Ok, parents who CARE and KNOW their children know best, so make sure the definition of parent is one who really does parent.
In preparation for my first child I read Dr. Spock's (no, not MR. Spock from Star Trek) book on baby care. After the first child I went back and read it again, laughing most of the way. The man was never a mother. But the one piece of advice that was sound was in the preface to the book. I don't have the book any more, I probably threw it away. But the advice was to parents who have had more opportunity to observe their children than anyone else. The gist was that parent sense is the best sense about the child. The folks who spend the most time with the child know the most about the child, and should be confident in their hunches and observations. Parents really do know best.
It's also true about education. Parents really do know best.
But we've grown up in someone else's classroom, and with an attitude by the educationists that the professionals know best. They have spent a lot of time frightening parents into thinking they are inexperienced, unimportant, and detrimental to their child's education, so much so that many parents have given up trying to be effective. Educationists, you cannot expect parents to take their child's education seriously if this is your message to parents.
Parents, you're the ones with the most actual experience with your kids.
So feel free to direct your child's education. It's okay!
Put yourselves in control of your child's education. Be kind to the high school guidance counselor, but be firm. Take your student off 'graduation' track if that's what you need to do to get a better or more appropriate education for your child. Homeschool. You survived the 8th grade, and I'm reasonably certain that what you know is sufficient for teaching your child, AT LEAST through the 8th grade.
Think of how many instructors whose classes you remember for having a positive influence on your education. I'm guessing that, unless you were in an unusual school that there were about five, from K-12. (That's how influential our current educational system is!) Find those people for your kids, and get your kids into their classes. If you're homeschooling, find those adults and get them in front of your kids.
Yes, you're the parent, and you know best!
Friday, June 5, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Educational theory
Let's see... In my educational career I've heard these terms thrown around:
ITIP
Direct instruction
Learning Styles
Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives (three categories)
Much discussion on the value of grouping in education, dozens of ways to group, to group or not, group grading, etc.
Distance learning
Whole child education
Multiple intelligences
Artificial intelligences
Ya know, I have two file drawers full of education theory topics.
But it comes down to this:
Education happens when one instructor gets in the face of one student and asks "Which part didn't you understand?"
It is not that the rest of it cannot inform instruction. But please differentiate instruction from classroom management.
Ninety percent of what we teach about education is really about crowd control. The other ten percent is actually about LEARNING!
If you really want to know about learning then do it in small groups. Get knee to knee and nose to nose or shoulder to shoulder with your students and WATCH THEM WORK! Listen as much as you talk, and get your student to talk. Get your students to perform.
Groups of about four will maximize your educational effectiveness.
ITIP
Direct instruction
Learning Styles
Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives (three categories)
Much discussion on the value of grouping in education, dozens of ways to group, to group or not, group grading, etc.
Distance learning
Whole child education
Multiple intelligences
Artificial intelligences
Ya know, I have two file drawers full of education theory topics.
But it comes down to this:
Education happens when one instructor gets in the face of one student and asks "Which part didn't you understand?"
It is not that the rest of it cannot inform instruction. But please differentiate instruction from classroom management.
Ninety percent of what we teach about education is really about crowd control. The other ten percent is actually about LEARNING!
If you really want to know about learning then do it in small groups. Get knee to knee and nose to nose or shoulder to shoulder with your students and WATCH THEM WORK! Listen as much as you talk, and get your student to talk. Get your students to perform.
Groups of about four will maximize your educational effectiveness.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Just how good are those homeschoolers?
I work with homeschoolers, offering classes a la cart to them, meaning they can take just a math class if they can do everything else at home, or they can take up to 5 classes if they want our organization to do more of the directing of their education.
The most common misconception of homeschooled kids is that they must be socially retarded because they are isolated at home.
This couldn't be further from the truth.
Homeschoolers are often so involved in church youth groups, 4-H, scouting, educational cooperatives, etc. that their tendency is to be on the road much of the day for several days each week. They have to fight the impulse to join another group.
Yes, their interactions with other age-peers is much more controlled. Their parents do actually get to choose who they hang out with. You must understand, they DON'T want their kids growing up in a greenhouse, withering at the first incidence of opposition the moment they step out into the 'real' world. They DO want the sun on their faces, the wind in their hair, the rain on their heads. They just want to be able to control what weeds grow up next to them.
Homeschooled kids more often know how to act like adults, because the adult-child ratio of the social circles in which they interact is much higher than with kids in a classroom setting 25 hours each week. They have much more opportunity to have mature behavior modeled for them, and much less opportunity to observe the behavior of classmates intent on disrupting a lesson.
These sorts of homeschooling families, intent on seeing their kids succeed in a classroom setting somewhere, have wonderful students. They often show up in classes at the community college, having been 100% homeschooled prior to taking college level classes at age 16, and they look and act a lot older than they are. I've mistaken a few 16 year olds for being 20 or older, because they are often far more mature than the usual 18 year old who is taking some classes at the community college because s/he just graduated from high school and is trying to find out what s/he wants to do in life.
But just as often, we get homeschoolers who place at the bottom of our placement tests. They come in wanting a job for which they need a GED or a high school diploma, and are using the college to get that, now that they are eligible for Running Start or adult high-school completion. They can barely read, write, or do sums with whole numbers. The folks who run the adult basic education programs sometimes complain that homeschooling is terrible because this is what it does to people. They don't see the students who were homeschooled and placed very well.
There ARE homeschooling families who are homeschooling for the wrong reason. The parents may have had disastrous experiences with schooling, and they have no intention of ever putting their child inside a classroom. They stay at home, helping mom or dad with whatever they do, and sometimes have a lot of spare time. Yes, sometimes the parents are engaged in illegal activities. If the child were in school and spilled the beans, their parents would be jailed.
But some of them just do not care about education. Their kids tend the farm, build treehouses, or play video games.
Before homeschooling was legal in this state, I knew these families in a public school setting. Regular absence was always followed up with an excuse, which often read "Johnny was needed at home on Friday." In my class, Johnny admitted to going fishing every Friday. Needless to say, these kids didn't do well in school, were not required to go to school by their parents, and disappeared by age 16. They're no different as homeschoolers, and who is to say they are doing any better or worse? They'll show up at the community college when they need a job that requires a GED or diploma!
Before they 'need' that GED or diploma, they place just as well on the standardized tests as the kids who have been in public school all their lives. Why? I asked this of someone who offers standardized testing annually to the local homeschooling population. Is it the test, I wondered, or is it how bad our K-12 educational system is? She suggested it is neither, but it is the ability of the student, any student, to figure out what is necessary to know, and to learn it. People who have never been taught to read learn how to read, write, and do math necessary to their lives. Hmm. It's likely that our educational establishment has a highly overrated opinion of itself!
The truth is that on the continuum of academic success, the top is occupied by homeschooled kids, but so is the bottom. They are also sprinkled pretty evenly between the two. Academically, homeschoolers look like the general population. They just have a better chance of reaching their goals without being sideswiped by the thug on the bus or in the lunch room. They are much better to work with, because they haven't learned the distracting behaviors that kids teach each other in a K-12 classroom.
I'll take them, any day, from the bottom or the top of the placement tests.
The most common misconception of homeschooled kids is that they must be socially retarded because they are isolated at home.
This couldn't be further from the truth.
Homeschoolers are often so involved in church youth groups, 4-H, scouting, educational cooperatives, etc. that their tendency is to be on the road much of the day for several days each week. They have to fight the impulse to join another group.
Yes, their interactions with other age-peers is much more controlled. Their parents do actually get to choose who they hang out with. You must understand, they DON'T want their kids growing up in a greenhouse, withering at the first incidence of opposition the moment they step out into the 'real' world. They DO want the sun on their faces, the wind in their hair, the rain on their heads. They just want to be able to control what weeds grow up next to them.
Homeschooled kids more often know how to act like adults, because the adult-child ratio of the social circles in which they interact is much higher than with kids in a classroom setting 25 hours each week. They have much more opportunity to have mature behavior modeled for them, and much less opportunity to observe the behavior of classmates intent on disrupting a lesson.
These sorts of homeschooling families, intent on seeing their kids succeed in a classroom setting somewhere, have wonderful students. They often show up in classes at the community college, having been 100% homeschooled prior to taking college level classes at age 16, and they look and act a lot older than they are. I've mistaken a few 16 year olds for being 20 or older, because they are often far more mature than the usual 18 year old who is taking some classes at the community college because s/he just graduated from high school and is trying to find out what s/he wants to do in life.
But just as often, we get homeschoolers who place at the bottom of our placement tests. They come in wanting a job for which they need a GED or a high school diploma, and are using the college to get that, now that they are eligible for Running Start or adult high-school completion. They can barely read, write, or do sums with whole numbers. The folks who run the adult basic education programs sometimes complain that homeschooling is terrible because this is what it does to people. They don't see the students who were homeschooled and placed very well.
There ARE homeschooling families who are homeschooling for the wrong reason. The parents may have had disastrous experiences with schooling, and they have no intention of ever putting their child inside a classroom. They stay at home, helping mom or dad with whatever they do, and sometimes have a lot of spare time. Yes, sometimes the parents are engaged in illegal activities. If the child were in school and spilled the beans, their parents would be jailed.
But some of them just do not care about education. Their kids tend the farm, build treehouses, or play video games.
Before homeschooling was legal in this state, I knew these families in a public school setting. Regular absence was always followed up with an excuse, which often read "Johnny was needed at home on Friday." In my class, Johnny admitted to going fishing every Friday. Needless to say, these kids didn't do well in school, were not required to go to school by their parents, and disappeared by age 16. They're no different as homeschoolers, and who is to say they are doing any better or worse? They'll show up at the community college when they need a job that requires a GED or diploma!
Before they 'need' that GED or diploma, they place just as well on the standardized tests as the kids who have been in public school all their lives. Why? I asked this of someone who offers standardized testing annually to the local homeschooling population. Is it the test, I wondered, or is it how bad our K-12 educational system is? She suggested it is neither, but it is the ability of the student, any student, to figure out what is necessary to know, and to learn it. People who have never been taught to read learn how to read, write, and do math necessary to their lives. Hmm. It's likely that our educational establishment has a highly overrated opinion of itself!
The truth is that on the continuum of academic success, the top is occupied by homeschooled kids, but so is the bottom. They are also sprinkled pretty evenly between the two. Academically, homeschoolers look like the general population. They just have a better chance of reaching their goals without being sideswiped by the thug on the bus or in the lunch room. They are much better to work with, because they haven't learned the distracting behaviors that kids teach each other in a K-12 classroom.
I'll take them, any day, from the bottom or the top of the placement tests.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
If you're not a visual, you're learning disabled.
Before the printing press, there might have been one text book in each subject taught for the entire school. The way the students 'got' the text book was to recite it, line by line, after the instructor. The instructor would repeat the important parts to be sure they were memorized. If a student really wanted a copy for himself, he could make one.
A photocopier was twenty people in a room writing down what one person was reading. Each of those copiers were trained to form their letters exactly the same shape and size as everyone else in the room, and when the reader was done reading, there would be twenty nearly identical copies of the text.
By the way, an error checking method was to stop at the end of a line, count how many characters were in the line, and be sure that everyone in the room had the same number of characters. That would help prevent misspellings or misuse of sound-alike words, like 'rain' and 'reign'. It's an error checking scheme that electronic devices use today to speak with each other.
"I just sent you a packet of 256 characters? Did you get it?"
"No, I only got 248. Send the packet again."
At any rate, when the copying was done, it was easy to tell a 'published' version of a text from one that someone had made for himself or herself. It was just as easy as it would be today, comparing someone's handwriting with a published book. This is what is meant by 'reliable manuscripts'. 'Manu' means 'manually', and 'script' means 'writing', and before the printing press everything was a manuscript, written by hand. But 'published' versions were clean and uniform in appearance, like today's books.
Anyway, the process of recitation was really important. Students wouldn't be writing a lot of papers because paper was a precious, expensive commodity. Teachers would know what a student knew by questioning them and listening to the answers. Students would be preparing speeches much more often than they would be writing papers.
When books were opened, they were read aloud. With the rarity of a book, one could never know who might be interested in hearing what someone else had taken the trouble to publish, and so reading was always aloud. I can see folks in a neighborhood gathering for the reading of a chapter of a book at the end of a day. If you had the funds to buy a book, then sharing it aloud would be a neighborly thing to do. Even after the advent of the printing press, families would gather around the fire at night and have someone reading aloud while everyone performed the small manual tasks necessary to life and survival.
This method of education greatly favors the auditory learner.
There are many definitions of 'auditory learner', but the one I'm going to use is the student who finds that s/he must recite or reiterate the material to be learned before it's solidified in his/her brain. They don't just learn by hearing, but the sound has to come out of their own mouth into their own ear before learning has taken place. They have to find the words to speak what they've heard before they 'know' it.
Somebody told me a story about St. Augustine, possibly sitting in the library with an array of books around him. He was reading silently to himself, and everyone thought he must be really smart because he could read silently. I don't know if the story is true or not, but it IS an illustration of how far we've moved away from the auditory learning system of the past.
Today, our educational system greatly favors the visual learner. We have kids reading silently for 20-minute stretches. We think that everything can be learned from a book. You must be quiet in our libraries so as not to disturb others.
We do almost nothing for the kinesthetic learner, the student who has to find a way to get the material into their hands before it clicks into place in their brain.
Some auditory learners get enough auditory stimulation through the discussion that goes on in class. If small group work is encouraged, then there is more opportunity for everyone to participate and talk about ideas.
As a math instructor, however, I'm acutely aware that teaching math is almost exclusively a visual exercise. It's true that lots of math is easier done than said. It amuses me that there are symbols in math books that the book itself does not explain how to say aloud. But we tend to work a few examples on the board, turn around to our students, say "There it is. Follow the example." Mathematicians tend to be a visual lot, having been sifted out from among the auditory learners to be mathematicians. Having learned math that way, we tend to teach math that way. We almost NEVER give our students the opportunity to discuss what they're learning. I've found that that means encouraging them to work in pairs and threes in the room, and talk through how they got an answer, or why the problem should be worked this way and not that way.
Let me offer a few more illustrations and observations.
A few years ago, bad weather toward the end of a term knocked out both meetings in a week, of an evening math class I taught. I came to class with a test in my hand. We hadn't had a chance to cover the last lesson of the chapter or do the chapter review. "I need this test score," I told them, and passed out the test. I told them to get with one or two other people in the room, and work the test. It would be open book, as well. I would walk around and teach when I found folks stuck. I would collect it at the end of the hour.
I heard some amazing learning going on that night, people arguing vehemently about how quadratics worked. They taught each other the material, checked each others work, and turned in their tests. I was amazed to find that I had a nice range of scores, and that no one was far off from their average on previous tests. Their learning that night was solid, and showed well on the final exam. The students appreciated the experience.
Although a tiny sample, a young woman I worked with in algebra a few years back was being caught up in both English and math skills. Both subjects poked at her brain in different ways. It was our observation that when we saw her verbal skills improve that her math skills did as well. The math made her think in symbols, a visual skill, and when she learned the skills to explain the symbols, her math skills improved. The work with symbols taught her another way to think about the words, and then her verbal and writing skills improved.
What you need to know is that today's educational methods favor the visual learner almost exclusively. Large lecture halls give students very little opportunity to interact with an instructor. TV is visual. Computer games are mostly visual, with some very narrow kinesthetic skills required. Reading silently is a visual skill. We almost never require a student to recite after the instructor, and talking out in class is bad. I've heard of K-3 instructors who insist that they should have to tell students only once what to do, and that should be enough.
The auditory learner HAS to talk about it!
If you recognize yourself or your child in the 'auditory' category, what can you do? Here are some suggestions.
1. Form a small study group, so that each person has more opportunity to tell what they know, or try to verbalize what they're learning.
2. Record lectures. Stop and start the recording and recite what you heard, verbatim. See if you can learn how to gather longer and longer chunks into memory before you can't repeat what you heard. ITunes has the iTunes University, and there are some fabulous lectures there. TED (www.ted.com) has some amazing lectures that you can watch online and download to your iPod. Google 'lectures online' and find everything. Learn to stop your iPod, repeat what was said, and start it again. Become an auditory learner.
3. Talk with your kids about their lessons. Even visual learners need to learn to communicate what they know.
4. Read aloud. Sit with the child next to you as you read. When they are learning to read they'll be following along beside you, learning vocabulary.
5. Have the child read aloud. If a child has a lot of trouble doing this, find a recording of a book so they can follow while playing the recording. Go back and read aloud sections already played to see if the child can pick up the art of reading aloud. Don't stop this before age 12, and don't stop then if you both enjoy it.
One of the reasons our modern educational system favors visual learners is money. Large lecture halls or even classrooms of 30 deliver learning to large groups of people at the price of a single instructor. This might seem cost effective, but it isn't necessarily educational. Small groups of students enable an instructor to check the knowledge of each student on a daily basis. I find personally that a class of ten on the grade 6 - 12 level is too many. A class of 20 on the adult level is my maximum. I regularly see classes of 35 at the community college. The smaller my classes are, the higher the rating I get as a professor from my students. Hmm. Could be that I actually get a chance to talk to them all. That's an auditory experience.
A photocopier was twenty people in a room writing down what one person was reading. Each of those copiers were trained to form their letters exactly the same shape and size as everyone else in the room, and when the reader was done reading, there would be twenty nearly identical copies of the text.
By the way, an error checking method was to stop at the end of a line, count how many characters were in the line, and be sure that everyone in the room had the same number of characters. That would help prevent misspellings or misuse of sound-alike words, like 'rain' and 'reign'. It's an error checking scheme that electronic devices use today to speak with each other.
"I just sent you a packet of 256 characters? Did you get it?"
"No, I only got 248. Send the packet again."
At any rate, when the copying was done, it was easy to tell a 'published' version of a text from one that someone had made for himself or herself. It was just as easy as it would be today, comparing someone's handwriting with a published book. This is what is meant by 'reliable manuscripts'. 'Manu' means 'manually', and 'script' means 'writing', and before the printing press everything was a manuscript, written by hand. But 'published' versions were clean and uniform in appearance, like today's books.
Anyway, the process of recitation was really important. Students wouldn't be writing a lot of papers because paper was a precious, expensive commodity. Teachers would know what a student knew by questioning them and listening to the answers. Students would be preparing speeches much more often than they would be writing papers.
When books were opened, they were read aloud. With the rarity of a book, one could never know who might be interested in hearing what someone else had taken the trouble to publish, and so reading was always aloud. I can see folks in a neighborhood gathering for the reading of a chapter of a book at the end of a day. If you had the funds to buy a book, then sharing it aloud would be a neighborly thing to do. Even after the advent of the printing press, families would gather around the fire at night and have someone reading aloud while everyone performed the small manual tasks necessary to life and survival.
This method of education greatly favors the auditory learner.
There are many definitions of 'auditory learner', but the one I'm going to use is the student who finds that s/he must recite or reiterate the material to be learned before it's solidified in his/her brain. They don't just learn by hearing, but the sound has to come out of their own mouth into their own ear before learning has taken place. They have to find the words to speak what they've heard before they 'know' it.
Somebody told me a story about St. Augustine, possibly sitting in the library with an array of books around him. He was reading silently to himself, and everyone thought he must be really smart because he could read silently. I don't know if the story is true or not, but it IS an illustration of how far we've moved away from the auditory learning system of the past.
Today, our educational system greatly favors the visual learner. We have kids reading silently for 20-minute stretches. We think that everything can be learned from a book. You must be quiet in our libraries so as not to disturb others.
We do almost nothing for the kinesthetic learner, the student who has to find a way to get the material into their hands before it clicks into place in their brain.
Some auditory learners get enough auditory stimulation through the discussion that goes on in class. If small group work is encouraged, then there is more opportunity for everyone to participate and talk about ideas.
As a math instructor, however, I'm acutely aware that teaching math is almost exclusively a visual exercise. It's true that lots of math is easier done than said. It amuses me that there are symbols in math books that the book itself does not explain how to say aloud. But we tend to work a few examples on the board, turn around to our students, say "There it is. Follow the example." Mathematicians tend to be a visual lot, having been sifted out from among the auditory learners to be mathematicians. Having learned math that way, we tend to teach math that way. We almost NEVER give our students the opportunity to discuss what they're learning. I've found that that means encouraging them to work in pairs and threes in the room, and talk through how they got an answer, or why the problem should be worked this way and not that way.
Let me offer a few more illustrations and observations.
A few years ago, bad weather toward the end of a term knocked out both meetings in a week, of an evening math class I taught. I came to class with a test in my hand. We hadn't had a chance to cover the last lesson of the chapter or do the chapter review. "I need this test score," I told them, and passed out the test. I told them to get with one or two other people in the room, and work the test. It would be open book, as well. I would walk around and teach when I found folks stuck. I would collect it at the end of the hour.
I heard some amazing learning going on that night, people arguing vehemently about how quadratics worked. They taught each other the material, checked each others work, and turned in their tests. I was amazed to find that I had a nice range of scores, and that no one was far off from their average on previous tests. Their learning that night was solid, and showed well on the final exam. The students appreciated the experience.
Although a tiny sample, a young woman I worked with in algebra a few years back was being caught up in both English and math skills. Both subjects poked at her brain in different ways. It was our observation that when we saw her verbal skills improve that her math skills did as well. The math made her think in symbols, a visual skill, and when she learned the skills to explain the symbols, her math skills improved. The work with symbols taught her another way to think about the words, and then her verbal and writing skills improved.
What you need to know is that today's educational methods favor the visual learner almost exclusively. Large lecture halls give students very little opportunity to interact with an instructor. TV is visual. Computer games are mostly visual, with some very narrow kinesthetic skills required. Reading silently is a visual skill. We almost never require a student to recite after the instructor, and talking out in class is bad. I've heard of K-3 instructors who insist that they should have to tell students only once what to do, and that should be enough.
The auditory learner HAS to talk about it!
If you recognize yourself or your child in the 'auditory' category, what can you do? Here are some suggestions.
1. Form a small study group, so that each person has more opportunity to tell what they know, or try to verbalize what they're learning.
2. Record lectures. Stop and start the recording and recite what you heard, verbatim. See if you can learn how to gather longer and longer chunks into memory before you can't repeat what you heard. ITunes has the iTunes University, and there are some fabulous lectures there. TED (www.ted.com) has some amazing lectures that you can watch online and download to your iPod. Google 'lectures online' and find everything. Learn to stop your iPod, repeat what was said, and start it again. Become an auditory learner.
3. Talk with your kids about their lessons. Even visual learners need to learn to communicate what they know.
4. Read aloud. Sit with the child next to you as you read. When they are learning to read they'll be following along beside you, learning vocabulary.
5. Have the child read aloud. If a child has a lot of trouble doing this, find a recording of a book so they can follow while playing the recording. Go back and read aloud sections already played to see if the child can pick up the art of reading aloud. Don't stop this before age 12, and don't stop then if you both enjoy it.
One of the reasons our modern educational system favors visual learners is money. Large lecture halls or even classrooms of 30 deliver learning to large groups of people at the price of a single instructor. This might seem cost effective, but it isn't necessarily educational. Small groups of students enable an instructor to check the knowledge of each student on a daily basis. I find personally that a class of ten on the grade 6 - 12 level is too many. A class of 20 on the adult level is my maximum. I regularly see classes of 35 at the community college. The smaller my classes are, the higher the rating I get as a professor from my students. Hmm. Could be that I actually get a chance to talk to them all. That's an auditory experience.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Another reason why government should NOT be in the business of education
"The millions of images we have been exposed to through television, movies, magzines, newspaper, and other media have not sharpened but dulled our creative imagination. More than ever, we need to develop and sanctify our imagination, because the truth of Scripture and spiritual experience is, to use Jean Leclercq’s words, 'impregnated with a mysterious light impossible to analyze.' A sanctified imagination will enable us to grasp more than we can see, but we need the lifeline of Scripture to tether us to the truth."
-Kenneth Boa on meditation, The Psalms, a Journal
If YOU don't want the government defining truth for you, then the government should get out of the business of education.
-Kenneth Boa on meditation, The Psalms, a Journal
If YOU don't want the government defining truth for you, then the government should get out of the business of education.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Thank you! I'll have this job forever!
My deepest, most heartfelt thanks to those committed to making algebra required for 8th graders!
You have guaranteed my job at the local community college until I die.
There are those who believe that we'll be able to teach reading to all 3-year-olds. It's the same group who believe we should be teaching algebra to every 8th grader. They probably also believe that we can start doing some education before the child is born. Perhaps they believe that humankind is on an upward evolutionary path, so of course all kids will be walking by 7 months, reading by age three, and math/science geniuses by age 16.
This is nonsense, of course, evident to anyone who has actually raised a child they bore or adopted. Not many US parents do that these days, so perhaps that's why this fallacy exists.
Anyway, my job here is to teach high school algebra to adults. I really like it! My classes are filled with students who did poorly in math in high school, but now that their brains are older and better, they get it just fine. My part is to help them overcome the math anxiety they learned in algebra in the 8th grade.
So again, my solution to education is to give folks a certain number of years of education, take it when you're ready. Then we won't be stigmatizing folks who don't read when they're three, or do algebra when they're in the 8th grade. They'll be absolutely, perfectly normal, rocket science and all.
You have guaranteed my job at the local community college until I die.
There are those who believe that we'll be able to teach reading to all 3-year-olds. It's the same group who believe we should be teaching algebra to every 8th grader. They probably also believe that we can start doing some education before the child is born. Perhaps they believe that humankind is on an upward evolutionary path, so of course all kids will be walking by 7 months, reading by age three, and math/science geniuses by age 16.
This is nonsense, of course, evident to anyone who has actually raised a child they bore or adopted. Not many US parents do that these days, so perhaps that's why this fallacy exists.
Anyway, my job here is to teach high school algebra to adults. I really like it! My classes are filled with students who did poorly in math in high school, but now that their brains are older and better, they get it just fine. My part is to help them overcome the math anxiety they learned in algebra in the 8th grade.
So again, my solution to education is to give folks a certain number of years of education, take it when you're ready. Then we won't be stigmatizing folks who don't read when they're three, or do algebra when they're in the 8th grade. They'll be absolutely, perfectly normal, rocket science and all.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Rethinking society and K-12 education
The book of Deuteronomy is a series of sermons from God, given by Moses just before the nation of Israel crossed the Jordan river into Canaan, the Promised Land. Deuteronomy reviews the history of the nation, reminds the Israelites what they are to do upon entrance into Canaan, and reviews the laws that God gave the Israelites. Moses begs parents:
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your hear and with all your sould and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hears. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Proverbs 2 outlines the benefits of seeking wisdom.
In education, our first goal ought to be the fear of the Lord. Seeking God first, we fit the world to that framework. The scriptures are not the only thing we study. But fitting the two together, we get a more complete picture of God. Knowledge cannot be idolized, as it is in some academic institutions. We also seek to instill wisdom, which grows with knowledge and understanding, with light shed from the scriptures. Those three, fear of God, knowledge, and wisdom, will build the learner. We start with a bit of awe of God, add knowledge, gain wisdom, and we'll end up with more awe of God. It will spiral, and it's an endless cycle. This is the cycle of learning.
I believe that in heaven, it will be like going to school every day with the best teacher in the universe. We'll have eternity to pursue fear of God, knowledge, and wisdom, and we'll frequently be in the concert hall, giving praise to God for His mighty works and thanking Him for being pleased to share His company with us.
How does this suggest we ought to run K-12 education?
First, parents are the primary educators. Their power in this needs to be recognized, understood, cultivated, promoted, and utilized! The focus of the field of education ought to be on the parents, NOT THE KIDS! Get the parents up to speed, and the kids will be just fine.
Second, the focus of society should be on the kids. I've written that there is NO economic reason to have kids any more. A hundred years ago, a large family was an asset. Kids were needed to help run the farm or the business, and it was up to the kids to take care of their aging parents. Today, we have a fairy tale belief that kids should be allowed 16 - 18 years of educational play, it's illegal to put children to work, and that somehow with proper education that they'll know how to show up to work on time, put in eight hours, and do their best work. That costs money! Children aren't required to take care of their aging parents because parents are supposed to have a retirement account to take care of that. If nothing else, there will be social security. (More folks my age believe in visitors from outer space than the likelihood there will be any social security remaining when we get there.)
This isn't bad news for kids. We now can have kids because we just want them. We are at a place right now where we should be able to cultivate every good thing in a child. We have the resources to give them everything they need, except..... time. We're in such pursuit of those resources and maintenance of our possessions that we have forgotten why we're doing this.
Rocket science is great stuff. Cloning tissues and stem cell research will promises to save us from everything except the common cold. All this knowledge, and no fear of the Lord or wisdom, and what do we have? Pursuit of material possessions and knowledge are our idols, and our future is in daycare.
So let's slow down some. We know enough to give everyone on the planet hot running water and a refrigerated drink. The moon and the outer planets can wait. Put the kids first. Run your business and bring your kids. If things don't move any faster than the little ones, then so be it.
Put schools where the parents are, right inside their work place, where parents can see what's going on and provide the object lesson for math and English. Let the kids get their work ethic from their parents, helping out with the business as it is appropriate for them. There will be much more 1:1 contact between adults and kids.
There are a few places we don't want kids. Kids should probably not be around health care, law enforcement and other emergency services. But kids should be allowed to try dangerous things. Gever Tully runs The Tinkering School. See his video about that:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html
Third, find time to discuss, discuss, discuss with kids, all of them. The communications skills they learn, the insight they get from other adults, the wisdom that will grow from these discussions will glue together their fear of God and knowledge. Turn off the TV! Get into their faces and help them find out who they are, which is more important than imprinting yourself upon them. You probably can't do that, anyway, because it wasn't you who made that child.
Recognize and cultivate the power of parents. Cultivate the parents. Slow down. Talk.
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