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‘Absurdities’ Category

  1. Parents Need Outlets for their outrage

    September 5, 2016 by Tunya

    FACILITATING THE PARENT VOICE IN EDUCATION DECISION-MAKING May 17, 2012

    Ever since the teacher unions gained legal voice through collective bargaining parents have been shunted to the side. The PTA was no longer useful. Education decisions increasingly were made by and between bureaucrats and the unions.

    Parents as a class never had much voice and as individuals it was the most ardent and persistent individual families who got anywhere with the public schools.

    Compulsory schooling and monopoly public schools effectively usurped parents from the role Nature endows them with — the duty and instincts to safely bring up their children.

    It is in times of crisis that parents feel most alarmed and anxious that their children’s’ well-being is being threatened. This current teacher strike — nearly nine months already — illustrates just how robbed of voice parents have become.

    So, in this age of communication, parents, as the ultimate educators of their children, find themselves gagged.

    Thus we can see how this website, Where Is My Kids Report Card? has proved so profoundly effective.

    1. Without the complaints about missing, blank, scanty Report Cards here on this site it is unlikely we would have seen the LRB and BCPSEA and the Ministry in concert to restore some legal sanity to this matter.

    2. Without this site frequently using the word “pawns” it is unlikely that so many people would now be using that term as a regular term for those hostage kids caught in the middle. See: “Most vulnerable are hurt the most by BCTF strike”, May 09, by a retired superintendent: http://blogs.theprovince.com/…/geoff-johnson-most…/

    This quote is precious:

    “Using those kids as pawns in a political dispute is so wrong it defies description.”

    3. This site and others (Janet’s Report Card, Parents Saying NO, etc.) are providing a most welcome voice to muzzled and browbeaten parents, suffering far too long at the command of “the establishment”. Productive and positive results have already been seen. Long may these sites thrive !

    [comment on Facebook site Where is my Kid’s Report Card?]

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

  2. Matthews Reflections – a “must” read

    July 25, 2016 by Tunya

    Absolutely MUST Reading
    Here is a teacher who LOVES civilization, the Enlightenment, children, teaching Science, the Scientific Method, the concept of continuity of life — Here he was at the frontlines of the art and science of teaching Science to the young — Here is what he saw for 25 years of his life as he edited a Journal devoted to these teachers who teach Science — Here he saw the tentative, then ever more assertive, incursions by Constructivists who had learned from the Reading and Math Wars how to flummox * the Science; how to embed; how to seed self-doubt; how to turn truth–seekers into relativists, etc., etc.

    √ #1 Please see the post on July 18 about Constructivism and the two comments today, one from a concerned teacher and my comment (a concerned grandmother) on our fears. Link to Michael Matthews FREE article.

    If you study the History of Education and how the theme of creating “The New Man” pervades so much of the literature — well you haven’t seen anything yet! There is so much that is being hatched right now, via school changes — employing the latest through cognitive and neural science; through data mining using school devices; through cultural norming; applying artificial intelligence; and through a host of sophisticated media techniques — that the sooner we clue in the better. Post-human is not just Science Fiction any longer!

    √ #2 Again, read #1 above and/or read Sections 10, 11, 12 of this FREE article by this professor who fervently wishes for the “demise of constructivism”, and in personal correspondence says: “everyone recognizes that constructivist-taught children can’t read, can’t add up, can’t understand or do science … but no one wants to take responsibility” (note: permission granted to use his comments)
    — https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276458457_Reflections_on_25_Years_of_Journal_Editorship
    _______________
    * Flummox — confuse, perplex, stun, stump, baffle, bewilder, flabbergast, confound, mystify, bamboozle, deceive . . . . . . . .

    http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/blog/read/alberta-educators-have-had-their-hands-in-the-cookie-pot-but-want-to-hide-t

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  3. Constructivism – Now Into Science Wars

    July 25, 2016 by Tunya

    YES, THE UNDEAD CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING VAMPIRE, EVEN WITH STAKE IN HEART, IS ALIVE AND WELL AND CONTINUES ITS HARMFUL WAYS

    Ever hear about the casualty lists that continued, even after a formal truce was signed? Sometimes it took months for the word to get to the front lines of the old wars. Of course, they did not have the technology we have today to get the word out to the front lines — instantly !

    Here is one declaration about Constructivism’s rejection by a leading promoter that’s already 10 years old! How many Constructivist casualties in that time period?

    “I have abandoned the constructivist paradigm as a useful theory for articulating and explaining knowledgeability and changes in observable behaviors. …[this] because it turned out to be plagued with considerable contradictions.” (Roth, W.-M. 2006) Learning science: A singular plural perspective, p. 326)
    A dozen years earlier this same author had been saying: “Constructivist teachers view themselves as gardeners, tour guides, learning councillors or facilitators rather than as dispensers of information or judges of right and wrong answers.”

    The aim of constructivist science teaching was to turn students into constructivists. Again, the same author’s quote is instructive: “Thus, science educators seek to help teachers in changing from worldviews that are commensurable with objectivism to ones that are commensurable with constructivism.”
    On another thread I had posted information regarding material to read about how Constructivism had migrated from Reading Wars to Math Wars to, now, Science Wars.

    Constructivism As It Affects Science Teaching

    I read this article while it was still available FREE in January according to publishing rules, but then it became costly. I had recommended it to many people. It is now again FREE due to the author’s intervention.

    I recommend it highly. Reflections on 25 Years of Journal Editorship https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276458457_Reflections_on_25_Years_of_Journal_Editorship

    Michael R Matthews chronicles his editing of a Journal devoted to teachers who teach SCIENCE in Schools. It is the Sections 10, 11, 12 that deal specifically with how CONSTRUCTIVISM made inroads into the teaching. At one point it became so dominant that a speaker proclaimed: “We are all Constructivists now!”
    __________________________________

    Are we concerned? I am very concerned, on many counts, but fearfully because discussion about methods and philosophies such as constructivism are being suppressed and not provided forums for wider airing. I am concerned because “Shifting of Minds” and changing “worldviews” ARE topics in the inner circles of the education establishments but are not open to the public.

    [ to SQE 20160725 11:35 http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/blog/read/time-to-put-a-stake-through-the-heart-of-the-undead-constructivist-learning ]

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  4. Education & Accountability at all levels!

    June 29, 2016 by Tunya

    Tunya Audain says:
    June 29, 2016 at 11:23 pm
    Well, What Are The Avenues to Correct Journalist Errors?

    Jay Greene’s report of the “hatchet job” by the New York Times on Detroit charter schools clearly asserts that it’s “journalistic malpractice”.

    Now it’s Matthew Ladner and George Mitchell who elaborate on the misrepresentation and errors.

    Are there not any steps to challenge this front-page story, which casts such a dark and untruthful picture on Detroit charter schools? Any codes that govern journalistic ethics? Any NYT Editorial Board to review complaints?

    Since this author (Kate Zernike) aims to be educational on this subject, and the subject itself is about education, I would propose that even the Biblical enjoinder against misteaching could be invoked: “Taming the Tongue — Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers and sisters, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. James 3:1”

    I am reminded of the UK story where a father took the teaching of Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth”, to court and received a favorable ruling.

    The Judge (2007) did not forbid the showing of the film, but provided legal guidelines for continued showings:
    – It is understood the film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument
    – If teachers do not make this clear they are in breach of Section 406 of the School Act and guilty of political indoctrination
    – Nine inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of students when the film is shown.
    See “Anti-indoctrination guidelines for schools” http://www.parentsteachingparents.net/2013/12/anti-indoctrination-laws-for-schools/

     

    Published in Jay P Greene's blog, https://jaypgreene.com/2016/06/29/nyt-piece-on-detroit-charter-school-missed/#comments

    Category Absurdities, Opinions in media, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  5. Discovery continues its masquerades

    May 11, 2016 by Tunya

    The Mantra Persists — Discovery In It’s Many Masquerades !

    “ . . . children in rows bad, teachers who talk bad, today’s kids will have 17 jobs in 5 industries, content and knowledge bad, schools kill creativity, project-based learning is the future, kids need 21st C competencies and be ‘engaged’ — or so the mantra goes. We have it here in Canada as well, right now!


    This reminds me of the 1980 quote from the Aquarian Conspiracy: “Discoveries about the nature of the mind, unfortunately, have been like the slow-spreading news of armistice. Many die needlessly on the battlefield, long after the war is over.”

    Just how many of our children are the casualties of today’s continuing education wars. A dozen years ago Richard E Mayer said, “The debate about discovery has been replayed many times.” After discovery came experiential learning, then problem-based learning, then inquiry learning, then constructivist instruction. Other terms also populate this thrust — and they should be collected and brought forward for the needed work ahead. 


    Mayer, in his paper “Should There Be a Three-Strikes Rule Against Pure Discovery Learning? The Case for Guided Methods of Instruction” says:
    “An important role for psychologists is to show how educational practice can be guided by evidence and research-based theory rather than ever-shifting philosophical ideology.”

    The division, the disagreement, the actual “war” lies in a quarrel between practical people who want the education job done and political people who see schools as training for changing the world (or something like that, you know, “social justice”, etc.).

    To differ slightly with Mayer, I, as a grandparent, don’t think psychologists alone can tackle this job. Many parents are getting impatient, and so too are a lot of teachers. Thankfully, cognitive psychologists ARE leading the way in delineating effective methods in pedagogy. But the matter has come to the point of knowing that withholding critical information is doing untold harm in this world. No medical breakthrough would ever be left dormant as long as this unrevealed education knowledge has been left to fester.

    I am a gardener and am constantly uprooting invasive weeds. That is the imagery that inspires me to want to help in this task of getting the proper pedagogy out there. I came across an incredible article that increases my fears even more, and that is a 25 year chronicle of the very revered “scientific method” itself being attacked by “constructivists” . Academics out there should be able to get this paper easily and I got it months ago when it was still free — 25 Years of Journal Editorship, Michael R Matthews.

    The comforting part in Matthews article is that he has found at least one constructivist cheerleader who has “abandoned the constructivist paradigm as a useful theory for articulating and explaining knowledgeability and changes in observable behaviors . . . because it turned out to be plagued with considerable contradictions.” Ominously, however, Matthews points out that there is now a journal devoted to cultural studies in science as a mutation of the constructivist direction.

    I am wondering if this embrace by Willingham of the social and cultural is aligned?

    [published in SQE and Filling the Pail, Disrupting The Culture https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/disrupting-the-culture/ ]

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