The top ten mistakes in education. Twenty years later.

It has been 20 years since I wrote about the top ten mistakes in education. Although this list is on many places on the web, here is the original link:

http://www.engines4ed.org/hyperbook/nodes/NODE-283-pg.html

The ten mistakes I listed were these (go the site to see what I said about each):

Mistake #1: Schools act as if learning can be disassociated from doing.

Mistake #2: Schools believe they have the job of assessment as part of their natural role 

Mistake #3: Schools believe they have an obligation to create standard curricula.

Mistake #4: Teachers believe they ought to tell students what they think it is important to know.

Mistake #5: Schools believe instruction can be independent of motivation for actual use.

Mistake #6: Schools believe studying is an important part of learning.

Mistake #7: Schools believe that grading according to age group is an intrinsic part of the organization of a school.

 Mistake #8: Schools believe children will accomplish things only by having grades to strive for.

 Mistake #9: Schools believe discipline is an inherent part of learning.

 Mistake #10: Schools believe students have a basic interest in learning whatever it is schools decide to teach to them.

Twenty years have passed. Surely my writing about this and other’s re-posting and writing about this have had a big effect on education. Let’s look at them one by one:

Mistake #1: Schools act as if learning can be disassociated from doing.

Yes. Things have changed. They are worse. The latest horror is MOOCs which is just more talking and insists on the idea the education means knowledge transfer and that knowledge can be acquired by listening.

Mistake #2: Schools believe they have the job of assessment as part of their natural role 

Yes. Things have really changed here. They are much worse. Before there were just lots of bad tests. Now there are tests at every grade. Tests to get ready for the test. And now -- teacher evaluations based on the tests.

Mistake #3: Schools believe they have an obligation to create standard curricula.

Wow! This one has gotten even worse than the others. Now it isn’t schools that create standard curricula it is Bill Gates, Common Core, the US Department of Education and every state Department of Education. We sure fixed that one.  

Mistake #4: Teachers believe they ought to tell students what they think it is important to know.

I am not sure about this one. I don’t think teachers think much of anything anymore other than how to survive in a system where they are not valued and teaching doesn’t matter except with respect to test scores.

Mistake #5: Schools believe instruction can be independent of motivation for actual use.

No change. Still no use for algebra, physics formulae, random knowledge about history or literature. No use for anything taught in school actually, after reading, writing, and arithmetic. 

Mistake #6: Schools believe studying is an important part of learning.

No change. 

Mistake #7: Schools believe that grading according to age group is an intrinsic part of the organization of a school.

No change. 

 Mistake #8: Schools believe children will accomplish things only by having grades to strive for.

No change.

 Mistake #9: Schools believe discipline is an inherent part of learning.

Perhaps this has changed. There seems to be a lot less discipline.

 Mistake #10: Schools believe students have a basic interest in learning whatever it is schools decide to teach to them.

Nah. No one believes that anymore.

I am not only one loudly talking into the wind. There are lots of people who agree with me and say things similar to what I say. 

Is there anyone listening?

Sure. Parents are noticing how stupid the tests are and how stupid Common Core is. The kids are noticing, now more than ever. The teachers are upset.

Is anyone listening to them? No. There is big money at stake in keeping things as they are.

Well, that's the report from 20 years on the front lines. We shall not retreat, but victory looks to be far away.

The lost art of conversation -- or-- why thinking is on it's way out

I was walking on the beach in Florida and thinking about how the young people I passed were not all on their cell phones (as seems usual when I walk down the streets of New York.) I wondered if maybe the beach was one place where people were actually just letting their minds wander and relax. But soon enough I noticed the phones and people were texting and taking pictures of themselves.

I was reminded of Wittgenstein’s 3 B’s. He said that all important thinking takes place in the Bed, in the Bath, or on The Bus. (I guess he didn’t go to the Beach.) His point was that in order to think clearly one needs to let one’s mind relax and avoid outside stimuli because it is one’s unconscious mind that does the real thinking. My question is: does anyone think any more?

One way people used to communicate was by writing letters. To me the main point of writing a letter was to find out what you yourself were thinking. Today everyone wants to text or tweet. Do they have to think in order to do that? In order to find out what everyday people are tweeting (I understand that many people, including me, tweet to get their ideas out to a community of which they are part.

Here are some tweets that came up when I typed my last name into twitter. They are from (3) teenage girls I am guessing:

There is just something really special about snow.

IU is just so cool❤

Bloomington bound

I really, really, hate when I accidentally favorite things. And most of the time, I favorite things from people I don't even know that well

I've come to the conclusion I really need to get some friends

Finally get to play my game!! 

My game better be finished downloading when I get home or ill be so upset 

Hate stupid shifts like this like 8-1 if you're gunna get me up early why cant I have a full fucking shift 

COOOOOOL ...

Leggings have made me realize how uncomfortable jeans really are

Hahahahha omg   

I guess these are conversations in a sense but they are not ones that are causing anyone to think very hard. If everyone is tweeting, checking for tweets, texting, or plugged into some sound or other, when does anyone let their mind wander and think?

One problem with not letting one’s unconscious free to muse every now and then is that real learning, real education, is about dialogue. (Aristotle certainly made this clear as does any professor who talks with students rather than lecturing at them.) No dialogue, no hard thinking. 

School is busy pressing on with “its all about testing” philosophy so even if their were teachers inclined to engage young people in dialogue they probably wouldn’t have much of a chance to do it.

So where does this leave us as a society? We stop any conversation we might be having in order to answer a text. We don’t have the opportunity to find out what we think because we never muse and talk with about our ideas. We text on the Bus. We text in the Bath (or listen to headphones). We are texting goodnight as we go to Bed.

I read recently where sharks are tweeting their location. Soon, perhaps our bodies can tweet how they are doing. Our stomachs will tweet that they are hungry. No one will have to think or talk at all.

Do Gifted Programs Improve Learning? (wow! really dumb question)

This is the actual title of an actual article published in the The Atlantic. I am saying this in this way because the question itself is absurd. What does it mean to “improve learning?” How can you improve learning? Does learning need improvement? I am upset by this question because in today’s world this almost seems like a meaningful idea.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/do-gifted-programs-improve-learning/282532/

What the writer means to ask, of course, is if gifted and talented programs improve test scores. This too is a silly question because you need good test scores to get into them in the first place. The right question is whether gifted programs make school any more interesting or relevant. My grandson Milo is in one at P.S. 10 in Brooklyn. When I ask him how school is, he always answers “boring.”

I was in one myself, although they didn’t call it that in my day. They called them the one classes. If you were in 6-1 in P.S. 247 you were in the smart class. If you were in 6-6 you were in the dumb class. (Also, given that this was Bensonhurst, this also meant that your parents were likely in the Mafia and you had been thrown out of Catholic School.)

If you asked me about school, I would have told you it was boring.

At the moment I am trying to learn how to improve my softball swing. I have a mentor I ask to look at what I am doing and occasionally he provides tips. He told me I was holding the bat wrong the other day. All these years of softball and no one had ever mentioned this to me. Now I am hitting better. I have improved my hitting not my learning.

We need to recognize that school should be about improving kid’s life -- about encouraging him to think new thoughts -- about giving him new abilities -- or about coming up with new ambitions. But, in this test crazed world we have created, we want to improve learning, which is not only meaningless, but insane.

In other news, the article says that gifted programs improve nothing. Not true. What they improve is a kid’s safety. What we have always meant by a “good school” is a safe school. I would have been beaten up regularly had I been in the 6-6 class. And that is why I am happy that Milo is in the gifted class, not because his learning will be improved.

OECD should stop pushing math in the name of reasoning and do its job

As I write this I am at sea, both literally and figuratively. I was just getting away from it all for a week, but now as the week comes to an end, I see I simply can’t get away from it in any way. By “it” I mean the general absurdity of the nonsense we say and do about education.

Today I read an article about an OECD report:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/world/asia/oecd-warns-west-on-education-gaps.html?src=rechp&_r=0

The article talks about how terrible it is that  Sweden’s PISA scores are slipping and quotes the U.K. education minister blaming the U.K.’s poor performance on the labor party. Do really need international math contests? 

Apparently we do because OECD’s real mission seems to be to standardize teaching around the world. I have been loudly against Common Core’s attempts to do this in the U.S., an idea being pushed by Bill Gates for reasons best known to himself.

The standard canard that one hears in every report about low math scores is that math teaches reasoning and problem solving skills and is critical for surviving in the 21st century. OECD says that their “mathematics test required creativity and problem solving skills based on a deep understanding of mathematical concepts.” Uh huh. “Math teaches creativity and problem solving” has almost become a religious proverb.

I have this odd idea that one should have evidence for statements one makes, especially statements that large organizations make that affect everyone.

Where is the evidence that math teaches problem solving and reasoning? It doesn’t exist.

As an example, I will talk about myself for a minute. I was a math major in college. I liked math and was very good at it.

Now let’s talk about my math ability has helped me solve problems and reason in  my own life. We all do many kinds of reasoning but three areas most of us need to reason about are relationships with people, business/everyday decision making and decisions about our own health.

Let’s start with the last one. I am getting older and health decisions come up again and again. I find that I am not particularly adept at making them. I don’t know enough for one thing. Also doctor’s say contradictory things so I have to figure whom to trust. There are many issues I worry about and nearly as many answers from various sources about them. Maybe I am better at making my medical decisions than others and maybe I am not, but my math ability has absolutely nothing to do with it. If only I were a better mathematician than surely I would be great at making the medical decisions I need to make? Does this sentence make sense to anyone?

Oh, but personal decision making, my math ability has surely helped there right? I can’t think of any area of my life that it has helped less. Love is not an equation. Nor is parenting, Nor do relationships at work go well because you can do algebra.

Business? I suppose it depends on what kind of business you are in.

The voyage I am on as I write this has taken me to some very rich places and some very poor places. In one of poor places, a place I have been to many times, I met with a university president. He is worried about the education he his offering to his students because there really are no jobs for them where he lives. We discussed teaching practical business and entrepreneurial skills. We did not discuss the need for more mathematics.

Later I visited a very wealthy place, a place where people who are rich have second and third homes. The other people there are people who work for low wages to help rich people live easier lives. More mathematics would have helped the poor people there I am sure. They could reason better and then...  Ooops. They would still be stuck living where they live in the economic and cultural situation that exists there. Surely the rich people got there by reasoning so well because they have learned mathematics. 

This sounds so silly it is difficult to write it without laughing. Rich people become (or are born) rich for many reasons. Were they all good at math?

Just as I was asking myself this question, my ship passed by a private island that I recognized because it belongs to a friend of mine and I had been there. Is my friend very good at mathematics? Yes. It turns out he is. Does he make money from being good at mathematics? Yes. It turns out he does. So how is my friend doing in other areas of his life and in other decisions he makes? To my mind -- not so well -- but it is not for me to judge. 

Suffice it to say that mathematics ability does not teach reasoning in general. Why don’t we teach reasoning in general? Everyone agrees that it is very important. Maybe we don’t know how.

But we do know how. The problem is that mathematics is easier to test. Reasoning would be more amorphous, there would be less certainty about right answers, in fact there would be many possible answers. There is also a cultural component. Reasoning about how to fix a social or economic problem would be different in any given place because the answers would depend upon the many factors that make up that place. There are good places and bad places to build a luxury hotel for example. While certainly some simple mathematics would be part of the decision making process about such a business idea, the answer would depend upon many factors most of which would be difficult to assess in a multiple choice test.

OECD has to get smarter. Pay attention to your own name. Teach economic and cultural development. Stop the nonsense about PISA scores and start thinking about what kids in different populations need to learn to do. Reason? Solve problems? Sure. Teach them to solve real problems, ones that exist in the environment in which they live. Forget the math problems.

Frank Bruni thinks kids are too coddled; I think kids are too tested; The Times fight for Common Core again

It seems if you write for the NY Times you must about why Common Core is wonderful.  I don’t know why. Sunday Frank Bruni wrote a column about how today’s kids are coddled. I couldn’t agree  more. Every game ends in a tie. No one can walk anywhere by themselves. Now I am done agreeing with Bruni. Here is some of the nonsense he wrote:

I behold the pushback against more rigorous education standards in general and the new Common Core curriculum in particular. And it came to mind when Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently got himself into a big mess. Duncan, defending the Common Core at an education conference, identified some of its most impassioned opponents as “white suburban moms” who were suddenly learning that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good.”

So, this is absurd. Common Core is being fought against because it means school is testing testing testing and  what is being tested it boring at best and basically stultifying.

 If you follow the fevered lamentations over the Common Core, look hard at some of the complaints from parents and teachers, and factor in the modern cult of self-esteem, you can guess what set Duncan off: a concern, wholly justified, that tougher instruction not be rejected simply because it makes children feel inadequate, and that the impulse to coddle kids not eclipse the imperative to challenge them.

More nonsense. People are fighting because mathematics is being rammed down the throats of kids who will never use it. Because science has been reduced to rote memorization and because reading has been made in to a painful activity.

The Common Core, a laudable set of guidelines that emphasize analytical thinking over rote memorization, has been adopted in more than 40 states. In instances its implementation has been flawed, and its accompanying emphasis on testing certainly warrants debate.

NO. They emphasize memorization and testing. How would like to take test sall day Frank? How would like to learn things that you didn’t want to learn just because some testing companies  have realized that that stuff is easy to test?

What’s not warranted is the welling hysteria: from right-wing alarmists, who hallucinate a federal takeover of education and the indoctrination of a next generation of government-loving liberals; from left-wing paranoiacs, who imagine some conspiracy to ultimately privatize education and create a new frontier of profits for money-mad plutocrats.

Come on. Common Core is not right wing issue any more that it is a left wing issue. It is a business issue. Bill Gate is behind it and big money is at stake. The idea that kids can learn what interests them to learn is out the window. How is that a political issue?

Then there’s the outcry, equally reflective of the times, from adults who assert that kids aren’t enjoying school as much; feel a level of stress that they shouldn’t have to; are being judged too narrowly; and doubt their own mettle.

  

That is a weird idea. Kids should enjoy learning. Of course not. Terrible idea right Frank?

Aren’t aspects of school supposed to be relatively mirthless? Isn’t stress an acceptable byproduct of reaching higher and digging deeper?  

No, stress and learning are unrelated. Were you stressed from writing this column Frank? Did you learn anything from writing it? Will you learn anything from what I am writing? Will you find it stressful?

Before we beat a hasty retreat from potentially crucial education reforms, we need to ask ourselves how much panic is trickling down to kids from their parents and whether we’re paying the price of having insulated kids from blows to their egos and from the realization that not everyone’s a winner in every activity on every day.

This has nothing to do with the Common Core issues. The curriculum is awful. See if you can pass any of the tests.

David Coleman, one of the principal architects of the Common Core, told me that he’s all for self-esteem, but that rigorous standards “redefine self-esteem as something achieved through hard work.”

Achieved through hard work that you want to do not that you are being made to do. Hard work that accomplished a goal that you have not that someone else has for you.

And they’ll be ready to compete globally, an ability that too much worry over their egos could hinder. As Tucker observed, “While American parents are pulling their kids out of tests because the results make the kids feel bad, parents in other countries are looking at the results and asking themselves how they can help their children do better.”

They will be able to compete globally? In the math competition? We aren’t teaching them computer skills or business skills or entrepreneurial skills or invention skills or even social skills. We are teaching them test taking skills, so maybe they will win the math prize. Hooray!

People are excited about or afraid of online education because…

I learned something yesterday. (This is not an everyday experience at my age.) I met with a group of faculty from a university that was thinking about adopting some of my online learn by doing curricula. I don’t typically meet with faculty about this because in general faculty don't care about educational change and they aren’t the decision makers anyway. I learned that I had been invited to talk with the faculty to allay their fears about online education.

I hadn’t really thought about this before. Of course, I know that faculty at places like San Jose State are objecting to MOOCs for a valid reason. MOOCs are providing canned lectures to students that are essentially faculty job eliminators. Stanford may be pushing MOOCs but they surely won’t be using them much. Faculty need to lecture in order to pay the bills. At places like Stanford, the faculty care about research and… did I mention research? They should be happy to not have to lecture. But, if they don’t who will pay their salaries? Some superstars can pay their own salaries from their research funds, but the average faculty member is actually being paid to teach, despite the fact that they get no respect for it and often do it badly. Stanford will muddle on and will be around for a long time. Not so San Jose State, which could easily disappear if State officials widely adopt MOOCs.

So, at the meeting I had with a good, but hardly Ivy League, private college, the faculty were afraid. I didn't realize what they were afraid of exactly for a while.

It was me.

They were afraid of me. They were the kind of faculty that dominates the educational landscape but not the kind of faculty that I have encountered in my professor’s life at Stanford, Yale, and Northwestern. While research dominates the life of faculty whom I have lived with, teaching dominates the life of the faculty with whom I was talking yesterday.

They were worried that if their university adopted my online master degree programs they would lose their jobs. After listening to me talk for a while (I was still at this point oblivious to their concerns,)  they started making odd statements like:

So you think that the problem at universities is that their isn’t enough good teaching?

Yes.

Your on line courses wouldn’t take away our jobs?

Hardly, we would need you to supervise the new mentors you would have to hire.

And my last and favorite:

Isn’t this the way people have always learned and universities always used to teach?

Yes. Exactly. Mother chimps teach their children by showing them what to do and then helping them do it. Professors teach PhD students one on one, supervising their work as they try things out. No one gives lectures to their children at home.

Online learning, in my mind at least, was always supposed to make learning more fun, more relevant to each particular student, and was meant to require a heavy investment from faculty to improve the nature of the university by better teaching. This does not necessarily mean more teaching, but rather individualizing teaching just in time in a way that online learning makes possible. 

So this is another thing MOOCs have screwed up. They have put faculty in fear of losing their jobs (rightly so) when the real issue is how to use online learning to improve the teacher-student experience.

Here is a picture of me doing one on one teaching with my grandson. I am teaching him how to handicap a horse race:

Charlie Trotter taught us what creativity and entrepreneurship are all about; school has nothing to do with either

I don’t usually write obituaries and this isn’t one, but it starts off that way. Charlie Trotter died yesterday. For those that never heard of him, he was one of the most inventive chefs I ever met. Here is the obit in the Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/dining/charlie-trotter-chicago-chef-who-elevated-american-dining-dies-at-54.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&_r=0

I met Charlie when I moved to Northwestern. He had opened his restaurant a year or two earlier. I loved his originality. Everything he prepared was unusual and unique for you. By that I mean he never served a customer something he had served him before. He once forced me to eat Halibut. I said I didn’t like Halibut and he said it was coming anyway and if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t have to pay. It was great and I happily paid.

I held my 50th birthday party at Charlie’s. I handed him the menu for my 40th (which was in Paris at Robuchon, the best in Paris at that time). I said he needed to beat what Robuchon had done because most of my current guests had been to my 40th as well. And beat it he did. He was  a great chef. I really liked him.

But that is not why I am writing this. I am writing this for all the young people out there who don’t know what to do with their lives and who think the answer is more school. 

While his food was great, for me he serves as a lesson to people who want to entrepreneurs, who want to be creative, or who simply have a passion for something. Here is a brief bit about him from the Chicago Tribune:

“I thought cooking out of a cookbook and following a recipe was not unlike doing a math problem: You had to measure everything out; you had to follow the directions meticulously; you couldn't deviate; otherwise the recipe wouldn't work,” he says. “So I cooked that way for about six months, and then I began to realize: Hey, tomatoes are out of season, so I'm not going to use tomatoes — I'm going to find something else to use. Or, I don't want so many mushrooms in the dish, so I'm going to cut back on the mushrooms.”

Trotter worked as a waiter, a bartender and a host at some Madison restaurants before ending up back on the North Shore. At that time restaurant work was considered more of a blue-collar pursuit — it certainly wasn't among the preferred professions for the New Trier set — but Trotter found his experiences “really cool” and considered having a go at it.

“What's the worst that could happen?” he says he thought. “I can always go back to graduate school or business school or law school or something.”

Full article to be found here:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-28/entertainment/chi-charlie-trotter-chicago-chef-part-1-20120827_1_charlie-trotter-gt-fish-oyster-giuseppe-tentori/4

School isn’t going to get you where you need to go. You yourself will have to do that. You have to decide what you care about, who you are, and jump into it with both feet. When you are ready, find a great teacher. And when you are find you are good at it, do it your way and don’t be dissuaded.

Charlie Trotter was the best at what he did and he loved doing it. He had to learn how to cook, how to manage people, how to deal with customers, and how to run a business. He had his own unique style that he kept improving. I ate there four or five times a year while I was at Northwestern. During those 11 years the restaurant was constantly changing. A 1989 meal was not very much like a 2000 meal. He was clearly satisfying his toughest critic (himself) all the time.

Eventually he spawned so many imitators (including many people he had trained,) that he created a lot of competition for himself. This happens to people with a strong vision who have great drive. It doesn’t always end prettily but the ride is great fun.

To be a creative, successful, entrepreneur never stop learning. School has very little to do it with it. 

As I said to Milo the other day “do you know who your most important teacher is?” He looked at me and said “you?”

“No,” I said, “it is you.” Be your own best teacher. Charlie was.