What If Modern Education Philosophy Were Applied to Fashion?
By M. M.
with apologies to Hans Christian Anderson
A famous tale ends with a scene in which a small child, watching the Emperor’s parade, finally blurts out, “Mother, the emperor has no clothes!”
Today, a similar comment could be made about our public education system--“Mother, the schools have no academics!”
We have heard so many explanations for current educational trends. The commentary below adds a new twist. The emperor’s clothing story is set against the backdrop of education rhetoric to point out the lack of logic. (The names of the officials have been altered.)
The previous Superintendent of Public Instruction was a strong proponent of post-modern education philosophy. Fortunately, we have new leadership in the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, but the negative influences from past years are systemic. It will require much time, effort, and insight to weed them out.
All of the comments below have been said, at one time or another, to justify various educational practices. Please consider this commentary when examining new educational trends.
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Upon hearing that a child had exclaimed, “The emperor has no clothes!” a spokesperson from Washington State’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Fashion announced, “Now that we are in the 21st century, we must surely realize that fashion is changing, …. evolving. What we wear this year will be different from what we wear next year. What we learn about dressing today will soon change, so we must focus on the process of dressing and on the Higher Order Dressing Skills so that we can adapt to any type of fashion trend.”
As Assistant Superintendent Sherry McCoy said, “….What is happening in America today, and what is happening in Kansas and the Great Plains, is not simply a chance situation in the usual winds of change. What it amounts to is the total transformation of our society.
…And the issue for most children and the issue for the society is that what is changed in fashion today is that we no longer see the wearing of clothes and as the primary outcome of getting dressed…”[1]
Also, our Superintendent Tricia Berger says we must use research to “shift from the ‘yesterday’ mind to the ‘tomorrow’ mind,” in the way we think of clothes.[2]
Fortunately, the ten Regional Fashion-Education Labs in the USA have provided us with a plethora of studies. The research is based on ecological, sustainable, and multicultural aspects of clothing, rather than the outdated thinking of past generations.
Ecologically speaking, we must realize that with global warming and higher temperatures, we will require a new type of more-breathable fabric for our everyday outfits. The fabric of the Emperor’s new clothes is the prototype of fabric for the future.3
Scarcity is also a concern on this blue planet, and it would be wrong of us to wastefully use material resources to over-dress our population, especially when people in other countries wear much less. Wearing cotton clothing causes people to waste farmland on growing cotton instead of valuable food crops. Wearing wool, silk, or leather causes the abuse or murder of poor animals, and wearing synthetic materials wastes fossil fuels. Following the Emperor’s lead and using his new fabric is the only sensible way to conserve resources and live sustainably.3
There are also multicultural considerations. People in many cultures of the globe are very comfortable being minimally-clad. It would be wrong to force our Euro-centric ideas about being over-clad upon other people. In fact, the indigenous peoples of the Americas and of Africa had ancient knowledge of medicinal herbs and lived in harmony with their habitat. We should learn from and emulate their cultures.4
One sub-culture that needs special attention, however, is the growing group of Home-Dressers. Parents who Home-Dress their children naively believe they can better instill clothing knowledge, behavior, and beliefs into their children, and they strive to take matters of attire into their own hands. Some of them even sew their children’s clothing! Many of them are not educated in the new standards of fashion and cling to their traditional notions. It is hoped that the clothing experts will eventually produce legislation to require that parents be certified in Modern Fashion Methods and Modern Fashion Philosophy before being permitted to Home-Dress their children.
The Emperor’s new fabric choice will be the recommended fabric in the reauthorization of Non-approved Clothing Left Behind. All states must align their dress standards with the NCLB guidelines. NCLB calls for a state assessment to assess the children’s clothing preferences to see if they have achieved the correct higher order dressing skills, with respect to state ecological, sustainability, and multicultural standards.
A spokesperson for the Federal Department of Clothing states that even though determining how US citizens are clothed is not a Federal power under our United States Constitution, it is for the good of the people that clothing choices be codified by the experts in Washington, D.C. Besides, if the Federal Department of Clothing didn’t exist, people would not know how to get dressed.
So while young children may not yet understand the new thinking of the 21st century, teachers and parents will surely agree that any responsible, ecology-respecting, culturally aware, conservation-minded citizen will want world-class clothing standards for the children, and will be able to see the Emperor’s new outfit for the brilliant, farsighted innovation that it is.
[1] Shirley McCune, held the position of Federal Liaison for Teaching and Learning at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Olympia, WA from around 1997 until 2008. In the late 1980s she was Senior Director of the Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory doing research for the U.S. Department of Education.
In 1989, at a National Governors’ Association Conference on education in Kansas, she said,
“….What is happening in America today, and what is happening in Kansas and the Great Plains, is not simply a chance situation in the usual winds of change. What it amounts to is the total transformation of our society.
…And the issue for most children and the issues for the society is that what is changed in education today is that we no longer see the teaching of facts and information as the primary outcome of education.”
[2] “Using Research to Shift From the ‘Yesterday’ Mind to the ‘Tomorrow’ Mind,” was a phrase used to describe mathematics education and is the subtitle to the former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Terry Bergeson‘s publication Teaching and Learning Mathematics, March 2000.
http://www.k12.wa.us/research/pubdocs/pdf/MathBook.pdf . (Also see page 58, for the statement that the math curriculum should not be concerned with correct answers.)
3 Environmental and Sustainability issues are to be emphasized and integrated into other subjects:
http://www.k12.wa.us/curriculumInstruct/EnvironmentSustainability/pubdocs/EESAVisionfortheFuture061807.doc
4 For example, this commentary by the Brookings Institute explains ethnomathematics, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2005/0620k12education_ravitch.aspx
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Learning Improvement Teams-- not an improvement
The Illusion of Local Control
by Mère Fâchée
In the mid 1990’s, I served on a Learning Improvement Team (LIT) in an elementary school in a large district in south King County. I struggled to get some semblance of representative government in this body, which was designed to make decisions impacting the entire school.
The typical LIT structure at that time was that the principal would appoint the entire committee, selecting several representatives among the teachers of different age groups, and the classified staff. There would generally be one parent representative – usually from the PTA – and one community representative – either a retiree or a business person. There was no set term of office. Members served until they got tired of it or their kids moved out of that school – or until the principal was tired of them.
The LIT’s were designed to have decision-making capability, specifically to spend the grant money provided by the state. The money was to be used to benefit student learning, but – ironically – could not be spent on classroom materials like textbooks, supplies, software, etc. Some LIT’s were used as pilot programs for other kinds of decision-making – like conflict resolution among the staff and school level policy-making.
Because of their unique role to spend taxpayer money and make other decisions, I thought it inappropriate that the LIT’s were structured as they were. When a boundary change landed my kids in a new school that was just beginning its LIT, I lobbied to get on it. Against his better judgement, the principal did appoint me. (This principal turned out to be a fine man, equally liked and respected by the students, teachers, and parents, alike – a rare individual, and one I found to be an ally as often as an opponent during our discussions.)
The original LIT at our school was composed of the principal, three teachers (one each from K-2, 3-4, and 5-6 grades), one classified staff person, the PTA rep, a community person, and me – in other words, five district employees, two parents, and a community member. I thought this was very lop-sided, considering whose children would be affected, and said so. I lobbied for at least even representation between school employees and non-employees, and for elections to choose whom those people would be. We set up three regions from the attendance area from which to choose three elected parent representatives, with one-year terms of office. The PTA members ratified their representative. We could not decide how to make the community representative elected, so we just left that as a volunteer appointed by the principal. Teachers were to set up their own selection process for their representatives. We also ended up with a parent from our school who was the “diversity” representative. That would seem to give non-district staff the edge, but the “diversity” rep was also the PTA rep, so we ended up at five employee reps and five community/parent reps.
Some issues we didn’t even begin to touch. Were the parents who voted for their representatives registered votes? Citizens even? Did the community rep live in the attendance area? Why should employees (staff), who may not live in the attendance area have a say in how taxpayer money is spent? Why are parents out-numbered by the teachers and staff? A parent rep might be representing 100 or 150 parents. A teacher rep was representing only three, himself and the other two teachers for his age group. Is that really fair representation?
The next job we had as LIT members was to create our mission statement. I pushed very hard to get the term ‘academics’ in the mission statement. One of the teacher reps (My husband and I privately referred to him as Mr. Flake. And he was, oh, he was!) said, “Well, what does ‘academics’ really mean? Is it art and music and PE?” I about had apoplexy during that meeting. The teachers all lined up on Mr. Flake’s side and the parents all lined up on my side. It was pretty much a deadlock until the principal spoke. All he said was, “I think we need to respect the parents’ wishes on this one.” So, ‘academics’ made it into the mission statement. (And Mr. Flake and one of the other teachers on the LIT later became principals.)
As part of our ‘training’ the LIT was sent to a decision-making seminar. We were all trained in the process of “consensus decision-making” – a process I came to refer to as organized peer pressure. We were essentially prepared to be fodder for any Delphi Technique facilitator we happened to meet. (If you are not familiar with this particular technique, please see http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/~consensus.htm.)
Then there was the teacher continuing education seminar that the LIT was invited to … The continuing ed. classes are theoretically provided to help teachers become better at their jobs – teaching knowledge to children. This one spent the entire time training attendees to influence community leaders, shifting public opinion to a more positive perception of the school and the district. An example of the knowledge we gained was that only 30% of the households in our community even received a newspaper, so positive news articles, while valuable, have limited effectiveness. The real game is played among the “opinion leaders” of the community: Kiwanis, Rotary Club, and Chamber of Commerce. Join those and become friends with the opinion leaders, and lead them to a favorable impression of … whatever you like.
Even though our LIT was less controlled and manipulated than most, I found the experience frustrating and disenchanting. It was one of the factors that ultimately convinced me that I needed to homeschool, which I did for the next eight years.
by Mère Fâchée
In the mid 1990’s, I served on a Learning Improvement Team (LIT) in an elementary school in a large district in south King County. I struggled to get some semblance of representative government in this body, which was designed to make decisions impacting the entire school.
The typical LIT structure at that time was that the principal would appoint the entire committee, selecting several representatives among the teachers of different age groups, and the classified staff. There would generally be one parent representative – usually from the PTA – and one community representative – either a retiree or a business person. There was no set term of office. Members served until they got tired of it or their kids moved out of that school – or until the principal was tired of them.
The LIT’s were designed to have decision-making capability, specifically to spend the grant money provided by the state. The money was to be used to benefit student learning, but – ironically – could not be spent on classroom materials like textbooks, supplies, software, etc. Some LIT’s were used as pilot programs for other kinds of decision-making – like conflict resolution among the staff and school level policy-making.
Because of their unique role to spend taxpayer money and make other decisions, I thought it inappropriate that the LIT’s were structured as they were. When a boundary change landed my kids in a new school that was just beginning its LIT, I lobbied to get on it. Against his better judgement, the principal did appoint me. (This principal turned out to be a fine man, equally liked and respected by the students, teachers, and parents, alike – a rare individual, and one I found to be an ally as often as an opponent during our discussions.)
The original LIT at our school was composed of the principal, three teachers (one each from K-2, 3-4, and 5-6 grades), one classified staff person, the PTA rep, a community person, and me – in other words, five district employees, two parents, and a community member. I thought this was very lop-sided, considering whose children would be affected, and said so. I lobbied for at least even representation between school employees and non-employees, and for elections to choose whom those people would be. We set up three regions from the attendance area from which to choose three elected parent representatives, with one-year terms of office. The PTA members ratified their representative. We could not decide how to make the community representative elected, so we just left that as a volunteer appointed by the principal. Teachers were to set up their own selection process for their representatives. We also ended up with a parent from our school who was the “diversity” representative. That would seem to give non-district staff the edge, but the “diversity” rep was also the PTA rep, so we ended up at five employee reps and five community/parent reps.
Some issues we didn’t even begin to touch. Were the parents who voted for their representatives registered votes? Citizens even? Did the community rep live in the attendance area? Why should employees (staff), who may not live in the attendance area have a say in how taxpayer money is spent? Why are parents out-numbered by the teachers and staff? A parent rep might be representing 100 or 150 parents. A teacher rep was representing only three, himself and the other two teachers for his age group. Is that really fair representation?
The next job we had as LIT members was to create our mission statement. I pushed very hard to get the term ‘academics’ in the mission statement. One of the teacher reps (My husband and I privately referred to him as Mr. Flake. And he was, oh, he was!) said, “Well, what does ‘academics’ really mean? Is it art and music and PE?” I about had apoplexy during that meeting. The teachers all lined up on Mr. Flake’s side and the parents all lined up on my side. It was pretty much a deadlock until the principal spoke. All he said was, “I think we need to respect the parents’ wishes on this one.” So, ‘academics’ made it into the mission statement. (And Mr. Flake and one of the other teachers on the LIT later became principals.)
As part of our ‘training’ the LIT was sent to a decision-making seminar. We were all trained in the process of “consensus decision-making” – a process I came to refer to as organized peer pressure. We were essentially prepared to be fodder for any Delphi Technique facilitator we happened to meet. (If you are not familiar with this particular technique, please see http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/~consensus.htm.)
Then there was the teacher continuing education seminar that the LIT was invited to … The continuing ed. classes are theoretically provided to help teachers become better at their jobs – teaching knowledge to children. This one spent the entire time training attendees to influence community leaders, shifting public opinion to a more positive perception of the school and the district. An example of the knowledge we gained was that only 30% of the households in our community even received a newspaper, so positive news articles, while valuable, have limited effectiveness. The real game is played among the “opinion leaders” of the community: Kiwanis, Rotary Club, and Chamber of Commerce. Join those and become friends with the opinion leaders, and lead them to a favorable impression of … whatever you like.
Even though our LIT was less controlled and manipulated than most, I found the experience frustrating and disenchanting. It was one of the factors that ultimately convinced me that I needed to homeschool, which I did for the next eight years.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
"Passport"-- to Ignorance. No more geography
Passport to Ignorance
by Mère Fâchée
In the mid 1990’s, my three daughters were in elementary school in a large district in south King County. This school had a building-wide program called “Passports”. Some of the parents I talked to were excited about it, but my personal experience was more than disappointing.
The idea behind passports was that each room would ‘become’ a country for several weeks. The concept was that the students would get deep learning about this particular country. Then, the entire school would spend a week visiting the other ‘countries’ and learning about them from the other students. The whole thing would culminate in an evening when the parents would visit their children’s classrooms. It was the execution, not the idea, that was the main problem, although the amount of time devoted to it was not justified, based on what learning took place.
Also, one of the years, the parent night was scheduled for Maundy Thursday (Holy Week, right before Easter). I told my children to tell their teachers that we would not be attending, as we had responsibilities at church that night. I told the principal that it was poor planning, and not very culturally sensitive of him to plan a school-wide program for Holy Week.
The first year that my family was exposed to Passports was when my oldest daughter was in fifth grade, the middle one in second, and the youngest not yet there. Daughter number 1 did learn quite a bit about her middle eastern country. The teachers tended to pick countries of which they had some personal knowledge, and this one was married to someone who was from that country. However, daughter number 2 learned next to nothing when she visited her sister’s ‘country’. The best she could come up with was, “They barter there.”
Daughter number 2 could not even tell me what continent her country was in, much less what language the people spoke, what religion they were, what the country produced, what its geography was like, any of its history… Her teacher had visited this country and used the opportunity as a travelogue. She brought her souvenirs to school and taught the kids to spell out the words one through ten in the Cyrillic alphabet. (There’s a life skill for you!) Knowing nothing themselves, they certainly could not teach what they learned to their ‘visitors’.
I aired my grievances at a meeting of the Learning Improvement Team (LIT), of which I was a member. Daughter 1’s teacher was also a member. He said he was completely satisfied that the only knowledge Daughter 2 gained from his class was that they barter there. The result was a rather heated discussion between the two of us over what the point of the Passports program was. His goal was entirely multicultural ‘understanding’. Mine was academic knowledge. The principal stepped in and said that both were important and moved the meeting to other topics.
The next year, the execution was pretty much the same. A few classes got some deep learning about their country, but most really didn’t. There was little to no knowledge gained through the visiting of other ‘countries’. But this year presented new problems.
Daughter 2, now a third grader, had Africa as her ‘country’. I don’t know off the top of my head how many actual countries there are in the continent of Africa, but I am sure the teacher could have managed to pick just one. It is also pretty hard to get deep learning about a single country when one studies an entire continent. It is pretty diverse in geography, race, history, climate, political systems. I think the teacher just wanted to focus on zoo animals.
By the family’s third year in this school, Daughter 3 was a second grader. Her teacher had selected Japan, a place she had visited. There was the usual travelogue aspect to her treatment, but this teacher also managed to scare the daylights out of my little girl, having convinced her that the school was going to be bombed. I found out about much of this many years later, as Daughter 3 belatedly realized what a skewed and inappropriate experience she had had, and finally told me about it.
This teacher was completely fixated on the atomic bombs dropped on Japan to end World War II. I was only vaguely aware of this. I knew she had read the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, about the little girl who died from radiation from the Hiroshima bomb. I knew the class was making paper cranes. The teacher even asked me, when she found out I was a chemical engineer, if I could do an experiment in class to demonstrate the power of a nuclear explosion. (“Uh, no. And if I could, you wouldn’t want me to.”) What I didn’t know about was that this seemed to be the entire focus of the unit. They didn’t really learn about anything else related to Japan. I also didn’t know about the “duck and cover” drills she had the kids doing. The poor kid was terrified that the school would be bombed.
The classes spent about six weeks every year, at least part of every day, focussing on Passport activities. The week spent visiting each other’s ‘countries’ was entirely devoted (all day long) to Passports. The evening event required the presence of teachers, so they likely were paid overtime for that. If you evaluate what was learned and compare it to the lost opportunity for other learning, the whole thing was a colossal waste of time and resources – a passport to ignorance.
by Mère Fâchée
In the mid 1990’s, my three daughters were in elementary school in a large district in south King County. This school had a building-wide program called “Passports”. Some of the parents I talked to were excited about it, but my personal experience was more than disappointing.
The idea behind passports was that each room would ‘become’ a country for several weeks. The concept was that the students would get deep learning about this particular country. Then, the entire school would spend a week visiting the other ‘countries’ and learning about them from the other students. The whole thing would culminate in an evening when the parents would visit their children’s classrooms. It was the execution, not the idea, that was the main problem, although the amount of time devoted to it was not justified, based on what learning took place.
Also, one of the years, the parent night was scheduled for Maundy Thursday (Holy Week, right before Easter). I told my children to tell their teachers that we would not be attending, as we had responsibilities at church that night. I told the principal that it was poor planning, and not very culturally sensitive of him to plan a school-wide program for Holy Week.
The first year that my family was exposed to Passports was when my oldest daughter was in fifth grade, the middle one in second, and the youngest not yet there. Daughter number 1 did learn quite a bit about her middle eastern country. The teachers tended to pick countries of which they had some personal knowledge, and this one was married to someone who was from that country. However, daughter number 2 learned next to nothing when she visited her sister’s ‘country’. The best she could come up with was, “They barter there.”
Daughter number 2 could not even tell me what continent her country was in, much less what language the people spoke, what religion they were, what the country produced, what its geography was like, any of its history… Her teacher had visited this country and used the opportunity as a travelogue. She brought her souvenirs to school and taught the kids to spell out the words one through ten in the Cyrillic alphabet. (There’s a life skill for you!) Knowing nothing themselves, they certainly could not teach what they learned to their ‘visitors’.
I aired my grievances at a meeting of the Learning Improvement Team (LIT), of which I was a member. Daughter 1’s teacher was also a member. He said he was completely satisfied that the only knowledge Daughter 2 gained from his class was that they barter there. The result was a rather heated discussion between the two of us over what the point of the Passports program was. His goal was entirely multicultural ‘understanding’. Mine was academic knowledge. The principal stepped in and said that both were important and moved the meeting to other topics.
The next year, the execution was pretty much the same. A few classes got some deep learning about their country, but most really didn’t. There was little to no knowledge gained through the visiting of other ‘countries’. But this year presented new problems.
Daughter 2, now a third grader, had Africa as her ‘country’. I don’t know off the top of my head how many actual countries there are in the continent of Africa, but I am sure the teacher could have managed to pick just one. It is also pretty hard to get deep learning about a single country when one studies an entire continent. It is pretty diverse in geography, race, history, climate, political systems. I think the teacher just wanted to focus on zoo animals.
By the family’s third year in this school, Daughter 3 was a second grader. Her teacher had selected Japan, a place she had visited. There was the usual travelogue aspect to her treatment, but this teacher also managed to scare the daylights out of my little girl, having convinced her that the school was going to be bombed. I found out about much of this many years later, as Daughter 3 belatedly realized what a skewed and inappropriate experience she had had, and finally told me about it.
This teacher was completely fixated on the atomic bombs dropped on Japan to end World War II. I was only vaguely aware of this. I knew she had read the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, about the little girl who died from radiation from the Hiroshima bomb. I knew the class was making paper cranes. The teacher even asked me, when she found out I was a chemical engineer, if I could do an experiment in class to demonstrate the power of a nuclear explosion. (“Uh, no. And if I could, you wouldn’t want me to.”) What I didn’t know about was that this seemed to be the entire focus of the unit. They didn’t really learn about anything else related to Japan. I also didn’t know about the “duck and cover” drills she had the kids doing. The poor kid was terrified that the school would be bombed.
The classes spent about six weeks every year, at least part of every day, focussing on Passport activities. The week spent visiting each other’s ‘countries’ was entirely devoted (all day long) to Passports. The evening event required the presence of teachers, so they likely were paid overtime for that. If you evaluate what was learned and compare it to the lost opportunity for other learning, the whole thing was a colossal waste of time and resources – a passport to ignorance.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
High School Language Arts = Mind Pollution?
Mind Pollution: R-Rated and Depressing Literature in High School
by Mère Fâchée
In the early 2000’s, I made the mistake of allowing one of my daughters to enroll in high school in a large district in south King County, after homeschooling her since 5th grade. Her first English teacher there, while fairly academically focused and appropriately demanding of her students, had questionable judgment when it came to choosing literature selections.
The first of several unfortunate selections was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. When my daughter told me that was the book they were reading, I had a vague sense that I had heard something negative about that book. I told her to let me know immediately if she came across any inappropriate content. It wasn’t long before she found it. This book is Angelou’s autobiography. She is a black woman who was sexually abused as a child by her mother’s live-in lover. She is very detailed and graphic in her descriptions of the abuse – to the point of describing the look and feel of the abuser’s relevant male anatomy.
As Angelou is a talented writer, the book leaves the reader with a very vivid mental picture of what occurred. It is a picture I wish my daughter did not have in her mind, and one I wish I could erase from my own. You see, in order to confront the teacher from a point of personal knowledge, rather than hearsay, I had to read the book myself.
My daughter and I met with the teacher together. I explained to the teacher how inappropriate it was for a book of this nature to be used in any K-12 school. While college students might have the maturity to read such content, I would even question the book’s selection in a college literature class based on quality, considering the caliber of its competition for space in a crowded syllabus. Perhaps for a class in black literature, ethnic literature, or women’s literature, it would make the grade.
Words are powerful, I told her – a contention with which she agreed. I explained the vivid images evoked by the words on the page that I wish I had not had to read. I made a few other points, which the teacher conceded.
· If this book were made into a movie, it would have to be R-rated at the very least – a movie my 16-year-old daughter and her classmates would not be able to get in to see without a parent to accompany them.
· A newspaper would be prohibited from publishing certain excerpts from the book, as the content would be considered salacious.
· I would not be allowed to read these particular excerpts on either radio or television, because of broadcast decency standards.
· If I tried to read the same parts of the book publicly at a school board meeting, they would stop me.
Why, then, I asked, were 15 and 16-year-olds being asked to read this? Was it because diversity standards required them to read black authors? Then read The Three Musketeers. I am sure that many of the students would be surprised and pleased to learn that Alexander Dumas was black. Do they need a black woman who has written an autobiography of her childhood abuse? Thelma Wells has written a compelling one that manages to evoke the pain of the abuse without the graphic language.
The teacher’s response was that this selection had been approved by a district level committee. She had not actually disagreed with any of my points, but it was clear that I had not convinced her that the book was inappropriate. The best she could do for me was to say that my daughter could be excused from reading the rest of the book. But the damage had already been done. She had read the worst of it, and the remainder of the book was not nearly so graphic.
We chose to pursue the issue at the district level. My daughter wrote the letter herself, which is probably why I didn’t end up being denounced in the papers as a book-burner. The district was very complementary to my daughter for being so well spoken and willing to take action on something she felt strongly about. (In other words, they validated her feelings, without conceding any wrong-doing.) They also said that the teacher was mistaken; there is no longer a district level literature approval process. It was all on her, but there had been a change in policy, so her mistake was understandable. It was the ol’ bureaucratic run around. Nothing has changed. I am sure they are still using this book in sophomore English.
Having now been alerted to our more tender sensibilities, the teacher mentioned at conference time that the next book was Of Mice and Men, which I might find objectionable for its language. I know Steinbeck is considered one of America’s greatest novelists, but I am sure that he did not expect this one to be read in high school classrooms. The language is quite realistic, meaning a lot of ‘30’s era swearing. I had the teacher send the book home and I leafed through it. I let my daughter make the decision, but I warned her that nearly every other page had a character using the Lord’s name in vain and that she would be offended. She opted not to read it and instead read The Pearl, another Steinbeck selection, but without the swearing. Why couldn’t the entire class read The Pearl? Why should high school students be asked to read material in which the characters use language that violates the school’s conduct code? (One that is not enforced, I might add.)
Another problem with the selections for sophomore English was the relentlessly depressing tone of most of what the students read. The Angelou book was disturbing for its depiction of child sexual abuse. I have never read a Steinbeck book that wasn’t a ‘downer’ on some level. They also read a collection of short stories from around the world. I did not read these, but my daughter gave me brief overviews of the plots of several of them.
A story set in Africa is about a young girl who is captured by slave traders. Her father searches her down and rescues her. After the rescue, he takes a sharp implement and horribly disfigures her face. This is to make her undesirable to the slave traders.
A story set in Russia is about a man who is a low-level functionary. He owns a shabby coat that barely keeps him warm enough to survive the brutal winters. Everyone also always overlooks him. After years of saving up meager funds, he purchases a warm and expensive coat that will not only keep him cozy in winter, but will make others see him as a real ‘somebody’. The coat works its purpose and he gets noticed and promoted. Life goes on well for him until he is robbed of his coat. The police seem uninterested in his case and the perpetrator is never caught. He loses his job and, unable to afford another coat, dies from exposure. The man’s ghost haunts the police officer whom he blamed for his death (not the thief!?), ultimately stealing the policeman’s coat, so that the policeman meets the same ugly fate.
My daughter had this same teacher as a senior. Conference time brought another warning about language in a literature selection, A Prayer for Owen Meany. I told the teacher that, at 18, my daughter was old enough to make those decisions for herself. Nearly three years in that school had changed her significantly and she opted to read it. I leafed through it when she brought it home and saw numerous f-bombs in it. I read an online summary of it and suspect from that synopsis that the book also has a very specific political point-of-view, one quite different from my own. A comment my daughter made at that time led me to believe that she and her teacher were making unkind jokes with each other at my expense. Can you sue a school for alienation of affection? I wonder.
by Mère Fâchée
In the early 2000’s, I made the mistake of allowing one of my daughters to enroll in high school in a large district in south King County, after homeschooling her since 5th grade. Her first English teacher there, while fairly academically focused and appropriately demanding of her students, had questionable judgment when it came to choosing literature selections.
The first of several unfortunate selections was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. When my daughter told me that was the book they were reading, I had a vague sense that I had heard something negative about that book. I told her to let me know immediately if she came across any inappropriate content. It wasn’t long before she found it. This book is Angelou’s autobiography. She is a black woman who was sexually abused as a child by her mother’s live-in lover. She is very detailed and graphic in her descriptions of the abuse – to the point of describing the look and feel of the abuser’s relevant male anatomy.
As Angelou is a talented writer, the book leaves the reader with a very vivid mental picture of what occurred. It is a picture I wish my daughter did not have in her mind, and one I wish I could erase from my own. You see, in order to confront the teacher from a point of personal knowledge, rather than hearsay, I had to read the book myself.
My daughter and I met with the teacher together. I explained to the teacher how inappropriate it was for a book of this nature to be used in any K-12 school. While college students might have the maturity to read such content, I would even question the book’s selection in a college literature class based on quality, considering the caliber of its competition for space in a crowded syllabus. Perhaps for a class in black literature, ethnic literature, or women’s literature, it would make the grade.
Words are powerful, I told her – a contention with which she agreed. I explained the vivid images evoked by the words on the page that I wish I had not had to read. I made a few other points, which the teacher conceded.
· If this book were made into a movie, it would have to be R-rated at the very least – a movie my 16-year-old daughter and her classmates would not be able to get in to see without a parent to accompany them.
· A newspaper would be prohibited from publishing certain excerpts from the book, as the content would be considered salacious.
· I would not be allowed to read these particular excerpts on either radio or television, because of broadcast decency standards.
· If I tried to read the same parts of the book publicly at a school board meeting, they would stop me.
Why, then, I asked, were 15 and 16-year-olds being asked to read this? Was it because diversity standards required them to read black authors? Then read The Three Musketeers. I am sure that many of the students would be surprised and pleased to learn that Alexander Dumas was black. Do they need a black woman who has written an autobiography of her childhood abuse? Thelma Wells has written a compelling one that manages to evoke the pain of the abuse without the graphic language.
The teacher’s response was that this selection had been approved by a district level committee. She had not actually disagreed with any of my points, but it was clear that I had not convinced her that the book was inappropriate. The best she could do for me was to say that my daughter could be excused from reading the rest of the book. But the damage had already been done. She had read the worst of it, and the remainder of the book was not nearly so graphic.
We chose to pursue the issue at the district level. My daughter wrote the letter herself, which is probably why I didn’t end up being denounced in the papers as a book-burner. The district was very complementary to my daughter for being so well spoken and willing to take action on something she felt strongly about. (In other words, they validated her feelings, without conceding any wrong-doing.) They also said that the teacher was mistaken; there is no longer a district level literature approval process. It was all on her, but there had been a change in policy, so her mistake was understandable. It was the ol’ bureaucratic run around. Nothing has changed. I am sure they are still using this book in sophomore English.
Having now been alerted to our more tender sensibilities, the teacher mentioned at conference time that the next book was Of Mice and Men, which I might find objectionable for its language. I know Steinbeck is considered one of America’s greatest novelists, but I am sure that he did not expect this one to be read in high school classrooms. The language is quite realistic, meaning a lot of ‘30’s era swearing. I had the teacher send the book home and I leafed through it. I let my daughter make the decision, but I warned her that nearly every other page had a character using the Lord’s name in vain and that she would be offended. She opted not to read it and instead read The Pearl, another Steinbeck selection, but without the swearing. Why couldn’t the entire class read The Pearl? Why should high school students be asked to read material in which the characters use language that violates the school’s conduct code? (One that is not enforced, I might add.)
Another problem with the selections for sophomore English was the relentlessly depressing tone of most of what the students read. The Angelou book was disturbing for its depiction of child sexual abuse. I have never read a Steinbeck book that wasn’t a ‘downer’ on some level. They also read a collection of short stories from around the world. I did not read these, but my daughter gave me brief overviews of the plots of several of them.
A story set in Africa is about a young girl who is captured by slave traders. Her father searches her down and rescues her. After the rescue, he takes a sharp implement and horribly disfigures her face. This is to make her undesirable to the slave traders.
A story set in Russia is about a man who is a low-level functionary. He owns a shabby coat that barely keeps him warm enough to survive the brutal winters. Everyone also always overlooks him. After years of saving up meager funds, he purchases a warm and expensive coat that will not only keep him cozy in winter, but will make others see him as a real ‘somebody’. The coat works its purpose and he gets noticed and promoted. Life goes on well for him until he is robbed of his coat. The police seem uninterested in his case and the perpetrator is never caught. He loses his job and, unable to afford another coat, dies from exposure. The man’s ghost haunts the police officer whom he blamed for his death (not the thief!?), ultimately stealing the policeman’s coat, so that the policeman meets the same ugly fate.
My daughter had this same teacher as a senior. Conference time brought another warning about language in a literature selection, A Prayer for Owen Meany. I told the teacher that, at 18, my daughter was old enough to make those decisions for herself. Nearly three years in that school had changed her significantly and she opted to read it. I leafed through it when she brought it home and saw numerous f-bombs in it. I read an online summary of it and suspect from that synopsis that the book also has a very specific political point-of-view, one quite different from my own. A comment my daughter made at that time led me to believe that she and her teacher were making unkind jokes with each other at my expense. Can you sue a school for alienation of affection? I wonder.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
"Honors" class - more fluff, low standards
The Charade of “Honors” English
by Mère Fâchée
In the early 2000’s, I made the mistake of allowing one of my daughters to enroll in high school in a large district in south King County, after homeschooling her since 5th grade. After a semester in regular English, her teacher recommended that she be transferred to the honors level class. We were both shocked at the appallingly low academic standards in this class.
The previous teacher had attempted to help my daughter improve her writing skills, holding her to much higher standards than the class as a whole. The ‘honors’ teacher seemed to think the kids were all still in elementary school. My daughter’s classmates told her that, at the beginning of the year, they were all required to make either a diorama or an ethnic heritage doll.
Many of the kids in this class turned in no assignments whatever. They relied completely on extra credit, which was given for frivolous things. For instance, my daughter brought in a cartoon that related to a topic under discussion, and that she thought the teacher and class would enjoy. It never occurred to her that she would earn extra credit for this, but she did.
In the spring, when the class was reading Watership Down, one of their assignments was to collect up all their previous assignments on this unit, put them in a notebook of some sort, and do four illustrations about the book – three for the inside of the notebook and one for the cover. My daughter is a fairly talented artist. However, she considered this assignment beneath her and not worthy of an honors class. She was also battling mono and struggling just to have enough energy to get through the day. She did not want to do the assignment and asked me about it.
I told her that if she decided not to do the assignment for philosophical reasons, I supported her. But, I gave her two caveats.
· A protest that occurs only privately is no protest at all. If she decided to take this position, rather than turn in nothing, she should turn in a letter explaining why she was not doing the assignment.
· If she chose that route, she should be willing to take a zero for the assignment, as protests have their costs.
My daughter looked at her online grades and decided that her 120+% average could take a zero hit. Then she wrote the letter. It was very harshly worded, taking to task not only the lax standards of the teacher and the lameness of the assignment, but also the poor quality of work and lousy work ethic of her fellow students. Rather than turning in just the letter, she turned it in with the notebook of work, minus the illustrations. She did receive a zero for the assignment, though I am sure that the notebook alone would have been given at least half credit.
There was never a private conversation concerning the letter, though my daughter had invited it. The next day, the teacher spoke to the entire class to explain that the reason that she asked them to draw illustrations was so that they could picture the characters in their minds. She did not seem to be concerned about the allegorical nature of the book, as that critical aspect never arose during class discussion. My daughter’s opinion was that most of the class was unaware of the deeper literary meanings in the book.
So much for ‘honors’ English.
by Mère Fâchée
In the early 2000’s, I made the mistake of allowing one of my daughters to enroll in high school in a large district in south King County, after homeschooling her since 5th grade. After a semester in regular English, her teacher recommended that she be transferred to the honors level class. We were both shocked at the appallingly low academic standards in this class.
The previous teacher had attempted to help my daughter improve her writing skills, holding her to much higher standards than the class as a whole. The ‘honors’ teacher seemed to think the kids were all still in elementary school. My daughter’s classmates told her that, at the beginning of the year, they were all required to make either a diorama or an ethnic heritage doll.
Many of the kids in this class turned in no assignments whatever. They relied completely on extra credit, which was given for frivolous things. For instance, my daughter brought in a cartoon that related to a topic under discussion, and that she thought the teacher and class would enjoy. It never occurred to her that she would earn extra credit for this, but she did.
In the spring, when the class was reading Watership Down, one of their assignments was to collect up all their previous assignments on this unit, put them in a notebook of some sort, and do four illustrations about the book – three for the inside of the notebook and one for the cover. My daughter is a fairly talented artist. However, she considered this assignment beneath her and not worthy of an honors class. She was also battling mono and struggling just to have enough energy to get through the day. She did not want to do the assignment and asked me about it.
I told her that if she decided not to do the assignment for philosophical reasons, I supported her. But, I gave her two caveats.
· A protest that occurs only privately is no protest at all. If she decided to take this position, rather than turn in nothing, she should turn in a letter explaining why she was not doing the assignment.
· If she chose that route, she should be willing to take a zero for the assignment, as protests have their costs.
My daughter looked at her online grades and decided that her 120+% average could take a zero hit. Then she wrote the letter. It was very harshly worded, taking to task not only the lax standards of the teacher and the lameness of the assignment, but also the poor quality of work and lousy work ethic of her fellow students. Rather than turning in just the letter, she turned it in with the notebook of work, minus the illustrations. She did receive a zero for the assignment, though I am sure that the notebook alone would have been given at least half credit.
There was never a private conversation concerning the letter, though my daughter had invited it. The next day, the teacher spoke to the entire class to explain that the reason that she asked them to draw illustrations was so that they could picture the characters in their minds. She did not seem to be concerned about the allegorical nature of the book, as that critical aspect never arose during class discussion. My daughter’s opinion was that most of the class was unaware of the deeper literary meanings in the book.
So much for ‘honors’ English.
Despite the rhetoric, what is Collaborative Learning, really?
Group Work: Math by Consensus
Ann Gryparent
The brochures on education reform claim that children need to learn to work in groups to prepare them for the world of work. I maintain that the type of group work done in the schools will totally undermine the workplace. For one thing, we all know that only a few students actually do the work, and the others just go along for the ride, or even slow down any progress. Furthermore, a consensus must be achieved, so it basically teaches children to go along with their peers, not to strive for the truth.
One of our children qualified for the Accelerated Math class in the early 1990s. This was when “collaborative learning” (group work for group grades) and “inquiry-based” math (no guidance) were just entering our school district. The Accelerated Class was piloting these changes.
One day after school, our daughter said they had been given a problem to solve in their math groups, but they could only submit one answer per group. Each person in her group came up with a different answer, so they VOTED on the correct math answer. The group ended up choosing and submitting the answer of a popular boy, but unfortunately, it was the wrong answer. Our daughter had come up with the correct answer, but it wasn’t submitted, and the teacher never knew.
I consoled her, but she smiled and said that it was all right. Even though the answer was wrong, the teacher had praised them for working well in their group.
I was appalled. Imagine if NASA or Microsoft did their calculations by negotiating to a consensus.
Is the goal of math class to learn math or to condition students to go along with the group? Sadly, we know the answer.
Ann Gryparent
The brochures on education reform claim that children need to learn to work in groups to prepare them for the world of work. I maintain that the type of group work done in the schools will totally undermine the workplace. For one thing, we all know that only a few students actually do the work, and the others just go along for the ride, or even slow down any progress. Furthermore, a consensus must be achieved, so it basically teaches children to go along with their peers, not to strive for the truth.
One of our children qualified for the Accelerated Math class in the early 1990s. This was when “collaborative learning” (group work for group grades) and “inquiry-based” math (no guidance) were just entering our school district. The Accelerated Class was piloting these changes.
One day after school, our daughter said they had been given a problem to solve in their math groups, but they could only submit one answer per group. Each person in her group came up with a different answer, so they VOTED on the correct math answer. The group ended up choosing and submitting the answer of a popular boy, but unfortunately, it was the wrong answer. Our daughter had come up with the correct answer, but it wasn’t submitted, and the teacher never knew.
I consoled her, but she smiled and said that it was all right. Even though the answer was wrong, the teacher had praised them for working well in their group.
I was appalled. Imagine if NASA or Microsoft did their calculations by negotiating to a consensus.
Is the goal of math class to learn math or to condition students to go along with the group? Sadly, we know the answer.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Inquiry-Based Science?? My query...,"Why aren't they teaching science?"
Inquiry-Based Science Education: The Death Knell of Science and Technology
by Mère Fâchée
Given the move in the 2009 session to approve the new inquiry-based science standards, this story is timely, especially since one of the chemistry teachers at this school was on the committee that developed the standards.
In the early 2000’s, I made the mistake of allowing one of my daughters to enroll in high school in a large district in south King County, after homeschooling her since 5th grade. One spring day, she came home from school upset and told me she just could not take her chemistry class anymore the way things were and asked me to go in and talk to the teacher about it. She had a litany of complaints:
· There was no assigned chemistry text. There was a stack of old texts in the classroom, but they were not used. This meant that there was no assignment to read pages such and such about topic X. Students were allowed to check the books out, but there was no incentive to do that. They would not have known how to find whatever concept they were having trouble with anyway.
· The teacher spent much of the class period working on his computer. If any questions were directed his way, he either ignored them or told the students to refer to their handouts. He rarely answered questions.
· There were some lectures explaining concepts, but this particular teacher was so bad that they were largely incomprehensible.
· “Learning” was to occur as the students performed experiments using (poor quality) copies of teacher-created handouts. The handouts were like recipes – no concepts, no theories, no formulas.
· My daughter was sick and tired of doing her teacher’s job. She felt she was the only student in the class who ever understood anything. The other students came to her with questions. If she didn’t get it, she would come home and ask me. The next day, she would go back and explain it to them. (Apparently, the other students did not have a chemical engineer as a resource at home like she did.)
I have a lot of experience dealing with education reform ideologues, and I did not hold out much hope that speaking with the teacher would be effective, but I made an appointment anyway. The appointment was for before school, so we only had 20 – 30 minutes to deal with the subject before students began showing up. It wasn’t enough.
I spent a while explaining to the teacher how disappointed I was in the curriculum and detailed several of my daughter’s complaints. (I didn’t mention her assessment of his teaching competence.) His best answer was that this was the curriculum that the school had chosen and he did not have the power to change that, as he was not the department head. I doubt he would have made the change if he had had the power anyway, but this was his way of deflecting my complaint.
Not one to be deterred by the parry technique, I asked who the department head was, so that I could take the issue to someone who had the power to actually do something about it. He indicated that the department head was in the very next room, and would I like to speak with him right now? Given the time constraints and that fact that I would then be outnumbered, I should have said I would schedule an appointment with the department head later, but I answered with a yes. They spent the next several minutes double-teaming me.
The idea behind the curriculum was that the students would “create knowledge” through the experiments, discovering the theories and concepts for themselves. What knowledge they “created” for themselves they would “own”. No longer would they memorize facts from a book to regurgitate for a test, only to immediately forget what they had learned. Less material could be covered this way, but it would be “deep knowledge”. They would truly understand it. The department head waxed eloquent on how wonderful this was. He even told me about students who came back from college and told him that this was how things were being done in college (which I strongly doubt) and how much they appreciated his methods.
I know what type of students come back to visit their teachers after they have been away to college. I was one of them. They are the ones who might actually learn with this method because there is no way to stop them from learning, no matter what method you use – the smart and motivated ones who have an affinity for the subject. I get awfully tired of the schools using my children as lab rats for some clueless Ph.D. candidate’s education thesis. Here’s another high-fallutin’ experiment foisted on children – just like the first attempt at New Math that introduced base arithmetic to 5th graders in the sixties!
Learning is only a 100% discovery process if you are a caveman. There is a process to learning about science that has been effective for centuries. First, the student is exposed to information discovered by others through reading and listening to lectures (class time and homework). Next, the concept is explored and knowledge deepened through practical experimentation (lab class). Next the student applies the concepts to real life examples (problem sets). Through all of this, the student is encouraged to ask questions that the teacher answers. Steps are repeated as needed until the student is able to show mastery of the material through testing.
The problem with inquiry-based learning is that it’s like throwing a non-swimmer into the ocean and expecting necessity to teach him how to swim. All but the most talented and resourceful students drown. Some of the drowning students try to grasp onto whatever they can to stay afloat, and in the process drag the swimmers down with them. The other drowning students just give up and go under. But (and here’s where the analogy breaks down), those who have given up can’t just leave the room; because they have to stay, they goof off and become a disruption. The result is a chaotic classroom with little to no learning going on.
Inquiry-based science education is particularly bad. It took intellects of the like of Newton, Pascal, Arrhenius, Charles, Boyle, Rutherford, Heizenberg, Gibbs, Le Chatelier, and more to develop some of the theories and concepts in chemistry alone. Each of these men was a giant, and each stood on the shoulders of other giants to develop his own theories. It took centuries for Man just to come up with the concept of zero. And we are expecting high school students to come up with these theories on their own, with a little directed experimentation?! How crazy is that?
I explained this to the two chemistry teachers to no avail. Mr. Department Head was extremely condescending. “Maybe your daughter is one of those students who needs to be spoon-fed everything.” My daughter, who turned out to be one of the few students from that school to graduate with a 4.0. My daughter, who spent her class time teaching the other students what only she understood. He could tell I was offended and wasn’t buying it. “What grade is your daughter getting? ‘A’? Is she going into a science-related field? No? Well, the best I can tell you is to tell her to get through the class, bag her ‘A’, and not worry about it.” That is a fine attitude about learning, isn’t it?
At this point, students were starting to show up and trying to get into the locked classroom. As I am a bottom-line kind of person, I tried to summarize what I had gotten out of our meeting, trying to make sure we understood one another. I said, “So, what you are telling me is that this is the curriculum you have chosen, and you don’t plan to change that. So we are just going to have to deal with it.” I suppose my angered state came through in my tone, but his response shocked me anyway. “Well, yes, if you want to be confrontational about it.”
I denied being confrontational and asked what my next step might be. He suggested that I schedule an appointment to speak with the principal about this, since she was both his boss, and the chair of the district level science committee that had chosen the curriculum. He thought that she might make me feel better about the decision. I had a mental image of me spending an hour listening to newspeak from Big Sister, while she tried to massage my ego and get me on their side. The thought of another hour wasted in frustration with a consummate educrat facilitator caused me to decline the invitation. I told them I would just teach my daughter what she needed to know at home.
I went home and told my daughter the result. I then told her that I would hold tutoring sessions after school for any of her friends that wanted to come. The next day, she brought home two boys who wanted to learn – boys she had thought of as goof-offs. I spent a half-hour teaching them about heat transfer and specific heat capacity. I explained concepts, showed them formulas, and went through calculations with them. When I was finished, one boy told me I had taught him more in half an hour than he had learned all year in class.
The next day, the “goof-offs” became model students – on task, understanding the experiment they were doing, and even helping other students. She said the change in them was remarkable. “They weren’t goof-offs,” she told me, “They were just lost and didn’t know what they were doing.” They even confronted the teacher and asked him why he hadn’t showed them the formula. His response was anger that I had showed them.
Inquiry-based science? It will be the death of our technological society.
by Mère Fâchée
Given the move in the 2009 session to approve the new inquiry-based science standards, this story is timely, especially since one of the chemistry teachers at this school was on the committee that developed the standards.
In the early 2000’s, I made the mistake of allowing one of my daughters to enroll in high school in a large district in south King County, after homeschooling her since 5th grade. One spring day, she came home from school upset and told me she just could not take her chemistry class anymore the way things were and asked me to go in and talk to the teacher about it. She had a litany of complaints:
· There was no assigned chemistry text. There was a stack of old texts in the classroom, but they were not used. This meant that there was no assignment to read pages such and such about topic X. Students were allowed to check the books out, but there was no incentive to do that. They would not have known how to find whatever concept they were having trouble with anyway.
· The teacher spent much of the class period working on his computer. If any questions were directed his way, he either ignored them or told the students to refer to their handouts. He rarely answered questions.
· There were some lectures explaining concepts, but this particular teacher was so bad that they were largely incomprehensible.
· “Learning” was to occur as the students performed experiments using (poor quality) copies of teacher-created handouts. The handouts were like recipes – no concepts, no theories, no formulas.
· My daughter was sick and tired of doing her teacher’s job. She felt she was the only student in the class who ever understood anything. The other students came to her with questions. If she didn’t get it, she would come home and ask me. The next day, she would go back and explain it to them. (Apparently, the other students did not have a chemical engineer as a resource at home like she did.)
I have a lot of experience dealing with education reform ideologues, and I did not hold out much hope that speaking with the teacher would be effective, but I made an appointment anyway. The appointment was for before school, so we only had 20 – 30 minutes to deal with the subject before students began showing up. It wasn’t enough.
I spent a while explaining to the teacher how disappointed I was in the curriculum and detailed several of my daughter’s complaints. (I didn’t mention her assessment of his teaching competence.) His best answer was that this was the curriculum that the school had chosen and he did not have the power to change that, as he was not the department head. I doubt he would have made the change if he had had the power anyway, but this was his way of deflecting my complaint.
Not one to be deterred by the parry technique, I asked who the department head was, so that I could take the issue to someone who had the power to actually do something about it. He indicated that the department head was in the very next room, and would I like to speak with him right now? Given the time constraints and that fact that I would then be outnumbered, I should have said I would schedule an appointment with the department head later, but I answered with a yes. They spent the next several minutes double-teaming me.
The idea behind the curriculum was that the students would “create knowledge” through the experiments, discovering the theories and concepts for themselves. What knowledge they “created” for themselves they would “own”. No longer would they memorize facts from a book to regurgitate for a test, only to immediately forget what they had learned. Less material could be covered this way, but it would be “deep knowledge”. They would truly understand it. The department head waxed eloquent on how wonderful this was. He even told me about students who came back from college and told him that this was how things were being done in college (which I strongly doubt) and how much they appreciated his methods.
I know what type of students come back to visit their teachers after they have been away to college. I was one of them. They are the ones who might actually learn with this method because there is no way to stop them from learning, no matter what method you use – the smart and motivated ones who have an affinity for the subject. I get awfully tired of the schools using my children as lab rats for some clueless Ph.D. candidate’s education thesis. Here’s another high-fallutin’ experiment foisted on children – just like the first attempt at New Math that introduced base arithmetic to 5th graders in the sixties!
Learning is only a 100% discovery process if you are a caveman. There is a process to learning about science that has been effective for centuries. First, the student is exposed to information discovered by others through reading and listening to lectures (class time and homework). Next, the concept is explored and knowledge deepened through practical experimentation (lab class). Next the student applies the concepts to real life examples (problem sets). Through all of this, the student is encouraged to ask questions that the teacher answers. Steps are repeated as needed until the student is able to show mastery of the material through testing.
The problem with inquiry-based learning is that it’s like throwing a non-swimmer into the ocean and expecting necessity to teach him how to swim. All but the most talented and resourceful students drown. Some of the drowning students try to grasp onto whatever they can to stay afloat, and in the process drag the swimmers down with them. The other drowning students just give up and go under. But (and here’s where the analogy breaks down), those who have given up can’t just leave the room; because they have to stay, they goof off and become a disruption. The result is a chaotic classroom with little to no learning going on.
Inquiry-based science education is particularly bad. It took intellects of the like of Newton, Pascal, Arrhenius, Charles, Boyle, Rutherford, Heizenberg, Gibbs, Le Chatelier, and more to develop some of the theories and concepts in chemistry alone. Each of these men was a giant, and each stood on the shoulders of other giants to develop his own theories. It took centuries for Man just to come up with the concept of zero. And we are expecting high school students to come up with these theories on their own, with a little directed experimentation?! How crazy is that?
I explained this to the two chemistry teachers to no avail. Mr. Department Head was extremely condescending. “Maybe your daughter is one of those students who needs to be spoon-fed everything.” My daughter, who turned out to be one of the few students from that school to graduate with a 4.0. My daughter, who spent her class time teaching the other students what only she understood. He could tell I was offended and wasn’t buying it. “What grade is your daughter getting? ‘A’? Is she going into a science-related field? No? Well, the best I can tell you is to tell her to get through the class, bag her ‘A’, and not worry about it.” That is a fine attitude about learning, isn’t it?
At this point, students were starting to show up and trying to get into the locked classroom. As I am a bottom-line kind of person, I tried to summarize what I had gotten out of our meeting, trying to make sure we understood one another. I said, “So, what you are telling me is that this is the curriculum you have chosen, and you don’t plan to change that. So we are just going to have to deal with it.” I suppose my angered state came through in my tone, but his response shocked me anyway. “Well, yes, if you want to be confrontational about it.”
I denied being confrontational and asked what my next step might be. He suggested that I schedule an appointment to speak with the principal about this, since she was both his boss, and the chair of the district level science committee that had chosen the curriculum. He thought that she might make me feel better about the decision. I had a mental image of me spending an hour listening to newspeak from Big Sister, while she tried to massage my ego and get me on their side. The thought of another hour wasted in frustration with a consummate educrat facilitator caused me to decline the invitation. I told them I would just teach my daughter what she needed to know at home.
I went home and told my daughter the result. I then told her that I would hold tutoring sessions after school for any of her friends that wanted to come. The next day, she brought home two boys who wanted to learn – boys she had thought of as goof-offs. I spent a half-hour teaching them about heat transfer and specific heat capacity. I explained concepts, showed them formulas, and went through calculations with them. When I was finished, one boy told me I had taught him more in half an hour than he had learned all year in class.
The next day, the “goof-offs” became model students – on task, understanding the experiment they were doing, and even helping other students. She said the change in them was remarkable. “They weren’t goof-offs,” she told me, “They were just lost and didn’t know what they were doing.” They even confronted the teacher and asked him why he hadn’t showed them the formula. His response was anger that I had showed them.
Inquiry-based science? It will be the death of our technological society.
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