A Conservative's Lament

Depressing if true.

Murder in the Ivory Tower

Minerva among the Muses. Thinking panty raid?

What this study primarily demonstrates is that students really don’t learn very much in college: “45 percent of students did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning during the first two years of college; 36 percent of students did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning over four years of college.”

The study evaluates only critical thinking and reasoning skills. But the knowledge gains are even worse. Other studies suggest that the typical student at an Ivy League college actually graduates with less general knowledge than when he entered—he forgets more than he learns over the four years.

But notice that there is one bright spot. “Students majoring in liberal arts fields see significantly higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills over time than students in other fields of study."

The bad news is, the liberal arts are dying everywhere. They are being taken over or replaced by the social sciences.

So which discipline scores the lowest skills and knowledge gains over four years of college?

You guessed it: social sciences. “Students majoring in business, education, social work and communications showed the smallest gains.”

Another interesting finding: “Students who study by themselves for more hours each week gain more knowledge -- while those who spend more time studying in peer groups see diminishing gains.” So why is it that current educational methods insist on group work at all times and under all circumstances?

It almost seems as though there is a plan to destroy education.

And I suspect that is exactly right. Not a conscious conspiracy. But somehow (and I suspect affirmative action has at least something to do with it), relatively stupid people have been given the reins of the educational establishment, and they have set out over time to destroy anything in it that might reveal their stupidity. It’s a matter of instinctive self-preservation, I suppose; but the effects on the culture are bound to be devastating. They will kill what they do not understand.

ClassRealm

Here’s an idea that looks perfect for a grade six class of boys: doing the entire curriculum as a role-playing game. What a great way to generate enthusiasm.

And it brings up an important point. Why isn’t this the obvious thing to do? Why haven’t we long ago harnessed the same techniques that make role-playing games so popular to improve learning in the classroom? Schools and educational theorists seem to consistently miss out on this very important point: that education is and should be entertainment. If you do not have the students’ attention, nothing else is going to happen.

Fortunately, we have a vast body of knowledge about how to make things entertaining: from the people who put out popular magazines, novels, movies, music, toys, games, public speaking, salesmanship, and advertising. From the people who work in the circus, the amusement park, the theatre, the comics industry. From just about anybody who runs any business that must attract customers. Magazine publishers, for example, know exactly what they can put on their cover to boost sales.

Not only does the educational establishment ignore all this valuable information: they consciously scorn it. It is beneath them. Perhaps it is evil capitalism. There is a perverse idea that in order to be educational, a thing must be dry and dull.

Nothing at all could be further from the truth. Look at small animals at play; or small children, for that matter. They are learning, quite deliberately. All play is educational by nature. Tiger cubs play-pounce, learning to hunt. Little girls play with dolls, learning to mother. Boys compete to learn how to stay on a skateboard, or make a yoyo return.

This is a good rule of thumb: far from being at cross purposes, being entertaining and being educational are the same thing. If it is not entertaining, it is not educational.

And if everyone does not love to go to a school, this is proof that that school is failing. As most schools clearly are. The surest mark of educational success is retention rate: how many students stay on until graduation.

Boundless Learning

A logical next extension from Wikipedia: free textbooks complied from open Web materials.

Virtual Grammar Lab

This looks rather interesting; and free.

Movie Segments for Grammar Goals

Great idea well executed. Using movie clips for grammar modelling and practice.

An Article That Gets Most Things Right

Important points made:

• · The best teachers are, obviously enough, the best students. These are the people who know their subject and know how to learn. That means graduates from the best colleges, with the highest SAT scores.
• · Our current system instead draws teachers from the worst students. Our current teachers do not do as well on standardized tests as the students they are supposed to teach. How can teachers teach what they do not know?

“As a group, schools of education are non-selective. Their students post SAT scores at or below the average of all college graduates.”

“A proficient score on NAEP reading or math translates into at least a 600 on the SAT, or about a 1200 overall. The most generous estimate of the aptitude of new U.S. teachers recently estimated SAT scores of 515 in critical reading (formerly verbal) and 506 in math, or 1021 overall.”

“states frequently set Praxis passing scores at levels that translate into SAT reading-math scores of about 1000—well below current expectations for students.”

• · Teachers who graduate from Ed Schools are no better than teachers who do not.

“There is no evidence that licensing or certification creates better teachers or even sets a floor beneath which quality cannot fall.”

“sophisticated statistical analyses have been unable to find any benefit in teacher education for student achievement. Licensed or certified teachers appear to perform no better than teachers without certification”

• · The existence of Ed Schools prevents the best teachers from going into the profession.

“licensing requirements today serve largely as an impediment to attracting high quality”

“The time required for traditional certification through a bachelor’s or master’s degree in education also deters many bright students from even considering teaching.”

• · We would have a better system simply by abolishing Ed Schools and Education degrees, at least as a qualification for teaching.

• · A good way to reduce the costs of education would be simply to raise class sizes. A second way would be to use the educational technology available to us.

Where I disagree:

• · Raising teachers’ salaries would do little or nothing to improve teaching—unless it were incentive pay.
• · Evaluating individual teachers based on student achievement is practically impossible.
• · Teaching really is an art, to which some are born and others are not. It is cited as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, after all.
• · Teaching quality is more than student achievement. A better measure is student satisfaction. The person is more than his achievements in a specific academic subject.