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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Educators should not be forcing their students to use crutches - or wheelchairs for that matter
The other day, there was a lament in the Globe and Mail over Canadian students' woeful lack of geography knowledge. This is something I remarked when I was tutoring kids in reading (see this article from our newsletter archives), finding that my students' abysmal knowledge of the world seriously hampered their ability to understand what they were reading. Another article from our archives gives some insights on how important geographical knowledge is when it comes to understanding history, economics, international relations, literature, and much more.
Educators' lack of attention to geography is part of an overall trend to skimp on teaching factual knowledge. I mean, after all, you can always look it up if you need to, right? But, just as with calculators and spell check and all the other new crutches that let people get by without a solid foundation of skills and knowledge, it's better to have this stuff at your fingertips. It's true that with crutches you can laboriously get to your destination, but it's not as good as if you can stride there confidently without help.
When it comes to knowledge of the world, a lot of Canadians are on crutches - and then there are the ones in wheelchairs! Changes to provincial curricula are needed if our crippled children are to throw away their crutches and walk.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Milwaukee)
This is a nine-minute interview with the principal researcher into the Milwaukee school voucher program. His research team concluded that Milwaukee's school vouchers are having a modestly-positive effect on reading and school graduation rates.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The requirement of teacher certification keeps out good teachers
Here's a video to warm the cockles of your heart. And I can't resist pointing out that this teacher could not teach in Ontario because she's not certified.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Mistakes Happen
This advice column appeared in this morning's Mop and Pail and I couldn't resist bringing it to your attention. To me it encapsulates the arrogance and blindness in Ontario public education - and the media's ongoing gullibility towards educators' blandishments.
The parent is complaining that his child's report cards contain spelling and grammar errors and the school won't do anything about it. The columnist swallows the party line hook, line, and sinker - you know, talk to the teacher respectfully, follow up with the principal, if nothing happens give these hard-working educators a pass, this is not that big a deal, chill....
We all know you can't fight city hall (in this case, city school I guess). The parent will never get anywhere. So the question becomes - does it matter if there are spelling and grammar errors? Personally, I think so - because it strongly suggests that the teacher is making similar mistakes in the classroom. In my opinion, this is not good for students. But that's just me.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
A Wealth of Words
There's a very interesting article by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. in the latest City Journal. It's on the long side, and those who don't like reading from the monitor might want to consider printing it out or clicking on the "listen" button in the right-hand column. It's definitely worth plowing through.
Dr. Hirsch is summarizing his main thesis that the most important determinant of success is vocabulary size - meaning that the best thing we can do for our kids other than feed and clothe them and give them morals is ensure they have large vocabularies. It's definitely worth a read and, for what it's worth, I agree with Dr. Hirsch.
For me, the most interesting part is about two-thirds of the way down when he talks about a French experiment where 2000 disadvantaged preschoolers were given very systematic instruction and, amazingly, the two-year-olds had fully caught up seven years later. If Ontario preschools would teach their students this way and could demonstrate that they are mitigating the socio-economic gap (instead of worsening it as they currenty are), then I would change my position on full-day kindergarten. H/T Chas
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Playing politics with taxpayers’ money
In an ideal world, the people who run the country would do their level best to be responsible stewards of taxpayers' money. That's certainly how the people who run my neighbourhood association behave, also the people who run my bridge club. However, in my experience - possibly because of their much attenuated face-to-face accountability - many politicians make their spending decisions on the basis of things like re-election prospects or even personal ideology - as opposed to what's best for the country as a whole.
This editorial in the Wall Street Journal provides a case in point. It cites the repeated research evidence that Head Start (a program for disadvantaged preschoolers) has virtually no lasting effect, and then reports that the US government has actually increased Head Start spending. Worse, the government would apparently prefer to suppress the evidence that Head Start doesn't work - releasing the latest evaluation more than a year late on the Friday afternoon before Christmas.
Perhaps someone can explain to me why the US government clings to its discredited Head Start program, spending $180 billion on it to date, even though they know it's a waste of money. And while you're at it, please also explain why the Ontario government continues to support its expensive all-day junior kindergarten program, even though the province can't afford it and there is absolutely zero evidence it will do a bit of good.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Cupboard Love
The Huffington Post has asked us to blog for them, and so here is our first offering. It's about the ingratitude of the Ontario teachers' unions, and you're welcome to read it - although you already know my thoughts on this topic. But what is really interesting is the comments. It's a revelation to me how rude and ignorant most of them are - it must be because the commenters were given inferior public school educations, poor things. 
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Late to bed, early to rise
It's Monday morning and teenagers all over Canada are struggling out of bed, grumpy and sleepy and not very interested in learning. Click here for an article by cognitive scientist Dan Willingham on the effects of sleep deprivation - why teenagers are especially susceptible, how it affects their learning, and some measures for mitigating the problem.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Space Station)
This is a fascinating tour of the international space station in orbit around our planet. YouTube link. H/T JE
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
The gorilla in the picture
Today, I'm following up on the video where you were to count how many passes the white team made. Did you notice the gorilla? If you didn't - and about half of people don't - you demonstrate our limited attention budget. People can focus on only one thing at a time.
I came across this example - and many other fascinating examples of "systematic errors in the thinking of normal people...traced...to the design of the machinery of cognition" in Thinking Fast and Slow, a book that explains that humans use two discrete systems that drive the way we think and the way we make choices. We mostly rely on System 1, a kind of automatic pilot that is fast, intuitive, and emotional", but we can choose to engage System 2, a slower, more deliberative, and more logical mode.
When you were counting the passes in the video, you were using System 2. Quoting from page 23:
- The often-used phrase 'pay attention' is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of attention that you can allocate to activities, and if you try to go beyhond your budget, you will fail. It is the mark of effortful activities that they interfere with each other, which is why it is difficult or impossible to conduct several at once. You could not compute the product of 17 X 24 while making a left turn into dense traffic, and you certainly should not try. You can do several things at once, but only if they are easy and undemanding. You are probably safe carrying on a conversation with a passenger while driving on an empty highway, and many parents have discovered, perhaps with some guilt, that they can read a story to a child while thinking of something else.