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I had always assumed E.D. Hirsch's account explained it: constructivists are the philosophical descendants of Romantics, and Romantics believed that nature is a whole and should not be dissected, analyzed, broken down into component parts, etc. Wholeism, in other words. Romantics extended this belief to teaching and learning.
Constructivists are Romantics, and Romantics are Whole-ists, so: whole child, whole language, whole math, histogeomegraph....
Here's Hirsch:
The romantic poet William Wordsworth said, “We murder to dissect”; the progressivist says that phonemics and place value should not be dissected in isolation from their natural use, nor imposed before the child is naturally ready. Instead of explicit, analytical instruction, the romantic wants implicit, natural instruction through projects and discovery. This explains the romantic preference for “integrated learning” and “developmental appropriateness.” Education that places subject matter in its natural setting and presents it in a natural way is superior to the artificial analysis and abstractions of language. Hands-on learning is superior to verbal learning. Real-world applications of mathematics provide a truer understanding of math than empty mastery of formal relationships.Reading Matthew Hunter's article on constructivism in British schools, though, I saw the constructivist antipathy to phonics in a new light:
The much publicised debate over "phonics" versus "whole word" methods sounds arcane, but it is really quite simple. "Phonics" involves teaching pupils to match individual letters to sounds, so that they can combine these sounds to make words. The teaching of phonics requires an orderly, teacher-led classroom, and in its technical approach is often characterised as boring and off-putting for young children.I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I had never thought of this.
For that reason, "whole-word" methods have been promoted for the last half-century as a more child-centred alternative. Instead of didactically instilling an understanding of which letters make which sounds, whole-word teaching encourages pupils to "discover" how to read by first matching words with meanings, then slowly building an understanding of letter-sounds. This method promises that pupils, to a large degree, will teach themselves. As one whole-word apostle claimed, it will lead to the "withering away of the teacher".
The most important distinction between the two methods is that one works, and one does not. This has not stopped generations of "progressive educators" from eschewing the teaching of phonics, not because of any perceived ineffectiveness but because its didactic methods are repugnant to their ideology. As a result of these teachers indulging their romantic ideals, 11-year olds arrive at secondary school unable to read and write.
Child-Centered Learning Has Let My Pupils Down
MATTHEW HUNTER| June 2012
During the Summer School Institute at Morningside Academy, Kent Johnson talked about the difference between training and education. Most of what he was teaching us was how to train students, not how to educate them. Training comes before education.
from my notes:
[The] test for training [is]: “I’m teaching them something I know & they don't know. I want them to be as smart as I am.”That's training, and for Kent training is (generally) not about discovery, while education may be.
For some time now, I've been frustrated that schools aren't giving students the practice they need.
But now, reading Hunter in the wake of attending the Institute, I think it's probably more accurate to say students aren't getting the training they need.
The reason they aren't getting the training they need is likely to be the fact that the concept of training seems almost intrinsically to require, or at a minimum suggest, an "orderly, teacher-led classroom" and a "technical approach."
and see:
balanced literacy - the video
histogeomegraph: preventing the tragedy of content isolation
15 comments:
Recent anecdote. My daughter is starting kindergarten (part-time) this year, and she and I just met with the kindergarten teachers. When I was talking with one teacher about something, the other quietly (without telling me she was about to do it) tested my child on the kindergarten sight words, which she read off quickly, having been taught to read already with Engelmann's Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons.
It was funny to see the teachers' faces change when I told them that my child had never done sight words. You'd think sight words were some sort of absolutely indispensable part of learning to read. A good phonetic reader can read most sight words without ever seeing a sight word flashcard; the rest can be taught as they come up in other reading instruction.
oh boy
that is distressing -- thanks for posting -- !
This reminds me of the very well-known charter school I toured, where they'd put sigh words on tiles in the hall floors. I didn't post about this before because I didn't want to insult anyone - and I think at this point no one's going to make the connection.
They had words like "dog" as sight words.
I was completely scandalized, but I was a guest, so I kept perseveratively asking whether the floor words were sight words without indicating the fact that I was hoping to GET A DIFFERENT ANSWER THIS TIME, and the head of the school kept patiently saying, yes, 'dog' was a sight word.
I wanted to ask her whether she knew what a sight word was, and what phonics was, but I couldn't think of a polite way to do it.
probably more accurate to say students aren't getting the training they need.
I think that's right. I have always thought of the difference between the software training courses I have taken as an adult, and the schooling my son receives.
Training should be about imparting a skill set as efficiently as possible. Schooling seems to have a bit more baggage attached.
Oh, that was fun. I just called over my five-year-old and asked her to read the 3rd grade Dolch sight word list. We've never gone over them. She got every word quickly except for the world "eight", which she figured out after being told it was a number. How can anyone not see that phonics, when it works, is a more efficient way of teaching reading that opens the world of books to children much faster? Use phonics as the default and save the sight words as an extra resource for children who need them. I'm not advocating for the abolition of sight words, but for children who can learn to read via phonics, they're just a waste of time.
A lot of teachers (not all by any means) have a general antipathy to training. We recently had a teacher at the local high school writing articles for the local patch, and that was soaked through his writing. His job teaching freshman English is to teach them to love reading, and so they read in his classroom 20 minutes of each 50 minute period! And he teaches honors as well as "college prep" (which in my area is what we used to call "general.") Sigh.
Hey Ben - Great to see you!
Training should be about imparting a skill set as efficiently as possible
Right. That's exactly what the Morningside people said. They used the word 'efficiency' over and over.
How can anyone not see that phonics, when it works, is a more efficient way of teaching reading that opens the world of books to children much faster?
The thing is: constructivist teaching isn't interested in efficiency. It's not a value.
I've said this any number of times, but it bears repeating now, but by the time C. was in middle school I was feeling as if the school was scooping up huge, heaping armloads of his childhood and tossing them into the trash.
No one had the slightest interest in or awareness of the fact that time was passing, his childhood was drawing to a close.
From the school's perspective, there will always be 10-year olds, and 11-year olds, and 12-year olds.
The school never runs out.
How can anyone not see that phonics, when it works, is a more efficient way of teaching reading that opens the world of books to children much faster?
The thing is: constructivist teaching isn't interested in efficiency. It's not a value.
I've said this any number of times, but it bears repeating now, but by the time C. was in middle school I was feeling as if the school was scooping up huge, heaping armloads of his childhood and tossing them into the trash.
No one had the slightest interest in or awareness of the fact that time was passing, his childhood was drawing to a close.
From the school's perspective, there will always be 10-year olds, and 11-year olds, and 12-year olds.
The school never runs out.
How can anyone not see that phonics, when it works, is a more efficient way of teaching reading that opens the world of books to children much faster?
The thing is: constructivist teaching isn't interested in efficiency. It's not a value.
I've said this any number of times, but it bears repeating now, but by the time C. was in middle school I was feeling as if the school was scooping up huge, heaping armloads of his childhood and tossing them into the trash.
No one had the slightest interest in or awareness of the fact that time was passing, his childhood was drawing to a close.
From the school's perspective, there will always be 10-year olds, and 11-year olds, and 12-year olds.
The school never runs out.
How can anyone not see that phonics, when it works, is a more efficient way of teaching reading that opens the world of books to children much faster?
The thing is: constructivist teaching isn't interested in efficiency. It's not a value.
I've said this any number of times, but it bears repeating now, but by the time C. was in middle school I was feeling as if the school was scooping up huge, heaping armloads of his childhood and tossing them into the trash.
No one had the slightest interest in or awareness of the fact that time was passing, his childhood was drawing to a close.
From the school's perspective, there will always be 10-year olds, and 11-year olds, and 12-year olds.
The school never runs out.
A lot of teachers (not all by any means) have a general antipathy to training.
I sometimes wonder whether you'd have to have a whole different crew of people teaching if you were going to go to a precision teaching/DI model...
On the other hand, at least in my freshman composition classes, 'training' and 'education' don't **feel** contradictory .... (I say 'feel' because I'm talking about personality of teachers)
They don't feel contradictory to me either. I'm teaching in a summer boot camp course (preparing students to be successful in college-level science classes), and we slide back and forth between skills, concepts, and applications. All of them are necessary and part of education. But I know that many colleagues of mine would strongly resist anything they felt was training.
Of course, I'm the oddball who argues we should keep teaching analytical chemistry, which is falling out of favor in the academy as not sufficiently theoretical and "mere training."
Hi Catherine! Yes, this seems to be what we are running into in middle school. We know math education is a problem (hence we are in Kumon), but have been frustrated by the English and writing instruction.
Not enough time is spent on basic skills like grammar and sentence diagramming. Then the teachers complain that the students don’t know it.
Then the kids get assignments for complex essays, without proper prompts, so they really don’t have a model to work from.
After getting marked down for an essay that counted in two subjects (and knocked our son off the honor roll), this summer I took the step of asking a graduating eighth grader for her essay so we would have an example to work from.
This is what I think of as the “not enough training, too much educating” model.
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