Textbooks for college are ridiculously expensive.
Textbooks for the math courses I teach cost about $120, new. There can be add-on charges, such as a CD which shows many problems worked out, or access to online help from the company that published the text.
Why so breathtakingly expensive? It has to do with the used book market. If there are plenty of used books available then the publisher doesn't make much money selling new books. So, part of the price of your new text includes funds for the publisher to buy your used book back at the end of the term. A certain number of those used books will be recycled as paper. Some will find their way back to the college bookstore shelf, if the publisher doesn't have enough new copies to sell.
Every three years, a new edition of the text appears. Changes may be superficial, such as moving the review section from the front of the book to the back of the book, changing the order of some of the homework problems, changing the order of a few topics, or changing the size of the page, all causing enough changes so that us instructors must write a new assignment list based on the new text. The original author(s) may or may not have much to do with the new edition. They will likely participate in the first revision, especially if there are substantial changes, but with subsequent editions you'll see more and more names added to the list of authors, and in the end, the work was BASED on the original authors but may not look much like their material at all. Since the publisher will only supply a new text, or in some cases a text one edition previous, colleges have opportunities to re-adopt the new text, or move to other authors.
At the college level, we REALLY DISLIKE this process. Because we teach several levels of math, that adoption process happens nearly every year, generating work for us both with the examination of new texts and in developing new homework assignments. I've stopped including page numbers in my homework assignment lists, which I pass out at the beginning of the term. I only list section numbers anymore. But I still have to sit down with the old text and the new, to see if the problems are the same. Ninety-nine percent are identical, but they may be numbered differently.
If you use the college bookstore's buy-back program then you are contributing to the problem. Buy your books online at sites dedicated to re-selling books. Ebay's division, half.com, allows folks to park a book online until it sells. This is different from their regular auctions in which items appear for about a week. Be careful, some of the books listed as 'New' list for MORE than the publisher/bookstore price. Buy used, and allow for 3-6 weeks delivery.
The textbook scam has another level.
A few years ago I bought several copies of a college-level math text for my homeschooled pre-calculus students. The book covered topics from 2nd year algebra through trigonometry. I bought copies from a few editions back, and because these could no longer be sold at college bookstores because of the situation described above, I got these copies from $0.75 (yes, that's 75 cents) to $5 each. That text is now a decade old, and we still use those copies. I loan them to students for the year. I have all of the supplemental materials, such as test banks and solutions manuals. The word problems are the only part that's really changed or needs updating. We don't talk much about the manufacture of VCR players any more, and the kind of vehicles manufactured has changed some. We get by!
That text was enormously better than the text we were using at the college for second-year algebra. I campaigned vigorously for its adoption, especially since students in that class (Math 99) could also use the text for Math 141 and 142, the pre-calculus sequence at our school. But what prevented its use had to do with a labeling problem associated with the college accreditation process. At our college, Math 99 is not considered college-level math. But other institutions DO label it 'college level', and it's usually called Math 100 or 110. For accreditation purposes, coursework that is UNDER the college level must use a book labeled 'Intermediate Algebra'. Coursework AT college level should use a book labeled 'College Algebra'.
For awhile, the pages in those books with different labels were IDENTICAL if they were from the same author/publisher. To our dismay, at some point in the last decade, the books labeled 'Intermediate Algebra' got dumbed down. The reading level diminished, using simpler words. While that may not be a bad thing, please understand that terminology among authors of math books is already not very standard. This made it worse. In addition, explanations (mathematicians call these 'proofs') were simply left out, leaving the student to take for granted what the instructor was telling them.
So, not only is the textbook of lesser quality, you have to buy more of them.
There ARE publishers out there that use mostly the same material from year to year, but they publish the book in a softcover format for about 40% of new price from other publishers. After a term or two of use, the book is falling apart, so there simply is not much used book market for it. Makes sense to me.
Textbooks are heavy. Are they ever going to go to CD or flash drive, where you just pop it in your laptop or Kindle and read it? Publishers don't like this, because the book can too easily be shared or put online for anyone to download. That would cut into their profits dramatically. For the sake of the student, making electronic notes on your text would be an excellent educational advantage. The ONLY reason why colleges don't demand this from textbook companies is because most instructors aren't tech-savvy enough to make the notes to share with students, and so don't know to ask for (demand!) this capability.
All that having been said, allow me to endorse a high school math text that is likely the ONLY high school text book still in publication since 1979. Harold Jacob's "Elementary Algebra" is still the best-written book on the market for first-year algebra, and it's still in its first edition. There have been a few corrections, but very, very few. The book is carefully and meticulously thought out and presented. There are some cultural references that are pretty old, older than the cultural repertoire of most of the math instructors out there today. The order and presentation of the material was different than most high school texts at the time. Mr. Jacobs led the way to a better path through first-year algebra, and since then most college textbooks have come around to his way of thinking. The homework is just math, and guess what? Math hasn't changed! I have suggestions for a new edition, but it evidently isn't forthcoming. So I supplement in a few places. This book will never be used on the college level because it isn't labeled for college use. Too bad! It's made me a much better math instructor. Mr. Jacobs has wisely kept control of the material so that subsequent editions aren't ruined, and I know that the publisher is still selling many new copies of this text and is making money on it. If they weren't, they would not be printing new copies.
(I'm not getting anything for this endorsement. The book was first brought to my attention by a student who wished to be tutored from it. I began using it with my privately taught math classes after that, and purchased all the copies I own, or they were donated to me by parents whose students were finished with algebra.)
So there you have it, why textbooks are so expensive, why you have to buy so many of them, and why you have to haul them around. I think textbooks publishers should invest in authors like Harold Jacobs, and in delivery methods that don't inflict printing and shipping charges, which HAS to be a huge chunk of the textbook cost. Subsequent editions ought to be available for a download price, like updated software. Paradigms must shift, if we are to have better texts.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The long arm of the state
This afternoon I had a conversation about paperwork with an official at a Whatcom County Parent Partnership Program (PPP). It doesn't matter which one, because this applies to all of you who use them.
Some of you homeschoolers are using classes from ZLO as part of your 25 weekly hours required to complete the Student Learning Plan (SLP) required by your participation in the PPP. The gist of the phone call was to ask if ZLO would sign paperwork showing that background checks are run on our instructors, because that was necessary for students whose ZLO work is included in the SLP. Each and every instructor used by a PPP student showing on the SLP must have the background check performed by the Washington State Patrol (WSP), and if any instructor on their SLP list is a one-on-one instructor, such as a piano teacher, then that person must be fingerprinted.
I made it very clear that ZLO instructors who choose to tutor anyone one-on-one do so outside of their ZLO work. ZLO does not require fingerprinting for instructors. We do perform the WSP criminal record check. We also make a lot of phone calls to check references and we require our new instructors to teach a lesson to our board of directors.
Let me suggest where this is going.
I KNOW that in writing that SLP that homeschool families dig to make up their 25 hours of educational time. For most students, homeschooling requires much less than 25 hours per week to complete while keeping a child at grade level. I have heard of families recording time spent washing dishes, mowing lawns, cleaning garages, etc. as educational time in order to complete the required time for the SLP. That data is recorded and kept somewhere. What your family does, perhaps how often you wash dishes, is in the hands of state officials somewhere. Could that ever be used against you?
It sounds like a silly question, but the person I spoke to is already referring to the 'risk management team', and that means attorneys at the state level who want no part of being accused of allowing child molestation when all a piano teacher did was sit next to a student playing duets. I'm quite certain the piano teacher is thinking about that when permitting him- or herself to be fingerprinted, and you should also be thinking about it when you fill out that SLP.
The administrator I spoke with endorsed the mound of paperwork for these background checks, claiming that if it protects even one student from abuse then it was worth it. I find it interesting that abuse and molestation in the public schools is on the rise by both male and female instructors, who were fingerprinted prior to beginning teaching. Sounds to me like you had better go and hang out in your child's classroom. You can take any class your child is in for free at ZLO.
Could they come back some day and accuse you of putting your child at risk mowing the lawn? Are you a qualified landscape engineer with a state contractor's license that you could guide your child to properly use power equipment like that? If you were a landscape engineer, would you allow a child under 18 to operate such equipment while in your employ? Could you also be accused under child labor laws of requiring a child to do such labor? Could a rebellious and angry child or a wayward spouse or a nosy neighbor accuse you of any of this at some point in the future and use that paperwork to prove it?
How many of you parents might NOT "pass" a background or fingerprinting check? Would that disqualify you to be homeschoolers? Could the state then come by and require you to enroll your child in a public school classroom?
I'm not interested in "Officials we've spoken to in Olympia say..." because that's their opinion this week. Next week, with a different person seated in that position, it could work out altogether differently. How many of you have had such conversations with folks in a city or county planning department concerning a structure you wanted to build?
SLP's and PPP's might not have been created with the intent of corralling parents into becoming an arm of the state, and extension of the public classroom, but that is becoming the end effect of them.
You do NOT need to fill out an SLP if you are homeschooling. That is not required of you when you fill out homeschooling paperwork at your local school district. You do NOT need to fill out an SLP if you are using classes from ZLO. You hire us like you hire the piano teacher. You're in control. And it should be that way.
As administrator for ZLO, deeply committed to protecting our right to teach from a Christian, Biblically-based viewpoint and our right to teach the best way we know how, I will not sign any paperwork for PPP's, not about what we teach or how we investigate our instructors. What we do is on our website. Click on Our Instructors, and then click on the link at the bottom of that page about knowing more about becoming a ZLO instructor.
I've already been asked by a PPP administrator if a math class isn't just a math class, and couldn't PPP funds be used to pay for that? In my geometry class we talk about how we have 360 degrees in a circle. The story starts with the Babylonians, continues with Daniel in that court and ends with the wise men at the birth of Jesus. If there's a problem with state funds being used while I tell that story then I guess it's not just a math class, is it? All of education should be about opening and soaking our souls in the wonder of our Creator. I will not be muzzled!
Educationists have long sought to disqualify the parent. I remember well the day in one of my university classes on education when they told us that we were the experts, that we knew better than the parents. While I do not believe that the administrators of the PPP's intend destruction any more than does any educator, I do believe that if they choose to not cooperate with the state that control will be ripped out of their hands, and what they thought they built for good will be used to dismantle the families they sought to enrich and support.
I will not be a part of this. I will not fill out or sign any paperwork from PPP's describing or guaranteeing what we teach or who we hire. I will not give them any control, or any leverage that could be used against us in the future. I know that I will be cutting off some of you who maneuver PPP funds to help pay for ZLO classes. They claim they're trying to protect your child from molestation. I'm trying to protect your family from the state.
Respectfully,
Molly Crocker
Administrator, ZLO
Some of you homeschoolers are using classes from ZLO as part of your 25 weekly hours required to complete the Student Learning Plan (SLP) required by your participation in the PPP. The gist of the phone call was to ask if ZLO would sign paperwork showing that background checks are run on our instructors, because that was necessary for students whose ZLO work is included in the SLP. Each and every instructor used by a PPP student showing on the SLP must have the background check performed by the Washington State Patrol (WSP), and if any instructor on their SLP list is a one-on-one instructor, such as a piano teacher, then that person must be fingerprinted.
I made it very clear that ZLO instructors who choose to tutor anyone one-on-one do so outside of their ZLO work. ZLO does not require fingerprinting for instructors. We do perform the WSP criminal record check. We also make a lot of phone calls to check references and we require our new instructors to teach a lesson to our board of directors.
Let me suggest where this is going.
I KNOW that in writing that SLP that homeschool families dig to make up their 25 hours of educational time. For most students, homeschooling requires much less than 25 hours per week to complete while keeping a child at grade level. I have heard of families recording time spent washing dishes, mowing lawns, cleaning garages, etc. as educational time in order to complete the required time for the SLP. That data is recorded and kept somewhere. What your family does, perhaps how often you wash dishes, is in the hands of state officials somewhere. Could that ever be used against you?
It sounds like a silly question, but the person I spoke to is already referring to the 'risk management team', and that means attorneys at the state level who want no part of being accused of allowing child molestation when all a piano teacher did was sit next to a student playing duets. I'm quite certain the piano teacher is thinking about that when permitting him- or herself to be fingerprinted, and you should also be thinking about it when you fill out that SLP.
The administrator I spoke with endorsed the mound of paperwork for these background checks, claiming that if it protects even one student from abuse then it was worth it. I find it interesting that abuse and molestation in the public schools is on the rise by both male and female instructors, who were fingerprinted prior to beginning teaching. Sounds to me like you had better go and hang out in your child's classroom. You can take any class your child is in for free at ZLO.
Could they come back some day and accuse you of putting your child at risk mowing the lawn? Are you a qualified landscape engineer with a state contractor's license that you could guide your child to properly use power equipment like that? If you were a landscape engineer, would you allow a child under 18 to operate such equipment while in your employ? Could you also be accused under child labor laws of requiring a child to do such labor? Could a rebellious and angry child or a wayward spouse or a nosy neighbor accuse you of any of this at some point in the future and use that paperwork to prove it?
How many of you parents might NOT "pass" a background or fingerprinting check? Would that disqualify you to be homeschoolers? Could the state then come by and require you to enroll your child in a public school classroom?
I'm not interested in "Officials we've spoken to in Olympia say..." because that's their opinion this week. Next week, with a different person seated in that position, it could work out altogether differently. How many of you have had such conversations with folks in a city or county planning department concerning a structure you wanted to build?
SLP's and PPP's might not have been created with the intent of corralling parents into becoming an arm of the state, and extension of the public classroom, but that is becoming the end effect of them.
You do NOT need to fill out an SLP if you are homeschooling. That is not required of you when you fill out homeschooling paperwork at your local school district. You do NOT need to fill out an SLP if you are using classes from ZLO. You hire us like you hire the piano teacher. You're in control. And it should be that way.
As administrator for ZLO, deeply committed to protecting our right to teach from a Christian, Biblically-based viewpoint and our right to teach the best way we know how, I will not sign any paperwork for PPP's, not about what we teach or how we investigate our instructors. What we do is on our website. Click on Our Instructors, and then click on the link at the bottom of that page about knowing more about becoming a ZLO instructor.
I've already been asked by a PPP administrator if a math class isn't just a math class, and couldn't PPP funds be used to pay for that? In my geometry class we talk about how we have 360 degrees in a circle. The story starts with the Babylonians, continues with Daniel in that court and ends with the wise men at the birth of Jesus. If there's a problem with state funds being used while I tell that story then I guess it's not just a math class, is it? All of education should be about opening and soaking our souls in the wonder of our Creator. I will not be muzzled!
Educationists have long sought to disqualify the parent. I remember well the day in one of my university classes on education when they told us that we were the experts, that we knew better than the parents. While I do not believe that the administrators of the PPP's intend destruction any more than does any educator, I do believe that if they choose to not cooperate with the state that control will be ripped out of their hands, and what they thought they built for good will be used to dismantle the families they sought to enrich and support.
I will not be a part of this. I will not fill out or sign any paperwork from PPP's describing or guaranteeing what we teach or who we hire. I will not give them any control, or any leverage that could be used against us in the future. I know that I will be cutting off some of you who maneuver PPP funds to help pay for ZLO classes. They claim they're trying to protect your child from molestation. I'm trying to protect your family from the state.
Respectfully,
Molly Crocker
Administrator, ZLO
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Reform, educational or otherwise
I was given this quote about the time I finished my Master's degree. It fit what I knew then about educational reform, and we were on the verge of implementing the No Child Left Behind Act. That is now largely dismantled, at least in WA and like most reforms is mired in funding issues.
"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning
to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later
in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing;
and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress
while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
According to Liberty-tree.ca, this quote is falsely attributed to Gaius Petronius Arbiter. Quote is from Charlton Ogburn, Jr. (1911-1998), in Harper's Magazine, "Merrill's Marauders: The truth about an incredible adventure" (Jan 1957)
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/gaius_petronius_arbiter_quote_7108
"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning
to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later
in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing;
and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress
while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
According to Liberty-tree.ca, this quote is falsely attributed to Gaius Petronius Arbiter. Quote is from Charlton Ogburn, Jr. (1911-1998), in Harper's Magazine, "Merrill's Marauders: The truth about an incredible adventure" (Jan 1957)
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/gaius_petronius_arbiter_quote_7108
Friday, June 5, 2009
Parents really do know best!
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!
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!
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.
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