Re: [xmca] Highly Formalized Curricula

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

David--
 
Isn't this really a continuation of Bill Kerr's thread on Direct Instruction? It seems to me that Direct Instruction provides precisely what you are looking for: manuals, specified content which has been carefully graded to virtually eliminate the possibility of "error" on the part of either the student or the teacher, and very clear protocols for their application. There is an incredibly wide variety of content available, including "How We Lost the Vietnam War" for high school history classes.
 
Another place to look might be the "Direct Method", the "Situational Oral Method", or the "Audiolingual Method" in language instruction. At one point (Richards and Rodgers 1985) the whole distinction btween "method", "approach" and "technique" in language teaching was that methods had to have manuals, specified content on a day to day basis, and clear protocols for administering techniques (and implementing an "approach", which only had to specify a theory of language and a theory of learning). 
 
On the face of it "methods" were really top-down instantiations of approaches (or abstractions from techniques, if you prefer looking at it bottom up). But in practice they were methods of employing underqualified teachers and administrating language schools.
 
The master of method was Maximilien Berlitz (founder of Berlitz language schools) who made it possible to replace highly experienced, usually bilingual, teachers who knew both the goal and the road with utterly inexperienced monolingual native speakers who knew only the goal, and even then were not particularly conscious about what made it a goal for their learners.
 
To join this to Mike's thread on war and food: One early victim of the system was Wilfred Owen, the great war poet, who spent a couple of weeks teaching English at a Berlitz school in Bordeaux in France, and was apparently so bored he joined the army. 
 
He perished just days before Armistice Day in World War I and just after writing "The Parable of the Old Men and the Young". Here he gives the Biblical account of the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, including the proffered substituter of the ram in the thicket by the angel. And then::
 
But the old man would not so but slew his son
And half the seed  of Europe. One by one. 
 
 
David Kellogg
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies


--- On Thu, 5/10/12, Shirley Franklin <s.franklin@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:


From: Shirley Franklin <s.franklin@dsl.pipex.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Highly Formalized Curricula
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, May 10, 2012, 11:50 AM


You might find what you are looking for in the now archived national Primary Framework.Strategy site on http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110202093118/http:/nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/primary
It is is based on the National Curriculum for England and Wales, but seems to have lessons in the box...
The Tory GOvernment scrapped the national primary Strategy and are still about to put something else in its place. But most people seem to be working to this old one. The Od National Literacy Framework/Startey also had a formalised pedagogy based on the NC.
Shirley
On 10 May 2012, at 16:20, David H Kirshner wrote:

> Does anyone know of a highly formalized curriculum, one that comes with
> manuals and detailed protocols for administration, preferably not
> special ed?
> Probably this is not of general interest, so best to reply offline--
> dkirsh@lsu.edu
> Thanks.
> David
> 
> 
> 
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