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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Ontario teachers’ unions risk losing the battle AND losing the war
Now the Ontario teachers' unions are threatening to go on strike. Whenever teachers strike, some parents start thinking about alternatives - private schools or home schools or maybe moving to a jurisdiction that isn't on strike. I note that there are now fully 996 private Ontario schools registered with the Ministry of Education. I predict that we'll very soon polevault over 1,000.
The teachers' unions are strong favourites to lose their battle with the government - you can't get blood from a stone. They also are certain to lose market share, as parents vote with their feet.
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Ontario’s teachers’ unions risk losing the public’s support
"Let them eat cake", Marie Antoinette supposedly said - a remark that has come to symbolize the bubble that power creates around itself. And perhaps the Ontario elementary teachers' union is falling victim to the same syndrome, as it gears up for strike action. "Let them take time off work" or "Let them pay for babysitters", we might imagine them saying.
I'm not suggesting that Ontario parents will rise up and send the teachers' union leaders to the guillotine, but I am suggesting that the unions may be dangerously out of touch with reality. There have been a lot of letters about the teacher revolt in my local paper, the Waterloo Region Record. Here's a typical one from today's paper.
"I am a college educated 30-year-old working in the private sector and have many years of experience in my field, and am even over qualified. And yet I am paid a little more than half the average individual income in Ontario (before taxes).
"Whether you choose to accept this or not, this will be our new reality; the glory days are over and the economy is struggling. Let us not forget why Bill 115, the Putting Students First Act, was introduced. It was because the unions and employers could not agree, and it was affecting the general public, who have no choice in the matter.
"Why should someone's job dissatisfaction hold the rest of the province hostage? Why do the rights of the few trump the rights of the many?
"If you are unhappy with your job compensation, working conditions, benefits, or any other work-related issue, I encourage you to seek employment elsewhere, as I am sure the vast majority of people in this province would be more than happy to step in and perform your duties while receiving a fraction of what you're currently accepting.
"Let us never forget that employment in these troubled times is a gift and a pleasure not everyone benefits from. Therefore, we should be thankful to be employed and not greedy for more when there is no more to give.
"Welcome back to reality. This is how the majority of people survive. We are not blessed with large salaries, inclusive benefits, sick days and bonuses.
"We go to work every day thankful we have a job.
"My job security is showing up on time and doing my job the best I can every day. What's yours?"
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Merry Christmas from Direct Instruction
Funnix Beginning Reading, Funnix 2, and Funnix Beginning Math are excellent Direct Instruction programs that normally must be purchased. However, in December all three programs are available at no charge: the math program for the first half of the month and the reading programs for the latter half of the month. Funnix. H/T SS
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Beware the Primary International Baccalaureate Program
PERSONAL STORY BY MONIKA GUCMA
I have taught both in Canada and abroad, in a variety of settings, and as a result I have been able to make some observations as to what works best: in one word, STRUCTURE. There are lots of opinions about what motivates students and makes learning fun, and for some, certain formats will undoubtedly be more appealing than others but, in essence, learning is about the ability to learn new information, retain new information, and be able to process new information accurately and efficiently. To achieve this outcome, sometimes rote learning is necessary - practice and memorization.
Recently, I was called upon to teach via the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program (IB – PYP). I expected this to be a very positive learning environment - based on the reputation of the high school (IB) program, but I was wrong.
The main goal of the primary IB is to make kids interested in learning, especially to have them essentially discover new learning and subsequently apply it to a project. On top of this, the new knowledge must be towards a greater global good. Basing the learning upon six transdisciplinary themes (Who We Are; Where We Are in Time and Place; How We Express Ourselves; How the World Works; How We Organize Ourselves; and Sharing the Planet) some of the leitmotifs to be experienced in each six week period are: we are all different but equal; we live on one planet an must care for it; we are all here to help one another; and we need to make and design things that will help the world's poor.
Although the program's goals sound very nice and may help to generate caring and compassionate global citizens, I wonder how able the graduates of the primary IB will be to execute their desired actions. Only the best of the best will be able to self-educate to the point that they will be able to use and apply calculus to engineer a bridge or design machinery to build a well... Unfortunately, the discovery approach doesn't work for math or for language, since both disciplines need a solid foundation that makes possible calculus, persuasive writing, and other advanced skills.
A typical six-week IB unit might have the theme of Sharing the Planet focus on recycling as a central idea. All reading, research, information, and calculations would then revolve around the theme of recycling, with the children deeply immersed in discovering as much information on the topic as possible. For example, they would be asked to state what they want to learn, and perhaps decide to make a calculation of the number of recycling bins necessary in a particular scenario - the idea being that the numbers involved would be large enough that the children would get so tired of adding and adding and adding that they would discover multiplication, learn it, and apply it to facilitate their calculation. Of course, this might work for a few kids, but most would, unfortunately, just fail to learn multiplication.
My own child, who was part of this system for a year in grade 3, is extremely well versed in building structures out of Popsicle sticks. Furthermore, she understands the lives of pioneers and she is good at making puppets and making them act. However, she cannot understand word problems, subtract three-digit numbers with zeroes as place holders, or string a sentence together grammatically or with proper spelling. Happily, my daughter is now being home-schooled - and all of a sudden all these things have started to make sense to her.
The bottom line: if your school is thinking about adopting the primary IB, tell them to forget it. It doesn't work!
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Putting the cart before the horse
There's a recent article in The Atlantic magazine about "math programs [that] strive to teach students to think like 'little mathematicians' before giving them the analytic tools they need to actually solve problems." This emphasis on critical thinking has now been enshrined in the USA's new Common Core Standards - which have now been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.
We have written many times about the folly of putting the cart before the horse by insisting on critical thinking and slighting memorization and practice (here, here, here). This belief system has no empirical or research justification. Hundreds of thousands of children are being cheated out of a decent math foundation because of it.
Can anyone explain why education leaders persist in this folly?
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (The Adolescent Brain)
Don't understand why your teenager behaves they way he or she does? Watch this video and all will become clear. link
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Where in the world?
Today's feature is a geography website that has lots more than maps - time zones, currencies, flags, travel photos and videos, distances, latitude and longitude, and more. It also has a daily quiz with a $100 prize. The new quiz will go up in a few minutes - at 8:55 am today. Good luck!
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
I’m moving to Lyme, New Hampshire
You have to read this blog posting about the school of your dreams! I would have been skeptical about character education before I read it, but all of a sudden I'm a convert. Core Knowledge and Core Virtue: an unbeatable combination.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Taming your inner expert
Here's another excerpt from Practice Perfect - a wonderful book because it clearly lays out the principles of effective practice. Lots of people practise things over and over and never improve their performance - think of golfers, for example, or bridge players - and that's because they just keep on practising their mistakes. As the book points out, "practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. For example, you have been shampooing your hair for decades and yet you are not getting any better at it." If you want to improve, it's critically important that you practise correctly. Although the emphasis in Practice Perfect is on improving teachers' pedagogical skills, the book's rules apply to virtually every area of human endeavour. Today's excerpt (pp 126-127) tells teachers to limit the amount of feedback they provide.
- "You want to be really good at tennis. Always have. Now you've come into a small inheritance, and so you've hired 'Super Coach' to help. He arrives wearing a Bjorn Borg headband and a cerulean blue Rafael Nadal shirt - a steely-eyed mix of retro and up-to-date. He knows everything. If you can download his knowledge, you will be the player you have always dreamed of being. But a few minutes into your first session, everything is going wrong. 'I am going to tell you one more time,' he says, as you stand like a child at the baseline. 'There are nine things you must do to hit a forehand. Only nine.' Still, as hard as you try, you can't remember them all, even though he reminds you of them over and over. You focus on getting your racket back early (#2) and he berates you for not being sideways to the net (#4). You do that, and your footwork (#3) comes under assault. You begin to think about your footwork, and he reminds you of the imperative of the follow-through (#7). 'Idiot,' you're pretty sure you hear him mutter as he bends to pick up the balls lining your side of the net.
- "Turns out, knowing what to do is a long way from doing it; in fact, knowledge can get in the way of learning when it isn't doled out in manageable pieces. This is Super Coach's problem: asking you to pay attention to nine things at once is all but impossible. But he is not alone; most people - the three of us included! - are inclined to give people too much feedback at once. When performers or employees or team members or children are trying to concentrate on more than one or two specific things at once, their attention becomes fractured and diluted. Ironically, this can result in reduced performance.
- "One of the keys to coaching, then, is to develop the self-discipline to focus on fewer things. Though you clearly see 15 things wrong with your daughter's rendition of the 'Moonlight Sonata,' you tell her about only the two most important and hold off on everything else. This is especially difficullt because it feels good to be the coach and to have so much to share. In the end, though, you have to choose between being an impressive boss - one who knows everything - and an effective boss: one who helps a team member focus on the few things he most needs to develop. Sharing everything is a fool's errand. If your game is going to improve, you are going to have to march right over and tell Super Coach as much."
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If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast
In the Kennedy School report that I cited a few days ago, there is an interesting passage that sheds light on what is happening in the rest of the world - a shift that is below the radar of most people.
"Some would excuse the mediocre U.S. performance by claiming that it provides a more equal education to a much more diverse population than other countries do. It is claimed that test scores in the United States are lower than those in many other countries because they are not providing an education to all their students. That argument might have made some sense fifty or seventy-five years ago, but it is a seriously dated view of the world.
"The data included in this report come from students who are between the ages of 8 and 15, and in virtually all the 49 countries participating in this study, only tiny percentages of the population within these age cohorts are not in school. And when it comes to high school completion rates, the United States, with a 72 percent graduation rate within four years of entering high school, performs no better than the average industrialized nation. Indeed, the countries that eclipse the United States in math and science have done it while also expanding dramatically their high school graduation and college enrollment rates, many reaching levels noticeably higher than those in the United States.
"Educating a broad swatch of the population does not necessarily prevent high levels of performance."