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Posted on 01/17/2015 3:35:42 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
[Summary: To save public schools, we have to fix the underlying sophistries and fallacies.] ---- When we contemplate public schools, two things are certain. Almost everyone agrees that the schools are not as good as they should be, given the huge effort and expenditure. Second, everyone has a theory.
You can hardly read a newspaper without some expert telling you yet another reason why the public schools are a mess. Much blame is heaped on parents. Other culprits include popular culture, the Internet, teachers, the students themselves, and of course, the perennial favorite, not enough money. We are often told, if only the American people cared, they would spend enough to create world-class schools. Another set of discussions deal with administrative or organizational solutions: testing, accountability, charter schools, vouchers, teacher training, promotions, unions, class size, and many more.
My conclusion is that all these theories remain more on the surface than people would like to suppose. Equally troubling, the endless debates turn out to be distractions. Millions of hours are sunk into solving problems that remain unsolved. The practical result is that the public is demoralized and numbed.
Doesn’t all this suggest we are not looking deeply enough? We are not looking at what the professors of education call theories and methods. It’s probably safe to predict, if you have good ones, you’ll get good results. Unfortunately, we have bad ones.
Let’s look at this intellectual machinery, one wobbly gear at a time.
College teachers casually mention these days that they have incoming students who don’t know what 6 x 7 is. How could such a thing happen? It all makes sense if you study Reform Math for even a few minutes.
This curriculum--actually, Reform Math consists of a dozen parallel curricula such as Chicago Math, Connected Math, Everyday, ....
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Interesting that you only post your own stuff.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:brucedeitrickprice/index?tab=articles
Plus the school boards are just figure heads that are doing it 'for the children'. And, they go along with the administrations, because what do they know about education?
Good points all.
Misses what is to my mind the most important problem in modern educational theory.
What is the purpose or goal of education? The question is simply not answered. When an attempt is made to answer it, usually involves something along the lines of equality and changing the world.
to my mind, what education should be is blindingly obvious. It’s purpose should be to help each and every child reach his/her maximum potential. Wont’ ever be accomplished, but that should be the goal.
If this were to be done, each and every child would be more educated than he is with the present system. But by definition the spread between top and bottom would be greater than at present. And for the ideologues of the education system, that’s unacceptable.
Are you familiar with the situation in New York? After three years of good results with the Core Knowledge Curriculum, it has been replaced by the Teachers’ College method only because de Blasio’s ed chick Farina has a very special relationship with the woman who developed it. It is not evidenced based. No, systems can’t be just switched out.
Not as long as a progressive is in charge.
Even if he is doing for profit to fund terrorism?
Public education is not for the student. It is not for the parent. It is for society. Liberalism has hijacked the education system for their agendas like they have hijacked government and charities. The reason education fails to educate is it is not focused on reading, writing and arithmetic. It is, instead, focused on a plethora of agendas, from birth control to abortion, to the environment, to doing away with the nation state, not to mention racism, sexism, how to perform anal sex, etc. None of these agendas are helpful to the student or the student’s ability to perform a useful role in the real world. The agendas exist separately from the real world and seldom, if ever, connect with it. Is it any wonder that the product of these unfocused and crazy agendas is not functional as an employee?
I thought the rule was: Post your own stuff, post the whole thing (don’t excerpt)...
This is a very good story. I love the phrase “ed chick.”
I’m not sure I could ever keep up with all the sleazy stuff going on in education state-by-state. Please tell us more about the NY story.
I know that Core Knowledge was created by E D Hirsch. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would always hope would prevail. So what is the The Teachers College method, something new or just a reference to John Dewey?
American Thinker and Free Republic have made a deal to use only a portion of the article. I don’t make these rules.
Ah.
At this point there can be no doubt that public education does nothing for society; here in NJ it is very obviously designed to provide lucrative incomes to teachers’ union members, and it does NOTHING else. Students don’t learn (even the lib social engineering nonsense), yet everyone in NJ claims they have the best school district in the state. Grades are meaningless, and graduates lack basic skills.
It is a (very expensive) system designed to fail its customers while enriching its bureaucracy.
http://edexcellence.net/articles/carmen-fari%C3%B1as-war-on-evidence
Start here. You might do a search on the edexcellence website for TC Reading. It’s supposedly “balanced literacy,” but displays a bias against phonics that borders on lunacy.
The progressive philosophy of education can be summarized as “values trumps data.” The two can’t even be in the room together, much less positions in a debate.
The best data driven ed researcher I know of is Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst. He ran the Ed Department’s What Works Clearinghouse during the W. Bush administration.
How so? Explain.
If he wrote it himself, he can post it in full.
The fact that he does not leads to the question of why.
He want’s Free Republic’s traffic.. to fund.. something.
Thanks, I read that and left a comment. I know a teacher in Brooklyn who’s been screaming about Calkins for years. TC is where it all started with John Dewey around 1910.
Writers put articles on American Thinker because it’s highly prestigious. There is no money involved.
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