We have a huge and shameful problem in education. The achievement gap between “advantaged” students and “disadvantaged” students is unacceptable. Closing this gap has been allocated first place among education goals for decades. Yet, despite billions being thrown at the problem it has only gotten worse.
As an example the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report of 11/2005 provides some important information on both the problem and the continuing misguided approaches to solving the problem. Since there is amazing consistency in education approaches and attitudes across the nation this is valid everywhere to a first order approximation.
"That a nation of unparalleled wealth, matchless military strength, undreamed of progress in science and medicine and home to history’s greatest democracy can tolerate this failure is shocking. Yes, individual schools sometimes defy the odds, but whole systems almost never do. Why? What are the reasons for this failure? It has to do with both will and skill and the reasons illuminate the fact that minority and poor youth are often seen as not worthy of our finest efforts. This needs to be said. The conditions of educational desolation that this Commission decries are to be largely found on streets that the movers and shakers of our society rarely walk; and in schools where their children cannot be found. However, perhaps the greater shame is that such conditions are also found in the schools that serve our society’s privileged children. Pouring billions of dollars into a search for solutions has eased the conscience of the fortunate but has not succeeded in saving those children who continue to be victimized by our abject failures.
Not surprisingly, we have found a fairly benign phrase to describe this catastrophe: “the achievement gap.” It is more comfortable than another phrase: 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.'”
The commission goes on to name its strategy for finally fixing the problem.
Data & Assessment
Closing the gap begins by understanding data and assessment. Colorado must develop a comprehensive, centralized, user-friendly and easily accessible data and assessment system that identifies gaps and deficiencies at the student, school and district level. This data and assessment system should gather available data and centralize it in a consistent and understandable format that can be applied with best practices to address gaps and deficiencies by informing instruction by classroom teachers. Data should be accessible to parents and the community to further understanding of achievement gaps. Data from the higher education system should be linked with K-12 to promote partnerships between the two systems as well as informing public policy makers, parents, teachers and the community at large about the efficacy of strategies that have been implemented to close the gap.
High Expectations
The achievement gap cannot be addressed without a commitment to high expectations. From the business community, students, parents, teachers, administrators and board members at the local level to the Department of Education, State Board of Education, General Assembly and Governor’s Office at the state level, must develop high expectations of success for all students and accept no excuses. The foundation of high expectations is by establishing and maintaining academic rigor in all grade levels from kindergarten through higher education and across school district boundaries. Cultural sensitivity and the impacts of cultural biases on expectations must also be addressed.
Higher Education
Higher Education is an essential participant in eliminating the gap. We must develop and infuse a strong connection between higher education and K-12 by emphasizing shared responsibilities, success indicators, rigorous and connected curriculum and a systemic, proactive support systems that encourages and enables all students to access and succeed in college. This would consist of establishing a rigorous and aligned P-16 curriculum that is the default for all students that begins with the destination in mind, preparing students for life and continuing education. P-16 must provide continuous support that enables all students (especially under-represented groups) to access and succeed in college by providing early counseling, “can-do” values and clear financial options. We must ensure that the P-16 system is seamless and includes elementary and middle schools as part of the solution. The committee recommends that access and affordability to higher education by under-represented groups be ensured.
Administrator/Teacher Qualifications and Professional-Development
The classroom teacher and the school administrator are the front line in ending the gap. We must develop administrator and teacher cultural competencies and sensitivity so that they can effectively embrace high expectations for all students. We must embed the same cultural competencies in local and state leadership. The state should require that administrator and teacher preparation programs are data-driven. As a state we should increase the number of minority teachers and administrators. Teachers should be involved in the choice of professional development opportunities. We must establish incentives that would place the most capable administrators and teachers to work in the most challenged and impacted schools.
Parent & Community Involvement
Schools alone cannot close the achievement gap without the involvement of parents and the broader community. We must build connections with parents, guardians, families, business and non-traditional leaders that will require more culturally sensitive behavior. We must make certain that we understand the strengths as well as the weaknesses of individual students and understand the circumstances that may affect their ability to learn. We must also effectively articulate why parents, guardians, families, business and non-traditional leaders are so important to creating an environment of high expectations.
Best Practices
Embracing and implementing strategies based upon research-based best practices at the classroom; school, district and state levels are the only means of effectively addressing the gap. We must collect, share and fund strategies that have demonstrated success in addressing the gap. This will involve not only the school districts, Colorado Department of Education and the State Board of Education, but must include the Colorado Education Association, Colorado Association of School Executives, Colorado Association of School Boards, the General Assembly and the Governor’s Office. The P-16 systems must reward best practices by linking them to funding and incentives.
Leadership
Leadership by superintendents at a district level, principals and teachers at the school level and other staff and administrators is critical to the effort to establish and maintain high expectations. Administrators and instructors have to both identify the problems and have good relationships with other faculty to implement solutions. Education specialists point to the importance of principal leadership that is passionate and competent in fulfilling the district mission and reaching achievement goals. Teachers also have opportunities to demonstrate leadership in the classroom on a daily basis. Achievement gap reduction efforts by both the Cherry Creek and Fountain/Fort Carson school districts included leadership success. Fountain/Fort Carson closed gaps in test scores, graduation rates and attendance rates by raising expectations for administrators. This effort entailed “principal academies” that include training, assessment and monitoring of principals. The district also emphasized an instructional leadership role of principals, in addition to their management role. Cherry Creek’s North Area achievement program required the addition of an executive director to ensure success.
How to summarize the above prescription. It is doomed from the beginning because it does not recognize that the current content-free approach does not work, especially for the “gap” kids. What does work for “ALL” kids is the content-rich approach used by our international competitors. We used that approach in the American Common School days but that was before Dewey and his henchmen took over education and began the damaging “dumbing down” process. THUS, THIS “DOING THE WRONG THING BETTER” APPROACH IS NOT GOING TO WORK BUT WILL CONTINUE TO ENRICH THE HUGE ARMY SUPPORTING THE STATUS QUO.
Since there is such a leadership vacuum in education, at least with the intestinal fortitude to call a spade a spade and force the system to face its reality, I wondered what George would do? That is, George Patton. Patton was famous for getting results. He was not famous for political correctness or being nice in the face of a challenge. I looked up some of his quotes to give a feel for what he might do to address this problem that our weak educators have been unable or unwilling to fix.
“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” This is particularly fitting to the education situation. The whole education fiefdom is very homogeneous in its core beliefs and approaches. This is reinforced by a strong wall and moat that keeps out corrupting outsider ideas and information. Hence, the kids continue to get bottom priority and the adults snooze in status quo, won’t work mode.
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.” If our leaders both political and across all areas in and out of education really cared about our kids, especially the very abysmally served poor and minority (Gap) kids they would not continue using the “be nice” approach that allows the status quo to be perpetuated.
“Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.” I would call this integrity, that is, a commitment to doing the right thing not the expedient or easy thing. There is very little integrity in education circles. This is coped with by fiefdom citizens with a delusional approach that embraces the “we confess it is their fault” attitude. It couldn’t be our fault, it must be the fault of the parents, the society, the voters who don’t approve our every request for more money to improve things.
“No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair.” William Oncken in his Performance Standards training would make the point, “Control—‘Only he who is where it is happening can control what is happening while it is happening.’ This is called “During-the-Fact” control and without it everything is OUT OF CONTROL.” The point is that sitting in your office does not work; you have to be out on the front lines to lead an organization to success.
“Say what you mean and mean what you say.” This problem is legion in education. Every year the administration gets their goals approved by the school board. Every year they fail to fulfill the goal achievement especially if it is any other than preserving the status quo. What is the consequence of failing to meet the goals they signed up for a year earlier? Nothing, in fact the board often hands out bonuses for good performance. This does not reinforce the need to perform, it reinforces sloth.
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” This is particularly appropriate to the education fiefdom. Top down management is ubiquitous. Just do as you are told, initiative will be punished. This starts with the legislators who always specify process very tightly and the autocratic cascade continues down to all levels. Legislators should specify desired results with rewards for meeting them and penalties for not meeting them. But instead we continue along with the “one size fits all” prescriptions that ignore any uniqueness across school districts.
“Many soldiers are led to faulty ideas of war by knowing too much about too little.” Here is another massive problem in education. The vast majority of educators are trained by our education schools. This training inculcates the process catechism that was installed by Dewey et al in the early twentieth century. Subject knowledge is not taught with any rigor at all. Thus, our educators know too much about too little. E.D. Hirsch describes the problem in The Knowledge Deficit. “[P]rinciples that constitute a kind of theology that is drilled into prospective teachers like a catechism.
Conclusion
Our kids would be much better off if a “Patton” type approach would be used in education than they are with the “take care of the adults who work here, who cares about the kids” approach currently in use.
Yes, most educators I have talked to are well meaning but they are also ineffective in serving their mission. They need our help to face reality. They are doing an unacceptable job and we must not tolerate it because it harms kids.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Team USA
The Most Important Race—We’re Losing
Imagine that many of the world’s developed and emerging nations agreed to compete in a yearlong auto race. The race will cover all sorts of terrain and climates in widely separated global venues. Our team would be selected by political leaders in the nation’s capital from people nominated by every state. Imagine that Team USA would be the first team to settle on an all purpose vehicle for the race.
All of the competitors but Team USA chose all purpose and reliable late-model SUVs for their vehicle based on the varying course conditions where normal over-the-road cars could not be as successful. Team USA chose a modified version of the Ford Model T. While their choice was scorned by their competition, Team USA said that they were the real experts and they would win the race easily.
They decided on the Model T based on its reputation for being easy to work on and repair. They added a bunch of features which they deemed necessary for the race. These included an air-conditioned cockpit, a complete set of the latest instruments to measure every aspect of vehicle performance, a state of the art GPS system plus additional crew members to monitor the gauges and computer readouts. Team USA was very positive about having the best vehicle in the race and couldn’t wait for the competition to begin.
The race is to cover 25,000 miles over one year. Only the first 5 teams would be awarded prizes. At the end of the first week the leading teams were Finland, Singapore, China, India and Russia. Team USA was far back because their 50,000 pound modified Model T experienced 100 tire blowouts and the top speed on level ground was 10 miles an hour due to the immense weight dragging on the relatively tiny Ford engine.
Day after day Team USA fell further and further behind. They took to announcing progress against lower and lower targets to make their failing performance look better than it was. This was successful in fooling most of the people. The race ended when the first five teams had finished. Team USA was about 200 days behind the leaders based on their average speed to date.
The Point
The race story is an analog to the performance of American K-12 education versus our global competition. The modified Model T was chosen because it is a hundred year old design just as the progressive philosophy of our education system is a century old. While there have been lots of added changes in curricula; program names, advanced education degrees, best practices, response to intervention, etc. they all are consistent with the constructivist, discovery beliefs of the progressive ideology. As in the race story, the performance of the constructivist/discovery methods is such that the education of students is much slower and never reaches the robust levels of the competition that are using higher performance methods and curricula (faster, better performing cars).
Also, as in the race story, educators set lower and lower standards to make their performance look much better than it really is (short yardstick). Our schools are simply not close to being competitive with those of our most capable competitors. Their children, not ours, are being prepared to seize the best job opportunities of the future. This has massive import to our future standard of living and our very survival as a nation.
How long will we grant huge amounts of money to the failed education process? The waste in the current system is akin to the thousands of pounds of modifications the race team made to the basic model. Attaching fancy gadgets to a failed underlying “vehicle” or education philosophy is a fool's approach. Yet it is we who are fools to allow it to continue when it is wasting huge amounts of money AND harming our kids. It shouldn’t be hard to demand changes once we face reality. That is difficult because we feel foolish for not realizing the truth sooner. But the truth must be faced if our kids are to be saved from hobbled futures. Results don’t lie. The educators have proven they can’t improve no matter how much money we give them. They can’t be trusted with something so important as the futures of our kids. Clemenceau famously said, “War is too important to be left to the generals.” Similarly, “Education is too important to be left to politicians and professional educators.”
Imagine that many of the world’s developed and emerging nations agreed to compete in a yearlong auto race. The race will cover all sorts of terrain and climates in widely separated global venues. Our team would be selected by political leaders in the nation’s capital from people nominated by every state. Imagine that Team USA would be the first team to settle on an all purpose vehicle for the race.
All of the competitors but Team USA chose all purpose and reliable late-model SUVs for their vehicle based on the varying course conditions where normal over-the-road cars could not be as successful. Team USA chose a modified version of the Ford Model T. While their choice was scorned by their competition, Team USA said that they were the real experts and they would win the race easily.
They decided on the Model T based on its reputation for being easy to work on and repair. They added a bunch of features which they deemed necessary for the race. These included an air-conditioned cockpit, a complete set of the latest instruments to measure every aspect of vehicle performance, a state of the art GPS system plus additional crew members to monitor the gauges and computer readouts. Team USA was very positive about having the best vehicle in the race and couldn’t wait for the competition to begin.
The race is to cover 25,000 miles over one year. Only the first 5 teams would be awarded prizes. At the end of the first week the leading teams were Finland, Singapore, China, India and Russia. Team USA was far back because their 50,000 pound modified Model T experienced 100 tire blowouts and the top speed on level ground was 10 miles an hour due to the immense weight dragging on the relatively tiny Ford engine.
Day after day Team USA fell further and further behind. They took to announcing progress against lower and lower targets to make their failing performance look better than it was. This was successful in fooling most of the people. The race ended when the first five teams had finished. Team USA was about 200 days behind the leaders based on their average speed to date.
The Point
The race story is an analog to the performance of American K-12 education versus our global competition. The modified Model T was chosen because it is a hundred year old design just as the progressive philosophy of our education system is a century old. While there have been lots of added changes in curricula; program names, advanced education degrees, best practices, response to intervention, etc. they all are consistent with the constructivist, discovery beliefs of the progressive ideology. As in the race story, the performance of the constructivist/discovery methods is such that the education of students is much slower and never reaches the robust levels of the competition that are using higher performance methods and curricula (faster, better performing cars).
Also, as in the race story, educators set lower and lower standards to make their performance look much better than it really is (short yardstick). Our schools are simply not close to being competitive with those of our most capable competitors. Their children, not ours, are being prepared to seize the best job opportunities of the future. This has massive import to our future standard of living and our very survival as a nation.
How long will we grant huge amounts of money to the failed education process? The waste in the current system is akin to the thousands of pounds of modifications the race team made to the basic model. Attaching fancy gadgets to a failed underlying “vehicle” or education philosophy is a fool's approach. Yet it is we who are fools to allow it to continue when it is wasting huge amounts of money AND harming our kids. It shouldn’t be hard to demand changes once we face reality. That is difficult because we feel foolish for not realizing the truth sooner. But the truth must be faced if our kids are to be saved from hobbled futures. Results don’t lie. The educators have proven they can’t improve no matter how much money we give them. They can’t be trusted with something so important as the futures of our kids. Clemenceau famously said, “War is too important to be left to the generals.” Similarly, “Education is too important to be left to politicians and professional educators.”
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sirens' Song; There be danger here Will Robinson
You probably remember the Sirens of Greek mythology. Homer’s Odyssey is one of the more famous versions of the tale, but there were many others. The basic kernel of the story was that the creatures (Homer said 2, but other sources vary from 2 to 5) would sing their song to lure mariners to shipwreck on the rocky shore of their island. Odysseus in Homer’s version knows the legend and has himself lashed to the mast tightly and tells his crew to plug their ears with beeswax and not to free his bonds no matter how much he demands or pleads for them to do so. As they travel within range of the songs Odysseus demands and pleads for them to release him from his bonds and is not at peace until they pass far enough away to be out of earshot of the Sirens’ songs. Because the myths said that the Sirens would die if anyone escaped their trap, the Sirens were no more.
In education the Sirens’ part is played by the schools of education. There are a very few exceptions but their graduates do not make a dent in the message carried in the Sirens’ songs of “process is all that matters, learning is natural it doesn’t need to be taught, just make the kids feel good about themselves and that is enough.” This romantic view of learning is de rigueur in our society because the vast majority of educators have been trained in education schools which were designed in the 1930s to teach the Progressive principles of education. This anti-content approach results in teachers (especially elementary level) who don’t understand the subject matter well at all. This is in direct contrast to the philosophy of nations where their children are getting a much better education than ours as their achievement results prove year after year and decade after decade.
So let’s consider a couple of examples:
• Music education—this field has escaped the “they will learn it on their own naturally” approach. Why? Because you can’t teach students to play a school band concert in front of the parents each year without them understanding the notes, how to play them and so forth. And the teachers have to know music reasonably well or their students would give an embarrassing performance that would surely leave the school and its music program subject to severe criticism. The romantic approach is akin to that of Professor Hill in The Music Man. Oh, it worked for him because it made a nice story but his “think” system doesn’t work in the real world no matter how strong the wishes that it would or should.
• Sports—this is another area where physical education teachers and coaches know the skills required in the sports and how to teach them to the kids. That dreaded “drill and kill” so criticized in “normal, mainstream” subjects, you know the most important stuff, works and is used widely by sports coaches. Why are they granted a “waiver” from the Progressive party line? Dewey likened the education system that really works as fascist because it was structured to really teach subject knowledge. You could ask yourself why the Progressives didn’t want kids to learn to their potential. Perhaps because if they were well educated they would see through the Progressives’ desire to have government experts make the important decisions for us.
In sports as in music the obvious proof of whether the students learned the skills and knowledge required to really perform is in the games with their competitors and the public music performances. The question for us then is how much longer will we see our students shipwrecked on the future-reducing rocks because their educators couldn’t resist the Siren Song of the technically wrong and “abysmal failure to work” education school training.
In education the Sirens’ part is played by the schools of education. There are a very few exceptions but their graduates do not make a dent in the message carried in the Sirens’ songs of “process is all that matters, learning is natural it doesn’t need to be taught, just make the kids feel good about themselves and that is enough.” This romantic view of learning is de rigueur in our society because the vast majority of educators have been trained in education schools which were designed in the 1930s to teach the Progressive principles of education. This anti-content approach results in teachers (especially elementary level) who don’t understand the subject matter well at all. This is in direct contrast to the philosophy of nations where their children are getting a much better education than ours as their achievement results prove year after year and decade after decade.
So let’s consider a couple of examples:
• Music education—this field has escaped the “they will learn it on their own naturally” approach. Why? Because you can’t teach students to play a school band concert in front of the parents each year without them understanding the notes, how to play them and so forth. And the teachers have to know music reasonably well or their students would give an embarrassing performance that would surely leave the school and its music program subject to severe criticism. The romantic approach is akin to that of Professor Hill in The Music Man. Oh, it worked for him because it made a nice story but his “think” system doesn’t work in the real world no matter how strong the wishes that it would or should.
• Sports—this is another area where physical education teachers and coaches know the skills required in the sports and how to teach them to the kids. That dreaded “drill and kill” so criticized in “normal, mainstream” subjects, you know the most important stuff, works and is used widely by sports coaches. Why are they granted a “waiver” from the Progressive party line? Dewey likened the education system that really works as fascist because it was structured to really teach subject knowledge. You could ask yourself why the Progressives didn’t want kids to learn to their potential. Perhaps because if they were well educated they would see through the Progressives’ desire to have government experts make the important decisions for us.
In sports as in music the obvious proof of whether the students learned the skills and knowledge required to really perform is in the games with their competitors and the public music performances. The question for us then is how much longer will we see our students shipwrecked on the future-reducing rocks because their educators couldn’t resist the Siren Song of the technically wrong and “abysmal failure to work” education school training.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Could You Pass?
Following is the British Columbia high school exit exam: literary section. There is an equally rigorous section for history. This information is taken from the Common Core report, Why We’re Behind, What Top Nations Teach Their Students That We Don’t (2009).
A real example helps to illuminate the difference between our educational approach and that of the competitor nations whose students consistently score better, much better, than ours on international tests. This provides more information on the topic started in A Sick Patient and Human Nature.
Please take a look at the exam and ponder the question, “Can we continue to ignore our dumbed down approach in K-12 education?”
British Columbia High School Exit Exam
Literary Selections
1. In Beowulf, which Anglo-Saxon value is represented by Herot?
A. power
B. heroism
C. boasting
D. community
2. In “The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, how is the Parson described?
A. “a very festive fellow”
B. “a fat and personable priest”
C. “rich in holy thought and work”
D. “an easy man in penance-giving”
3. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”), why does the speaker state that his mistress “treads on the ground”?
A. She is a sensible woman.
B. She is beautiful and attainable.
C. He is praising her as a real woman.
D. He is disappointed by her plainness.
4. Which quotation contains personification?
A. “Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am”
B. “No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move”
C. “Nor what the potent Victor in his rage / Can else inflict”
D. “and wanton fields / To wayward Winter reckoning yields”
5. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” on what does “dull sublunary" love depend?
A. spiritual union
B. physical presence
C. common attitudes
D. shared experience
6. In “On His Blindness,” which metaphor does Milton use to represent his literary powers?
A. a talent
B. a yoke
C. a kingly state
D. the dark world
7. In The Rape of the Lock, when Pope writes “So ladies in romance assist their knight, / Present the spear, and arm him for the fight,” what has just happened?
A. Belinda has just pulled out a “deadly bodkin.”
B. Chloe and Sir Plume have just confronted each other.
C. Clarissa has just offered a “two-edged weapon” to the Baron.
D. The Baron’s queen of spades defeats Belinda’s king of clubs.
8. Which characteristic of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” can be seen as Romantic?
A. It celebrates the supernatural.
B. It is written in iambic pentameter.
C. It emphasizes reason over emotion.
D. It deals with the lives of common people.
9. “The guests are met, the feast is set”
Which literary technique is used in the above quotation?
A. aside
B. caesura
C. apostrophe
D. cacophony
10. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” how do the sailors feel when the albatross first appears?
A. joyful
B. fearful
C. enraged
D. indifferent
11. According to the speaker in “Apostrophe to the Ocean,” with what attitude does the ocean
treat humanity?
A. anger
B. respect
C. disdain
D. generosity
12. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43 (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”), what does the speaker reveal about herself?
A. her desire to be loved
B. her love for her beloved
C. her love for her dying father
D. her need to be with her beloved
13. “And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star” In “Ulysses,” to whom does “this gray spirit” refer?
A. Achilles
B. Ulysses
C. Tennyson
D. Telemachus
14. What does Arnold lament in “Dover Beach”?
A. the loss of religious faith
B. the loss of romantic love
C. the loss of military strength
D. the loss of respect for nature
15. In “The Hollow Men,” how does the speaker suggest that the world will end?
A. violently
B. gloriously
C. ominously
D. anticlimactically
16. In “Disembarking at Quebec,” which article suggests the speaker’s alienation from her surroundings?
A. her pink shawl
B. her fine bonnet
C. her coral brooch
D. her red stockings
Recognition of Authors and Titles
INSTRUCTIONS: Select the author of the quotation or the title of the selection from which the quotation is taken.
17. “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings”
A. Wyatt
B. Donne
C. Chaucer
D. Shakespeare
18. “And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken —The ice was all between”
A. “Ulysses”
B. “The Hollow Men”
C. “Disembarking at Quebec”
D. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
19. “Dim, through the misty green panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”
A. “Dover Beach”
B. “Ode to the West Wind”
C. “Dulce et Decorum Est”
D. “Apostrophe to the Ocean”
20. “So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!”
A. Keats
B. Shelley
C. Browning
D. Wordsworth
21. “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men”
A. Pope
B. Donne
C. Milton
D. Raleigh
22. “The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant”
A. “The Hollow Men”
B. “The Darkling Thrush”
C. “The Second Coming”
D. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
23. “He wore a fustian tunic stained and dark
With smudges where his armor had left mark”
A. Beowulf
B. The Rape of the Lock
C. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
D. “The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales
PART C: SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA
1 written-response question
Value: 20% Suggested Time: 25 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Choose one of the three passages on pages 14 to 17 in the Examination Booklet.
With specific reference to the drama, respond to one of the following statements in at least 200 words in paragraph form. Write your answer in ink in the Response Booklet. Place a checkmark in Instruction 4 on the front cover of the Response Booklet.
Hamlet (See passage on page 14.)
2. Show the significance of this exchange between Hamlet and Gertrude.
Refer both to this passage and to elsewhere in the play.
OR
The Tempest (See passage on page 15.)
3. With reference both to this passage and to elsewhere in the play, show that this passage contributes to theme.
OR
King Lear (See passage on page 17.)
4. Discuss the parallels between the father–child relationship found both in these passages and elsewhere in the play.
2. Hamlet (1600 –1601)
Hamlet: Now, Mother, what’s the matter?
Queen: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
Queen: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Queen: Why, how now, Hamlet?
Hamlet: What’s the matter now?
Queen: Have you forgot me?
Hamlet: No, by the rood,1 not so!
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And, would it were not so, you are my mother.
Queen: Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.
Hamlet: Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass2
Where you may see the inmost part of you!
1 rood: cross
2 glass: mirror
OR
3. The Tempest (1611)
Gonzalo: I have inly wept,
Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods,
And on this couple drop a blessèd crown!
For it is you that have chalked forth the way
Which brought us hither.
Alonso: I say amen, Gonzalo.
Gonzalo: Was Milan thrust from Milan that his issue
Should become kings of Naples? O, rejoice
Beyond a common joy, and set it down
With gold on lasting pillars. In one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
And Ferdinand her brother found a wife
Where he himself was lost; Prospero his dukedom
In a poor isle; and all of us ourselves
When no man was his own.
Alonso: [To Ferdinand and Miranda] Give me your hands.
Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart
That doth not wish you joy.
Gonzalo: Be it so! Amen!
OR
4. King Lear (1603)
In her response to Lear’s question as to how much she loves him,
Cordelia answers truthfully.
Lear: But goes thy heart with this?
Cordelia: Ay, my good lord.
Lear: So young, and so untender?
Cordelia: So young, my lord, and true.
Lear: Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower!
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night,
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.
AND
4. King Lear (1603)
Gloucester has just read a letter forged by Edmund.
Gloucester: You know the character to be your brother’s?
Edmund: If the matter were good, my lord, I durst
swear it were his; but in respect of that, I would
fain think it were not.
Gloucester: It is his.
Edmund: It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is
not in the contents.
Gloucester: Has he never before sounded you in this
business?
Edmund: Never, my lord. But I have heard him
oft maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age,
and fathers declined, the father should be as ward
to the son, and the son manage his revenue.
Gloucester: O villain, villain! His very opinion in the
letter. Abhorred villain, unnatural, detested,
brutish villain; worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek
him. I’ll apprehend him. Abominable villain!
Where is he?
1 written-response question
Value: 30% Suggested Time: 40 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Choose one of the following topics. Write a multi-paragraph essay (at least three paragraphs) of approximately 400 words. Develop a concise, focused answer to show your knowledge and understanding of the topic. Include specific references to the works you discuss. You may not need all the space provided for your answer. You must refer to at least one work from the Specified Readings List (see page 20 in the Examination Booklet). The only translated works you may use are those from Anglo-Saxon and Medieval English. Write your answer in ink in the Response Booklet. Place a checkmark in Instruction 4 on the front cover of the Response Booklet.
Topic 5 The presence or absence of loyalty is often a theme in literature.
Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
OR
Topic 6 A journey of some kind is important to many works of literature.
Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
OR
Topic 7 The meaning of a literary work may be enhanced by its reference to another work of art or literature. Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
Note: On the following page is the reading list from which students must select one work to reference.
Specified Readings List
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval
• from Beowulf
• Geoffrey Chaucer, from The Canterbury Tales, “The Prologue”
• “Bonny Barbara Allan”
• from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Renaissance and 17th Century
• Sir Thomas Wyatt, “Whoso List to Hunt”
• Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
• Sir Walter Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
• William Shakespeare,
Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”)
Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)
Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)
Hamlet, King Lear or The Tempest
• John Donne,
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”;
“Death, Be Not Proud”
• Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins”
• John Milton, “On His Blindness”; from Paradise Lost
• from The Diary of Samuel Pepys
18th Century and Romantic
• Lady Mary Chudleigh, “To the Ladies”
• Alexander Pope, from The Rape of the Lock
• Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”
• Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”
• William Blake, “The Tiger”; “The Lamb”
• Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
• William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”; “The World Is
Too Much with Us”
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
• George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Apostrophe to the Ocean”
• Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”
• John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”; “When I Have Fears That I May
Cease to Be”
Victorian and 20th Century
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43
(“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”)
• Robert Browning,
“My Last Duchess”
• Emily Brontë, “Song”
• Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
• Thomas Hardy, “The Darkling Thrush”
• Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
• Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est ”
• William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
• T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
• Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
• Stevie Smith, “Pretty”
• Margaret Atwood, “Disembarking at Quebec”
A real example helps to illuminate the difference between our educational approach and that of the competitor nations whose students consistently score better, much better, than ours on international tests. This provides more information on the topic started in A Sick Patient and Human Nature.
Please take a look at the exam and ponder the question, “Can we continue to ignore our dumbed down approach in K-12 education?”
British Columbia High School Exit Exam
Literary Selections
1. In Beowulf, which Anglo-Saxon value is represented by Herot?
A. power
B. heroism
C. boasting
D. community
2. In “The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, how is the Parson described?
A. “a very festive fellow”
B. “a fat and personable priest”
C. “rich in holy thought and work”
D. “an easy man in penance-giving”
3. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”), why does the speaker state that his mistress “treads on the ground”?
A. She is a sensible woman.
B. She is beautiful and attainable.
C. He is praising her as a real woman.
D. He is disappointed by her plainness.
4. Which quotation contains personification?
A. “Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am”
B. “No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move”
C. “Nor what the potent Victor in his rage / Can else inflict”
D. “and wanton fields / To wayward Winter reckoning yields”
5. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” on what does “dull sublunary" love depend?
A. spiritual union
B. physical presence
C. common attitudes
D. shared experience
6. In “On His Blindness,” which metaphor does Milton use to represent his literary powers?
A. a talent
B. a yoke
C. a kingly state
D. the dark world
7. In The Rape of the Lock, when Pope writes “So ladies in romance assist their knight, / Present the spear, and arm him for the fight,” what has just happened?
A. Belinda has just pulled out a “deadly bodkin.”
B. Chloe and Sir Plume have just confronted each other.
C. Clarissa has just offered a “two-edged weapon” to the Baron.
D. The Baron’s queen of spades defeats Belinda’s king of clubs.
8. Which characteristic of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” can be seen as Romantic?
A. It celebrates the supernatural.
B. It is written in iambic pentameter.
C. It emphasizes reason over emotion.
D. It deals with the lives of common people.
9. “The guests are met, the feast is set”
Which literary technique is used in the above quotation?
A. aside
B. caesura
C. apostrophe
D. cacophony
10. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” how do the sailors feel when the albatross first appears?
A. joyful
B. fearful
C. enraged
D. indifferent
11. According to the speaker in “Apostrophe to the Ocean,” with what attitude does the ocean
treat humanity?
A. anger
B. respect
C. disdain
D. generosity
12. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43 (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”), what does the speaker reveal about herself?
A. her desire to be loved
B. her love for her beloved
C. her love for her dying father
D. her need to be with her beloved
13. “And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star” In “Ulysses,” to whom does “this gray spirit” refer?
A. Achilles
B. Ulysses
C. Tennyson
D. Telemachus
14. What does Arnold lament in “Dover Beach”?
A. the loss of religious faith
B. the loss of romantic love
C. the loss of military strength
D. the loss of respect for nature
15. In “The Hollow Men,” how does the speaker suggest that the world will end?
A. violently
B. gloriously
C. ominously
D. anticlimactically
16. In “Disembarking at Quebec,” which article suggests the speaker’s alienation from her surroundings?
A. her pink shawl
B. her fine bonnet
C. her coral brooch
D. her red stockings
Recognition of Authors and Titles
INSTRUCTIONS: Select the author of the quotation or the title of the selection from which the quotation is taken.
17. “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings”
A. Wyatt
B. Donne
C. Chaucer
D. Shakespeare
18. “And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken —The ice was all between”
A. “Ulysses”
B. “The Hollow Men”
C. “Disembarking at Quebec”
D. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
19. “Dim, through the misty green panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning”
A. “Dover Beach”
B. “Ode to the West Wind”
C. “Dulce et Decorum Est”
D. “Apostrophe to the Ocean”
20. “So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!”
A. Keats
B. Shelley
C. Browning
D. Wordsworth
21. “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men”
A. Pope
B. Donne
C. Milton
D. Raleigh
22. “The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant”
A. “The Hollow Men”
B. “The Darkling Thrush”
C. “The Second Coming”
D. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
23. “He wore a fustian tunic stained and dark
With smudges where his armor had left mark”
A. Beowulf
B. The Rape of the Lock
C. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
D. “The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales
PART C: SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA
1 written-response question
Value: 20% Suggested Time: 25 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Choose one of the three passages on pages 14 to 17 in the Examination Booklet.
With specific reference to the drama, respond to one of the following statements in at least 200 words in paragraph form. Write your answer in ink in the Response Booklet. Place a checkmark in Instruction 4 on the front cover of the Response Booklet.
Hamlet (See passage on page 14.)
2. Show the significance of this exchange between Hamlet and Gertrude.
Refer both to this passage and to elsewhere in the play.
OR
The Tempest (See passage on page 15.)
3. With reference both to this passage and to elsewhere in the play, show that this passage contributes to theme.
OR
King Lear (See passage on page 17.)
4. Discuss the parallels between the father–child relationship found both in these passages and elsewhere in the play.
2. Hamlet (1600 –1601)
Hamlet: Now, Mother, what’s the matter?
Queen: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
Queen: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Queen: Why, how now, Hamlet?
Hamlet: What’s the matter now?
Queen: Have you forgot me?
Hamlet: No, by the rood,1 not so!
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And, would it were not so, you are my mother.
Queen: Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.
Hamlet: Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass2
Where you may see the inmost part of you!
1 rood: cross
2 glass: mirror
OR
3. The Tempest (1611)
Gonzalo: I have inly wept,
Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods,
And on this couple drop a blessèd crown!
For it is you that have chalked forth the way
Which brought us hither.
Alonso: I say amen, Gonzalo.
Gonzalo: Was Milan thrust from Milan that his issue
Should become kings of Naples? O, rejoice
Beyond a common joy, and set it down
With gold on lasting pillars. In one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
And Ferdinand her brother found a wife
Where he himself was lost; Prospero his dukedom
In a poor isle; and all of us ourselves
When no man was his own.
Alonso: [To Ferdinand and Miranda] Give me your hands.
Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart
That doth not wish you joy.
Gonzalo: Be it so! Amen!
OR
4. King Lear (1603)
In her response to Lear’s question as to how much she loves him,
Cordelia answers truthfully.
Lear: But goes thy heart with this?
Cordelia: Ay, my good lord.
Lear: So young, and so untender?
Cordelia: So young, my lord, and true.
Lear: Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower!
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night,
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.
AND
4. King Lear (1603)
Gloucester has just read a letter forged by Edmund.
Gloucester: You know the character to be your brother’s?
Edmund: If the matter were good, my lord, I durst
swear it were his; but in respect of that, I would
fain think it were not.
Gloucester: It is his.
Edmund: It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is
not in the contents.
Gloucester: Has he never before sounded you in this
business?
Edmund: Never, my lord. But I have heard him
oft maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age,
and fathers declined, the father should be as ward
to the son, and the son manage his revenue.
Gloucester: O villain, villain! His very opinion in the
letter. Abhorred villain, unnatural, detested,
brutish villain; worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek
him. I’ll apprehend him. Abominable villain!
Where is he?
1 written-response question
Value: 30% Suggested Time: 40 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Choose one of the following topics. Write a multi-paragraph essay (at least three paragraphs) of approximately 400 words. Develop a concise, focused answer to show your knowledge and understanding of the topic. Include specific references to the works you discuss. You may not need all the space provided for your answer. You must refer to at least one work from the Specified Readings List (see page 20 in the Examination Booklet). The only translated works you may use are those from Anglo-Saxon and Medieval English. Write your answer in ink in the Response Booklet. Place a checkmark in Instruction 4 on the front cover of the Response Booklet.
Topic 5 The presence or absence of loyalty is often a theme in literature.
Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
OR
Topic 6 A journey of some kind is important to many works of literature.
Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
OR
Topic 7 The meaning of a literary work may be enhanced by its reference to another work of art or literature. Support this statement with reference to at least three literary works.
Note: On the following page is the reading list from which students must select one work to reference.
Specified Readings List
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval
• from Beowulf
• Geoffrey Chaucer, from The Canterbury Tales, “The Prologue”
• “Bonny Barbara Allan”
• from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Renaissance and 17th Century
• Sir Thomas Wyatt, “Whoso List to Hunt”
• Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
• Sir Walter Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
• William Shakespeare,
Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”)
Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)
Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)
Hamlet, King Lear or The Tempest
• John Donne,
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”;
“Death, Be Not Proud”
• Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins”
• John Milton, “On His Blindness”; from Paradise Lost
• from The Diary of Samuel Pepys
18th Century and Romantic
• Lady Mary Chudleigh, “To the Ladies”
• Alexander Pope, from The Rape of the Lock
• Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”
• Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”
• William Blake, “The Tiger”; “The Lamb”
• Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
• William Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”; “The World Is
Too Much with Us”
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
• George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Apostrophe to the Ocean”
• Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”
• John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”; “When I Have Fears That I May
Cease to Be”
Victorian and 20th Century
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43
(“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”)
• Robert Browning,
“My Last Duchess”
• Emily Brontë, “Song”
• Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”
• Thomas Hardy, “The Darkling Thrush”
• Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
• Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est ”
• William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
• T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
• Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
• Stevie Smith, “Pretty”
• Margaret Atwood, “Disembarking at Quebec”
Friday, January 14, 2011
A Sick Patient and Human Nature
How many of us react with positive energy to face problems with an obvious solution if it requires changes of long standing habits of our foundational lifestyle. Too few, whether it is to lose weight or quit smoking because the doctor tells us we are risking a significant reduction in our lifespan as examples.
Perhaps this is why it is so difficult to bring about positive changes in how we educate our kids. We have known for many decades that we are on the wrong course. When Russia launched Sputnik there was a knee-jerk raising of standards but in only a few years we went back to the old “easy does it, higher standards are hard work” attitudes. Then in the mid-sixties we became concerned with plummeting SAT scores which took a step-function down at that time and have not recovered after decades of throwing money and words at the problem. Robert Kennedy said over a third of a century ago that the achievement gap was a stain our nation’s honor. The 1983 “A Nation at Risk” report decried the rising tide of mediocrity in our education system. There is a whole industry in place to highlight the problems of our education system. Lots of people even read their reports but positive action to break the disastrously bad habits of a system built on a faulty foundation of false underlying beliefs is not taken. The attitude seems to be, “who cares about the future, changing our beliefs is just too hard. The kids can change it if they want to when they take over.”
Have all of these warnings resulted in the patient taking the actions required to change our education system for the better? NO!! Big, expensive and misdirected efforts have wasted decades to no benefit for our kids or our competitiveness as a nation. Because of that our economic competitive situation has been weakened to the point where it will take a herculean effort to restore the margin of safety we have thrown away in our high activity, no benefit response to the challenges of the last five-plus decades.
For this report I will use two reports found on the Common Core website. The first is Why We’re Behind, What Top Nations Teach Their Students That We Don’t, the second is, Still at Risk, What Students Don’t Know, Even Now. First some direct quotes to provide background.
Why We’re Behind—Nations; Finland, Hong Kong, S. Korea, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, Switzerland
• Each of the nations that consistently outranks the United States on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences.
• We must join our desire to compete with other nations with a willingness to learn from them.
• While American students are spending endless hours preparing to take tests of their basic reading and math skills, their peers in high-performing nations are reading poetry and novels, conducting experiments in chemistry and physics, making music, and studying important historical issues. We are the only leading industrialized nation that considers the mastery of basic skills to be the goal of K-12 education. [emphasis added]
• We at Common Core believe that national standards will not improve education unless they acknowledge that content matters.
• . . .[T]he amount of time actually devoted to reading instruction in U.S. elementary schools is more than four times that devoted to science and social studies.
• Our students lagged behind their peers in top-scoring Finland by roughly two full grade levels in both [math and science].
• These very diverse nations ensure that their students receive a deep education in a broad range of subjects. Why is this important? Because America is on the opposite track. [emphasis added]
• High-performing countries have very specific content standards in a wide range of liberal arts subjects.
• . . . [T]he countries reviewed here also appear to share a belief that requiring students to master basic literacy and math skill is not sufficient for defining a well-rounded curriculum.
• The most recent comprehensive review of state standards from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (2006) finds that states “still produce vague platitudes instead of clear expectations. Knowledge is still subordinated to skills.” [emphasis added]
Still at Risk
This report offers a good definition of the primary mission of public schools. “The first mission of public schooling in a democratic nation is to equip every young person for the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship.” How are we doing on that mission? Not well!
The basis for this report is a 1200 person survey of randomly selected 17-year olds. The questions concentrated on history and literature knowledge of the respondents. Their assessment was:
It is easy to make light of such ignorance. In reality, however, a deep lack of knowledge is neither humorous nor trivial. What we know helps to determine how successful we are likely to be in life, and how many career paths we can choose from. It also affects our contribution as democratic citizens. Unfortunately, too many young Americans do not possess the kind of basic knowledge they need. When asked fundamental questions about U.S. history and culture, they score a D and exhibit stunning knowledge gaps:
• Nearly a quarter of those surveyed could not identify Adolf Hitler; 10 percent think he was a munitions manufacturer
• Fewer than half can place the Civil War in the correct half-century
• Only 45 percent can identify Oedipus
• A third do not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of speech and religion
• 44 percent think that The Scarlet Letter was either about a witch trial or a piece of correspondence
Our education system is like a computer programmed with “how to” skills. The problem is that no one thinks it is important to upload the data (background knowledge) to process with that computer. Also, far too much time is wasted by the “discovery/constructivist” methods for writing each student’s interface software. This method results in agonizingly slow, simplistic, start-from-scratch approaches to each new problem while our competitors provide robust background information across a wide spectrum of subjects to provide important foundational context to any intellectual study. Thus, our graduates don’t have the background knowledge or the higher level thinking processes they need to be effective in the world against their foreign peers.
Our educators faced with high-stakes tests that concentrate most on reading and math have carved out ever larger parts of the total school day to have time for teaching to the test. They use ineffective “how to” approaches that are void of content knowledge. This creates students who at best can only regurgitate the examples they have studied in their classes.
Missing is the breadth and depth of knowledge (and practice in reading and literacy and grammar) that traditionally was provided by studying an increasingly challenging group of great writings by some of the best authors of our cultural background. Missing too, is the in-depth study of history which also provides the chance to practice literacy and thinking skills.
The same things are true of math and the related study of science. So much time is spent teaching to the test that the foundational facts and optimized over centuries computational algorithms are not taught with any rigor. The party line is that you don’t need to know how to compute anymore because we have calculators. That is as wrong-headed as it can be because, for example, those algorithms like long division provide the tool needed to divide polynomials in algebra. With the current dumbed down approach in elementary schools, students “hit the wall” in middle and high school math studies and most do not attain a competent basis of algebra and higher math limiting their future college and career choices.
We focus on methods of teaching reading and math that are much slower than the methods of our competitor nations (at least the ones teaching their kids much more than we teach ours) which are based on a direct instruction technique taught by subject-competent teachers who build the foundation over the grades. Our slower process is ironic considering that our competitor nations tend to have significantly more days in their school years as well.
Therefore, no amount of money can fix this problem until we are willing to throw out the current content-free approach and replace it with a content-rich curriculum. That is why in spite of wasting billions of dollars trying to improve our education performance it doesn’t happen because the foundational approaches we take are contrary to every other country that is successful in beating us.
Sadly, the method our competitors are using is exactly that used by our American Common School movement starting in the 19th century and replaced slowly by the progressive methods starting at the turn of the Twentieth century, first in the education schools and then in full implementation across the land by the mid 1960s. By then students graduating from high school had been taught by the acolytes of the new system for their whole school career.
The question is, “Can we break this unhealthy education habit which harms our kids and our nation, or do we react like most do when the doctor tells them to lose weight or quit smoking, etc to be able to live a higher quality and longer life?”
Perhaps this is why it is so difficult to bring about positive changes in how we educate our kids. We have known for many decades that we are on the wrong course. When Russia launched Sputnik there was a knee-jerk raising of standards but in only a few years we went back to the old “easy does it, higher standards are hard work” attitudes. Then in the mid-sixties we became concerned with plummeting SAT scores which took a step-function down at that time and have not recovered after decades of throwing money and words at the problem. Robert Kennedy said over a third of a century ago that the achievement gap was a stain our nation’s honor. The 1983 “A Nation at Risk” report decried the rising tide of mediocrity in our education system. There is a whole industry in place to highlight the problems of our education system. Lots of people even read their reports but positive action to break the disastrously bad habits of a system built on a faulty foundation of false underlying beliefs is not taken. The attitude seems to be, “who cares about the future, changing our beliefs is just too hard. The kids can change it if they want to when they take over.”
Have all of these warnings resulted in the patient taking the actions required to change our education system for the better? NO!! Big, expensive and misdirected efforts have wasted decades to no benefit for our kids or our competitiveness as a nation. Because of that our economic competitive situation has been weakened to the point where it will take a herculean effort to restore the margin of safety we have thrown away in our high activity, no benefit response to the challenges of the last five-plus decades.
For this report I will use two reports found on the Common Core website. The first is Why We’re Behind, What Top Nations Teach Their Students That We Don’t, the second is, Still at Risk, What Students Don’t Know, Even Now. First some direct quotes to provide background.
Why We’re Behind—Nations; Finland, Hong Kong, S. Korea, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, Switzerland
• Each of the nations that consistently outranks the United States on the PISA exam provides their students with a comprehensive, content-rich education in the liberal arts and sciences.
• We must join our desire to compete with other nations with a willingness to learn from them.
• While American students are spending endless hours preparing to take tests of their basic reading and math skills, their peers in high-performing nations are reading poetry and novels, conducting experiments in chemistry and physics, making music, and studying important historical issues. We are the only leading industrialized nation that considers the mastery of basic skills to be the goal of K-12 education. [emphasis added]
• We at Common Core believe that national standards will not improve education unless they acknowledge that content matters.
• . . .[T]he amount of time actually devoted to reading instruction in U.S. elementary schools is more than four times that devoted to science and social studies.
• Our students lagged behind their peers in top-scoring Finland by roughly two full grade levels in both [math and science].
• These very diverse nations ensure that their students receive a deep education in a broad range of subjects. Why is this important? Because America is on the opposite track. [emphasis added]
• High-performing countries have very specific content standards in a wide range of liberal arts subjects.
• . . . [T]he countries reviewed here also appear to share a belief that requiring students to master basic literacy and math skill is not sufficient for defining a well-rounded curriculum.
• The most recent comprehensive review of state standards from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (2006) finds that states “still produce vague platitudes instead of clear expectations. Knowledge is still subordinated to skills.” [emphasis added]
Still at Risk
This report offers a good definition of the primary mission of public schools. “The first mission of public schooling in a democratic nation is to equip every young person for the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship.” How are we doing on that mission? Not well!
The basis for this report is a 1200 person survey of randomly selected 17-year olds. The questions concentrated on history and literature knowledge of the respondents. Their assessment was:
It is easy to make light of such ignorance. In reality, however, a deep lack of knowledge is neither humorous nor trivial. What we know helps to determine how successful we are likely to be in life, and how many career paths we can choose from. It also affects our contribution as democratic citizens. Unfortunately, too many young Americans do not possess the kind of basic knowledge they need. When asked fundamental questions about U.S. history and culture, they score a D and exhibit stunning knowledge gaps:
• Nearly a quarter of those surveyed could not identify Adolf Hitler; 10 percent think he was a munitions manufacturer
• Fewer than half can place the Civil War in the correct half-century
• Only 45 percent can identify Oedipus
• A third do not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of speech and religion
• 44 percent think that The Scarlet Letter was either about a witch trial or a piece of correspondence
Our education system is like a computer programmed with “how to” skills. The problem is that no one thinks it is important to upload the data (background knowledge) to process with that computer. Also, far too much time is wasted by the “discovery/constructivist” methods for writing each student’s interface software. This method results in agonizingly slow, simplistic, start-from-scratch approaches to each new problem while our competitors provide robust background information across a wide spectrum of subjects to provide important foundational context to any intellectual study. Thus, our graduates don’t have the background knowledge or the higher level thinking processes they need to be effective in the world against their foreign peers.
Our educators faced with high-stakes tests that concentrate most on reading and math have carved out ever larger parts of the total school day to have time for teaching to the test. They use ineffective “how to” approaches that are void of content knowledge. This creates students who at best can only regurgitate the examples they have studied in their classes.
Missing is the breadth and depth of knowledge (and practice in reading and literacy and grammar) that traditionally was provided by studying an increasingly challenging group of great writings by some of the best authors of our cultural background. Missing too, is the in-depth study of history which also provides the chance to practice literacy and thinking skills.
The same things are true of math and the related study of science. So much time is spent teaching to the test that the foundational facts and optimized over centuries computational algorithms are not taught with any rigor. The party line is that you don’t need to know how to compute anymore because we have calculators. That is as wrong-headed as it can be because, for example, those algorithms like long division provide the tool needed to divide polynomials in algebra. With the current dumbed down approach in elementary schools, students “hit the wall” in middle and high school math studies and most do not attain a competent basis of algebra and higher math limiting their future college and career choices.
We focus on methods of teaching reading and math that are much slower than the methods of our competitor nations (at least the ones teaching their kids much more than we teach ours) which are based on a direct instruction technique taught by subject-competent teachers who build the foundation over the grades. Our slower process is ironic considering that our competitor nations tend to have significantly more days in their school years as well.
Therefore, no amount of money can fix this problem until we are willing to throw out the current content-free approach and replace it with a content-rich curriculum. That is why in spite of wasting billions of dollars trying to improve our education performance it doesn’t happen because the foundational approaches we take are contrary to every other country that is successful in beating us.
Sadly, the method our competitors are using is exactly that used by our American Common School movement starting in the 19th century and replaced slowly by the progressive methods starting at the turn of the Twentieth century, first in the education schools and then in full implementation across the land by the mid 1960s. By then students graduating from high school had been taught by the acolytes of the new system for their whole school career.
The question is, “Can we break this unhealthy education habit which harms our kids and our nation, or do we react like most do when the doctor tells them to lose weight or quit smoking, etc to be able to live a higher quality and longer life?”
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
What Have We Lost? How Do We Get It Back?
Some of you may have seen the 8th Grade Final Exam from Salina, Kansas of 1895 before. It is appended at the end. The question I want to ponder is not, how would our current 8th graders do on such a test as it is obvious that even if modernized in geography, etc. that they would do poorly, but how would their teachers do? My guess is that if an updated test of this rigor were given to our teachers and administrators of all levels that the results would be very discouraging.
This look at the pre-progressive education era characterized by the American Common School approach of Horace Mann and others versus the current progressive, process only approach that eschews subject knowledge should point out clearly why our kids can’t compete well with their best performing global peers. Our kids are not being prepared to handle the kind of practical, real world problems highlighted by the 1895test. Our educators preach that the “how to” approach is superior. However, starting on every problem without a base of knowledge to build on is a process that doesn’t work in the global competition. Also, trying to communicate effectively when you don’t know the rules of grammar doesn’t help either. The kids of our competitor nations where the approach of the best performing ones is akin to the American Common School approach, have a knowledge base that allows them to not reinvent the wheel with every problem they face.
Our approach is so obviously to blame for the poor education our kids are getting that it would seem easy to fix. In principle it is easy, but our society flinches at the thought of applying the required KITA to our education establishment. KITA is short for Kick In The Attitude. It is not easy to tell our educators that they are not educated as Rita Kramer does in Ed School Follies. But it is true as would be pointed out clearly if a rigorous 8th grade test of the type below were given to graduate ed school products up to and including the doctorate level.
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS - 1895
Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of 'lie,' 'play,' and 'run.'
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7. - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft Deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. Coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt
U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.
Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals.
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.'
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis-mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane , vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.
Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.
This look at the pre-progressive education era characterized by the American Common School approach of Horace Mann and others versus the current progressive, process only approach that eschews subject knowledge should point out clearly why our kids can’t compete well with their best performing global peers. Our kids are not being prepared to handle the kind of practical, real world problems highlighted by the 1895test. Our educators preach that the “how to” approach is superior. However, starting on every problem without a base of knowledge to build on is a process that doesn’t work in the global competition. Also, trying to communicate effectively when you don’t know the rules of grammar doesn’t help either. The kids of our competitor nations where the approach of the best performing ones is akin to the American Common School approach, have a knowledge base that allows them to not reinvent the wheel with every problem they face.
Our approach is so obviously to blame for the poor education our kids are getting that it would seem easy to fix. In principle it is easy, but our society flinches at the thought of applying the required KITA to our education establishment. KITA is short for Kick In The Attitude. It is not easy to tell our educators that they are not educated as Rita Kramer does in Ed School Follies. But it is true as would be pointed out clearly if a rigorous 8th grade test of the type below were given to graduate ed school products up to and including the doctorate level.
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS - 1895
Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of 'lie,' 'play,' and 'run.'
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7. - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft Deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. Coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt
U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.
Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals.
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.'
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis-mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane , vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.
Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Education FUQs
Everyone is used to FAQs showing up on websites, especially for tech support when they want you to figure it out for yourself so they don’t have to spend as much of their resources to handhold their customers through technical problems. In education the objective is the opposite. They don’t want any questions at all. Education FUQs are Frequently Unasked Questions about our education system and its realities. The thesis is that unasked questions are unanswered questions. Most of you are probably a bit nonplussed because for most school districts the flow of information from them is robust and it makes you assume that everything is as well as could be expected with the “stingy budgets” they have to work with. Following are some favorite unasked questions and some abbreviated answers. The hope is that they will motivate you to begin asking your local schools some of these questions and that you do not accept their answer as the truth without significant follow up questions and some independent research. If you do it well, your conclusion will surely be that the information from the educators is at best slanted propaganda and at worst outright lies. Sorry if that puts you off but it is true.
FUQs related to education in America
1. How does my local school’s student achievement compare to other education entities, globally? A favorite game played by school districts is to compare themselves to only other districts within the same state or local area. To assess your school district’s performance you must measure it against the best global competition. This is really the only metric that matters.
2. Why can’t we seem to make progress on reducing the achievement gap between the minority and poor kids and their demographically better off peers? Robert Kennedy called the achievement gap a stain on our national honor over 3 decades ago. Yet, the problem is worse now than when he commented on it. Billions of dollars have been spent but to no avail except for enriching the adults who work in education.
3. Why do educators always clamor for more money, more money, more money? Two reasons. First, it makes a great excuse for not performing better since they can claim we didn’t provide them with all the resources they say they need to do their job. Second, it is greed so that the individuals and the power groups who make their living at the public education trough can be further enriched and politically empowered. One fact to ponder is that the funding per pupil in American education has increased by about twice the rate of inflation for over 4 decades. Yet, achievement of the students has not improved and in some ways is worse.
4. Is it reasonable to use graduation from an education school teacher or leadership program as the basis for certification? No, the education schools are basically diploma mills whose purpose is to extract money from the education system to fund other parts of the university. They provide little rigor and virtually none in subject matter.
5. Is it reasonable to pay teachers based on years of experience rather than their performance? No.
6. Are education doctorates required for superintendents to perform their jobs? No, if they were of value our education performance would be top notch not abysmal as is the reality. We have an oversupply of education doctorates and an undersupply of competent education leaders.
7. Why do politicians legislate education funding by specifying process very tightly in a one size fits all formula rather than specifying the required results with penalties in resource availability if the results are not attained? Short answer—the legislatures want to lock the status quo in place to please their campaign donors.
There are many more questions that need to be asked. However, if you start with these you will be much further along than most on the road to objective understanding of our failed education process.
FUQs related to education in America
1. How does my local school’s student achievement compare to other education entities, globally? A favorite game played by school districts is to compare themselves to only other districts within the same state or local area. To assess your school district’s performance you must measure it against the best global competition. This is really the only metric that matters.
2. Why can’t we seem to make progress on reducing the achievement gap between the minority and poor kids and their demographically better off peers? Robert Kennedy called the achievement gap a stain on our national honor over 3 decades ago. Yet, the problem is worse now than when he commented on it. Billions of dollars have been spent but to no avail except for enriching the adults who work in education.
3. Why do educators always clamor for more money, more money, more money? Two reasons. First, it makes a great excuse for not performing better since they can claim we didn’t provide them with all the resources they say they need to do their job. Second, it is greed so that the individuals and the power groups who make their living at the public education trough can be further enriched and politically empowered. One fact to ponder is that the funding per pupil in American education has increased by about twice the rate of inflation for over 4 decades. Yet, achievement of the students has not improved and in some ways is worse.
4. Is it reasonable to use graduation from an education school teacher or leadership program as the basis for certification? No, the education schools are basically diploma mills whose purpose is to extract money from the education system to fund other parts of the university. They provide little rigor and virtually none in subject matter.
5. Is it reasonable to pay teachers based on years of experience rather than their performance? No.
6. Are education doctorates required for superintendents to perform their jobs? No, if they were of value our education performance would be top notch not abysmal as is the reality. We have an oversupply of education doctorates and an undersupply of competent education leaders.
7. Why do politicians legislate education funding by specifying process very tightly in a one size fits all formula rather than specifying the required results with penalties in resource availability if the results are not attained? Short answer—the legislatures want to lock the status quo in place to please their campaign donors.
There are many more questions that need to be asked. However, if you start with these you will be much further along than most on the road to objective understanding of our failed education process.
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