The Law of the Teacher
The first law - the Law of the Teacher - states the teacher must know that which he would teach.
Teachers who are partly prepared or wholly unprepared, writes Gregory, are like messengers without a message. The unknowing teacher is like the blind trying to lead the blind with only an empty lamp to light the way.
A well-prepared teacher, on the other hand, awakens in his pupils the active desire to study further.
We follow with expectation and delight the guide who has a thorough knowledge of the field we wish to explore, but we follow reluctantly and without interest the ignorant and incompetent leader.
The Law of the Learner
The second law - the Law of the Learner - states the learner must attend with interest to the material to be learned.
The basic premise underlying this law is that without paying attention the student cannot learn. The student must think. He must work with a fixed aim and purpose - in other words, with attention.
Since attention follows interest, it is folly to attempt to gain attention without first stimulating interest.
The teacher who would win the richest and best results of teaching should give to the Law of the Learner his best thought and most thorough obedience. He should master the art of gaining and keeping attention, and exciting genuine interest, and he will rejoice at the fruitfulness of his work.
The Law of the Language
The third law - the Law of the Language - states the language used in teaching must be common to teacher and learner. Stated differently, the language used in teaching must be understood by each, with the same meaning to both teacher and student.
Not what the speaker expresses from his own mind, but what the hearer understands and reproduces in his mind, measures the communicating power of the language used.
In all effective teaching, thought passes in two directions - from the pupil to teacher as well as from teacher to pupil. It is as necessary for the teacher fully to understand the child, as for the child to understand the teacher.
Children do not always ask for explanations, discouraged sometimes by fear of the teacher, or shame for their ignorance, and too often they are charged with stupidity or inattention when no amount of attention would have helped them to understand the unfamiliar language. The effective teacher will make his words clear to his students and work hard at understanding the words of his students.
The Law of the Learning Process
The sixth law - the Law of the Learning Process - states the student must reproduce in his own mind the truth to be learned.
Gregory states: The laws of teaching and learning may seem at first to be only different aspects of the same law, but they are really quite distinct - the one applying to the work of the instructor, the other to that of the one receiving the instruction. The law of the teaching process involves the means by which the self-activities are to be awakened, the law of the learning process determines the manner in which these activities shall be employed.
If we observe a child as he studies, and note carefully what he does, we shall easily see that it is not merely an effort of the attention nor a vague and purposeless exertion of his power, that is required of him. There is a clear and distinct act or process which we wish him to accomplish. It is to form in his mind, by use of his own powers, a true concept of the facts or principles in the lesson. This is the purpose to which all efforts of teacher and pupil must be directed.
The discoverer borrows largely of facts known to others, and the student must add to what he studies from his own experience. His aim should be to become an independent searcher in the fields of knowledge, not merely a passive learner at the hands of others.
The Law of Review and Application
The seventh law - the Law of Review and Application - states the completion, test and confirmation of the work of teaching must be made by review and application.
Gregory writes: The statement of this law seeks to include the chief aims of the review: (1) to perfect knowledge, (2) to confirm knowledge, and (3) to render this knowledge ready and useful.
The ablest and most successful teacher is the one who secures from his pupils the most frequent, thorough, and interesting reviews.
A review is more than a repetition. It involves fresh conceptions and new associations, and brings an increase of facility and power.
Each review establishes new associations, while at the same time it familiarizes and strengthens the old. The lesson that is studied but once is likely learned only to be forgotten. That which is thoroughly and repeatedly reviewed is woven into the very fabric of our thoughts, and becomes a part of our equipment of knowledge. Not what a pupil has once learned and recited, but what he permanently remembers and uses is the correct measure of his achievement.
Return to Index
Reading: The Root of All Learning
Reading is the heart of education, the basic skill upon which all others are built.
Reading skill serves as the major avenue of learning about other people, about history, geography and social studies, the language arts, the fine arts, science, mathematics, and other content subjects that must be mastered in school.
Effortless reading is mandatory for success in all academic areas. There is no question that an individual's reading skills affect other academic areas.
When children do not learn to read with ease, their general knowledge, their spelling and writing abilities, and their vocabulary development suffer.
Although reading, and the skills associated with reading, are crucial to the educative process, it is important to note that word recognition, phonics, and other decoding skills do not exist in an educational vacuum. Reading and writing skills - as important as they are - cannot be treated as simply skills, independent of specific knowledge - content.
To find meaning in the words he is reading, the student has to know a lot of information that is not contained in the words on the page. The reading skill of the student will vary greatly from passage to passage depending on the relevant background information that the student possesses. What counts is the student's ability to grasp what he is reading and tie it to what he already knows.
To demonstrate this point I borrow an illustration from E.D. Hirsch, Jr. "Waltzing Matilda" is a song known to every Australian, but understood by few Americans - though any American child could easily be taught to decode and pronounce each word.
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billy-bong,
Under the shade of a kulibar tree,
And he sang as he sat and waited for his billy-boil,
"You'll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me."
A swagman is a hobo, a billy-bong is a brook or a pond, a kulibar is a eucalyptus, a billy-boil is coffee, and waltzing Matilda doesn't mean dancing with a girl named Matilda; it means walking with a certain kind of knapsack.
I use this illustration to point out the fact that although a student may be able to decode and pronounce individual words, he will not be able to gain an integrated sense of a passage as a whole if he lacks the relevant background information needed to give meaning to the passage he is reading.
In Cultural Literacy, E.D. Hirsch Jr. makes the following observation:
Every text, even the most elementary, implies information that it takes for granted and doesn't explain. Knowing such information is the decisive skill of reading.
The dichotomy between skills and content is a false dichotomy. Skills and content must not be pitted against one another. It should not be a question of either skills or content, but both skills and content. Content is the milieu in which skills find meaningful expression.
Return to Index
The "Great Debate"
Discussions of educational issues often veer into "either/or" oppositions. One of those discussions revolves around the "great debate" as to how children should be taught to read - either by phonics or by whole language.
In Why Our Children Can't Read And What We Can Do About It, Diane McGuinness writes:
According to the tenets of whole language, children can "discover" how to read and spell on their own. They can do this because whole language advocates believe that spoken and written language are essentially alike, and should be learned the same way, "naturally." (pages 6 & 7)
The word "phonics" is problematic as well because it is used in two entirely different ways. In Adam's book (Marilyn Adam's Beginning to Read), "phonics" means anything to do with teaching "sounds" as contrasted to teaching whole words. The other meaning refers to a type of reading program. But there are diametrically opposing ways to teach "sounds." One way, traditional "phonics," is to teach "the sounds of letters." The other way, which doesn't yet have a name, teaches the "sounds of the language" and how these sounds are mapped to letters. (page 101)
To learn an alphabetic writing system, a child must be taught the sounds of his language and be trained to hear the order of these sounds in words, because it is these sounds that the letters represent. The next step is to teach children how each of these sounds can be spelled in a carefully sequenced way. (page 12)
Children must be given direct, systematic instruction in letter-sound correspondences because learning to read is not a natural process. Written English is a code, and one needs to give children the keys to crack the code. Early, systematic letter-sound instruction is indispensable in teaching children the code of written English. Once the code is known children should have experience reading words in meaningful context.
Teaching children to "crack the code" can best be achieved using multi-sensory, sensorimotor instruction. Each student's strengths and weaknesses in their learning patterns can best be addressed through four avenues: sound, voice, sight and writing.
Through multi-sensory instruction the student hears the teacher say the sound, repeats (says) the sound, sees the symbol, and writes the symbol.
Deliberate, coherent, direct instruction in letter-sound correspondences gives children the tools they need to gain access, on their own, to authentic, meaningful texts.
Return to Index
The Other 3-Rs
Reading, Writing, and Arithmatic are the disciplines referred to as The 3-Rs. An excellent education will include, but not be limited to, a solid grounding in these three disciplines.
There is, however, another set of 3-Rs - Respect, Restraint, and Responsibility. Respect, restraint and responsibility are integral ingredients of an education that is excellent. I like to think of them as the climate - the atmosphere - in which the first 3-Rs can find meaningful expression.
On pages 43-45 in Educating For Character, Thomas Lickona writes:
Respect means showing regard for the worth of someone or something. It takes three major forms: respect for oneself, respect for other people and respect for all forms of life and the environment that sustains them.
Respect for self requires us to treat our life and person as having inherent value. That's why it is wrong to engage in self-destructive behavior such as drug or alcohol abuse. Respect for others requires us to treat all other human beings - even those we dislike - as having dignity and rights equal to our own. Respect for the whole complex web of life prohibits cruelty to animals and calls us to act with care toward the natural environment, the fragile ecosystem on which all life depends.
Responsibility is an extension of respect. If we respect other people, we value them. If we value them, we feel a measure of responsibility for their welfare.
Responsibility literally means "ability to respond." It means orienting toward others, paying attention to them, actively responding to their needs. Responsibility emphasizes our positive obligations to care for each other.
Where respect says "Don't hurt," responsibility says "Do help." It's true that the call to "love your neighbor" and "think of others" is open-ended; it doesn't tell us how much we should sacrifice for our families, give to charitable causes, work for our communities, or be there for those who need us. But a morality of responsibility does point us in the right direction. Over the long haul it calls us to try, in whatever way we can, to nurture and support each other, alleviate suffering and make the world a better place for all.
What else does responsibility mean? It means being dependable, not letting others down. We help people by keeping our commitments, and we create problems for them when we don't. Responsibility means carrying out any job or duty - in the family, at school, in the workplace - to the best of our ability.
Finally, an emphasis on responsibility is especially important today as a corrective for the modern preoccupation with "rights." In the not too distant past, British essayist Christopher Derrick notes, when people thought about morality, they were likely to ask: "Am I fulfilling all my obligations?" If the answer was partly negative, their grievance was against themselves; they had to strive to do better.
Today when people think about morality, they are more likely to ask: "Am I getting all my rights?" When the answer is partly negative (as it invariably is, life being imperfect), people have a sense of grievance against others, either other individuals or society at large.
Obviously, rights are an indispensable part of morality. But one of the moral challenges of our time is to balance rights and responsibilities and to raise young people who have a strong sense of both.
There is a clear relationship between the individual components of this second set of 3-Rs. Committing oneself to practicing respectful and responsible behavior - whether to oneself, one's fellow students, or one's teachers - requires personal restraint. Respectful and responsible behavior - which includes personal restraint - is necessary to protect the teacher's right to teach and each student's right to learn.
Unfortunately much of what is called education today lacks genuine study of the first, second and third Rs and genuine practice of the fourth, fifth and sixth Rs.
*****^^^^^*****
Could it be that the greatest moral failure of our time is the stress on our rights, on what we can claim from others - human rights, women's rights, workers' rights, gay rights - and not on our duties, on what we owe to others?
- - Immanuel Jakobovits - -
the late former chief rabbi of Britain
***^^^***
Return to Index
Permissive, Authoritarian, or Authoritative?
Which educator is the most effective - the permissive educator, the authoritarian educator, or the authoritative educator?
For purposes of discussion let's define the permissive educator as the one who is reluctant to set rules for the student and reluctant to confront infractions of the rules reluctantly set.
The authoritarian educator, on the other hand, is the one who desires total control of the student, sets rules, and sees no need to reason with the student, explain the rules, or motivate compliance. The authoritarian educator demands unquestioning obedience to his firmly set rules.
The authoritative educator, knowing that he is the authority over the student, requires obedience from the student, but provides clear reasons why obedience is required, hoping that the student will internalize the moral rationale and act responsibly on his own.
Which educator is the most effective - the permissive educator, the authoritarian educator, or the authoritative educator?
Return to Index
Curriculum: A Core Consideration
Curriculum, quite simply, is what we teach, when we teach it, and the order in which it is taught.
Educational policy always involves choices between degrees of worthiness and this is certainly the case when educators sit down and decide what they are going to teach their students, when they are going to teach it, and the order in which it will be taught.
E.D. Hirsch Jr., founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation, writes in the preface to Cultural Literacy:
In the anthropological perspective, the basic goal of education in a human community is acculturation, the transmission to children of the specific information shared by the adults of the group or polis.
The anthropological view stresses the universal fact that a human group must have effective communications to function effectively, that effective communication requires shared culture, and that shared culture requires transmission of specific information to children.
On page 18, he writes:
The acculturative responsibility of the schools is primary and fundamental. To teach the ways of one's community has always been and still remains the essence of the education of our children.
Curriculum - what we teach, when we teach it, and the order in which it is taught - is based on the assumption that education involves the teaching of specific material - content.
Curriculum equals content, but the question that invariably follows is: What content are we going to teach?
If our goal as educators is cultural literacy - what E.D. Hirsch Jr. calls "a deep understanding of mainstream culture" - then a curriculum must be chosen that is excellent and fair for all students.
Because knowledge builds on knowledge, we owe it to our students - all of our students: rich and poor, advantaged and disadvantaged - to teach a coherent sequence of specific knowledge that builds year by year.
If you have continued interest in curricular issues as they relate to grades K-8, I encourage you to visit the Core Knowledge Foundation web site.
*****^^^^^*****
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has identified four criteria to help identify promising education reform programs. They profile six schoolwide improvement programs that show credible evidence of satisfying the four criteria. Their description of Core Knowledge (CK) is exceptional.
Return to Index
School Choice
School choice - giving parents the opportunity to use public tax money (their own money) at the school of their choice - continues to be a serious bone of contention not only in educational circles, but in American society at large.
At the risk of taking an issue that is very complicated and dealing with it in a simplistic fashion, I offer the following thoughts.
The main argument of those opposed to school choice, as it is defined above, is that allowing parents to choose their child's school would be the "death of public education in America."
Developing instruments of choice would not lead to a mass exodus from the public schools. The truth is there are not now, nor will there ever be, enough parochial and nonparochial private schools to educate all of America's K-12 students.
What school choice would do is bring to the public schools in America a level of competition we find in American society at large. Think about this for just a moment. Why shouldn't K-12 public school educators be submitted to the same competitive spirit found at every other level throughout American society? Why should K-12 public school educators be exempt? Why should they and their unions control a monopoly that is not accepted in any other arena of public life?
What school choice would do is improve accountability. Accountability would improve if parents were able to choose another school - a better school.
School choice would give all American parents - not just the wealthy - the opportunity to hold the public education system accountable.
As William J. Bennett has stated:
It is ironic that the American system of higher education, with generous taxpayer support, provides such choice in the selection of colleges, while in elementary and secondary education, which is compulsory for all, there is choice for so few. All parents, not only the affluent, must be able to exercise greater choice in what, where and how their children learn.
One simple way those in public education can demonstrate that they are serious about education reform and the education of America's children is to allow every American family the right to choose the school their children attend.
To me it all seems quite simple, straightforward and fair. Is there something about this I don't understand?
**********************************************************************
***^^^***
For a fascinating story of how a number of Princeton, New Jersey, parents
tried to change "the system" from within but had to resort to starting a charter
school in order to provide choice and raise academic standards, see
Chiara R. Nappi's Why Charter Schools? The Princeton Story.
*****^^^^^*****
**********************************************************************
Return to Index
fzobrist@hotmail.com
1998-2009
You are visitor
