I don’t know if square pegs and round holes have anything to do with public education in California at this moment – but probably the “rapidly” portion of the directive is relevant for us. So it was interesting to me, when I recently was able to review a video clip of Dr. Sugata Mitra (Ph.D. in Solid State Physics) of the United Kingdom.
While I certainly don’t advocate his particular research as the solution to California’s public education problem – it does cause one to think and reflect about the capacity of our students to learn well in a changing environment. I would suggest that this video clip is not for those that may be faint of heart – as it challenges a lot of our assumptions and may be suggesting new ideas that are far beyond our California context. But if you dare, you can find the video here.
Is there any chance for the rescinding of RIFs and restoring class size before the end of this school year?
ReplyDeleteI find this video, and its presenter, to have various flaws in its thesis:
ReplyDelete(1) Much of the evidence shown is merely the ability for children to use search engines (sorry, not that impressive, nor is it much of an employable skill)
(2) Group, peer teaching, as many teachers know very well, is flawed as a solitary teaching method for various reasons (including what others have found to be the case in the Dr's work as well-a few students taking over-usually male- while others fall back to passive roles-usually female- and many times, turn to uninvolved roles). Furthermore, not all students learn best within the group dynamic. Furthermore, any solitary pedagogical method is flawed when used in isolation.
(3) The evidence he has shown is merely novelty. . . newness is of course going to lead to higher memory retention; however, day-after-day, year-after-year, same group/computer learning method will lose its "newness" and therefore, fall into the same pitfalls as every pedagogical method will fall into if used exclusively.
(4) The subject matter being taught did not appear very broad, but rather shallow, fact-based recall (dare I say rote, lower-level Blooms) and research. Not all important and necessary skills that are taught in schools can translate in this fashion (e.g., how could writing really be taught with only a mediator and a computer, sans educator).
(5) Any universal, "magic bullet" theory should be suspect to everyone; any "I have THE answer!" proclamations are highly dubious to say the least.
(6) The Dr. has some major assumptions about what the children are learning through his very soft-science-based evidence and underlying beliefs he had before the observations. Any intro-level philosophy student knows about the epistemic problems of inductive logic and informal fallacies involved with cause and effect. It seems that he might be confirmation-seeking (a fallacious teleological move where he has already assumed the truth of his theory and is trying to confirm it- which is not science at all...science is a destructive force-and I say that with all the kindness in the world. Science, by its very nature and in its proper form rules out possibilities until there are no others (falsification), it does not confirm things with searched-for positive, highly speculative and subjective evidence-that's pseudo-science) Also...where is his control group?
to be continued...
continued from above. . .
ReplyDelete(7) His Ph.D is completely unrelated to this study-he is not an expert by education in this field. By waving his Dr. title in this field seems to be another logical fallacy...appeal to authority.
(8) The doctor is not taking into consideration the reality of the multifaceted student populations around the globe. Let me give an example: My wanna-be-ganster students would have no buy-in to this "free internet-self-motivating" style of learning. They would just look up inappropriate material and go on Facebook or YouTube. The moderator would just be a glorified babysitter, who, while trying to not pull all their hair out, manage the classroom's inappropriate surfing. Kids rebel, especially when the population is not "oo'd" and "ahh'd" by the internet like the poor kids in the far reaches of the world would be.
(9) His examples were false analogies: those students were all young (elementary) and highly motivated, and were only British, Indian, and Italian, where culture might play a role in this model working well. What do we do for students who are not motivated by the shared-group computer model or whose cultural norms would not support this style of learning?
(10) Not all students learn the same way, and group work is not a bolus vaccination to bad test scores and failed schools.
(11) Can students be let to their own devices, as the Dr. did, to weed out all the misinformation that's out on the internet, either due to sheer ignorance or due to pure malice aforethought? The internet is not all peer-reviewed, fact-checked information. Anyone can add to the pool. Therefore, children could be learning incorrect information and the mediator might not have a clue, especially when dealing with higher level subject matter, like Physics or Chemistry.
(12) So, if teachers are unnecessary, why should I care about anyone's Ph.D. for that matter? I think I am going to stop now so I can go give myself my own degree in Epidemiology or Micro-Brain surgery(apparently, Google and Wikipedia are more reliable than human beings with expertise), because if the Dr.'s plan follows through the entire education system, then I will need a new job!