SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Taking the Joy Out of Reading

It’s not necessary to watch all of this 30-minute video of a grade 1 Balanced Literacy lesson to grasp one of the problems with this approach to teaching children to read. If you scrub through the video dipping into it here and there, you can easily grasp what is going on. The teacher (who does a fine job, given the premises of Balanced Literacy) spends almost half an hour teaching her students how to make a distinction between books that entertain and books that teach. So what’s that all about? Well, Balanced Literacy makes very heavy weather of teaching kids to read by adding the requirement that the kids be able to analyze their reading material to death.

While you are watching this video, ask yourself how important you think it is for young readers to be able to determine whether a particular story was written as entertainment or for instructional purposes (itself a bogus distinction in many cases, let’s face it). Then ask yourself how much the kids in the video are enjoying their books. Finally, once you have exited the video, scroll down our blog page to the video at “Changing Children’s Lives” and take a couple of minutes to watch the Direct Instruction kids in that video read with huge relish. You almost have to feel sorry for the Balanced Literacy kids. Being asked to dissect a story takes much of the fun out of reading.

It’s odd, really, when you consider that the proponents of Balanced Literacy criticize Direct Instruction as being too robotic and soul-destroying.

The Waste of the Big-Time Spenders

This article from The Economist deals with the problems inherent in “big government”. The second-last paragraph uses public education as an example of the reality that “governments can frequently spend lots of money without producing any improvement in public services”. The British government doubled its spending on education between 1999 and 2007 but showed a dramatic decline in educational performance over the same period, as measured by the OECD. This phenomenon is not an isolated one. 

Ontario, for example, increased its allocations to school boards from $14,696 million in 2003 to $19,142 million in 2009, an increase of approximately 30% over a period when student enrolment was declining by about 4% - yet showed no improvement on the OECD’s tests of reading and writing, and actually lost ground on the more rigorous Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. 

Many other jurisdictions have tried to spend their way to educational success, but we are not aware of any that have succeeded.

Money-Making Opportunity

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) is offering to pay $1000 for “proposals for practical, stand-alone, progressive, classroom-ready lessons/unit plans of 4 to 5 lessons in length on social issues such as (but not limited to) globalization, world peace, anti-discrimination, environmental issues, universal child care, sexual harassment, aboriginal issues, poverty, etc.” Since SQE operates on a shoestring, receiving no government funding, and relying solely on the generosity of its individual supporters, we have decided to try to augment our budget by submitting some lesson plans. Here are some of our ideas:

• Climategate (the stolen e-mails and other evidence that global warming is not a threat after all)
• Sexual Abstinence (a discussion of why teenagers would be better off waiting to become sexually active)
• Free Markets (the power of Adam Smith’s invisible hand and the baleful effects of unions and other pro-monopoly forces)
• Universal Child Care (an honest look at the real costs of existing initiatives and their disappointing results)
• Perpetuation of Class Differences (an analysis of schools’ role in preventing disadvantaged children from rising above the circumstances of their birth)

These are only a few ideas, and we invite our readers to vote for their favourite or perhaps suggest a lesson plan of their own - the more the merrier. The OSSTF is bound to be impressed by our submissions!

Homework Doesn’t Need to be Tough

Click here to access our latest quick study, this one by a former teacher on the topic of how much parents should be helping their kids with homework.

Math Class Doesn’t Need To Be Tough

Remember when Barbie said "Math class is tough", and everyone got bent out of shape? A new study from the University of Chicago finds that female grade 1 and grade 2 teachers with math anxiety negatively impact their female students' math ability, via little girls' beliefs about who is good at math. It seems Barbie was on to something!

The Chicago study suggests that a vicious circle is operating whereby little girls catch math phobia from their female teachers, grow up to become primary teachers themselves, and then infect their own female students with math phobia. What can be done to break the cycle? In other words, how can we make female primary teachers less anxious about teaching math?

Stated that way, it seems obvious that we should consider providing primary teachers with more support in math. At present in Ontario, it is actually illegal for teachers to use well-sequenced and clearly-explained math textbooks, and the use of direct instruction and drilling is strongly discouraged, even though these teaching methods result in better student learning. If the province's primary teachers, especially the ones who are shaky in math, could use highly-scripted and effective textbooks and teaching methods, these teachers would feel more comfortable teaching math, and their confidence would begin to grow. The more confident they became, the more confident their female students would become. And, as an added bonus, the students would learn more math!

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

Let's say you're desperately worried about your 10-year-old son who's is in terrible trouble at school - he's still can't read more than a few words; he hates school; and lately he has started to display very serious behaviour problems. You think that your son needs to be referred for testing and special help, but the school won't listen. What can you do?

Obviously, you have already talked to your son's teacher and the school principal - and got nowhere. If you turn to the school council, you are sure to get a brush-off, since they can't get involved in the problems of individual children and anyway they're mostly about fund-raising. So you approach your school board trustee, and you are astonished to learn that she, a former high school geography teacher, cannot or will not do anything for your son since, in her words, the educators at the school are the experts. Furthermore, your trustee informs you that you would be wasting your time to apply to the board of trustees since they never discuss individual cases.

It looks as if the only way you can save your son is to pull him out of his current school. Unfortunately, your school board has a firm policy of assigning students to schools on the basis of where they live, and you soon discover that you are not allowed to ask for a transfer to a different public school. Your only options appear to be a private school or home-schooling. Let's hope you are in a position to consider one of these options, because otherwise it's highly likely that your son will become a statistic.

Given the current structure of Ontario's education system, most of the province's parents have very little wiggle room if one of their kids is unlucky enough to encounter problems at school. 

A Proud Heritage Language

This article in Scientific American reports on new evidence of the cognitive advantages of learning a second language. We already know that bilingual students tend to do better in school, are more tolerant of diversity and minorities, earn more, and live longer and healthier. The new research suggests that bilingual students' brains actually work differently from those of monolingual students. 

This article from our archives explains how bilingual parents can best pass on their mother tongue to their children.

Democracy Inaction

The existence of school boards is often defended on the grounds that they make the education system democratic, since the trustees are elected. Seldom mentioned is the fact that many trustees are former or current educators, or spouses of educators, and some even have ties to the teachers' unions. In addition, many non-affiliated trustees are quickly co-opted by a very efficient and well-oiled school board machinery. The result is a board of trustees who mostly view their role as representing the school board to the community, as opposed to representing the community to the school board.

The Bluewater District School Board is a case in point. As this article in the Owen Sound newspaper reports, several local action groups are so dismayed by the board's secrecy and lack of response to very serious allegations, such as bullying and plagiarism, that last month they asked the province's premier to call an inquiry, but he has chosen not to respond. Now the groups are planning to approach the provincial ombudsman and, if this last-ditch appeal route fails, they will be out of options. Where is the democracy in all this?

Changing Children’s Lives

A comment to "Doing Our Levelling Best" claims that better teaching methods won't help disadvantaged children do better in school. This short video suggests otherwise.

Technically Addicted

A new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that the average American child spends more than nine hours a day using technology - cell phones, computers, television, iPods, or other electronic devices - sometimes two or more at once.

The heaviest users - those who used technology at least 16 hours a day - did worse in school and were more likely to report that they were bored or sad, did not get along with their parents, or got into trouble at school. The study did not address the question of whether heavy use of technology caused these problems or resulted from them.

Do you know what your kid is doing right now?