my dad found that out, he bought us a state jigsaw puzzle.) Half of these countries in Africa have now changed their names.
I did have one good history class in high school, World History. However, my class was the first class to be 1 semester long instead of 2 (presumable to make room for things like Contemporary World Problems.) So, I just learned World History from the industrial revolution on, they hadn't figured out how to condense it and figured that the 2nd half was the most relevant.
We also had 1 semester of American History in High School, which, for obvious reasons, dates back only so far.
Reading through Hirsch's Cultural Literacy, I was shocked how many pre-industrial revolution things I needed to teach myself. (I did get a lot of history at college, but I went to the Air Force Academy, which taught history, understandably, with an large emphasis on wars.) So, many non-war pre-industrial revolution things, I missed learning about.
I had to fill out a homeschooling form this year. The suggested format included "social studies" as a discipline. I replaced that with history and geography, I couldn't even bear to write the word social studies.
We move so often, geography almost does teach itself!
"Hi Doug - well as usual I'm working from a mortifyinging low knowledge base, but I think rhetoric used to be one of the "7 liberal arts" and now, somehow, is not....or has been absorbed into literature....
Obviously, I have no idea."
See also: Writing across the curriculum. 8-)
A classical liberal education consists of the following:
The Trivium:
Grammar
Dialectics (Logic)
Rhetoric
The Quadrivium:
Arithmetic
Geometry
Music
Astronomy
Here's a website called Trivium pursuit that lays out what to teach for each age level within these categories:
http://www.triviumpursuit.com/articles/suggested_course_of_study.php
Trivium Course of Study
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