SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

The US is sneezing….

Here’s Jay Greene being interviewed about the benefits of school choice. One of the benefits of school choice, according to Dr. Greene, is that it works to counter the baleful consequences of centrally-planned education systems. In watching the video, it’s important to remember that the US is far more advanced than most Canadian provinces when it comes to school choice. However, you know the old saying - when the US sneezes, Canada catches a cold. 

The Roots of Public Education Failure

Things have been a little quiet around here lately, and so I thought I would try to shake things up by writing something controversial. Today, I want to talk about how and why public education is failing so many students, despite the many caring and hard-working educators who work in it. My hypothesis is that it's the fault of the centrally-planned nature of public education.

This long-but-fascinating article explores the theories of a Nobel-prize-winning economist most people have never heard of - F. A. Hayek - who argued that central planners' interventions lead towards totalitarianism. If you don't have time to read the whole article, be sure to at least read "The Pretence of Knowledge", "The Synoptic Delusion", and "The Abstract Order". Here's an excerpt:

"Intellectuals were under a dangerous self-delusion that mastery of our social and economic life lay in their grasp. Deeply-troubled by what he saw, Hayek set out to expose the rational-sounding claims of the salivating planners for what they were, the oldest scam in marketing: bait and switch. Planners promised a world in which the public's needs and desires would be satisfied more efficiently and with less waste and human misery than ever before. The reality, Hayek knew, would be that people's lives would be planned to satisfy the needs and desires of the planners, and that ultimately, if left unchecked, the economic waste and the loss of economic freedom would be devastating."

I suggest that the more education systems are centralized, the more unresponsive, wasteful, and ineffective they become.

Teach Effectively

Teach Effectively is an excellent source of information about, well, teaching effectively. The site has a special focus on information about good instruction for students at risk for school problems. 

The latest posting is a case in point, informing readers that, until the end of January, Siegfried Engelmann's stellar remedial reading program, Funnix, is available for free downloading. Funnix normally costs $249.

The relentless march of school choice

It looks as if the newest kid on the school vouchers block is going to be New Jersey. As this newspaper article reports, a key legislative committee has - despite the best efforts of the teachers' union - passed a bill that will make it possible for low-income students to escape their failing public school and choose a private school instead. In the first year, the number of scholarships will be limited to 3,900, expanding to 40,000 by the fifth year. 

For most of these kids, the result will be the difference between success and failure in life. Enough said.

Brain-Based? My Foot!

Daniel Willingham is a cognitive scientist who is specializes in his discipline's relevance to education and training. His latest column tackles the applicabilty of neuroscience, concluding that there are four facts that every educator should know. 

1.  The brain is always changing.

2.  The connection between the brain and behaviour is not obvious.

3.  Deriving useful information for teachers from neuroscience is slow, painful work, and almost no one has done it.

4.  If you see the words "brain-based", run.

Two Schools of Thought

The education world might be divided into two schools of thought. There are those who think that we should build on the knowledge accumulated over the centuries and slowly and carefully make incremental improvements in schools. Then there are those who think that the world is changing so much and so fast that we should jettison the outdated and stultifying practices of previous years, embracing new technologies and possibilities and racing towards the future with arms wide open. This video, produced by the New Brunswick Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, embodies the latter perspective. HT to Educhatter, whose Jan. 18 blog asks whether burying the past is the wave of the future.

You can’t have one without the other

Dear Aunt Malkin,

Every time there’s a newspaper article that is critical of education outcomes, some educator writes in that test scores are not meaningful because they just test basic skills like reading and writing. The important thing, according to these educators is critical thinking. Can I rest easy, secure in the knowledge that even though he is lousy at reading and math, my son is being taught to think critically? Joanne, Toronto

Dear Joanne,

The distinction between basic skills and critical thinking is what Hung-Hsi Wu called “a bogus dichotomy” in this excellent article from our archives. For those without the time to read the whole article, Dr. Wu essentially says that basic skills and conceptual understanding are completely intertwined. Quoting Dr. Wu, “In most cases, the precision and fluency in the execution of the skills area the requisite vehicles to convey the conceptual understanding. There is not ‘conceptual understanding’ and ‘problem-solving skill’ on the one hand, and ‘basic skills’ on the other. Nor can one acquire the former without the latter.”

It’s kind of like in the old song “Love and Marriage”: you can’t have one without the other. Here’s Frank Sinatra to explain….  

Regards, Aunt Malkin

Meow!

A couple of days ago, I referenced Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Now comes this auto-animation commentary from China.

Brain School

The latest addition to our lending library is Brain School: Stories of children with learning disabilities and attention disorders who changed their lives by improving their cognitive functioning by Howard Eaton. The author is the principal of schools in Vancouver and Victoria that use the approach developed by Barbara Arrowsmith Young to overcome their students' significant learning disabilities. New understanding of brain plasticity and how to go about overcoming weaknesses has made it possible for people to improve their cognitive capacities and achieve academic success. The Arrowsmith program focuses on improving the underlying cognitive problems that make it impossible for some children to learn in regular classrooms. The book tells the stories of nine children as they work through the Arrowsmith program at one of Mr. Eaton's schools, going on to make successful transitions to regular schools. In telling Cody's story, this excerpt (pp. 206-207) touches on the fact that the IQ's of Arrowsmith children improve significantly.

"Through our data-gathering efforts at Eaton Arrowsmith School, we are constant witnesses to intelligence changes among our graduates as they receive updated pscho-educational assessments from other learning centres. Intelligence tests show dramatic improvements in cognitive capacities such as perceptual reasoning, nonverbal intelligence, processing speed, and working memory. Beyond intelligence measures, we are observing improvements in visual-motor integration, motor coordination, visual memory for symbols, and expressive and receptive language abilities. Finally, depending on the type of learning disability, we have also observed significant shifts in mathematical reasoning, reading comprehension, reading speed, writing fluency, written expression, and math calculation skills. There is much research ahead of us. These are exciting times in neuro-educational developments.

"What does it mean for education if intelligence is not fixed? In particular, what does it mean for the field of learning disabilities? First, the entire psychological and educational assessment business needs to be revisited in terms of diagnosing or labelling children with learning disorders or disabilities. For example, if a child is tested and found to have severe perceptual organization intellectual deficits, one cannot simply assume that this is a lifetime sentence. Cody is a perfect example of this. A child can actually improve visual-perceptual cognitive functioning through intensive and systematic cognitive remediation. This will in turn dramatically improve overall intelligence for this child."

Sunday at the Movies (Singing History Teachers)

We brought you the singing science teacher. Now we bring you the singing history teachers. At present, they have posted a total of 50 YouTube videos on all kinds of historical topics, such as Napoleon, Beowulf, the Borgias, and the Spanish Inquisition. The topic of this one is the Canterbury Tales, and it's sung to the tune of the Mamas and the Papas' California Dreaming.