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Thursday, October 5, 2017
October 11...Traditional and Progressive Education
Welcome back to the blog after a little bit of "off-time." I want to keep this week's installment kind of open-ended. Please comment on what you've read (and listened to) about traditional and progressive education. You can consider how the readings compare to what you've experienced as a student, teacher educator, or other education-interested grown-up. You can also react to Kohn's belief that Hirsch is calling for a back to the old way approach when, in fact, progressive education has, according to Kohn, never been widely adopted in schools. Or feel free to find your own way into the discussion about our readings...
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Alfie Kohn’s The Schools Our Children Deserve was definitely eye-opening in terms of how I’m continuing to re-evaluate my understanding of the profession of teaching and the concept of education. In the Kohn reading, there was a reference to Piaget’s idea of creating people capable of doing new things, as opposed to people who repeat what others have done. This idea really brought me back to our class discussions on indoctrination and the distinction between being a transmitter and transformer of societal values. I think our current system does a really good job of producing people who do well and get by with just enough knowledge to be relatively decent people who contribute to society. We fail, however, to encourage people to think critically (in the broadest of terms). Essentially, we teach people to be a mile wide and an inch deep; “walking repositories of knowledge” as Alfie Kohn described them.
ReplyDeleteI was well aware that schools are often the place where children’s love for learning go to die, but I didn’t realize all the ways that we kill that love, until Kohn laid out a short, but not exhaustive, list. The list included things, like grades, honor roll, segregation of students by ability, the criteria for college admission, the value placed on error-free work and right answers. Although the reality is disheartening, two quotes gave me a little bit of hope: “A passion for learning…isn’t something you have to inspire [kids] with; it’s something you have to keep from extinguishing” (Deborah Meier) and “The goal isn’t to make work playful. The goal isn’t even to make school fun. The goal is to create a learning experience that arouses and sustains children’s curiosity, enriching their capacities and responding to their questions in ways that are deeply engaging” (Alfie Kohn). The text really reinforced the importance of going beyond what our traditional education system demands in order to provide students with a transformative and impactful learning experience.
-Jamiee Freeman
The Schools Our Children Deserve by Alfie Kohn was like a big breath of fresh air. Throughout, he discusses how learning needs to be more meaningful for children for it to be effective and to create lifelong learners. There isn't much said for students memorizing facts and being able to regurgitate them on a test, only for those facts to be forgotten the next week. First, the children didn't have any say whatsoever in what they were learning, and second, there wasn't a direct relevance to the learning and the students' lives. In Progressive Education there is a huge emphasis on the context of learning. If the kids can't relate it to their lives outside the classroom, what purpose does it serve for them? It signals to their subconscious that they only need to learn it for the classroom's sake. In the beginning of the reading, there was this quote about education: "...helping kids become contented and fulfilled, helping them grow into adults with a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them." I think this really encapsulates the message of the reading; education needs to be at best autonomous and meaningful for the learners at hand. With an increase of autonomy within students allows for organic discovery of subjects and topics that you were going to "cover" anyway. When a learner discovers something on his/her own, the learning is more deeply embedded in their minds versus a teacher explaining the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteOur goal as teachers is to facilitate learning within our classrooms. This looks much different than simply stating facts to students and expecting them to remember. We want to not just prepare students to do things, but to decide what is worth doing. Dewey explains it as "a process of living and not a preparation for future living". That one really hit home for me. You don't want the rote routine of everything to be the thing the children remember. The goal is to create a lifestyle of learning that children take with them for the rest of their lives.
-Callie Grunstad
I definitely agree with Kohn that progressive education has never been widely adopted. In progressive education, the focus is on developing competent, caring, creative, critical thinkers; while our schools still focus on getting the right answer. Even I have a mindset based on achievement. Although, I do enjoy learning new things, I still focus on my grades and I believe that is a product of my school experience. When so much emphasis is put on standardized tests, you can’t expect students to want to take risks. I found it interesting that Kohn mentioned the responses that teachers and parents give regarding what they want their children to get out of school, no matter the SES, the location of the school, whether it is public or private, their answers were similar. They all mention wanting the students to be life-longer learners, creative, critical thinkers, caring, etc.; not ones who can real off facts or ‘knows the difference between a simile and a metaphor’. This makes me wonder where the disconnect is. If we all have the same viewpoint of what is important, why are we stuck with the same approach to teaching that started so long ago, when the goal of school was to learn and recite? It is very eye opening, and a little frightening, to look at it this way. With advancements in so many other domains, how has our approach to education not changed? One quote from the reading by Deborah Meier really stood out to me; “a passion for learning… is not something you have to inspire kids with; it’s something you have to keep from extinguishing.” I think this is encouraging because it isn’t the students that we need to change. They already are inherently ready to learn; the system is what takes this out of them. Being and early childhood educator, I see how my classroom environment can help foster their creativity as long as I allow them to keep it, instead of focusing solely on achievement, I can focus on their effort.
ReplyDelete-Arica Fowler
Like my peers have commented so far, I also really enjoyed the Kohn reading. The beginning of the reading related a lot to our discussion about the purpose of public school. Are we sending children to school for them to receive individual benefits or for society to benefit? Also, I resonated greatly with Kohn’s overall view towards education when he stated “I believe school should be about more than just academics, more about producing thinkers than walking repositories of knowledge, more about creating an ethic of questioning than of preserving the status quo, more about teaching and learning than sorting and selecting, and more about honoring the needs and interests of the child in the present but without overlooking legitimate, humanistic concerns about the future.” I believe that traditional education has gotten too comfortable/complacent about regurgitation of facts and short-term goals. Are we trading good SOL scores for long-term retention and appreciation of new material? Possibly. In agreement with Kohn, I think the public school’s goals should shift back towards genuine appreciation for learning and growth rather than such a heavy fixation on test scores and grade level achievement. When Kohn goes on to discuss how traditional schooling causes students to focus on their performance rather than their efforts in their learning, it made me think of our educational psychology class. We just read an article about praising achievement versus praising effort and how it affects our students academically and emotionally. We have seen that praising achievement can cause a love for learning to regress, and I found it interesting that Kohn briefly discussed this idea in his book. Lastly, I found it interesting and a bit funny that Kohn addressed the cliché of teachers wanting to create “life-long learners” while our school system actively works against this goal in many ways. So is this something we are taught to say that sounds good, or do we genuinely desire that for our students? Either the system needs to change or we need to find ways to work within the system in order to foster the type of environment where “life-long learners” can actually be created and grown.
ReplyDelete-Stephanie Liggitt
While reading, Hirsch, I really liked reading about traditional teaching vs modern teaching when it comes to teaching merely verbally, and teaching with hands-on activities. It is very important that our teachers not look to teaching traditionally, because there would be so many opportunities our students would miss out on. Being taught with hands-on activities gives you opportunities to see things from a different view. You are allowed to gain more of an understanding of how something works because you can take it step by step to see how it works. A lot of students, cannot learn by just listening, so it is irrational to think teaching traditionally is the best way to teach. I know for a fact I learn better when I am working with my hands. I cannot sit down and listen to a person, because my ADD allows my mind to wander, so I never gain much of anything. My practicum students last semester really enjoyed the hands on activities I planned for them to learn about transparent, translucent, and opaque items. With this activity, they were allowed to explore different items and classify them themselves. They told me they learned so much more than the video their teacher showed them. Exploring the materials allows you to make the connections, and not have the connections made for you which will overall stay in your long term memory more.
ReplyDeleteIn Hirsch's "The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them", I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with how he compared traditional to modern schools. Hirsch says that America has followed the ideas of Freire, who rejects traditional teaching methods and subject matters, while other, more successful countries are following the ideas of Gramsci who believes there is actually an inverse relationship between educational progressivism and social progressivism. I have many mixed feelings while reading this because we have been taught throughout our schooling that we need to make material relevant and relatable, allow students to work through inquiry and hands-on materials, and provide individualized instruction, but Hirsch is saying the opposite. While this is contradictory to what I have learned in school and what I believe, there were some parts that DID make sense to me. For example, with individualized instruction, I understand wanting to make sure to work with each student to help them and monitor their progress, but what about the other 20-something students. Hirsch is saying that other countries that are doing better than the US academically focus on more whole-class instruction.
ReplyDeleteI now turn my attention Alfie Kohn's, "The School's Our Children Deserve". The first quote that stuck out to me from this was "Few parents have the courage and independence to care more for their children's happiness than for their 'success'", and I feel like this quote alone kind of shatters everything Hirsch was going for. Kohn believes in relieving some of the emphasis of achievement because students become preoccupied with performance and meeting standards. Kohn goes on to say that where interest lies, achievement follows.
As teachers, it is important for us to remember some of Kohn's beliefs, especially that our emphasis should be on how to help our students develop the strategies to think for themselves as opposed to thinking we need to provide them with all of the answers.
-Maris Mulroney
After reading “The Schools we Need and Why we don’t Have them” by E.D. Hirsch, I realized how much of our current educational climate has become politicized. A lot of times we don’t consider what’s best for the students in schools because of our own political views. The example that really struck home was about redistributing or increasing funds for lower income schools. Those with politically conservative ideologies didn’t want to increase spending money on these schools because they’re against increasing spending on principle. I agree with Hirsch that our educational policy has become too politicized in this way. Why doesn’t it make sense to spend more money on schools that need it if we want to increase academic achievement? I think it’s very hard for us to separate our political ideologies from educational policy to the point where we pick ineffective educational policies for our students. That’s why I agree with Hirsch that the phrasing or terminology used in educational policy can be deceiving to what actually happens in the classroom. For example, Hirsch talks about “merely verbal vs. hands-on” instruction. While it’s important for students to have hands-on activities, it’s also important for students to verbalize these experiences, which needs to be modeled by teachers. However, using the traditionalist terminology vs. the progressive terminology highly polarizes these practices when in reality we should be trying to use both of them.
ReplyDeleteMichaela Richmond
I liked the comparison Hirsch made with classrooms and their nature of being little societies and it's effectiveness being dependent on participation from everyone. This idea that our students are part of a little society creates the idea that we as teachers have a role to play in making our students active members of the bigger society around them. If anything, the role of the teacher is expanded among other areas than just subject matter which seems to embody more of the progressive education idea but on a smaller classroom scale. It was shocking to see some core progressive educational ideas sprinkled throughout the reading to be coupled with the assertion that conservative education is the backbone of the school system and is necessary to success. He fails to recognize the idea that our society is dynamic and always changing. To keep an education system that refuses to change with our changing society is naiive and ineffective. Like what was mentioned in the beginning, you could go anywhere else in the world and probably get a better and more relevant education. Why keep what is not working? When you think about it, we are still meeting at a school, sitting in a classroom, sitting at a desk, with a blackboard, and a teacher at the front. It's always been this way and sadly not much has changed which explains the unequal distribution of education. Hirsch frequently referenced his idea of "shared knowledge" and how that will begin to close the wage gap, success gap, and solve misbehavior problems within the classroom itself. This notion hardly seems progressive in that we should already be guaranteeing our students a fair basis of shared knowledge taught by equally skilled educators.
ReplyDeleteI see progressive education as the notion that we should provide a quality of education that should have been provided for our students in the first place. After reading the excerpts throughout the semester so far, the call for change isn't just out of a desire for something different, but out of necessity. Our schools are failing, the traditional approach is losing its touch, and educational policy makers just bury their head in the sand deeper and deeper. Hirsch thinks schools are politicized. I see the benefit of keeping our school depoliticized, but I also see the benefit of politicizing our schools in order to achieve equality in shared knowledge to level out the playing field. It becomes a sticky situation when politics enter the classroom, but our students need to understand they are about to enter a politicized world in which they need to know how to advocate for change, participate in our democracy, and recognize that they have a role to play. All in all, I like the principles of progressive education but hate the name, because we should have been providing our students a better education in the first place.
While reading Hirsch, I kept going back to the thought of the lack of ownership we have in our country's society. We always hear about these new reform ideas and how we need to improve our schools, but also how nothing is working. Like Hirsch states, how is it that our country has such a strong sense of vitality and independent-mindedness, but our schools do not live up to that standard? As our schools are progressing and there is the notion towards progressive education, we are moving towards more flexibility in the educator and the students, but there is little movement toward rigor. That just makes me wonder if we are preparing our students to be internationally competent, confident, and competitive? Not only in the education world, but the business world and the international relations world. As I read through "The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them," I can't help but agree with the points that he made. Our education system has become too politicized in a sense, and there needs to be the shift to education as an important asset, rather than just a way to get political ideologies across. Overall, I am very conflicted with our lack of progression in our education system while there is a huge push for progressive ideologies in our classrooms.
ReplyDelete- Lyly Lieu
It's funny, as someone who grew up in the age of traditional teaching with very severe ADD, it was terrible. I can tell you that this article reinforced the way that I want to run my classroom, using modern teaching techniques like learning centers to allow more exploration and autonomy in their own learning for the students. I think that it is important to let them thrive on their own and really be their own teacher. I am disapointed that you do not see this more in classrooms today. I feel like a lot of the classrooms of today are study in the past. But we also have to keep in mind that places that can be difficult to teach in like Richmond City have a teacher shortage. So how do we move more traditional teachers into the modern schooling era without insulting them or the way that they have been doing things? A large part of this change comes from things like technology and video games being more widely available to the students and changing their attention spans as well. How do we bring them forward without kicking them out?
ReplyDelete-Farrell Bishop
I enjoyed the Alfie Kohn reading a lot. His commentary on education has stuck with me ever since I did a project on his book, From Discipline to Community, in my classroom management class. The project focused on Alfie's regards about the best way to deal with management in a classroom, and that he says, is best taken care of through a strong classroom community and democracy. When you (Kurt) discussed how you ran your classroom the first two years of teaching, in a democratic manor where students had automaticity over their choices, it reminded me of some of Alfie Kohn's approaches. Throughout the reading there were a lot of soundbites, if you will, that stood out to me was the notion that schools kill children's love and desire for learning and stunt creativity. A quote in the text that asserts something along the lines of, that teachers/schools should take children for what/who they are in the NOW instead of focusing on making them into mini adults, to me, related to the notion that schools kill student's love of learning. When bogged down in the realities and standards of the job, I think it may be easy to forget all the knowledge that kids have to offer, despite maybe not knowing the required curriculum. I think in order to put more love back into learning, not only does a progressive mindset need to be believed in, but also, there needs to be a calling for larger impact and change.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading Alfie Kohn’s The Schools Our Children Deserve. One important statement that really stuck with me is when the author stated that “Other educators are content to restrict schools to the intellectual realm but insist that the focus should be not merely on what students learn, but on how strong their desire is to keep learning”. School is not about how many skills the students acquire, but about whether they want to acquire more. This is why teachers should incorporate other things into their lesson plans to make the learning content more enjoyable. This includes cooperative group work, learning centers, field trips, the use of technology, etc. We should also challenge our students by providing new and innovative lessons- not just boring lectures. To have effective and beneficial lessons, you must provide meaningful activities that will assess the students’ learning- not just standardized tests. Like the article states, “One place it leads is to the recognition that the problem with tests is not limited to their content. Rather, the harm comes from paying too much attention to the results”. Even til this day, I hate taking standardized exams because they make me focus only on what I should study for the exam. I never really keep the “knowledge” that I studied for AFTER the exam, and this is a common issue that students face. To help students keep their learned information in their minds, teachers must be bold and make a change.
ReplyDelete-Jin Kim
It is interesting that Kohn spoke about the ultimate goal for students from the perspective of their teachers, parents, etc. being that they want the children to grow up to be lifelong learners. This term is something I hear thrown around quite often in the School of Education. Our professors thus far, have drilled into our brains that we will never be done “learning” for the profession and in life. Kohn states that no one wants their child to simply become a “storehouse of facts”. This also is something our teachers have taught us in the teacher preparation program. Ultimately, Kohn asks an interesting question, “Are school practices in sync with the long-term goals shared by most parents and teachers? My answer to this question is no. I have been in Practicum classrooms for a while now. Every teacher I have encountered has “complained” about the amount of testing and drilling they are forced to do with their students enforced by their administration, superintendent, department of education, etc. Even though we haven’t started our careers in teaching, my classmates often talk about the struggles of teaching to the test with their idea of what they want their classroom to be. Parents hate for their kids to be sent home with countless homework having their child memorizing something they have no interest in or struggle with. If both teachers and parents are not satisfied with the way schools are run, what is stopping the school system from changing? Kohn’s thoughts on traditional schooling reflect what we see today, in my opinion. It is a mixture of irrelevant practices not getting children to meet our objectives, and making it harder for children to develop as critical thinkers, caring, and creative. He brings up a good point that (we) want change, but are stopping ourselves from doing anything about it. Our long term goals are crashing to a halt because we see everything short term. This is where progressive education comes in. Kohn thinks that progressive education is the solution. He signifies the importance of having short term goals, but checking in on long term goals often. This is only one of the ways he mentions to solve the issue with traditional education, but I believe it is one of the most important. If teachers do this, their students will be much more likely to be intrinsically motivated and learn in a more meaningful way.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that particularly struck me whilst reading was, as often as we hear the term thrown around, I don't think very any people actually know what the differences are between Progressive education and "traditional" Dewey talks about how education should advance democracy and it would seem most people would agree, though they rebel against the term "progressive". To my understanding, it refers to teaching students problem solving and critical thinking as well as focusing on students' needs, including teaching students to be good citizens as well as good learners. It seemed odd to me that was such a revolutionary idea, that students have needs which ought to be met to help them learn.Is it a function of public schools to create citizens capable of participating in a democracy? I would say so, so what is it that makes this idea "progressive"?
ReplyDeleteAfter reading, I am impressed on Kohn’s overall perspective toward education— “I believe school should be about more than just academics, more about producing thinkers than walking repositories of knowledge, more about creating an ethic of questioning than of preserving the status quo, more about teaching and learning than sorting and selecting, and more about honoring the needs and interests of the child in the present but without overlooking legitimate, humanistic concerns about the future”. It is convincible that education is not merely limited into textbook or academic knowledge, but to guide students and prepare them to accommodate the future live after graduating from school. At present, for most people, I guess, traditional education is equal to passing all standard tests. It is already much less of importance than critical thinking, skill training, and forming interests of progressive education. Wait, does the essence of traditional education mean various tests? Personally, the answer is NO. For traditionalists, why traditional education aims at academics is because education need to emphasize on the full range of Western culture and ideas. In my opinion, culture and ideas, rather than colors and languages, are two vital identifications to distinct different races and countries, even for cities. This is the reason why I introduce myself— “I am a Chinese”, but not “I was born in China”. It is responsible for all people to understand or know their own cultures. However, it is demanding to make it because the new generation has no chance witnesses or experiences those events by themselves. Therefore, tests become the most efficient method to stimulate students to learn. Personally, even with rich preparation for the future life, we cannot promise to be a successful person in life and career; but we must be an American, or Chinese, or Japanese...
ReplyDelete--Feifei Xu
I don't think that Kohn's interpretation of Hirsch's call for "back to the old ways is accurate. In contrast, i think that Kohn's belief that progressive education reforms have never truly been adopted is indeed accurate. Overall, the process of moving towards a more progressive education systems seems to be plagued by a battle of interpretations and semantics. From the readings and my own experience, I think this is a missed point in the discussion. The majority of school reforms actually implemented seem nothing more than an increase in syllables ("real-world problems" are now "applications and modeling of practical situations with connections"). When Hirsch described advice from experts as "high-sounding, antiknowledge advice"(pg2), he nailed what I see happening in schools. For example, in mathematics, massive curriculum overhauls end up being just a rearrangement of sequence and changing verbs statement to imply an increasingly higher cognitive demand (students will apply... turns into students will explain...). Changes in methods of instruction such as lecture versus discussion or naked problems versus problem based all speak to a move away from the traditional as Hirsch referenced. However, this ends up being merely ink on paper. In reality, the teaching and learning environment in many classrooms haven't reflected these changes. They have only changed the words to describe what is happening in the classroom. This is something I am able to regularly observe in my own practicums. The are lesson plans built on a plethora of great ideas and progressive methods; then, the students come in, sit down, and receive step-by-step lecture instead exploration. I understand this may not be true in all schools, but in our schools that need these reforms the most (those filled with majority low SES population), I am 2 for 2.
ReplyDeleteI think that the reason progressive education is not as common as traditional education is because as humans, we are more favorable to stick to our traditional beliefs and practices especially in schools. It might also be easier for teachers to stick to a lesson plan and facilitate learning instead of memorizing their subject. Even though schools have come a long way, we’re still focused on memorizing facts and making sure that the state scores are up to standards. As a result, the students aren’t making much progress. Through Alfie Kohn’s alternatives and ways to encourage teachers to pursue a more progressive education will help students to become critical thinkers and lifelong learners.
ReplyDeleteBecause of our traditional school system, we have a vastly different education than other countries. It manages to somewhat work out for us, but we aren’t giving all the students as many or as quality opportunities as they should be having. There are still many teachers who may have a very traditional approach to teaching and education. The problem is that time and the world around us is evolving. What has worked before isn’t as effective as it is now; those that never did, are even more damaging than before. The way Kohn describes the attitude of students and how they don’t become these lifelong learners like we encourage them to be. It reminds me of something we discussed in my psych class about fixed and growth mind-set in children – students with a growth mind-set are more interested in learning and develop strategies to think critically. We’re so focused on getting through the material that will be on standardized tests and teaching to the assessments, teachers aren’t praising their efforts to show the progress is just as, if not more, important than discovering the actual answer.
ReplyDeleteJennifer Coronado
These readings have left me a little conflicted. It sounded to me that both authors were arguing for the same thing but through different methods. Hirsch was arguing for a progressive agenda, just as Kohn was, however Hirsch was convinced that to help progressive movements, you must teach traditionally. He even has some historical backings for this claim by noting: “Modern nations that have adopted Gramscian principles have bettered the condition and heightened the political, social, and economic power of oppressed classes of people”, and that by contrast “Nations that have stuck to the principles of Freire have failed to change the social and economic status quo” (p.7). Where Gramsci, Hirsch argues, is a more traditional approach versus Freire's progressive. Kohn, I found, didn't really make any similar claims for his arguments. While Kohn's argumements made great logical sense, and he certainly provides many examples of these techniques in classrooms, he never really addressed the ability for these techniques to improve social standing or change the status quo.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm conflicted about is the idea that this has many parallels for mathematics pedagogy. The fight between traditional and progressive teaching methods is juxtaposed by the fight between Procedural and conceptual knowledge in mathematics. I feel that students learn the best, and there is some data backing this up, when we explore topics instead of just drilling them in. So why am I finding myself being more agreeable to Hirsch?
-Peter LaBarr