TD Rants about Education

Over at t'other place. Not quite sure it makes sense, but then I was a bit pissed when I wrote it. I think the main thrust - a bizarre emphasis on a wholly unnatural and often inappropriate concept of understanding in mathematics teaching - holds, mind.

The Art of Noise

Silence, as they say, is a non-reactive rare earth metal. In which case, noise is a precious though abundant element.

The problem is: where do you go for noise? How do you achieve it?

Well, I suggest that an average primary classroom is a good place to start: in there is all human noise - the hum of work, the mutter of conspiracy, the febrile buzz of unconscious flirtation (and that's just the teacher and assistant), the groans of pain, the sneers of hate.

It's all there, and in any good classroom they mix and mould all together, giving an outsider the impression of some kind of productivity. Whereas, what really exists is a sort of subdued revolution, consisting of all the adult, sub-adult and immature minds in that room, dancing together in felcitious concert.

Look for noise in the scribbling of pencils, in the sharpening of the same, in the bloated silence of the rubber, in the pregnancy of the staring into space, in the glare of the teacher, in the misread glance of enthusiasm from educator to pupil: at every stage the noise.

Even to the warlike roars, chants and screams of the playground. This is where we act all politics, from the tribal disputes to the sophisticated attempts to bring protagonists together (usually without genuine success, thus guaranteeing yet another League of Nations fiasco).

Into the frustrated scraping of chairs and all too rapid scuffling of coats at the end of the day. Noise, meaningful noise, what it means to be a community.

A surviving, thriving community.

Why Would I Post In Defence Of Freedom When Everyone Thinks It Is Shite?

I don't know.

Just this feeling I have, that alcohol is better than Caroline Flint: that thoughts of different worlds, where you don't have to prove who you are, are better than Harriet Harman; that you exist, regardless of what Yvette Cooper thinks: that actually, despite the spew talked by Ed Balls, it is quite good to know things about the world, I mean real things, like where people live and what they are called and what they speak and what they make: and that learning about multiculturalism is like, learning about fuck all.

If children learn things,

if they know stuff about the world, I mean real stuff like where people are and what they speak, and what they make, then the "learn about socialism" Left are without a cause, without a home, without a voice.

Suck the voice from the Left.

Learn the World's Capitals today.

A Child Can Cry/To Anything You Say

Late news: Child Cries During Drummer Drama Lesson

A child today burst into tears during a Friday afternoon drama lesson taught by a balding individual known only as "the tin drummer". The child was reported as saying "it's really scary, I'm scared," to which the "tin drummer" responded by giving the child a cuddle and telling them "it's only a bit of make-believe". The child was, however, dissatisfied by this response and immediately called for a report from OFDRAM, the regulatory company in charge of drama lessons. The report, we think, will not be published until 2042, by which time it is thought that the teacher might be dead. The child also said, "His response was laughable. Of course it was "make believe" - hence, I was made to believe. This is wholly unacceptable. I was forced through a traumatising experience - ie I was made to pretend that a wizard had prevented the sun from setting. This teacher wholly neglected his responsbilities in attempting to make an engaging lesson, and he should be made to pay." A spokesarse from the group FART (families against real teaching) said: "We deplore this latest example of a teacher overstepping the mark and terrifying children. It shows how out of touch these people are. The teacher should come to our re-training classes, which we'll provide for him at minimal cost." The "tin drummer" has so far refused to comment, telling our reporter to four letter shocker off, he was "going down the inapppropriate leisure activity centre for an unacceptable number of outdated imperialistically measured alcoholic beverages."

The tin drummer is pissed.

Drummer's Head vs Drummer's Arse

Alright. I can accept that some people - mainly those who know me, may their shell suits be blighted - think that I have my head stuffed so far up my own arse that I can tickle my own tongue.

However. This is not true. There is a breed of people who have their heads a lot further up their own jacksies than myself. Such people, occasionally known as "teachers" with a subdivision who shall remain nameless, are thought to spend entire days eulogising themselves and their ideals, at enormous expense. They are also thought to organise immense entertainments and to spend so much time organising them that the object of said events is _completely forgotten_. In the course of this, some things which are believed to have been sighted at 9pm on dank Thursday nights include 40 minute unfunny sketches - one of the worst "entz" crimes ever devised.* In this devilish medium, some largely untalented persons recite (or worse, it is thought, _improvise_ ) cliched-friendly-indictments of known persons for the delectation of non-persons present. Or of persons unpresent. Either way the effect is deadly. Within 30 minutes mild irritation is caused to the outer thought-centres of the brain, inducing a slight dream state known as "boredom". In this conscious-state it is thought that committed persons can suddenly -

lose their commitment -

Anyway. In such a tedious environment an individual can succumb to collectivist ideals, such as blasting the damn hell out of half the bastards here; or worse, of "fomenting revolution", in which persons deemed arbitrarily to be in power (usually those sighted by the revolutionary at any given time) are slaughtered by huge weapons, or even by the _sheer power of thought_. Occasionally the revolutionary is thought to put a whole load of people up against an imaginary wall and shoot the sam hell out of their sorry asses.

The cautionary tale here is to not get involved with people who think their cause is more important than any particular individual (especially when the individual in question is supposedly being celebrated but generally the moral applies anyhow); and to tell people to "fuck off" when one is invited to anything.

Anything at all.

AND the evening was not for the drummer. The drummer was merely a spectator with a headache.


* Another such crime is showing film of the _drummer's bald patch_ to 300 people.

Constructivism

Natalie Solent has a post up about the educational theory known as constructivism:

Re-naming it every ten years hasn't made it work. Read Joanne Jacobs linking to Ken DeRosa linking in turn to an article in Educational Psychologist magazine called Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work by Paul Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard Clark.
These three links all have worthwhile stuff to read in them, so I'm telling you to read all three. OK, I'm also admitting that I have only skim-read the paper itself - but I've always said that "Do as I say not as I do" has a lot more going for it as a teaching strategy than it is given credit for.
Anyway. It's been called discovery learning, experiential learning, problem-based learning, inquiry learning and now (heaven help us) "constructivist instructional techniques".


I can tell Natalie that it has been called that for at least the last decade, since I trained as a primary teacher in England 6 years ago and it was well established then. It is high time a thoughtful criticism was made of it, and the article certainly gives some.

If you read the links you notice that a common thread in the discussions about it is constructivism's denial of the concept of reality, which is handed down to it from postmodern philosophy. This I found odd, because if they were challenged about their theories or methods, my tutors always replied in ways that indicated definite belief in some things being true, and valid, always and everywhere, and other things not (ie "shut up") - the true things were mainly theories, ethics, and so on (such as a certain view of multiculturalism, equal opportunities, politics). The things that were not really existing things were facts, you know, the little nuggets of information that teachers are commonly supposed to pass on to pupils (or "learners" as they have been renamed in all government material).

The reason there is no such thing as reality, we are told, is because we all "construct" our own reality. Leaving aside the clear contradiction in someone saying this to a group of people, and the group, by and large, understanding the person rather than all thinking they heard something completely different, like "the sky is a nice shade of pink this morning", I found it a sinister attempt to discredit learning, communication, culture and knowledge: you assume reality is imagination, then you set about moulding that imagination. All else is irrelevant or nonexistent.

As one of the arguments in one of Natalie's links shows, constructivists often turn to an absolutist view of reality and of knowledge as soon as they are challenged, which makes them hypocrites as well as underminers of education.

By way of a final whinge about it, I remember very few, if any, taught sessions on the PGCE which actually followed the constructivist ideal. Most were good old fashioned "chalk and talk" sessions, in which we made copious notes and then afterwards went and learnt the notes. We were rigorously assessed, our learning was not "scaffolded", some of our tutors were very harsh, and we all worked damn hard, often doing a day at school and then four or five hours work in the evening, which might be preparing an assignment, doing the reading, or just preparing more lessons.

And do you know, it worked....myself and some of my colleagues passed out with all A Grades...