Broom, now I wonder did they makes brooms from this bush? I think not.
I've just read that this is Radiate broom
and that there are pollen rich grasses called Hairy and Upright Brome.
But then again, brome and broom are the same to my dyslexic self. :)
The Trendiest
Current Arguments For Progressive Education Part 1
One of the best analyses of progressive education is “The
Crisis in Education” by Hannah Arendt.
An online copy can be found here and
you should read it. It was written in the early 60s,
and as well as analysing the progressive movements of the
time, it made the following prediction about the chances of reversing the
progressive tide in education:
…wherever the crisis has occurred in the modern world,
one cannot simply go on
nor yet simply turn back. Such a reversal will never
bring us anywhere except to the same situation out of which the crisis has just
arisen. The return would simply be a repeat performance
–though perhaps different in form, since there are no
limits to the possibilities of nonsense
and capricious notions that can be decked out as the last
word in science.
While not every movement towards progressive education
that has occurred since then
has claimed to be scientific, very many have; but the
point that progressive education
will keep reappearing has been spot on. Many of the
arguments for it are fairly timeless.
Technology is always about to make traditional
education obsolete.
Schools (despite the influence of the last progressive
invasion) are always presented as
an out-of-date product of a past era (usually the 19th
century, sometimes the 50s,
occasionally Roman times or something similarly exotic).
Another country is always showing us
the way with their latest experiment in project-based
learning or discovery learning.
There is always some list of aims of education
that go far beyond the academic.
However, some arguments appear for a time, then fall out
of favour.
For instance, only the most behind-the-times progressive
would argue that we need
more progressive education to satisfy kinesthetic
learners,
or to enable girls to compete academically with boys.
In this post and tomorrow’s, I aim to mention some of the
arguments for progressive education
I have been seeing lately (mainly in blogs) that I don’t
remember seeing much of 10 years ago.
I didn’t note them down when I saw them, and it is only
as they are repeated
that they’ve made an impression, so I’m not able to
conveniently link to examples and,
no doubt, somebody will accuse me of creating straw men.
At the very least, if I mention them
we can all watch out for them and see them in the
context of an attempt to present an ideology
of teaching from over 100 years ago as a novel response
to contemporary concerns.
1) The
Argument from Mental Health. I don’t want to dismiss concern about
children’s
mental health, although I am,
as ever, sceptical when medically unqualified adults
claim to be able to make
amateur diagnoses of medical conditions
in other people’s children.
The access (or lack if it) to mental health services for children
is an important issue and we
should take mental health seriously.
However, I have seen
increasing attempts to blur the line between
actual mental health issues,
and any kind of emotional discomfort for children.
I have seen bullying described
as a mental health issue.
I have seen people take the
leap from concern about mental health, to the importance
of “wellbeing” , or
“resilience” as an aim of schooling and then to a downplaying
of the academic purpose of
schooling, or the need for knowledge.
Most commonly though, I have
seen “stress” and “anxiety” join “self-esteem” as an argument against various
traditional practices, from strict discipline to setting exams.
Indeed, the
idea that children are traumatised by exams seems particularly popular
at the moment, often tied to
the bizarre claim that the amount of exams
children sit is being
increased by politicians.
There are two key assumptions in the mental health
argument.
The first is that teachers should absorb ever more
responsibility for other people’s children, effectively usurping parents. This
is then combined with the assumption that the liberal,
middle class parent who is concerned only about their
child’s day-to-day happiness and autonomy, rather than their long-term
interests, will have children with better mental health.
As I am fond of quoting, R.S. Peters described the first
assumption
as the idea that schools should be “orphanages for
children with parents”
and can be best challenged by a defence of the rights of
parents to raise their own children.
As for the second assumption, it’s a debate that I can’t
really go into here too much,
but it is highly dubious and worth considering in the
light of the attitudes of different cultures.
Despite the claims of
progressives, it is not the most authoritarian countries
that have the highest youth suicide rates, nor is it
obvious that those raised by liberal parents
are beacons of good mental health in their youth or
later.
2) Debate
Denialism. The argument between traditional and progressive education
are ancient
(a case can be made that they
date back to at least Plato) and have been expressed
in those terms, i.e.
“traditional” and “progressive”, for at least 100 years.
There are good arguments that
“traditional”, “progressive” and other terms
like “child-centred” are
misleading, and what they stand for can change over time.
However, they have been the
standard terms for the debate over many decades
and represent real divides.
In the period between 2001 and 2010 when the traditional side was
largely suppressed, many progressives thought the debate was over and they had
won.
It came as a shock to the system for many that values that were unopposed
for almost a decade were once
more being challenged in public.
One of the responses has been
to simply deny that the debate exists and, therefore,
the “progressive” domination
of state education is a myth and so any challenge
to it can be dismissed. So we
see people claim that terms like “progressive” and “traditional” are
meaningless; that this debate is stale and irrelevant, or that “progressive” is
an insult
and should not be used to describe people who champion the ideas
that, historically,
were described in that way.
Progressives have always been coy about the history
of their ideas, invariably the
old dogmas are presented as new innovations,
but this takes it to a new
level by denying that the argument about their ideas ever existed.
Of course, there is something absurd about the idea that
the language that allows us
to distinguish between different values and methods in
education should be discontinued
or that the debate is over. There are variations of that
idea used to make it more plausible. Sometimes it is combined with the
suggestion that the words only apply to teaching methods,
not the values we use to choose between teaching methods.
This means that one can claim
to use a mix of methods, or observe that most teachers
use a mix of methods, and then can claim
to be neither “progressive” nor “traditional” ignoring
the philosophies that guide how we choose
our mix. Sometimes it is combined with talk of evidence
and “what works”
as if we can judge this in the absence of a view about
what we are trying to achieve.
Perhaps there can be confused positions; progressives do
go through periods of claiming
that their methods are the best ways of achieving
traditional, academic ends
(periods that usually end when promised improvements in
academic performance
don’t materialise). But if one cannot identify clear and
genuine disagreements
between those in the traditional and those in the
progressive camp,
then one simply needs to read up. Perhaps “Left Back
– A Century of Failed School Reforms”
by Diane Ravitch might be a good place to start.
https://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/the-trendiest-current-arguments-for-progressive-education-part-1/
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To quote the Dr Seuss
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