Romanticizing is such a huge problem in education today. This is where we view things or people as we
wish they were, instead of how they really are.
It’s kind of like lying to ourselves to make us feel good or sound good
to others. It clouds our judgment of plans and actions. It is like allowing our heart to overrule our
brain!
We wish all children were just little learning machines, and
all we have to do is set up the right situation, and they will just whiz
through learning on their own! It denies
the fact that along with the angelic side that all children come with, there is
also a demon side that must be tamed before success can come.
We frequently choose to view children “with rose colored
glasses,” because we don’t want to go to the work of actually teaching them
discipline, following through with them, and planning. So we do wonderful sounding, though not very
educational, “projects,” which have a great deal of busy-work to them without
giving the practice students need.
We do group assignments, which we make successful by putting
someone into the group who will get it done even if no one else works at it,
allowing us to give credit to all, including those who did little. We justify this by saying that this is the
way “businesses” operate, when in fact businesses don’t really. They have to have individual accountability,
or they can’t justify keeping the employee on the payroll.
We use subjective assessments, so we can make sure everyone
passes, regardless of effort or learning taking place. We label these assessments as “authentic,” so
they sound more valid than they really are.
We call practice “drill and kill,” because it isn’t
fun. We call teacher directed learning
“lecturing,” so that gets us off the hook of really doing our job, and then
justify our lack of real teaching by saying that teachers should be “a guide on
the side, not a sage on the stage.”
While the romantics deny that this is the result of the philosophy, the
students end up not gaining the skill necessary to be proficient.
These ideas have been replicated, with new labels over and
over for a hundred years - ever since John Dewey gained credit for their
origin. They continue to be largely
refuted, yet never die, because they sound so wonderful, so much like we wish
children and learning were like – as one continuous round of fun and exciting
explorations.
Unfortunately the results of these philosophies are students
who can’t or won’t. They promote in
students an aura of awe that starts with, “I wish I was good at…” math, piano,
writing, or whatever the subject is, while believing they never will be.
These ideas keep being resurrected when new teacher trainers,
wanting to promote themselves or their products, assign the blame for the lack
of proficiency, caused by this romantic belief, on the very things that would
have provided proficiency! These are
direct instruction, practice, and building facts in students first and
cementing them with deep understanding as the students gain sufficient facts to
put together into understanding, rather than just trying to “deeply think” from
the start. This philosophy was manifest
early on in Professor Harold Hill’s “Think System” in The Music Man!
The educational romantic wants the end (deep understanding)
without the beginning and all the work in the middle. He wants the roof without the foundation. Human beings do not generally gain
understanding by starting with the theory behind it. They have to gain possession of the facts
pertaining to it first.
As the person gains more facts, they can begin to put them
together to learn the why behind them. Some
facts are more important than others in this process, despite romantics saying
that it doesn’t really matter which facts they learn. That is where the idea of “standards” came
from, the desire to make sure the most important facts were taught.
Romantics, or constructivists using the philosophical name,
reacting to the back-to-basics movement, conceded the need for some facts, but
responded that it doesn’t really matter which facts, just have them learn some
facts, and that would be good enough.
Standards were then called for, in order to make certain
facts recognized as more important.
Constructivists, who were in positions of leadership that would create
those standards, responded by changing the standards, which were at first
measurable, into nebulous “understandings,” which were not measurable.
Because the new “standards” were subjective in nature,
constructivists could then claim success with their methods, even when proficiency
had not been obtained. This continued
the erosion of trust in educators, even though most teachers in the trenches
adapted these ideas mostly into methods that worked, instead of what the
constructivist theorists promoted.
Those who attempted to fight constructivists legislatively
came up with the idea to make curriculum proven by student test scores, calling
it “Standards-Based,” not realizing that constructivist had already turned
standards into nebulous understandings.
By using the power of government to try to force standards, they naively
gave constructivists the power to force teachers to adopt their philosophy by
using tests, which they constructed to show the methods used, to ferret out
teachers who would not adopt their methods.
This manifested itself in Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
With the adoption of CCSS, which are not amendable by
teachers or parents, and using the tests to reveal teachers using the
“closed-door veto,” constructivist have finally gotten the way to enforce their
philosophy on all teachers nation-wide!
They want every state to adopt them, so that there will be no way
to compare whether they accomplish their goal.
There will always be a need for a few romantics in the world
to give spice and flavor. However a plate
of spaghetti would not taste good, if it were mostly spice and no noodles. So too if constructivists/romantics control all
of what and how our children are taught nation-wide, via CCSS or some other
scheme, the result will not be healthy or desirable for our country’s future. We will not be able to discern what is good
and what is not. We will not be able to
judge it accurately.
In order to have the balancing effect that competition can
bring, we must have variety of curriculum and methods between, not only states,
but also districts. We need to have
local districts creating their own standards and comparing them against other
districts in order to be able to discard what romantically may sound delicious,
but in practice does not nourish.
