Society for Quality Education

Volume 18, Number 4, December 2009. ISSN-1201-215

FROM THE PRESIDENT

The main purpose of our newsletters is to arm parents and teachers with authoritative information about good teaching methods and materials. As a result, this newsletter contains lots of teaching tips and other great information about schooling. If you have questions about a particular topic or would like something addressed in a future newsletter, please click here.

Our society is one of the few Canadian organizations that speak on behalf of parents and teachers who seek better schools. If you find our services helpful, please consider making a donation to SQE. Because we receive no government money, we rely on the voluntary support of people like you. If you are a Canadian and choose to donate stock to SQE, you will get a tax credit for the current value of the stock, yet pay no capital gains tax on its appreciated value. We are more grateful to our supporters, large and small, than you could ever know!

If one of our articles would interest someone you know, you can forward the newsletter by clicking here.

Regards, Malkin Dare

MAIL BAG

Participation Certificates

I just heard on the radio that the local school board is going to replace first, second, and third results in athletic events with participation certificates for everyone. If this is true, it is yet another example of the disconnect between the educational bureaucracy and the real world. If everyone participates and no one wins or loses, then how can anyone succeed or fail? How can excellence be cultivated? The popular educational belief that all must get prizes is totally disconnected from the real world. What would the Manchester United/New York Yankees fans do if competition were eliminated? Those of us who watch and study human behaviour know that even very young children are competitive. Human beings need competitive sports activities - whether they are competing themselves or whether they are watching others do so. Kitchener, ON

Remedial Math Software

We seem to have the same issues here in Australia as you do in Canada. As the parent of four children with learning problems, I am grateful for the resources on your web-site. There are a couple of free on-line resources that I would like to pass on to your readers. The first is The Numbers Race , a terrific remedial program designed specifically for dyscalculic students. To use it, you need to have a current version of Java, and the game is activated in a DOS window. Another really helpful assistive technology resource is the Vu-Bar, an on-line reading rule that helps children track the text. I am always on the lookout for free resources for kids with learning difficulties, as the local system is hopeless. Merino, Australia

Hard to Help

Although I had worked there four days a week for two years and the children were always asking to be allowed to come to me for reading, a new administration abruptly informed me there was no longer any place for me at the school. This administration insists on a certain schedule, and I suppose you must have a central plan, but it certainly presents difficulties for well-intentioned volunteers, and in certain cases it deprives children of much-needed assistance. However, another teacher called me over the summer to ask if I would come back and work with her. I will be in touch if I am given something to sink my teeth into and need your help. Ottawa, ON

ASK AUNT MALKIN

A veteran of the school wars herself, with the scars to prove it, Malkin Dare always has lots of advice to offer. If you want some been-there-done-that advice from Aunt Malkin, call her at 519-884-3166 or e-mail her.

Question

My wife and I are trying to decide whether to send our son to a semestered or non-semestered high school. Which is better? Greg, Toronto

Answer

The term "semestering" refers to the practice of condensing high school courses into five months instead of the normal ten months. In order to make this possible, the school's periods are usually lengthened to 70-odd minutes and the students carry only three or four courses at a time. Semestering is very popular with many educators and parents because it offers greater flexibility.

Unfortunately, however, there is a little-known side effect to semestering. Every comparison of semestered and non-semestered schools - and there have been dozens - has found a significant shortfall in the academic achievement at semestered schools.

There are several possible reasons for the reduction in student learning at semestered schools, ranging from most teenagers' inability to sustain concentrated learning for 75 solid minutes, to the up-to-yearlong gaps between courses in the same subject (especially math), to the increased amount of material missed by a student who is absent for a few days.

When the Avon-Maitland District School Board switched to all non-semestered high schools, it shot to the top of the rankings for the grade 9 math test and placed near the top on the grade 10 literacy test. (Obviously, this was unimportant to the board, since it made the move back to semestered schools a few years later and resumed its former position in the rankings.)

Your choice of school - semestered or non-semestered - is thus a matter of preference. Which is more important to you and your son - flexibility or learning?

Regards, Aunt Malkin

SOCIETY ACTIVITIES

We have now launched our Sunshine on Schools web-site - a goldmine of statistical information that allows parents and teachers to make comparisons among Ontario school boards.

SQE has been in the news a lot lately - check out our media activities here.

We have added a subscription feature to our blog. Just click on "Subscribe to our blog" in the left-hand column, and you will be notified whenever a new entry has been posted. The service includes a nice suite of handling and filing options.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Changing Hearts and Minds

We at SQE first became aware of the need for education reform through our own children's disastrous collisions with the system many years ago. Every single one of us began by trying to fix the problems at our children's school and, when that proved impossible, we all turned our attention to the local school board - invariably running into a brick wall there too.

Most people would give up at this point, but we are a stubborn bunch, and so we pressed on. Since we couldn't get anywhere locally, we banded together and decided to apply pressure at the level of the province. We thought that stronger accountability measures - like more testing, a strong curriculum, decision-making school councils, etc. - would make schools better.

Then along came Mike Harris who, amazingly, brought in many of the things we were asking for - and then some. His government created a provincial testing body that administered annual tests and published the results. The funding formula was changed so that the money followed the child. Because there hadn't been a standardized curriculum for many years, his government developed one. They created the Ontario College of Teachers to protect the public against bad teachers. They brought in mandatory professional development for teachers, extended the school year, reformed the way schools were funded, and on and on.

If these reforms had been the right ones, they would have produced a spike in test scores. It's hard to be sure how effective the Harris reforms were, but it seems likely there was a small improvement in student achievement in Ontario in the late nineties and then no improvement since then, or perhaps a small deterioration that has taken us back to where we were 20 years ago.

The point is that the accountability measures brought in by the Harris government didn't bring about major improvement and, in fact, they didn't last all that long. Most of them have already been undone by the subsequent Liberal government or subverted by the education establishment.

SQE was forced to go back to the drawing board. We did a lot of research, searching for the best educational policies in other provinces and countries around the world. In the end, we came to the conclusion that the fundamental problem, the root cause of schools' poor outcomes, is the system's virtual monopoly over schooling. Educators with a guaranteed supply of students and money have little or no incentive to improve.

SQE continues to provide support to parents, but we are painfully aware that we can help only a tiny fraction of the children who are struggling in school. Consequently, we are simultaneously engaged in spreading the word about the benefits of forcing publicly-funded schools to compete for students. Unfortunately, many people do not yet realize that their children's schools are unlikely to improve unless they are forced to compete for their students.

Politicians tend to support policies that will gain them votes. Until the majority of voters support parents' right to choose their children's schools, most politicians will not support policies, like tuition tax credits, charter schools, open enrollment, and decentralized schools, that will make this possible. You can help by discussing these issues with your friends and neighbours.

WHAT'S NEW?

Go to School for Thought, our brilliant new blog, for up-to-the-minute education news, along with scintillating - albeit occasionally sarcastic - commentary.

BOOKS OF INTEREST

A Desolation of Learning: Is this the education our children deserve? Chris Woodhead

The author was England's chief inspector of schools from 1996-2000. As such, he had a ringside seat from which to watch the government's "frenzied initiatives of the last 12 years [which] have resulted in a decline of educational standards". Just as happened in Ontario and in many other jurisdictions, the English government has pulled out all the stops in a desperate effort to reform their troubled schools, but most of their reforms have backfired, leaving the English education system in even worse shape than before. The excerpt exposes the undead child-centred philosophy that underpins the continuing educational failure.

Excerpt (pp. 98-100)

"When I talk of 'discredited orthodoxies' I am referring to a complex of beliefs rooted in the idea that everything important in primary education springs from some nebulous, mystical concept of 'the child' and that the systematic initiation of children into different bodies of knowledge inevitably drives a stake through the heart of the creative primary classroom. Those who worship at the shrine of 'the child' argue that the primary classroom should be a place of happy spontaneity in which teacher and child together explore experiences of mutual interest. Children, they suggest, should discover things for themselves rather than be told anything by their teachers. One to one, personalized conversations between the teacher and individual children are better, therefore, than whole class instruction in which the teacher explains things which, on a different view of education, it might be thought every child within the class needs to know....

"Good teachers, they like to argue, are neither traditionalist nor progressive. They will explain things when explanations are necessary and they will find opportunities for children to experience the excitement of discovering ideas and knowledge for themselves. They will plan meticulously so that insights from different subjects can be brought together to illuminate the child's experience. I do not disagree. This is indeed what good teachers do. The fact remains that everything that happens in a classroom is determined by the teacher's understanding of the educational enterprise...There are two fundamentally different views of this enterprise.

"On the one hand, the emphasis on 'the child'; the insistence that everything must be 'relevant' to the child's experience and to the perceived needs of society; the argument that the teacher should be a 'mentor' or a 'coach' who 'facilitates' the growth of the child's understanding; the current obsession with 'personalisation'. On the other, the belief that a school is an institution in which children are initiated, by teachers who are authorities in their subjects , into a body of knowledge which has no immediate connection to their lives or necessary relevance to the problems of society. This body of knowledge needs no justification, no explanatory statement of aims or values. To allow children to remain ignorant of, say, literature, history or mathematics is to deny them the inheritance...on which their humanity depends....

"Teachers cannot pick and choose between these two views. They cannot personalise their beliefs about what they are doing when they teach. The pretence that they can is a calculated deceit: a transparent attempt to capture the high moral ground of pragmatic, professional commonsense in order to demonise those who have attempted to clarify the obfuscation."

The Making of Americans: Democracy and our schools. E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

The author makes a very convincing case that the fundamental flaw in progressive education is not ineffective teaching methods (although he agrees that they are problematic) but rather progressive educators' rejection of the need for a common content-rich curriculum. Dr. Hirsch argues that the absence of such a curriculum leads inevitably to low standards, perpetuation of class differences, widening inequality, and a weakened democracy. The excerpt addresses the importance of a common curriculum to social justice.

Excerpt (pp. 186-187)

"One of the gravest disappointments I have felt in the twenty-five years that I have been actively engaged in educational reform is the frustration of being warmly welcomed by conservatives but shunned by fellow liberals. The connection of the anti-curriculum movement with the Democratic Party is an accident of history, not a logical necessity. All the logic runs the other way. A dominant liberal aim is social justice, and a definite core curriculum in early grades is necessary to achieve it. Why should conservatives alone favor solid content while my fellow liberals buy into the rhetoric of the anti-curriculum theology that works against the liberal aims of community and equality? Practical improvement of our public education will require intellectual clarity and a depolarization of this issue. Left and right must get together on the principle of common content....

"Only a grasp of the accidents of history can enable such change to prevail. The apparently benign idea of natural, child-centred education that took hold at the beginning of the twentieth century came by gradual degrees to vitiate our public education, weaken our country's competence and competitiveness, diminish our solidarity, and destroy equality of opportunity. It has almost nullified two of the most precious founding ideas of the United States, the idea of unity despite our differences and the idea of equality. Nothing of consequence can be done to save public education until the disastrous anti-curriculum theory, which has dominated American schooling for nearly a century, is vigorously set aside."

Organizing the Disorganized Child: Simple strategies to succeed in school. Martin L. Kutscher & Marcella Moran

This is a short how-to book full of easy-to-understand, detailed directions to parents and teachers on how to help spacey kids. The excerpt is from the section on the morning routine.

Excerpt (pp. 131-132)

"Get an effective alarm clock. Some parents complain that alarm clocks don't work for their child. Their children sleep right through the roaring alarm. These children are in such a deep sleep that the only thing that works is the parent coming into the room to physically awaken them.

"In our experience with alarm clocks, we have found an assortment of fine (albeit somewhat dastardly) instruments that meet the needs of most heavy sleepers. Our favorite is the Clocky, the run-away alarm clock. It is unique in sound, shape, and function. When the alarm sounds, the clock not only makes an unusual beeping and chirping noise, but it also vibrates. It can jump off the night stand onto the floor and roll around. To turn off the alarm, you have to get out of bed and scoop up the Clocky, which is bouncing on the floor. There are some other clocks, such as the Screaming Meanie and the Sonic Boom, that set off an obnoxious high-decibel sound that would wake anyone up. The Sonic Boom also vibrates and has a flashing light as part of its armamentarium.

"For the child who really needs to get out of bed to be completely awake, there are clocks that require the completion of multiple tasks in order to shut off the alarm. Jigsaw puzzle alarm clocks explode pieces of a puzzle out of the clock and require your child to put the pieces of the puzzle together correctly before the blasted thing can be shut off."

The Philosophical Baby: What children's minds tell us about truth, love, and the meaning of life. Alison Gopnik

This book discusses cutting-edge research that reveals babies' ability to learn more and create more than we dream possible. In a way, according to the author, babies are actually smarter than adults. The excerpt discusses the superior aspects of babies' brains.

Excerpt (pp. 10-12)

"Our human capacities for imagination and learning have great advantages; they allow us to adapt to more different environments than any other species and to change our own environments in a way that no other animal can. But they also have one great disadvantage - learning takes time. You don't want to be stuck exploring all the new possible ways to hunt deer when you haven't eaten for two days, or learning all the accumulated cultural wisdom about saber-toothed tigers when one is chasing you. It would be a good idea for me to spend a week exploring all the capabilities of my new computer, as my teenage son would, but with the saber-toothed tigers of grant deadlines and classes breathing down my neck, I'll just go on relying on the old routines.

"An animal that depends on the accumulated knowledge of past generations has to have some time to acquire that knowledge. An animal that depends on imagination has to have some time to exercise it. Childhood is that time. Children are protected from the usual exigencies of adult life; they don't need to hunt deer or ward off saber-toothed tigers, let alone write grant proposals or teach classes - all of that is done for them. All they need to do is learn. When we're children we're devoted to learning about our world and imagining all the other ways that world could be. When we become adults we put all that we've learned and imagined to use.

"There's a kind of evolutionary division of labor between children and adults. Children are the R&D department of the human species - the blue-sky guys, the brainstormers. Adults are production and marketing. They make the discoveries, we implement them. They think up a million new ideas, mostly useless, and we take the three or four good ones and make them real.

"If we focus on adult abilities, long-term planning, swift and automatic execution, rapid skilful reaction to the deer and the tigers and the deadlines, then babies and young children will indeed look pretty pathetic. But if we focus on our distinctive capacities for change, especially imagination and learning, then it's the adults who look slow. The caterpillars and butterflies do different things well.

"This basic division of labor between children and adults is reflected in their minds, their brains, their everyday activities, and even their conscious experience. Babies' brains seem to have special qualities that make them especially well suited for imagination and learning. Babies' brains are actually more highly connected than adult brains; more neural pathways are available to babies than adults. As we grow older and experience more, our brains 'prune out' the weaker, less used pathways and strengthen the ones that are used more often. If you looked at a map of the baby's brain it would look like old Paris, with lots of winding, interconnected little streets. In the adult brain those little streets have been replaced by fewer but more efficient neural boulevards, capable of much more traffic. Young brains are also much more plastic and flexible - they change much more easily. But they are much less efficient; they don't work as quickly or effectively."

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Click here to see some very funny test answers by students who had no idea what the solution was but who were unwilling to leave the space blank.