Re: [xmca] Direct Instruction: observations at Djarragun college, Cape York, Australia

[Bill Kerr <billkerr@gmail.com>]

hi David,

I agree that the definitive justification for DI must be developed from DI
itself and my generalist remarks about motivations and turning away are
inadequate.

When I observed at Djarragun college I didn't actually speak to any DI
experts. I merely observed practitioners and chatted to them after lesson
for a few minutes since they were busy and off to their next lesson, etc.

I can't significantly improve on my response to your critique at this
stage. However, I believe a more adequate response internal to the dynamics
of DI could be made.

Cheers.

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 6:03 AM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> Dear Bill:
>
> Actually, I did read all the material you posted--when you posted it. I
> thought about it for a few days too before trying to reply. Not sure if you
> actually READ what I wrote, Bill--but perhaps we just disagree about what
> constitutes READING!
>
> I'm certainly not conceding you anything. I'm also not advocating
> sophisticated techniques. Like you (and like Marx), I believe teaching is
> merely another form of labor. But it's not unskilled labor, and what I see
> on those clips is unskilled labor.
>
> South Korea has fifty million people. Our literacy is second to none--we
> are the most literate nation on earth. For a while, this was attributed to
> rote techniques similar to DI, until classroom observations and "problem
> solving tests" showed that actually Korean classrooms are much further from
> rote techniques than American ones.
>
> Obama and Duncan like to credit Korean parents, and of course so do the
> pro-dictatorship parties here, because they hate our (now semi-legal)
> teachers union and because they think that when you flatter parents they
> will vote for you.
>
> The "sophistication" of teaching here is not "scaled up". It was
> accumulated the hard way, and it is diachronic rather than synchronic. Like
> France and Russia and most civilized nations (but unlike the USA) every
> teacher is a civil servant and enjoys the pension benefits, holidays, and
> salaries that come with that. So the average length of service of a teacher
> in the USA is something like four years or less. The average length of
> service of a teacher in South Korea is more like four decades.
>
> You write:
>
> "That we, the free learning sophisticated are somewhat repelled by the
> crudity and authoritarianism of rote and checkout. That feeling operates
> strongly at our emotional level
> and so we prefer to "look away" at this crudity that does work and pursue
> our more sophisticated learning methods. This applied to me, at least."
>
> It didn't't apply to me. I am perfectly unsentimental; my objection to the
> crudity and authoritarianism of rote and check are based entirely on
> the mediocrity of the results that I see in the posted data.
>
> "One thing that I notice most people agree on is that all form of talent
> or genius do require the learner to do a lot of boring repetition. eg.
> Mozart took 10 years, from 5-15, before he could be regarded as a genius.
> All athletes do mind numbing boring practice to reach Olympic level, etc. I
> think in observing DI we are just observing such repetition in crude form."
>
> There is a widely cited statistic that mastery of anything requires about
> ten thousand hours, plus or minus five thousand. I am not sure about this:
> it seems more like a definition of what people accept as mastery in a given
> field rather than the objective statement it pretends to be. But if it is
> true than it is clear evidence in favor of what we do in Korea (that is,
> provide teachers the respect and the pay they require to stay on the job
> for decades) rather than in favor of crash training programmes like DI.
>
>
>
> "How do you propose to scale these sophisticated methods?"
>
> I wasn't talking about a sophisticated method. All we did was to use
> computer software to examine the actual phonological data that perfectly
> workaday Korean teachers judgments are based on.
>
> We found them well founded, but only if you accept that they are based on
> sensitive responsiveness to intra-individual variation and not if you think
> they are based on some kind of objective standard. It is exactly what you
> would expect in any highly skilled performance--enormous responsiveness to
> individual variability.
>
>
> You write:
>
> "In DI the students are consumers and they are being force fed education.
> That is certainly one way to look at it. I just loved it when Chomsky
> critiqued Skinner even though I didn't understand Chomsky I knew that
> Skinner was so boring and dehumanising. But that was when I was
> "progressive" and young and now I'm older and more experienced in the
> realities of disadvantage."
>
> Not sure to what extent my personal experience is relevant here--I suppose
> it might be. But I'm afraid you haven't got me at all. I found Chomsky
> boring and dehumanising. I don't remember much Skinner, but my mother did
> try to raise me in a Skinner box (I think she just didn't like changing
> diapers) .I was pretty jaundiced and crusty in my educational views when I
> was young. Now that I am old, I find myself less experienced than ever.
>
> David Kellogg
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
> >
> >
> > --- On Mon, 5/7/12, Bill Kerr <billkerr@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Bill Kerr <billkerr@gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] Direct Instruction: observations at Djarragun
> college,
> > Cape York, Australia
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date: Monday, May 7, 2012, 7:27 AM
> >
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.beteronderwijsnederland.nl/files/active/0/Kozloff%20e.a.%20DI.pdf
> >
> > This paper appears to provide a comprehensive overview of the theory and
> > practice of DI and also includes a response to criticisms (27pp)
> >
> > I think that Engelmann is incorrect to criticise other theories of
> > education so trenchantly but what he has done brilliantly is develop one
> > practice of basic literacy / maths education with almost fail proof
> rigour.
> > Some other theories and practices do work IMO (eg. Papert's
> constructionism
> > is one I have worked with for years) but the problem with them in
> practice
> > is that they don't scale for all learners because they require fairly
> high
> > degrees of teacher expertise.
> >
> > Given that we have a society in which the highly skilled mathematicians
> and
> > physicists are more likely to end up programming economic models for
> > Goldmann Sachs than teaching in primary school then Direct Instruction is
> > the best bet since it doesn't require deep thinking teachers for it to
> > work.
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