Independent Educator

Horse sense

hopgood — Fri, 13 May 2011 02:44:48 +0000

After a long (alright, very long) hiatus, Independent Educator is back. We start with an article in NRO by James W. Guthrie that contains some horse sense: Six East Steps to School Productivity. Two questions:

Are these reforms achievable?
If they are not, is any useful reform possible?

The war against parents continues

hopgood — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:55:37 +0000

Here is a minor rant. There has been a quiet propaganda drumbeat for years to the effect that parents – those who are directly responsible for children and, most of the time, love those children more than anyone else in the world – are incompetent at best and malign at worst. What has me going right now is a set of radio ads by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (I didn’t know there was such a thing, but there it is) and the Ad Council under a campaign called Talk Early. Talk Often. Get Others Involved. in which parents or children give sacasto-ironic monologues suggesting the cluelessness and shallow thinking of parents. I could not find these ads on their website but did find descriptions of three videos:

“Tommy”…A mother has unreal expectations of her son.
“Julia”…An oblivious couple drops their daughter off at a party.
“Our Guys”…Two fathers miss an opportunity to talk about underage drinking.

You get the idea.

Far be it from me to discourage a campaign against underage drinking or even to accuse those who created these ads of bad motives. Rather, I think this mode of expression has become an establishment lietmotif that many go to without thinking. You can hear this song in the popular media and faculty lounges alike. (To be fair, teachers do sometimes have to deal with parents who are, well, difficult.) This is a big long-term problem for education.

Good parents are either partners in education or, if they see the system as malign, oddly dissonant with it as they try to protect their children. Yes, there are some who are not good parents but we might consider engaging them – and all parents – as adults. Maybe someone can design a creative ad that starts from that premise. You never know: it might work.

Where we are

hopgood — Sat, 29 May 2010 04:58:35 +0000

Donald Rumsfeld was a controversial Secretary of Defense, admired and excoriated. He did leave at least one unmistakable gift to history in his tenure, though: his ability to coin pithy comments that become part of the larger culture.

In the realm of education reform, a Rumsfeldian quote (on an entirely different subject, of course) can be a useful anchor to our efforts: As you know, you go to war with the Army you have.

As you know…In education, we often act as if we either don’t know what Rumsfeld is getting at or it’s all we know. On one hand, it is tempting (and, yes, sometimes useful) to imagine a sort of pure education, in which students learn naturally because they are continuously curious and excited with results that far surpass anything on a puny AP or IB exam and allow them to dash off acceptance-assuring University of Chicago application essays as easily as they tweet where to meet for lunch. On the other (isn’t two-handedness useful?), we move into “get real” mode and hand out worksheets to students constrained to not move until the bell rings because otherwise the chaos that is about to break out will be far worse.

Parsing Rumsfeld a bit more, we focus on you go to war. Education is not war but the stakes are not far off from that and it can be a struggle. In education, as in war, you do what you need to do to succeed because the consequences of failure are dire. After Allied troops took the Normandy beaches, they were stymied by ancient and sizable hedgerows laid out in vast grids across the countryside. Imagining a battlefield without hedgerows might help to plan the next war but would do nothing for the war the army was in. Hunkering down would mean losing the initiative and possibly their beach-head: they had to get inland. U.S. soldiers improvised and came up with ungainly steel spikes and frames welded to fronts of tanks that tore the hedgerows open. They did not wait for a differently trained army or for a new weapon. They knew that you have to win the battle with the Army you have.

An ideal vision of education and hard-headed realism both have their place. Blended, they force us to think of how to reform education with the schools, the teachers, and the students we have, if we have the courage to cut through the hedgerows.

Where we are headed

hopgood — Fri, 14 May 2010 01:46:29 +0000

I attended a great web seminar two days ago with Leonard Waks, Emeritus Professor of Education at Temple University, hosted by Steve Hargadon’s Ning web community The Future of Education. It was recommended by a colleague and well worth attending.

Before getting into the substance of Prof. Waks’ remarks, I should point out the format, hosted on Elluminate. There was a main screen to which notes could be posted and a side chat window, which could be used to discuss the issues raised with the other attendees or “raise your hand” and ask a question of the presenters. Steve interviewed Leonard and put notes up on the main screen. While I can think of other ways to use the main presentation screen than simply putting up notes, I do think the overall approach was a very effective way of managing a virtual classroom. And I liked the chat a lot: there was some excellent, if at times disjointed, discussion among the attendees.

As for the substance of the presentation: it is an approach, or perhaps a tendency, to which I am sympathetic. Overall, it seems Prof. Waks is heralding a revolution away from the traditional school and toward an online Web 2.0 educational environment. (Maybe it really will come into its own with Web 2.5 or 3.0?) The buzz in the chat was excited: the breakdown of the effectiveness of traditional classrooms is seen by many as the condition that sets the stage for the coming upheaval. Things may not be that dramatic yet, as many schools still work and one favored solution is toward blended learning in which students attend school at least part-time but also learn on their own and/or with instructional guidance using Web 2.0 tools. The main points are summed up on Steve Hargadon’s website (center section, scroll down some).

I actually asked a question – alright, I meant to ask in the chat but I inadvertently raised my hand by accidentally changing a pull-down choice – and, of course, it got me in trouble. Well, not trouble, really, but a whithering response. The reason is that I was openly wondering about the two main preoccupations of most teachers: standards and discipline. Prof. Waks has a different vision, in which these are no longer relevant, and it is compelling. Also, he argues, we are not doing well with these now so why use them to evaluate or map our march to the sunlit uplands? At least that was my take-away from his answer, and there is much to commend it. There is much we are doing wrong and too much of school creates, as he points out, barriers to learning. Are standards and discipline working in our schools now to help low-performing students now?

By definition, the answer must be “not enough”, otherwise we would not deem them low-performing. Yet there is a small, steady teacher’s voice in me warning that great-sounding plans can go badly awry. Reformers often decry the quiet resistance of teachers – but teachers are often protecting their charges from the unintended consequences of reforms. Their experience has shown them that we need to tread carefully and beware of the next big idea to “solve” education with one or another silver bullet idea.

Yet we cannot go on as we have. The center will not hold because our world, and the world of our children, is changing. Leonard Waks understands this.

Opportunity in science education

hopgood — Tue, 11 May 2010 02:33:31 +0000

Those of us who do science education often discuss how we want students to understand how science really works, how the scientific method, properly understood, is far more than a series of steps.

So…I’ve refrained from saying much about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) because, for me, the jury is still out. However, the recent furor over the e-mails at the University of East Anglia and suspect peer review on the subject are worth mentioning in this context: I hope science teachers will not ignore the controversy and just continue to teach n ways to save the planet. I do not ask they they embrace or reject AGW but that they lead students into the fascinating story behind the arguments.

It boils down to something like this. We often say that science and religion are quite separate (I like to say orthogonal, which is different) but scientists do have one point of intersection: treating the integrity of data with near-religious fervor. Data must is the basis of truth on which experiment and theory sit and, therefore, the data and its uncertainties must be well-understood.

The controversy that has erupted is over whether passion for a conclusion has overtaken the defense of the integrity of data. We could say, “This can never happen in science.” Pwah: as long as scientists are human, it certainly can happen. We could go to the other extreme and say, “Aha! So it is all subjective anyway!” Yet we see the system righting itself as voices are raised. Eventually, there is a good chance that this will be sorted out and we will see where the data really does lead – or that it doesn’t yet lead anywhere.

This is a great process for students to observe and understand. People made mistakes. Passions were high on both sides. But the main thing is the data.

But will students see it? It can be tempting to throw a cloak up over the whole affair in order to avoid controversy, to protect the “image” of disinterested science, or to favor a side. The better impulse is to air it out: let students learn how science really works, even when it isn’t pretty. In the end, they will learn to respect what scientists respect: the data, the data, and the data.

Follow-up, finally

hopgood — Sun, 02 May 2010 05:05:56 +0000

I’ve been away and a bit preoccupied of late – sorry for not posting earlier. There’s this volcano in Iceland, you see…

In any case, now is the time to follow-up on the last post with some specific ideas on how to do more with less in science. Here a a few; they will be familiar to at least some readers.

First example: simplify labs but increase the amount of data. Modern science labs in U.S. high schools make intensive use of the the lastest and coolest. We will show that x = v/t by finding the time for the marble to roll one meter to 4 significant figures. We then take 2-3 more highly accurate measurements and then plot a lovely graph on the computer. But we can easily give students two very wrong impressions about science this way. The first is that research is done with equipment that just plain works. Actually, research is at the cutting edge of what we can measure; thus, we are always struggling to make the equipment work and understand the readings. This is a big part of science. The second error is that we can easily convince students that a few measurements make up data. In reality, thousands or millions of data points are often called for in actual research. So? How about we do more of our labs with simple equipment and let students struggle with how to get the best data out of them. (It is not enough to say “human error” or “equipment limitations”; students should be asked to identify the specific issues and create techniques to minimize them.) Then get as much data as possible from every class that does the lab, so that students can create a graph from a large data set (admittedly still not as large as in actual research), using statistics to combat error.

Second example: let the computers run free. This will be a hard sell to many. The fact is that schools spend a lot of time and money blocking all sorts of internet sites and generally clamping down on computers. There are good reasons. However, all of these reasons come down to a lack of control. The best way to keep kids from hopping to the wrong site is to keep them engaged in what they are supposed to be doing, first by keeping students off the computers until they are needed, then by giving them a goal and a focus for their use of the computer, and finally by having the teacher up and involved with what they are doing. Frankly, if students are sitting at computers unsure of what to do and without strong teacher involvement, they are misusing the machines anyway. And a computer that is freed up from blockages is one where students can get physics lessons from Mr. Khan on YouTube or create a Facebook page about heart-healthy foods. They can make better use of the computer than ever…but it takes work and focus.

Third example: use computers for data and for collaboration that you can’t get in the high school lab. Many experiments, especially in modern science, are just too expensive for even an up-to-date high school lab. Also, sometimes local data just will not suffice. (Take weather data, for example.) The web often has data from the cutting edge, such as recent event displays from the Large Hadron Collider or human gene maps. And students can work together across town or across the world using Web 2.0 communications and collaboration tools. Thus a simple act like counting clouds can take on significance if students are doing it across a region.

Three ideas. Hopefully, this will just get the brainstorming started. (Send in your own ideas via comments.) Not all will pan out; many will not. But we have to start thinking about how to do things differently.

Downsize obstacles to education

hopgood — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 02:48:37 +0000

There were some churches promoting some interesting ideas last advent. One of these was “spend less, give more”. They were referring to spending less on Christmas gifts but giving more of oneself. Noble thought – I like it.

I wonder how it applies to education. We are in a time of decreasing budgets and fiscal uncertainty. Maybe it is time we started to use adversity to improve learning.

One way is to find less resource-intensive, more student-teacher interactive ways to teach. To do this, though, we need to clear away the barriers. Let’s take a look at the school day and work week of a teacher. What are we paying for that does not promote education of students? Paperwork? Meetings? How about instructional time lost to dealing with discipline?

This is a time of difficulty and danger for schools – and an opportunity to re-think how we do things. Easy to write (the words just flow from my typing fingers into my computer) but hard to do.

Next post: what we can do in science.

Keeping tabs and Ravitch too

hopgood — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:14:39 +0000

Keeping up with Race to the Top:

Toothless reform? by Andy Smarick in Education Next
Rick Hess here and here

It is now fairly well known that Diane Ravitch, conservative commentator and education expert, has made something of a turnabout on No Child Left Behind, school choice, and charter schools. This NY Times article summarizes it. Of course, there have been reactions. It seems that everyone is missing the point a bit. I have yet to read her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, so these comments are conditional and not meant to directly refute Ravitch. There are two points, really:

No one option, such as school choice, is a golden bullet to kill all that ails education. Even a few “golden bullets” will do not do it. A cultural commitment to education is necessary; in many cases, choice or charter schools have created zones where that culture can be nurtured. That leaves many problems yet to be solved. It was wrong to sell these initiatives as golden bullets and it is wrong to judge them on that basis.
A big part of our problem is a large, stubborn government-run system which is highly resistant to change. (To be fair, sometimes such resistance is justified.) Deep government involvement in education was adopted to solve some problems but it created others. We are living with that – and the answer is more with students and parents and teachers than with the government.

Educating boys: thoughts

hopgood — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:45:18 +0000

In the previous post, we looked at the issue of boys lagging in school and Stephen Zelnick’s useful article on same. In that post, I suggested that teachers need to take the problems that boys face into consideration in the classroom, just as they do differing learning styles. Here are a few suggestions:

Be careful to not exclude teamwork and competition
Seek a mix of examples and problems that appeal to boys and girls
Use your sense of humor
Project an image for your class of being tough but doable with effort
Encourage the boys – but never to the detriment of the girls
Model honorable behavior and enforce it in your classroom

Two caveats:

If these suggestions are helpful, they may well be just as useful for girls’ education and for boys’
These are based on experience teaching physics – data would be nice, too (action research?)

Comments and alternate suggestions are really wanted here.

Boys and school

hopgood — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:38:19 +0000

I recently ran across Another reason why boys fail by Stephen C. Zelnick (hat tip to NRO). The problem is well documented and often commented upon. Zelnick looks at it from a different direction: the acculturation of young men. He describes well the problem of under-motivated and confused boys and what this means in the classroom and beyond. Zelnick also argues that boys can succeed – as in the military – when we re-emphasize “…the affinity between young men and ideals of service and sacrifice.”

This is an insight. Perhaps our appeals to self-interest (“you’ll get a job in the future”) or immediate rewards (“if you want to get un-grounded, you’d better…”) have a place but miss a larger point: the need to be part of a bonded, motivated team seeking to do something they see as great. Yet our society and our schools somehow do not often enough connect boys with their education this way.

How can the education community respond? It seems that some of the answers are systemic: single-sex schools or classrooms are one answer. Awareness by teachers can be as important here as awareness of different learning styles can be in others contexts.