Ted Dintersmith was honored by the NEA for his advocacy on behalf of public education.
In this article, which appeared in Forbes, he urges support for a national commitment to investing in education and the future of our society.
He writes:
Education is the single most important issue determining our democracy’s future. If we continue to get it wrong, we’re headed for collapse. But if we bring the vision and courage to get it right, we will rescue the American Dream. Now more than ever, we desperately need a compelling blueprint, an Education Imperative.
Education sits in a context. Machine intelligence (computers, software, robotics, artificial intelligence) is advancing at a blistering pace, posing profound career and citizenship challenges for our population. Within a decade or two, machines will outperform humans on almost any physical or cognitive task, eliminating almost all routine white- and blue-collar jobs. To his immense credit, presidential candidate Andrew Yang is sounding alarm bells about this economic tsunami heading our way. And if economic upheaval isn’t enough, technology-driven social media and deep-fake videos are now weapons with the power to manipulate and disrupt civic engagement, to undermine democratic processes…
In the past, America was at its best when faced with an existential crisis. Hell, we saved the free world during World War II. We rebuilt Europe. We put a man on the moon. What better cause than fighting for our children’s futures by rallying around an aspirational view of what our schools could be, by stepping up to an Education Imperative.
Our Education Imperative should start with our babies and toddlers. There’s no better economic investment, nor higher moral imperative, than ensuring that our youngest children receive high-quality early-childhood care. Too many of America’s kids grow up in desperate circumstances. Every child, not just every rich child, deserves a decent start in life.
The vast majority of U.S. kids attend our public K12 schools, one of our country’s most vital resources. These schools need more financial support. We need to offset the outsized role of local property taxes in funding education, which results shortchanging the kids who need the most. If you’re looking for heroes in America, you’ll find them in our classrooms. Our teachers fight daily for their kids, even risking their lives to protect children from shooters armed with NRA-endorsed assault weapons. They deserve a fair salary, better professional development support, and trust.
You may not agree with all his prescriptions but in general he is on the right track.
Time for a massive investment in children and teachers and education.
Testing and choice have been a wasteful and harmful distraction.
Yeah….but the devil is in the details. Dintersmith is a rich techie. He speaks truth, but he is selling his wares and nothing more. Sorry, but I’m jaded. All that I got from this article is a feeling of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Buzzwords with a slick undertone to sell more tech….especially at the PreK level.
Don’t be sorry, you are right to be jaded. Dintersmith is a true neoliberal. His basic vision for education is that roughly six billion of us will be rendered superfluous by technology, so the one billion worthy souls need a true education, while the rest simply need to be conditioned to accept their poor lot in life. There Is No Alternative.
It surprises me not a whit that the NEA would honor this demon.
Dienne,
Nea – Gates funded
Doesnt surprise me at all. Once again why does someone like dimtersmith get a voice in what should be a community driven conversation
So true, and so overwhelmingly manipulative: go after the problem, loudly call it out, and then instate your own profitable “solutions.” As you state it so well, he is selling his wares and nothing more.
Hang down your head and cry, John Dewey …
How about developing a educational leap manifesto using the climate change leap manifesto as a template? Something basic with compelling talking points.
There are no prescriptions here to agree or disagree with, just blabber. Nothing, even “start with our babies and toddlers” is actionable, and even this point is questionable. Kids should play before school, later they can learn reading in a month using phonics.
It is Shared knowledge that MAKES DEMOCRACY POSSIBLE. An ignorant citizenry is the goal, not just the profit made by the businesses that take over our schools.
You cannot have an educated citizenry and elect a Trump.
E.D. Hirsch: “Shared knowledge MAKES DEMOCRACY POSSIBLE”
I agree completely.
Best line in the article, and a point that needs to be made loud and clear by all MSM: “…policymakers bet on test-driven accountability measures… Bored K12 students grind through a daily standardized routine that rewards memorizing material, replicating low-level procedures, and following instructions – exactly what machine intelligence does perfectly.”
I thought his ideas on higher ed were slim, jargon-y, weak. And as usual, higher ed is expected to replace on-the-job training: its absence in the private sector reflects the lack of commitment of our corporations to the US work force, which reflects complex economic changes 40 yrs in the making, which our govt has completely failed to address.
I thought that was the WORST line in the article. Where are kids memorizing anything these days? That’s exactly what they’re not doing, but need to do.
The century-long jihad against memorization is the central problem in American education.
Memorizing IS learning. If they’re not memorizing, they’re not learning. KIrschner, Clark and Sweller: “learning is defined as change in long-term memory.”
Teachers need to learn the latest brain science. Long-term memory IS the seat of skills. Endowing long term memory with facts, schema, and memorized procedures is what makes a sharp and successful problem-solver, reader, and writer. Ignorant of these facts, we try vainly to exercise mythological mental muscles instead. Counterintuitive as it seems, learning things by heart is what builds skills. Merely exercising the brain does not build skills. We need to promote memorization, not bash it.
Ponderosa, I am not referring to learning real facts through memorization. I gathered the author is referring to test-prep “tips and tricks” for proving mastery of “skill-sets” er I mean state standards. I am only familiar w/ELA stds so this may be unfair re: math or the new science stds [do they have govt/ history stds yet?]. I’m judging from a ‘close reading’ of the ELA stds & a look at every yr’s sample questions. They are testing and teaching to subjective & idiosyncratic generalizations about cognitive processes, and stale, routinized literary/ essay formats. Their purported assessment of reading comprehension is slender & faulty; ditto, writing ability. And tho I haven’t seen full tests, I wonder how they can explore students’ knowledge of key literary movements and authors, since stds shy away from prescribed reading [perhaps just as well….]
I personally have no shibboleth against rote memorization: without it, I could never have excelled in for-langs. There, short-term memory is the operative force in initial vocab learning; long-term is only acquired through extensive reading [aided if poss w/study of related langs]. I see a parallel w/memorizing dates in history, phylla in bio, periodic table in chem: long-term-memory is cemented thro extensive reading/ practicum; it seems a necessary supplement to study of any academic discipline.
an essential point: I have often thought that “memory” is a sort of muscle and MUST be regularly used and regularly pushed into becoming larger
The Kirschner paper says that long-term memory has no known limits.
Well, I’ve said it before (also many times in my own blog “The Treasure Hunter) the purpose of education is to help you develop your own life. Of course that means learning math, reading, spelling, writing, etc, and also some experience with those new skills becoming prominent in the outside world. But they are not the whole package.
When I was a student in middle school I had classes in sewing, cooking, and typing that were beneficial to me, plus a few others, such as health, that were a waste of time. So later, as a teacher, I tried to bring as much of the world into the classroom as I could: singing songs, acting in plays, playing games, writing letters, and so on. Of course we didn’t do all those things one after the other, but fitted them in whenever they matched the regular school subjects.
Well, I wound go on boasting and blathering. The point I want to make is that life is large; so learning about it and practicing it in school is an important part of education. for all of us.
P.S. Above I meant “woun’t” not wound.
Slightly off topic, but related — I was sorely disappointed during the debates last night. For the first time I can remember, a moderator asked a question about K-12 education and charter schools. Finally, an opportunity to make it clear the different perspectives by the candidates when it comes to charters. Instead, except for Julian Castro, it was a lot of blather. Even when Bernie finally had a chance to speak, he spent his time talking about other parts of education and didn’t mention charters even once. Bernie absolutely has the best education policy by far, but it’s so important that candidates who support public schools and oppose charters are able to explain it to the public in a way that makes sense. Otherwise, the battle is lost.
I contrast that with what happened when other issues, like Medicare for All, were discussed and candidates challenged one another. Frankly, the differences between the candidates proposals for universal health care are not all that different, despite the attempt by the moderator to engender a controversy. Whether the Democrat is fighting for Medicare for All and give up your union insurance or Medicare for All but you can keep your union insurance if you like it better is relatively minor and can be hashed out later. But whether a candidate philosophically supports public education and rejects privatization, or whether that candidate supports charters cherry picking the least expensive students, is a huge deal (in my opinion).
This is why I wish de Blasio was in the debates. We need Democrats in the primary who are willing to challenge others on the privatization movement. I hope if there is another debate, Bernie spends his time directly challenging the other candidates on their support for charters and explains why that is wrong. I really don’t need to hear more about how he supports free college for all because that is not exactly something that needs to be explained to the American people. What does need to be explained is why charters are harmful when most Americans still believe they are wonderful ideas that do so much for the most vulnerable poor children “trapped” in “failing” urban schools.
I was not precisely disappointed in that exchange. I listened for code—key words, etc. We seem to be at a moment when privatization of public ed is being questioned in liberal quarters at last, and I noted that no one specifically promoted charters/ vouchers. Even Cory Booker refrained.
What I DID like was something I think is more important, as it directly affects the 85-90% who attend traditional publics: there were cracks about over-testing by a couple of candidates. [which got effusive applause]. To me, this issue should be FIRST on the candidates’ ed hit parade: dump annual 3rd-8th + 1yr in hisch state-stdzd assessments, AND the cruddy aligned stds to which they’re aligned, AND the faux high-stakes accountability systems presently overseen by the fed Dept of Ed.
It was also more important to me at this stage that a number of candidates spoke out in support of unions. If the Democrat Party can be brought back around to strong support of labor force/ union protections– and return to power– that will undermine privatization. However I agree with you: I won’t be happy until I hear full-throated rejection of privatization of public goods, period.
Thank you for making excellent points.
What was crazy is that Andrew Yang gave full-on endorsement of charter schools and then got applause by saying that standardized tests didn’t measure anything. Buttigeig got applause by saying he wanted a Sec of Education who believed in public education like he did. Everyone kept praising teachers and talking about giving them more money, including Bernie, and pretending charters didn’t exist. Julian Castro was the only candidate who straight out called out charters for what they were (and got applause) with Warren sort of doing so.
I think what depressed me was that it seemed like Corey Booker gave one of the best answers — at long as you had minimal knowledge about the issue you would think Booker made a lot of sense. He supports public schools and giving teachers more money and he supports shutting down those “bad” charters and only keeping the “high performing charters” that are so great for so many of the families in the most dire need of them! And he was 100% correct on much of what he said — the poverty, environmental issues, etc. that also need to be addressed as part of this.
What’s not to like in Corey Booker’s answer? I’m sure many viewers were nodding right along thinking how much sense that made.
And no one asked the basic question to anyone who was pro-charter: Why charters? If you want to establish a public school that will teach only the most motivated family’s children and gets rid of kids that cost more money, why would you give that franchise to privatizers instead of simply establishing those as choice public schools? That is the question that needs to be answered by anyone who supports charters. Giving that franchise to a private entity is as ridiculous as giving a franchise for Medicare insurance to a private company that specializes in only insuring the youngest and healthiest senior citizens and is allowed to kick any senior who gets too sick back into a public Medicare system. It is absurd on its face and yet not one candidate is ever asked to explain or justify why they insist this is a good idea for public education.
When you listen to candidates, you must remember that when they say they support “public education,” they are usually including private charters as part of that term.
What you are describing is that the promoters of privatization have gone underground and use code words. But they haven’t given up.
Dintersmith betrays his ignorance of what’s really going on in schools when he says kids sit around memorizing. First, that’s not true. Teachers scorn memorizing these days. Common Core test prep consists not of memorizing, but of incessant practice as test-like questions. Second, he implies that memorizing is bad –that it”s “low level”. This is a common but false belief. The universal prejudice against learning facts by heart is the fruit of a century-long disinformation campaign led by benighted and ideological teachers colleges across the country. Fortunately recent advances in cognitive science show what a mound of horse**** this prejudice is. The vaunted skills we all claim to be teaching instead of mere “low level” knowledge actually stem from a well-endowed long-term memory. Long-term memory is the central powerhouse of the brain. By delivering relevant knowledge to the very-limited working memory at lightning speed, it frees up precious bandwidth in the working memory to tackle complex and difficult tasks. Without vast stores of knowledge in long-term memory, our higher order thinking is hobbled. People like Dintersmith ignorantly imagine that high level thinking stems from a set of thinking muscles somewhere in the brain that get stronger with exercise. These muscles do not exist. What they imagine is being done by these “muscles” is really being done by long-term memory. American educational thought needs a revolution. We need to elevate the stocking of the memory as the central task of our schools. Learning facts is fun and fruitful; the current mental exercise regime is stultifying and fruitless. My own practice proves this.
You make some good points although I think the devil is always in the details and specifics of how people define “rote memorization” and “knowledge”.
The Common Core curriculum was never the problem for most parents, in my opinion. It was the TESTS that purported to be the way to find out if the kids were learning. Which turned “Common Core” into a dirty word that meant “non-stop test prep”. To me, it’s just another curriculum and every few years some new curriculum in math or reading comes along and then goes out of fashion. Common Core was actually quite vague and if testing had never been any part of it, would probably have worked as well as any other idea — some parents would like it and some would not. And the science education my kid got in a neighborhood public school was amazing with kids loving science.
One thing — I certainly have clear memories of being bored sitting in elementary school classes in the early 1970s. And I was bored sitting through high school classes where the entire curriculum in science classes and social studies was reading a textbook, “memorizing” and answering questions. When I finally had a kid of my own going to a neighborhood NYC public elementary school, I was blown away by how much better it was! Sure parents had complaints about some way of teaching math or reading or writing, but even at the worst it was miles better than the way I had learned it as I fought to keep my eyes open when I was in elementary school through high school. I still know almost no science despite getting As due to my “memorization” skills in high school. It was dull and turned most kids off unless they were lucky enough to stumble into a great science class in college.
I don’t think there was some “golden era” in public education. And even with testing, for most kids the curriculum now is better than in the 1970s. But I do think students in expensive private schools always received a far more engaging education that public schools rarely offered.
Of course, no one ever tries to model a public school after a top performing private school and claim all public schools should do what they do (which includes tiny class sizes). Ask yourself why. Until the “reform” is about doing that, it’s all a fraud to make privatizers rich.
You’re right: dreadful fads and bad teaching have marred our schools, off and on, for decades. The Sixties and Seventies saw some of the same misguided trends we’re suffering from today –e.g. inquiry learning. Direct instruction is best for novices –which means most students –as studies demonstrate over and over (these studies are inconvenient truths ignored by most ed leaders). But direct instruction can be done badly too. Reading aloud from the textbook is bad. That doesn’t mean the alternatives –e.g. inquiry –are better. This basic principle cannot be ignored: kids’ long-term memories need knowledge. I provide this with interactive, cartoon-based lectures that kids enjoy and learn a lot from. These are followed by opportunities to use this knowledge. The value of these activities is not “skill building”: it is solidifying knowledge in long term memory. This in turn empowers working memory to do complex and challenging mental tasks like reading comprehension. “21st Century Skills” are really all based on knowing stuff.
“it’s just another curriculum and every few years some new curriculum in math or reading comes along and then goes out of fashion” — quite the opposite. Common Core was a trojan horse that allowed rebranding quarter century old failed programs as “aligned with Common Core” and sell them to the districts without much outcry like it was two decades ago. These people do not want to throw stuff away, even if this stuff is unusable. They wash it, relabel it, and sell it again.
I agree with you about Common Core test prep – it’s crap and it’s not about memorization – and there is very little of that going on in schools these days. Where we part company, as you know, is whether or not lack of memorization is a good thing.
If kids simply learn to memorize “facts” without learning the skills to understand, verify, analyze and contextualize those “facts”, how do they know what’s true? For example, I learned a fun “fact” in my Indiana high school. Did you know that Indianapolis is the fifth largest U.S. city? Well, let’s just say I believed that “fact” until I embarrassed myself with it in college.
That’s a pretty minor example, but many teachers and schools have agendas (especially in rural, Southern and Bible Belt areas). So if kids are taught “facts” like Noah’s Ark and humans riding dinosaurs and the earth is 6,000 years old, how are they supposed to know better? It’s all just information, something passed from an authority to a student to be swallowed whole. Are you okay with that? Or how do you propose to combat that if kids don’t learn the skills to understand the “facts”?
I think the ideas behind Common Core may have worked if all standardized testing from K- 8 was banned (except for high school students who elected to take SATs or ACTs or whatever they wanted to take).
I think it started as a philosophy of teaching young students how to weigh evidence and think. But since there was a separate goal that was designed to demonstrate how awful public schools were, it came with nonsensical testing in which the intention was not to see whether students knew how to read or do math, but whether they could think like not very smart test designers to decide what a “best answer” was. It was absurd and of course, and instead of teaching a new interesting curriculum, teachers went nuts trying to teach students how to put aside all logic and reason and think like a not very bright test maker.
And the reason for that is because if you force young students to pick a “best” answer among a group of ambiguous answers, you are guaranteed to have many of them pick the “wrong” answer which is then proof that they are poorly educated. And that was the intention. To show that public schools were all failures and drive kids to charters.
The best thing that ever happened was when suburban parents got a taste of this and were told by Arne Duncan how poorly educated their kids were and that they just didn’t want to acknowledge how stupid their kids were because the test said they were stupid so Arne said they must accept it. These were the same parents whose kids were thriving in high school and college and they clearly knew that Arne was full of it when he kept trying to tell them their children were poorly educated dolts and they should simply admit that their children were poorly educated dolts and only a charter would make them better.
Arne Duncan thought that he could create a whole new market for the charter industry that later made him rich by convincing suburban parents to leave their pubic schools where their kids were certified mediocrities or dolts according to the Common Core tests and attend a “high performing charter” where there kids would be certified outstanding because they performed well on these tests.
But those parents weren’t as stupid as Arne Duncan thought. It backfired and those charter advocates trying to hard to convince educated parents that their 8 year olds were only as good as the common core tests said they were experienced a huge backlash.
Dienne,
All the teachers are trying to do exactly what you desire: implant thinking skills sans knowledge. Yet it seems to me all hocus-pocus. The incoming seventh graders I get each year have been taught almost no facts at all. Allegedly they’ve only been taught skills. But I see no evidence of it. It’s as if they’ve had no education whatsoever. They can decode, and some can do a little math, but they’re not especially clever at most things. Their teachers, in having them DO elaborate things over and over, have just assumed the kids are LEARNING something –they cannot say exactly what –but I’ve come to believe almost no learning is actually occurring. The teachers have been making a leap of faith, and that leap has been unwarranted.
Certainly one can promote the HABIT of critical thinking. But where does the CAPACITY for critical thinking come from?
How did you figure out that Indianapolis was not the 5th largest city in the US? Hearing better information, noting contradictions with prior knowledge, and then evaluating (using other knowledge –i.e. of the respective sources) which is best. Are “noting contradictions” and “evaluating” skills that must be built up with practice on random topics, as if they were muscles? That’s what today’s education orthodoxy maintains. But I suspect that’s wrong. These skills are in-born, basic functions of the brain and they deploy automatically. Their functioning is very limited, however, until they are empowered, by having vast amounts of knowledge on hand –in the head. What we call “critical thinking skill” is really just cooperation between innate capacities of the brain and the offerings of the long-term memory. What we loosely dub “skills” is actually, in large part, learned (i.e. memorized) knowledge in action. By adding vast troves of relatively reliable information to long-term memory, we greatly augment our native powers of discernment. The thinking skills curriculum is a dead end. Teach the kids about the world and they’ll finally start becoming the critical thinkers we want them to be.
The act of “learning” is itself a skill. Kids can “learn” by being told: “Indianapolis is the 5th largest U.S. city.” In that case, kids have to accept it because they have no other reference. Or the teacher can say, “find out the 5th largest U.S. city.” Then kids have to figure out for themselves and the teacher should challenge them on how they “learned” their answer. Did they look it up online? How did that site determine that information? Did they ask someone? How does that person know? Then you can start exploring how we would know that information – for instance, you can look into the U.S. Census and how that works. And since the census counts are political, is there any other system for how we verify those counts, or is the Census simply taken as gospel? Kids can start to see who’s agenda determines the “facts” we all “learn”. All of that is certainly knowledge – and valuable knowledge too, but it’s not just rote memorization of what the teacher or other authority says.
Note that authors of papers advocating pure, 100% rote memorization do not describe how they establish the effectiveness of their preferred method, but from the descriptions it’s clear, they use tests. Kids do well on the usual (CC?) tests.
The positive effect of the method of active learning you describe, like tying data to its history and sources, have kids take part in hunting down the validity of the data, doesn’t show up in usual tests which usually checks the ability of speedy recollection of facts.
Dienne,
The type of deep scrutiny you describe is procedural knowledge that should be taught. It should be practiced a few times until it’s embedded in the memory. However it is impractical to expect kids to do this with every morsel of knowledge that attempts to enter their brains –there’s simply too much to learn. It seems to me kids should consume vast quantities of knowledge from varied sources –that received from school will have been mostly vetted and be mostly accurate. This large body of knowledge is what gives one the ability to sniff out facts that might be false. One can then do deeper scrutiny on those off-smelling facts.
Mate,
The paper says nothing about rote memorization.
If you don’t like pre- and post-tests, what method of gauging benefit would you recommend instead?
Quotable quote: “People like Dintersmith ignorantly imagine that high level thinking stems from a set of thinking muscles somewhere in the brain that get stronger with exercise.” This goofball idea seems derived from pop self-help books and yet has gained so much traction, it has intruded majorly into the classroom.
Ponderosa, I would love to hear you expound on the differences between short-term, working, and long-term memory—giving examples if you can from the type of academic practices that encourage each, and perhaps the goals, & maybe the sequencing of those pedagogical practices, or how they can work together to attain the goals. It sounds like a book! But maybe you can give a thumbnail.
I know there is much more to deep learning than memorization, but I also recognize there is a role for rote learning at each stage. There is interconnecting tissue, which involves [in the humanities] extensive reading and discussion of narratives which put the memorized data into contrasting contexts, which then can be examined from various points of view. I think it is only from that level of study that one can tease out universal concepts. The error I see in many of our K12 stds is putting the concepts up front: attempting to teach/ describe/ memorize description of concepts first, which reduces the connective tissue to illustration of a priori concepts. [Which of course risks the indoctrination of faulty concepts, and also represses innovative thinking.] Concepts—it seems to me—can only be understood if derived by the student from deep study [which includes rote memorization of necessary facts].
bethree,
There was a really interesting article in Chalkbeat by an experienced Physics teacher about this. She seemed to be a very good teacher who had been skeptical of “discovery based” learning being very useful.
In the article, she explains her experience at a wine tasting, where she was given 5 empty glasses and then listened to the instructor lecturing about the wines they were about to try. She said she was thinking “I have no idea what he is saying” and “I’m dumber than everyone else here “. She realized that until she actually tried the wine, everything that had been said to her by the instructor was of no help and just made her feel lost and inadequate. And she realized that was probably how many of her physics students felt, too. So she revamped her curriculum so that it started with hands on discovery, with the related “lessons” coming after.
I’m not explaining it very well, but was published 8/29/19 on Chalkbeat and author is Robin Norwich. I’m also interested in hearing Ponderosa’s answer to your question!
Bethree:
I’m not a cognitive scientist, but I’m reading them. The Kirschner article (http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf) and others I’ve read say we’ve long misunderstood long term memory as a peripheral player in thinking. Now we realize it is the central player. We used to think chess players had massive, high-speed reasoning powers that allowed them to process possible moves way faster than us mere mortals. But it turns out what they have is a myriad of memorized board configurations and the attendant best move for each. Long term memory instantaneously provides these to working memory on an as-needed-basis, thus freeing up working memory to do higher-level thinking. Other studies show this dynamic in other fields (e.g. science). It seems to me that the tacit belief underlying what most teachers do nowadays is that they can make the brain better at thinking by just having it think more. If you have it try to find the main idea over and over, it will build up some power to find the main idea. There’s an implicit muscle metaphor here, it seems to me. If the new science is correct, however, this “muscle” doesn’t exist. What enables one to find the main idea is rather long-term memory offering up word meanings instantaneously, thus freeing up the working memory to assess which ideas are key and which are not. Thus the real path to strengthening one’s ability to find main ideas lies in equipping the long-term memory with word meanings. Mental workouts that do not augment long-term memory thus do nothing to improve thinking.
That’s my current understanding.
What I do with my students is try to implant knowledge about the world –e.g. that the Romans spoke Latin, not Roman (harder to convey that one might think) –bit by bit. I feel like I’m laying bricks. I do this in thematic units, not as “disconnected facts” as the anti-fact crowd love to say (who teaches disconnected facts??) I believe that this foundation is necessary for higher-order thinking. If these mundane bits are well-implanted, students won’t have to think about them; they won’t become stumbling blocks to thought; they’ll be there “on call” in the brain so that working memory won’t have to spend bandwidth searching for them on Google or trying to discover them through context clues. I don’t pretend to do anything fancier with my students. I’m skeptical of those who claim they do, but I’m open minded. I feel like Descartes when he decided to wipe his brain clean of all received ideas and start from scratch, only allowing what was truly sound to enter his brain: cogito, ergo sum. I know I can teach facts and that they’re useful. I’m not yet sure I can or should do much more than that.
Just want to say that the main reason I come to this blog is to see your comments.
NYC:
I read the Chalkbeat article. It sounds to me that the wine lecture was unintelligible to Ms. Norwich because she lacked the relevant background knowledge. I find it hard to believe that sipping the wine conferred all of the missing knowledge that would make the lecture intelligible. Likewise letting students diddle around with physics toys is unlikely to elucidate physics for many students, as research shows over and over (http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf). I think a better inference from her wine tasting experience would be that she needed a much more elementary-level lecture that what she was getting. As a science teacher, she should really study the science behind discovery learning before rashly jumping on board the bandwagon. She does cite one research study from Turkey that purports to support discovery learning. I found it hard to understand in part because it was written in fairly awkward English, but it seemed like the validity of the study depended heavily on the quality of the one direct instruction teacher in the control group. If he or she was a dud, it would certainly make the discovery learning group’s results shine by contrast. Weigh this against Kirschner’s mountains of evidence against discovery learning.
Also consider that Norwich hasn’t even tried discovery learning yet. She’s simply vowed to try it out this year. She might hate it.
The idea that the brain has muscles that are exercised by certain subjects (Latin used to be #1) was strongly held in the 19th century. When the idea was discredited in the early decades of the 20th century, the field of Latin collapsed, because it relied on a spurious justification instead of relying on the cultural and linguistic value of studying Latin.
Ponderosa,
You described your teaching above as:
“I provide this with interactive, cartoon-based lectures that kids enjoy and learn a lot from. These are followed by opportunities to use this knowledge. The value of these activities is not “skill building”: it is solidifying knowledge in long term memory.”
I think this sounds terrific. It also sounds very similar to what that physics teacher uses. It is a combination. Having kids do a brief experiment first isn’t all that different than letting them watch a cartoon lecture first. There are both parts to learning. You seemed to assume that the physics teacher was making major changes or giving short shrift to teaching knowledge, but she was just starting in way to engage the students early so they were interested in what came next.
I mentioned above how blown away I was with my kid loving science in lower elementary grades as it was the most tedious subject taught when I was in elementary school — teacher droning on “lecturing” to young kids, reading textbook and answering questions getting “knowlege” I immediately forgot once whatever test was done.
Then I saw an open school for my kid. The students walked into a science class and there was a hands on experiment they did — very simple taking no more than 5 minutes. Then the teacher talked about scientific inquiry and methods and the kids started talking about that and writing about it in their journal. But the experiment made all the difference. Probably like your engaging lecture with cartoons did.
At any rate, what seems clear is that no one thinks “skills based” learning is good. But that seems to be what is tested these days. How well did the teacher teach students the skills to excel on a standardized test? The rebellions by parents is because we understand that rewarding teachers for their “excellence” in teaching students the skills to succeed on a standardized test is not a good thing.
If you want to get past the Dintersmith rhetoric, carefully contrived to make an appealing plausible story (with some help from Frameworks Institute.org), you need to look at the website Education 2020 (ED 2020) to see the underling incoherence (hot air) in Dintersmith’s project, and who is supporting it.
About Education 2020: “We (partners) have come together to advocate for a shared vision to advance a comprehensive education agenda that promotes universal inclusion and access to ongoing learning opportunities for everyone living in America. We call on all 2020 Presidential candidates to develop comprehensive education proposals aligned to this shared vision.”
Our coalition members (partners) include: Alliance for Excellent Education, American Federation of Teachers, Autism Society-, Center for American Progress, Children’s Defense Fund, Community Change Action, Institute for Educational Leadership, Learning Policy Institute, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Center for Learning Disabilities, National Disability Rights Network, National Education Association, National Public Education Support Fund, National Women’s Law Center, Reach Higher-, Save the Children Action Network, Save the Children-, Teach Plus-, The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Education Task Force, The Education Trust-, The Institute for College Access & Success, The Partnership for the Future of Learning, The United State of Women, UnidosUS-, Young Invincibles-, ZERO TO THREE.
Education 2020 offers a “Briefing Book” for this promotional activity aided by Dintersmith’s article. The briefing Book includes brief “policy pitches” offered by each of the partners, presented in alphabetical order. These policy pitches are brief, and they do not add up to a “comprehensive agenda” or reflect a shared vision. For example, there are pitches from Teach Plus and the Education Trust, both unsupportive of unions along with pitches from both teacher unions, AFT and NEA.
The Briefing Book includes this idea from the Center for American Progress: “High-quality charter schools are a valuable strategy to increase the number of good public school seats for students. But the growth of charter schools should not be an end in itself, and there are legitimate critiques of the sector that must be addressed. The next administration should take a nuanced approach to charters that includes both the expansion of good school options and the coordination across the traditional district and charter sectors to avoid potentially negative impacts.”
The Learning Policy Institute calls for these actions among others: “Monitor, support, and enforce ESSA’s equity provisions. Key indicators of opportunity and outcomes can be used to inform “equity audits” for low-performing schools to support improvement and effective targeting of resources. “ also “Provide federal funding to support state and district efforts to create greater socioeconomic and racial school diversity and fund the Magnet School Assistance Program at a minimum at parity with the Charter School Program, currently funded at $440 million.”
The Briefing Book for this promotional activity also says: Education 2020 is a coalition housed and supported by the National Public Education Support Fund (established 2009, EIN 26-3015634).
Next question: what do we know about the National Public Education Support Fund? Here is what the fund does according to IRS form 990 for 2017.
“The mission of the National Public Education Support Fund (NPESF) is to promote equitable opportunities for all children to receive a high-quality education from birth through college and career. NPESF is a network hub for EDUCATION PHILANTHROPY, policy, advocacy and practice focused on equitable systems change.” What does “system change mean?” Systems change means reforms favored and charted primarily by billionaire-funded non-profit foundations, as if these tax havens are also sources of superior wisdom about education. The National Public Education Support Fund–a network for education philanthropy”–has the following projects in motion.
A. Partnership for the Future of Learning. Previously called the New Models Working Group. This working group dates to 2009. It was launched by Bill Gates to push the Common Core and aligned tests. The working group of participating foundations had quarterly meetings in DC). The current version funds organizations that offer “a forward-looking vision and policy framework for a 21st century public school system” (more and deeper learning, grounded in the core values of equity, democracy, and shared responsibility to ensure all children are prepared for college, career, and citizenship). Progress over the year: launched a STORYTELLING and NARRATIVE CHANGE effort with a microsite and about 50 partner organizations; publication of a community schools playbook and toolkit; and expanded participation to over 100 partners across dozens of education organizations.
B. We sponsor Education Justice Network. With six national education nonprofits advocating for greater education equity and opportunity with “alignment among the partners to amplify their work on policy, research, and advocacy.” Over the past year, members have created a governance structure for the network and its activities (e.g., working groups on community schools, school finance, redesigning districts, narrative shift, and democratizing knowledge).
C. Education Funder Strategy Group. Includes more than 30 leading foundations focused on “education policy and systems change from early childhood to college and career readiness and success.” Four quarterly meetings were held on the topics of FRAMING THE NARRATIVE on public education, resource equity, systems change…8 monthly calls were held on a variety of topics.” “A special dinner was held with leaders from the OECD focused on expanding access to high quality early learning. Working groups continued to self-organize around issues including “racial equity, using research evidence for change, and social-emotional learning.” (This as the current version of the New Models Working Group started by Bill Gates.)
D. Grantmakers for Thriving Youth: We are the fiscal sponsor for foundations/funders who are investing in “non-academic youth outcomes” such as “social and emotional learning and character development.” A majority of the funders “decided to continue this collaboration over the next two years.”
There is more. The 2017 Form 990 form identifies the Alliance for Excellent Education (all4ed.org) as a related organization whose work advances …”the goal of remodeling US public education.”
Indeed. all4ed is supported by many foundations known to support public funding of privately managed schools. These are named: Anonymous, AT&T Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, GE Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Kern Family Foundation, National Public Education Support Fund, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, State Farm, Stuart Foundation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.
If you want a deep dive into the policies favored and promoted by all of these interrelated projects and organizations, look at the “issues” section of the all4ed website. These are the topics for which there are recommendations.
Accountability, Adolescent Literacy, Assessments, Brown vs. Board, Career & Technical Education, College- and Career-Ready Standards, Deeper Learning, Digital Learning and Future Ready Schools, Economic Impacts, Every Student Succeeds Act, High School Reform, International Comparisons, Linked Learning, Personalized Learning, Science of Adolescent Learning, Teachers and School Leaders.
Dintersmith’s article is an example of the relatively new strategy for selling ideas, marketed by Frameworks Institute.org with a focus on inventing stories, and forwarding narratives calculated to distract attention and elicit favorable responses to hidden-from-view power players. Many of the same “philanthropies” who have promoted failed policies for schools in the last two decades are still at it with Dintersmith trying out a refreshed story line.
This is interesting: “Provide federal funding to support state and district efforts to create greater socioeconomic and racial school diversity and fund the Magnet School Assistance Program at a minimum at parity with the Charter School Program, currently funded at $440 million.” I don’t know what the “Magnet School Assistance Program” is, & wonder if it promotes “socioeconomic and racial school diversity” any better than the Charter School Program [i.e., not at all, in fact if anything exacerbating segregation]. There is only way I can imagine magnet schools achieving diversity, & that would be a 100% “magnetized” district where there was not a single magnet dedicated to gifted or disabled or college-bound or voc-tech.
The federal Charter Schools Program is a slush fund for national corporate chains. It should be abolished.
Common core was created by Gates and meant to standardize the system across the country. Standards are a business model approach that has no business in our schools
“Within a decade or two, machines will outperform humans on almost any physical or cognitive task, ”
Cognitive? How?
Physical: How will be plumbers, electricians, mechanics, secretaries, mailmen, truckdrivers etc be replaced in a decade or so?
Here is an article suggesting that it might be less than a decade for truck drivers: https://gizmodo.com/ups-has-been-delivering-cargo-in-self-driving-trucks-fo-1837272680