Old School is the Best School

Learning Styles Don't Matter Part 2

2006-08-03T15:24:00.000-06:00

I thought it be a good idea to expand on the some more on my last post. I thought it nice to condense the basic ideas of the Heterodoxy web site for those people who are too lazy to check it out for themselves and for me to read it again. Also, it is so refreshing to read something which is just plain common sense. I created a short summary for the main topics I care about. As I stated in my last post, this guy's ideas are pretty much against what is being taught in most colleges of education and the public school lingo of today. A lot of times teachers act like a bunch of sheep following what ever the education "experts" tell us. I think that's why he is "against" everything. Comments are welcome.

A “positive learning environment” is irrelevant: At the heart of this assumption is the self-indulgent and individualistic notion of the primacy of personal feelings.

...indiscriminate use of praise in the classroom reduces student achievement because it leads them to believe that mediocre work is really excellent and lowers their aspirations.

"teacher as entertainer" — the kind of teacher who believes that students will learn as long as you make learning "fun" enough.

Learning is not mindless "fun".... It is hard work. It does not have to be miserable work, but any denial of the work aspect inevitably compromises standards.

We shouldn’t support students: The problem with "supporting" students is that in many — probably most — cases it does not work. It merely defers their ultimate failure: or of course it results in collusion between the staff and their incapable students to "dumb down" the course so that they do pass.

...the journalism diploma has no system for allowing deferrals of assignments: in journalism, the deadline is absolute — if you can't make it, you don't deserve to be a journalist.

Learning styles don’t matter: Learning styles theory is an academic luxury: the students not only have rights but also responsibilities.

You can't tune in to all of them, so they have to tune in to you ... pandering to learning styles may be doing the students a disservice: they will benefit more from adapting and becoming versatile, more able to respond both to formal teaching and learning from experience, than they will from having everything made as easy as possible for them in your particular subject.

Against learning objectives: Formulation of objectives, particularly in its extreme form as "outcomes" is naive, objectionable and patronizing. It is naive because it denies the complexity of the teaching and learning task.

It is objectionable because it seeks to deny the individuality of the students' understanding.

Indeed, at a technical level, it is difficult to see just how you could realistically specify objectives in the higher reaches of Bloom’s taxonomy in the cognitive domain. It may be clear what counts as "knowledge", but as you move towards "analysis", "synthesis" and especially "evaluation", an attempt to specify in advance what these will look like is inherently subjective.

Against criterion-referenced assessment: Pre-determined criteria are set, and everyone who meets them gets the appropriate grade, even if everyone passes.

The fundamental problem is that norm-referencing embraces the possibility of failure, and in a mistaken effort not to hurt anyone's feelings we have rejected that. But, in the absence of mechanisms to prolong periods of study until students can meet realistic criteria, we are stuck with a trade-off between failure and lowering standards.

For teacher-centered teaching: If we know something and the students don't, why can't we just tell them what it is? The usual argument is that it is important for the students to "engage" with the material, and the lecture, which is the principal method of "delivery"—as opposed to "consumption"—oriented teaching, simply induces passivity and even surface learning.

Focus on what you want the students to learn, and you stifle and restrict what they might learn. Focus on what you want to say, and you permit them to take away what they want, and to make it applicable to their own situation.

So-called "student-centred learning" is an oxymoron. It is about not trusting students to learn. It is a sophisticated manipulative game of getting them to jump through hoops of the faculty's devising.

Learning Styles Don’t Matter

2006-07-31T21:39:00.000-06:00

I came across this web site from the U.K. about 2 years ago before I got a full-time teaching job. At the time I thought it sounded interesting, so I bookmarked it. After experiencing the classroom in the real world and starting my 3rd year of teaching, I think this guy is really on to something. Heterodoxy I like it because it pretty much goes against all the conventional wisdom that is being taught in most universities and colleges today. That alone is reason enough to like his hypothesis. He is against formal education, against a positive learning environment, against supporting students, against objectives, against criterion referenced assessment. Learning styles don't matter, is for surface learning, and teacher-centered teaching works. YES! Finally someone who thinks like I did before the so-called professionals tried to brainwash me.

Ok, I do believe in supporting students, but to a limit, not to enable them. My favorite is "against objectives". Last year my school district was manic over objectives. The kids don't care if the learning objective is written on the board or not. Only administrators care. They convinced themselves that "students learn better when they know the objective". Oh? I'd like to see the research on that. I think they just want to see if you are following your lesson plan for the day if they walk in your room on a walk-through. "Is Mr. D following a plan or just ad-libbing?" Well, stay all period and find out.

Old School Classroom Management Part 2

2006-06-17T12:30:00.000-06:00

I don't know why I didn't do this earlier, but I e-mailed my cousin to verify the veracity of the ".45 in the classroom story". She is a teacher also who has been teaching 30+ years and is the family keeper of all the oral traditions on my mother's side of the family. Here is what she said:

"Yes, that story is a true story told by my Dad many times. The man they hired as a last ditch chance had been a banker and lived across the river. He came to school on horseback, and took his saddle bag into the school house. As he unpacked his saddlebag, the last thing he pulled out was the 45. Dad quoted him as saying, "Now I've heard you young people have had some trouble here. Well, we're not going to have any trouble. We are going to hold school." And Dad said, "That teacher did hold school with not bit of trouble the rest of the year!" That was in Courney Flatt, and Dad was a small child. It was a one room school house with grades 1-8. Eighth graders might be 16 or 18 years old if they had been pulled from school to help with the crops."

I wonder if his actions damaged the sensitive children's self-esteem?

Old School Classroom Management

2006-06-13T19:22:00.000-06:00

I just finished a book about the Gilded Age in American and how bad it sucked. Even thought the writer (now deceased) lived in New York and wrote like an elitist (surprised?) it did have some interesting anecdotes from the past. In one part of the chapter on Education, the writer discusses how there was no discipline and cites a case of a young school teacher who was stoned to death by some of her students. In another part of the chapter, the book discusses how school teachers would beat the students for the slightest offence, such as, falling asleep in class. I have to ask myself, which is it, was there no discipline or was it excessively abusive?

Anyway, this leads me to a story that my late Uncle Bud would tell when he was growing up in rural Oklahoma circa 1920. I could never tell it as well as he could but here goes: The local school was having a hard time keeping a teacher employed because they kept quitting. Why? Because a few of the strong willed farmboys did not like "larnin" and would get in fights with the teacher and beat him up. Well, this went on for a while and a number of teachers quit. Finally, they found a new teacher who knew how to solve the problem. On his first day at the school (are you listening Harry Wong?) the new teacher walks into the classroom carrying a large leather satchel. He sets the satchel down on the teacher's desk and proceeds to unpack assorted papers and other items. He hasn't said a word to any of the students yet, but they all have their eyes fixed on the satchel waiting for him to speak. Finally, he pulls out a .45 caliber revolver and quietly sets it on the desk. He then starts class business as usual. Needless to say, the new teacher went through the rest of the year without any trouble from any student.
True story.

Life is Not a Constant Disney Ride

2006-04-16T16:07:00.000-06:00

Here is an article out of London that makes my heart warm. I love it because it goes against the conventional wisdom of the so-called professional educators and administrators who have surrendered to the idea that teachers need to constantly capture the kids attention and the need be entertainers more than teachers. Boring lessons 'are preparation for life'

Teachers say children need more boring lessons to help them deal with the world beyond the classroom door.

Pupils needed to get used to the idea that life wasn't a constant "Disney ride", said delegates at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers annual conference yesterday. "I don't have the energy to do all-singing all-dancing lessons every day, five-days-a-week, each term," supply maths teacher Zoe Fail explained, to loud cheers. "Children are not bored enough. They are over stimulated. Being bored encourages thinking skills and imaginative play."

Oh, man. This is HERESY!!!

Barry Williams, a lecturer at Hertford Regional College in Cambridgeshire, said that those who believed his teaching style was dull "just don't understand the nuances and subtleties of my lessons".

HA! HA! I'm gonna save that last quote for next years *PDAS.

"When they say to me: 'Mr Williams, that girl is looking out of the window staring at a tree,' I say: 'Do they not recognise the advanced stages of Zen Buddhism which I have brought into my lessons?' I am in fact producing adults who will be able to watch party political broadcasts."

Teacher after teacher said that they believed their students to be incapable of handling the mundane aspects of everyday life beyond the television screen or interactive whiteboard.

True. True.

Antoinette Lavelle, from Cottesmore St Mary's RC Primary School in Hove, said: "In some lessons the skills you are practising might be boring, but are very important in the development of knowledge, such as learning times tables or long division."

Watch it madam. You are speaking common sense which is frequently lacking in public education and in the schools of education at the university.

*In Texas, a PDAS is a teacher's formal evaluation of a classroom lesson plan that is observed by an administrator. This one time evaluation can make or break your entire year or teaching career.

Oh, great. Just what the world needs, another blog.

2006-04-09T14:38:00.001-06:00

According to goggle Blog Search, there are currently 2,565,746 blogs with the word"teacher". So why should any one care about another teacher writing another blog? Well, I don't care what anyone else thinks. This is therapy. After putting up with a 131 (on roll) teenagers all day, teachers need to occasionally vent (if you spend any time in public education you would understand). I was thinking about starting a "reflective" journal during my first year of teaching, but never got started. I'm not some youngster fresh out of college with his first teaching job. I spent 15+ years in the business world before I got into teaching. I feel this is a major asset to me and my teaching style. I got into teaching because I wanted to do it, not because I wanted paid summers or become head coach of whatever team.

I guess my ultimate goal is to "share" those experiences, express how I see the profession, and give readers an occasional laugh. If you want more than that, go find something else to read. I'm only one man.