Another year, another school board election

Needless to say, I cannot resist a school board election.

Letter to the editor:

At the September 23, 2013 meeting of the Board of Education, Superintendent Kris Harrison briefed the board on his plan for the district.

His plan is drawn from Tony Wagner’s 2008 opinion piece, “Rigor Redefined,” available here.

Wagner believes the world is changing so rapidly that by the time today’s children reach adulthood, most of the knowledge they learned in school will be obsolete.

Thus the school’s traditional mission of imparting knowledge to a new generation should be subordinated to a new mission: helping students master seven “21st century skills” Wagner claims to have identified. (Wagner spends the second half of his essay denigrating Advanced Placement classes and their teachers.)

Two years later, the superintendent has acted on at least five of Wagner’s seven “skills.” This has had the effect of actually increasing the need for tutors, because teaching knowledge is not the district’s priority. Teaching “21st century skills” is. That’s why we now have flipped classrooms, learning stations in 6th-grade math, children sitting in pods peering at iPads and Chromebooks, guidance counselors ordered not to help students draw up lists of colleges, and a Shark Tank project in the middle school. (The last two innovations fall under skill number 4: “Initiative and Entrepreneurialism.”)

What unifies Wagner’s list of seven “skills” is the absence of knowledge, and that’s the first problem. Cognitive scientists have spent years trying to explain that knowledge stored in long-term memory is different from knowledge stored on Google. To think critically, you need the former. When you think without knowledge, all you’re doing is taking your clichés for a walk.

A second problem: Wagner’s piece was published before the crash. It was wrong then (as a few minutes on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website reveals), but it’s even further off base today. The 21st century Wagner imagined, with its happy, humming global society and its ever-increasing “abundance,” is not the 21st century we got. Our children got world recession and Charlie Hebdo.

But the most important problem is the fact that all of these changes are being made without the consent of the people. No member of the board has expressed enthusiasm for changing the mission of the school to the teaching of 21st century skills, yet three members of the board have allowed the superintendent to proceed.

I hope the next board will have the strength to change course.

Catherine Johnson

If students could talk

Oh, wait (warning: many f-words).

One thing that annoys me no end re:constructivism & contructivists is the universal constructivist assumption that constructivism in all its myriad forms and formations is more fun for students.

We instructivists have only drill-and-kill on offer; constructivists have real-world authentic 21st-century global hands-on group problem solving!

Wheeeee!!!

Kids love that stuff.

Problem is, no one ever asks the kids if they agree.

They don't understand. When they make math fun, it's MORE BORING.
- Christopher, age 10 (scroll down to "Kids say the darndest things")

Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5

Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?

what do students want, part 3

from Crimson Wife:

My DD would probably have "no word problems" high on her math wish list but when using math IRL, one is rarely handed an equation to solve. The math I use day in and day out are basically word problems:

"Crimson Wife has $70 in her wallet. She has to fill up her 12 gallon gas tank at $3.13/gallon. She also has to pay the $15 co-pay at the pediatrician's office. Does she have enough cash to purchase 2 kids' meals costing $4.99 each and a salad for herself costing $6.49? (ignore tax as she also has a bunch of loose change)"

what do students want, part 2

what do students want, part 2

from Laurie Rogers:

Students said they want:

• More “examples”
• “Explanations,” line by line, of how to do each skill
• Helpful “resources” within the textbook structure, such as the meanings of words, “answers,” “glossary,” directory, lists of mathematical procedures, explanations of mathematical symbols
• Clearer and simpler language, “easier to read and understand”
• Classical math – the math schools used to teach, the math that will get them to college without remediation – with “equations, algorithms, formulas, theorems”
• Useful “visuals”
• Uncomplicated word problems; (or) No more word problems
• Content that’s germane to them, to their life, to college and to their future
• More time and opportunity to “practice” skills
• Small, portable machines that will calculate for them
• The paid adult in the classroom to actually show them how to do things
• To be allowed to progress when they understand something
• Help from a “Website”
• To learn a skill before they’re told to use it
• A textbook that isn’t so big and heavy
• A book they can work in at home

Rogers, L. (December, 2009). "School district excludes feedback from committee, students." Retrieved (date) from the Betrayed Web site

I'm especially partial to "learn a skill before they're told to use it," thanks to C.'s experience in middle school math, where the first application was always on the test. The kids went from seeing a procedure done a couple of times in class to one or two ungraded homework assignments practicing the procedure to multiple-step word problems applying that procedure on a graded test.

Two years of misery.

what do students want, part 1

what do children want?

from Lisa:

I live in IN and went to our school system's program on our new 'tech' high school with my 8th grader. He was mortified. It was everything he hates about school now intensified. Lots of group work and projects vs tests and grades. His comment was hilarious. They showed a picture of a 19th century school room as what is wrong with schools and he raised his hand and asked where he could find a school room just like the one in the picture (everyone facing forward in rows watching a teacher at the blackboard.)

Well, at least they get to sit in chairs.