Charitable No. 85857 5087 RR0001   Volume 17, No. 4    www.societyforqualityeducation.org   Dec. 2008

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FROM THE PRESIDENT

In our newsletter, you will find information about good teaching methods and materials, as well as information about the trouble with education systems and how to go about correcting their problems.
In this issue, there are lots of interesting and informative items on topics as diverse as self-esteem, international testing, good university professors, little-known Internet resources, help for special needs students, competition among school systems, and Aboriginal education.
As always, I welcome your comments, especially requests for articles about particular topics.



Regards, Malkin
   
 

MAIL BAG

Public School versus Home School
I am a mother of a nine-year-old daughter who has just returned to the public school system after two years of homeschooling. I have been devastated with the entire education system since my days at high school, and currently find it severely lacking in many ways. As a student who was always in the high 90’s percentile, I struggled at university in physics and calculus. My frustrations again flourished, after my nine-year-old returned to the system. Although we put the older one back hesitantly, we did so because my husband thought we were not able to be as systematic as a regular school due to the many interruptions of my day. My daughter and I have found that even on our worst homeschooling days we did more than she does currently at school. 
Milton, ON
                                                            

Misleading Averages
Averages, it’s said, conceal as much as they reveal. Did you hear about the chap who lay with his head on a block of ice and his feet in a hot oven, but on average he felt fine?  Ontario’s public school results are averages, concealing alarming facts. For example, in a 23-school patch in Burlington, some primary schools have only 20% of students who score “pass” in reading, other schools 80% - four times as many good readers! Hot schools, cold schools, but on average pleasantly warm. “We welcome a problem, because it identifies our next level of improvement,” is a saying from Japanese industry well worth contemplating. The identification of a problem demands measuring of results. The adage, “If it matters, measure it” applies in spades to education, because no modern enterprise can operate without educated people. True, we can’t measure everything; but that is not an excuse for measuring nothing.

Burlington, ON
                            

Exit Exams
When people talk about moving to Canada (we know many international families), I always warn them about our educational system. They can hardly believe me when I tell them that Ontario has no standardized exit exams at the end of high school.

Sarnia, ON
                                  

Update – Teaching Aidan to Read
In an earlier edition of the SQE Forum, I wrote about teaching my then three-and-a-half-year-old grandson to read. (Well actually, his parents did most of the instruction.) Aidan is now five and in senior kindergarten. His love of reading and of books of all sorts remains undiminished. Currently, Owl Magazine and the “Captain Underpants” series are great favourites. There can really be no doubt that early literacy is a great advantage. However, it must be said that there are drawbacks as well. When his teacher sends notes or information home, Aidan has read the correspondence before his parents get to see it. Also, he avidly reads the Toys R Us sales flyers, letting Mummy know there are great deals available. Of course he still enjoys having books read to him. I like to embellish a little, most recently when reading “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. Since Aidan is following along, he corrects me when I change a word or phrase. Want to rock a young child’s world? Teach him to read. 

Waterloo, ON
                         

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Living in a Fool’s Paradise?

Many people think that Canada’s high standing on the recent PISA tests means that Canadian students are doing well academically. But there is more to this story than meets the eye. In fact, the PISA tests say nothing about advanced academic learning – like, say, the ability to read sophisticated text or explain E=MC2. Rather, the tests measure how well students can use very simple arithmetic and literacy skills to solve everyday problems.

Calculators are allowed on the tests, spelling and grammar mistakes are not penalized, partial marks are liberally awarded for incorrect answers, and the students are never asked to write answers of more than a few words.

The PISA sponsors make it clear that they are not trying to assess the skills and knowledge that one would normally expect to be taught to 15-year-olds. Instead, their test is designed to find out how well students are prepared “to meet the challenges of the future”.

This means that the tests are designed to discover how intelligently students can tackle practical tasks, like interpreting diagrams or estimating results. In contrast, skills like the ability to craft a persuasive argument or solve quadratic equations are irrelevant to the PISA.

Here’s an example of a typical PISA question. “A pizzeria serves two round pizzas of the same thickness in different sizes. The smaller one has a diameter of 30 cm and costs 30 zeds. The larger one has a diameter of 40 cm and costs 40 zeds. Which pizza is better value for money? Show your reasoning.”

The simplicity of the PISA tests means that they neutralize much of the advantage enjoyed by students with advanced skills and knowledge. These tests simply do not tell us how well our students stack up against their counterparts in India and China (countries which, by the way, don’t take part in the PISA tests).

If we want to know how well Canadian students are prepared in terms of more difficult material, we must look at other international tests, such as the 2005 Adult Literacy and Life Skills survey. This test measured both the literacy and numeracy of more than 23,000 Canadians, as well as students in other countries.

Canada ranked roughly in the middle of the countries that chose to participate in this test. According to Statistics Canada, the test showed a decline in literacy scores among young people aged 16 to 25. It also confirmed the results of an earlier study which showed that approximately “42% of Canadian adults aged between 16 and 65 years are below the level of literacy considered appropriate in order to function effectively in today’s society”.

Of course, it is important that Canadian students are well prepared to meet the practical challenges of the future, but there is also value in ensuring that they can read and write at advanced levels, as well as solve difficult mathematical problems and understand chemistry and physics.

After all, Canadian hairdressers and plumbers are not at much risk of losing their jobs to better-educated international competitors. Rather, it’s the white-collar jobs, like computer programming, that are most vulnerable to offshoring. For example, it seems clear that Japanese engineers’ jobs are safe for the foreseeable future – unlike those of their Canadian counterparts.

It is important for Canada’s future that we not be lulled into a false sense of complacency by our good results on the PISA.

ASK AUNT MALKIN


A veteran of the school wars herself, with the scars to prove it, Malkin Dare has lots of advice. If you would like some been-there-done-that advice from Aunt Malkin, call her at 519-884-3166 or e-mail her.

Question
I know my son is a handful, but surely his teacher can find a half an hour a day to give him the individual attention he needs?    Joan, Listowel

Answer
I’m afraid I’m going to have to recommend remedial math for you.
Let’s say your son is in a class of 25. The school day is 300 minutes long. If his teacher does nothing but spend individual time with each student, she will have 12 minutes per child. That’s not a lot of time.
But even that figure is misleading. Once you deduct the time-stealers like announcements and assemblies and transitions between activities, and then give the teacher some time to attend to various responsibilities, such as discipline, administrative chores, helping with boots, and — oh, yes — teaching, and the 12 minutes per child per day drops to two or three minutes if you’re lucky.
Furthermore, the trend towards placing exceptional students in regular classrooms means that there are probably several other children with special needs in the class. Want to guess how many parents are also requesting special arrangements for their children?

To make things even worse, the practice of encouraging children to learn at their own speed means that some kids do really well in school while others learn very little. Consequently, a typical grade 6 class has most kids working somewhere between a grade 2 and a grade 8 level, along with a few who are outside even that range. Your child’s teacher would have to be superhuman to meet all of her students’ individual needs.

The only way to ensure that your son gets lots of individual attention at school is to place him in a private school with extremely small classes. And, of course, home schools have the smallest classes of all!

WHAT’S NEW?


Ontario Public School Teacher Salaries and Benefits
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario has published a quick comparison of the contracts in each school board. This information provides a useful context for the ongoing contract talks in Ontario.   more

World’s Most Expensive Typos
Those who think that spelling and grammar aren’t important should visit this site which documents costly mistakes such as a Chilean typo that cost $175 million.  more

When Homework is a Headache (Literally)
As many as one of every 20 students may have some degree of what eye doctors call "convergence insufficiency," or CI, where eye muscles must work harder to focus up close. And those standard vision screenings administered by schools and pediatricians won't catch it — they stress distance vision.  more

Competition Improves Schools
The C.D. Howe Institute has released a study of Ontario’s competing Catholic and public schools. The authors found modest improvement in student performance on provincial tests between grade 3 and 6 in areas where schools face more competition. These areas have a large Catholic population (thus able to choose between Catholic and public schools) and many residents who have recently relocated (more willing to switch between school systems than long-time residents of an area).  The authors conclude that greater competition can lead to increases in test-score improvements for both Catholic- and public-school students. more

Slower Speech Increases Comprehension
A Wichita State audiology professor warns that most teachers talk too quickly for young children. The average five-to-seven-year-old processes speech at a rate of only 120 words per minute, but the average adult speaks at a rate of almost 170 words per minute.  more

Premature Algebra
The well-respected Brookings Institution is warning that a policy of introducing algebra to all grade 8 students has had unintended and damaging consequences, as some 120,000 middle students struggle in advanced classes for which they are woefully unprepared. more

Canada’s Failing Aboriginal Students
The C.D. Howe Institute has released a study documenting the disastrous educational results of Canada’s Aboriginal students. In Manitoba, for example, only 28% of on-reserve Aboriginal students graduate from high school. The report calls for Aboriginal-run school authorities that are able to operate on-reserve schools – independent of individual band councils. more

Music to Their Brains
A Harvard University study has found that children who study a musical instrument for at least three years outperform children with no instrumental training—not only in tests of auditory discrimination and finger dexterity (skills honed by the study of a musical instrument), but also on tests measuring verbal ability and visual pattern completion (skills not normally associated with music).  more

BOOK REVIEWS


The Self-Esteem Trap
Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance
Polly Young-Eisendrath
Well-meaning parents and educators believe that praise, encouragement, and advantages translate directly into happiness in childhood and success in adulthood. According to this book, the reverse is often true. Unrealistic expectations of fame, power, or achievement can set children up for the self-esteem trap. Our misplaced indulgence has produced many young adults who are stymied by the ordinary challenges of life, lack basic skills of empathy and collaboration, and fear humiliation above all else.
Excerpt (pp. 21-22)
“Jason, a young man in his early twenties, came to see me in therapy because he had a distinct feeling that he was superior to others. He didn’t like the feeling. He didn’t know how he had gotten it, but it made him uncomfortable socially. When Jason met new people, at first he was interested and enthusiastic about getting to know them. But then within a month or so, he would notice himself judging them. He would quickly and gleefully identify their flaws and weaknesses. Eventually he would find himself to be superior, better, or more capable than others who had initially intrigued him. He felt a pressure to succeed, to be better than others, almost all the time. He was uncomfortable around, and uninterested in, those whom he secretly found lacking, yet he felt ashamed of his incessant judgments. This whole range of thoughts and feelings was terribly upsetting to him on many different levels. Jason is stuck in the self-esteem trap.”

What the Best College Teachers Do
Ken Bain
What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a 15-year study of nearly 100 college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators.
Excerpt (pp. 22-23)
“In the early 1980s, two physicists at Arizona State University wanted to know whether a typical introductory physics course, with its traditional emphasis on Newton’s laws of motion, changed the way students thought about motion. As you read this account, you might substitute for the line “think about motion” any other phrase that fits your subjects. Do the students in any class change the way they think? To find out, Ibrahim Abou Halloun and David Hesteneses devised and validated an examination to determine how students understand motion. They gave the test to people entering the classes of four different physics professors, all good teachers according to both colleagues and their students. On the front side, the results surprised no one. Most students entered the course with an elementary, intuitive theory about the physical world, what the physicists called ‘a cross between Aristotelian and 14-century impetus ideas’. In short, they did not think about motion the way Isaac Newton did, let alone like Richard Rehnman. But that was before the students took introductory physics. Did the course change student thinking? Not really. After the term was over, the two physicists gave their examination once more and discovered that the course had made comparatively small changes in the way students thought. Even many ‘A’ students continued to think like Aristotle rather than like Newton. They had memorized formulae and learned to plug the right numbers into them, but they did not change their basic conceptions. Instead, they had interpreted everything they heard about motion in terms of the intuitive framework they had brought with them to the course.”

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT


Wikipedia can serve as a great introduction to a subject, and connect you to other related ideas, people and places. But it’s not all there is. Here are some other excellent – but little-known – Internet resources.