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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As I walk through the exercise I see no logical difference between your method and the lattice. What is different is the mechanics - you broke 14 into 10 and left the 56 intact. The lattice method breaks both numbers into single digits. The diagonals just establish the thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones positions. In any large number multiplication the result can have no more positions than the total of the positions of the two numbers being multiplied. Any lattice problem sets up with that number of diagonals.
When I was in school things like the lattice might have been shown as parlor tricks after teaching us traditional arithmetic. I grew up learning why arithmetic worked as it did. I wish more kids could have that.
Public schools were never bastions of academic excellence, not even in their earliest days.
Do you know the outcome of that case? I would be interested to know.
Government education can NOT NOT NOT NOT be FIXED!
You will not see an effective “BKM” program in socialist-funded, government owned and managed, collectivist school board managed, GODLESS, prison-like schools. It can NOT NOT NOT happen! Why? Because the very purpose of government school is to turn out compliant collectivists and socialists! It was that way from the very beginning in the mid-1800s to early 1900s.
From the very first day that government schools opened in the mid-1800s American education was on its INEVITABLE path toward destruction of the American mind and soul. Socialist, collectivist, welfare schemes **ALWAYS** do this! It doesn't matter what they are.
If conservatives love children, America, and desire to see our nation's experiment in self rule survive, we MUST MUST MUST shut down every government K-12 school in this nation! We MUST MUST MUST get our nation's children into private conservative educational settings that fully and completely integrate the child's family's Judeo Christian belief and our nation's founding principles into every minute of the day.
Please note that I said “educational settings”. I did not say prison-like “schools”.
Yes, our Founding Fathers desired that the American people be well educated. It is likely that they had in mind their **own** educations: homeschool, educational cooperation among families, one room schools, private tutoring, very small educational academies, apprenticeships, and college by the early teens for those who were very bright and well enough off to pay for it.
Get government completely out of education and this nation will soon see BKM.
By the way, if vouchers, tax credits, and charters can lead us out of this mess of government education welfare and toward complete privatization then I support it....BUT...There is a danger with vouchers, etc. They can lead to continually higher and higher tuition hikes that we see with colleges and universities today and government control of the curriculum and programs.
( Yeah! I am shouting. It distresses me that so few conservatives understand that socialism and collectivism can NOT be fixed.)
It was a Tower of Babel moment for us. Very sad.
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The parents can not transfer their culture to the child because they *literally* no longer share the same language!
That is the very **POINT** of these “methods”. The very GOAL is not to teach math but to drive a wedge between the parents and the child! Instead of respecting the parents as a well of knowledge and wisdom, the child is taught to lean on the government and have contempt for his parents and the parents’ values.
It is EVIL! How can evil be reformed? IT CAN NOT! It must be shut down.
It was a Tower of Babel moment for us. Very sad.
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The parents can not transfer their culture to the child because they *literally* no longer share the same language!
That is the very **POINT** of these “methods”. The very GOAL is not to teach math but to drive a wedge between the parents and the child! Instead of respecting the parents as a well of knowledge and wisdom, the child is taught to lean on the government and have contempt for his parents and the parents’ values.
It is EVIL! How can evil be reformed? IT CAN NOT! It must be shut down.
I just read your post to my husband. He immediate quipped, “He should shut up and **DO** something about it!”
( Get your grand daughter out that temple of evil and teach her yourself.)
A wonderful story! Effing POS’s is poetry next to the blather normally emanating from public schools.
Please have this teacher put his experiences on FreeRepublic. He can say he’s in Florida. (Or have him get in touch with me at Improve-Education.org and I’ll write up his ideas.)
“And no matter which side of the paradox the kids are operating on, academic attainment is not part of the craziness. So they end up confused AND ignorant.”
And can therefore be flim-flammed into voting for a despicable scoundrel like, oh, I don’t know, the Kenyan Commie?
” 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”
I feel a tad vindicated to learn that a math major does it that way. I’m a total math wimp, but I’ve been doing it that way for decades because it seems easier.
“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.”
Aside from working with my own kids, the only thing I know to do is gently let young people know that I think they are exceedingly pathetic for not knowing things like, say, the three branches of our government, or how to return change.
Maybe it will motivate one or two of them to pick up a book.
“She claims that’s the only way she can understand it but I couldn’t do it. It makes absolutely no sense to me and I want to scream every time I look at it.”
My four older children went to school in Japan until at least through the eighth grade, so no problems there.
I’ve had to work with my ten-year-old, though, on long division, multiplication of fractions, etc. It wasn’t easy, but I found that I was able to get him up to speed by dropping back a level every time he didn’t understand something, getting that straight, then moving on. Associating numbers with real-world objects helped, too.
“Suppose I give you an allowance, then every time you don’t do your homework I fine you 20 per cent of that allowance. How many times can you screw up before it’s all gone?”
One might call it incentive.
He didn’t start learning to speak English until he was six, but now he’s reading at grade level. He actually seems to be starting to enjoy it (laus Deo). And he may be, finally, the one who appreciates music in the same way that I do.
Now I just have to equip him to see through the left’s attempts to flim-flam him.
That’s one thing that I find incredibly frustrating about the Republican Party right now - they should be organized and leading a public information campaign. Cut through the disinformation put out by the other side (and apparently acceded to by the GOP’ers). We should be trying to get out of the definitional box that they have very successfully put us in. We should define ourselves rather than letting them define us.
Instead, the GOP seems intent on maintaining the same-old-same-old and not rocking the boat too much. Just enough to make it appear that they have a spine and support a Constitutional Republic, but not enough to actually challenge and change anything.
Yes, and as part of what you suggest, the Republican Party should be leading the charge to fix the schools (by getting rid of all the stupid ideas).
There is an odd lack of vision and vigor. Education is a huge issue, and Republicans should be talking it up all the time.
(Article is 2 years old but still new, unfortunately: Republican Must Attack Dems on Education: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/102899 )
When I was in high school, they forced me to read Shakespeare. I loved it! When people say they’ve never read the classics, I feel like they got gypped (sp?). Poe, Dickens, Sinclair Lewis—really good stuff there. I had terrific teachers, too.
You are a great blessing!
“they should be organized and leading a public information campaign.” I’ve found it very difficult to get past the knee-jerk reaction libs have to anything that might destabilize their world view. They have universally viewed facts as personal affronts. The impenetrable wall goes up; the wall is impervious to ideas, facts, anything that’s different from what they’ve been taught. Responses are usually emotional and lacking in substance.
The public information campaign should be developed to appeal to the middle-of-the-roaders who are open to ideas and challenges. “Public relations” is a dirty term in some circles; however, it looks like the GOP needs a PR expert. (Can you tell that I’ve been reading “Propaganda” by Bernays after Glenn Beck recommended it?)
For those that still do not see the reality of this please pick up one of these books...
“Aim For The Children” by Daniel E. Johnson
“The Battle For Truth” by David A. Noebel
“Clergy In The Classroom” by David A. Noebel
“None Dare Call It Education”...not sure of the author (my copy is loaned out at this time)
“...they should be organized and leading a public information campaign...”
Absolutely. That’s how the left got where they are today. Well, that and violence.
“Instead, the GOP seems intent on maintaining the same-old-same-old and not rocking the boat too much.”
The RINO elite must go. They are as much domestic enemies of the Constitution as the demonrats.
“Just enough to make it appear that they have a spine and support a Constitutional Republic, but not enough to actually challenge and change anything.”
They appear to have a spine? That one got by me.
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