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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Summer Matters
School's out for the summer, and many Ontario parents are uneasy about their children's academic status since their working-to-rule teachers didn't issue report cards. These parents should take a look at our schoolproofing site - it contains a wealth of information about good, inexpensive resources that can be used to tutor kids in reading and math.
The summer is a great time for catching up. For one thing, the tutoring can be done in the morning or in odd moments at your mutual convenence when your kids aren't exhausted after a long day of fun at school. And for another, your teaching is not being constantly undone by the competing methods used by your kids' well-meaning (but misguided) teachers.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Trying to get blood from a stone
WrightsLaw is a very valuable website for the parents of struggling students in that it contains very extensive resources for parents about special education law, education law, and advocacy for children with disabilities. Tom Berend sent in a link to this page which helps parents understand the point of view of school staff - who basically see your child as the problem (as opposed to, for example, the curriculum, the teaching methods, or the amount of time spent on academics). According to the Wrights, "Once you understand the beliefs and perceptions of the school staff, you will be in a stronger position. You are more likely to accomplish your objective. When you understand how school people think and what they believe, you'll be able to generate "win-win solutions" that meet your child's needs -- and theirs".
Personally, I'm not sure there's much point in trying to negotiate a school-based solution - after all, you can't get blood from a stone - but if you're determined the squeeze the stone anyway, for sure read the linked-to article.
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Sunday at the Movies (North Korea)
This TED talk is not about education particularly, except for the question of when it's right for a teacher to tell his or her students the truth, but it's very moving and offers an insight into life in North Korea.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Guided Discovery
Often when there is a very polarized debate - for example, between the proponents of discovery math and the proponents of rote learning - both sides are partly right and partly wrong. Click here for John Mighton's take on the debate. And click here for a posting on our blog from several years back that cited research showing that while direct instruction was better than unassisted discovery learning, a third method was better than both of them. That third method, which John Mighton calls "guided discovery", uses scaffolded tasks that provide sufficient support for the students to make discoveries that lead to deeper conceptual understanding. Of course, I'm sure John Mighton will agree there is a time for practice and drill, for example when it comes to learning things like number facts.
JUMP Math has developed wonderful - and inexpensive - teaching materials for home and school. H/T CD
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Governments are more powerful than teachers unions - but only if they choose to exercise their power
The sound of all the rattling teachers' sabres has got quite deafening in Ontario. After a fraught spring, with strategic strikes and workings to rule (including a refusal to issue report cards), it's looking like full-fledged war in September. Judging by the letters to the editor and the radio phone-in shows, the man on the street is fed up with fat-cat teachers and wonders why the government doesn't just rein them in.
This column from the Hamilton Spectator explains the political realities and makes the point that "as things stand, there is virtually no government that will ever give enough to satisfy the teacher union demands. And the province simply cannot afford to keep paying." The suggested answer is expanded school choice as "a useful pressure valve to undercut the overwhelming power the teachers unions have over government and parents."
The teachers' unions ought to be a bit careful. If they push the Ontario government too hard, they could force the government to bring in more school choice, for example charter schools, in order to clip the unions' wings. Likewise, if the teachers' unions push parents too hard, they could exert powerful pressure on the government to give them schools, for example charter schools, that are havens of labour peace. H/T TB
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How many valedictorians does it take to change a lightbulb?
First there was grade inflation and Ontario Scholar inflation (currently more than 60% of graduates), and now there is valedictorian inflation. In Dublin, Ohio, a town with three high schools, this year there were fully 222 valedictorians. more
Next thing you know, all high school graduates will be automatically granted a degree (suggestion: BS = Bachelor of School).
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Vaccinations and Autism
For a while there, lots of people thought that some autism was being caused by vaccinations, and now the pendulum has swung against this notion, with scorn being rained down on those benighted individuals who cling to the idea. For a counterpoint, here's what Dr. Norman Doidge has to say on the subject in his latest book The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable discoveries and recoveries from the frontiers of neuroplasticity (from the endnotes).
"We often hear in the media that all medical experts think that vaccinations offer no risk, are safe, and couldn't possibly harm a child. The mainstream medical position is far more nuanced. The Centers for Disease Control publish a thirty-four-page 'Guide to Vaccine Contraindications and Precautions'. Contraindications is a medical term for situations in which an intervention should not be used or its use should be altered, such as for people who have had significant or or life-threatening reactions to the vaccine or to a component of it; for people who have abnormal immune systems or certain infections; or for those who have had adverse reactions before, among other situations. The general medical consensus is that vaccines are sometimes harmful for some individuals, and some have been taken off the market for this reason. The key question for autism is, might some potentially autistic children qualify for precautions or contraindications, and have these children specifically been studied? Herbert describes what these children look like in Autism Revolution. Some experts say that this subgroup has not been studied in relation to vaccinations. Dr. David Amaral, director of research at the University of California, Davis, MIND Institute, one of the world's leading research institutes on autism and inflammation, said (in a recent PBS special) of children at risk for autism, 'Vaccinations for those children actually may be the environmental factor that tips them over the edge of autism. And I think it is incredibly important still, to try and figure out what, if any, vulnerabilities in a small subset of children might make them at risk for having certain vaccinations.' The new science of vaccinomics, which aims to develop personalized vaccines tailored to a person's genetic profile and individual medical history, acknowledges that our current one-size-fits-all approach to vaccines is less than optimal, and that for some people, some current vaccines may be ineffective, and for other people some may be harmful. See M. W. Moyer, 'Vaccinomics: Scientists are devising your personal vaccine,' Scientific American (June 24, 2010)."
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Summer Time and the Learning is Easy
School's out this Friday and an extra-long (10 weeks) summer vacation stretches ahead. Savvy parents can take advantage of this school-free zone to do enriching activities with their kids - activities that nourish the development of vocabulary and general knowledge. Click here and here and here for lists of cool things to do with your kids between trips to the library.
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Educational Technology Lets the Genie Out of the Bottle
For hundreds of years, people have hailed each new technological advance as the silver bullet that was going to revolutionize education. Perhaps the invention of paper was the first eureka moment, but then along came things like horn books, ferules, magic lanterns, slates, chalkboards, pencils, stereoscopes, slide and film projectors, radios, ballpoint pens, mimeographs, slide rules, televisions, audio and videocassettes, photocopiers, overhead projectors, calculators, computers, interactive whiteboards, clickers, laptops, and i-Pads. We're still waiting for the revolution.
This article provides an insight into why this is so. The article describes what happened when a technological advance (computers that could accommodate multiple mouses) was introduced in India. The trial went well - the experimental schools had capable teachers and principles and the researches lent massive support - but later on when the multiple mouses technology was introduced into less idealized circumstances, it soon broke down and was put aside, with the only result being wasted time and resources.
The author concludes as follows.
"In other words, technologies don’t have fixed additive effects. Rather, they magnify existing social forces, which themselves can be good, bad, or neutral. For instance, administrators rarely allocate enough resources to adapt curricula or train teachers, and this problem is worse in lower-budget schools. Where teachers don’t know how to incorporate digital tools appropriately, there is little capacity for the technology to amplify.
"And what about computers outside of school? What happens when children are left to learn on their own with digital gadgets, as so many tech evangelists insist we should do? Here technology amplifies the children’s propensities. To be sure, children have a natural desire to learn and play and grow. But they also have a natural desire to distract themselves with Angry Birds. Digital technology amplifies both of these appetites. The balance between them differs from child to child, but on the whole, distraction seems to win out when there’s no adult guidance.
"This is exactly what economists Robert Fairlie and Jonathan Robinson found in a randomized controlled trial of laptops distributed to some California students but not others: Those with laptops saw no improvement “on a host of educational outcomes, including grades, standardized test scores, credits earned, attendance, and disciplinary actions,” though they did use the laptops for social media and video games. That is, if you provide an all-purpose technology that can be used for learning and entertainment, children choose entertainment. Technology by itself doesn’t undo that inclination – it amplifies it." H/T TB