World leaders, apparently, have put off the "difficult" decisions on climate change. I smell a beginning of realization that, as warming turns to cooling (actually, it’s not turning, it’s turned), political face must be saved. It will be fun to see how this unravels and how all those who were foolish pretend that they were wise.
from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
When committees give recommendations for reform, these recommendations always miss the point. The reforms concentrate on better teacher training and better pay. They regularly ignore teaching methods, data-based curriculum, supervision of teaching, evaluation of teaching by results, and classroom management. These factors are the ones which, in combination, produce powerful results.
With a little planning, Power Teaching allows true individualization of the curriculum as students move through a subject’s curriculum at their own pace. At the same time, they are laying the foundation for further improvement by not advancing until more basic skills are mastered.
Power Teaching has been used at several sites in North America. At Morningside Academy in Seattle, it has been used to teach children who were not learning when taught with traditional methods. The results for the last 5 years from an article by Johnson and Layng in the November, 1992 issue of The American Psychologist, show gains of 2.42 grade years per year instruction in reading, 3.18 grade years/year instruction in language arts and 2.62 grade years/year instruction in mathematics. These results are more startling because they were achieved with students who "suffered" from "…the so-called learning and attention disorders."
In Chicago, the Morningside Model has been used with disadvantaged adults who were aiming for entrance to and continued success in, community college. Results with adults were even more dramatic than those with children. Follow-up indicated that the students were achieving their community college goals and maintaining their Grade Point Averages.
One of the great mistakes of the standard education establishment in North America is the "spiral curriculum". The spiral curriculum is based on a layman’s "logical" analysis, rather than a facts-based analysis. In the spiral curriculum, a topic, such as fractions, is examined in greater "depth" on successive occasions, spaced apart by other mathematical topics. This is supposed to provide greater understanding of a topic, but it "ensures that each year"s curriculum will be a bewildering array of many topics, superficially covered." The students, who are not taught to a fluency criterion, forget most of the instruction which should be, but usually is not, extensively reviewed before new material is given. The opposite of the spiral curriculum is the "teach once, remember always" curriculum.
Vouchers should be issued for the full cost of education. Those parents who would use voucher would be the kind of parents who demand better results. One of the arguments against vouchers is that they would lead to "student flight" from public schools. This is like saying the Berlin Wall should have stayed in place because it stopped "people flight" from East German worker’s paradise. The teaching profession, from educational "experts" in schools of education to teacher unions, are violently opposed to any form of education which departs from the kind currently in place. In spite of their constant emphasis on creativity, these people are rigidly non-creative in providing alternatives which work.
Social sciences are the last refuge of scoundrels. If a chemist told you the chemical reaction did not occur because the chemicals were "resistant" and not "ready" for change you’d laugh. If the engineer told you the bridge could not be built because the steel had suffered a traumatic event while being changed from iron ore, you’d fire the engineer. If the veterinarian told you your cat was incurable because she was denying she was a cat and insisting she was a dog, you’d get another veterinarian. Teachers insist on blessing their students with characteristics that make them impossible to teach. "Learning disabilities, emotional upset, poor socialization. Forty percent of our students are so "damaged" that teaching them is impossible. So it goes in the social sciences, however. Causes are mixed with effects, lack of change is attributed to the subject of change and ignorance of technique is graced by assigning it to factors beyond the grasp of the social scientist.
Homework
Homework is unnecessary if correct teaching programs are used. There is ample time, even in the short-day, short-year, days-filled-with-learning-politically-hot-topics North American school, to learn the important skills, if they are taught correctly. When the public education system smells accountability, it seems to pile on homework, a weak substitute for effective teaching.
Tips for Teachers
One of the strangest things I see in teaching is the amount of time teachers spend in creating exercise sheets. This is unnecessary and inefficient. It is unnecessary because many exercise sheets exist from commercial and other sources. It is inefficient because much better sheets exist which are based on research. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, especially if the reinvented wheel is square.
My second tip is to let the students do most of the work in copying, distributing, marking and collecting materials. The students can keep their own data and do their own analysis. In a class where high intensity work is done, this a necessity.
How to do really bad teaching
Hijack the good words
Use words like progressive so that your opponents are regressive Whole Language so that your opponents are teaching Part Language child-centered so that your opponents are centered on the walls, perhaps developmentally appropriate so that your opponents are developmentally inappropriate co-operative learning so that your opponents are practicing uncooperative learning, humanistic so your opponents are `anti-humanistic, creative teaching so your opponents will support robotic teaching.
Make it sound plausible
Create an argument which is plausible in relation to laymen and to whatever intellectual world view is current. Refer to each other’s opinions as "research". Disregard as many of the DIW criteria as possible. This is Argumentum ad populum, or argument by Appeal to the people. Closely related is the Argumentum ad numerum, the greater the number of people who believe it, the more likely it is. Laymen are known as really poor scientists. As I have said many times in this book, facts do not care about votes.
Institute large scale implementation
This must be done without without any research safeguards. Since you have a lot of non-scientific support, this means that your opponents are in a position to demonstrate the negative. For those readers who are Latinically inclined, this is Argumentum ad ignorantiam, or argument from ignorance. Something must be true because it has not been proved false. This gives you a few years of breathing space.
Question the research that goes against you
In the social sciences you can question the results. When the results are uniformly against you, question the assessment procedures which are used. Create your own instruments. When these are demonstrated to be invalid and unreliable, state that what you are doing is so spiritually profound, that it cannot be measured. Question the political motives of your opponents. This will complete the Great Circle by bringing you back to your start. While you’re doing this, it is essential you use words and phrases such as excellence, rich, world class, reform, authentic and genuine.
In the end, all of this sound and fury will be relevant only to historians. Children will be taught phonics as their introduction to reading, data will be kept on the student’s daily progress by the student, lesson plans will be produced as a result of research and not by individual teachers who will then put their energies into classroom teaching.
Educational "progressives", note the choice of a good word, are responsible for Open Classrooms, child-centered learning, Whole Language, Objective-Based Education, and other disasters. Their methods were designed to solve the problems of self-esteem, creativity, boredom, lack of higher-order thinking, rote memorization and other vaporous evils.
"Pianists are no longer required to learn chords which are unconnected to the experience of playing a concerto. figure skaters are not longer required to practice landings which are disconnected from the experience of skating a program. Baseball players are no longer required to take batting practice, disconnected as it is from the actual game experience."
The California Whole Language Experience–The Perfect Example of a Polgram
There is no point discrediting something which has never been credited.
1. Creation by committee
2. Ignoring research
3. Domination by layman-based theory vaguely based on psychological and educational theorizing without data support.
4. Faith in teachers to apply concepts without training.
5. Accolades from those who don’t know anything about teaching reading but like the philosophy.
6. Lots of money made by those who taught the "new philosophy".
If this had worked, it would have been the first time in the history of the social sciences, or anything else, that this had worked. Those who don’t know what they are doing are sentenced to eternally commit the same sins under different names.
Arguments with educators usually get distilled into, "My intentions are better than your results."
Why Engelmann and his colleagues were right
"This works in practice, but does it work in theory?" OR "I can’t explain my data in terms of your theory no matter how heartfelt your belief."
From the beginning, the Direct Instruction people followed the principles of program construction outlined in the first chapter. The programs are validated, powerful, tested and effective. Results, not theory, are central. Teaching, not students, is tested.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
