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July 12, 2012
24 notes
More Than Facts and Formulas

iamlittlei:

Educators should not teach only facts and formulas — they should also teach students how to use that subject knowledge to remain academically motivated, think critically, and communicate ideas to others, according to a report about education and life skills released Tuesday by the National Research Council.

Whilst I agree with all this and think that it is important for this kind of thing to be out there, I’m starting to get annoyed by the prevalence of announcements and articles like this. The prevailing idea seems to be that teachers don’t know that they should be teaching concepts/critical thinking/communication instead of facts.

We. Know.

We want to teach critical thinking. We know it is a stupid waste of everyone’s time to drill our kids on facts and formulas. We do not want to teach the way we currently teach.

When we teach facts and formats, it’s because our students our being tested by higher authorities on facts and formulas. Even if we ourselves are not yet judged on he well our students perform on these inane assessments, our students are judged on how well they perform. We need to set them up for success on these assessments, so we teach them the facts and formulas. This doesn’t mean teaching to the test, necessarily, but it does often mean spending precious instructional time on detail.

I’m so over educational reformers telling me to teach critical thinking. Don’t tell me that. I know. I want it. Tell into the administrators who write the detail-ridden curriculum I’ve been saddled with and to the standardized testing industry that insists on judging my professional competence and my students’ ability from a test on facts and formulas.

An excellent summary of what most teachers I’ve talked to about this issue say.

Not only that, but we should remember that this isn’t the first time that we’ve been down this road. Curriculum reform seems like it’s on this swinging pendulum between strictly critical thinking/applied learning and basic skills and knowledge. It’s exhausting to look at.

(Source: gjmueller)

Tags: Education Curriculum Progressive Education

Text
May 04, 2012

the-identitycrisis-deactivated2 asked: I'd like to add that really, you can't "overeducate" someone. Yes, everybody should know the basics - but there's nothing wrong with learning algebra or Greek history or quantum mechanics, even if you'll never use it in real life. All knowledge is useful, and if nothing else, helps us to understand the world around us more.

It seems that the common argument is that packing curricula with what many deem as “trivia” contributes to decreased student engagement, as our kids will try to roughly guess what’s useful and what’s not. I don’t know if “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” is something that our schools do (or even should) be pushing, since all people are different.

But I agree that in general, I don’t think there’s any necessary negative in teaching those things. It’s just a matter of how. It’s just something we have to be careful about as we try to reform education, I guess - that we don’t condemn the different perspectives on the issue since they really can coexist.

Tags: Education Student Engagement Curricular Content Progressive Education

Photo
May 04, 2012
4 notes
I laughed a little too hard at this XKCD comic. I think that it’s because of arguments like these that progressive education has some sort of natural foothold in education discussions. I really used to be into a pretty extreme version of the idea as well, where all curricular content was boiled down to the essential things all people need.  I’ve thought about it more since then. Now, especially reflecting on my own experiences and career path, I can somewhat see why, for example, the push for progressive education didn’t do so well in the “math wars” of the later 20th century. And I think this comic touches on the issue. (Note that I’m referring to extreme, down-to-the-essentials versions of this movement.) For example, I worked in bioinformatics for a bit. In that field, the things I learned in biology, chemistry, and other STEM classes were very useful. I got a kick out of employing my knowledge of acid-base chemistry, which I first gained in high school science. But I can also recognize that the majority of the people in my class probably hated learning that. Most can probably claim now that it wasn’t ever useful for them, just as I claim that learning about the War of 1812 wasn’t overly useful for my work (or life) either. However, I can now appreciate, seeing all of the wonderful things my fellow graduates are doing, that someone in my class benefited from that experience. And sure, I can understand why some people might be annoyed that they spent all of that time learning things they’d never use. I mean, when it comes down to it, is that exposure worth all of the resources we put into the depth of curricula for all of these subjects? I don’t know, but I also can’t think of a better solution for preparing students to successfully pursue their goals after high school (other than changing the role of higher education and really examining post-secondary job training). After all, if I remember correctly, again using mathematics as an example, it was employers who had noted at one point that certain trends in extreme progressive education left graduates in the field without the depth of knowledge to contribute effectively to the work being done. So no, I never figured out why I had to learn about the details of Antigone. Nor do I have it worked out in my head how the pendulum for progressive education should sit or swing. But I’m sort of glad someone learned it and can take that knowledge with them to a place where they will succeed. It’s a weird, awkward balancing game where the extremes on both ends feel like the others are dooming children to failure. In the end, I feel like the strategies used within schools and the learning environments in which our kids are education can achieve both. But in order to keep it balanced, I think those who are maintaining the more classical aspects of education need to find a better justification for parents, teachers, communities, and, most importantly, students than “Someone will need you to do this one day.”

I laughed a little too hard at this XKCD comic. I think that it’s because of arguments like these that progressive education has some sort of natural foothold in education discussions. I really used to be into a pretty extreme version of the idea as well, where all curricular content was boiled down to the essential things all people need. 

I’ve thought about it more since then. Now, especially reflecting on my own experiences and career path, I can somewhat see why, for example, the push for progressive education didn’t do so well in the “math wars” of the later 20th century. And I think this comic touches on the issue. (Note that I’m referring to extreme, down-to-the-essentials versions of this movement.)

For example, I worked in bioinformatics for a bit. In that field, the things I learned in biology, chemistry, and other STEM classes were very useful. I got a kick out of employing my knowledge of acid-base chemistry, which I first gained in high school science. But I can also recognize that the majority of the people in my class probably hated learning that. Most can probably claim now that it wasn’t ever useful for them, just as I claim that learning about the War of 1812 wasn’t overly useful for my work (or life) either. However, I can now appreciate, seeing all of the wonderful things my fellow graduates are doing, that someone in my class benefited from that experience. And sure, I can understand why some people might be annoyed that they spent all of that time learning things they’d never use. I mean, when it comes down to it, is that exposure worth all of the resources we put into the depth of curricula for all of these subjects?

I don’t know, but I also can’t think of a better solution for preparing students to successfully pursue their goals after high school (other than changing the role of higher education and really examining post-secondary job training). After all, if I remember correctly, again using mathematics as an example, it was employers who had noted at one point that certain trends in extreme progressive education left graduates in the field without the depth of knowledge to contribute effectively to the work being done.

So no, I never figured out why I had to learn about the details of Antigone. Nor do I have it worked out in my head how the pendulum for progressive education should sit or swing. But I’m sort of glad someone learned it and can take that knowledge with them to a place where they will succeed. It’s a weird, awkward balancing game where the extremes on both ends feel like the others are dooming children to failure. In the end, I feel like the strategies used within schools and the learning environments in which our kids are education can achieve both. But in order to keep it balanced, I think those who are maintaining the more classical aspects of education need to find a better justification for parents, teachers, communities, and, most importantly, students than “Someone will need you to do this one day.”

Tags: Education Education Reform Progressive Education STEM Education Math Education XKCD

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January 28, 2012
Youth Rights, Dignity, and the Anti-Democratic Values of Public Schooling

I feel like there are three different issues here, all with very different (but related) roots:

1) Behavior management: Based on my limited experience, I would agree that behavior management is a huge part of the problem in education (as I’ve noted several times). And like any set of laws (which really are just behavioral rules), it’s unfortunate when people’s freedoms are restricted because of the few who abuse them. (And like any set of laws, there are many in power to enforce those rules that abuse their positions.) But I don’t think that’s an inherent tenant of the school system: control of behavior. It’s just an unfortunate result of the many many other issues we have in American schooling, much of which are cultural.

2) Compulsory Education: Again, I’ll agree that there’s little attention given to the issue of whether compulsory education makes sense. Movement towards compulsory education started a while back, powered by political and religious movements that felt that it was necessary for the citizenry to be able to read and write in order to be able to interpret and understand the law and religious texts, contributing to shared values in society. Consumer interests in education sort of sneaked in over time later, eventually helping to evolve American education into what it is today. So we can agree that today’s education system has a very different cultural “purpose” today, one that makes much of it seem unnecessary. But at the same time, I don’t know enough about child development and such to say when a child should be allowed to decide not to go to school. Let’s note that kids can leave school at 16 (for now, at least). After that point, getting your diploma is (increasingly) a cultural necessity.

3) Curricular Content: So there are two different issues I pulled out here: progressive education and passion-driven education. The first is a debate that’s been going on forever. But I don’t know really what that has to do with democracy within education. It’s definitely an issue I’d love to see addressed more, though. The second issue, however, I’ve only seen come up more recently. Here, as I’ve mentioned before, is just another manifestation of the conflict between societal interests and consumer interests in education, or more broadly, meritocracy and national interests verses individual benefits. This isn’t meant to be defeatist and say that it’s indomitable. But we have to pay it some attention before we start condemning a system that is just built upon American society.

In general, the article felt a lot like “school is boring and useless, it has too much control over our lives, and thus we should just do it ourselves.” And I can agree that it has a lot of those issues. But I don’t think that solution adequately addresses the problems in education upon which these issues have grown throughout history. Even with a youth-controlled education system, I don’t see any of these issues changing at the root level. Even if you lower or remove the school leaving age, for example, you end up with a whole mess of other issues that you now have to deal with, most prominently the increase of the uneducated in society (which has debatable effects) and more concretely, a likely heavy increase of youth in a workforce that is stretched as it is.

Basic point if you don’t want to read all of that: Interesting piece. Definitely hits a lot of issues. Doesn’t seem to address causes of those issues, though. Not convinced solution would mitigate those causes. But still, very interesting.

Tags: Education Education Reform Democracy Democracy In Education Youth Democracy Curricular Content Passion-Driven Education Progressive Education Behavior Meritocracy History Compulsory Education