Do not think about, write about or deal with human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.
Zig Engelmann, one of the few people in education who knows whereof he speaks, because his programs produce superior data, has the following to say about the standards imposed on the various states in compliance with the new federal, “Race to the Top” (where do they get these phrases?) grant structure. These standards are an example of jargon gone wild, bad and incomprehensible.
The standards sound as if they were generated by the famous Educational Jargon Generator, found here.
Some quotes. I encourage you to read the whole thing.
“Math Standards for the early grades, particularly K and 1, are distasteful, but the
new Common Core Standards may have premiere distasteful status.
What makes them distasteful? A subtle combination of vagueness, misplaced
specificity, and a lack of understanding about teaching young children. But let the
committee or braintrust that made up the descriptions about the standards speak
for itself.”
……
“Mathematical Practices
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
There is no doubt that these mandates are composed of English words and follow
English syntax, but some of them don’t seem to convey more than a suggestion of
meaning or relate in an obvious manner to any specific standard or combination
that would induce the mandate.”
…….
“Mandate 1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
This item raises the question of whether the authors or committee who wrote it
has a clear idea of what kindergartners are. They are little guys who are just
getting their feet wet in the sea of formal instruction. Do we design material so it is
easy for them? Not according to mandate one. Rather, it appears that we’re going
to make math “challenging” so kids have to frown and struggle as we remind
them, “Persevere, damn it.”
If this interpretation seems like a stretch, consider mandate one with the p word
replaced by a Webster definition:
Make sense of problems and persist in the undertaking in spite of
opposition or discouragement.
If children are going to persevere, we’re going to have to do our part and provide
them with opposition and discouragement. Why? Apparently so we can show
them that they are to persevere, damn it.”
There is, of course, much more about the Standards, but they don’t get any better.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
July 26, 2010 at 1:36 am |
[...] addressed in the following article. The second is the quality of the standards themselves, addressed earlier. Standards will join the two horrible errors of the 20th century, the “New Math”, which changed [...]