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‘Education Reform’ Category

  1. checklists — why don’t teachers use them?

    December 11, 2015 by Tunya

    Checklists — Why Don’t Teachers Use Them?

    Atul Gawande, in his book — The Checklist Manifesto — mentions several professions that use checklists as both proven standard practice and to avoid ineptitude (and its repercussions). He mentions doctors, lawyers, professors and engineers. Of course we’re familiar with aviation using checklists which Gawande references.

    Why don’t teachers use checklists? Especially teachers of Reading? Most people and certainly most parents see Reading as a very important subject for literacy, for knowledge, for problem solving and for a host of other pedagogical reasons. BUT, the KEY reason why Reading is important is that this skill, gained and fluent, allows the student to get on the very ramp of disciplined learning itself.

    Instead, resisting (defying?) proven practices, teachers cling to fallacious beliefs. Note, this term is no redundancy — beliefs can be truths or myths, but it’s when they are false that “fallacious beliefs” can do damage.

    In Preventing Reading Failure, Patrick Groff lists 12 fallacious beliefs that interfere with effective teaching of reading: “It seems incredible that the education establishment could have persisted in the folly of inappropriate reading methodology over so many years and with so many millions of failures. Had we not known how to teach children to read easily and well, this persistence in ineffective methods would have been understandable. However, we have had highly successful methods, programs, and techniques for many, many years . . . [with] conclusive research evidence of their efficacy” says Prof. Barbara Bateman, 1987.

    (I can find and list the 12 fallacious beliefs in a subsequent post if they are not readily available to our readers.)

    What I am pointing out is that there is some deliberate, entrenched stubbornness at play — innocent or malicious — it’s hard to say. It’s harmful, damaging, crippling. When will there be a multi-million dollar damages court award to shake up the teaching “profession”?

    Even Daniel Willingham who is, in my view, trying so hard to be diplomatic regarding the virulent Reading Wars, says that in any list of 16 reading activities (Mind: He does not say checklist.) 20 or 25% of the time should be devoted to phonics, “ . . . when kids are practicing phonics, that practice should be focused.” (pg 82, Raising Kids Who Read, 2015).

    If there isn’t a Teaching Students To Read in Primary Years Checklist, why doesn’t someone produce it?

    [published in Australian blog, Filling the Pail, https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/there-are-many-ways-to-mess-things-up/comment-page-1/#comment-1479 ]

    Category Book Reviews, Education Reform, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Can the courts stop education malpractice?

    December 7, 2015 by Tunya

    Can We Stop Further Dumbing Down Through The Courts?

    Do we really have to go to court — expensive — to get the law to stop education systems from using bad methods (malpractice)?

    I know of only one case where education methods and content were taken to court and the customer won ! (Please let us know if there are other cases where the courts allowed such cases to even be considered.)

    This is the case and it’s fully described in these two blog posts of mine:

    √ Maybe going to court is the only way. In England when Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was challenged by some parents no-one listened until a court case ruled otherwise. There is a UK law, Sec 406 of the School Act, which forbids the promotion of partisan political views in teaching.
    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 the Section and guilty of political indoctrination
    – Nine inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of students when the film is shown.
    http://www.parentsteachingparents.net/2014/02/maybe-going-to-court-is-the-only-way/

    √ Anti-indoctrination guidelines for schools. When Gore’s film was shown in 2008 in class without any balance a father took the issue to court. He won, was awarded 2/3 costs against the Government and changed history in that any future showings of the film in UK government schools must follow court ordered guidelines. The nine inaccuracies are described in this post:
    http://www.parentsteachingparents.net/2013/12/anti-indoctrination-laws-for-schools/

    As far as extra money and higher priority for adult education in Ontario, as part of their Achieving Excellence (21st Century Learning) thrust, there is probably some foundation for illegalities to be proven.

    For example there is the question of balance. In an Ontario report (Beyond the Book: Learning From Our History), I read that three approaches are being used — “Some programs used the whole language approach, some the Laubach system, and others the “consçientization” approach of the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire.” (p17) If teaching literacy is to be part of a successful adult education program I’m wondering why the successful phonics approach to teaching English is not being used. Or is there an adult ed embargo on phonics as there is (unfortunately) to a great extent in K-12? Phonics is a practical program that does not insist on worldview methodologies regarding social justice, oppression, emancipation, etc. as the other approaches do. There is a decided element of “radicalization” in those three methods.

    If “constructivism” is part of “philosophy” and practice being used in adult education then this is another angle that can be examined for wrongdoings, malpractice and worldview imposition. I am currently reading with great interest how the Science Wars and the current Math Wars have been affected by the intrusion of constructivism into the teaching of these subjects. About the Reading Wars, this is what the author has to say: “’Whole-language’ literacy teaching was enormously expensive and very ineffective, and consequently inflicted lifelong damage on many students . . . “ This was in New Zealand. This is a 95 pg report by Michael R Matthews on his experience in editing the academic journal “Science & Education — fascinating reading — Reflection on 25 Years of Journal Editorship, 2015 — http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-015-9764-8/fulltext.html

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

  3. 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

  4. 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]

    Category Absurdities, Book Reviews, Education Reform, 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]

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

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