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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
School-Homing
It probably was intended for April 1, but this March 29 article in the satirical on-line publication The Onion is devoted to a recent U.S. Department of Education report on the increasing number of parents who are school-homing - that is, choosing to have their children raised at school rather than at home. These parents have accepted that educators are the experts on child-raising and are better equipped to instill the right values, provide proper nutrition, teach about safe sex, and so forth. School-homing parents believe it's not really parents' job to raise their own children.
The only fly in the ointment is the many short-sighted voters who oppose tax increases that would allow schools to take on even more child-rearing responsibilities. Though school-homing is working well for millions of busy parents, the lack of funding may be responsible for the up-tick in the number of students being prison-homed.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The Only Kids Parents Have
In this powerful video, Howard Fuller argues that educators should stop making excuses and accept the responsibility to educate all of their students. After the video has finished playing, a number of related clips can be accessed by clicking on the thumbnails along the bottom.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A New Episode for The Sopranos
Canadian teachers' unions would never be this thuggish. It is New Jersey, after all.
Instead, they put paper bags over their heads and throw water on the Minister of Education.
HT to Mark H and Malkin
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
April Poll Question
The results of the last poll question:
"Have you ever paid for tutoring for your child, either in home or at an outside centre like Kumon or Oxford?"
Yes 61%
No 39%
Total votes: 51
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Ravitch is Wrong
Diane Ravitch is a prominent education reformer who recently repudiated her support of accountability and school choice. The media, who love conversions on the road to Damascus, have been eating up her message, and status quo educators have been making hay while the sun shines. Now, however, comes a cloud....
After reposting Stuart Buck's five-part critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book, Jay Greene writes: "The only conclusion I can draw after reading Stuart's critiques is that Diane Ravitch's new book is not a serious piece of scholarship. I do not know (and I do not care) why a normally serious education historian would write such a book. The only thing that matters here is that much of what she has to say is wrong. Unless and until she or someone on her behalf addresses the issues that Stuart has raised, I think we can dismiss this unserious book and the people who peddle it."
Here is the five-part critique (read from the bottom up).
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Doing Less With More
Click here to access CBC's cool interactive statistics on Canadian education. Looking at 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available from Statistics Canada, the CBC reports that spending on schools rose 24.6% between 1999 and 2005, while the student/educator ratio dropped in every province except BC. Given that student achievement has flatlined or declined slightly during the same period according to most indicators, the increase in spending does not appear to have accomplished anything.
Here is the per-student spending by province in 2005.
Nunavut $106,676
Northwest Territories 75,756
Yukon 15,837
Manitoba 9,394
Alberta 9,346
Ontario 9,267
Canada 9,040
Saskatchewan 9,031
BC 8,960
Quebec 8,663
New Brunswick 8,653
Newfoundland & Labrador 8,075
Nova Scotia 7,728
PEI 7,583
There does not appear to be any correlation between the amount of per-pupil spending and student achievement, given that the highest-scoring provinces are usually Alberta, followed by BC and Quebec.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Finnish Sisu
Guest Blog by Bev Koski, SQE Supporter and Canadian of Finnish Origin
This BBC article on why Finnish schools do so well shows that on the surface there are many similarities with Canadian schools - for example, the many dedicated teachers helping struggling students. Nothing leaps out as obviously superior in Finnish schools, and it seems that the journalist noticed this as well. In one of the videos he repeatedly asks, "What is the secret of Finnish schools?" There are lots of different answers and theories, and of course there is never just one single factor. But here is my take on the crucial cultural difference that undergirds the success of Finnish schools.
Finns are socialists. In Canada, for example, the Finns were very active in bringing in the eight-hour work day and unions, and in the 1920's they tried to bring in pension plans (although this was too radical for the government of the day). Also in Canada, meeting halls and community centres were copied from Finnish community centres and sports halls (which were always some of the first buildings Finns constructed when they settled somewhere). At the beginning of the last century, Finnish women were already practising birth control, although it was unheard of elsewhere.
Because of this culture of socialism, in Finland everyone is treated the same. For example, heavy drinking and alcoholism are a big problem in Finland, and so drivers with even the smell of alcohol on their breath are automatically sent to jail for three months. Some time ago, the president of the country received this punishment!
Finns have a love - almost a reverence - for learning. For example, in Finland there are radio broadcasts in Latin for the many Finns who choose to study the language. Finns understand that their children are their future and so they are determined to give Finnish children the very best. They would never think of letting someone's child down. The Finnish educational system reflects their strong ties to one another, their deep commitment to education, and their commitment to social justice.
I see little or no evidence of this kind of devotion to the children and the good of the country in the Canadian education system. The teachers' unions, the bureaucracies, the faculties of education, the textbook publishers - all seem to be focused on using the system to benefit their own interests. There is no vision that we are all in this together and that when one organization takes advantage of another, it drags everyone down - including itself ultimately.
The Finns, as you probably know, fought off the attempted Soviet occupation in 1939. They were short of weapons, so at times they had to fight with sticks and rocks. The Finns felt the attempted Russian invasion was wrong - plain and simple - and so they fought. "Sisu" is a Finnish word that loosely translated means strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity - the ability to sustain an action against the odds.
Sisu to all of you at SQE!
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Speak Only When Spoken To?
Conventional Wisdom
Toddlers' language acquisition depends on how much exposure they have had to spoken language since they were babies.
NurtureShock Wisdom
Toddlers' language acquisition depends on how often their vocalizations have been responded to since they were babies.
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Everyone agrees that early language advantage is desirable, since toddlers' language proficiency strongly predicts their grade 3 language skills, including reading, spelling, and other measures of verbal ability. For a long time, people thought that it was enough just to surround babies and toddlers with language, for example putting them in front of the TV for hours every day to look at videos like the Baby Einstein line. But it turns out that the more hours kids watched these videos, the worse their vocabulary.
The trick is that the main driver of language acquisition is not how much language young kids hear, but rather how often their vocalizations are responded to. In Cornell's B.A.B.Y. (Behavioral Analysis of Beginning Years) lab, an interesting experiment illustrates how powerful "turn-taking" conversations are. For part of the experimental period, mothers reacted normally to their babies, and for part of the time they were cued to respond to their infants every time the baby made a voiced sound. Here's what happened (p. 213).
"In the first ten minutes (that baseline natural period when the mom responded as she might at home), the average child vocalized 25 times. The rate leapt to 55 times in the middle ten minutes, when the mom was being coached to 'go ahead' by Goldstein. The complexity and maturity of the babble also shot up dramatically; almost all vowels were now fully voiced, and the syllable formation improved. Canonical syllables, previously infrenquent, now were made half the time, on average.
"To my ear, it was stunning - the children literally sounded five months older, during the second ten-minute period, than they had in the first."
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This concludes the series on the lessons in NurtureShock. I hope you found them as interesting and thought-provoking as I did.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
“Math Gene” Myth
SQE director, John Bachmann, has a great article published this month in Design Product News, a trade publication for design engineers.
"Math gene" myth threatens future of Canadian industry describes the need for effective mathematics instruction in our schools as a key component to ensuring "Canadian manufacturing's survival and exploiting any competitive advantages that we may have as an industry and as a country."
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
An Intervention That Actually Works
Conventional Wisdom
Like intelligence, self-control is fixed.
NurtureShock Wisdom
Like intelligence, self-control can and should be taught.
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Children are subjected to all kinds of well-intentioned interventional programs in school, like driver training and drug resistance education, but few have any lasting effect. It seems human behaviour is incredibly stubborn.
However, there is at least one exception to this rule: Tools of the Mind. This program develops young children's ability to regulate their own behaviour - emotional, social, and cognitive - through a series of carefully-scaffolded activities, and it actually works. Here are a few examples of program activities.
- At the beginning of play time, each child is helped to make his or her individual "play plan". For example, if the theme is fire station, a child might choose to be the 911 operator, and he or she is expected to stick to this role for the next 45 minutes.
- The children are taught how to talk themselves through their activities. For example, when they are learning the letter 'C', they all say in unison, 'Start at the top and go around" as they make the letter. And their self-analysis is honed by being asked to identify which of their versions is the best.
- Simon Says requires the children to pay close attention and exercise self-restraint.
- During reading period, the children are paired up and they take turns reading and listening. They often are expected to critique each others' work.
The result is classes that are well behaved, self-organized, and self-directed. And their reading and math scores go through the roof! This excerpt from the book explains why Tools of the Mind is so effective. (pp. 169-170)
"The foremost expert on executive function in young children is Dr. Adele Diamond at the University of British Columbia. A few years ago, she was approached at a conference by [one of the developers of Tools of the Mind], who told her about the experiment in the Passaic preschool. Diamond wondered if the success of Tools might be because it was exercising children's executive funciton skills. So Diamond went to Passaic to visit.
"Diamond recalled. 'In the regular classes, the children were bouncing off the walls. In the Tools classrooms, it was like a different planet. I've never seen anything like it.' She decided to return the next year and test the children's executive functioning. 'I could see the difference with my owneyes, but I wanted hard data,' she said.
"To do this, Diamond ran the Passaic children through a number of the executive function computer tasks. She found a huge gap between the regular kids and the Tools kids on executive function. On one task, the regular kids tested not much above chance, but the Tools kids scored at 84%. On a very difficult task, only one-quarter of the regular kids could complete the test, while over half the Tools kids completed it.
"'The more the test demanded high executive function,' Diamond noted, 'the bigger the gap between the kids.'"