Jennifer Berkshire and historian Jack Schneider conduct a very interesting discussion with scholars who have written about no-excuses charter schools and public Montessori schools.
They interview Mira Debs of Yale and Joanne Golann of Vanderbilt about their research.
They wonder, what do parents want? The answers might surprise you.
Incidentally, I communicated to Berkshire and Schneider that the origin of the term “no excuses” for strict schools was not the book by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom with that name, which was published in 2004, but a small book by a writer named Samuel Casey, which was called “No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Poverty, High-Performing Schools.”
The publication date on the paperback copy is 2000, but I remember going to a dinner at the Heritage Foundation where Mr. Casey presented his findings, and it must have been in the late 1990s. Conservatives were thrilled to learn that the answer to the education of poor black children was not more money, but strict discipline. It fit their preconceptions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have always assumed that parents who send their children to “no excuses” schools with reputations for strict discipline do so not because they believe their own children are in need of strict discipline, but because they are trying to escape schools where they perceive lax disciplinary standards are harming their children’s education by creating disorderly classrooms and/or fears of bullying or physical violence. These are real problems that a lot of public school parents grapple with.
Read for yourself what parents at a “no excuses” charter school write when their own children experience some of that “special sauce” they assumed would be directed only toward the students whose parents were disadvantaged and poor. Obviously, they don’t like it when their own children get even the smallest taste of it.
“Dear Eva and SA Board of Trustees,
We are a large group of parents from Hudson Yards Middle School who are outraged by Principal Russell’s policies and treatment of our children.
……
HYSA faculty broke our children’s spirit and erased their self confidence in less than 3 weeks.
…..
Some of our children are getting physically sick, experiencing meltdowns***, vomiting, having nightmares and/or having sleepless nights and are unable to concentrate etc. Some of our children have even requested to be homeschooled although they had been award winners and popular last year.
Intimidation and Detention of the scholars: Since school started most of the scholars were detained at least once for reasons that can hardly justify such an extreme measure. Examples:
Not locking their hands
Not completing homework that was confusing, in some cases assignments not even given to them in the first place
For unintentionally and/or accidentally breaking wind or burping in the classroom
…..
Vindictive: scholars were told they “need to stop whining to their parents”.
***”meltdowns are what the children of privilege have. acting out violently are what disadvantaged children have that leads to Success Academy administrators suspending them.
The letter goes on, but I won’t quote all of it here.
The principal in question was African-American and trained for his position at a Harlem Middle school with almost no white students. After this complaint by parents who were more affluent than parents in the Harlem Middle School, this principal was replaced by a white principal.
This post is about how ALL parents want their children treated with respect.
But only privileged parents seem to demand that respect and have “no excuses” charters cater to their desires.
There is an ugly racist undertone in implying that poor African-American parents WANT their children to be treated in a way that these affluent parents complained about — as if they are happy to see their children’s misery.
Wrong. Just because white charters CEOs don’t give disadvantaged African-American parents’ complaints the same attention they gave those affluent parents at this middle school does not mean that those parents would not wish to have it.
And while it is true that these parents can leave, it is also true that these charters and their rich backers have tried very hard to undermine public schools by insisting that they must not have small class sizes because large class sizes are all those children need, and lobbying to cut funds and take over classrooms that provide extras for the most disadvantaged students.
Anyone with a smidgeon of conscience at these no-excuses charters would want to help the public schools where they dump the low-income children they don’t want to teach.
Anyone who lacks a conscience would only see it in terms of what helps them personally and would do everything in their power to make those public schools worse. Starting with endorsing Betsy DeVos and working for her confirmation.
Here is a link to the letter that supports the contention that even parents at no excuses charters want their children treated with respect.
https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2017/10/hudson-yards-success-charter-parents-to.html
Some sensitive children of any color would be crushed by such inhumane treatment. My daughter, for example, is super-sensitive and always has been. She would have been one the students getting sick from such treatment. Fortunately, she never attended a “no excuses” school.
Flerp, that motivation doubtless prevails, but it would cause parents to seek any charter, as long as it provided an alternative to overcrowding & low teacher: student ratio (i.e., chaos).
The podcast says urban parents who originally welcomed “no-excuses” schools were seeking to counter attitudes their kids picked up on the street– general neighborhood culture (re: discipline/ authority). But the interviewees, & Schneider, are finding thro research that “discipline” means much the same thing to parents seeking either Montessori or “no-excuses”: developing mutual respect & learning self-discipline. “No-excuses” parents are unhappy with the actual product, an arbitrarily-imposed “broken-windows” approach that leaves their kids wild as uncaged birds at the end of the school day.
Excellent point.
“an arbitrarily-imposed “broken-windows” approach..” I don’t think it is “arbitrarily-imposed”. I think that a kid who struggles academically is more likely to be targeted and disciplined for a minor infraction like hands not clasped together perfectly, while better performing students’ “infractions” are treated more gently if not overlooked.
I think that some parents of academically strong students are not in the classroom and have no idea what happens to the students who aren’t as strong, unless they have a sensitive child who is bothered by watching other children being humiliated by a teacher while they are praised.
Remember when a teacher appalled at the treatment of children surreptitiously videoed a charter’s model teacher demonstrating exactly the model techniques that won her plaudits and designation as the perfect role model that other teachers should copy?
Remember how much the struggling child in the room was punished for the “infraction” of not knowing the answer?
What was most shocking is that the other students in the room did not seem bothered by that at all. Targeting the struggling student for punishment seemed to be what those young students thought was normal.
What bothers me the most is that “no excuses” always places blame on the children, even if they are 5 or 6 years old. Except in certain circumstances when a lot of no excuses parents happen to be affluent and college educated and complain about their children’s treatment.
I prefer the methods LeBron James public school for at-risk kids uses.
Now, I’d love to see an education competition between LeBron James and Betsy Devos and/or Eva Moscowitz.
“Jennifer Berkshire and historian Jack Schneider conduct a very interesting discussion with scholars who have written about no-excuses charter schools and public Montessori schools. ”
By “scholars” you mean actual scholars, not the ridiculous euphemism that the charter chains use for “students,” right? 🙂
The “scholars” in no-excuses charter schools are incapable of scholarship. This is a minor fraud but it really annoys me. It took many years of hard work to earn the title “scholar” and these charters give it to children in kindergarten. That makes me angry!
I know a teacher, used to send her own child to a charter, who calls the students scholars and herself a master scholar. First, they’re misnomers, but moreover, why can’t she be proud and call herself a teacher? Teaching is a noble profession.
“Teaching is a noble profession”
Yes, and guess who one of those teachers was – Jesus Christ. If He appeared on Earth today, He would agree with you that teaching is a noble profession, but then Trump would go insane tweeting that Jesus was a fake and Betsy the Brainless would block Him from entering any town halls she holds to support vouchers and corporate charter schools.
A lot of what parents believe about discipline is culturally defined. As an ESL teacher, I worked with students and parents from all over the world. Many of the foreign parents wanted our school to be more punitive with students. I have had parents from Haiti that have offered to come to my class and beat a student in front of the other students to “teach him a lesson.” I have also had parents from Eastern Europe hit their non-compliant child at home so I had to be very careful about how I relayed information to parents. I have heard many foreign parents complain that American schools are too permissive. They think that hitting students will manage their behavior and keep them away from drugs. We did a lot of work with parents to help them understand what is legal and illegal with regard to classroom management, and the role of CPS if corporal punishment is taken to the extreme. Many of these parents grew up in a culture where corporal punishment was the norm.
I do think the “broken windows” notion of discipline is a way for untrained teachers to build a wall between them and their students. It seems unnecessarily punitive and perhaps colonialist in its application. I have worked with many black and brown students, and I have not found it necessary to intimidate students. Some students from war torn nations do not need harsh discipline. They need support and understanding.
My timid daughter spent two years in a private Montessori preschool upon the advice of the pediatrician. The goal was to help her be more independent. While she enjoyed the experience, it did not solve her issues. To this day she remains a highly neurotic individual as this is her nature. At present she is reasonably content and functioning.
Institutional racism is a “real” phenomenon.
Privilege is learned and reinforced by many.
I knew a nanny who was told by a grade 1 boy, “YOU work for ME.” She asked the grade 1 boy to please pour the milk over his cold cereal. She was dealing with the baby who was sick.
The value of public education (where all students are valued) cannot be adequately measured.
All students want to feel that they have been understood, and they deserve to be treated with respect. We also need to show them they are capable, but they need to apply themselves.
Your last paragraph, Diane, says it all. It’s prejudice and greed combined, plain and simple.
My experience w/Montessori (PreK) is that there are mixed results; pros & cons. I understand that diff M schs can be diff, but I found both ‘classic’ Montessoris my kids attended in Bkln & in central NJ similar. (I had extended experience as the latter, later teaching there as a special for several yrs.) In both schools, the structure itself left a gap that can inhibit optimum social-relationship devpt, compared to tradl PreK’s. The mixed-age classrooms tend to be very large, accommodating as many as 25-30 2.5-4y.o.’s—far more than the typical PreK. Their time alternates between independent ‘work’ [bulk of time] and a couple of circle activities.
Kids learn how to behave en masse in large [mercifully abbreviated] teacher-directed circle activities—several teachers are present, quietly guiding behavior. And kids learn self-discipline as they work the self-teaching matls independently in this large space—but there’s lots to do & only minimal cooperation/ sharing is required/ learned. Mini- ‘godfathers’ tend to establish themselves in any area where several can assemble & need to “cooperate” (“practical-life” corner, notoriously). Hierarchies set there are carried onto the playground.
Meanwhile, multiple teachers (typically 3 for a group this size) are monitoring/ note-taking/ assisting individuals. The pecking-order stuff either escapes their attention, or they just write it up. Some very gifted teachers are angels & are everywhere & keep the keel even. Likewise (& more prevalent in Montessori, I found) there are teachers who use the evil-eye of disapproval/ over-stern 1-on-1/ notes home to make it happen, devastating their tiny charges.
Traditional PreK’s (I teach at several types regionally) have smaller classes and are far more proactive—and vocal– in teaching cooperative social behavior. They can make a lot of mistakes, but most of them are very loving & smooth things over one way or another. But then there are the unloving ones… the problem here is that too much depends on the teacher. At least in those big Montessori groups you have several teachers, & much individual time, & much less idiotic pressure to conform for conformity’s sake..
Also heard on this podcast: Eva in so many words admitted that the Success Academy version of “no-excuses” is about establishing a uniform training policy to help young, inexperienced, 2-3yr turnaround staff control the class—so as to proceed apace with the curriculum. Schneider correctly noted that this is not about what’s good for the kids.
Perhaps lost in the talk about Montessori or “no-excuses” methods: it’s really all about the director. In 2 decades as a for-lang special to 14 regional PreK/K’s/ daycares, that is my observation.
I taught at an employee daycare/PreK/K which was founded by a classic progressive director; when she passed away she was replaced by a Christie-era ed-reformer, & the place was turned upside-down. She did some great things, notably allowing longtime low-pd aides to get free courses to advance their careers, & bringing in some really excellent teacher replacements. But: the hands-on play matls disappeared, rug-time gave way to long seat-time at tables & chairs for 3’s/4’s at acad “centers,” recess time was cut in half. Sadly this was all applauded by mostly-Asian parents looking for more discipline & too-early academics for their tykes.
Another employee daycare, also founded by a classic progressive director came on hard times when the parent pharmaceutical was bought out: in the ensuing power/ funding void, trustees/board started calling the shots for director; a longtime & fine ed culture which had succeeded in creating gold from lo-pd staff bolstered by parent involvement was diminished by board whims—opinionated old-timers replaced by pliable lo-qual newbies… board apparently taking their cue from the chain commercial PreK that ran the show at the pharm competitor that bought them out.
I’ve taught for a dozen yrs at a chain commercial PreK/K for wkg/ lower-mid class families. Here there’s a potentially ameliorating force: the franchise owner. They can operate between the lines, choosing to implement co policy their own way [to my benefit, she chose specialized free-lancers in lieu of corp-IT/sw versions of for-lang, phys-ed, music…]. She made a brilliant director change early on: the new one prioritized keeping existing staff & upping their game thro personal observation/ training. Much kid-friendlier discipline since that change. Sadly owner’s “selling back to corporate” this yr, & you can see the shift in culture during the transition. Corp folks onboard are all about rules & data collection; director swamped & can’t guide newbies— who are uniformly creatures of their parents which usually means arbitrarily inconsistently punitive!
The balance of my schools have been run by non-profits—local churches & temples (tho they are all non-denominational re: applicants; their kids represent local demographics). No “corporation” involved. They are hands-down the highest quality PreK/K’s I’ve taught in, & the least likely to suddenly lurch into untried ed policies w/no foundation in early-childhood research. I dare to conclude it’s because they respond to local clientele w/o interference from some corporate hierarchy. But: this costs more! Corp & empl-daycare places are cheaper!
Bottom line: in private PreK/K’s, which a huge no of kids attend nationally, the philosophy, background, & quality of leadership of the director is everything. The more corporate hierarchical whims duct-tape the director, the more ed quality suffers. The business model is precisely the same as in charters, applies to higher grades. To wit: Eva Moskowitz, who tho CEO is also hands-on micromanaging director.
Very interesting observations here. Alas, public schools are becoming more like the non-autonomous corporate franchises that you describe where boneheaded mandates from on-high degrade the quality of product. NGSS is a perfect example.
Off-topic: Anybody see this 5/12 Forbes article? “Is the problem that educators believe it’s more important to teach “skills” like critical thinking, rather than focusing on content—despite abundant evidence that content knowledge is what enables you to think critically?” And guess who’s seeking to turn this around… Chiefs for Change (the gang that brought you “the problem”)!!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2019/05/12/the-biggest-education-news-story-youve-never-heard-of/#1b13c6c560d4
Awesome article! Very encouraging. Natalie Wexler gets it. Hey, if Chiefs for Change is going to lead the charge for putting content back at the center of the curriculum, more power to them!
Chiefs for Change may prattle about content, but they are an instrument of Jeb Bush, whose sole motivation and passion is privatization. Look at the mess that he has made of Florida. Don’t be gullible.
Diane,
If you only knew what a wasteland our public schools have become –because of the curriculum, not because of the teachers. It’s doing tedious chores without learning anything interesting or important. It’s fake learning. If you were a student at one, you would hate it. I deplore privatization, but I also deplore the intellectual vacuity of the many public education leaders who are so complicit in this degradation of our schools. We need change. I want to see it before I die. If it comes from the deformers, I will embrace it –with many qualms. Bethree is right that they helped create the problem in the first place with NCLB. But the root of the problem is Dewey’s outsized and unwarranted influence in the edworld, which far predates NCLB. The perfect is the enemy of the good. I doubt the needed change will ever come from the public school establishment. Vacuity there. Perhaps you could convince me otherwise. Most I’ve met here in CA’s establishment don’t even know Hirsch exists, much less his sound reasons. Gates’ new infrastructure of education non-profits is benighted in many ways, and sullied in many ways, but there is intellectual heft there that seems to be lacking at NEA, today’s Teachers College, and the other citadels of the establishment.
I recently read that Portugal has taken Hirsch’s pro-knowledge views to heart and scores on PISA and TIMSS have jumped upwards. Kids there are actually learning now.
Ponderosa,
I don’t know any reformers who are serious about a knowledge rich curriculum. At one time, Checker Finn and I were. But then he became mesmerized by choice and the Hirschian views fell to the side. As you know, Don Hirsch was an early endorser of the Common Core, assuming that his ideas were being adopted. When he looked closer, he realized that CC is as vacuous as what it replaced. I have come to believe that the fight for what we both treasure requires that we fight to preserve the common good. Once the principle of consumerism reigns, then the state will be funding religious quacks and home schoolers who learn only what their parents know.
Dewey is not all bad. Check out a book about the Dewey School at the U of Chicago. It had a knowledge rich curriculum. You would be amazed to see what the children at his own school studied.
“If you only knew what a wasteland our public schools have become –because of the curriculum, not because of the teachers. It’s doing tedious chores without learning anything interesting or important. It’s fake learning. If you were a student at one, you would hate it.”
This is my middle-school son’s exact description of every day in his school.
“It’s doing tedious chores without learning anything interesting or important. It’s fake learning. If you were a student at one, you would hate it.”
“This is my middle-school son’s exact description of every day in his school.”
I know some public schools are like this but some of them are not. So perhaps the question is why some public schools operating under the same guidelines are not like this and some are.
It’s hard not to have some “tedious” learning in middle school. (It happens in private middle schools, too). But that should be balanced with learning interesting and engaging material as well. There are public schools that do this and perhaps the ones that don’t have more overwhelmed teachers having to teach classes too large for the range of abilities in the class.
First “they” break it and then they blame the schools for the results.
i have always believed that knowledge is required before you can think critically. I am very tired of the non-educator rich telling us how it needs to be done when they have no expertise. The elementary schools have quit making kids memorize multiplication tables and quit “drill and kill” which only means the skills never set. Result is they can’t factor in algebra and anything with fractions is mind-boggling. The deeper understanding common core promised is yet to be seen – I find the math skills are worse than ever.
Too bad the sports teams never have to give up drill and kill.
I think you will find that in ALL states that are very test centric, the math curriculum has been awful and it has only gotten worse with Common Core. I live in MD…very data driven, very test centric. I’m fortunate that I caught onto this early with my 2 children and I took it upon myself to teach them ALL the basic math skills because they didn’t get it in school. My kids will say that they hated “Mommy Math” (especially in the summer), but now that they are older, they realize that those basic math skills are very important in the higher maths and in life (they know how to calculate tips! when they go out with friends). I didn’t drill and kill them all summer long, but 1/2 hour 3-4 times a week was sufficient. In school, the curriculum is geared toward test prep.
Test-centric curriculum is a skeleton. Content is some meat on the bones. Content is also what makes learning engaging.
“The elementary schools have quit making kids memorize multiplication tables and quit “drill and kill” which only means the skills never set..”
I’m not defending Common Core, but I don’t believe that the problem is that kids aren’t doing more “drill and kill”.
The students today do learn their math facts, but they also learn what those facts mean and how to get to “what’s 7 x 8?” if they don’t have “56” right at hand. Giving students a sense of what numbers means is not a terrible way to teach them math and simply being able to memorize single digit times tables may get a kid a 100 on a test of easy multiplication and not help them once they get beyond that rote memorization.
One “no excuses” charter school is famous for having the highest elementary school math test scores in the state. And yet when it comes to taking the SHSAT which requires more understanding of numbers, those students are not breezing through. Sometimes teaching students to understand numbers can be just as useful, if not more useful.
While knowledge of multiplication tables is important, learning them through kill and drill is not the only way and I don’t believe that has anything to do with why kids are struggling in higher level math. Kids who can adeptly use a calculator to get the answer to multiplication problems still struggle. Having those multiplication facts doesn’t mean they can easily do higher level math.
In my opinion, the Algebra 1 that is now required is nothing like basic Algebra that I was taught decades ago. It has elements that I learned in Trigonometry and Calculus. It has elements that many adults with successful careers never learned and will never have to learn. And that is what the kids with the very lowest math ability are supposed to learn in 9th grade — and after that it gets harder and harder. Which is fantastic for engineering types but just a difficult hurdle for many perfectly competent high school students who are not engineering types. Middle class and affluent parents simply pay for tutors or send kids to private schools where the students can take easier math if they want to study a non-STEM subject at a top liberal arts college which requires no high level math classes to graduate.
This is as if every high school senior boy was expected to run a 4:40 mile and anything slower than a 4:40 mile meant that they failed physical education and weren’t “college-ready”. That is what has happened in math — it is a set up for many students to “fail” based on the false claim that every college student must learn advanced math to be successful. A student who runs a 4:55 or 5:00 minute mile is a perfectly competent runner, even if they aren’t going to be among the top 20 runners in a typical high school meet if they “only” run a 5 minute mile. That doesn’t mean their 5 minute mile marks them as a failed athlete. They can be a successful athlete even with a 5:20 mile. Or a 6 or 7 minute mile if their strength is throwing a shot-put or golfing. It would be ridiculous to demand a 4:40 mile for any boy who wanted to play a sport because that was the only way to show they were “athlete-ready”.
There are now simply more middle class and poor students forced into higher level math who were never in those classes decades ago and don’t need those math classes for anything they plan to study in college. If a child is rich and parents pay for a private school, they don’t need to take an advanced math class to attend a perfectly good liberal arts college that has no math requirements to graduate summa cum laude from that college – or they have a tutor who gets them through a class taught in their private high school and those students never have to prove any competency by taking the same standardized math exam that public school students take. But if a student is poor and struggles in higher level math, they are told they are not college-ready period.
It is important to have higher level math classes available and for all students to be encouraged to take them, while making it clear that those students can still be excellent college-ready students who can graduate from many colleges summa cum laude even if they struggle in higher level math.
LisaM “In school, the curriculum is geared toward test prep.”
Which is about drill and kill.
“Too bad the sports teams never have to give up drill and kill.”
Are you comparing teaching with coaching or dog training?
“While knowledge of multiplication tables is important, learning them through kill and drill is not the only way and I don’t believe that has anything to do with why kids are struggling in higher level math. ”
They struggle because even what would be useful in CC (like learn to think) is tested hence kids learn it via drill and kill, and kids end up not thinkimng at all.
Yeah some drills are needed in math, but that’s not learning math, and that’s not thinking. If we don’t allow kids to slow down and think things over, they won’t, and they will have the impression that whatever they are thinking is unimportant.
It’s really puzzling to see over and over the same arguments: “Only drill and kill” “No, what kids need is to think”. Kids need to do both, and they need to do it from early on. Even a 6 year old has her own thoughts, and teaching her as if she was a puppy whose input is immaterial is, well, just dog training, and then we shouldn’t be surprised to see completely passive students in college with self confidence problems who only dare to do whatever they were trained to do.
Stop thinking in extremes. It rarely works and it certainly doesn’t work in education.
I agree with you!
I hope my post didn’t sound as if I was advocating one extreme or the other.
No, I just wrote a longwinded “I agree with you”. Those who think, cognitive science exclusively supports one method of teaching over another, I think should read the Nobel prize winning Kahneman’s book “Thinking fast and slow”. We do both kinds of thinking, and both can and should be nurtured early on.
Noexcuses teaching values only fast, passive thinking—those teachers barely do more than a dog trainer, or a drill sergeant or a coach. Which is fine with many parents, because they often think “A few years in the military would do good for every child especially for boys.”
There are four parenting styles and the parents that would slam their children into these brutal child boot camps like Eva’s Torture Academies would be authoritarian disciplinarians and/or uninvolved (who want the child out of their lives and docile at all times when they are there – seen occasionally when its time to pretend to be a parent with one hug a day, and never heard).
Authoritarian Parenting
Do any of these statements sound like you?
Uninvolved Parenting
Do any of these statements sound familiar?
https://www.verywellfamily.com/types-of-parenting-styles-1095045
I once spent two hours chatting with George Lakoff, who has written about the rhetoric of politics (“Don’t Think of an Elephant”).
He said the big difference between right and left is that left believes in rational thinking while right appeals emotionally to the “strict father” style of parenting. The strict father believes in discipline, right and wrong, no gray areas, no excuses.
I have tried several times to discover how many parents, the ratio in relation to the total number of parents, that practice this style of parenting. So far, I haven’t come up with the proper search terms to find the answer.
I’m sure Donald Trump and Besty DeVos had parents like these and grew up to be the same kind of parent.
Back to discussion among Used2LoveNY, LisaM, retiredteacher, NYCPSP & mate weirdl above: Two points being made here. I agree that high-stakes annual testing in early grades leads directly to rote don’t-think-just-parrot pedagogy, particularly with unseasoned teachers– & we get more of the latter due to the former.
But there’s also the math wars thing. Again an issue of extreme either/or. Conceptual beat out rote drilling 25 yrs ago in textbooks. Granted teachers had time/ flexibility to supplement before NCLB, but my kids’ K-3rd classwk/ hw/ tests were dominated by clumsy methods attempting to elicit number-sense, visualization of concepts etc. Many reqd lengthy sequences of dots in circles/ what-have-you that took laborious hrs for little fingers. Concept-wise they were hit or miss depending on how each kid conceptualizes.
You could anticipate the pbms to come w/CCSS (esp ELA): somebodies somewhere break mind process down into skill-steps according to their idea of how everybody’s brain works– & standardize it. Add testing & you’ve got everybody parroting what is nonsense to many of them (esp those w/innate number-sense).
2 of my 3 inherited my vacant math brain (despite mathematician dad). They picked up a few handy improvements on old-fash long-div/ multip/ etc, but were no better than I at midsch/ hisch math. Just like me they gained numbersense later in real-world app. But speaking for us empty math-brainers… A lot of us are high in logic & visual-spatial sense. I think I would have gained from age 2-on abacus use, plus lots of K-3rd hands-on– counting/ measuring/ sorting/ arranging objects.
That’s exactly the point, bethree5: make math education hands on. Let kids manipulate physical objects, and talk to them while they are doing that, to see what they think. Pure direct instruction doesn’t want to waste time with this stuff since “it has no definable content to learn” and pure indirect instruction wants kids to come up with the addition algorithm on their own from these experiments.
So the idea of CCS to slow things down some and let kids do some experiments with physical and mental objects sounds very reasonable: they invite kids’ own thoughts, ideas, and they also indicate where the ideas of math are coming from. Where CCS fails is that it demands to test that kids really did and understood these experiments. It’s like telling kids “Why don’t you draw a picture of a house, don’t worry about what it looks like, just draw it, so that I can see what your idea of a house is. If you have a cat or dog, I’d like to see them in the picture, too” Then, once they are done with the picture: “Tomorrow we are going to have a test where you have to draw a house, and I will grade your house-drawing skills. Everybody has to draw at least one cat and one dog, and they need to be recognizable, or I will take off points.”
Fans of pure direct instruction always run out of time since they have so much essential knowledge to cover in a way too short time (they are often promoters of year-round schools), and fans of pure indirect instruction brag about the two kids who “just figure out everything I throw at them, and the school will be proud of them one day”, while the other 20 kids in the class “just refuse to think on their own, they seem to be angry if I dare to ask them a question. I suspect bad parental influence, who simply can’t think out of the box”.
“Fans of pure direct instruction always run out of time since they have so much essential knowledge to cover in a way too short time.” 😀 Perfect, mate. When I was growing up we had an old Readers’ Digest cartoon taped to the fridge. Mom is on the floor w/open books spread out around her saying “Does that answer your question dear?” as Dad & kids are donning coats & fleeing.
the gang so exactly adept, these days, at changing the terms, the labels, the programs and the personnel — but keeping the same old game