POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

The questions you pose are a part of history but only half. When Morgan Spurlock did his CNN feature on education America and Finland, the chosen American school was proud of drilling the kids on history ‘facts’ which president didd this. Then the kids gave them 2 finger snaps for getting it right.

The Finnish kids were asked deeper questions. We were taught that history is about the answers to the deeper questions.

Why was it Japan that became the first advanced nation in Asia?

Why did the industrial revolution happen first in England (Belgium actually but small)?

What caused WW1? Which cause is more important? Make the case?

Why did the communists defeat the nationalists in the Chinese civil war?

This is what history is about. You do however need the FACTS FIRST.

I liken it to an IKEA bookshelf. The facts are all the boards and screws laid out in front of you. Without them no bookcase but they still have to be put together. Sense has to be made from them. Applying some existing knowledge plus some reading (the instructions) allows you to finally have a bookcase. Putting facts together and making something out of them is knowledge.

Agree with Doug - facts and a framework to hold them.  But there is something else, and I don’t know how to describe it.

Teaching assistants share howlers on this site:  http://shitmystudentswrite.tumblr.com/  Some of them are plainly just typos, but others give a sense of something missing even as facts are neatly fitted into a framework.  Those ideas seem to come from an alternate reality.

Very naughty lead line MALKIN.

The lead line in your post suggests that the questions you list are some sort of reflection of the curriculum.  Not so.

The questionnaire is the sort that has been around for ever.  I had to write such a test in the 80ies to reflect my knowledge of the world - beyond the curriculum.  It was a measure of my social and literal literacy. The test took eight hours.  If I did not pass I would not get my teacher credentials because I was not an informed citizen of the world.  The only way you could pass was to be someone who read newspapers, followed the news or radio/TV, read weeklies, and occasionally enjoyed documentaries.  And no point at any time did anyone suggest that school was to take care of it.  The measure/assumption was that I was a literate citizen of the world.

My personal results were tremendous - top 2% across America that year.  Much of that is also a result of world travel .

These measures are not a measure of the education system as much as a measure of a person that reflects literacy, family, and travel.

Malkin.  Here is my challenge to you as I met you a few times before you got this bitter.  5 posts celebrating anything on any scale in the edu system in Ontario.  5 posts in August.  Surely that is doable.

cheers,  Mirka

Mirka, it would be great if you would agree to do a guest blog (or two) celebrating some of the good things about the Ontario education system. You are more in touch than I.

Sorry Malkin - the challenge, that you responded to , still stands.  5 positive posts on the edu swamp.  You have to be bored with quoting American nonsense in our progressive country. Canada has eclipsed the American nonsense generations ago.  To be an agent of change has always required that you celebrate what works while you eliminate what does not. The social democracies in Europe got this right and then got the schools right too.  Celebrate what works and change what does not.

Your challenge, should you accept it, is to leave the chicken little diet where the sky is falling and falling and then falling…. ugh….  how does anyone build anything on that? 

I am all about progress and change, I am troubled about some of the same issues that captivate this blog—> that is why I periodically touch down here.

You are the moderator of this blog—you post the subjects and then decide when the conversation is closed.  When is the last time you were in a classroom that purrs and ticks?  I expect it has been decades since you have actually seen the magic. That honestly makes me sad.  Very sad for you and the consumers of this blog .

Idea….. go see what it is all about, how it works, and why it works.  Get into classrooms again…  Stop with the dinosaur dissertations. 

we need you to be better,
Mirka

Who’s “we” anyway? The OSSTF? OECTA? 

WE would love to have effective teaching practice that WE promote in classrooms, but WE end up tutoring the kids that don’t get what they needed in the first place. WE provide a free remedial program for teachers and parents on this website.  (Mirka, you might want to view the Tuesday at the Movies video that follows this day’s post.) 

When I read this post, I thought it was about what E D. Hirsch Jr. would call cultural literacy, not curriculum.  For instance, my kids would not know what that little yellow plastic spindle adapter was for (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45_rpm_adapter) to play 45 rpm records—hey, what are 45 rpm records anyway?

Hello Doretta,

Nice to hear from you.  Happy to see that you are still part of the good fight.

Many of us have been at this for far too many decades… with little to show for it. 

Kudos to Malkin for posting what I wrote.  While my ruminations absolutely reflect my particular radar—To be honest—- I was deliberately “kicking the tires” in terms of how legit this blog is about open discussion.  I am happy to see that post that challenge are posted.  Kudos to the moderator!

I remember many years ago that you folks would have regular meetings—this was the day that you still sent your newsletters via snail mail -on paper.  Cannot do justice to how much impact those missives had! 

One of my favourites that I shared, and shared, and shared—> how female teachers speak quicker and at higher tones and how that impacts a majority of students (especially boys) who cannot process the information in that format. 

Does this group still do gigs when people get to meet and look each other in the eye and speak their truth?

Mirka

Oops - one more bit to respond to Doretta.

Do not understand your level of frustration on having to support your children’s academic success.

In my own family we have Grandparents, Parents, Aunts and Uncles who have a variety of credentials from a simple BA or a BSc, to PhD, in many fields including History, Geography, Mathematics, Science,  and Computer Technology.  We all support our kids and fill in the blanks.  And I do shake my head many times in despair…................  And then I shake it off.

Why?  Because we can provide *one on one* while a teacher needs to teach “to the middle” for a class of 30.  Parents have and always will fill in the gaps.  Good parents do that in all aspects of their children’s development on all continents.

I certainly, as may you, remember practising cursives - at home - with parents sitting beside me and making corrections.  I think most people also recall going home and being drilled by parents or older siblings their multiplication tables ( 6x9 =?).

It is not a failure of the education system that parents need to be an active part of the process, they always were. 

In 2002 my husband and I were in the Masai Mara in Kenya.  We were there to see the ‘great migration’.  The staff at our camp were all parents who were working to send their children to school.  The bulk of their salary was to send their children to school - it was important.  They paid the bulk of their salary for the children’s education.  After that enormous sacrifice they would go home work with their children to fill in the blanks

it’s complicated.

Mirka

You want positive stories?  Hard to find them in Ontario. Pathways to Education comes to mind and Open Court in a Stroud Catholic school about 15 years ago until the Simcoe board cut down that tall poppy, but here’s a serious one from Edmonton Public Schools: http://archive.teachfind.com/ttv/www.teachers.tv/series/lessons-from-alberta.html

Doretta,

No arguments -  Alberta is a beacon .  I think you folks actually were ahead of the curve and posted as the change was happening in Edmonton.  Nikiforuk wrote/celebrated the work of superintendent Angus McBeath.  Then Ouchi examined this new paradigm and wrote “Making Schools Work” .  I bought ten copies and handed them out to my administration and any and all administrators that had my own two children in their care.  Most principals said bring it on….as do my colleagues as we discuss the issues of the day

love to celebrate Canadian solutions to Canadian circumstances.

best, Mirka