Here's a paradox. Twitter has been the best professional development tool of my life, turning me from a parrot of right-on, Edu-meme trivialities to someone quite who is in the nuance camp. Ironically perhaps, Twitter is a completely constructivist, self-directed learning medium. It has no "centre" or "curriculum" and yet it's bringing me around to a more critical view of how constructivism is enacted in schools. I'm now a nuanced prog in the edu-trad-prog debate and I think I'm much better off as a result. I used to bang on about how all school's should provide the conditions for innate human wisdom to flourish and "teaching as talking" was something that unenlightened, unimaginative and useless teachers did to torture children. Most people just didn't "get it" like I got it. 21st-century man! Get with the Edutopia program and get them on Google.
The scary thing was just how taken in with this narrative I was and how utterly ubiquitous it is around the world. I've written about it before so don't want to repeat myself but seriously, for all those out there who try to claim that 2000-2010 UK and international education didn't promote the teaching of generic skills and getting kids to do fun engaging activities over learning knowledge, because, well 21st century and google innit, you are either lying or living in a parallel educational universe. That has been the status quo and continues to be so in many places. I´m actually quite annoyed no one bothered to tell me there was another side to the story. Or maybe it's my fault for not looking hard enough.
I still refer to myself as a progressive educator. I like to do that because I think we should teach kids to be mentally healthy, I like the idea of a wellbeing curriculum where kids learn to be happy and are happy to learn. Watch me now, I don't think that replaces discipline. I remember when I finished reading the Michaela Tiger Teachers book I got on Amazon and bought it for five people. We then implemented a full-on, "one squeak and you're out, take-no-prisoners, you can cry-if-you-want-to " behaviour policy and it made everyone's life a hell of a lot easier. We called them the golden rules. Don't break 'em kids, you will be sorry. The good thing about proper discipline was it meant we could all meditate in peace and the kids could be themselves without fearing being laughed at. I also promote service learning projects where kids come up with stuff to help their community and work together to put it into practice, I don't like grading much (prefer feedback to mastery) and I think we should probably listen to parents and work with them on general "good person" stuff. All this holistic stuff makes me pretty prog.
Here's the thing, and it's maybe the most important thing. I now know that direct instruction and carefully planned curriculum and sequencing are crucial for a healthy school. Ignore the "what" of teaching at your peril.
I've been trying to find out more and more about Sewell and cognitive load theory as it seems to make a lot of sense even though many of the results are reproduced under lab conditions. One commentator who I respect a lot, Christian Bokhove, said people like CLT because it "sounds truthy". I think that's a strength. How often do the results of research sound, well, bullshitty? I do believe we should test things against our own experience and CLT makes sense. Every time I find myself thinking about anything, I'm paying attention to the blips of info that come floating up from the unknown expanse of my memory and I smile and have a better understanding of myself. People on the prog side have loved (they seem to have stopped now in the UK) putting offensive words before the word memory ¨just memorising¨, ¨rote memory¨, ¨mere remembering¨ etc. What a bunch of silliness.
There are the progs who argue that somehow we are causing a mental health crisis by teaching kids in schools and then giving them grades. This is astounding hubris. One chap mentioned stats from the last five years showing unhappy kids, doesn't he realise that teaching and testing have been around forever? The failure to be even slightly critical of such a view of causality makes me cringe.
Then there are those who think that children always know best whilst at the same time telling us all the wonderful things that children should know but aren't taught in schools. If you think kids should learn "things that are going to be useful in real life" then please specify what they are and don't just say you think kids will decide to learn them by themselves. We teach kids things, that's the point. If you are arguing for an overhaul of teaching so kids learn to write checks, fix toilets or program robots then we should probably specify that very clearly.
The other day someone said that thinking there are right or wrong answers in maths was a "crippling misconception". Other people jumped in and made the point that maths is based on axioms and that these are human constructions which could be different. They then tried to use this as evidence that there are not right and wrong answers in maths. Yes, I get it, if I decide the number 4 is actually 11 and the number 5 is 8 then 5 plus 4 = 19. The problem is that it's not like that and whilst it could be different there are pretty good reasons why it's not. If maths didn't give some pretty watertight proximities to absolute truth then this computer wouldn't work and the large hadron collider would be a waste of time. The only reason they built that thing was that maths said that there should be something in reality corresponding to the maths. Someone then said that there was no link between constructivism in maths and defenders of progressive educational ideology; that´s complete rubbish. Any mathematical system that says you can both be and not be at the same time takes a huge swing at our mental health which is based on knowing that truth is truth and lies are lies. Ignoring this leads people to say things like, well it could be true for me and who defines truth anyway? It's only one step from there to allowing kids to spend all day making paper mache figurines of Hermione Granger because well, everything is just as important and true as everything else. Could be good, could be bad, who knows or cares because it could be or not be. Bye bye, any sense of reality.
Oh, then there are the tech progs. These are variants of the 21st-century skills gang but sometimes a bit more sophisticated. They believe that computers are like minds and so we should learn to code them. Computers and AI are the future so we should learn to do everything computers can't do. That doesn't sound very sensible, does it? Who would look after the computers for a start and who would decide what they should and shouldn't do? Tech companies are beginning to automate law and their capacity for logic and memory are much greater than your average magic circle bigwig. True, but the logical consequence of this is that we are handing over our entire legal system to a computer and then letting it make judgement upon us under the thrall of its programmers. Anyone who isn't freaked out by this needs their head examining. This is not progress people!
But wait, there are also some very bad arguments on the trad side. Firstly, they argue that everything should be measured. This is just stupid, most of the stuff we do is because of morals or ethics or just because it seems right and we don't need to know it's having an impact to know it's good. I love playing with my daughter but I´m not about to go measuring the impact of that on her overall progression as a little human, I just know it´s good for her to spend time with daddy. There are those who argue that we don't need to teach the human aspect at all whilst at the same time talking about the high behavioural expectations that will literally help change massively improve kids life chances. That's contradictory, you have high expectations because there is a dimension of education that is about spiritual and ethical growth and self-realisation not just because they learn more knowledge in a structured environment.
Anyway. blog finished.
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