On the reform of public education

[Rogue 9]

Just saw this (hat tip to Alyrium):



And was put in mind of this post of Red's, which has stuck with me since reading it. Just thought it worth sharing.

[RedImperator]

Saw that. It pretty much jives with what I learned in grad school--in addition to teaching methodology, I studied the history of education reform. There was an ideological struggle in the early 20th century between the followers of John Dewey, who advocated a more individualistic model of education, and those of industrial reformer Fredrick Taylor, who wanted to reform schools for maximum efficiency, using the same methods Taylor was advocating for industrial production. Taylor's followers won, and that's the paradigm we've been using for the last 100 years.

[Eleas]

I agree very strongly with the notion of ADHD not being an epidemic but a consequence of today's demands on the brain. I agree even more strongly with his observation of education being rooted in old (arguably obsolete) paradigms about the human mind. I even agree that the present-day first impulse to medicate kids is often dangerously cavalier, and I say that as someone with ADHD.

However, in the case of ADHD itself, the speaker is an ignoramus. Ritalin is not, as he would have it, a drug designed to deaden the senses, to shut down anything. What these CS derivates have in common is that they do the exact opposite, i.e. what he advocates.

[..] and anaesthetic is when you shut your senses off and deaden yourself to what's happening. And a lot of these drugs are that. *drawing a link to Ritalin*

We're getting our children through school by anaesthetising them. And I think we should be doing the exact opposite. We shouldn't be putting them to sleep, we should be waking them up to what they have inside of themselves.

So in order to "wake them up," we should stop administering stimulants? Someone here clearly didn't do their homework.


EDIT: A quote got truncated. EDIT2: clarified some stupid phrasing.

[Thanas]

Saw that. It pretty much jives with what I learned in grad school--in addition to teaching methodology, I studied the history of education reform. There was an ideological struggle in the early 20th century between the followers of John Dewey, who advocated a more individualistic model of education, and those of industrial reformer Fredrick Taylor, who wanted to reform schools for maximum efficiency, using the same methods Taylor was advocating for industrial production. Taylor's followers won, and that's the paradigm we've been using for the last 100 years.

That is interesting, because in Germany it is the opposite since the sixties.

[Eleas]

Saw that. It pretty much jives with what I learned in grad school--in addition to teaching methodology, I studied the history of education reform. There was an ideological struggle in the early 20th century between the followers of John Dewey, who advocated a more individualistic model of education, and those of industrial reformer Fredrick Taylor, who wanted to reform schools for maximum efficiency, using the same methods Taylor was advocating for industrial production. Taylor's followers won, and that's the paradigm we've been using for the last 100 years.

That is interesting, because in Germany it is the opposite since the sixties.

Hm. Do you refer to the Hauptschule/Realschule divide? I went to school (albeit briefly) in Nordfriesland, and my time seemed very much steeped in the cookie-cutter 'one size fits all' paradigm of education. Then again, this was rural territory, and so may have been atypical.

[Zixinus]

About standardized tests: an issue is that when trying to govern everyone to the same degree is that teachers will end up teaching the test, not the curriculum. I don't know how prevalent it is in the USA ("The Wire" certainly hints so) or Britain or whatever, but I do know that it is present in Hungary. Teachers of mandatory school-leaving exam subjects (Maths, Hungarian, History, one language and one freely picked) certainly and openly do so, they teach how to prepare for the school-leaving exam usually from the first lesson. Non-mandatory subject teachers are more chill and more likely to focus on teaching the subject rather than the school-leaving exam alone (with some exceptions regarding more "harder" subjects like biology). The books are structured as such, the lessons are structured as such and so on.

If a reform is needed, it is one that needs to resolve this problem or find the root cause of this problem. You know something is wrong when people focus on gaming the system rather than doing the job needed to be done.

However, in the case of ADHD itself, the speaker is an ignoramus. Ritalin is not, as he would have it, a drug designed to deaden the senses, to shut down anything. What these CS derivates have in common is that they do the exact opposite, i.e. what he advocates.

Yes, I caught that myself. He might have been referring (or thinking about) anti-depressants. Ritalin is a stimulant, although I agree that it is a dangerous one. Though he did agree that he is not qualified to truly comment on ADHD.

[Rogue 9]

On the ritalin point, to be absolutely fair the speaker did not produce the animation that in this video accompanies his speech, so the chain back to the ritalin illustration is not his doing. However, even if that's not what he meant the speech does indeed imply it.

At any rate, putting every kid who doesn't pay attention on a Schedule II stimulant the equivalent of speed is fucking asinine, whether it dulls the senses or not.

[Thanas]

Saw that. It pretty much jives with what I learned in grad school--in addition to teaching methodology, I studied the history of education reform. There was an ideological struggle in the early 20th century between the followers of John Dewey, who advocated a more individualistic model of education, and those of industrial reformer Fredrick Taylor, who wanted to reform schools for maximum efficiency, using the same methods Taylor was advocating for industrial production. Taylor's followers won, and that's the paradigm we've been using for the last 100 years.

That is interesting, because in Germany it is the opposite since the sixties.

Hm. Do you refer to the Hauptschule/Realschule divide? I went to school (albeit briefly) in Nordfriesland, and my time seemed very much steeped in the cookie-cutter 'one size fits all' paradigm of education. Then again, this was rural territory, and so may have been atypical.

No, I mean education in general. Whenever you read education literature they always talk about the individual, however the practice of said maxims is of course different.

[RedImperator]

Whenever you read education literature they always talk about the individual, however the practice of said maxims is of course different.

American education literature talks about the same thing. You rarely actually see it in the classroom. There's a complete disconnect between the theory and practice.

[Bakustra]

Whenever you read education literature they always talk about the individual, however the practice of said maxims is of course different.

American education literature talks about the same thing. You rarely actually see it in the classroom. There's a complete disconnect between the theory and practice.

Has there been any investigation as to why this is so? Entrenched tradition in the school system and a limitation on the ability of incoming teachers to affect their classroom and curriculum? A difficulty in communicating the theory to education students? I would personally bet on the former, but personal bets are somewhat limited.

[RedImperator]

Whenever you read education literature they always talk about the individual, however the practice of said maxims is of course different.

American education literature talks about the same thing. You rarely actually see it in the classroom. There's a complete disconnect between the theory and practice.

Has there been any investigation as to why this is so? Entrenched tradition in the school system and a limitation on the ability of incoming teachers to affect their classroom and curriculum? A difficulty in communicating the theory to education students? I would personally bet on the former, but personal bets are somewhat limited.

The entire system is structured the old way. Schools are chartered that way, curricula are designed that way, results are measured that way. And really, except for fresh-faced young teachers straight out of grad school, absolutely everybody expects things to be run the old way. You try to change things, and you're going to get resistance from administrators who don't want teachers "going rogue", students who have gotten comfortable with the old rules and expectations (even if they're bored shitless and hate school), parents who understandably don't want their kids to be subjects in an education experiment, and state bureaucrats who want results they can measure with a scantron. And incidentally, assembly-line teaching is already way fucking easier than individualized teaching even without having to fight every other stakeholder in the system, so ultimately, so you end up facing resistance from the part of yourself that doesn't want to, you know, work sixteen hours every damn day (lol teachers only work six hours hurf hurf).

Education reform can't be done by individual teachers. It just can't, not when the entire system needs to be restructured from the ground up. I mean, consider your situation. You have the kids in any given class for about five hours a week. They come in at the beginning of the year with 8, 9, 10, 11 years in a "teaching factory". When you're done with them, unless you have seniors, they're going to move back into the teaching factory. In between, you have a state test that you have to cover. There's no fucking choice there. If you're teaching English, and the state test is on Shakespeare, you can't fucking teach them Milton instead no matter how much more appropriate to that group you think Milton might be. Never mind stuff that's handled entirely on the administrative level, like assembling classes by skill level and interest instead of grade (I've had classes where one kid is obviously too fucking smart for the shithole school she's stuck in, and another can't read or write; how the fuck am I possibly expected to provide a meaningful educational experience to both of them at the same time?). You do what you can, but you're handcuffed by the system you're in.

There's been no serious attempt to apply any modern methods to teaching at all, at least not on any large scale. Not the theories that are cooked up in American education departments, and not practices that have been demonstrably more effective overseas, either. Charter schools have been experimenting and some have been getting good results, but I sincerely doubt you'll see any large-scale implementation of their ideas, not when the current fad is for more testing and more centralized control--"Let's keep doing the same 19th century shit we've been doing since, erm, the 19th century--we'll just measure it more. That will get 21st century results. Somehow." I'd be more optimistic, but I don't see any indication right now that the people who are actually capable of making meaningful changes--elected officials, state education bureaucracies, professional public hand-wringers, the teachers' unions--even seem to understand what the problem actually is.

Incidentally, would a mod care to kick this thread somewhere it won't auto-delete?

[Stofsk]

I'm trying to follow this debate, but can someone give a basic overview of what 'modern' methods are vs what's archaic, or assembly line style teaching?

[fgalkin]

Why is this in Testing? This is like, totally a real thread.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Rogue 9]

Why is this in Testing? This is like, totally a real thread.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Because I wasn't sure it would turn out that way. If someone wants to move it, then by all means.

In Indiana's last gubernatorial election, the only candidate for governor that actually campaigned on education reform was the Libertarian. To my knowledge (and I followed the debates closely) Daniels and the bitch the Democrats ran (the band I'm in played a fundraiser for her campaign that she spoke at; she is indeed a bitch) didn't really even seriously address the issue. How's that for a laugh?

[RedImperator]

I'm trying to follow this debate, but can someone give a basic overview of what 'modern' methods are vs what's archaic, or assembly line style teaching?

A brief introduction to Taylorism:

Frederick Taylor was a 19th century industrial reformer working at the University of Pennsylvania. He was interested in developing a theory of "scientific management" that could get more production out of existing workforces and physical plants through efficiency increases. Taylor basically figured out that you could break down the process of making, say, a widget, into discrete physical steps. Furthermore, you could, at least in theory, find the most efficient possible motions for completing each physical step. Once you had that, you were supposed to retrain your workers to perform those steps in that exact way, and viola, big boost to efficiency. And it worked--sorta. Turns out, humans hate truly mindless work. In Taylor's defense, he understood this and advocated better pay and working conditions for workers in compensation. This wasn't just out of the goodness of his heart; he realized that if you didn't try to make workers happier, all your production efficiencies would be lost to strikes, turnover, and sabotage. Which is exactly what happened; the response to Taylorism was the explosive growth of the union movement in the early 20th century. It finally settled down in the 1930s into pretty much the arrangement we have today; assembly line workers do mindless, draining robot work (when actual robots aren't doing it) in exchange for pay and benefits significantly above average for that skill and education level (retail work requires far more problem solving than working on an assembly line, but retail workers are almost universally paid minimum wage).

In the meantime, around the same time, someone got the bright idea that if Taylorism works for widget factories, then it should work for schools, too.

The idea was that if you broke down teaching into discrete steps, and then identified the most efficient way to carry them out, and then trained teachers to carry them out exactly that way, you could educate students more efficiently. As much as possible, teaching is supposed to be robotic; all actual decision-making power is in the hands of the administration. And I mean all of it--even things like the thermostat setting are, under most school districts' charters, entirely in the hands of the front office. This necessarily produces a one-size-fits-all curriculum; the curriculum is written by experts in the central office, either at the district or state level, and the teachers teach it exactly the way they're instructed. This is literally still in effect--I've seen 180 day lesson plans assigned to teachers before the school year starts, with all classroom activities, homework assignments, and exams already written up. They're designed, unsurprisingly, according to the state standardized tests. People talk about teachers "teaching to the test" as if that's an unforeseen consequence of high-stakes standardized testing, when really, it's a designed outcome. The tests are written based on what whoever wrote it thinks is an appropriate curriculum for that subject and grade level. People defend the tests with the argument, "Oh, well, they just test what they think is a grade-appropriate level of knowledge for that subject; the teachers can get there any way they want", but that's not how they're written, and, anyway, hardly anybody can agree on what a student should know at any given age anyway. Even talking about "a student" is nonsense; students have wildly varying levels of ability and interest.

This is the model still in effect. As I've said many times, it was designed to produce three tiers of workers: a small professional class, a larger class of skilled tradesmen, and a mass of blue collar workers with a basic level of literacy, numeracy, civics education, and--this is the most important--comfort with obeying authority and following directions. It still does two out of three. Vocational programs, which were designed to give tradesmen a grounding in their chosen trades before they started apprenticing, have been gutted. Why? Because we've now decided that the goal of secondary education should be to send every student to college, so vocational education isn't actually considered important anymore. It's just an elective program, and an expensive one. In an environment where art, music, and even social studies are being cut, who the hell is going to pay to maintain a wood shop--pay for a shop teacher, pay for materials, pay to keep the machines running, pay the insurance you need if you're going to let fifteen year olds run bandsaws. So the trades pretty much do all the training themselves now; I have no idea what effect that has on productivity, but it can't be good. But professional preparation, in the form of AP, honors, and some "college prep" courses, that's still running. We still turn out tons of professionals--too many lawyers and not enough nurses, engineers, or scientists, but that's another problem. The real problem is what to do with the bottom tier, and really, that's the problem educational reform is grappling with. We can't send them to the factories because we sent the factories to China. Right now, we try to send them all to college, which is a stupid fucking idea, but it's all we've got, and instead of recognizing it as a stopgap, it seems the leadership in this society has decided that should be a permanent policy.

Just about everyone agrees that going into the 21st century, we're going to need a more creative workforce, because the monkey jobs will be outsourced to China or Indonesia or wherever the fuck companies can pay workers a buck a day and dump industrial waste into the nearest river. But there's no--absolutely no--effort to try to produce this creative workforce in high school. Even though there's no reason why teenagers can't be creative. I've been arguing for five years that 16, 17, 18 year old high school students are more than qualified to do actual research in social studies. Why are you wasting a high school senior's time on "read this chapter from the textbook, then answer the questions at the end"? It's even more of a joke when you realize actual illiterate students can do that. Why aren't they down in the library researching primary sources for a thesis project? Well, because we can't test that, so fuck them and fuck you (and anyway, we can only afford to have the librarian in three days a week). Then you toss them into college, and the colleges are stuck teaching them how to write a paper, how to research, how to answer a question where you can't just look back in the chapter for the bolded keywords. It's fucking ridiculous. And just about every reform with any traction that I know of thinks we can do better with more of the same.

[General Zod]

Ugh. . .they haven't even covered writing a proper research paper in any of my classes yet. Yet my psych prof expects a 7-10 page paper from everyone on a topic we've covered in class. They sure as fuck didn't cover writing a big paper when I was in highschool. (Which was more than ten years ago.) I don't even really know where to begin.

[Thanas]

Moved to a more deserving forum.

[Zixinus]

People talk about teachers "teaching to the test" as if that's an unforeseen consequence of high-stakes standardized testing, when really, it's a designed outcome.

Wait, they not only expect teachers to teach the test, they actually want them to teach the test? As in, specifically prepare just for the test itself? That anything not covered in the test is not worth teaching?

That's insane. You teach the subject and tests are a subservient to that, used only to measure how much they learned of the subject. Or am I naive?

Then you toss them into college, and the colleges are stuck teaching them how to write a paper, how to research, how to answer a question where you can't just look back in the chapter for the bolded keywords. It's fucking ridiculous.

Yeah, there is a degree of that here too. We learn about the origins of the Hungarian language, the changes it went trough, nothing less than a linguistic history of it, or language-relatives, the styles of literature one can encounter, but there is not one bloody word in several books how to write a regular research paper or a decent essay.

And just about every reform with any traction that I know of thinks we can do better with more of the same.

As someone growing up with Aspergers and having the system recognize that only after serious breakdowns (with my heart), I can relate in your disgust at overemphasizing at this approach.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Wait, they not only expect teachers to teach the test, they actually want them to teach the test? As in, specifically prepare just for the test itself? That anything not covered in the test is not worth teaching?

That's insane. You teach the subject and tests are a subservient to that, used only to measure how much they learned of the subject. Or am I naive?

You'll probably spend 10 of your 180 classroom hours a year talking about the test, explaining 'good testing strategies', and going over sample problems. And this is for a test which isn't usually used for a student's grade, so we're wasting their time and giving them mindless work for NO INCENTIVE.

I am optimistic, however. One consequence of the baby boom generation is that between now and 2020, 75% of all US teachers will be retiring. That is HUGE, and its why you're seeing so much of this 'changing the paradigm' stuff now. People recognize the system is flawed, and if we want to effect sweeping institutional changes now is the time. I can't count how many times I had to say 'new paradigm' while in my credentialing program. I just hope it actually GOES somewhere instead of following New Math and Ebonics into the lost drawer of educational fads.

[Dominus Atheos]

Wait, they not only expect teachers to teach the test, they actually want them to teach the test? As in, specifically prepare just for the test itself? That anything not covered in the test is not worth teaching?

That's insane. You teach the subject and tests are a subservient to that, used only to measure how much they learned of the subject. Or am I naive?

You'll probably spend 10 of your 180 classroom hours a year talking about the test, explaining 'good testing strategies', and going over sample problems. And this is for a test which isn't usually used for a student's grade, so we're wasting their time and giving them mindless work for NO INCENTIVE.

Is that 10 a typo? Your statement makes way more sense (and is way more true) if that was supposed to be a 100. 10 is way, way too low.

[Agent Sorchus]

Wait, they not only expect teachers to teach the test, they actually want them to teach the test? As in, specifically prepare just for the test itself? That anything not covered in the test is not worth teaching?

That's insane. You teach the subject and tests are a subservient to that, used only to measure how much they learned of the subject. Or am I naive?

You'll probably spend 10 of your 180 classroom hours a year talking about the test, explaining 'good testing strategies', and going over sample problems. And this is for a test which isn't usually used for a student's grade, so we're wasting their time and giving them mindless work for NO INCENTIVE.

Is that 10 a typo? Your statement makes way more sense (and is way more true) if that was supposed to be a 100. 10 is way, way too low.

No it isn't. That is 2 weeks that are not used for anything but teaching the test. This doesn't of course include all the hours that are teaching to the test, just how to take the test.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Ten hours of classtime = ten days = 2 weeks = 8% of the total time I have in a year to teach your child how to not blow his hand off and why he shouldn't mix bleach and ammonia just because he thinks it'll clean the bathroom faster.

Ten hours isn't a lot in the real world, its a long workday. To a student, ten hours is everything. When people think '180 days of teaching a year' what that really says is '180 hours of a given subject'. If you put a kid in one of my classes for a 40-hour week, he'd get his entire school year's education in 1 month.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

People talk about teachers "teaching to the test" as if that's an unforeseen consequence of high-stakes standardized testing, when really, it's a designed outcome.

Wait, they not only expect teachers to teach the test, they actually want them to teach the test? As in, specifically prepare just for the test itself? That anything not covered in the test is not worth teaching?

Indeed. The standardized test is the hard data point school districts use to assess how productive a given school is. Remember that American schools are organized along industrial lines. You have a factory school that takes raw product children, and by mindless robot-work strictly defined cirriculum administered by factory workers teachers manufactures produces graduates. So when you think of a school as a factory run by metrics-oriented businessmen, where children are viewed as merely an input to the factory's finished product, a cirriculum centered around getting students to pass the standardized testing is the logical outcome.

[Uraniun235]

In an environment where art, music, and even social studies are being cut, who the hell is going to pay to maintain a wood shop--pay for a shop teacher, pay for materials, pay to keep the machines running, pay the insurance you need if you're going to let fifteen year olds run bandsaws. So the trades pretty much do all the training themselves now; I have no idea what effect that has on productivity, but it can't be good.

A couple of years ago one of the vocational teachers in the district I work in said that local businesses were desperate for people with experience in drafting, CAD work, shop work, etc. No work experience needed, as long as you knew your way around a metal shop or could work a CAD program semi-competently, they would take you in and pay to train you. But the Oregon education system simply wasn't producing enough students with even that basic entry level of experience, so oftentimes the businesses would have to recruit from out of state, sometimes as far away as Texas.

The district I work in has been abnormal in that it's clung to its high school shop programs so far. Hell, we have greenhouses and livestock at the high school. Part of that is that some of the programs go a long way towards paying for themselves - the ag people do a flower sale each year, the architecture/drafting teacher (actually he's got a degree in Industrial Arts, he's qualified to teach any shop class he wants if I remember right) gets support from the community college and applies for grants, and the wood shop has a side program that builds a house each year and sells it.

I'm not sure how much longer it'll last though - last year they cut some of the shop teachers down to half-time, which is doubly brutal in that half-time employees have to chip in towards their insurance benefits. The sad thing is that those classes were enormously popular too. (One of the teachers they cut to half-time was the guy in charge of the house program - they cut the hours of a guy who's running a self-sufficient program?? What kind of fucking clownshoe decision is that?)


The really perverse one is that there are zero computer classes at the high school - no diagnostic classes, no sysadmin/network management classes, no programming classes. You can look at yearbooks from the 80s and find pictures of kids bashing out BASIC programs on old Commodore VIC-20s, but for over five years there have been zero vocational computer classes because they simply never bothered to replace the last guy who taught them (who, by the way, left at the end of the year because he'd been led to believe he was getting laid off at the end of the year, then was told he could stay... after he'd already found another job elsewhere).


And of course, there's almost no way any school will make a move towards restoring elective or vocational classes - not just because of the economy, but because everyone's screaming their head off about improving math and reading scores. It'll never be good enough, so whenever an opportunity to hire a new teacher comes up, it'll always be another math, science, or English teacher.

[RedImperator]

In an environment where art, music, and even social studies are being cut, who the hell is going to pay to maintain a wood shop--pay for a shop teacher, pay for materials, pay to keep the machines running, pay the insurance you need if you're going to let fifteen year olds run bandsaws. So the trades pretty much do all the training themselves now; I have no idea what effect that has on productivity, but it can't be good.

A couple of years ago one of the vocational teachers in the district I work in said that local businesses were desperate for people with experience in drafting, CAD work, shop work, etc. No work experience needed, as long as you knew your way around a metal shop or could work a CAD program semi-competently, they would take you in and pay to train you. But the Oregon education system simply wasn't producing enough students with even that basic entry level of experience, so oftentimes the businesses would have to recruit from out of state, sometimes as far away as Texas.

When I was student teaching, I had a kid who was kind of a fuckup. Good kid, really--not a gangbanger, not vicious--but a big mouth, didn't like authority, was obviously bored shitless by school and thought it was a big waste of his time. Send him to the salt mines, right?

Well, I assigned them a project where they had to teach a ten minute lesson of their choice (don't ask; the class was called "problems in urban education" or something, and I had to write the curriculum myself because the school had no idea what it was supposed to be). This kid went first; he was going to teach how to cut hair. I'm thinking he's going to come in with a pair of scissors, maybe an electric trimmer. Kid shows up with an entire fucking barber kit and actually gives another student a damn haircut in class. Did a good job, too! Best performance I ever got out of him in class; I talked to him after class, and all he wanted to do with his life was be a barber. You want to know how many kids told me they wanted to be rap producers or basketball players? As far as I can remember, this was the first student I had with an actual realistic career goal.

Now, someone explain to me why forcing that kid to sit in classes he hated, in a "college prep" program that wouldn't actually prepare him for college even if he planned on going, is a better use of time and money than teaching him how to cut hair and, maybe, how to run a business so if he ever wanted to start his own shop, he'd at least have some grounding in the basics. How many boys in that school would have been happier learning how to fix cars, or build houses, or run wires, or cook? How many girls would have rather learned how to braid hair, or take bloodwork? Meanwhile, do you know that school's college graduation rate? Not the rate of students who graduate with high school diplomas, or go on to college, but actually make it all the way through all four years of college and finish with a bachelors degree?

One percent.

Incidentally, the school district of Philadelphia does have one vocational training high school. There's a waiting list to get in it as long as my leg.

But I hear vocational training is a waste of money.