Article #1 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VII, Number 10, April 2021 >>>>> Origins and Maintenance of a Corrupt System of Public Education in the United States

Article #1: 

 

The Intellectual Damage Inflicted by Education Professors and the Incompetence of the Teachers and Administrators Whom They Train

 

All problems of the locally centralized school district in the United States are traceable to wretched teacher and administrator training programs. 

 

We have known for at least 35 years that we must transform our systems of K-12 educational delivery in order to give citizens of all demographic descriptors an excellent education.  In 1983 a federally commissioned study, A Nation at Risk, signaled the crisis in schools of the United States, with implications for many facets of life in the polity, given the critical importance of education to the quality of life in a nation of advanced economic status and world leadership.

 

By definition, we have not cared enough to make the needed changes.  People do those things about which they care deeply or to which they are addicted.  In the United States, people get married, and secure the most remunerative employment possible.  They have children and angle for the best possible lives for their own particular progeny.  People buy houses, automobiles, electronic goods, and consumer items of many sorts at the upper ranges of what they can afford.  They tweet and text and stare at computer screens.  They ensconce themselves in front of television sets to dance with the stars, identify their favorite new singing voice, and immerse themselves in the reality of other people’s vapid lives.

 

All of this is more important to people as of the year 2020 than the education of our precious children. 

 

Rarely does any child in the United States get an excellent education.  As a nation we do not believe enough in the importance of knowledge-based lives to even imagine an excellent education for our children.  We go to war because in our episodic propensities going to war at the time seems the right thing to do, or we are told by people of our political affinity that it is the right thing to do, not because citizens as a whole have the knowledge base in history and international relations to make considered judgments of their own.  Whether or not, and for how long, the Federal Reserve should pour money into the economy is a policy decision evaluated by people on the same episodic and self-focused basis, not because the typical citizen has a whit of knowledge concerning macroeconomics.  The reality of climate change is evaluated by the typical person not on the basis of any depth of scientific knowledge but on what scientists themselves say, at best, and in view of religious and personal biases, at worst.

 

The unit of delivery of excellent K-12 education in the United States must be our locally centralized school districts.  In public education systems of East Asia and the European social democracies, curriculum and policies are centralized at the national level, but in the United States people claim an attachment to local control.  So in this nation, any progress that will be made in transforming K-12 education must be made at the level of the locally centralized school district.  We cannot and should not pin our hopes on charter schools or vouchers.  Most charter schools are worse than conventional public schools.  There are not enough excellent private schools to accommodate the masses of K-12 students, even if a thoroughgoing voucher system could be instituted.  And in any case, should we ever aspire to the quality of education found in East Asia and the European social democracies, we need to find a way to approximate the coherence of curriculum found in those educational systems. 

 

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Mediocrity of K-12 education in the United States originates in departments, colleges, and schools of education wherein professors do not believe that systematically acquired and mentally stored knowledge of the liberal arts is important.  They believe, instead, in so-called “constructivist” approaches that begin with the knowledge base and life experiences of the student as a foundation for seeking information that is relevant to the particular young person. 

This so-called “progressive” approach to education is implemented upon the assumption that the systematic, sequential accumulation of knowledge in math, natural science, social science, history, literature, and the fine arts is not important.  Only those topics that passionately drive a given student, for which a teacher serves as “facilitator” in accumulating this particularistic information, are important.  As to accumulated knowledge from the human inheritance, one can always “look it up.”

But this view of education and the teacher is deeply flawed.  Imagine going to a cardiologist with complaints about chest pains and being told that the doctor would have to take a moment to look up what is known about arterial blockage, because this was not covered in medical school.  Consider describing to an attorney an experience whereby police officers broke into one’s home without a search warrant and being told by this lawyer that this sounds like an interesting predicament that would have to be researched, because such instances were not part of the law school curriculum.

Taught by such professors promulgating the “constructivist,“ “progressive” approach to knowledge and pedagogy, our K-5 teachers, especially, enter our classrooms woefully underprepared.  Those who teach at the grades 6-12 level are a bit better trained, because most get bachelor’s degrees in legitimate disciplines (e. g., physics, math, history, economics, English literature, fine arts).  But low licensure requirements mean that those who enter our middle schools and high schools are not always truly masters of their fields.  Graduate programs for teachers, in the meantime, provide programs for easily attained master’s degrees that are financial spigots for universities.

Teachers unions act in ways to protect such unprepared teachers.  Most central school district and school building administrators are too busy protecting their sinecures of substantial remuneration to contest teacher union power, and thus the status quo prevails.  Our children walk across stages to receive diplomas in name only.  Most could not tell you the difference between debt and deficit;  the Roman and Byzantine Empires;  Newtonian and Einstein’s physics;  Ego and Superego;  or the literary styles of Fitzgerald and Hemingway.  And they could not tell you the essential differences, as we recall our nominal focus on Black History in February, in the approaches to the African American dilemma in the early 20^th century as espoused by Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Marcus Garvey.

 

Constructivist ideology and systemic flaws operate in highly similar ways from state to state, so that teacher preparation programs and institutions of K-12 education maintain the status quo of mediocrity in Minnesota and throughout the nation.   But we cannot afford to wait for the needed overhaul of teacher preparation programs on college campuses, nor can we depend on action taken mainly at the state level to produce the needed institutional change.

The needed overhaul of K-12 education will ride the waves of energy emitted by local school district activists who take seriously the great accumulated wealth of knowledge that defines the human experience, working to retrain teachers and revamp curriculum to ensure that children of all ethnic and economic descriptors receive this knowledge as their rightful inheritance.

Although central office administrators, building principals, and teachers within the locally centralized school district have their particularistic differences connected to roles occupied within the education establishment, their fundamental views on curriculum and pedagogy are essentially the same.  Teachers unions and administrators with their own group affiliations may struggle together over contracts, evaluations, and job assignments, but teachers and administrators at all levels espouse the views that they imbibed from those campus low-lifers known as education professors.

 

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Ever since the transformation of the normal school into teacher’s colleges created within universities during the 1920s, education professors have sought to make a place for themselves in their new institutional setting.  Lacking the knowledge base of field specialists such as psychologists, philosophers, mathematicians, chemists, literary scholars, historians, and economists who were best positioned to provide prospective teachers with a strong knowledge base, education professors began to emphasize pedagogy over subject area training for teachers.  They came to view schools as dispensers of many attitudes and vocational tools purportedly for the good of students:  training for a life of work integrally connected to the employment and social position of parents, socialization for citizenship, and for a period of the early 1930s the internalization of a collectivist outlook for constructing a socialist society at a time when the Great Depression had undermined faith in liberal democracy.

 

Education professors came to profess a belief in a “constructivist," "child-centered” approach to education that minimized the value of imparting logically sequenced, commonly shared knowledge sets, in favor of giving great scope to the child’s own life experiences and interests, with the presiding classroom presence transformed from teacher into “guide” or “facilitator.”  Student mastery of well-defined knowledge sets, education professors maintained, was not important.  In addition to preparing for one’s vocational and civic responsibilities, the student should learn to think critically about topics of immediate personal and societal importance and to access information as a lifelong learner.

 

Emphasis on the individual interest of the student as the driver of what was to be learned fit well with the zeitgeist of the 1960s.  Over the decades since the 1920s, parents, teachers, and local communities had often objected to the views of education professors, but during the years from the 1960s to the present year of 2019, the ideology of the education professor has been dominant in our schools.  When a student gets to high school, she or he may scramble quickly to make-up for lack of knowledge by taking substantive Advanced Placement (AP) courses;   but even the most ambitious college-bound student graduates with large gaps in the knowledge and skills necessary to make the most of the college or university experience.

 

Although this key anti-knowledge message took different forms as pedagogical fads came and went, the essential core of the message has never changed.  That message is entirely consistent with the contemporary education professor’s insistence on the ability to think critically and to become an enthusiast of lifelong learning as the key components for students in K-12 schools.  The education professor maintains that the acquisition of specific knowledge and skill sets is not important, for those can always be looked up or learned as necessary.

 

So never think that such pap is new or “progressive,” although education professors appropriate the latter appellation.  Such harmful jargon has been the consistent usage of education professors for a century.

 

Professors of cognitive psychology demonstrate through research published in professionally refereed journals that knowledge builds on knowledge, freeing up limited short-term memory for quick retrieval in the pursuit of knowledge sought in the moment.  Adept and informed critical thinking depends on knowledge.  Love of learning most often happens when students pursue knowledge systematically as a matter of acquired habit, a labor of love.  Critical thinking and lifelong learning are functions of knowledge purposely pursued;  they are not efficiently or effectively demonstrated in the absence of systematically acquired knowledge.

 

Education professors have done much harm in seeking to make a place for themselves at colleges and universities, where they occupy the lowest rung with regard to professorial status.  They send forth ill-trained teachers, particularly at the K-5 level, who know very little about mathematics, natural science, history, economics, psychology, literature, English usage, or the fine arts.  Middle school teachers are little better, and most high school teachers are not capable of serving as instructors in advanced courses such as those for Advanced Placement.

 

Thus do we get abominable performance by students in the United States on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment);  and by students in Minnesota on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments.

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Education professors are objectionable generally.  Mathematics education professors are objectionable particularly.  A mathematics education professor is someone without the intellectual mettle to pursue a degree in mathematics, thus retreating to a similar-sounding credential.  Many mathematics education professors lack the intellectual discipline to master the intricacies even of algebra and geometry, much less calculus, differential equations, linear and advanced algebra, topography, and the ever-ascending challenges in a legitimate mathematics masters or doctoral program.  

 

So mathematics education professors conger up various iterations of the purportedly deep-think, multiple answer, learn via manipulative approach as reported by Faiza Muhammad in “Several Districts Are in the Midst of Overhauling Their Curriculum” (Star Tribune, Section B, Page 1, February 8, 2018).  This approach is akin to the “New Math” that produced such deleterious results in the 1960s

and early 1970s and has made unfortunate comebacks at various intervals ever since.  As with previous students upon whom such an approach was inflicted, the students of the Brooklyn Park, Anoka-Hennepin, Osseo, and Columbia Heights school districts will be academically poorer for the infliction.

 

Because mathematics professors are themselves mathematically challenged, they are forever contriving ways to make what is simple seem difficult, so as to avoid what is truly difficult.  Notice that their gimmicks are never applied to mathematics at the higher levels;  their ruses would never be applicable to Advanced Placement courses at the high school level.  The schemes of mathematics professors always come with a pretension of philosophical depth, always focused on relatively simple mathematics at the K-5 level.

 

But simple does not mean trivial.  The operations and concepts pertinent to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, percentages, fundamental probability, ratios, proportions, graphs and tables are vitally important

 

Students in the New Salem Educational Initiative inevitably come to me for academic assistance because they have not been taught these skills in their classroom.  This is especially true for K-5 students, but the point is also that until I teach them these skills most high school students have never acquired the requisite ability in the fundamental operations and basic skills to succeed at higher mathematics.   I teach them skills, then we ascend to college preparatory mathematics.

 

Students of the Minneapolis Public Schools and other school districts perform so wretchedly in mathematics because mathematics education professors have been playing with their lives, in order to survive pseudo-professionally.

 

They must stop.

 

Teacher training programs as currently inflicted on our prospective teachers and administrators should be terminated.

 

The pseudo–profession of education professor should be no more.

Article #2 >>>>> >Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota<, Volume VII, Number 10, April 2021 >>>>> Origins and Maintenance of a Corrupt System of Public Education in the United States

Article #2: 

 

The Jargon-Infested World of Education Professors

and

Those Whom they Train

 

The introductory section of the most recent draft for the Minneapolis Public Schools Comprehensive Design acceptably focuses on a well-rounded education as phrased in the Every Student Succeeds Act.  Sections pertinent to career and technical education, special education, and world languages also read coherently and describe viable approaches to improving the quality of education at the Minneapolis Public Schools.

 

However, the phrasing for the main program of academic instruction is predictably laden with jargon endemic to those trained by education professors.

 

To understand how this resort to vacuous verbiage over substance, review carefully the lexicon given below from the strange world of education professors and those whom they train.  You will first read an objective description, followed after this long presentation by my own comments that decode education- professor-speak. 

 

Accessing Skills

 

This refers to the use of websites and other forms of cyber-technology, along with traditional encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other forms of print to gain information needed at a certain time for a particular purpose.

 

At their own pace

 

The term of reference asserts that a child best learns at her or his own pace, rather than according to the dictates of a teacher or in the context of learning targets to be met by an entire group of students at the same time.

 

Authentic Assessment

 

This form of assessment is of the portfolio, project, demonstration type, allowing a student to show what she or he knows about a topic typically selected by the student herself or himself;  this form of assessment is counterpoised to measurement of student skill acquisition via multiple choice and other formats for providing definite answers in taking standardized tests. 

 

Break the Mold Schools

 

This is a term much in vogue from the 1980s forward, referring to schools inaugurated by parents, teachers, and community members who endeavored to utilize methods that could produce higher rates of learning or more satisfying learning opportunities for students;  the advent of charter schools in the early 1990s became a widely prevalent version of “break the mold” schools.

 

Child-Centered Schooling

 

This is a term first made popular by Harold Rugg in his 1928 book, The Child Centered School.  “Child-centered schooling” focuses on the interests and perceived needs of the individual child, in contrast to

the traditional schools, which transmits set bodies of knowledge to students.

 

Competition

 

“Progressive” educators have since the 1920s argued against pitting students against each other in attempting to achieve top grades and high scores on test. 

 

Constructivism

 

Proponents of this view assert that education should begin with the life experience of each individual child, so that all information is either sought by the student as an extension of personal experience or carefully introduced by the classroom facilitator so as to build on what the child already knows.

 

Cooperative Learning

 

This form of learning provides opportunities for students to pursue information on topics selected by the classroom facilitator in a group context, advocated by education professors as preferable to requiring students to study or seek information individually.

 

Critical Thinking Skills

 

Along with “lifelong learning,” this is one of the key emphases of education professors, who maintain that critical examination of topics of immediate interest is more important that learning a set body of knowledge.

 

Culturally Biased Curriculum

 

This is the notion that the key problem with curriculum as conventionally presented in K-12 classrooms has a bias toward the West, mainly Europe and the United States.

 

Culturally Biased Tests

 

This term refers to the cultural bias that education professors and their acolytes in the education establishment assert makes standardized tests unfair to students of color and to other populations who are unfamiliar with vocabulary and references that originate in the culture of European Americans who dominate in constructing the tests.

 

Developmentally Appropriate

 

Educators and other “progressive” educators maintain that introducing concepts before a child is ready can be demoralizing and psychologically harmful to the girl or boy;  the student should not be presented with information earlier than age ranges at which children typically encounter concepts.

 

Drill and Kill

 

“Drill and kill” is the moniker assigned by education professors and others in the education establishment to rote methods of learning and to the memorization of factual material, considered by those who use the term to destroy creativity and promote a distaste for school-based learning.

 

Exhibitions

 

This refers to presentations made by students, following group projects or from portfolios from which students select items to present to teachers, to other evaluators, or to an audience of parents and other interested observers.

 

Factory-Model Schools

 

This is a derogatory term applied by education professors and other “progressive” educators to the traditional high school, held to be a fossil from an industrial age when the function of schools was to train students as if working in lockstep on an assembly line in a factory on the floor of which a foreman did the bidding of those higher in the bureaucratic hierarchy.

 

Facts are inferior to understanding

 

Education professors assert that factual knowledge is unimportant, except as sought by the student herself or himself;  what is more important is a deep conceptual understanding of the concepts to which the facts are pertinent.

 

Facts are soon outdated.

 

Education professors hold that in this fast-changing world of technology, discreet facts are soon outdated, so that learning how to learn is more important that systematic acquisition of defined knowledge sets.

 

Hands-On Learning

 

In the view of education professors and the “progressive” educators that they train, real-world experience with tactile objects is preferable to book learning. 

 

Holistic Learning

 

This term refers to learning as natural engagement with the totality of one’s environment, featuring interconnection rather than segmention into artificially designated subject areas.

 

Individual Differences

 

As “progressive educators” sent forth by education professors, most K-12 teachers and administrators  emphasize the individuality of each student, understood to have significant differences in familial circumstances, ethnicity, learning styles, interests, and other characteristics that necessitate differentiated instruction and curriculum variance from student to student.

 

Individual Learning Styles

 

These follow from the conceptualization of multiple intelligences by the psychologist Howard Gardner, who maintains that there is no one kind of intelligence as in an intelligence quotient (I. Q.), but rather a least eight categories of intelligence:  musical, visual, verbal, mathematical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic;  education professors and the students whom they send forth as K-12 teachers and administrators believe that instruction should vary according to the modality in which each student learns best, depending on her or his dominant form of intelligence. 

 

Individual Differences

 

As “progressive educators” sent forth by education professors, most K-12 teachers and administrators  emphasize the individuality of each student, understood to have significant differences in familial circumstances, ethnicity, learning styles, interests, and other characteristics that necessitate differentiated instruction and curriculum variance from student to student.

 

Individual Learning Styles

 

These follow from the conceptualization of multiple intelligences by the psychologist Howard Gardner, who maintains that there is no one kind of intelligence as in an intelligence quotient (I. Q.), but rather a least eight categories of intelligence:  musical, visual, verbal, mathematical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic;  education professors and the students whom they send forth as K-12 teachers and administrators believe that instruction should vary according to the modality in which each student learns best, depending on her or his dominant form of intelligence. 

 

Learn to Learn

 

Education professors assert that mastery of a set body of knowledge is not important;  rather, the student should learn how to learn by developing skills in accessing information from multiple sources.

 

Metacognitive Skills

 

These skills involve student contemplation of what she or he is doing in any learning activity;  rather than just mastering a discrete skill, the student should ask questions as to why the skill is being learned and what process is being utilized in learning the current task.

 

Multi-Aged Classrooms

 

Preference for classrooms in which students vary in age is grounded in the education professor’s  contention that each student should learn at her or his own pace;  in this scheme, traditional grouping of students of like age at specific grade levels gives way to classrooms filled with students of different ages studying at their own pace and assisting each other in learning activities.

 

Open Classrooms

 

These were most in vogue from the 1970s into the early 1980s, during which many school buildings were constructed so as to feature classrooms without permanent walls, allowing students to move easily from class to multi-media room, auditorium, cafeteria and other rooms throughout the building, eliminating the physical and psychological obstruction of enclosure spaces.

 

Passive Listening

 

Education professors and their proteges deride the transmission method of learning via teacher lecture or direct instruction as encouraging passivity;  they favor active projects, personal investigations, and hands-on learning activities.

 

Performance-Based Assessment

 

This involves evaluation of student demonstration of learning by the classroom facilitator, who assesses the quality of a portfolio or presentation rather than giving conventional objective tests;  this is what education professors and their vocational progeny call “authentic assessment.”

 

Portfolio Assessment

 

This is one form of performance-based assessment, whereby in this specific case the classroom facilitator evaluates the academic and creative production selected by students for inclusion in portfolios, again as an alternative to conventional objective tests.

 

Problem-Solving Skills

 

This is another emphasis of the education professor, who maintains that mastering specific subject area knowledge is not important;  rather, the student should learn to exercise critical thinking to solve problems, thereby accessing the information and utilizing the skills actually necessary to a given

 

One Size Fits All

 

This is a term of disparagement for set curriculum delivered to all students, in the absence of consideration for individual differences, learning, styles, and interests. 

 

Project Method

 

William H. Kilpatrick first popularized this term among “progressive” educators in his 1918 book, The Project Method, in which he argued that students learn best when engaged in holistic, life-like projects in cooperation with others in groups.

 

Promise of Technology

 

One hears and reads in many places these days that computers will revolution education;  technology enthusiasts view computers and other instruments as having the capacity to provide individualized learning experiences based on the pace of learning and interests pertinent to each particular student, ensuring universal success.

 

Research has shown

 

This is a phrase used often by members of the education establishment (education professors and the administrators and teachers whom they train) to bolster claims made for favored approaches such as portfolios, cooperative learning, and differentiated instruction.

 

Rote Learning

 

This refers to learning facts through memorization and repetition, considered by education professors and their acolytes to be inferior to learning in holistic, life-like experiences, and through interaction with one’s fellows.

 

Self-Esteem

 

This became a key concern of education professors and those whom they trained from the 1970s forward, promoting favorable comments to students in an effort to build self-confidence and to make all young people feel good about themselves in the world.

 

Teaching to the Test

 

Education professors and other opponents of standardized testing frequently claim that the administration of standardized tests narrows the curriculum and diminishes teacher creativity as practice for looming standardized assessments limits the focus of teaching to the skills and material that will ensure good test scores.

 

 

Teach the child, not the subject

 

This is one those notions that has been around since the 1920s, when William Heard Kilpatrick, Harold Rugg, and education professors at Teachers College of Columbia University started their campaign advocating an approach to education for which they appropriated the appellation, “progressive”;  teaching the child rather than the subject focuses on the social and emotional needs of student rather than content conventionally associated with academic curriculum.

 

Teach the whole child

 

This was the third major component of the “progressivist” movement of the early 20^th century, along with “child-centered schooling” and “teach the child, not the subject”;  teaching the whole child deemphasizes knowledge-based curriculum in favor of an approach that gives more weight to the social and emotional needs of the child, in the effort to produce a person of high self-esteem and confidence in the world.

 

Textbook Learning

 

Education professors deride learning via textbooks in particular, and books in general, favoring projects, demonstrations, and “hands-on” learning experiences.

 

Thematic Learning

 

This approach is counterpoised to focus on individual academic disciplines, favoring instead multi-disciplinary investigations of themes, topics, and subjects driven by student interest.

 

Transmission Theory of Schooling

 

This is a pejorative expression in opposition to the impartation of knowledge from teacher to student, counterpoised to active involvement of students in projects, demonstrations, and the compilation of portfolios.

 

Whole-Class Instruction

 

Conventional classroom presentations by a teacher to a whole class are anathema to education professors and their acolytes, who prefer cooperative learning, student investigations, and projects conducted while a classroom presence known as a “guide” or “facilitator” rather than a teacher assists student in their active learning experiences.

 

Whole-Language Instruction

 

This approach to the teaching of reading, emphasizing engaging reading experiences with literature in the absence of instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness, became a major mode of instruction in many schools of the 1950s and 1960s;  the assumption is that students will pick up principles of grammar and English usage naturally as the joy of reading whole words in engaging reading material animates and motivates the young reader.

 

 

Analysis of the Education Profedssor’s Lexicon

 

Accessing skills

 

are not efficiently utilized in the absence of strong bases of knowledge;  the absence of contextualizing information necessitates quick and typically shallow understanding, rather than the acquisition of knowledge inculcated and internalized over an extended time, to the point of automaticity.

 

At their own pace

 

is by no means satisfactory for acquiring the enormous body of knowledge at the core of an excellent education;  students should be the recipients of knowledge and skill sets possessed by teachers who are themselves broadly and deeply knowledgeable, with a strong sense of the pace at which information is best acquired.

 

Authentic Assessment

 

Is a supplementary rather than primary format for the demonstration of student knowledge and skill;  well-constructed standardized tests are the fairest, most objective means to measure student achievement in mathematics, reading, and all subject matter.

 

Break the Mold Schools

 

Well-trained scholars operating at the level of the locally centralized school are better positioned than most parents and community members to inaugurate and manage schools;  the perceived need to launch “break the mold schools” is a testimony to the terrible training that administrators and teachers receive in departments, colleges, and schools of education.

 

Child-Centered Schooling

 

Adult educators should nurture young people as village elders and responsible adults have always imparted knowledge and wisdom to those who shall carry forth and innovate upon their cultural inheritance.

 

Competition

 

Numerous scholarly investigations demonstrate that tests and grades are powerful motivators for the acquisition of specified knowledge and skill sets;  an excellent teacher conveys an excitement about the pursuit of knowledge for the intrinsic satisfaction of learning while establishing instruments for measuring student achievement.

 

Constructivism

 

Especially for students whose families have had limited opportunities for education, travel, and experiences with the world, the intentional introduction of knowledge and skill sets to be mastered by a broadly and deeply knowledgeable teacher is vital to an excellent education;  all children should be understood in the context of their life circumstances, but such circumstances are neither the basis for the starting point of study or the foundation for curriculum.

 

Cooperative Learning

 

Group study must be adroitly overseen by a highly killed teacher as a supplementary rather than prime mode of learning;  vital student learning proceeds best on the basis of individual assignments, group discussions, and individually demonstrated acquisition of knowledge and skill sets on objective assessments.

 

Critical Thinking Skills

 

Astute thought can only occur on the strength of a strong body of knowledge pertinent to the matter being analyzed.

 

Culturally Biased Curriculum

 

The real problem in K-12 education is the absence of any systematically presented curriculum, especially at K-5, which if properly constructed would reflect the human cultural inheritance across all cultures of the world.

 

Culturally Biased Tests

 

Great attention has been paid over the course of that last twenty years by those who construct standardized tests to present examples from a variety of cultural contexts that resonate with students of diverse cultures;  especially with regard to mathematics, though, there is not much cultural bias embedded in the four basic operations, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios, proportions;  and concepts from algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics, and calculus.

 

Developmentally Appropriate

 

No preconceived notion of when a child can learn a given skill or knowledge set should proscribe what the precocious or highly motivated learner seeks to know or is able to learn under the sensitive guidance of a master teacher. 

 

Drill and Kill

 

Athletes and musicians practice certain motions, learned from the best practitioners, to the point of automaticity, all the better preparing them for individualistic creative expression as their knowledge and skill level increases;  K-12 students should do the same. 

 

Exhibitions

 

These are adjunct ways of demonstrating what a student knows;  objective tests and standardized, assessments more accurately and fairly indicate what a student knows across a broad and deep range of knowledge.

 

Factory-Model Schools

 

Conventional schools provide classroom settings conducive to efficient learning;  when conducted by a master teacher, lectures and classroom discussions abet the accumulation of a multiplicity of knowledge and skill sets in an engaging and intellectually challenging learning environment. 

 

Facts are inferior to understanding

 

Factual knowledge is a necessary prerequisite for deep contemplation and full understanding.

 

Facts are soon outdated.

 

The preponderance of facts accumulated over centuries of experience by scientists, mathematicians, historians, and other scholars are permanent fixtures in the architecture of the major academic disciplines;  mastery of time-tested facts and concepts is necessary to evaluate information in contemporary contexts and to engage in processes that produce new knowledge sets.

 

Hands-On Learning

 

Reading books or cybernetic print sources  and listening to lectures are the most efficient ways to accumulate vast stores of factual knowledge;  hands-on learning is an engaging way to apply and experiment with what one has learned from lectures and reading.

 

Holistic Learning

 

Mastery of knowledge and skill sets in the discreet academic disciplines abets holistic learning.

 

Individual Differences

 

The master teacher should always be aware of a student’s particular life circumstances and special talents;  but students at given ages have much in common and all have a need to learn the same body of knowledge and the array of skills necessary to academic success.

 

Individual Learning Styles

 

These are magnified for emphasis way out of proportion to their validity and applicability;  the master teacher should always be aware of talents possessed by her or his students, but all students respond to well-crafted lectures, direct instruction, and classroom discussions.

 

Learn to Learn

 

Learning how to learn should occur in the process of mastering well-defined, logically sequenced knowledge and skill sets, delivered in grade by grade sequence throughout the K-12 years.

 

Metacognitive Skills

 

Education professors as a rule lack the intellectual ability to engage in this sort of deep think at the upper grade levels, so they pretend that they are grand philosophers working their wonders with children at grades K-5;  students at grades K-5 would be much better off learning to read well, master basic mathematical operations, and practicing good principles of English usage and composition.

 

Multi-Aged Classrooms

 

Children and adolescents are much better off being matched with their peers, who have very similar intellectual and social propensities.

 

Open Classrooms

 

These proved to present irritating distractions;  classrooms enveloped by walls are quieter, more comforting places, conducive to learning challenging knowledge and skill sets.

 

Passive Listening

The master teacher provides scope for active learning but also encourages her or his students to become good listeners, adept at deriving information from lectures and classroom discussions.

 

Performance-Base Asessment

 

This form of assessment should be supplementary to objective and standardized tests, which are fairer and more dependable forms of assessment.

 

Portfolio Assessment

 

As with performance-based assessments, this form of assessment should be supplementary to objective and standardized tests, which are fairer and more dependable forms of assessment.

 

Problem-Solving Skills

 

Students should learn to analyze material and solve problems while mastering challenging curricula comprised of well-defined knowledge and skill sets;  these latter make possible more efficient and well-informed investigation into current events and matters of immediate interest.

 

Project Method

 

This is an adjunct, secondary mode of learning, supplementary to more efficient methods such as reading challenging material across the liberal, vocational, and technological arts;  listening to teachers delivering lectures and to fellow students in class discussions;  and engaging in individual research on serious academic subjects.

 

Promise of Technology

 

Advances in computer and other digital technologies have given students rapid access to information on a wide variety of subjects;  but technology is not a substitute for engagement with teachers and classmates, must be used wisely in the quest for quality information, and more than ever makes an abundance of knowledge and skill sets vital for evaluation of sources and dependability of information.

 

Research has shown

 

Educational research varies widely as to quality, too often conducted with small sample sizes with accompanying extrapolations that are scientifically dubious;  educational research should be compared to findings in scientifically rigorous studies in fields such as psychology and sociology that are published in refereed journals scrutinized by academic experts.  

 

Rote Learning

 

Memorization of factual material to the point of automaticity makes learning more efficient, embedding great quantities of information in the long-term memory so that new information may be acquired more quickly and securely;  memorized and inculcated facts are important for critical analysis and encourage creative inferences and extrapolations.   

 

Self-Esteem

 

Teacher comments intended to raise a student’s self-esteem should be genuine expressions of admiration;  in the school setting, such comments should most often be rendered for the accomplishment of an academic feat.

 

Teaching to the Test

 

All teachers should impart the knowledge and skill sets that will be covered in well-constructed objective and standardized tests that measure what students should know at a given grade level;  this expands rather than narrows the curriculum. 

 

One Size Fits All

 

One size should indeed fit all, in the sense that all students should be taught the same abundance of  knowledge and skill sets in a well-defined, logically sequenced, grade by grade curriculum throughout the K-12 years;  and just as the quantity and content of what is learned should be the same, the quality of instruction provided to all students should also be uniform.

 

Project Method

 

This is an adjunct, secondary mode of learning, supplementary to more efficient methods such as reading challenging material across the liberal, vocational, and technological arts;  listening to teachers delivering lectures and to fellow students in class discussions;  and engaging in individual research on serious academic subjects.

 

Promise of Technology

 

Advances in computer and other digital technologies have given students rapid access to information on a wide variety of subjects;  but technology is not a substitute for engagement with teachers and classmates, must be used wisely in the quest for quality information, and more than ever makes an abundance of knowledge and skill sets vital for evaluation of sources and dependability of information.

 

Research has shown

 

Educational research varies widely as to quality, too often conducted with small sample sizes with accompanying extrapolations that are scientifically dubious;  educational research should be compared to findings in scientifically rigorous studies in fields such as psychology and sociology that are published in refereed journals scrutinized by academic experts.  

 

Rote Learning

 

Memorization of factual material to the point of automaticity makes learning more efficient, embedding great quantities of information in the long-term memory so that new information may be acquired more quickly and securely;  memorized and inculcated facts are important for critical analysis and encourage creative inferences and extrapolations.   

 

Self-Esteem

 

Teacher comments intended to raise a student’s self-esteem should be genuine expressions of admiration;  in the school setting, such comments should most often be rendered for the accomplishment of an academic feat.

 

Teaching to the Test

 

All teachers should impart the knowledge and skill sets that will be covered in well-constructed objective and standardized tests that measure what students should know at a given grade level;  this expands rather than narrows the curriculum. 

 

Teach the child, not the subject

 

Teaching the child in a school setting is primarily about the impartation of knowledge from teacher to student;  the excellent teacher is a professional of broad and deep knowledge with the pedagogical ability to impart that knowledge to all students, necessitating sensitivity to a child’s social and emotional needs.

 

Teach the whole child

 

The teacher’s prime professional responsibility is to ensure that a student learns important knowledge and skill sets pertinent to the subject matter of her or his class;  in doing this, the master teacher is keenly aware of the multiplicity of needs that a young person has as she or he develops and grows in the school setting and beyond.

 

Textbook Learning

 

Wide reading of material spanning the liberal, vocational, and technological arts is central to the school experience;  textbooks, other books, and direct instruction by the teacher provide the most efficient means of accumulating vast stores of knowledge and skill sets at the core of an excellent education.

 

Thematic Learning

 

Themes are meaningfully explored only on the basis of strong knowledge sets that provide the factual underpinning for contemplation, reflection, and discussion of the variety of topics considered in an education of excellence.

 

Transmission Theory of Schooling

 

Teachers should be professionals of broad and deep knowledge with the prime role of imparting that knowledge to students of all demographic descriptors;  transmission of knowledge and wisdom is as central to the teacher’s responsibility as to the role of elders across the world who pass on the cultural inheritance to young people under their guidance.

 

Whole-Class Instruction

 

Teachers of those nations (Finland, japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) whose students record highest achievement on the Program of International Student Assessment operate primarily in the mode of whole-class instruction, the most efficient and effective pedagogical method;  all other classroom actitivities are secondary to the prime method of whole-class instruction.

 

Whole-Language Instruction

 

Students become excellent readers only when they grasp the fundamentals of phonics, phonemic awareness, and the many conventions of English and other languages;  going forth to wide reading in classic world and ethnic-specific literature should then be a given.