Trivial Pursuit - Moderns Against the Past

The following article seems to further the notion that the educational establishment continues to jettison all norms from the past. History should be more than a set of feelings I have about the past. http://www.educationnews.org/Gencomm/Trivial_Pursuit.htm

Peevish about Percentiles

I just love the mentality ol’ Gilbert Highet states in his work, The Art of Teaching. He explains his title by stating, “I believe that teaching is an art, not a science. It seems to me very dangerous to apply the aims and methods of science to human beings as individuals, although a statistical principle can often be used to explain their behavior in very large groups and a scientific diagnosis of their physical structure is always valuable. But a ‘scientific’ relationship between human beings is bound to be inadequate and perhaps distorted. Teaching involves emotions, which cannot be systematically appraised and employed, and human values, which are quite outside the grasp of science. A ‘scientifically’ brought-up child would be a pitiable monster...You must throw your heart into it, you must realize that it cannot all be done by formulas, or you will spoil your work, and your pupils, and yourself.” This sets the tone for my point of peevish punctiliousness regarding viewing the abilities of children from the vantage of percentile rankings. We are enamored with false notions of objectivity. If we can simply get any idea to the point of number, we feel we have a handle on the idea. At their foundation, this is the notion of standardized tests. We want to know we are doing our job in schools better than half or more of the rest of the nation. But what does this number, this “ranking” do for us? Does it alter our goals? Does it alter our technique or manner of teaching? Do we then begin teaching to the test? Especially for those in CCE, do standardized tests even measure our objectives? Just what habits of learning are measured in multiple choice answer sheets? The habit of filling in circles with a No.2 pencil? I am being a little supercilious, but the point is still there. I have always believed that a teacher begins with a standard, a norm, a high goal, usually involving a habit or virtue they are seeking to cultivate in the student. From that a lesson is designed, then taught. To see if we have accomplished our goal, we must assess the student’s progress. If we are seeking a goal of virtue or habit, then it must be assessed with that in mind. In shorter terms, I do not believe in teaching to the “test,” especially the standardized one. We teach to the goal; we test to the goal. Should we even partake of the standardized test? I think there is a limited benefit that should cause our participation to be limited. Comparison is a classical notion. I see no benefit in subjecting Kindergarten or First grade students to such tests. Early grammar students should perhaps endure the basic battery. Older students can compare in more areas. The largest single factor moderating my actions as an administrator in this regard is simply the addiction most parents have to such things. As our movement grows, perhaps we will be able to manufacture some standardized exams that test to our goals and objectives. Until then, we do the best we can with what we have. But we must not fall prey to the temptation to “teach to the test.” We are seeking higher ground.

What is the Question?

Thoughts on teaching a student to ask the right questions I have been having delightful “private” conversations about this for some time. I think it's time to throw it out into the public sector for comment and discussion. If classical education is all about the questions (and it is), and if questions can be of a greater or lesser quality (and they can), then we must (should, ought to) be able to teach students how to ask better questions. When I have posed the next logical question, “How do you teach students to question well?” I come across a lot of methodological answers, but Andrew Kern recently threw my way something of a model or basic strata of questioning that seems to be the root of the issue. I use “root” carefully, as I believe that as a teacher seeks to bring a student down a path of learning, the following questions are the general basis for the specifics of that path. Now I know Andrew did not birth them, but rather gleaned them from throughout classical studies on the Topics and the like. The following are the roots of any good questioning on any given subject. I almost think the wise teacher should print these off on a 3X5 and have it in their pocket whenever they are planning a lesson or leading a class and run short on Socratic fuel. Definition: What is it? Who is it? What do you mean by…? Comparison How is x like y? How is x different from y? In degree? In kind? Relation What is the relation between x and y? What are the causes of x? What are the effects of x? Circumstances What was happening at the time of x? What is written around x (context)? Testimony Who says what about x? Now that we have those on the table, the next move would be discussing the “ins” and “outs” of applying these to specifics. I would love to see either models of this suggested, or other possible root questions, or discussion of clarification for any of these. It seems so unorthodox for Christians to purposely seek to inculcate a “questioning” spirit in our students, but I think this is born out of becoming so convinced of the cynic’s point of view in our postmodernist culture that questions everything because it does not believe anything is possibly true. They question to assure themselves there is no truth; we question in order to arrive closer to the Truth. A side bar here is the need to continue to visit the questioning of Christ. How often He taught in this manner cannot be denied, and rather should be the model for such thinking to be applied. Any great questions (or comments) are hereby requested.

Deconstructing Derrida

Recently some of my staff and I have been discussing the issue of teaching students to read. At the heart of the current stream of thought is the ongoing shout match between “phonics” and “whole language” theories. In the course of our discussion, I mentioned that “whole language” was more than simply a method or technique, but involved the larger school of philosophy called “deconstruction.” As many were unfamiliar with this view, I am providing a link to some definitions of it put together by Stanford. I found them as a whole to help me closer to understanding the general idea behind the founder of the movement, Jacques Derrida. Of course, reading his works would help this further. The Stanford Link A Bibliography for Derrida Another link to a discussion of Derrida that is sympathetic to him A site attempting to bring together links of the Whole Language and Phonics debate Here is a link to another article I have posted on my blog about Whole Language – the rhetoric is somewhat pushy, but the points are still there.

Whole Language Defined

Though this is a little old now, the points ring true. Normally Blumenfeld has an edge, so don’t judge him by his swagger but by his reasoning and ratio. Whole Language Defined 8/27/2002 Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld The other day, I received an e-mail from a lady in California who asked, "What on earth is the whole-language system?" She had read my article on the making of the black underclass in which I had identified whole language as the primary cause of reading failure among so many black students. Fortunately, the answer is easy to give, because whole-language professors have been quite open in defining what they mean by their pedagogic philosophy. So I shall quote some salient passages from their writings. In a book entitled "Whole Language, What's the Difference?" written by three whole-language professors in 1991, we read on page 32: Whole language represents a major shift in thinking about the reading process. Rather than viewing reading as "getting the words," whole language educators view reading as essentially a process of creating meanings ... Meaning is created through a transaction with whole, meaningful texts (i.e., texts of any length that were written with the intent to communicate meaning). It is a transaction, not an extraction of the meaning from the print, in the sense that the reader-created meanings are a fusion of what the reader brings and what the text offers ... Although students who learn to read in whole language classrooms are, like all proficient readers, eventually able to "read" (or identify) a large inventory of words, learning words is certainly not the goal of whole language. Another passage from page 19 of the same book may be even more illuminating: From a whole-language perspective, reading (and language use in general) is a process of generating hypotheses in a meaning-making transaction in a sociohistorical context. As a transactional process ... reading is not a matter of "getting the meaning" from text, as if that meaning were in the text waiting to be decoded by the reader. Rather, reading is a matter of readers using the cues print provides and the knowledge they bring with them (of language subsystems, of the world) to construct a unique interpretation. Moreover, that interpretation is situated: readers' creations (not retrievals) of meaning with text vary, depending on their purposes of reading and the expectations of others in the reading event. This view of reading implies that there is no single "correct" meaning for a given text, only plausible meanings. Now you might think that all of this pedagogical insanity is taking place in some kind of political vacuum. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Whole language practice is very politically oriented. We read on page 23: Learning is a social process ... Although whole language educators accept the importance of learning through individual interactions with the environment (Piaget 1967), they lean more heavily on Vygotsky's ideas about the social nature of learning (Vygotsky 1978). Whole language takes seriously Vygotsky's notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (Engstrom 1986) which entails stressing the importance of collaborations (between students and teachers and between peers) through which students can transcend their own individual limitations. You might ask: Who is Vygotsky? Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Soviet psychologist who worked with Pavlov's colleagues at the State Institute of Experimental Psychology in Moscow in the 1920s and '30s. James Wertsch, Vygotsky's biographer, writes: [It] is important to note that Vygotsky was a staunch advocate of dialectical and historical materialism. He was one of the creators of Marxist psychology ... People such as Vygotsky and his followers devoted every hour of their lives to making certain that the new socialist state, the first grand experiment based on Marxist-Leninist principles, would survive. Vygotsky's colleague, Alexander Luria, wrote: "Vygotsky was ... the leading Marxist theoretician among us ... in [his] hands, Marx's methods of analysis did serve a vital role in shaping our course." Apparently, these same methods of analysis are also serving to shape the course of the whole-language agenda. The three professors, cited earlier, state on page 67: The whole language theoretical premise underlying which topics are pursued and how they are treated is: "All knowledge is socially constructed." Therefore all knowing is political. In an effort to promote critical literacy and thus to help children learn to read the world, not only the word (Shor & [Marxist revolutionary] Freire 1987), teachers who work with theme cycles try – no matter whether the topic is overtly "political" or not – to show how the topic is related to other more general questions. They try to demystify social institutions by helping children investigate connections between surface facts and underlying social structures, between lived experience and structural features of class, gender and race. They know that not making connections is as political as making connections. No further explanation needed. But what about phonics, you might ask? Here's a view of phonics given in another book on whole language, "Evaluation: Whole Language, Whole Child." We read on page 19: The way you interpret what the child does will reflect what you understand reading to be. For instance, if she reads the word feather for father, a phonics-oriented teacher might be pleased because she's come close to sounding the word out. However, if you believe reading is a meaning-seeking process, you may be concerned that she's overly dependent on phonics at the expense of meaning. You'd be happier with a miscue such as daddy, even though it doesn't look or sound anything like the word in the text. At least the meaning would be intact. My response to that kind of imbecilic pedagogy is that any child who looks at the word "father" and says "daddy" can't read. It's as simple as that. But tell that to a whole-language teacher. Meanwhile, we the taxpayers are paying for all of it.