I've been listening to the abridged CD edition of this, it's great; disclaimer is that I've been living an alternative lifestyle based on clutter for most of my life. ;') Anyway, a couple days ago I reached a section on a "disorganized" school.
Posted on 01/27/2011 2:02:38 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
[New YouTube video is short, graphical, and has good jazz; this is script for it--]
A century ago, Maria Montessori reached a brilliant insight. Observing children at a mental institution, she wondered: “Suppose we created a jazzed-up environment that constantly challenged and inspired young minds...?”
Montessori created a new kind of school for impaired children. Quickly, her students were equal to “normal” children. She became the toast of Europe; as she deserved to be. Montessori’s vision has to inspire all true educators.
But what, after all, is Montessori telling us but common sense? If you want intellectual and cognitive development, you had better do everything possible to light fires in those young minds.
Unfortunately, American education, for a century, has followed exactly the opposite path from Montessori’s. Our public schools are based on a model of intellectual minimalism.
The first question asked by John Dewey--the Father of American Education--was how much content can we toss out the window? The second question was how can we teach school subjects so that all students remain more or less at the same stage? He wanted little Socialists who work and play well together.
Dewey and his followers devised what might be called the anti-Montessori classroom. The only positive stimulation came from group activities. Other than that, Dewey’s classrooms, behind the contrived festiveness, were to be academically stunted.
Tragically, much of the genius of American Education has gone into devising dozens of methods that sound scientific; but in practice are formulas for education LITE.
The most egregious example is Whole Word. This gimmick was sold to the public as “modern” whereas “dear old phonics” was dismissed as obsolete. Sounds good until we tally up the 50,000,000 functional illiterates and 1,000,000 dyslexics created by Whole Word--the purest example of education as neurotoxin.
In the name of their ideology, progressive educators were willing to dumb down an entire country by propagating neurotoxic ideas falsely labeled as education. Discarding these dishonest ideas is our first order of business.
For Dewey and his ilk the operative phrase was “social engineering.” What we need is “intellectual engineering.”
Whether kids are gifted or slow, they are best served by Montessori’s insight that all children develop most quickly in a challenging, cognitively enriched environment. Dewey’s disgraceful goal was to crush all children down to the same average size. Thanks for the neurotoxins, John. But enough already. What we need is education as neuro-enhancer.
The right approach is simply stated. Emphasize basic skills, foundational knowledge and mastery. Basics, Knowledge, Mastery. BKM. That's something we didn't try for a while.
In sum, American schools were overrun by bad theories and unproductive methods because the education bosses became obsessed with social engineering schemes. All we are saying is give education a chance...
For more on the hoax called Whole Word, see “42: Reading Resources” on Improve-Education.org.
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A longer version of these thoughts ran here more than a year ago. I just realized I could make a graphic video out of it. The video runs only 3:40 minutes and is fairly lively. Please pass it on.
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Thanks.
I wouldn’t dispute the negatives about Dewey and his like but I do think that children have historically been treated as more of a discipline problem than as eager young minds to nurture.
“... they will use the excuse that parents are too stupid to understand them. “
And that is deliberate. How dare the parent challenge the enlightened “teacher”. And if the parent tries to teach the child the traditional way, the parent gets hit with criminal charges. It has happened, in NYC. And the father, trying to teach his daughter the old way to do math (the way that works) was black, which reinforces my view that inner city schools are administered by racists who do NOT want the child to learn - need to make more welfare clients for the Cloward Piven strategy.
Next up - if the student on his/her own initiative learns to old way, then it’s time to drug the student.
I have always viewed Montessori as some flaky New Agey stuff, however I am re-considering that position.
What’s your opinion re: teaching the classics?
One thing which would help would be a decent alphabet for English; we don’t have one at present.
Consider this idiotic exercise I'd never heard of lattice multiplication despite having been a math major in school and something like 70 semester hours of math courses. Assuming a need to multiply 14 by 56 as per the problem, I'd multiply 10 by 56 and get 560 in my head and then 4 x 56 (112 twice) for 224 and add the 560 and 224 to 784, again without having touched a pen or pencil, and generally thus feel no need for implements in multiplying two digit numbers. Anything much worse than that and I'd do the normal multiplication with a pen and paper.
If somebody’s actually trying to teach one of your kids something like this you need to figure out who’s responsible for it and beat the **** out of them...
I had a similar impression decades ago. I think most people did.
...however I am re-considering that position.
It may depend on the school. That the Montessori name is used doesn't guaranty that the methods are used.
Ouch. Prayers for her and her educational future!
I think you can show her how to do them, now, though. That site covers it pretty well.
Same here, math minor, CS major, UoA. Lots of Calculus, no lattice multiplication.
“The dumbing down is so patently obvious to me it’s jaw-dropping.”
Yes, but not if you’ve been run through the school system lately. What is patently obvious to you and me is not to younger Americans. And, when they vote, bad things happen.
RE: Montessori.
In truth, the hippies brought her name back in the 1960s. Thus your associations.
She died within a year of Dewey, circa 1952. The part of the story I like happened all the way back in 1914, when the Dewey Gang mugged the nice Italian lady and destroyed her rep. Google “DEWEY VS MONTESSORI—THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY.”
She was the real deal; and Dewey was a quack socialist. Thus my loyalties.
Here’s how article starts;
Here’s why:
I’ve been studying Rudolf Flesch, the reading wars, the ed wars, John Dewey, and all points in between. Along the way I learned a lot about Montessori, and her losing, bruising battle with America’s top educators. Mainly, I learned that she deserved to win....”
I like the idea of teaching everything. Gilbert Highet has this great quote about how you just can’t know what a kid can absorb if you teach it right. So I like the idea of teaching a lot rather than a little. We aim so low sometimes.
Thank you, Bruce. Interesting.
Fred,
Post #32 should be for you, too.
My 9th grade son just told me a funny about his geometry teacher who used to be a bouncer.
On the first day of school, he told the class to get out their new math books and “put those effing POS’s in the cardboard box.”
He then distributed the older math books that actually had real math and real instructions for doing it.
He is one of my son’s favorite teachers but his language is a bit uh-colorful.
I’m okay with it if he’s teaching the boy real math though.
Ping.
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I know a retired teacher who did about 6,000 hours worth of research with the help of another teacher trying to find out what went wrong with our education system.
She’s now of the opinion that sending children to government schools constitutes child abuse.
Thanks for the link.
I can’t believe mastery of the basics is viewed as a waste of time!
When I went to school, we were supposed to do basic math and show our work to prove we didn’t use a calculator and nowadays they are encouraging the use of calculators in these books.
This is why some college graduates use their calculators for simple multiplication facts(6 times 8) now. One might think MJ was exaggerating when she mentioned that, but I’ve actually seen co-workers who were college graduates do this and I’ve always just been shocked and amazed by it.
Einstein didn’t even know his own phone number and didn’t see the point in memorizing it when it can be looked up in a book, but I bet even with these “new and improved” methods, he would still know his multiplication tables.
That is scary!
But now I can kind of understand this demonic new math from watching the video. Maybe when it’s time to do math homework I won’t just throw up my hands in frustration anymore and dump it in dad’s lap anymore. (until we get to algebra)
I had my doubts as well but my mind is changed. I'm half way through teaching a square dance unit (also line dances and contras) for a Montessori school. I have 32 kids grade 1 through 6 for four one-hour sessions. I was dazzled when I watched the children putting things away and moving furniture in preparation for the first dance class. Afterward they put the room back together. I'm sure this would violate a union contract in a public school. As to teaching them - I am having a good time and some reasonable success. They are attentive and responsive and doing a good job given their ages and the limited time we have together. This afternoon I will do the third session and for the first time mrs jimfree will be joining me to assist.
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