# Bad ideas in education **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 19, 2011, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893 "2011-02-19T07:48:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/121 "2011-03-11T19:31:06Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > Long story short: there’s no “right” way, and we’re still in the process of figuring it out. Pedagogy, as a science, just started around 1960. > > However, to address the OP, there’s a fault in the underlying premise: education used to be better. In 1914, drafted soldiers were given literacy tests and 90%+ passed. In 1942, after the public school system was started by FDR, the number of literate drafted soldiers dropped to below 50%. This indicates the public school system we have today is seriously flawed. > > Is pre-1914 the way to go? No. Back then, we were still a rural economy with farmhouse schools where all the grades were put into the same room. Schooling largely ended at 6th grade. The reason literacy was so high back then was reading was the only source of entertainment when living on a rural farm, and as children did 8-10 hours of chores, they would dream of going back to their room and reading a book instead of doing backbreaking labor all day. > > Pre-Civil war, only rich white children or those living in the NE had a chance to get educated, and it wasn’t free. I’d need to see a cite confirming what you say about drafted soldiers in 1914 and 1942 here, because it seems to be at odds with the statistics on literacy found here: [National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) - 120 Years of Literacy](http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp) ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/122 "2011-03-11T19:35:14Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I’d be curious to know what would happened if you showed **LHoD** ’s posts in this thread to your teacher friends and relatives. My guess is they’d find them mainly unremarkable, a much kinder assessment than I offer. If I can find the time to waste, I’ll go through Left Hand’s posts and point out where he is wrong in detail. I’ll try to do it for you since you seem interested and capable of maintaining a rational discussion. A slight tangent, but several school principals and headmasters understand what I am talking about. They have a slightly more objective viewpoint from being able to observe teachers, and notice the obvious pattern. Children have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and ability to learn until they start school, and they don’t blame the kids for that. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/123 "2011-03-11T19:43:09Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > However, I think [Michelle Rhee](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Rhee) in DC is on the right track. …If you trace all the flaws in the US school system today, it all comes back to the teacher: teacher’s unions, teacher training programs, teacher salaries, etc. By focusing on teachers, I hope she can unveil everything behind them that is causing students to fail. You probably didn’t mean to do this but it sounds like you are blaming teachers for our problems rather than saying that teachers are the one aspect of the teaching calculus that we can most readily change. To be fair she also focused on changing incentives for students. She participated in a very controversial program to reward students for good attendance and behaviour. It was part of a privately funded experiment, in NYC, they paid students for grades and it did not change the achievement level of its students noticably. Sudents didn’t feel that they were being rewarded for soemthing they could control. Rhee took the money and gave it to people for good attendance and good behaviour. Attendance shot up, behavioural problems diminished and as a natural consequence of better attendance and fewer disciplinary issues, everyone learned more. The notion of paying kids to go to school was so abhorrent to some people that I think the program is scuttled. Mostly by the sort of people who buy their kids a pony (or an ipad) when they get a good grade. I like Rhee, not because I think all of her ideas are likely to work but because she is headed in the right general direction. Pay teachers enough money to attract really good talent. Acknowledge that not everyone who trains to ba a teacher is going to end up being a good teacher. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/124 "2011-03-11T19:48:58Z")
> [@ZenBeam](#): > > I don’t believe this. I believe the attitude of the families the students come from is the biggest factor in a “good” teacher. I’d be interested in cites to studies supporting the position that teachers are a more important factor than the students. > **[Education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education#Teaching)** > > Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education also follows a structured approach but occurs outside the formal schooling system, while informal education involves unstructured learning through daily experiences. Formal and non-formal education are categorized into levels, including early childhood education,... Look at footnote 14. I’m not saying that a good teacher in an impoverished neighborhood will get better absolute results than a mediocre teacher in a professional suburb but the biggest factor in the differences between achievement is teaching quality. Elmininating poverty is not the way to improve education, improving education is the way to eliminate poverty. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/125 "2011-03-11T20:01:59Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > I’ve taught high school and college on two continents. > > For all the talk of “OMG China,” I don’t know a single American teacher in China- and I know hundreds- who thinks the Chinese school system is better. Do you think the average Chinese student is better prepared to elarn English or the average American student is better prepared to learn Chinese (or lets jsut ask which student is better prepared to learn navaho). To some extent at least the Chinese system teaches discipline. > [@](#): > > Original research and higher-level analytical writing are not taught at all. Critical thinking and creative problem solving are not taught at all. And how well do you think these things are taught here? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/126 "2011-03-11T20:11:42Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > And how well do you think these things are taught here? Be careful, you can catch a lot of flak in this thread by implying a lack of perfection in American teachers. If I understand correctly, it’s because you aren’t thinking right if you disagree with a teacher. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/127 "2011-03-11T20:26:22Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Be careful, you can catch a lot of flak in this thread by implying a lack of perfection in American teachers. If I understand correctly, it’s because you aren’t thinking right if you disagree with a teacher. I support teachers, almost blindly. I jsut think we should do things to help the teacher achieve their goals. I am a lawyer and I know a LOT of young lawyers that settled on law school because they had a fancy degree and no way of making money. I don’t know ANY young teachers that “settled” on teaching because they needed a way to make money, they became teachers because they WANTED to be teachers. For some of them, the desire may not be enough, not everyone can teach no matter how much they want to, but lets be honest, you don’t need to be Edwin James Olmos to be an effective elementary school teacher. I had great elementary school teachers and and without exception, the subject matter they taught was not very challenging for any adult, it was the care and concern for then development of very young minds that made them good teachers and unlike the law, teaching does not attract a temperament that is not suitable to the profession. With all that said, sometimes the teachers unions (not their members) are more concerned about maintaining the status quo than doing what is in the best interestrs of public education. So its one thing to criticize the intransigence of teachers unions but attacking teachers (in my mind) is scapegoating ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/128 "2011-03-11T20:48:10Z")
**Damuri Ajashi** , I couldn’t disagree with you less. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/129 "2011-03-11T20:59:17Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Be careful, you can catch a lot of flak in this thread by implying a lack of perfection in American teachers. If I understand correctly, it’s because you aren’t thinking right if you disagree with a teacher. How fortunate we all are that you don’t understand correctly! > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I support teachers, almost blindly. I jsut think we should do things to help the teacher achieve their goals. > > I am a lawyer and I know a LOT of young lawyers that settled on law school because they had a fancy degree and no way of making money. I don’t know ANY young teachers that “settled” on teaching because they needed a way to make money, they became teachers because they WANTED to be teachers. Sad thing, infuriating thing, is that I went to school (my postbac teaching certificate program, their undergrad program) with plenty of young people who WERE settling on teaching because it was the best living they could make. Those people were friggin’ pitiful. Some stories: -The student who introduced herself in a children’s lit class by saying, “My name is Laura, and I hate to read. Except the Bible.” She was far too depressing a human being to be joking. -The student who, asked to say something about the American Revolution, said, “I don’t know anything about the American Revolution! Who was president then? Was it Washington? Was he our first president?” -The student group that, as their end-of-course project designing a unit that incorporated math and social studies, presented us a series of lessons about four countries: Italy, Jordan, Columbia, and Africa. Their trivia facts included, “Egypt and Cairo are two cities in Africa with a population of 9 million,” and “You can swim in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Africa.” Keep in mind that this was a whole-group project: nobody in the group caught any of those mistakes before the presentation. When you ask folks to go through four years of school to earn less than $30,000 a year, you’re gonna get people with a calling, and then you’re gonna get people who genuinely think that this is the best money they can earn. And those people who genuinely think this is their best financial course are gonna be in charge of your kids’ education. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/130 "2011-03-11T21:06:44Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > How fortunate we all are that you don’t understand correctly! Thank you for demonstrating the proof of my statement. > [@](#): > > Sad thing, infuriating thing, is that I went to school (my postbac teaching certificate program, their undergrad program) with plenty of young people who WERE settling on teaching because it was the best living they could make. Those people were friggin’ pitiful. Some stories: > -The student who introduced herself in a children’s lit class by saying, “My name is Laura, and I hate to read. Except the Bible.” She was far too depressing a human being to be joking. > -The student who, asked to say something about the American Revolution, said, “I don’t know anything about the American Revolution! Who was president then? Was it Washington? Was he our first president?” > -The student group that, as their end-of-course project designing a unit that incorporated math and social studies, presented us a series of lessons about four countries: Italy, Jordan, Columbia, and Africa. Their trivia facts included, “Egypt and Cairo are two cities in Africa with a population of 9 million,” and “You can swim in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Africa.” Keep in mind that this was a whole-group project: nobody in the group caught any of those mistakes before the presentation. > > When you ask folks to go through four years of school to earn less than $30,000 a year, you’re gonna get people with a calling, and then you’re gonna get people who genuinely think that this is the best money they can earn. And those people who genuinely think this is their best financial course are gonna be in charge of your kids’ education. Ironic. I avoided pointing this out because I didn’t want to infuriate you. We agree here. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/131 "2011-03-11T21:27:38Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Thank you for demonstrating the proof of my statement. > > Ironic. I avoided pointing this out because I didn’t want to infuriate you. We agree here. Ironic indeed–you claim that I prove your statement (that disagreeing with a teacher is proof of incorrect thinking), then go on to quote me excoriating teachers. You don’t see the problem with that? And don’t worry, you won’t infuriate me. You’ve exasperated me, but that’s different. You’re not thinking incorrectly because you’re disagreeing with a teacher, any more than my second grader who thinks water decreases in volume when poured into a larger container is thinking incorrectly because she disagrees with a teacher. You’re and she are thinking incorrectly because your thoughts don’t correspond to reality. The fact that my thoughts do, and that you’re therefore disagreeing with me, is incidental to whether you’re thinking correctly. There are plenty of teachers who do a bad job, and I hate that and am embarrassed for my profession because of them. However, when I talk about improving teaching, I want those improvements to correspond to scientific understandings of cognition, not to romanticized ideas of childhood. Of course kids are incredible learners–I’ve already said that. But that’s not sufficient: if you think it’s necessary for kids to learn certain things, then you need to have a structure by which to scaffold that particular knowledge acquisition. Kids naturally learn very well. They don’t naturally learn to infer character motivations in novels, or naturally learn to add base-ten numbers using place value, or naturally learn to read a thermometer, or naturally learn to design and interpret experiments with single variables, or naturally learn to tell a story with a sequential structure full of rich sensory detail, or naturally learn to discuss literature in a dynamic, equitable fashion. But I want my students to learn all those things, so I set up experiences in which their natural propensity for learning will enable them to learn these particular things. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/132 "2011-03-11T21:48:34Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > How fortunate we all are that you don’t understand correctly! > Sad thing, infuriating thing, is that I went to school (my postbac teaching certificate program, their undergrad program) with plenty of young people who WERE settling on teaching because it was the best living they could make. Those people were friggin’ pitiful. Some stories: > -The student who introduced herself in a children’s lit class by saying, “My name is Laura, and I hate to read. Except the Bible.” She was far too depressing a human being to be joking. > -The student who, asked to say something about the American Revolution, said, “I don’t know anything about the American Revolution! Who was president then? Was it Washington? Was he our first president?” > -The student group that, as their end-of-course project designing a unit that incorporated math and social studies, presented us a series of lessons about four countries: Italy, Jordan, Columbia, and Africa. Their trivia facts included, “Egypt and Cairo are two cities in Africa with a population of 9 million,” and “You can swim in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Africa.” Keep in mind that this was a whole-group project: nobody in the group caught any of those mistakes before the presentation. > > When you ask folks to go through four years of school to earn less than $30,000 a year, you’re gonna get people with a calling, and then you’re gonna get people who genuinely think that this is the best money they can earn. And those people who genuinely think this is their best financial course are gonna be in charge of your kids’ education. WTF!!! I grew up in a poor neighborrhood called far Rockaway in NYC and I honestly never had a teacher like this in my life. Has the standards for becoming a teacher dropped so muich or was i just reall really lucky to grow up in a poor neighborhood with reasonably good teachers? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/133 "2011-03-11T22:10:39Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > WTF!!! > > I grew up in a poor neighborrhood called far Rockaway in NYC and I honestly never had a teacher like this in my life. Has the standards for becoming a teacher dropped so muich or was i just reall really lucky to grow up in a poor neighborhood with reasonably good teachers? To be fair, I don’t know how many of those folks went on actually to get jobs as teachers, and I even know that Ms. “I Hate To Read” got hustled out of the program by an appalled professor (she went into social work, joy joy). All I know is that there were people who genuinely saw teaching as the best income they could make, and those people were scary. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/134 "2011-03-12T02:23:20Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Ironic indeed–you claim that I prove your statement (that disagreeing with a teacher is proof of incorrect thinking), then go on to quote me excoriating teachers. You don’t see the problem with that? Are you trying to say the teachers who think Egypt is a city in Africa by the Caribbean Sea are thinking correctly, or incorrectly? > [@](#): > > And don’t worry, you won’t infuriate me. You’ve exasperated me, but that’s different. > > You’re not thinking incorrectly because you’re disagreeing with a teacher, any more than my second grader who thinks water decreases in volume when poured into a larger container is thinking incorrectly because she disagrees with a teacher. You’re and she are thinking incorrectly because your thoughts don’t correspond to reality. The fact that my thoughts do, and that you’re therefore disagreeing with me, is incidental to whether you’re thinking correctly. You have 2 boxes. One has 20 pounds of tangerines in it. The other has 10 pounds of grapefruit. Do you have more tangerines or grapefruit? That’s the kind of question you are asking children about the volume of water. There’s nothing wrong with their thinking, they just didn’t know what you meant. So I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself here, do you mean they are thinking incorrectly, or they didn’t know you were asking about something they didn’t know? > [@](#): > > There are plenty of teachers who do a bad job, and I hate that and am embarrassed for my profession because of them. However, when I talk about improving teaching, I want those improvements to correspond to scientific understandings of cognition, not to romanticized ideas of childhood. Of course kids are incredible learners–I’ve already said that. But that’s not sufficient: if you think it’s necessary for kids to learn certain things, then you need to have a structure by which to scaffold that particular knowledge acquisition. > > Kids naturally learn very well. They don’t naturally learn to infer character motivations in novels, or naturally learn to add base-ten numbers using place value, or naturally learn to read a thermometer, or naturally learn to design and interpret experiments with single variables, or naturally learn to tell a story with a sequential structure full of rich sensory detail, or naturally learn to discuss literature in a dynamic, equitable fashion. But I want my students to learn all those things, so I set up experiences in which their natural propensity for learning will enable them to learn these particular things. See, I don’t think you’re a bad teacher, but you have a problem. The words ‘structure’ and ‘scaffold’ are red flags. Children are not buildings. I think my initial assumption about your rigidity in nature and thought is correct. Here are just some brief responses to show you that your concept of memory is highly flawed. > [@](#): > > Where were you, for example, when: > -You realized that text is read from left to right? I never realized it. I learned to find the capital letter at the start of the first sentence. I was well entrenched in reading by the time I heard the phrase left to right. But I learned which direction to read in the second week of the 1st grade in Mrs. Burke’s class. We were given an Alice & Jerry book, and Mrs. Burke believed in the word recognition school of reading, so she said we could learn the word ‘look’ by remembering the ‘oo’ looked like a pair of glasses (sad but true). We had 8 kids in the reading group. The class of about 25 was initially 8 1st graders, and the rest were second graders. Our 8 desks were in the back of the classroom, in 2 rows of 4, positioned back to back. There were some of the old wooden desks still in use, with a hole cut out for an inkwell insert. For the reading lessons we would bring our chairs to the front of the class and sit in a circle. I remember about half the 1st graders names and 3 of the second graders names. That’s about as good as I’ve always done with names. > [@](#): > > -You realized that books have front and back covers? I can’t tell you exactly when, I would have been 3 or 4. It was in the bedroom I shared with my brother, at the top of the stairs on the right. I didn’t know left from right yet, that’s just where it was. We had a stack of Golden books, and a few others. It’s easy to tell the difference, there’s a picture on the front, and writing on the back. Written words were meaningless marks to me at the time (and for a while after). But I knew the story would progress in the pictures from the front to the back. > [@](#): > > -You figured out what sound the letter “z” makes? Easy one, kindergarten. The teacher had big cards with each letter and would put them up on the easel and tell us the sounds of the letters. Pretty boring stuff for me, because I had no idea there’s was any relationship between the sounds and how words were spelled. We all knew the alphabet, we had been chanting the song since before my memories begin. But it was the sounding out lessons where I actually connected the song to the individual letters of the alphabet. The Z stood out because it was cool, it buzzed like a bee. At the time I pictured the bees outside that flew around the honeysuckle vines on the path to school. It was a beautiful spring day too, I can remember the sun streaming through the windows in the classroom, hoping the teacher wouldn’t pull the blinds as she was prone to do. Learning that Z buzzed like a bee is one of the few formal learning experiences from kindergarten I remember clearly like that. > [@](#): > > -You learned to look at a picture for a clue when a word was difficult? I never did that. It rarely worked for me. Go Dog Go could have worked with that, but I didn’t do that. In the first few weeks of reading class I had seen this technique used, by Doug and a girl (Cynthia maybe, it’s fuzzy), and they would guess wrong, because it was the word ‘climb’ instead of ‘tree’ for instance. That would be a terrible technique for learning to read text, perhaps useful in learning a few individual words by recognition to get started. > [@](#): > > -You learned to try different medial vowel sounds on unfamiliar words? That was about week 3 or 4 of the 1st grade, but not exactly in that manner. I was in the basement of our house after school. This was before my father put up paneling to finish it off, so it was at the old, big workbench by the basement door and the pipe ‘tree’ (a plumbing stack). I was busy at one of my constructive activities, trying to saw through a piece of 2x4 with a back saw from a miter box. The full sized cross cut saw was to big for me to handle. My father had told me the small saw was called a back saw, I would have just called the cross-cut the ‘big saw’ at the time. I was bored, and frustrated with learning to read. After 2 to 3 weeks, we weren’t through the Alice and Jerry book, and I could only pick out a word here and there from other books. I wanted to read because nobody would read to me. I had figured out that the letter sounds were evident at the beginning of words, and so obviously ‘board’ started with ‘b’, and saw started with ‘c’ (I told you that part was boring in K, I didn’t learn it too well, and ‘c’ is closer to the start of the alphabet). But the rest of the letters seemed random to me. Then I recalled the word ‘house’, which I had learned to recognize to some degree, and realized that ‘s’ made the proper sound, and the letters in between must magically turn ‘h’ and ‘s’ into the word house. Applying this principle to the books I had, Go Dog Go in particular, and the Alice and Jerry book at school, I began to learn the basic structure of vowels between consonants to form words. I picked up details about silent 'e’s, and ‘when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking’ from the second graders lessons. I read all I could after that, when I wasn’t doing more important things like playing and watching TV. I never paid attention to any of our first grade reading lessons after that. [quote] -You started pausing at periods? I never pause at periods when I read, it isn’t part of the reading process. First day of the reading lessons Mrs. Burke told us the period was the end of the sentence, and by day three we were expected to read aloud complicated sentences like ‘Look Jerry Look’. I think all of us were happy to stop at the period to let the next person read. I didn’t get a full awareness of speech patterns and intonation and their use to denote the end of sentences until Miss Hipp’s 4th grade class, but had picked up most of it by imitation by that time anyway. Speech is something that seems to be hard-wired in the brain (by that I mean more driven by innate biological structure than a learned process like reading), so I don’t think it relates to the reading process at all. It is very important for writing though. I can give you much more detail about this, and all of my life starting at around age 4, because I know how to access my memories associatively. I know how to tell when memories have degraded and lack substantial detail, and when my memories could be influenced by reconstruction. No one can ever know for certain if any memory is accurate, but you can tell if the necessary associations exist to a memory for it to a have a high degree of accuracy. What concerns me is that unlike my good friend Frylock, who cannot remember things, you seem to think your memories are skewed. This is an indication of a serious problem if it is true. But I suspect someone told you your memories were skewed and you believed them. Try getting out of the box, and reflecting on your memories again, they probably aren’t skewed, just unexamined. ---
**Author:** ![Snifit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5fc32e/32.png) [@Snifit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snifit)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/135 "2011-03-12T04:22:15Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You have 2 boxes. One has 20 pounds of tangerines in it. The other has 10 pounds of grapefruit. Do you have more tangerines or grapefruit? > > That’s the kind of question you are asking children about the volume of water. There’s nothing wrong with their thinking, they just didn’t know what you meant. So I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself here, do you mean they are thinking incorrectly, or they didn’t know you were asking about something they didn’t know? No, **Tripolar** , it’s not the same kind of question at all. **LHoD** is using a very well-known example of a specific, universal error that children make. This example is a failure of children to recognize the conservation of physical quantities. To reiterate what **LHoD** has been talking about: young children do not understand that some quantity of water poured into a different container _remains the same quantity of water_. Your analogy is baffling; it has no similarity to what **LHoD** is talking about. One can pour the quantity of water into a different container in front of the children, and they will still make the error of conservation. For another example of this kind of error, consider two identical lines of quarters. While the child is watching, change the spacing between the quarters in the second line so that the line appears to be longer. When asked, the child will respond that the ‘longer’ line has more quarters in it. These are findings from Piaget’s work. He was pretty much the first scientist to actually study cognitive development in children, so his work is not without its problems. The examples that **LHoD** is using of incorrect thought in children are not, however, chosen arbitrarily. You’ll have to do a lot better than to suggest the children don’t understand what is being asked. > [@TriPolar](#): > > See, I don’t think you’re a bad teacher, but you have a problem. The words ‘structure’ and ‘scaffold’ are red flags. Children are not buildings. I think my initial assumption about your rigidity in nature and thought is correct. I find it amusing that you are accusing **LHoD** of rigidity while you completely fail to understand a metaphor. ‘Structure’ and ‘scaffolding’ are metaphors used to allude to the notion of children “constructing understanding”. This metaphor comes from Piaget, whose model of human cognitive development has come to be called Constructionism. It is not, as you seem to think, a betrayal of **LHoD** ’s dishonorable motives. It is jargon thrown about by teachers to indicate that they follow a child-centred approach to education. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/136 "2011-03-12T04:46:32Z")
> [@Snifit](#): > > No, **Tripolar** , it’s not the same kind of question at all. **LHoD** is using a very well-known example of a specific, universal error that children make. This example is a failure of children to recognize the conservation of physical quantities. To reiterate what **LHoD** has been talking about: young children do not understand that some quantity of water poured into a different container _remains the same quantity of water_. > Your analogy is baffling; it has no similarity to what **LHoD** is talking about. One can pour the quantity of water into a different container in front of the children, and they will still make the error of conservation. > For another example of this kind of error, consider two identical lines of quarters. While the child is watching, change the spacing between the quarters in the second line so that the line appears to be longer. When asked, the child will respond that the ‘longer’ line has more quarters in it. > > These are findings from Piaget’s work. He was pretty much the first scientist to actually study cognitive development in children, so his work is not without its problems. The examples that **LHoD** are using of incorrect thought in children are not, however, chosen arbitrarily. You’ll have to do a lot better than suggest the children don’t understand what is being asked. My question is exactly the same. Words have different meanings based on context. You are no more able to answer my question about fruit than a child is to answer the question about physical principles. There is nothing wrong with the way the child is thinking. When an adult believes that a child, answering a question with the correct answer in the only context the child knows, is thinking incorrectly, then it is the adult who is thinking incorrectly. Unless Piaget addresses this obvious fact, or you and Left Hand are not accurately conveying Piaget’s conclusions, then you are wasting your time by citing him (or her, if any of you have some preferred pronouns, I’ll be happy to use them). > [@](#): > > I find it amusing that you are accusing **LHoD** of rigidity while you completely fail to understand a metaphor. ‘Structure’ and ‘scaffolding’ are metaphors used to allude to the notion of children “constructing understanding”. This metaphor comes from Piaget, whose model of human cognitive development has come to be called Constructionism. > It is not, as you seem to think, a betrayal of **LHoD** ’s dishonorable motives. It is jargon thrown about by teachers to indicate that they follow a child-centred approach to education. Apparently you don’t understand a metaphor. Structure and scaffold are metaphors that associate education with rigidity. You see that’s how it works, a metaphor is about associating the characteristics of one thing with another. You don’t use a ‘scaffold’ metaphor to associate something with creativity. You’ve helped prove my point. I didn’t know that a model called Constructionsim was going to follow. It’s more of the same. Children are building blocks that a teacher puts together, is that what you think? You are right though, it is jargon thrown around, but it sounds a lot like PC or dogma to me. Finally, I do not believe Left Hand has dishonarable motives in teaching. If I have implied, or stated that, it was not my intent, and I apologize. I don’t know about Left Hand’s motives towards me though, and I’ve stated clearly what I thought about that. ---
**Author:** ![Snifit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5fc32e/32.png) [@Snifit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snifit)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/137 "2011-03-12T06:46:13Z")
In what way is the child correct when the child thinks liquid is not conserved when poured into a different container? The child’s belief does not accord with reality. Agreement with reality is the gold standard when it comes to evaluating beliefs. If your point is that we should strive to understand why the child makes the error, we are all in agreement. However, you seem to be saying that the child is simply not in error; could you explain what you mean in a little more detail? Again, I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that children simply don’t understand what is being asked of them; maybe that’s true in a small number of individual cases, but the error of conservation in young children is simply a fact. It has been established through scientific study. > [@](#): > > Apparently you don’t understand a metaphor. Structure and scaffold are metaphors that associate education with rigidity. You see that’s how it works, a metaphor is about associating the characteristics of one thing with another. You don’t use a ‘scaffold’ metaphor to associate something with creativity. You’ve helped prove my point. I didn’t know that a model called Constructionsim was going to follow. It’s more of the same. Children are building blocks that a teacher puts together, is that what you think? You are right though, it is jargon thrown around, but it sounds a lot like PC or dogma to me. First, a minor correction; the metaphors allude to Constructivism rather than Constructionism. Pedagogues aren’t very creative in naming their ideologies. I apologize for the tone of my last post. I told you that you were wrong without explaining why, which is never helpful. I will simply say that you are making incorrect assumptions about how educators use words like ‘scaffolding’ and ‘structure’. They are referring to the internal mental processes that children (and everyone) use to make sense of what they experience. The construction is used in this sense to simply refer to “making something”; in this case, making sense. These words are not used in the sense that “children are building blocks that a teacher puts together”. I’m not sure where you picked up that meaning, but I’d be shocked if it was something you picked up from this thread. If you’d like to learn more about what educators mean when they use metaphors like that, I encourage you to educate yourself rather than make uncharitable assumptions. You might want to start by reading about [Constructivist learning theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_%28learning_theory%29). ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/138 "2011-03-12T08:37:18Z")
> [@Snifit](#): > > In what way is the child correct when the child thinks liquid is not conserved when poured into a different container? The child’s belief does not accord with reality. Agreement with reality is the gold standard when it comes to evaluating beliefs. > If your point is that we should strive to understand why the child makes the error, we are all in agreement. However, you seem to be saying that the child is simply not in error; could you explain what you mean in a little more detail? Again, I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that children simply don’t understand what is being asked of them; maybe that’s true in a small number of individual cases, but the error of conservation in young children is simply a fact. It has been established through scientific study. The child would not understand the question if it was phrased: ‘Do you think the volume of a liquid is conserved if you pour it from container to another.’ Whatever the phrase is, it does not convey anything like that meaning to a child. You are asking a child a question about a physical principle, but they do not understand that because they have no context for it. They know little or nothing about physical principles at all, don’t understand them very well, and have had no need to understand them, and no exposure to the information. You are asking them to use the narrow scope of their knowledge and abilities to tell you whether there is more, less, or the same amount of liquid when it is poured from one container to another (I hope they are given the same amount as a choice, otherwise you would be deceitful). They rely on a guess, or a thought, or a mental image, or a something totally random to answer the question. That is the only context they have for it. If they consistently answer in a similar manner, that is the right answer for the context of a child. Now stop. I asked a question about fruit in boxes. It has an answer based on principles you do not know, do not understand, you have no need to understand, and have never had exposure to. Why can’t you answer the question? That is exactly the same situation the children are being subjected to. > [@](#): > > First, a minor correction; the metaphors allude to Constructivism rather than Constructionism. Pedagogues aren’t very creative in naming their ideologies. > I apologize for the tone of my last post. I told you that you were wrong without explaining why, which is never helpful. I will simply say that you are making incorrect assumptions about how educators use words like ‘scaffolding’ and ‘structure’. They are referring to the internal mental processes that children (and everyone) use to make sense of what they experience. The construction is used in this sense to simply refer to “making something”; in this case, making sense. > These words are not used in the sense that “children are building blocks that a teacher puts together”. I’m not sure where you picked up that meaning, but I’d be shocked if it was something you picked up from this thread. > If you’d like to learn more about what educators mean when they use metaphors like that, I encourage you to educate yourself rather than make uncharitable assumptions. You might want to start by reading about [Constructivist learning theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_%28learning_theory%29). The metaphors have their names. I doubt they were randomly chosen. I think they convey exactly what I percieve. Because I don’t know what Constructivism is, I’ll look at your cite. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/139 "2011-03-12T09:54:27Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Apparently you don’t understand a metaphor. Structure and scaffold are metaphors that associate education with rigidity. You see that’s how it works, a metaphor is about associating the characteristics of one thing with another. You don’t use a ‘scaffold’ metaphor to associate something with creativity. Sure you do, otherwise there would be no creativity to architecture. A scaffold doesn’t control the design of a building - it is created purely in service to the design, which may be as creative as you like, and helps provide structure when building. You may have a scaffold on a bogstandard boring office block; you may have a scaffold on the Sydney Opera House. It’s not a word that implies rigidity. Structure and scaffold in this context are metaphors associating education with foundation and building, which may be as creative or uncreative as you like. As to rigidity - a good example of the lack of necessity of this in structure and scaffold are the unfortunate events currently going on in Japan. When you want to put up a building in an earthquake-prone area, then rigidity in structure is very much a bad thing; so you design a non-rigid struture to provide give in such a situation, as is done there and in other regions with potential earthquake risk. ---
**Author:** ![Snifit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5fc32e/32.png) [@Snifit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snifit)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-ideas-in-education/571893/140 "2011-03-12T10:14:57Z")
**Tripolar** , do you honestly believe that the scientists studying cognition in children asked, word-for-word, “Do you think the volume of a liquid is conserved if you pour it from one container to another?” Since you seem to be stuck on this point, I’ll describe how the experiment might have looked when Piaget first performed it. (As I said, he was pretty much the first scientist to study cognition in children, and so his experiments have been heavily critiqued and more recent experiments have been designed to study the conservation error with less confounds). The experimenter shows the child two identical containers, filled to the same proportion with a liquid that is easily visible (e.g. water with colouring added). The experimenter asks the child whether there is the same amount of liquid in each container. The child answers this question correctly. The experimenter then takes one of the containers, and pours all of the liquid in that container into a differently shaped container (say, tall and thin rather than short and stout) in full view of the child. The experimenter then presents the two containers with liquid and asks the child again whether there is the same amount of liquid in each container. Young children will often answer that there is not the same amount. The fact that young children do not have the ability to answer this question correctly _is exactly the reason we are talking about it_. I don’t agree with you that it is because the answer is, to paraphrase you, “based on principles the child does not know, does not understand, has no need to understand, and has never had exposure to”, but the reason why the child cannot answer the question correctly is immaterial (assuming the child understands the words used to ask the question, as the experiment does in fact show). The point here is that the child is thinking incorrectly, and we know this because the child’s thoughts do not match up with reality. I stand by my statement that your analogy with grapefruits and tangerines is baffling. Upon review, I think you even mixed up the fruit, but I’m only guessing there because I’m not sure what point you were trying to make. > [@](#): > > You have 2 boxes. One has 20 pounds of tangerines in it. The other has 10 pounds of grapefruit. Do you have more tangerines or grapefruit? There’s not even any ambiguity here. I assume you were trying to make a question where the answer was different based on whether we count the number of fruit in each box, or judge by the weight. But either way we end up with more tangerines (assuming that tangerines are smaller than grapefruit, which they are in my experience). Regardless, I hope you see how your analogy is simply completely different from an error of conservation? I’ll say no more on the subject. Anyway, my contributions to the discussion here were mostly tangential. To get back on topic I’d like to quote **LHoD** , because I think he is quite eloquent on his approach to teaching, and judging from his accounts it seems he is an exceptionally effective teacher: > [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > You’re not thinking incorrectly because you’re disagreeing with a teacher, any more than my second grader who thinks water decreases in volume when poured into a larger container is thinking incorrectly because she disagrees with a teacher. You’re and she are thinking incorrectly because your thoughts don’t correspond to reality. The fact that my thoughts do, and that you’re therefore disagreeing with me, is incidental to whether you’re thinking correctly. > > There are plenty of teachers who do a bad job, and I hate that and am embarrassed for my profession because of them. However, when I talk about improving teaching, I want those improvements to correspond to scientific understandings of cognition, not to romanticized ideas of childhood. Of course kids are incredible learners–I’ve already said that. But that’s not sufficient: if you think it’s necessary for kids to learn certain things, then you need to have a structure by which to scaffold that particular knowledge acquisition. > > Kids naturally learn very well. They don’t naturally learn to infer character motivations in novels, or naturally learn to add base-ten numbers using place value, or naturally learn to read a thermometer, or naturally learn to design and interpret experiments with single variables, or naturally learn to tell a story with a sequential structure full of rich sensory detail, or naturally learn to discuss literature in a dynamic, equitable fashion. But I want my students to learn all those things, so I set up experiences in which their natural propensity for learning will enable them to learn these particular things. Read that passage again. Do you really think he believes that “children are building blocks that a teacher puts together”? You’ve said in this thread that you greatly respect teachers, and yet most of your words have been quite hostile and belittling. As a pre-service teacher myself, I’ll be the first to argue that the educational system has large problems. Recent studies have shown that the single most important factor in improving the education system is improving instruction. **LHoD** , based on his accounts of his practice in this thread (and other threads where I have read about his practice), is exactly the kind of teacher we need more of. Do you find anything objectionable in his descriptions of his practice other than your misunderstanding of a few words he used? 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