I don't think teaching kids "what" and "how" to think are mutually exclusive. Teaching what to think has been very successful in teaching kids the wrong things. Students retain that information well it seems. If "how to think" were included in the corriculum wouldn't we have better educated students?
I started in a one room school where the teacher taught to a Grade 8 for school completion certificates. The curriculum was rational by definition but in about 1947 was altered to be more welcoming to the religious community or so I overheard. Teachers weren’t allowed to overtly teach about the enlightenment hypothesis that the only reliable evidence was physical and no religion had any greater evidence than any other.
We learned that the classical definition of common sense as ‘Complex but orderly’ was a corollary of Einstein’s Relativity which is the enabling logic of the scientific method. In one room, each concept was familiar before your particular grade was introduced to it, grade 5 for example learned that equal and opposite forces (Newton) was scientifically unproven.
I was very disappointed when the completion certificate was cancelled and I had go to a regular high school but I have never seen any evidence that the scientific method as shown by Einstein and Lorentz was able to explain magic.
Disagree 1 - We simply MUST come to a national agreement on what the main objectives of the US K-12 program are. Although every State should then adopt those goals, it will be left up to each State as to how it meets them.
Dissent: Each of our 50 sovereign states possesses it own unique culture within the framework of the US Constitution. Let the states decide, let the states compete as they always have. All learning is trial and error. I would rather have ten or fifteen states fail and 35 or 40 succeed, than have the whole country fail at once. The states are better prepared to move quickly to adjust to a program failure than a national agency funded by disputatious members of Congress.
None of us knows better than the parents and their communities how to raise their children. God forbid that we raise a nation of automatons. The gifted kids, mentally and physically, will always rise to the top. National corporations and local businesses with their need for certain kinds of employees will continue to drive the educational systems of the States. I know that John disagrees with me on this issue, but it is that very disagreement that drives sharper thinking.
Agree 2 - We MUST change from teaching children WHAT to think, to teaching them HOW to think. That is an essential Skill that our K-12 education system should prioritize. Regretfully, the evidence (e.g., here) indicates that so far we are doing the exact opposite!
Concurrence: It is time to store cursive writing, drawing, elocution, grammar, essay and letter writing, etc. to the curriculum.
Agree 3 - We MUST get rid of the politicalization that we have allowed to infect essentially all of the K-12 subject areas. Yesterday.
Agree 4 - We MUST thoroughly and objectively assess the value of different pedagogies — e.g., what is being successfully done in Alpha schools and at Thales Academy schools.
Concurrence: Home schooling in NOT a bad thing. In my experience, they tend to be better balanced because their parents were better balanced than the teachers in the school system. Also prohibit the insidious incompetence inherent in the tenure system.
Disagree 5 - We MUST radically reform the DOEd so that it properly provides the leadership desperately needed by all fifty States, regarding all K-12 issues.
Dissent: How many radical reforms can one agency swallow before it becomes sentient and lives solely for its own continued existence with overpaid, overstuffed, bloated, politically driven incompetents? The bigger the agency that harder it is to prevent it from becoming sentient, and completely self-serving. For the model of such, look at the bloated foundations created by the Robber Baron families and how they have long left their original purposes.
Chris: Re #1. What you say makes no sense from several perspectives. We do NOT have fifty different "unique cultures" regarding education. That thinking is how we got into the educational disaster we currently have. Exactly what say to you have as a NY citizen regarding the NYS K-12 education system. It is an illusion.
Re #5. The number of reforms to an agency is irrelevant. (For example, how many reforms have there been in the Dept of Energy?) What is important is what is needed to be done, and the stark reality that there is no other option that is practical. None. Nada.
This is correct, in a sense. But missing the point.
Consider a military analogy. The staff spends all its time debating what hill should be taken, none on how to take the hill. Then they go home. That’s nuts.
Another analogy, in ecology: Lieblig’s Law of the Minimum. Growth is limited by the scarcest resource. We overflow with descriptions of better education systems. There are few descriptions of how to develop a consensus plan, mobilize sufficient support, and apply that support to change the system.
Irish: I have explained in prior posts (in detail) HOW to take the hill. Here I'm reiterating the critically important starting point: we need a national agreement as to what are the K-12 objectives. Etc.
Once upon a time, the nation rallied around the common school. Today, that idea is known as classical education. It teaches fundamentals and then moves on to critical thinking. And it works. We need to get back to basics and use models that work. We need to get back to the common school and classical education. It’s really not that difficult.
Public schools are not attracting our best. Why? Because there is little financial incentive to become a teacher today beyond two things: you can’t easily be fired, and you get summers off. That is not how you draw the best talent into such a critical profession.
When I taught for ten years, I discovered something disheartening: it didn’t matter if I did an exceptional job or a terrible job. Advancement was automatic. You moved up the pay scale in only two ways:
By surviving another year.
By taking a few meaningless “education” courses to pad a degree — one of the least useful advanced degrees ever invented.
The result? A culture of mediocrity. At best.
What we need is obvious: weed out the worst, reward the best. Evaluating teacher performance is not impossible. But the unions have no interest in doing it.
I left teaching for software engineering around the time teacher unions rose to power. Even then, I saw their true purpose: not to protect students or improve education, but to shield the worst teachers in the system. That was forty years ago. Since then, the quality has only gone downhill.
If we are serious about improving education in America, we must confront this reality: teacher unions exist to serve themselves, not the children or the public who pay their salaries. Eliminating them wouldn’t just save money — it would save students.
What a great response from someone with good judgement who experienced the teaching profession. I remember reading a report at least 30 years ago about the LA school system that spent $10 million in legal cost to fire 3 terrible teachers but were successful in getting rid of only one. Would the district try that again? Thanks for taking the time to writer your conclving comment.
How many decades has there been a National Department of Education? and in that time, by what metric exactly can it be shown that this expensive Bureaucracy has had a positive impact on any facet of "education" . . Note that any "educational system" that is wholly owned & operated by the "government" is absolutely the wrong way to even attempt to educate our youth in the skills that they will need as adults. WE THE PEOPLE have the resources to take EDUCATION out of the hands of bureaucrats & place the authority & responsibility in the hands of those who should have it, that is the PARENTS.
Bob: I've written this before, but maybe you missed it. 1) The DOEd has been terrible to date. 2) That said, 95% of the K-12 problems we have are due to the STATES. The solution is to genuinely FIX DOEd, as the States are in desperate need of leadership. There currently is ZERO national K-12 leadership.
to be perfectly clear, I am in favor of totally dismantling the system, that is the government run "EDUCATIONAL" system - sufficient resources exist for parents to provide an education to their kids . . . BIG BROTHER is a FOOL!
All 5 points are very valid. You are right there is nothing more boring than having a teacher do nothing, but spout off facts in front of a class, then grade students on what they can recall. This really is not learning. I took a class in student teaching...and we had to go and observe teachers. I selected to observe my own mother (who wound up teaching 52 years) as one of my choices. I was amazed at how good she was. She engaged her students in discussions and this impressed me. When students raised their hands to say something. She responded to everyone. She did not ignore the hands that went up. Many teachers that I have observed during my years of schooling...ignored the students, when they raised their hands. Few teachers did more than rattle off information. ...boring!
It was interesting...The students in the class had a rapport with their teacher and did not get out of hand. She was in charge and respected. My mother always said that she would teach for nothing, if she could afford to do so, as she loved teaching so much. When I visited some of my children's teachers ...I picked up their attitude. They really were in the profession for the paycheck and vacation time, but they really didn't like the vocation or the children.
Dr Droz, TX
I don't think teaching kids "what" and "how" to think are mutually exclusive. Teaching what to think has been very successful in teaching kids the wrong things. Students retain that information well it seems. If "how to think" were included in the corriculum wouldn't we have better educated students?
Paul Kennedy
Paul: We are on the same page. I am advocating that we emphasize the HOW to think part...
I started in a one room school where the teacher taught to a Grade 8 for school completion certificates. The curriculum was rational by definition but in about 1947 was altered to be more welcoming to the religious community or so I overheard. Teachers weren’t allowed to overtly teach about the enlightenment hypothesis that the only reliable evidence was physical and no religion had any greater evidence than any other.
We learned that the classical definition of common sense as ‘Complex but orderly’ was a corollary of Einstein’s Relativity which is the enabling logic of the scientific method. In one room, each concept was familiar before your particular grade was introduced to it, grade 5 for example learned that equal and opposite forces (Newton) was scientifically unproven.
I was very disappointed when the completion certificate was cancelled and I had go to a regular high school but I have never seen any evidence that the scientific method as shown by Einstein and Lorentz was able to explain magic.
Disagree 1 - We simply MUST come to a national agreement on what the main objectives of the US K-12 program are. Although every State should then adopt those goals, it will be left up to each State as to how it meets them.
Dissent: Each of our 50 sovereign states possesses it own unique culture within the framework of the US Constitution. Let the states decide, let the states compete as they always have. All learning is trial and error. I would rather have ten or fifteen states fail and 35 or 40 succeed, than have the whole country fail at once. The states are better prepared to move quickly to adjust to a program failure than a national agency funded by disputatious members of Congress.
None of us knows better than the parents and their communities how to raise their children. God forbid that we raise a nation of automatons. The gifted kids, mentally and physically, will always rise to the top. National corporations and local businesses with their need for certain kinds of employees will continue to drive the educational systems of the States. I know that John disagrees with me on this issue, but it is that very disagreement that drives sharper thinking.
Agree 2 - We MUST change from teaching children WHAT to think, to teaching them HOW to think. That is an essential Skill that our K-12 education system should prioritize. Regretfully, the evidence (e.g., here) indicates that so far we are doing the exact opposite!
Concurrence: It is time to store cursive writing, drawing, elocution, grammar, essay and letter writing, etc. to the curriculum.
Agree 3 - We MUST get rid of the politicalization that we have allowed to infect essentially all of the K-12 subject areas. Yesterday.
Agree 4 - We MUST thoroughly and objectively assess the value of different pedagogies — e.g., what is being successfully done in Alpha schools and at Thales Academy schools.
Concurrence: Home schooling in NOT a bad thing. In my experience, they tend to be better balanced because their parents were better balanced than the teachers in the school system. Also prohibit the insidious incompetence inherent in the tenure system.
Disagree 5 - We MUST radically reform the DOEd so that it properly provides the leadership desperately needed by all fifty States, regarding all K-12 issues.
Dissent: How many radical reforms can one agency swallow before it becomes sentient and lives solely for its own continued existence with overpaid, overstuffed, bloated, politically driven incompetents? The bigger the agency that harder it is to prevent it from becoming sentient, and completely self-serving. For the model of such, look at the bloated foundations created by the Robber Baron families and how they have long left their original purposes.
Chris: Re #1. What you say makes no sense from several perspectives. We do NOT have fifty different "unique cultures" regarding education. That thinking is how we got into the educational disaster we currently have. Exactly what say to you have as a NY citizen regarding the NYS K-12 education system. It is an illusion.
Re #5. The number of reforms to an agency is irrelevant. (For example, how many reforms have there been in the Dept of Energy?) What is important is what is needed to be done, and the stark reality that there is no other option that is practical. None. Nada.
This is correct, in a sense. But missing the point.
Consider a military analogy. The staff spends all its time debating what hill should be taken, none on how to take the hill. Then they go home. That’s nuts.
Another analogy, in ecology: Lieblig’s Law of the Minimum. Growth is limited by the scarcest resource. We overflow with descriptions of better education systems. There are few descriptions of how to develop a consensus plan, mobilize sufficient support, and apply that support to change the system.
Irish: I have explained in prior posts (in detail) HOW to take the hill. Here I'm reiterating the critically important starting point: we need a national agreement as to what are the K-12 objectives. Etc.
Good to know. It is useful in such cases to give readers links to relevant supporting articles.
Right over the target..👍🇺🇸
Once upon a time, the nation rallied around the common school. Today, that idea is known as classical education. It teaches fundamentals and then moves on to critical thinking. And it works. We need to get back to basics and use models that work. We need to get back to the common school and classical education. It’s really not that difficult.
Nard: Agreed that Classical Education — if done right — is a winner. That is the philosophy of the Thales Academy that I cited, and why I listed them.
The Problem with Teaching Today
Public schools are not attracting our best. Why? Because there is little financial incentive to become a teacher today beyond two things: you can’t easily be fired, and you get summers off. That is not how you draw the best talent into such a critical profession.
When I taught for ten years, I discovered something disheartening: it didn’t matter if I did an exceptional job or a terrible job. Advancement was automatic. You moved up the pay scale in only two ways:
By surviving another year.
By taking a few meaningless “education” courses to pad a degree — one of the least useful advanced degrees ever invented.
The result? A culture of mediocrity. At best.
What we need is obvious: weed out the worst, reward the best. Evaluating teacher performance is not impossible. But the unions have no interest in doing it.
I left teaching for software engineering around the time teacher unions rose to power. Even then, I saw their true purpose: not to protect students or improve education, but to shield the worst teachers in the system. That was forty years ago. Since then, the quality has only gone downhill.
If we are serious about improving education in America, we must confront this reality: teacher unions exist to serve themselves, not the children or the public who pay their salaries. Eliminating them wouldn’t just save money — it would save students.
What a great response from someone with good judgement who experienced the teaching profession. I remember reading a report at least 30 years ago about the LA school system that spent $10 million in legal cost to fire 3 terrible teachers but were successful in getting rid of only one. Would the district try that again? Thanks for taking the time to writer your conclving comment.
Jim: 100% agree See my writeup here <https://criticallythinking.substack.com/p/summary-of-the-k-12-education-situation>.
My point is that even if we have very good teachers, there will not be good results if the curricula, books, etc. are third rate.
How many decades has there been a National Department of Education? and in that time, by what metric exactly can it be shown that this expensive Bureaucracy has had a positive impact on any facet of "education" . . Note that any "educational system" that is wholly owned & operated by the "government" is absolutely the wrong way to even attempt to educate our youth in the skills that they will need as adults. WE THE PEOPLE have the resources to take EDUCATION out of the hands of bureaucrats & place the authority & responsibility in the hands of those who should have it, that is the PARENTS.
Bob: I've written this before, but maybe you missed it. 1) The DOEd has been terrible to date. 2) That said, 95% of the K-12 problems we have are due to the STATES. The solution is to genuinely FIX DOEd, as the States are in desperate need of leadership. There currently is ZERO national K-12 leadership.
to be perfectly clear, I am in favor of totally dismantling the system, that is the government run "EDUCATIONAL" system - sufficient resources exist for parents to provide an education to their kids . . . BIG BROTHER is a FOOL!
All 5 points are very valid. You are right there is nothing more boring than having a teacher do nothing, but spout off facts in front of a class, then grade students on what they can recall. This really is not learning. I took a class in student teaching...and we had to go and observe teachers. I selected to observe my own mother (who wound up teaching 52 years) as one of my choices. I was amazed at how good she was. She engaged her students in discussions and this impressed me. When students raised their hands to say something. She responded to everyone. She did not ignore the hands that went up. Many teachers that I have observed during my years of schooling...ignored the students, when they raised their hands. Few teachers did more than rattle off information. ...boring!
Barbara: Thank you. It must have been interesting being in a class where your mom was the teacher.
It was interesting...The students in the class had a rapport with their teacher and did not get out of hand. She was in charge and respected. My mother always said that she would teach for nothing, if she could afford to do so, as she loved teaching so much. When I visited some of my children's teachers ...I picked up their attitude. They really were in the profession for the paycheck and vacation time, but they really didn't like the vocation or the children.