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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Be careful what you ask for….
The Ontario Government has introduced a new scheme whereby students from low-income families will not have to pay any tuition fees for their post-secondary education. more
This six-year-old School for Thought posting suggests that this is a bad idea and the students will pay for the government's mistake.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Breaking Bad Habits)
This is not about education per se, but it definitely is educational................
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
There, I’ve said it!
As we watch the Donald Trump madness in the US, I - like most normal people - have been wondering what his appeal is. This article offers a plausible answer - people are tired of political correctness.
"Liberal elites may try to conceal some of these “truths: Mexican immigrants are wrecking the country; Muslim immigrants are potential terrorists. But conservative elites conceal others: Trade deals destroy American jobs; big donations affect government policy."
The linked-to article then riffs on the politically-correct notion that most high school graduates should be encouraged to try post-secondary education. Of course, the hard truth is that less than half - perhaps as few as a third - of high school graduates are adequately prepared for higher education. The same goes for Canada, of course, and this is reflected in the high drop-out rates (in some Canadian schools, nearly half of freshman fail to graduate).
At the risk of being politically incorrect and inviting comparisons to Donald Trump, I declare that I believe post-secondary education should be reserved for those who are adequately prepared for it - and its inevitable corollary, students should be required to write common external examinations at the end of grade 12 and post-secondary institutions should be allowed to use student results in making admission decisions.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Tall poppy syndrome
TK writes in from Regina, SK about the local school board's decision to phase out its International Baccalaureate IB) high school program. more
Education leaders are justifying their decision by saying that the IB is too expensive and they will substitute the much-less-expensive and equally-good Advanced Placement (AP) program. Against this, TK says the AP program has been mandated to have identical programming at all eight public high schools and thus it is expected to be much watered down.
Education leaders' second justification is that only eight students had pre-registered for next year's IB program. They fail to mention, however, that this was the direct result of their arbitrary relocation of the program from the two high schools where it was thriving to a downtown high school that has mostly lower-achieving students who are less interested in the IB.
As far as I'm concerned, it's déjà vu all over again. I can't count the number of times I've witnessed the death of a popular high-achieving program or school because it made the other schools look bad.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it
This poster was sent in by CD. It appeared in the latest edition of Professionally Speaking, the magazine of the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT).
When I first became aware of the problems with education back in 1988, I have to say most of these "2016" trends were already in full swing. Project-based learning? Collaborative Learning? Self-Directed Learning" Play-Based Learning? Experiential Learning? They were all being used whole hog and they were all seriously failing their students. And of course this is still true almost 20 years later.
This obliviousness to history is typical of education leaders. How in the world can they still be breathlessly suggesting their excitement over failed fads that are at least 20 years old?
Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a poster in the OCT magazine that pants over trends towards systematic phonics, teacher-led instruction, drill and kill, and very structured classrooms. It's just not going to happen because it doesn't get educators' juices flowing.
The fact that it would get parents' juices flowing is irrelevant.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
King Canute and the Baltimore School Board
Click here for a story from Baltimore that illustrates what seems to me upside-down thinking regarding conventional publicly-funded schools and charter publicly-funded schools. The story concerns a Montessori charter school in a "struggling but gentrifying" neighbourhood that is so good that it is attracting students from wealthier neighbourhoods. By law, the school has to decide admissions by lottery, meaning that something like 90% of its students come from outside the area.
The school's founder wants to be able to accept more local students - she's already asked the city for permission twice - but the Baltimore school board doesn't like this idea because it is worried that the nearby conventional publicly-funded school will lose students and have to close its doors. And, as it happens, the Baltmore school board is in the business of trying to protect its conventional schools from its charter schools - it gives the charters less money, arguing that giving the charters more money will result in under-funding for the conventional schools.
I expect that if the Baltimore school board was instead the Baltimore whale-bone corset company, it would be pulling out all the stops in an effort to force its citizens to continue to wear corsets. But times change, disruption and competition happen, and the smart thing is to accept the new wave and try to stay on top of it. The Baltimore school board should be embracing charter schools, helping them in every way possible, while at the same time leveraging their competition to galvanize its conventional schools into improving their service.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Smorgasbord
My reader tips file overflows.
ADHD Does Not Exist - guaranteed to make you think (see also Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD) H/T DW
A Pilot Program to Pretest and Post-test Ontario Post-Secondary Students H/T DW
Schoolwork, Advocacy Place Strain on Student Activists - suggesting that schools' well-meant efforts to radicalize their students may backfire on the students (see also Ontario's $1.35 million new program to build environmentally-responsible citizens) H/T JD
The Learning Styles Myth Debunked on the Back of a Napkin - adding modalities benefits some students without hurting any H/T JG
If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world H/T TB
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Na, na, na, I can’t hear you
Although I usually find myself in agreement with Margaret Wente, Saturday's column constitutes an exception. In it, Margaret refers to a recent UK study that suggests that both intelligence as well as "non-cognitive components of school success include traits such as self-efficacy and motivation, curiosity, emotional intelligence, conscientiousness, well-being and prosocial behaviour" are substantially heritable, and together they essentially determine school success. The UK study, it is important to stipulate, examined students who had attended publicly-funded schools that are dominated by the currently-fashionable child-centred methods.
I disagree with Margaret because she appears to be assuming that the students' schools were doing everything possible to help their students succeed but failed because they ran up against an impenetrable genetic barrier. For my part, I believe that there is much schools can do to mitigate genetics - things like systematic phonics, direct and sequential instruction, practice, high expectations, structure, and so forth - but for some reasons educators are choosing not to use these measures. I believe that the methods used by most modern schools essentially make no difference to their students' lives - raising the question of why we even bother with school if it is so ineffectual. As Andrew Nikiforuk says in the title of one of his books, "If learning is so natural, why am I going to school?"
Until such time as schools bring in 'unnatural' approaches, I think the jury is still out on the question of whether or not schools can make a difference. It may be that more traditional approaches will help all students equally and do nothing to mitigate the achievement gap - but I don't think so. I think traditional approaches will disproportionately help disadvantaged children, and I would love to find out!
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Sunday at the Movies (Imagination)
This TED talk discusses the reason behind human domination of the earth. H/T JE
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Classic Learning Test
JD has sent in this link to a Classic Learning Test that can be taken by grade 11 or 12 students to see whether they are well prepared for post-secondary education. The test is not so much about whether the student has advanced skills and knowledge but rather whether he has cultivated a thoughtful approach to problems. It takes careful thought and deliberation to succeed on this test, and I'm guessing that many students will fare poorly because they are in the habit of skimming and stabbing.