The article starts out with an unattributed aphorism: The great truths in education turn out to be half-truths in search of their other half.
There is something to ponder.
Prof. Shattuck had the luck of being elected to a local and district school board in Vermont. For some inexplicable reason he wanted to know what kind of curriculum the state required and after reading a 600-page document put out by the state board called Curriculum Guidelines plus something called Vermont's Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities he found that it had no content.
[There seems to be an inverse relationship between volume and vacuousness in edland. The NCTM "Standards" come to mind.]
Instead of content, the good professor found that "...entry after entry stipulates that students shall examine, investigate, analyze, understand, and interpret immense intellectual topics such as 'fiction' and 'nature and nurture.' The verbs teach, learn, and study do not appear."
Prof. Shattuck writes:
The nearly impenetrable pages of the state of Vermont's Framework of Standards plus the Addison Northeast Curriculum Guidelines add up to an elaborate professional camouflage of the fact that at no level—state, district, or school—is there a coherent, sequenced, and specific curriculum. The teachers on the curriculum committee for accreditation had good reason to ignore the district Curriculum Guidelines. They propose no course of study, no coordinated sequence of subjects within the core fields. I'm not saying that our district curriculum is watered down or lopsided or old-fashioned or newfangled. I'm saying that those six hundred pages contain no useful curriculum at all.Progressive/constructivist ed hostility to knowledge induces educationists to commit semantic fraud. Two extemely nettlesome terms that fill educationists with horror are "standards" and "curriculum." Educationist have appropriated these terms, drained them of meaning and redefined them. "Standards" now stands for vague visions and "curriculum" is misused to stand for a particular pedagogical doctrine:
What then fills these pages in multiple copies which no one reads or consults? In large part they contain bland hortatory statements about what students "should know and be able to do." It's almost a mantra. Yet the two major curriculum documents refer to no specific content, to no simple lists of items such as osmosis and Martin Luther King Jr. and, one hopes, Martin Luther.
And what also fills these pages, in the place of what to teach, is lengthy instructions about how to teach these unspecified materials. Our district Curricululm Guidelines of recent years devote increasing space to "Best Practice in Teaching," identified as "an inquiry approach, which is based on constructivist principles." The documents to which one looks for the articulation of curriculum turn out to be presentations of a pedagogical doctrine, constructivism, much in dispute and which has appropriated to itself the dubious slogan and sales pitch "Best Practice." Most board members don't know what "constructivist" means and, if they read that far in the Curriculum Guidelines, they don't ask. Constructivism refers to the half-truth that full understanding occurs only when students learn for themselves from hands-on experience without direct instruction or teacher intervention.Prof. Shattuck limits his exploration of state "curricula" to one state. A review of other state "curricula" shows the same vacuousness. State "curricula" are one form educationist hostility to knowledge is institutionalized.
5 comments:
I don't know why I bother leaving comments here, because it doesn't seem to have any impact: you'll just go and write another post on the same topic with the same vacuousness and misrepresentation.
But I'll repeat myself: the NCTM's standards are not curriculum standards and they don't pretend to be. They're standards for how mathematics should be taught INCLUDING how curriculum should be approached.
How are these for curriculum standards?http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/math/2000/final.pdf
(Out of curiosity, have you read the Principles and Standards in their entirety yourself?)
You seem to be unaware that NCTM is opposed to a coherent curriculum since the outfit subscribes to something called constructivism. According to this ludicrous credo, pupils must discover on their own what has taken the sharpest minds thousands of years to develop. A systematic, specific and coherent curriculum taught explicitly is anathema this credo.
NCTM went berserk when California developed real, high-quality standards.
Here is an excerpt from important writing on the history of math education by David Klein:
http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/AHistory.html
The NCTM responded to the new California mathematics standards with denunciations. The cover story of the February 1998 News Bulletin of the NCTM began with:
Mathematics education in California suffered a serious blow in December. Over protests from business, community, and education leaders, California's state board of education unanimously approved curriculum standards that emphasize basic skills and de-emphasize creative problem solving, procedural skills, and critical thinking.
The NCTM Standards were not standards in the usual sense of the word. Harold Stevenson, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, described them as follows:
In our view the NCTM standards present a vague, somewhat grandiose, readily misinterpreted view of what American children should learn in mathematics. Moreover, the view fails to meet what we would consider to be the meaning of "standards." Standards should involve a progression of accomplishments or competencies that are to be demonstrated at defined times in the child's schooling. The NCTM standards give no indication (beyond four-year intervals) of the sequence with which the content is to be presented and are not helpful to the classroom teacher in designing lessons that meet the standards.
At last we have some kind of clarity into your argument. You're saying that you dislike NCTM because it subscribes to constructivism. While you will use any ammunition you can find against it or any of your other targets, when you find yourself firing blanks you seem to find comfort in the fact that you can always retreat back to "they support constructivism, and therefore they are BY DEFINITION against anything that is correct in education."
So you are against constructivism. I get that. So maybe you should look for ways to constructively (if you'll excuse my use of the term) critique it's theories, rather than concocting a ridiculous mess of theories about a left-wing conspiracy to destroy children's minds. Start with a FACTUAL description of the theory. You might even (GASP!) include some accurate sources that are from self-described constructivists. Then take it apart, point by point, with clear supporting evidence (E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E, not quotes of random unknowns saying "constructivists are a bunch of commy bastards"). Maybe even a little bit of reasoning might do the trick.
Please, surprise me.
JK,
There are ample references on this very site describing the nature of progressive/constructivist ed and its effects.
Somehow I don't think more evidence is going to make a difference if you still don't have a clue.
If you really feel the need for more evidence you might want to try Google or check out Prof. Plum's collection of articles on edland including this one on the cult nature of ed schools:
http://www.educationation.org/edschool.html
http://www.educationation.org/page5.html
1. Organizational Autism
Schools of education are generally not connected to other (and serious) academic departments, such as economics or biology. This means that the ed school belief system (a shared delusion of flatulent offerings such as “There are no truths,” “Knowledge is a social construction,” “External authority inhibits personality development”) is unchallenged by disciplines whose members are obliged to support knowledge claims with data collected and interpreted according to rules of logic.
When ed schools have connections across the campus, it’s with departments and faculty who share the ed school delusion and the collective intellectual derangement that produces it; e.g., postmodern literary critics in English departments.
What a horrifying combination! English perfessers so flagrantly incompetent they can’t write a coherent sentence work with ed perfessers who consider themselves “stewards of America’s children.” This duet in bow ties and Birkenstocks turns out a manifesto that is at once paranoid in its grandiosity (“We will make all children life-long learners.” [How, exactly! You’ve already made them illiterate!”] AND utterly incomprehensible.
But this goes over big among the university administration.
“Wow, they must be really smart! I have NO idea what they’re talking about.”
And their “joint courses” (called “collaborations”) are as loony as “new pants day” at the local home for the semi-witted.
2. Cultivation of groupmind. “Baaaa” or “Moooo” as the case may be.
As with other cults, ed schools work towards unity of belief. How?
Ed schools have to have a shared mission—always something simultaneously inane and ironic.
“Hey, what’s our mission? We gotta have a mission.”
“A mission. A mission. A mission.” [The Chorus]
“I got it! ‘The mission of the School of Education at Testa de Merda University is to produce reflective practitioners who are really reflective.”
“That’s good! I like that.”
“A mission. A mission. A mission. [The Chorus again.]
Hiring faculty who already subscribe to the dominant beliefs—who will fit in.
Awarding tenure not on the basis of improving student achievement, but on the basis of conformity to the dogma.
Periodic ritual celebrations (e.g., conferences) where The Mission Statement (as a banner or poster) is displayed and/or read and/or discussed. These ritual affirmations bind members to the icon and to each other.
3. The typical ed school belief system is a shallow, nonlogical canon consisting of repeated empty phrases whose concepts have virtually no empirical referents. (In other words, gas.) Examples include
“Instruction should be developmentally appropriate.”
[The essence of daffy.]
“Correcting errors hurts children’s self-esteem.”
[But being illiterate doesn’t?]
“Teachers should be guides on the side, not sages on the stage.”
[No sane explanation is ever—or ever could be—given for this slab of egregious piffle. But note the function: If teachers can’t teach, they can’t be blamed, because they aren’t SUPPOSED to IMPART knowledge. They are supposed to be like camp counselors who make everyone feel accepted.]
These beliefs are easy to understand; they conjure up simple imagery. They are easy to recite and communicate. This adds the strength and security of infallibility to the collective credo and makes it possible for members to see themselves as “reflective scholars guided by rich theory.” When in fact they border on insanity.
4. The ed cult uses signs of recognition, loyalty tests, and curses—in the form of shibboleths, such as “Do you believe in best practices?” or “Do you use authentic assessments?” and “She advocates direct instruction! Can you believe it?!”
These enable members of the dominant progressivist belief system to share and affirm their common bias, and to place invidious social distance between themselves and persons whose beliefs and activities are threatening; e.g., persons (heretics) who believe that the job of teacher is to ensure that students master classical knowledge systems such as mathematics, history, and literature, and who know how to think.
5. The ed school cult is impervious to possibly threatening information and beliefs. This is accomplished in the following ways.
a. Selective disattention. “We see only what we believe.”
Constructivism dominates the ed school cult. This epistemology asserts that all truths are relative to situations and reflect the interests of believers. However, as with other cults, ed schools do not see their own as merely one belief system, but as THE correct belief system. All others are, for the ed school cult, fatally flawed—not developmentally appropriate, not child-centered, not democratic—and therefore not tolerated. However, by excluding its own constructivist doctrine from critical analysis, the ed school cult is able to disguise what is obviously rigid orthodoxy behind high sounding words and phrases—in a manner identical to other sorts of cults.
b. Not basing verification on the necessity of falsifying the null hypothesis.
Instead, verification of a proposition or speculation or “innovative practice” generally consists merely of gathering information or “expert” testimonials that support it. Since supporting information can always be found, no proposition, speculation, or “innovative practice” ever needs to be rejected.
For example, instead of testing the null hypothesis that a Professional Development System has no significant beneficial effect on public schools, PDS administrators merely collect information that supports their PDS; e.g., anecdotes on how PDS teachers have become more “reflective.”
c. Claiming that quantitative data and experimental methods are contrary to humanistic values (“Persons are more than numbers.”) or are essentially invalid (“You can do anything with numbers.” “Experiments are not natural.”)-- and therefore should be rejected out of hand. In this way, a century of experimental research on learning and instruction, and large longitudinal studies (e.g., Project Follow Through) can be ignored entirely, without producing a sense of irony when the word “scholarship” is used to describe ed school activities.
This imperviousness helps to sustain the essential ed school belief system—constructivism/progressivism—that is at least 80 years old.
6. Socialization of new members (ed students) is easily understood as indoctrination.
Undergraduates seldom take courses in logic and research methods, and rarely examine literature reviews on what they are taught. For, skill at identifying logical fallacies (overgeneralization, equivocation, ad hominem) and access to scientific research would make it easy for ed students to challenge the ed school belief system.
Courses and overall curricula present one point of view. When Direct Instruction or more traditional (research based) instruction is presented, it is generally for purposes of demonization—drawing and affirming the lines between the in-group and out-groups.
“Direct Instruction is only for disadvantaged children.” [The word “racism” is used too often, but this is one time that it fits.]
As in other cult groups, the natives in ed school are obliged to examine their beliefs, reveal deviance, and expiate wrong thinking (heresies). In some cults, this takes the form of public confession. In some ed schools, it takes the form of “reflective journals.” This also operates outside of ed schools, when state departments of public instruction require initially licensed teachers to include “reflective pieces” graded according to educationally correct “rubrics.”
7. Messianism. As with other cults, ed schools have messianic visions that include the hysterical assertions that they champion children’s rights and welfare (at the same time pushing destructive fads), ar1. Organizational Autism
Schools of education are generally not connected to other (and serious) academic departments, such as economics or biology. This means that the ed school belief system (a shared delusion of flatulent offerings such as “There are no truths,” “Knowledge is a social construction,” “External authority inhibits personality development”) is unchallenged by disciplines whose members are obliged to support knowledge claims with data collected and interpreted according to rules of logic.
When ed schools have connections across the campus, it’s with departments and faculty who share the ed school delusion and the collective intellectual derangement that produces it; e.g., postmodern literary critics in English departments.
What a horrifying combination! English perfessers so flagrantly incompetent they can’t write a coherent sentence work with ed perfessers who consider themselves “stewards of America’s children.” This duet in bow ties and Birkenstocks turns out a manifesto that is at once paranoid in its grandiosity (“We will make all children life-long learners.” [How, exactly! You’ve already made them illiterate!”] AND utterly incomprehensible.
But this goes over big among the university administration.
“Wow, they must be really smart! I have NO idea what they’re talking about.”
And their “joint courses” (called “collaborations”) are as loony as “new pants day” at the local home for the semi-witted.
As far as I can tell, there are descriptions of your understanding of progressive education and its effects, along with quotes of people who share the same understanding (Professor Plum is an excellent example). If you reference any first-hand sources which even come close to stating an unbiased fact and not an opinion, I would appreciate it if you could point it out to me.
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