What has our history taught us?
Achieving educational reform and improvement has been a goal sought throughout the centuries. Achieving that goal has been an elusive problem. To better understand an ongoing effort at reform in this 21st century it is useful to place current attempts at reform in an historical context.
There have been two competing philosophies in this country that have driven the efforts to improve our schools. These philosophies are reflected in movements that swing back and forth like a pendulum. One side places its primary emphasis on the transfer of pre-defined content/subject matter to students through instruction in compartmentalized classrooms. This point of view is expressed in strong advocacy for teaching as telling, standardized testing and grade level achievement.
The other side places its primary emphasis on the unique individual who has developmental and social as well as intellectual needs. Its emphasis is on learning.
Bud Blake’s cartoon that follows summarizes the dilemma:
TIGER © KING FEATURES SYNDICATE
The two sides of this conflict are variously referred to as content vs. process, or subject-centered vs. child-centered.
Neither point of view completely ignores the other. It is apparent to the subject-centered side that change in student behavior is what is desired but they consider specific content to be universally important for all students, regardless of their differences.
On the child-centered side, they know that students need to acquire knowledge and skills but they take the position that learners are developmentally different and unique in every way. The advocates for child development take issue with the strong emphasis on teaching, rote-level learning, standardized testing and standardized curricula.
At the turn of the 20th century, the main emphasis was primarily on the three "R’s." This approach in education was on the side of content, instruction/teaching and a fixed curriculum. By the 1920’s and 30’s the pendulum swung to the left.
In those years the Progressive Education movement placed its main emphasis on a child-centered curriculum. In spite of the fact that the famous "Eight Year Study" showed the progressive schools to be superior in many ways over the conventional school of the three "R’s," this movement was severely criticized by the content advocates as not addressing their concerns about mastery of traditional subject matter.
There was a short interlude after the demise of the progressive education movement when the "Project Method" (Kilpatrick) was maintained which was an attempt to engage learners in the decision making processes of acquiring content. Unit lesson planning got its impetus from this brief movement. This challenged approach to lesson planning is still in existence in many schools.
In the late fifties, after Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union, a panic ensued reflecting the fear we had fallen behind the Soviet Union in math and science instruction. Massive Federal funds were then allocated to create subject-matter commissions whereby college professors (considered experts) were hired to examine the nature of mathematics and sciences and to describe these disciplines so that teachers could successfully teach an updated content. These efforts were supported by advocates of the content side of the pendulum swing. "The New Math" was an outgrowth of this effort at reform.
About all that happened, in spite of innovative approaches to learning that were introduced, was mainly a change in the vocabulary adopted by textbook publishers. As everyone knows, we still are behind in math and science according to the standardized test results administered globally to older students.
The post-Sputnik era was followed by the "open education" movement that coincided with the student protests of the Vietnam era. Clearly this was an attempt to actualize the basic tenants of the child-centered movement. School buildings featured "open architecture" where the classroom walls were eliminated to encourage a more open, dynamic approach to learning. Discovery became the watchword for this change. However, teachers were still often forced to teach state-mandated, predefined subject matter so the teachers constructed new walls using filing cabinets, cardboard boxes or book cases, to gain privacy for their instructional groups.
The conservative movement of the 1980’s featured a "back to the basics" approach to educational reform. There was a renewed emphasis on instruction and testing. Research in education took on a life of its own in an effort to legitimize the importance of specific instructional techniques that would ensure more predictable teacher behavior thought to produce better results among the students. Programmed instruction took root in this era of reform.
The "back to the basics" movement was followed by another attempt to assert the importance of the individual as a learner with social, developmental and intellectual needs. This movement was best known as the "constructivist" movement. Much of this movement was buttressed by a re-discovery of the work of Jean Piaget, drawn from cognitive/humanistic psychology. This movement hardly became airborne before the forces of content-oriented officials gained ground and re-captured the momentum.
The first President Bush declared himself to be the education president. He attempted unsuccessfully to raise funds from private sources to underwrite a massive educational reform movement. Over seven hundred proposals were submitted for review, each one focused on designing a comprehensive plan to reform education in this country. Five (now unknown) proposals that were built on "gimmicks" to teach subject matter were eventually funded under the leadership of the commissioner of professional football. So much for a self-appointed education president.
The "Goals 2000" project was initiated to further the efforts to redesign our school’s instructional programs. The "charter school" concept was initiated ostensibly to create more decision making freedom within the established school systems. Charter schools, however, are obligated to teach and test pre-defined subject matter.
Charter schools were invented under what appeared to be a more open- ended approach to change and organization. Yet, most early and more recent charter schools were organized by corporations with a profit motive. These corporate interests were the authors of "teacher proof" instructional materials and processes that supported the current era of standardized testing, a standardized core curriculum and teacher evaluation centering upon student performance on standardized tests.
"The Race to the Top" was an outgrowth of the second Bush’s "No Child Left Behind" movement. This latest movement, like its predecessor, is designed to promote the instruction of content. The basic assessment tool is the broadly administered standardized test. Evaluation results of standardized tests are reported as grade level achievements determined by the student’s relative success on a written exam. All Students Succeed is another content-oriented plan.
While both sides are in agreement that some form of assessment is necessary to determine what has been accomplished, the standardized test has many important flaws. The standardized test is first of all limited in scope. It only samples a fraction of the experiences students have encountered in their daily lives. The content included in these tests represents what is presumed to have been taught, whether or not that subject matter has any relevance in the lives of learners.
The standardized test does not register the negative impact that teaching for the test, and the fulfilling of repetitive requirements of the system have had on the student. Fear of math, lack of curiosity, boredom, lack of competence, low self-esteem, latent and not so latent hostility and so on are real indicators of the results of student experiences in this system.
Secondly, these tests are designed as one size that is supposed to fit all. Standardized tests and standardized curricula are just that, standardized.
The application of standardization in education represents a denial of a basic reality that everyone knows, that is, every individual is unique. There are no two people in this world who are identical; not their genetics, not their experience, not their changing developmental abilities, and not what they have done with their experience at any point in their lifetime.
By applying the one size fits all standardization, students are profiled as either on grade level (whatever that means), below grade level or above grade level. This method of segregation leads to remedial instruction for students judged to be below grade level, it ignores the on grade level students, and rewards the above grade students, all of whom are engaged in an instructional program that is presented to them without their input or full commitment.
In addition, the one size fits all simply ignores developmental realities. Developmental sequences are generally considered invariant; however, progress from one developmental stage to another is clearly an individual matter. Age or grade levels are not predictors of the time of arrival of specific intellectual capabilities in each individual student.
For instance, a student who is developmentally at a concrete operational/logical level of intelligence (Piaget) might be considered on the grade level for the fourth grade, and another student of the same age, who is developmentally pre-operational or pre-logical, will be identified as below grade level. The student at this pre-logical stage is there because his or her development is at a slower pace due to individual differences in unique genetic codes and experience. This student needs more time and varied experience, not remediation.
A student of the same age as the other two, who has matured to the formal operational level (capable of hypothetical deduction) has developed more quickly, again due to genetic codes and experience. Showering this person with accolades can develop a false sense of superiority that often leads to intolerance for those who are developmentally less mature, mistakenly viewed as inferior.
To ignore these developmental differences is unconscionable and above all, costly in terms of money and students’ individual development. (Of course, there are differences in ability that may be attributed to having more or fewer brain cell connections, but the fact that the conventional schools have not tapped the intellectual potential of most students makes the claims for superior intelligence seriously problematic.)
I’ll bet even Einstein would have been described as below grade level when he was eight to ten years of age, needing remediation. Left alone to develop normally with facilitation, he found his own resources for learning and creativity. Others can also find their own resources for learning and creativity that the school in its present form cannot begin to recognize, essentially out of ignorance of or disdain for developmental and learning theory.
Content oriented plans attempt to bribe educational institutions to conform to methodologies that are supposed to raise the test scores, mistakenly assumed to represent improvements in learning. Federally funded programs represent the most devastating attack on public schools ever witnessed, all based on false presumptions about the processes of learning and the assessment of outcomes.
Given that the pendulum of reform movements is now at the farthest to the right that it has ever traveled to affect changes in content instruction, it is nearing the development of an organized resurgence of the child-centered concerns, by parents and competent teachers. Experience through history indicates there will be a rebellion against the content oriented movement.
The rebellion is already being witnessed in its infancy as teachers are being fired without regard for, or real knowledge about, their needs and those of their students. Politicians and business interests have endorsed a plan to force our entire population of youth into conforming to procedures that can only exacerbate the ills and inefficiency of present day conventional schools. Parents and other concerned citizens will (and must) eventually see the need to push back on these forces.
Hopefully, we can learn from our past and make adjustments that bring these two competing ideologies together for the benefit of all learners both young and old. Subsequent writings will attempt to develop such an understanding and hopefully create a ground swell of efforts to reform education in a way that is theoretically and pragmatically sound, affordable and effective.
The two sides of this conflict are variously referred to as content vs. process, or subject-centered vs. child-centered.
Neither point of view completely ignores the other. It is apparent to the subject-centered side that change in student behavior is what is desired but they consider specific content to be universally important for all students, regardless of their differences.
On the child-centered side, they know that students need to acquire knowledge and skills but they take the position that learners are developmentally different and unique in every way. The advocates for child development take issue with the strong emphasis on teaching, rote-level learning, standardized testing and standardized curricula.
At the turn of the 20th century, the main emphasis was primarily on the three "R’s." This approach in education was on the side of content, instruction/teaching and a fixed curriculum. By the 1920’s and 30’s the pendulum swung to the left.
In those years the Progressive Education movement placed its main emphasis on a child-centered curriculum. In spite of the fact that the famous "Eight Year Study" showed the progressive schools to be superior in many ways over the conventional school of the three "R’s," this movement was severely criticized by the content advocates as not addressing their concerns about mastery of traditional subject matter.
There was a short interlude after the demise of the progressive education movement when the "Project Method" (Kilpatrick) was maintained which was an attempt to engage learners in the decision making processes of acquiring content. Unit lesson planning got its impetus from this brief movement. This challenged approach to lesson planning is still in existence in many schools.
In the late fifties, after Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union, a panic ensued reflecting the fear we had fallen behind the Soviet Union in math and science instruction. Massive Federal funds were then allocated to create subject-matter commissions whereby college professors (considered experts) were hired to examine the nature of mathematics and sciences and to describe these disciplines so that teachers could successfully teach an updated content. These efforts were supported by advocates of the content side of the pendulum swing. "The New Math" was an outgrowth of this effort at reform.
About all that happened, in spite of innovative approaches to learning that were introduced, was mainly a change in the vocabulary adopted by textbook publishers. As everyone knows, we still are behind in math and science according to the standardized test results administered globally to older students.
The post-Sputnik era was followed by the "open education" movement that coincided with the student protests of the Vietnam era. Clearly this was an attempt to actualize the basic tenants of the child-centered movement. School buildings featured "open architecture" where the classroom walls were eliminated to encourage a more open, dynamic approach to learning. Discovery became the watchword for this change. However, teachers were still often forced to teach state-mandated, predefined subject matter so the teachers constructed new walls using filing cabinets, cardboard boxes or book cases, to gain privacy for their instructional groups.
The conservative movement of the 1980’s featured a "back to the basics" approach to educational reform. There was a renewed emphasis on instruction and testing. Research in education took on a life of its own in an effort to legitimize the importance of specific instructional techniques that would ensure more predictable teacher behavior thought to produce better results among the students. Programmed instruction took root in this era of reform.
The "back to the basics" movement was followed by another attempt to assert the importance of the individual as a learner with social, developmental and intellectual needs. This movement was best known as the "constructivist" movement. Much of this movement was buttressed by a re-discovery of the work of Jean Piaget, drawn from cognitive/humanistic psychology. This movement hardly became airborne before the forces of content-oriented officials gained ground and re-captured the momentum.
The first President Bush declared himself to be the education president. He attempted unsuccessfully to raise funds from private sources to underwrite a massive educational reform movement. Over seven hundred proposals were submitted for review, each one focused on designing a comprehensive plan to reform education in this country. Five (now unknown) proposals that were built on "gimmicks" to teach subject matter were eventually funded under the leadership of the commissioner of professional football. So much for a self-appointed education president.
The "Goals 2000" project was initiated to further the efforts to redesign our school’s instructional programs. The "charter school" concept was initiated ostensibly to create more decision making freedom within the established school systems. Charter schools, however, are obligated to teach and test pre-defined subject matter.
Charter schools were invented under what appeared to be a more open- ended approach to change and organization. Yet, most early and more recent charter schools were organized by corporations with a profit motive. These corporate interests were the authors of "teacher proof" instructional materials and processes that supported the current era of standardized testing, a standardized core curriculum and teacher evaluation centering upon student performance on standardized tests.
"The Race to the Top" was an outgrowth of the second Bush’s "No Child Left Behind" movement. This latest movement, like its predecessor, is designed to promote the instruction of content. The basic assessment tool is the broadly administered standardized test. Evaluation results of standardized tests are reported as grade level achievements determined by the student’s relative success on a written exam. All Students Succeed is another content-oriented plan.
While both sides are in agreement that some form of assessment is necessary to determine what has been accomplished, the standardized test has many important flaws. The standardized test is first of all limited in scope. It only samples a fraction of the experiences students have encountered in their daily lives. The content included in these tests represents what is presumed to have been taught, whether or not that subject matter has any relevance in the lives of learners.
The standardized test does not register the negative impact that teaching for the test, and the fulfilling of repetitive requirements of the system have had on the student. Fear of math, lack of curiosity, boredom, lack of competence, low self-esteem, latent and not so latent hostility and so on are real indicators of the results of student experiences in this system.
Secondly, these tests are designed as one size that is supposed to fit all. Standardized tests and standardized curricula are just that, standardized.
The application of standardization in education represents a denial of a basic reality that everyone knows, that is, every individual is unique. There are no two people in this world who are identical; not their genetics, not their experience, not their changing developmental abilities, and not what they have done with their experience at any point in their lifetime.
By applying the one size fits all standardization, students are profiled as either on grade level (whatever that means), below grade level or above grade level. This method of segregation leads to remedial instruction for students judged to be below grade level, it ignores the on grade level students, and rewards the above grade students, all of whom are engaged in an instructional program that is presented to them without their input or full commitment.
In addition, the one size fits all simply ignores developmental realities. Developmental sequences are generally considered invariant; however, progress from one developmental stage to another is clearly an individual matter. Age or grade levels are not predictors of the time of arrival of specific intellectual capabilities in each individual student.
For instance, a student who is developmentally at a concrete operational/logical level of intelligence (Piaget) might be considered on the grade level for the fourth grade, and another student of the same age, who is developmentally pre-operational or pre-logical, will be identified as below grade level. The student at this pre-logical stage is there because his or her development is at a slower pace due to individual differences in unique genetic codes and experience. This student needs more time and varied experience, not remediation.
A student of the same age as the other two, who has matured to the formal operational level (capable of hypothetical deduction) has developed more quickly, again due to genetic codes and experience. Showering this person with accolades can develop a false sense of superiority that often leads to intolerance for those who are developmentally less mature, mistakenly viewed as inferior.
To ignore these developmental differences is unconscionable and above all, costly in terms of money and students’ individual development. (Of course, there are differences in ability that may be attributed to having more or fewer brain cell connections, but the fact that the conventional schools have not tapped the intellectual potential of most students makes the claims for superior intelligence seriously problematic.)
I’ll bet even Einstein would have been described as below grade level when he was eight to ten years of age, needing remediation. Left alone to develop normally with facilitation, he found his own resources for learning and creativity. Others can also find their own resources for learning and creativity that the school in its present form cannot begin to recognize, essentially out of ignorance of or disdain for developmental and learning theory.
Content oriented plans attempt to bribe educational institutions to conform to methodologies that are supposed to raise the test scores, mistakenly assumed to represent improvements in learning. Federally funded programs represent the most devastating attack on public schools ever witnessed, all based on false presumptions about the processes of learning and the assessment of outcomes.
Given that the pendulum of reform movements is now at the farthest to the right that it has ever traveled to affect changes in content instruction, it is nearing the development of an organized resurgence of the child-centered concerns, by parents and competent teachers. Experience through history indicates there will be a rebellion against the content oriented movement.
The rebellion is already being witnessed in its infancy as teachers are being fired without regard for, or real knowledge about, their needs and those of their students. Politicians and business interests have endorsed a plan to force our entire population of youth into conforming to procedures that can only exacerbate the ills and inefficiency of present day conventional schools. Parents and other concerned citizens will (and must) eventually see the need to push back on these forces.
Hopefully, we can learn from our past and make adjustments that bring these two competing ideologies together for the benefit of all learners both young and old. Subsequent writings will attempt to develop such an understanding and hopefully create a ground swell of efforts to reform education in a way that is theoretically and pragmatically sound, affordable and effective.
