The McNamara Fallacy and the Problem with Numbers in Education | chronotope: "While there is some merit to this approach in certain situations, there is a deeply hubristic arrogance in the reduction of complex human processes to statistics, an aberration which led the sociologist Daniel Yankelovitch coining the term the “McNamara fallacy”:
1. Measure whatever can be easily measured.
2. Disregard that which cannot be measured easily.
3. Presume that which cannot be measured easily is not important.
4. Presume that which cannot be measured easily does not exist.
Sadly, some of these tenets will be recognisable to many of us in education – certainly the first two are consistent with many aspects of standardised testing, inspections and graded lesson observations. "
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The Learning Revolution Blog: highlighting disruptive and challenging ideas about teaching and learning.
Monday, June 8, 2015
John Taylor Gatto » How do I rekindle curiosity in my teenagers? – Ask John #5
So very well-worth reading...
John Taylor Gatto » How do I rekindle curiosity in my teenagers? – Ask John #5: "It was for centuries extremely common for families to exchange the care of their own children with the children of another family, forcing each child to adapt to strange people and strange standards, strange settings, strange expectations––all great stresses with no end in sight. Forget that you won’t or can’t do this, think only of the principle involved: the end of familiar routines."
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John Taylor Gatto » How do I rekindle curiosity in my teenagers? – Ask John #5: "It was for centuries extremely common for families to exchange the care of their own children with the children of another family, forcing each child to adapt to strange people and strange standards, strange settings, strange expectations––all great stresses with no end in sight. Forget that you won’t or can’t do this, think only of the principle involved: the end of familiar routines."
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The three REAL reasons for Finland’s high PISA scores. | Filling My Map
The three REAL reasons for Finland’s high PISA scores. | Filling My Map: "This is the KEY my friends. The PISA exam does not measure a students ability to solve a mathematical equation or calculate the answer to a directly given math problem. It doesn’t require factoring skills or differentials. The mathematics used in this international assessment of “What students should know” is actually fairly simple and straightforward every day math.
The math itself is not complicated or difficult. The students must read the problem, assess the situation, and figure out the answer. And the Finnish students who have been treated more like adults than children have more real life experiences in which to pull from to problem solve. They have been given independence at a young age and have therefore figured out how to deal with real-life issues and problems on their own.
They have also had an education system that has not spoon-fed them all of the answers. They have learned how to read through a problem, think it through logically and actually attempt to find an answer before they give up."
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The math itself is not complicated or difficult. The students must read the problem, assess the situation, and figure out the answer. And the Finnish students who have been treated more like adults than children have more real life experiences in which to pull from to problem solve. They have been given independence at a young age and have therefore figured out how to deal with real-life issues and problems on their own.
They have also had an education system that has not spoon-fed them all of the answers. They have learned how to read through a problem, think it through logically and actually attempt to find an answer before they give up."
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Saturday, June 6, 2015
Friday, June 5, 2015
Principal: I’m retiring because Common Core puts test scores before children - The Hechinger Report
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Dear Jayne, I appreciate your belief that all states should have the same or very similar standards. I also believed in national standards before the implementation of the Common Core. Now I believe that variation among states is a strength, not a weakness. If there are different models used by different states, we can evaluate […]
The post Principal: I’m retiring because Common Core puts test scores before children appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
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Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Common Core Not Aligned With Basic Facts of Human Development | Truth in American Education
Common Core Not Aligned With Basic Facts of Human Development | Truth in American Education: "For example, a child entering kindergarten is now expected to know the difference between informative/explanatory writing and opinion writing. The concern is that preschoolers without that knowledge will not succeed at meeting the new higher-level Common-Core standards. However, I think a more pressing concern is: Why do we have educational standards that are not aligned with even the most basic facts of human development? Clearly these test results show that the problem is with the standards, not the children."
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How Early Academic Training Retards Intellectual Development | Psychology Today
How Early Academic Training Retards Intellectual Development | Psychology Today:
Now, here’s the point to which I’m leading. It is generally a waste of time, and often harmful, to teach academic skills to children who have not yet developed the requisite motivational and intellectual foundations. Children who haven’t acquired a reason to read or a sense of its value will have little motivation to learn the academic skills associated with reading and little understanding of those skills. Similarly, children who haven’t acquired an understanding of numbers and how they are useful may learn the procedure for, say, addition, but that procedure will have little or no meaning to them.
...
What a finding! Benezet showed that five years of tedious (and for some, painful) drill could simply be dropped, and by dropping it the children did better, in sixth grade, than did those who had endured the drill for five previous years. This is the kind of finding that educators regularly choose to ignore. If they paid attention to such findings they would do themselves out of their jobs, because the truth is, what Benezet found for math can occur for every subject. Young people learn amazingly rapidly, and require little help, when they learn what they want to learn, in their own ways, on their own time.
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Now, here’s the point to which I’m leading. It is generally a waste of time, and often harmful, to teach academic skills to children who have not yet developed the requisite motivational and intellectual foundations. Children who haven’t acquired a reason to read or a sense of its value will have little motivation to learn the academic skills associated with reading and little understanding of those skills. Similarly, children who haven’t acquired an understanding of numbers and how they are useful may learn the procedure for, say, addition, but that procedure will have little or no meaning to them.
...
What a finding! Benezet showed that five years of tedious (and for some, painful) drill could simply be dropped, and by dropping it the children did better, in sixth grade, than did those who had endured the drill for five previous years. This is the kind of finding that educators regularly choose to ignore. If they paid attention to such findings they would do themselves out of their jobs, because the truth is, what Benezet found for math can occur for every subject. Young people learn amazingly rapidly, and require little help, when they learn what they want to learn, in their own ways, on their own time.
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