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One of my friends holds advanced degrees in education, and she used cutting-edge methods to teach her own kids. What she forgot was the classic problem of the teacher being all fired up and motivated, and the student feeling left out of the picture. After all, fundamentals may be old-hat for teachers, but for students they're all new concepts. Her son was all but forgotten in her enthusiasm and fascination with the perpetually new. She has asked me a hundred times what I think is "wrong" with him (answer: "you").I wonder if this boy was being homeschooled or afterschooled.
She force-fed her son this and that fad over the years while he quietly turned off to learning. He recently dropped out of the marginal college he was able to squeak into with his middling test scores, yet it is obvious to anyone who talks with him for five minutes that he is very bright. I think he'll probably drop back in some day when he returns for his own reasons, but his mom's incessant buzz-speak about the latest pedagogical gewgaws of the day (I suspect 21st-century skills were part of it) really did a number on him. Poor kid.
1/5/2009 7:10:48
The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad: 21st-Century Skills
by Jay Mathews
Washington Post
Monday, January 5, 2009
Sunday, September 5, 2010
edu-fads at home
Found this comment on Jay Mathews' 2009 column about 21st century skills:
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This can be a bit of a problem with some homeschoolers.
I'm going to talk a bit about generalities here, but they're obviously not universal.
Most of the primary homeschooling decisions get made by mom, and mom does most of the actual instruction. (I'll say again: this is not universally true, but the numbers are pretty strong.) Now, in many cases, dad acts as the "administration," hopefully as a potential veto/check on mom running off on some crazy pedagogical crazy-land tangent with the kids, but ... well. In some households I'm aware of, I'm not sure how much that is happening.
Sometimes we'll read a story about something or talk to someone, and later my husband will say, "Dad was *really* on board with this?"
I think a more general version of what you have posted is that homeschooling only requires one or two people (the parents) to pick a direction. This can make it easier to pick a good direction (Singapore Math instead of MathLand), but also makes it easier to pick a bad direction (MathLand instead of Singapore Math).
Just the nature of the beast.
Anecdotally, a YMCA instructor that we knew for a number of years (she was one of my son's swim instructors) eventually started coordinating their summer camps. She knew we were homeschooling and we talked about it for a bit because she knew more people were homeschooling and she wanted the YMCA to be more ready to handle these kids.
One of her comments to me was that in a lot of respects the public school kids tended to bin kinda the same -- she said that they tended to be more "resilient" than the private school kids; and the private school kids tended to bin kinda similarly -- more "fragile", but in general more advanced verbally. And the homeschool kids were wildly different both from the public/private school kids and from each other -- lots of different strengths and weaknesses -- which made things much more interesting for the people running the programs.
I think that is true. It is very easy to select a very strange direction when homeschooling and there isn't much bureaucracy to prevent it.
-Mark Roulo
Mark Roulo wrote: "It is very easy to select a very strange direction when homeschooling and there isn't much bureaucracy to prevent it."
True. It is also very easy to select a far superior direction when homeschooling because there isn't much bureaucracy to prevent it.
True. It is also very easy to select a far superior direction when homeschooling because there isn't much bureaucracy to prevent it.
This allows me to dig back into my pre-motherhood years as a unix sysadmin and pass along this nugget of wisdom we used to ponder:
Windows people who weren't used to unix were always flabbergasted that (with proper permissions, of course), you could just so easily, say, wipe out the entire filesystem with a slip of the finger if you are "rm -rf"ing somewhere. Unix never asks, "Are you sure?" And unix didn't have an obvious "undo" for deleting.
And we always used to say:
If unix could prevent you from doing something stupid, it could also prevent you from doing something clever.
Consider the fine level of control you have on a unix system vs. the more tightly controlled experience of a Windows system. Also consider the number of times you say, "Why can't I just X??" on a Windows system vs. unix.
Homeschooling is similar, in that sense. The state could possibly prevent you from doing something stupid to your kids, but only at the expense of preventing other people from doing something great.
"his mom's incessant buzz-speak about the latest pedagogical gewgaws of the day (I suspect 21st-century skills were part of it) really did a number on him. Poor kid."
I'm very skeptical of judgments like these. The writer seems quite certain that he understands cause and effect with regard to this case, but I'm willing to bet he doesn't. A child's ultimate educational attainments are not solely a function of his mother's educational practices and may not even be primarily so.
I probably agree with this writer's assessment of various educational philosophies, but whenever I hear that some kid turned out such-and-such a way because of such-and-such, I get the same feeling I get when someone blames a failed romance on an astrological mismatch, hyperactivity on corn sugar, a recession on whoever happens to be President, a market crash on...anything. I can't be sure, but I suspect we have another attribution error.
I'm late to this party, but what are 21st Century skills? It seems to be a big buzzward in our school district.
OK.... I followed the link so I'm slightly more educated. If anyone has additional references please post them.
TerriW: "Also consider the number of times you say, 'Why can't I just X??' on a Windows system vs. unix."
But this isn't fair! Most Linux systems come with X installed. Most Windows systems don't. :-)
-Mark Roulo
Sometimes a parent's parenting or teaching style comes as a result of a kid's problems. If this kid had issues, perhaps her bouncing from method to method was an attempt to find one that worked.
Also, there's no mention of what became of the other children ("her own *kids*"). It sounds like they might have turned out fine, which furthers the argument for the kid's problems being the impetus for all the changing.
I'm very skeptical of judgments like these. The writer seems quite certain that he understands cause and effect with regard to this case, but I'm willing to bet he doesn't.
I wouldn't make a bet one way or the other -- there seems to be quite a bit of friction in this friendship, which may (or may not) make the account off-base.
But I was intrigued by the image of a parent cycling through education fads....
It made me realize I've actually developed a stereotyped image of homeschooling parents as sensible and effective.
I don't think I have that many glowingly positive stereotypes inside my How the World Works file -- but it turns out that homeschooling parents are one of them.
Terri - that is really interesting.
Love the with this?" -- !!
As far as I know, the phrase "21st century skills" was invented by The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, which was founded by a group of education technology companies acting in conjunction with the NEA.
Which means:
* more money for edu-tech companies (cause 21st century skills mean buying SMART Boards)
* less accountability for schools (cause there are no tests or AP courses on 21st century skills)
win-win
My district has yet another strategic plan in the offing.
This go 'round '21st century skills' is one of 4 district goals.
Our superintendent simply can't get the message about spending. Nor can she get the message about the deep and getting deeper budget hole NY state is in.
Our pension contribution is about to rise 37% & she is still 'thinking big' --- 21st century skills!
Lots more technology!
It's the 21st century!
Somewhat OT here, but not horribly - the whole "digital natives" woo-woo drives me about bonkers. (As does 21st century skills, partly because I keep thinking that was last century since I've been hearing it so long.)
So, I'll get to my point/story, I'm taking an undergrad course currently and one of the textbooks is only readily available in an on-line format. I wasn't too happy about this, but figured that maybe this was normal for the other students. Not so. I'm probably more willing to put up with the on-line format than most of the other students, and I'd say the undergrads are more disgruntled than the grad students.
It's been interesting to hear my own reactions given voice by the supposed digital native crowd.
I like giving students the option of a digital textbook, especially if it saves them money, but requiring it would drive a lot of my students crazy. They also typically hate it when lecturers depend heavily on powerpoint.
So much for "digital natives!"
Fortunately Powerpoint isn't an issue in this class since it's a language course. Cost is pretty much even between the digital/print choice. Honestly, I see advantages to either choice.
Forgot to say above that I've got ~30 years on the younger students in the class.
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