RSS Feed

‘Obstacles’ Category

  1. Whole-Language Fall-out

    September 18, 2015 by Tunya

    Whole-Language Baggage Continues To Clutter Education Agendas 

    It’s true — I’m finding out as I research the whole-language movement — it was never just about teaching reading. Whole-language has religious, ideological overtones. It sets out to shape the holistic, humanistic child. It attracts discontented teachers.

    Reading — the physical act of reading — is a straightforward skill taught engaging the language hemisphere of the brain. English is a phonetic language. Decoding takes patience, but once learned (and taught), also becomes a transferable aptitude applicable to other challenges beyond reading.

    Whole-language approach is a huge package of social and emotional learning, emphasizing “guessing” of sight words, and encompasses school experiences far beyond primary years when basic reading should have been mastered and “reading to learn” replacing “learning to read”.

    It’s a long, unpleasant story — the Reading Wars. Started in 1898 by John Dewey who called phonics a “drill” and perversion he helped set in motion the collectivist/progressive movement in education, “learning by doing”, and we still reap the dubious and damaging “rewards” in 21st C Learning initiatives in our Western English-speaking world.

    The late Samuel Blumenfeld (The New Illiterates, Crimes of the Educators) quotes in his book on Homeschooling the words of Dr. Seuss on the matter:

    “That damned ‘Cat in the Hat’ . . . I did it for a textbook house and they sent me a word list. That was due to the Dewey revolt in the Twenties, in which they threw out phonic reading and went to word recognition . . . I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country . . . there were two hundred and twenty-three words to use in this book . . . I read the list three times and I almost went out of my head. I said, I’ll read it once more and if I can find two words that rhyme that’ll be the title of my book . . . I found ‘cat’ and ‘hat’ and I said, ‘The title will be ‘The Cat in the Hat.’”

    See more on this viewpoint – see comment : https://wearechange.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/dr-seuss-and-the-killing-of-phonics/

    Category Book Reviews, Obstacles, Parent Tribal Memory, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Flabby Families & Absence of choice

    September 9, 2015 by Tunya

    Choicelessness Leads To Flabby Families

    Certainly, the model of Education Savings Accounts as a way of ensuring education as a public good is overdue. Thankfully, both persuasion and budgetary realities are convincing legislators to release their tight controls over prescriptive education spending and to trust parents to make wise decisions using ESAs. The more jurisdictions (5 US states so far) that do this the better the chances of an educated public — people able to lead self-sufficient lives and participate in free democratic citizenship. Such is the yet-unproven promise of these new models. (We can be sure there are still considerable resistance and overt and covert opposition to ESAs. Good luck with the continuing effort!)

    Yes, the freeing up of the education dollar has had a long discussion over the decades. Coons and Sugarman did propose something along the lines of ESAs or vouchers way back in ’78. Now, I would like to bring forward more of Coons’ views as they relate to family policy as counter to persistent centralizing efforts.

    See this interview — School Choice as Family Policy: John E. Coons — http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2002/02/01/school-choice-family-policy-john-e-coons

    Some short excerpts:

    “ [Choice as family policy] . . . is one of the most important things we could possibly do as therapy for the institution of the family, for which we have no substitute. The relationship between the parent and child is very damaged if the parent loses all authority over the child for six hours a day, five days a week, and over the content that is put into the child's mind."

    "What must it be like for people who have raised their children until they're five years old, and suddenly, in this most important decision about their education, they have no say at all? They're stripped of their sovereignty over their child."

    “And what must it be like for the child who finds that his parents don't have any power to help him out if he doesn't like the school?”

    "It's a shame that there are no social science studies on the effect of choicelessness on the family. If you are stripped of power—kept out of the decision-making loop—you are likely to experience degeneration of your own capacity to be effective, because you have nothing to do. If you don't have any responsibilities, you get flabby. And what we have are flabby families at the bottom end of the income scale."

    We won’t expect any sympathy or studies on lack of choice from the new Think Tank, Learning Policy Institute (Linda Darling-Hammond, Pres and CEO), will we? Yet one more “non-partisan” central command effort to keep families at arms-length from their children’s education.

    Category Education Reform, Obstacles, Parent Tribal Memory, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Teacher “training” seriously challenged

    May 18, 2015 by Tunya

    TEACHER  TRAINING  MUST SHIFT  PRIORITIES

    I’m going to go out on a limb, and am open to corrections, but here are my views about a SOURCE of much of the education problems we discuss in Canada.

    1 The problem is with the Deans of Faculties of Education in Canada and their over-arching Manifesto — Accord On Initial Teacher Education http://www.csse-scee.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE32-4/CJE32-4-TeacherAccord.pdf

    2 All 50 Faculties of Education in Canada have signed this Accord.

    3 Developed in 2006, this is how the Accord is described in an abstract of an article by Alice Collins and Rob Tierney (then Dean of UBC Ed Faculty):

    The twelve principles advance values and ideals about the teacher as professional, life long learner and social activist; about the power of teaching and learning; about values of respect, inclusion, globalization and diversity; about collaboration with educational and public communities; and about strong content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge.

    4 Principle #3 states:

    An effective initial teacher education program encourages teachers to assume a social and political leadership role.

    5 All 50 faculties include in their mandated or suggested reading materials — Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire.

    6 All 50 faculties do NOT teach how to teach phonics — an essential teaching skill in the tool kit of primary teachers.

    7 One in four Canadians is functionally illiterate.

    8 Rob Tierney, after a stint in Australian academe is back at UBC in the Language Division of the faculty. He is decrying the high burnout rate of teachers — 30% leave within 5 years. He suggests social workers “to help build better relationships between the teachers and the community they serve.” http://news.ubc.ca/2015/04/22/why-are-so-many-new-teachers-burning-out/

    My Conclusion:

    a) Again — as is customary in a defensive education system — the blame on burn-out or anything else educational is placed on everything except the teaching “profession” itself and its trainers!

    b) There is far too much time spent on theory, philosophy and social activism instead of teaching the essential student learning skills of reading, arithmetic and writing that are the fundamental building blocks toward academic and aptitude development.

    c) There is much that is irrefutably known about good teaching (Hattie, Willingham, Lemov, etc.) that can be applied universally and today (as it is in many independent schools).

    d) What will drive meaningful education reform — presently in the grip of progressive, constructivist philosophy (which is not a science) — is NOT the system reforming itself (impossible) but for consumers, bolstered with choices and funding following the student, to become more informed and assertive of their sovereign rights.

    e) Seriously, urgently, review how 50 teacher training faculties in Canada contribute to or hinder our well-being. Add Myth #8 to Daisy Christodoulou’s Seven Myths About Education — Teacher training prepares teachers for teaching.

    The 7 myths are:

    1. Facts prevent understanding
    2. Teacher-led instruction is passive
    3. The 21st century fundamentally changes everything
    4. You can always just look it up
    5. We should teach transferable skills
    6. Projects and activities are the best way to learn
    7. Teaching knowledge is indoctrination

    Category Book Reviews, Obstacles, Parent Tribal Memory, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Schools as tools

    May 5, 2015 by Tunya

    Schools As Tools For Coerced Cultural Change

    In the binary scheme of things educational, there are TWO main visions of how schools should be run. One is the progressive view held by most in the organized government education establishment and includes those all the way from teacher training to teacher unions. The other view is the traditional view held by many parents who see the older ways as effective and respectful of the parental role in guidance and decision-making about schooling.

    The Ontario protest against the new sex curriculum by so many parents, to the extent of withdrawing their children from schools, is not a new issue in Canada about the parental role.

    In 2011 when Alison Redford became premier of Alberta it was claimed that she obtained her surge of votes when promises were made to the teacher union for 3 things — immediate restoration of $107 million to education funds, scrapping standardized tests for Gr 3 & 6, and repeal of the parental veto.

    Amazingly, the first two were quickly accomplished but parents across the province seriously protested the third item. The parent veto still stands.

    What is important to note is that the third is a cultural change item and has nothing to do with the issues of school funding and testing which do affect teachers. It is the ideology of the progressive establishment intruding into curriculum content that was challenged by parents.

    Similarly, it is the ideological agenda of the progressive establishment which is currently being challenged by these parent protests in Ontario.

    Thankfully, the parents are standing up for the integrity of their children’s minds and development and for their own role in overseeing values questions.

    Of all the professions we have in society it is the teaching profession over which parents should be most vigilant. To twist the mind is to twist the child and the adult in the long term.

    It’s in the Bible and I have seen teachers on the Internet acknowledge at rare times their respect for the injunction: Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (James 3:1, NIV Study Bible)

    Here’s another interesting quote for parents to be aware of and it’s from Israel. Much as the nation desires a national curriculum it does allow home education for this exception: “The Ministry of Education will grant a child exemption from mandatory schooling and permit home school if the parents have a core value system that differs from the local school.”

    Thankfully we are seeing awakened parents becoming aware and assertive about cultural changes being engineered without their consent.

    Category Obstacles, Parent Tribal Memory, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  5. usurpers’ remorse

    April 24, 2015 by Tunya

    USURPERS’ REMORSE


    A very quick history of public education and exclusion of parents from school matters. William Cutler, in his book — Parents and Schools: The 150-year Struggle for Control in American Education — wrote that parents and schools get along well as long as it is on the terms of the system. Never the other way around.


    The same indictment applies in Canada.


    In 1980 Simon Fraser University in BC put on a conference — Family Choice, Schooling and the Public Interest. The brochure had this quote:


    * “It is the business of education in our social democracy to eliminate the influence of parents on the life-chances of the young. “- Professor F. Musgrove, The Family, Education and Society, 1966.


    Even as such conferences play at staging important topics, this one undoubtedly did more as a caution against growing parent assertiveness for choices than for any wide “public interest”. But, of course, as seen entirely from the eyes of the industry, the “public interest” can only happen if the industry is in control.


    The question still remains — Is education a state responsibility or the duty of parents?


    Of course parents, who have been usurped from their primary role in education, still do get lip service and tokenism. Or, the opportunity to fund-raise ! It’s all symbolic use of parents.


    The literature is full of arguments why parents should be involved.. This is why the system continues its overtures and even jacked up efforts from involvement to participation to engagement.


    What parents should really be striving for is more driving the system. The idea of Education Savings Accounts which is now a reality in a number of US states, going far beyond charter schools, is what parents should be promoting. This is where for a lesser than total allocation per child, perhaps 90%, the parent can start an education account from which to draw for selected education offerings and services according to the best interests of the child.


    It’s partly remorse from upstaging parents at every turn, and partly the public relations literature that is propelling more pretenses at welcoming parents. Equity and social justice are not being served by government schools finding busy-work for parents. Nor is the education mission more fulfilled from superficial parent involvement.

    Category Book Reviews, Obstacles, Parent Tribal Memory, Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

Older Entries
Newer Entries