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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Our Home and Native Land
Monday, the first day of the week, and thus the perfect day to start off a week-long discussion thread. Recently in our comments section, Mirka has been repudiating much educational research because it wasn't Canadian. So, I would like our readers to weigh in on whether the only research that Canadian educators ought to heed has to be done in-house.
Some questions to think about.
1. Are Canadian children significantly different from children in other jurisdictions?
2. Are Canadian education systems significantly different from other education systems?
3, How much Canadian education research is there?
4. Do other professions reject the research from other jurisdictions?
5. Is it possible to correct for differences in other jurisdictions and draw valid conclusions?
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Sunday at the Movies (The 100,000-student classroom)
Most educators advocate smaller class sizes - 15 students or less - but here's an educator who's definitely heading in the other direction!
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More Education Reform Ideas
Today's post is an attempt to find something we can all agree upon, namely that California gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly is barking up the wrong tree in planning a campaign to identify the worst teacher in the state and then donate $250,000 to the teacher's school board to fire him or her. more The comments to this article are not exactly complimentary (although, being on the Huffington Post, one would be foolish to expect otherwise).
So, readers, weigh in. Do you think Mr. Donnelly is on to something? Do you think the public is so enraged by terrible teachers' continued tenure that they will vote for a politician who goes after them tooth and nail? Also, please feel free to comment on the sidebar issue of whether transgendered students should be allowed to use washrooms of either sex.
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Teaching Anti-Conscientiousness
Yesterday's blog was about the importance of conscientiousness - the fact that students who try to do a good job even when there's nothing in it for them tend to succeed in life. So how well do schools inculcate conscientiousness in their students?
Not very well, according to this article sent in by Tom Berend, at least when it comes to urban youth in poverty. Most schools have a tough time handling these kids, especially as they reach adolescence and beyond, and so the schools have developed coping strategies - strategies that allow the schools to manage the students with a minimum of flare-ups and confrontations and strategies that allow the students to "slip and slide through school".
The unfortunate consequence of the coping strategies is that the students are being taught habits that will make it virtually impossible for them to get and keep jobs. Here are a few of the thoughts and behaviours that are inadvertently inculcated in students.
- All you have to do is show up and, if you have a good excuse, you don't even have to do that.
- You just have to go through the motions: you don't need training; you don't need to make up for missed work; mistakes don't matter; and you're done at quitting time.
- You automatically get a raise after you have been in the job a set amount of time.
- The work is fun and easy.
- It's not your problem if the company isn't doing well.
Far from trying to inculcate conscientiousness in their students, according to this article urban schools are actually inculcating anti-conscientiousness. And the longer students stay in school, the more deeply engrained the habits become and the more unemployable the students.
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Read today’s blog conscientiously
For some time now, it has been accepted in education research circles that students' "grit" (things like perseverance, attention to detail, self-discipline, determination, etc.) is a strong predictor of their life outcomes. However, it has turned out to be tricky to measure "grit".
Now comes a real seat-of-the-pants measure that seems to be an excellent and easy-to-calculate measure - namely, the percentage of responses students make on surveys. Click here for more on this new measure, and be sure to read the comments under the article as well, as they contain more detail and lead to more information about how to nurture conscientiousness in children.
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For once, it isn’t about the money
Click here for a story about a school board in Michigan that was spending almost $20,000 per pupil every year - yet had schools that were infested with rodents, had holes in the ceilings and walls, and had disgusting bathrooms. I suppose the usual suspects will just say the schools were underfunded, but you have to wonder how much money is enough. It's also worth noting that the school district was one of two school districts that have been turned over to an outside agency which has converted the schools to all charter schools.
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All the news that’s fit to print
Readers' tips continue to pour in faster than I can keep up, so once again here's a Rorschach collection of stories that you're welcome to react to according to your personality characteristics and emotional functioning.
Click here for a scholarly article that provides evidence for the superiority of guided instruction. H/T LH
In Philadelphia, the school board has suspended some union rules, including seniority. H/T DW
In Wisconsin, almost 2,500 students applied for the state's school choice program. H/T DW
Click here for a book review that gives all kinds of information about schooling in four other countries - US, Poland, South Korea, and Finland, concluding that American kids are behind in higher-order thinking skills. H/T TB
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Much education research has a very long nose
The latest addition to our lending library is Teacher Proof by Tom Bennett, a seasoned teacher in England who despairs of the fads that sweep English schools. It does sound as if England is much more gullible about education fads than Canada. Here are a few of the fads that were or are heavily implemented across the pond.
Multiple Intelligences - which resulted in "geography tasks that involved students discussing their feelings about soil erosion, and music teachers attempts to convey Mozart through the medium of mime"
Brain Gym - which trained teachers to rub their 'brain buttons' "(just under my collar bones, if you're getting interested) before a new activity, to activate my 'cognitive centres'
Emotional Intelligence - which believed "that learning could be assisted when students were also coached and directed towards better ways of feeling, relating and valuing"
Learning Styles - which required teachers to cater to students' presumed learning styles and ensure that "no one was left out of the lesson because they preferred to see information in a film (visual) rather than, say, absorb it in the form of Japanese Noh theatre (kinaesthetic)
Thinking Hats - which boosted the power of lateral thinking by having students "imagine that they are wearing a different hat every time they consider a concept"
There are lots more, but you get the idea. All of these fads were sold to teachers on the basis that they had solid backing in the research, but of course this research was very flawed, in ways which the author enumerates. And here's what the author has to say about social sciences research in general.
"In Pinnochio, the wooden hero dreams of being a real boy; Frankenstein hopes to be loved and accepted by his creator as a son; Data in Star Trek wonders what it must be like to be human; in Robert Howard's Conan the Barbarian, the ape pretends to be a king, and smashes every mirror to avoid being reminded that it isn't.
"So too with the social sciences. In its quest to emulate the success of science, it has copied its every quirk, mannerism and accessory, like a child pretending to be its mother by walking around in heels and pearls, or an eager junior sibling clinging to its elder brethren.....They adopt the form of the research paper, but many of them go their own way from there, assuming ridiculous axioms, basing their conduct and methodology on whim, affectation and fancy, prejudice and yearning."
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Sunday at the Movies (Parent Trigger)
So here's an interview with the director of a brand-new documentary, WE THE PARENTS, on the parent trigger, a new concept in the US that allows parents to take drastic measures if their childrens school is not offering an adequate service. YouTube link.
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Privately Better?
Tom Berend sent me this link, which leads to an interesting column about the decline in BC public school enrolment and the incline in BC private school enrolment. After disposing of the grassy knoll theory of a plot on the part of the Fraser Institute to privatize the province's public education system, the author explores the likely reasons for the decline and then gets to the real meat of the situation. As Tom says: "Eventually it comes down to funding. If independent schools save the government $5K per student, then every 200 students is a million bucks year after year - and pretty soon you are talking real money."
Speaking financially, privatized public schools are clearly in the best interests of BC taxpayers. And, of course, if - a big if - private schools offer better service than public schools, privatized public schools are in the best interests of BC students.
The conspiracy theorists frequently dismiss education reforms on the grounds that their proponents have a secret agenda to privatize schools and that this secret agenda is something to worry about.
Is there something awful and scary about having fewer and fewer public school students and more and more private school students? Am I missing something? Please enlighten me.