Shout-out for Ludo.
June 4, 2011 1:54 PM Subscribe
(Public education filter): Who decided that children are stupid?
At one point in my life I got a little taste of teacher training. I was preparing to teach a summer session at a Baltimore elementary school. We got a lot of handouts and lectures about mental development in young children. The training materials were mostly facile assertions organized into bulleted lists and Venn diagrams. My undergraduate background is in cognitive science, and I quickly reached the conclusion that the information in our training was scientifically unsound, grounded in anecdote and hearsay, and full of willful misconceptions. (NB: Modern, research-based cognitive psychology regards Piaget and Vygotsky as historical curiosities like Freud or Jung.)
At one point in my life I got a little taste of teacher training. I was preparing to teach a summer session at a Baltimore elementary school. We got a lot of handouts and lectures about mental development in young children. The training materials were mostly facile assertions organized into bulleted lists and Venn diagrams. My undergraduate background is in cognitive science, and I quickly reached the conclusion that the information in our training was scientifically unsound, grounded in anecdote and hearsay, and full of willful misconceptions. (NB: Modern, research-based cognitive psychology regards Piaget and Vygotsky as historical curiosities like Freud or Jung.)
- If you are familiar with the academic literature on developmental psychology, can you suggest a review or survey of children's mental limitations, specifically in the capacity for abstract thought?
- If you're familiar with the history of public education in the US in the latter half of the 20th century, can you recommend some reading about the influence of cognitive psychology on curriculum development? By this I mean efforts to space out or dilute learning material to "accommodate" children's mental development. Also, if this tendency is influenced by factors other than psychology (Cold War? economy? politics?), I'd love to learn more.
I saw a study about "insides" that showed that children actually shift back and forth between abstraction and concrete thinking... and Google Scholar provides, yay.
posted by SMPA at 2:16 PM on June 4, 2011
posted by SMPA at 2:16 PM on June 4, 2011
I am a HS teacher and I have an MA in Psychology. I think a lot of the problem is that the people designing and implementing the teacher training materials often aren't exactly academics themselves. And even sound research (&common sense?) findings such as 'smaller classes sizes are more effective' are often ignored due to budgetary/political/ecomomic/ basically-students-aren't-the-first-priority factors. So everything is often scaled to the lowest common denominator- IMO for the slowest teacher and the slowest student to grasp the ideas at hand. Honestly, if you think too much your head will almost explode from the cognitive dissonance between intellectual pursuits/your own knowledge/what you see in front of you/and what is implemented in the public education system. Wait, do I sound bitter?? (also I do think that many children in seriously impoverished communities/home situations may be exposed to much much less intellectual stimulation (and to many more other things) that may actually delay/hinder their learning abilities substantially for their ages...but that is total conjecture...)
posted by bquarters at 3:53 PM on June 4, 2011 [9 favorites]
posted by bquarters at 3:53 PM on June 4, 2011 [9 favorites]
Keep in mind in your research that Public Education curriculum development builds from outcomes success for large groups of children versus supporting the development of a single child, and so often, you'll find better literature reviews searching for terms like "educational planning," "outcomes assessment," as well as searches for how selection works for determining a population in a study.
Teachers, themselves, because they do deal more directly with individual children, will often use secondary sources that have applied cognitive theories to classroom activities which, necessarily, also have to appeal to 20 kids at a time. So often, it's not that teachers think kids are dumb, it's that they are dealing with applied theory and sometimes seminars and the like talk about it like it is theory, when it's really practice--and good practice depends on the talents of the educator and the resources of the school.
Child development is more the realm of pediatric research/developmental psychology/neurobiological sciences. My sub-specialty as a pediatric nurse practitioner is this kind of stuff. In this area, it really is individual development versus pinning down population norms, statistically, but you only really need to do that in order to assess children and determine interventions. And even in my area of practice and research, I am more in the realm of clinical research and development versus theoretical research. Basically, true developmental research focuses on the journey of human development without looking at outcomes (or destination, in my little metaphor).
So, take one kid, say a kid with some highly functional ASD. He plays, he reads, he has interests, he's happy with his family. He is assessed by the healthcare community to be hypotonic with gross motor delays according to some Denver Developmental Assessment that compares him to a statistical population. He is referred to PT. PT sets some goal that he will achieve physical movement goals in line with his peers, who in this case, happen to be a "mainstreamed" class at school that are chronologically 2 years younger than he is. This goal is made so he can participate in his class's presidential physical fitness assessment. In class, his phys ed teacher observes that he wanders a bit and distracts other kids, so the phys ed teacher invents some activity game that all the kids like and do okay with, and then the phys ed teacher presents the game at a conference for phys ed teachers about developmentally appropriate games for that age group.
So what's going on in that's kid's brain? Well, we have some guesses, but what about that stuff about him being happy at home, and the stuff about him playing and reading and having interests? That seems to suggest development. Everything else is a lot about what we think that kid's final destination should be.
I have access to a lot of studies and articles, if you're interested in aspects of what I'm talking about--email though because my access is connected to my position as a grad student and so I can't link, but I can email PDF. As a clinician, I really love this stuff, though. New brains are pretty awesome.
posted by rumposinc at 4:00 PM on June 4, 2011 [3 favorites]
Teachers, themselves, because they do deal more directly with individual children, will often use secondary sources that have applied cognitive theories to classroom activities which, necessarily, also have to appeal to 20 kids at a time. So often, it's not that teachers think kids are dumb, it's that they are dealing with applied theory and sometimes seminars and the like talk about it like it is theory, when it's really practice--and good practice depends on the talents of the educator and the resources of the school.
Child development is more the realm of pediatric research/developmental psychology/neurobiological sciences. My sub-specialty as a pediatric nurse practitioner is this kind of stuff. In this area, it really is individual development versus pinning down population norms, statistically, but you only really need to do that in order to assess children and determine interventions. And even in my area of practice and research, I am more in the realm of clinical research and development versus theoretical research. Basically, true developmental research focuses on the journey of human development without looking at outcomes (or destination, in my little metaphor).
So, take one kid, say a kid with some highly functional ASD. He plays, he reads, he has interests, he's happy with his family. He is assessed by the healthcare community to be hypotonic with gross motor delays according to some Denver Developmental Assessment that compares him to a statistical population. He is referred to PT. PT sets some goal that he will achieve physical movement goals in line with his peers, who in this case, happen to be a "mainstreamed" class at school that are chronologically 2 years younger than he is. This goal is made so he can participate in his class's presidential physical fitness assessment. In class, his phys ed teacher observes that he wanders a bit and distracts other kids, so the phys ed teacher invents some activity game that all the kids like and do okay with, and then the phys ed teacher presents the game at a conference for phys ed teachers about developmentally appropriate games for that age group.
So what's going on in that's kid's brain? Well, we have some guesses, but what about that stuff about him being happy at home, and the stuff about him playing and reading and having interests? That seems to suggest development. Everything else is a lot about what we think that kid's final destination should be.
I have access to a lot of studies and articles, if you're interested in aspects of what I'm talking about--email though because my access is connected to my position as a grad student and so I can't link, but I can email PDF. As a clinician, I really love this stuff, though. New brains are pretty awesome.
posted by rumposinc at 4:00 PM on June 4, 2011 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: Here's a part of what I memailed to another Mefite on this subject:
On preview: Thanks to rumposinc for a detailed response.
posted by Nomyte at 4:09 PM on June 4, 2011 [2 favorites]
I really like the idea of teaching, probably for selfish and invalid reasons. What repels me is exactly what I asked about: what I perceive as rampant, inherent, structural anti-intellectualism. [Hovering] parents and lazy students are things that a teacher can deal with, with effort, and with difficulty, but with some probability of success. Systemic anti-intellectualism is something an individual teacher cannot deal with. Often, the teacher is the carrier of these ideas. I find the wide spread of misconceptions about what children can accomplish heart-breaking. The mythology surrounding education has an air of flat world thinking, and its influence is pernicious and omnipresent. I would like to trace its history and roots, but it's quite difficult. Pound for pound, educational writing seems to have more hot air than any other discipline (except entrepreneurship).Basically, I recall seeing writing on the subject of educational policy to the effect that a deliberate slowing of pace was a desired outcome. Not a consequence of reduced funding, not an example of regression to the mean, and not a perverse instance of bureaucratic surrealism. Rather, it was a conscious choice, informed by some real or perceived findings, or possibly by folk beliefs, as many things are. There is a lot of popular, but deeply harmful and pseudoscientific beliefs about children (remember the "crockus").
On preview: Thanks to rumposinc for a detailed response.
posted by Nomyte at 4:09 PM on June 4, 2011 [2 favorites]
Most of the Piaget that has been debunked is either his early work, or misinterpretations of his work. Piaget's four stages (which are not actually four), are only a very tiny portion of his work. Many professors teach only the four stages, but the ideas of assimilation; accommodation; equilibrium; operation; scheme; and empirical, pseudo-empirical, and reflecting abstraction are far more important. They describe mechanisms of learning rather than classifications.
The statement that Piaget's work is based solely on his own children is also only true of his early work. Piaget's later work involved a center with dozens of researchers and hundreds of experiments over a career that spanned decades, up through the 80s (if we include posthumous publications).
Most criticisms of Piaget are based on strawmen. This is not to say that all of his work is correct, but it does mean that it's worth spending some time reading his books and seeing what he actually said and what his evidence really was before coming to conclusions about the quality of his work.
In that vein, I highly recommend child's conception of space, studies in reflecting abstraction, and grasp of consciousness.
posted by yeolcoatl at 4:18 PM on June 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
The statement that Piaget's work is based solely on his own children is also only true of his early work. Piaget's later work involved a center with dozens of researchers and hundreds of experiments over a career that spanned decades, up through the 80s (if we include posthumous publications).
Most criticisms of Piaget are based on strawmen. This is not to say that all of his work is correct, but it does mean that it's worth spending some time reading his books and seeing what he actually said and what his evidence really was before coming to conclusions about the quality of his work.
In that vein, I highly recommend child's conception of space, studies in reflecting abstraction, and grasp of consciousness.
posted by yeolcoatl at 4:18 PM on June 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I don't mean for this to become an out-and-out attack on Piaget. I am concerned by what I perceive as his status of a guru-like figure. I'm not sure how to interpret the statement that Piaget's work "involved a center with dozens of researchers." Almost all researchers produce collaborative work. Does this mean that he led a private think tank-like organization? There are academics that operate private organizations of dubious scientific virtue (not claiming that Piaget did). To what extent did Piaget participate in the academic mainstream of cognitive psychology (which in the 70s and 80s certainly existed and closely resembled the academic community of today)? I have to admit that my knowledge of Piaget's work consists of two things: the heavily filtered and distorted version that education students get, and a knowledge of his debate with Chomsky, in which Piaget defends his model of distributed consciousness and Chomsky opposes it with the more soundly supported model of modular and dissociable cognitive processes (language in particular).
posted by Nomyte at 4:31 PM on June 4, 2011
posted by Nomyte at 4:31 PM on June 4, 2011
Piaget has been pretty soundly discredited in the actual field, but that doesn't mean it's trickled down to what they're teaching teachers...
This, but not only teachers. I studied psychology at A-Level and we were taught Piaget and Vygotsky. For years I assumed that they were the touchstone of all child development research, which is obviously wrong. I also feel that oftentimes school subjects are simplified to the point of being useless/misrepresentative (anecdotal: my mathematician friend says that his first lecturer at uni said to forget everything he ever learned at school because "it's not maths").
However, I would like to play devil's advocate and say that most subjects are just vast, requiring years of in-depth, meaningful research just to gain an accurate overview. The one thing my psychology teachers at school did was create debate, engaging our capacity to think critically and abstractly with confidence. These are skills which helped us to understand and apply our knowledge beyond the classroom, and kept us interested in psych.
Admittedly, schools in general fail to distinguish between abstract thought and empirical evidence, especially in subjects that cross the boundary between humanities and science. More should be done to address that.
posted by dumdidumdum at 5:00 PM on June 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
This, but not only teachers. I studied psychology at A-Level and we were taught Piaget and Vygotsky. For years I assumed that they were the touchstone of all child development research, which is obviously wrong. I also feel that oftentimes school subjects are simplified to the point of being useless/misrepresentative (anecdotal: my mathematician friend says that his first lecturer at uni said to forget everything he ever learned at school because "it's not maths").
However, I would like to play devil's advocate and say that most subjects are just vast, requiring years of in-depth, meaningful research just to gain an accurate overview. The one thing my psychology teachers at school did was create debate, engaging our capacity to think critically and abstractly with confidence. These are skills which helped us to understand and apply our knowledge beyond the classroom, and kept us interested in psych.
Admittedly, schools in general fail to distinguish between abstract thought and empirical evidence, especially in subjects that cross the boundary between humanities and science. More should be done to address that.
posted by dumdidumdum at 5:00 PM on June 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
I agree that his status as a guru-like figure is problematic, particularly because the image that is held up for semi-worship is not the Piaget that actually existed, nor does it reflect his real beliefs or conclusions.
The comment about the Center was not about establishing his credentials as an academic, but rather to help imagine the sheer number of children that passed through his experiments. It was a comment aimed at debunking the idea that all his work was based on just observations of his own children.
In terms of academics, Piaget has always been associated with universities. He was fundamentally and primarily an academic. Specifically he was an evolutionary zoologist, and that training colored everything he did. Published at 10 (or 11), and Ph.D. at 22. He held an appointment at the University of Geneva, and collaborated with many academics, including professors at Georgia, Cornell, and Berkeley, for ones that I know of offhand.
As I mentioned early, the best way to learn and form an opinion about Piaget is simply to read his work. It's dense, time consuming, and difficult, but it's worth it if only to have an informed opinion rather than one you were told to have. You can me-mail me with contact info if you want to get started, or just ignore me if you don't.
As for Chomsky, he has his own problems. Just as Piaget was colored by being a biologist, Chomsky was colored by his strong ties to electrical engineering, and he still tends to see everything in those terms, whether appropriate or not. I'm particularly fond of his debate with Pinker and Jackendoff on the uniqueness of human language. Those papers are hilarious.
posted by yeolcoatl at 5:06 PM on June 4, 2011
The comment about the Center was not about establishing his credentials as an academic, but rather to help imagine the sheer number of children that passed through his experiments. It was a comment aimed at debunking the idea that all his work was based on just observations of his own children.
In terms of academics, Piaget has always been associated with universities. He was fundamentally and primarily an academic. Specifically he was an evolutionary zoologist, and that training colored everything he did. Published at 10 (or 11), and Ph.D. at 22. He held an appointment at the University of Geneva, and collaborated with many academics, including professors at Georgia, Cornell, and Berkeley, for ones that I know of offhand.
As I mentioned early, the best way to learn and form an opinion about Piaget is simply to read his work. It's dense, time consuming, and difficult, but it's worth it if only to have an informed opinion rather than one you were told to have. You can me-mail me with contact info if you want to get started, or just ignore me if you don't.
As for Chomsky, he has his own problems. Just as Piaget was colored by being a biologist, Chomsky was colored by his strong ties to electrical engineering, and he still tends to see everything in those terms, whether appropriate or not. I'm particularly fond of his debate with Pinker and Jackendoff on the uniqueness of human language. Those papers are hilarious.
posted by yeolcoatl at 5:06 PM on June 4, 2011
Response by poster: Oh, certainly. Science is done by scientists, but the scientist is not science itself. This is as true of Piaget as it is of Chomsky. I know little about Piaget. It would be interesting to read his work, but I'm ultimately interested in the lasting influence of the "straw man" Piaget on what's taught to teachers and how curricula are planned.
posted by Nomyte at 5:17 PM on June 4, 2011
posted by Nomyte at 5:17 PM on June 4, 2011
Well, yes. The lasting influence of "straw man" Piaget are the ideas that the four stages are important, and that they are tied intrinsically to certain ages (as opposed to observed to generally occur at certain ages within certain cultures). Those two misconceptions add up to the idea that a student can't learn something until after they reach a certain age, which is clearly untrue.
posted by yeolcoatl at 5:28 PM on June 4, 2011
posted by yeolcoatl at 5:28 PM on June 4, 2011
So dumdidumdum, might you say that your psych teachers employed a strategy that was using P and V not for the content -- but to help you understand even at that level (high school for those in the US) that the field contained contingency, debate, and the need for critical thinking and abstraction?
Perhaps that makes them geniuses. The one time I taught a psychological foundations of education class (15 years ago) it was for in-service teachers working on their masters degree. This was one cynical bunch when it came to what the boffins say about learning. What I got mileage out of was exactly what you mention -- helping them understand that "research" does have foundations, and assumptions, and to engage it critically but with understanding. I have worked in the learning laboratory side and also on the opposite end with teachers in the field doing action research. Teachers are practical, and the curriculum materials that you (Nomyte) talk about were probably well-intended and selected to appear "useful" and it is not likely that the person who chose them did so intentionally knowing that they were out of date or offensively horrible.
Finally getting around to my point: I have just been reading the post on the blue that talks about school pseudo-science and Brain Gym which hilights the need to teachers to better understand scientific "truthiness" and I have been reminded about the chasm between applied individual learning needs, classroom level strategies, system and policy level application, and then full circle back into the laboratory running tests on undergrads taking a psych class. My response to Nomyte is not to look for a conspiracy, but to realize that application and the lab evolved separately and have always looked for ways to converge, the battle has been fought over and over again. I have mellowed out over the years and realize that it would take a generation or more for them to move closer, and in the meantime looked for fellowtravellers. I have reserved a small amount of despise for those who still push "learning styles" on new teachers though.
posted by cgk at 5:39 PM on June 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
Perhaps that makes them geniuses. The one time I taught a psychological foundations of education class (15 years ago) it was for in-service teachers working on their masters degree. This was one cynical bunch when it came to what the boffins say about learning. What I got mileage out of was exactly what you mention -- helping them understand that "research" does have foundations, and assumptions, and to engage it critically but with understanding. I have worked in the learning laboratory side and also on the opposite end with teachers in the field doing action research. Teachers are practical, and the curriculum materials that you (Nomyte) talk about were probably well-intended and selected to appear "useful" and it is not likely that the person who chose them did so intentionally knowing that they were out of date or offensively horrible.
Finally getting around to my point: I have just been reading the post on the blue that talks about school pseudo-science and Brain Gym which hilights the need to teachers to better understand scientific "truthiness" and I have been reminded about the chasm between applied individual learning needs, classroom level strategies, system and policy level application, and then full circle back into the laboratory running tests on undergrads taking a psych class. My response to Nomyte is not to look for a conspiracy, but to realize that application and the lab evolved separately and have always looked for ways to converge, the battle has been fought over and over again. I have mellowed out over the years and realize that it would take a generation or more for them to move closer, and in the meantime looked for fellowtravellers. I have reserved a small amount of despise for those who still push "learning styles" on new teachers though.
posted by cgk at 5:39 PM on June 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
Two hypotheses, both of which are cultural ones, and independent of Piaget or anything else:
1) K-12 school teachers are generally coming from the bottom third of their high school classes. When you are dumb, everyone else looks dumb too. It is hard to teach (at least in the classical mode of "insert knowledge onto blank slate" that still holds sway) when the student can learn faster than the teachers can learn or did learn or can teach.
2) If you demand that everyone learn all the material in an effort to leave no child behind, then the class is going to go as slow as the slowest passing student can learn. If you don't even realize you are doing this, then you end up treating kids as if they were stupid. Treat someone as if they were stupid for long enough, and eventually they will act as if they were stupid. Kids who act stupid then justify the policies which made them stupid by teaching too little too slowly.
I prefer hypothesis 2, as it suggests a systemic problem rather than calling teachers uniformly stupid, which is not true.
posted by pmb at 6:47 PM on June 4, 2011
1) K-12 school teachers are generally coming from the bottom third of their high school classes. When you are dumb, everyone else looks dumb too. It is hard to teach (at least in the classical mode of "insert knowledge onto blank slate" that still holds sway) when the student can learn faster than the teachers can learn or did learn or can teach.
2) If you demand that everyone learn all the material in an effort to leave no child behind, then the class is going to go as slow as the slowest passing student can learn. If you don't even realize you are doing this, then you end up treating kids as if they were stupid. Treat someone as if they were stupid for long enough, and eventually they will act as if they were stupid. Kids who act stupid then justify the policies which made them stupid by teaching too little too slowly.
I prefer hypothesis 2, as it suggests a systemic problem rather than calling teachers uniformly stupid, which is not true.
posted by pmb at 6:47 PM on June 4, 2011
Response by poster: Hmm… sorry to thread-sit, but several answers give ahistorical, "sociological" explanations. US public education is an institution (or congeries of institutions) that relies on the guidance provided by state and national policies for curriculum planning, school structure, and so on. For example, Wikipedia credits a particular thinker for the notion of a "middle school" that serves a particular need. Wikipedia also credits certain corporate bodies for advocating for the middle school model, eventually leading to its widespread adoption. That's the kind of thing I'm asking about.
Perhaps someone familiar with the history of public education in the US can chime in and tell us about a moment in recent history when some decision-makers were influenced by some kind of consideration (e.g., contemporary psychology, Why Johnny Can't Read, etc.) and began advocating a model of slower-paced instruction in middle school. No conspiracy theories at all. Universal public education is recent enough and mutable enough that substantial changes in structure and policy are observable on the scale of decades, not generations.
If no expert on this specific issue is present, perhaps somebody can recommend some essential scholarly reading on the history of public education in the 20th century? I'd like to have some recommendations before I hit the stacks.
posted by Nomyte at 7:16 PM on June 4, 2011
Perhaps someone familiar with the history of public education in the US can chime in and tell us about a moment in recent history when some decision-makers were influenced by some kind of consideration (e.g., contemporary psychology, Why Johnny Can't Read, etc.) and began advocating a model of slower-paced instruction in middle school. No conspiracy theories at all. Universal public education is recent enough and mutable enough that substantial changes in structure and policy are observable on the scale of decades, not generations.
If no expert on this specific issue is present, perhaps somebody can recommend some essential scholarly reading on the history of public education in the 20th century? I'd like to have some recommendations before I hit the stacks.
posted by Nomyte at 7:16 PM on June 4, 2011
I didn't really want it to get away from the questions, but I kind of feel the need to note that while it is a low pay and low prestige field, the most common motivation to enter teaching is to help young children or to provide a service to society. Naive altruism yes, but not an easy path and certainly a reason why there is a lot of attrition during the first years of teaching.
Graduate education is a funny thing. In NYC, for example, a masters degree is required for licensure, pay step at the second masters. Illinois is different, but I would note that most of the universities around Chicago are running 2-3K per course, so that and the time commitment are not trivial costs -- and in my own experience there is a general commitment to personal growth and improvement so I have not run across a lot of "checked out" teachers in the graduate arena.
pmb's comments are just over the top. Needless to say attainment of a bachelor's degree and further work toward certification and graduate study does not map to the bottom third of the high school class. I think that it is a sign of the times that people can make such broad swipes at a class of civil servants that we have directly benefited from and that drive things like, well, the economy, by preparing the future workforce.
I'll note that the original post was not driven by real teacher training, but the "taste" provided when preparing to teach a summer school session and the admitted familiar visceral reaction one can have moving form cog sci into the ill-structured world of the classroom. The only thing more shocking is trying to apply cognitive science to your own children, that times 20 and there is no way I would cut it in a classroom. rumposic's comment above actually did a nice job outlining a response to the original questions. I will point to that and my earlier comments and head off to bed.
posted by cgk at 7:19 PM on June 4, 2011
Graduate education is a funny thing. In NYC, for example, a masters degree is required for licensure, pay step at the second masters. Illinois is different, but I would note that most of the universities around Chicago are running 2-3K per course, so that and the time commitment are not trivial costs -- and in my own experience there is a general commitment to personal growth and improvement so I have not run across a lot of "checked out" teachers in the graduate arena.
pmb's comments are just over the top. Needless to say attainment of a bachelor's degree and further work toward certification and graduate study does not map to the bottom third of the high school class. I think that it is a sign of the times that people can make such broad swipes at a class of civil servants that we have directly benefited from and that drive things like, well, the economy, by preparing the future workforce.
I'll note that the original post was not driven by real teacher training, but the "taste" provided when preparing to teach a summer school session and the admitted familiar visceral reaction one can have moving form cog sci into the ill-structured world of the classroom. The only thing more shocking is trying to apply cognitive science to your own children, that times 20 and there is no way I would cut it in a classroom. rumposic's comment above actually did a nice job outlining a response to the original questions. I will point to that and my earlier comments and head off to bed.
posted by cgk at 7:19 PM on June 4, 2011
Best answer: Sorry to veer Nomyte: Clarence Karier, The Individual, Society, and Education: A history of American educational ideas.
posted by cgk at 7:26 PM on June 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by cgk at 7:26 PM on June 4, 2011 [1 favorite]
cgk seems to have missed that pmb put forth not 1 but 2 alternate hypotheses and in fact refuted in his personal opinion the first, which caused cgk such offense.
posted by vsync at 7:50 PM on June 4, 2011
posted by vsync at 7:50 PM on June 4, 2011
Best answer: Historical, huh?
A large part of it has to do with the 50s, when the move to McCarthy-style conservatism meant that John Dewey style education (and Dewey himself) become unpopular. At the same time, Dewey became tremendously popular in Japan, in part because Japan wished to imitate the educational system of winners of WWII. Many (not all) of the differences between American education (back to basics, dumb things down for the students) and Japanese education (deep concepts, high expectations of students) can be traced back to this schism.
Relevant readings:
The Trans-pacific experience of John Dewey
The Teaching Gap
posted by yeolcoatl at 8:12 PM on June 4, 2011 [6 favorites]
A large part of it has to do with the 50s, when the move to McCarthy-style conservatism meant that John Dewey style education (and Dewey himself) become unpopular. At the same time, Dewey became tremendously popular in Japan, in part because Japan wished to imitate the educational system of winners of WWII. Many (not all) of the differences between American education (back to basics, dumb things down for the students) and Japanese education (deep concepts, high expectations of students) can be traced back to this schism.
Relevant readings:
The Trans-pacific experience of John Dewey
The Teaching Gap
posted by yeolcoatl at 8:12 PM on June 4, 2011 [6 favorites]
Unfortunately I'm going to be light on cites as I'm short on time, but if I recall correctly US public school system as we know it is primarily an adaptation of the Prussian education system which had the goal of unifying disparate subcultures, instilling obedience, etc. In other words, state schooling was less about intellectual life and more about subordination and training. I'm sure there's another side to the story, but this is the side of it I remember (I think it was a long Harpers' article). It resonated with me from reading the flip side of this approach i.e. Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society and the like.
This is not a knock on teachers, many of whom are wonderful, or their motivations -- but an assessment of the historical purpose of a system of education.
posted by safetyfork at 5:26 AM on June 5, 2011
This is not a knock on teachers, many of whom are wonderful, or their motivations -- but an assessment of the historical purpose of a system of education.
posted by safetyfork at 5:26 AM on June 5, 2011
This thread fills me with despair.
It seems like you have come to us with assumption - namely, that teachers think children are stupid and that education is anti-intellectual - and you want to know why that is.
Others in this thread have answered the question with very broad strokes. I want to offer a counterpoint.
Public schools and public school districts are large, underfunded bureaucracies that have a mandate to accomplish a very difficult task - educating a large number of children who come from vastly different backgrounds.
Many of the people who are involved in education are not terribly well-educated themselves, sad to say.
But there are many others who are actually just a smart as adults in any other field, and are well-intentioned but underinformed. Teaching is actually one of the most intellectually complicated endeavors I can imagine. Teachers make thousands of small decisions each day. The people who seem anti-intellectual or stupid to you are in fact just normal folks who want to do their jobs well but are dealing with information overload, constantly shifting directives, and juggling a variety of competing demands in the classroom.
Then there are other teachers who are brilliant. I happen to teach with a large number of them. They don't always know everything but they seek to understand how children learn and how best to teach them in a rigorous way. You will find other teachers like that out there, maybe not as often as you would hope, but they exist.
I think a more relevant question for you is, "if I become a teacher, can I be one of those people? Do I have the drive and optimism to believe that even if I can't fix everything that is wrong with education today, I can still bring a thoughtful perspective and make things better? Can I find a network of other educators who believe that teaching and understanding how kids learn are intellectual pursuits?"
It takes serious commitment, but it is worth it.
posted by mai at 1:19 PM on June 5, 2011 [3 favorites]
It seems like you have come to us with assumption - namely, that teachers think children are stupid and that education is anti-intellectual - and you want to know why that is.
Others in this thread have answered the question with very broad strokes. I want to offer a counterpoint.
Public schools and public school districts are large, underfunded bureaucracies that have a mandate to accomplish a very difficult task - educating a large number of children who come from vastly different backgrounds.
Many of the people who are involved in education are not terribly well-educated themselves, sad to say.
But there are many others who are actually just a smart as adults in any other field, and are well-intentioned but underinformed. Teaching is actually one of the most intellectually complicated endeavors I can imagine. Teachers make thousands of small decisions each day. The people who seem anti-intellectual or stupid to you are in fact just normal folks who want to do their jobs well but are dealing with information overload, constantly shifting directives, and juggling a variety of competing demands in the classroom.
Then there are other teachers who are brilliant. I happen to teach with a large number of them. They don't always know everything but they seek to understand how children learn and how best to teach them in a rigorous way. You will find other teachers like that out there, maybe not as often as you would hope, but they exist.
I think a more relevant question for you is, "if I become a teacher, can I be one of those people? Do I have the drive and optimism to believe that even if I can't fix everything that is wrong with education today, I can still bring a thoughtful perspective and make things better? Can I find a network of other educators who believe that teaching and understanding how kids learn are intellectual pursuits?"
It takes serious commitment, but it is worth it.
posted by mai at 1:19 PM on June 5, 2011 [3 favorites]
« Older We don't need no stinkin' checked luggage | How can I describe the robes worn at the ICC? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
Piaget has been pretty soundly discredited in the actual field, but that doesn't mean it's trickled down to what they're teaching teachers...
posted by brainmouse at 2:15 PM on June 4, 2011