This could change everything about school — for kids, teachers and everybody else
For years, veteran educator Marion Brady has argued on this blog that no matter the level of a learner’s ability, much higher levels of academic performance are possible. The means to that end, he says, is learners’ understanding and deliberate use of their “master mental organizer”—the information organizer we all begin developing at birth and routinely use (except in schoolwork) to make sense and communicate.
Acknowledging and accommodating institutional resistance to the idea, he and his brother have written, for middle or high school students, three illustrative, ready-to-use, year-long courses. The first helps learners understand the sense-making process; the other two use world history and American history as vehicles for exercising and elaborating the sense-making process. To encourage examination, criticism, use, and collaboration in their improvement, the three courses are and will remain free for the downloading. Links are at the end of the post.
By Marion and Howard Brady
Learning is challenging. Kids need to accept that life is a test and grit is essential to success. Competition builds character. A quiet school is a good school. Recess and leisurely lunchtimes are poor uses of valuable instructional time. Kindergarten should be the new first grade. Poverty is no excuse for poor performance. Retention in grade for under-performing kids just makes good sense. The root cause of academic decline is teachers’ low expectations. Rigor is the key to winning the Race to the Top.
So goes the conventional wisdom. Saying that learning is natural, that stress is counterproductive, that free play and the so-called “frill” subjects teach in powerful ways, that standardized tests are counterproductive, invites heated argument. To say that present corporately driven education policies have been a monumental waste of time, money, and talent invites being dismissed by those setting education policy as too out of touch with reality to deserve continued reading.
But hear us out. That first paragraph reflects a Puritanical view of human nature that, historically, Americans have tended to favor. No surprise then that those leading the “reform” effort believe the “test and punish, standards-This could change everything about school — for kids, teachers and everybody else - The Washington Post: