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‘Absurdities’ Category

  1. slinking away from accountability in Education

    December 2, 2015 by Tunya

     

    Accountability in Education — The Missing Link

    There is a big difference between SUBJECTIVE and OBJECTIVE ratings — be it rating of bridges or teachers or even pencils. Do they do the job they were produced to do?

    There is a big difference between feeling/looking nice and actually producing a demonstrable result.

    For teachers to be judged subjectively, “probably by their own peers”, as the New York story conveys, is not good enough. Teachers rated “effective” are not necessarily able to bring forth students who read or do math at grade level. http://www.activistpost.com/2015/12/the-fall-of-america-signals-the-rise-of-the-new-world-order.html?utm_source=Activist+Post+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=f034b7162c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_b0c7fb76bd-f034b7162c-369048093

    Not so in Australia — if their plan for producing effective teachers goes ahead.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-01/around-one-in-ten-teaching-students-fail-literacy-and-numeracy-/6988168

    The news from Australia is that teacher training is now under the glass. Numeracy and literacy proficiency is expected from newly trained teachers and they are to be screened and tested. The full plan is yet to be implemented, but a trial run with 5000 trainees shows that 10% of trainees did not pass. Upon full implementation, these candidates would not receive teaching certificates.

    What is dismaying is not only what’s going on in Canada or New York but from the very head of the venerable PISA measurements (Program for International Student Assessment). Andreas Schleicher, in a foreword to a recent OECD publication — Schooling Redesigned: Toward Innovative Learning Systems — says:

    “Some will call for a robust scientific evidence base . . . to distinguish what is truly innovative and effective from what is simply different . . .The report therefore avoids references to “proven” or “best” practices.” (Pg 3-5 http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/schooling-redesigned_9789264245914-en#page6 )

    Please read just these three pages (3-5) and see if you discern any commitment from the PISA chief to continuing to provide hard measures about education performance and accountability.

     

    [To SQE Dec 02, 2015]

    Category Absurdities, Obstacles, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Adult education and the teaching of reading

    November 30, 2015 by Tunya

    [ Submitted, but not published. ]

    Vancouver Sun
    Letters to the Editor
     

    November 30, 2015

    Dear Sir:

    Re: Refugee students will have a steep learning curve, 27 November 2015

    Obviously, as part of their induction into Canadian society, Syrian refugees will be offered English classes. As well as writing, speaking and listening in English, they will be learning to decode the alphabetic English language in order to read fluently. This is where we should pause to look at the methods of teaching reading in this province.

    From what I can gather there is really a mixed bag of approaches. The long Reading Wars issue still continues, though not in the high profile way when “Why Johnny Can’t Read” was published in 1955 and again in the 80s with “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read”.

    In my brief survey of methods and professional development programs for teachers I see that there is still a wide range of styles, even with empirical research demonstrating superior results from a phonics approach compared to the sight-word or whole-language methods.

    My concern is that new refugees should not be subjected to even more confusion in adapting by having language courses that are not the most effective.

    Though seemingly unrelated (I would say it’s not) I bring forward the recent findings of the Auditor General who characterizes the education of BC Aboriginal children as “racism of low expectations”. Her report shows that in 10 years the government’s promise to bring parity of educational outcomes did not happen for our Aboriginal students. I believe that if strong programs to systematically teach reading were in place for all children this would not be happening. Experts tell us that Aboriginals are overrepresented in prison populations and that over half are considered functionally illiterate.

    Given this glaring fact about BC’s failure to address the educational needs of First Nations students I’m concerned. I hope the teachers in the schools and adult classes helping Syrian refugees are well equipped to teach the alphabetic principles of the English language.

    Sincerely, Tunya Audain

    Category Absurdities, Education Reform, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Guilt-ridden Ed Inc — very defensive

    November 27, 2015 by Tunya

    The Degree Of Defensiveness In Education Is Telling

    More critics of our education systems in the English-speaking Western World — US, UK, NZ, Australia, Canada — have received pressures to stop exposing the harms being done. This defensiveness itself is growing which indicates that exposing truth is having an effect.

    In Canada our latest relevant headline says: “Aboriginal students face ‘racism of low expectations’ in BC schools.” (Nov 25, ’15)

    The very act of teaching, or should it be more accurate to say “misteaching”, is under scrutiny and those who protect shabby practice are also under the glass.

    Increasingly it is the teaching of reading and the unresolved issues of the 100 years Reading Wars that bedevil us still. The READING FIRST movements of the past need to be revived as never before. Our children and increasing populations of refugees need the tools of insight by which to lead capable lives in our democracies.

    There is definitely a viewpoint that is now crystallizing about the unacceptable gap between research and truth and the public’s knowledge about the ills and incongruities in our education systems.

    It’s significant that even in the successful KIPP charter school locales the parents will use private phonics tutoring services for their children in order to keep up.

    It is important to keep educating the public about what “teaching” should be and what it’s not. The recent article by Bruce Deitrick Price (Why Kids Can’t Read) in The American Thinker has generated 100s of comments worth reading and passing on. To paraphrase Shakespeare, we must be able to withstand the “slings and arrows” as we take up arms “against a sea of troubles”.

    Those threats of being sued for libel and “cease and desist” letters are indeed badges of honor in our current education wars.

    [pub ECC on Why Kids Can’t Read thread, 27 Nov, 2016]

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  4. why do teachers refuse to teach reading ?

    November 26, 2015 by Tunya

    WHY do Teachers REFUSE To Teach Reading

    Resistance To, And Sabotage Of, Teaching Reading — Sinister And Foreboding

    Today’s mail is deeply disturbing. First the article on Why Kids Can’t Read from Bruce Deitrick Price (200+comments), Then the news column by Deb on Black Lives DON’T Matter in Education.

    http://www.examiner.com/article/black-lives-don-t-matter-education

    Then Will’s comment: “Jeanne Chall’s book: The Academic Achievement Challenge is an almost heartbreaking but sober account of a century’s successful efforts by educators to prevent reading.” ***

    There is something very perverse if not pathological for people in the human service of education to deny assistance or willfully use teaching methods that seriously harm some of their subjects. ***

    Equally diabolical is some of the treatment received by those in the field who speak up against poor practice. Here is an anecdote by Marilyn Jager Adams in the above book mentioned by Will:

    “ . . . reviewing the research on phonics, Chall told me that if I wrote the truth, I would lose old friends and make new enemies. She warned me that I would never again be fully accepted by my academic colleagues . . . Sadly, however, as the evidence in favor of systematic, explicit phonics instruction for beginners increased, so too did the vehemence and nastiness of the backlash. The goal became one of discrediting not just the research, but the integrity and character of those who had conducted it. Chall was treated most shabbily . . . “

    Yes, it’s over a century — these complaints. We’ve used the media for our complaints but these absurd inconsistencies seem entrenched in the culture. Reading Deb’s piece, with the facts and figures all laid out, how can anyone not come to the conclusion that some grave disservice to a visible minority AND mankind is being deliberately perpetrated? ***

    How can the incoming refugees to our countries not be dismayed by these incongruities? BTW, I see a lot of the adult learning books that are to teach English to ESL students and adults heavily lean on whole-language principles and techniques. Is this how we integrate newcomers —by dumbing-down?

    Category Absurdities, Book Reviews, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  5. Gramsci/hirsch versus Dewey/Freire

    November 25, 2015 by Tunya

    Counterproductive Progressivism Takes Another Twist
    “It is odd that a country with a good track record, that has the answers to the problems that it wishes to solve in its own history, is so keen to strike out along a century-old, ideologically-driven dead-end. It’s a tragedy.” — Greg Ashman, 2015, on Finland’s decision to adopt ”phenomenon-based learning”, a derivative of the family of Dewey-eyed “learning by doing” speculative education experiments, aka as “project method”, “inquiry learning”, “discovery learning”, “constructivism”, “meaning-making”, “developmentally appropriate practice”, etc.


    “This book is dedicated to the teachers and principals of Core Knowledge Schools and to the memory of two prophets, William C Bagley and Antonio Gramsci, who explained in the 1930s why the New Educational Ideas would lead to greater social injustice.” — E D Hirsch, 1996, in his book “The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them” explains the standoff between the “two most distinguished educational theorists of the political Left—Gramsci and Freire”, contending that Gramsci’s suggestion to master the “tools of power and authority—read, write, and communicate”—would lead to greater social mobility and fairness.(p6,7)


    “School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.” ― Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, 1971
    “I am compelled to dissent from his [Dewey’s] substitution of ‘inquiry’ for ‘truth’ as the fundamental concept of logic and theory of knowledge . . . a further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness—the intoxication of power . . . this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time, and that any philosophy which, however unintentionally, contributes to it is increasing the danger of vast social disaster.” — Bertrand Russell, 1945, chapter on John Dewey, in “A History of Western Philosophy” (p820,828).


    I don’t know the ideological compass point for Ashman, but these three — Hirsch, Illich and Russell — are all lefties deploring the direction of progressive schooling and its failure to address the educational needs of the disadvantaged. Ashman joins them with his jeremiad (bitter lament or righteous prophecy of doom) about the new Finnish path in education.


    Thank you Greg for the alert. I am not a socialist, but if Finland wanted to sincerely help its citizens it would be better off following the Gramsci/Hirsch way instead of the Dewey/Freire way.
    Myself? Being a granny I would counsel parents to avoid the socialist public school systems altogether. Either go private, or home educate, or find a charter without all that socialist baggage.

     

    [pub on Filling the Pail on Finnish article by Greg Ashman]

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