Top 10 Worst Ideas In Education
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Bill Gates concluded
that public schools are so bad they are a threat to the national economy and the society’s long-term survival. Why might
a shrewd observer think this? What is it that most needs fixing? Herewith the 10 worst ideas in public education:
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1) BOGUS READING INSTRUCTION -- Whole Word, Sight Words, and Dolch Words (there
are many aliases) have created 50 million functional illiterates, for the simple reason that this method does not work. (No
one learns to read fluently with Sight-Words. Some people learn to read, if at all, IN SPITE OF of Sight-Words.) This hoax
and the accompanying gimmicks known as guessing, picture clues, et al should be eliminated from the schools.
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2) REFORM MATH -- Arithmetic jumbled and mumbled. Reform Math is a monster with
many names (Connected Math, Chicago Math, Mathland, etc.) created by the same people who gave us New Math and now want to
give us Core Standards. Reform Math forbids mastery, requires spiraling from topic to topic, and promotes using a calculator
to compensate for a lack of basic skills. |
3) COOPERATIVE LEARNING -- Students always work in groups. A good approach for
fostering a herd sensibility; a dreadful approach for creating independent thinkers and self-starters.
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4) CONSTRUCTIVISM -- A destructive fad. Teachers are reduced to facilitators,
their knowledge and academic training rendered moot. Students are required to invent their own new knowledge. This process
will be long and slow. After all, the human race has been around for millennia and has collected tens of thousands of prime
facts, insights, discoveries, theories, etc. What sort of loon turns a child loose with this order: try to recapitulate the
intellectual history of the human race? (A far better approach is to give children a wide range of foundational knowledge
ASAP.) |
5) WAR AGAINST CONTENT -- A witless policy pursued since the time of John
Dewey. The apparent goal is to make sure that children learn as little as possible. In any case, that is the result.
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6) NO MEMORIZATION -- This is standard operating procedure in all grades and in
all courses. It is an excellent policy if you wish to ensure cultural illiteracy and societal amnesia.
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7) SELF-ESTEEM -- Another destructive fad now rampant. Students
must be praised even when they do bad work. Furthermore, a concern for self-esteem can justify eliminating virtually all content
from classrooms, on the grounds that some students won’t be able to handle the material. A quiet plague.
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8) MULTICULTURALISM -- This sophistry requires children to learn more about faraway
cultures, both in miles and years, than about their own. As the children have no frame of reference for understanding other
cultures, little information is retained, other than the persistent message: your own country is no damn good. Multiculturalism
helps in the war against content. Kids are kept busy, going nowhere. |
9) HOSTILITY TO GENUINE TESTING -- A helpful policy if you wish to conceal that
children aren't learning much. (A complex point. If schools are genuinely trying to teach knowledge, they will want to find
out how much the students are learning. Same as it ever was. Problem is, in the schools today there is a lot of disingenuous
testing of trivial things that didn't need be taught in the first place. Common Core Math illustrates this phenomenon.)
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10) TOO MANY IMPOSTORS -- Ideologues pretend to care about education even while
focused on manipulating the minds of millions of children. (Keep these extremists away from the schools, and the other nine
problems will miraculously vanish.) |
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BONUS PROBLEM: the Top 10 work in perfect harmony to dumb down the schools, and
make them the threat to our future that Bill Gates saw. |
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GOOD NEWS: These bizarre and
bogus methods are not automatic or inherent. They had to be smuggled into the public schools. They can be discarded.
First step: encouraging people to look closely at them.
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