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71% see book learning as key to successI'd love to see this question asked of a) classroom teachers, b) administrators, c) education school professors, d) educational consultants, and e) VENDORS. I'm guessing teachers would be much closer to the public than the other three.
Fifteen percent (15%) say street smarts are more important, and 14% are not sure which is better.
[snip]
More than eight-out-of-10 adults who earn more than $75,000 per year say book learning is more important than street smarts, higher than for any other income groups.
In any event, the fact that 71% of the public thinks book learning* is the secret to success while 86% of education professors told Public Agenda that, "The process of learning is more important ... than whether or not students absorb specific knowledge," tells you parents and taxpayers need a vote. A vote and a veto, preferably.
the struggle
While I'm constructing my survey wish list, I'd like to know how many parents would sign off on this sentiment:
Nearly 9 in 10 (86%) say when K-12 teachers assign math or history questions, it is more important for kids to struggle with the process of finding the right answers than knowing the right answer.
students must struggle
* I am assuming that by "book learning" parents mean learning and remembering, i.e. the acquisition of knowledge
8 comments:
Does it have to be an "either - or" situation?
I think that both are important, and neither one by itself tells the whole story. I've had students (college age) scribble a bunch of baloney on an exam question, and then the correct answer miraculously appears. I do not give full credit for that (maybe one point out of four or five), since it's obvious that they're throwing everything on the wall and hoping something sticks.
"Nearly 9 in 10 (86%) say when K-12 teachers assign math or history questions, it is more important for kids to struggle with the process of finding the right answers than knowing the right answer."
I'm not sure what that means. Does that mean that kids should be familiar with how to look things up, and that's more important than knowing the history? Why can't kids learn the history *and* learn how to look things up? It seems to me that the two things are more likely to go together than to be mutually exclusive.
The word "struggle" makes me imagine kids who don't know how to look things up, but are expected to do so anyway. As a librarian, I don't want kids to struggle to find information--I want them to be able to name what they're looking for, look for it in a few different ways, and then be able to judge whether they've found it or not (is it the desired information? is it complete? is it reliable? is it biased?). That's not an easy skill set--relatively few adults can do it--and I'm more than happy to help them on their way and explain what to do.
An amazingly frustrating attitude when your essay is trying to make an argument for one historical explanation (over a competing one) but your history class is still at the level of "exploration".
High school humanities classes really don't seem to have any conception of "falsifiability". If you try to criticise a classmate's competing explanation you're seen as just mean.
The real problem is that you can come up with 100 different explanations for why X happened. But high school history classes generally don't teach you anything like how to reject competing hypotheses and modify theories!
Many/most do not understand the difference between "I think" and "I feel". All the way through school, they have been told that their feelings are what matter, so they don't realize that incorrect or insufficient data invalidate an argument/theory.
Does it have to be an "either - or" situation?
apparently so
i'm joking
you can come up with 100 different explanations for why X happened
double that if you're talking about school politics in a small town!
Does that mean that kids should be familiar with how to look things up, and that's more important than knowing the history?
They're not talking about kids looking things up.
They're talking about giving kids multiple-step 'authentic' problems to solve, which the kids have not been taught to do.
hence: struggle
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