BOOK OFFERS CLEAR AND CALM LESSON ON LEARNING
Michele Landsberg
New shoes, a funky backpack a fresh start -- fall is the season of
innocent hope and high spirits for most students and their parents. But
what if anxious parents were conned into accepting policies that actually
stunted their children's intellectual development, the same way that tigh=
t
and prolonged swaddling can weaken a baby's limbs?
That's just what seems to be happening as Ontario zealously embraces the
conservative approach of "back to basics," phonics drill, testing and
standardization. While parents have been persuaded that this rigid
ideology will help their children succeed, there's ample evidence that
they have been misled.
Just consider:
? The Japanese, constantly held up to us as examples of academic
"excellence," reject standardized national tests for elementary school
children. Free play and an emphasis on the "whole child" and on community
prevail in primary school.=20
? Tests do not improve learning. In fact, many studies show that children
learn more and better when not given any grades but are offered
constructive comments instead.
? Students from primary to college level have greater trouble in
understanding new materiel when they know they will be tested and scored.=
=20
? According to the U.S. government's National Assessment of Educational
Progress, primary kids who could choose their own books to read, and who
never used worksheets and never took quizzes and tests, scored the
highest. The children who were constantly tested, used daily worksheets
end never chose their own reading materiel scored the lowest.
? Think that "Whole Language" is some kind of crazy and discredited
"mushy" teaching style? What the media haven's told you is that,
overwhelmingly, 60 years of education re- -search strongly validates the
progressive teaching methods that are grouped under the name "Whole
Language."
? Remember those notorious TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and
Science Study) tests, the international tests of math and science which
the Ontario government misrepresented to "prove" that Ontario students
were doing badly? The TIMSS research team concluded=F3and this was not
reported in the press=F3that "traditional forms of teaching, and an empha=
sis
on the basics, contributed significantly to the low standing of
olderAmerican students.
If any of these statements have you hopping mad and ready to rush to
rebuttal, you owe it to yourself (end your children) to read =93The Schoo=
ls
Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms And
=91TougherStandards=92" (Thomas Allen & Son) by Bostonian AIfie Kohn.
When Kohn, a former leacher and prolific author, came to town last week
with his new book tucked under his arm, I leaped at the chance to meet an=
d
talk with him.
Calmly, clearly, with humour and zest, Kohn has assembled the available
evidence, anaIyzed it, and sliced through the rhetoric of the education
conservatives.
"When people talk about school success or achievement, what criteria are
they using?" Kohn asked. "If it's temporary retention of facts and
low-level skills, then you can achieve it with competition, rewards,
drills and tests."
You can call that success, Kohn says -- but only if you don't care if
children ever develop critical thinking, a zest for learning, creativity
and a real understanding of ideas.
The mania for "basics" and for standardized testing, as Kohn documents in
his lively book is the enemy of these truly important human capacities.
How did so many of us get the idea that the schools are in chaos and the
only way to make them more "successful" is to adopt these ruinous
remedies? We have been suckers for conservative propagandists who
bad-mouth the public education system precisely because it is public.
We're being hyped and hustled toward a state of mind so frantic that we'l=
l
beg for charter end voucher schools, just like the Americans. You have
only to think of our . r't health care system, and its slow but sure
destruction, to see how the process works: Squeeze and starve it into
inadequacy and soon the public will be screaming for privatization.=20
As for testing, and the naive faith that tests will somehow improve
learning, Kohn offers an analogy: Suppose we decide to raise the standard=
s
of hospital care by taking patients'. temperature on a regular basis. Jus=
t
before insertingthe thermometers, nurses run around~ administering huge
doses of Aspirin and cold drinks. Voila! The temperatures are down --
hospital care is improving!=20
We wouldn't be that stupid, would we? Espe cially not when our chiildren~=
s
if uture is at stake?
It's worth reading Kohn to be shocked into seeing how close we've come to
that state of unreason=F3and how we can change things for the better.
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