How ‘Progressive’ Education Patronises the Poor
My article for Spiked Online.
The only responsibility schools have to working-class kids is to give them a good education.
Source: How ‘progressive’ education patronises the poor
Child-Centred
Why Do Crybullies Go To University?
I have veered between being utterly bewildered at the current crop of crybully university students, with their intolerant politics and need for ‘safe spaces’, and angry that their main goal seems to be to complain rather than learn. So far the worst of this seems to have occurred in the US, but it’s gathering a similar momentum over here.
But today it hit me, these particular students don’t see education as an intellectual activity or a means of achieving their best academically. Why should they?
The vacuous anti-intellectual, anti-academic nature of progressive education, with its emphasis on navel-gazing and extended infanthood, can be seen in its full glory in these students.
Brought up by ‘we teach children not subjects’ primary teachers and secondary teachers sticking different coloured hats on their head, education is meaningless.Teachers dance like monkeys to entertain, fun matters more than attainment and ‘interests’, no matter how trivial, trump the best that has been thought and said.
Is it any wonder they believe that the world revolves around them?
Is it any wonder they believe the university should pay attention to their feelings rather than their intellectual development?
Is it any wonder that they believe their personal wants take precedence over the learning of others?
These are students who have been fed the idea since entering the education system that:
a) they don’t have to take any responsibility for their actions (it’s the teachers fault after all),
b) that those who behave appallingly deserve to be listened to and
c) they are entitled to exercise inordinate levels of power over the adults who teach them.
It’s not surprising they have internalised these beliefs and ideas. This is what education is about for them.
As one observer put it, these are ‘over-privileged special little snowflakes’, the epitome of self-centered, narcissistic attitudes honed over their lives so far. So no, higher education is not about developing one’s academic and intellectual abilities for these students. Why should it be?
Special Thanks to Ben Garrison for granting me permission to use his cartoon ‘Cry Bullies’ as the featured image for this blog. Go to http://grrrgraphics.com to see more of his work.
Why Don’t Intervention Strategies Use Progressive Methods?
If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.
Ignacio ‘Estrada
Hands up if you have worked, or are working, in a school that has Estrada’s quote proudly displayed as an inspirational poster?
Well, inspirational for the progressive teacher maybe. I always saw it as a lament aimed at anyone who dared still use traditional methods; we should all know by now that children simply don’t learn that way. Instead, we should know to teach them using progressive methods because that is the way they learn.
If this is true, then why don’t intervention programmes use ‘child-centred’ progressive methods. Now there are interventions that promote themselves using progressive terminology, which is understandable in the current educational climate, especially in primary schools. But these words just hide the reality of highly structured, explicit/direct instruction programmes they are.
Take ‘Speed Up,’ which markets itself as a ‘kinaesthetic’ programme to develop handwriting (I’m not sure how handwriting can be anything else). I taught it as an assembly time intervention for six months. It involves exercising the relevant muscles through press ups for example. Then explicit instruction and modelling, then practice, practice, and yep you guessed it, more practice. While I had to adjust timings, I did follow the methods to the ‘t.’
Numbers Counts, a widely used maths intervention in primary schools, is another case. Its website states clearly children will engage in ‘active learning.’ I observed my TA (at the time) teaching this intervention on some occasions while on PPA.
By ‘active’ it meant participating and that the children sometimes play games, (they also write cute postcards about what they had learned, which they give to the teacher or their parents). This is very much a direct instruction programme focused on closing gaps in knowledge. The lessons plans are highly detailed, and they need to be followed step by step. The children repeat and reinforce the knowledge they learn until they are secure.
If discovery is better than using traditional methods, then why is it not the basis of this intervention? At most there are four children in a group with one adult, much better odds of being responsive to each child and facilitating their learning.
All the successful interventions I have seen/used follow the same pattern. Explicit/direct instruction and modeling, followed by children repeating, reinforcing and practicing until they get it.
This begs the question:
Why don’t we just cut out the (intervention) middle man and teach using traditional methods in the first place?
It seems insane to show using progressive methods and then, when these methods fail, send children to learn via traditional methods in an intervention group. What a waste of time, energy, effort and money.[/vc_column_text]
Let’s update the quote shall we:
“If a child can’t learn the way progressive ideologues believe we should teach, maybe we should ignore them and teach traditionally because that is the way children learn.”
Tarjinder Gill