MY TURN: The flaw in education
The acknowledged difficulties in education statewide and nationally may seem impossibly complex, but most are from a fundamental choice gone wrong.
In the early 1900s, European educators were trying ways to improve their system. John Dewey brought many ideas to the U.S., but among their positive features was a fatal flaw noted in Dewey’s 1916 book "Democracy and Education" (available online):
The development within the young of the attitude and dispositions necessary to the continuous and progressive life of a society cannot take place by direct conveyance of beliefs, emotions and knowledge. It takes place through the intermediary of the environment … The deeper and more intimate educative formation of disposition comes, without conscious intent, as the young gradually partake of the activities of the various groups to which they may belong.
While groups do affect people, Dewey asserted that you can’t convey “beliefs, emotions, and knowledge” directly but they come instead from the environment “without conscious intent.” If your peer group isn't learning, however, you don't either, and if your adult doesn't install “beliefs, emotions, and knowledge” in you, you stay ignorant.
To give the impression that students knew something under the new methods, schools invented a smoke-and-mirrors switch. My high school world history class 1950-51 had worked through a 400-page text. Nearing the end of the school year, a classmate asked our teacher, “Mr. McC, what will be on our test?”
He smiled and said, “When the time gets closer, we’ll go over some review questions.” We grinned at each other and leaned back in our chairs. Pressure was off — due to what a prior era would have labeled teacher complicit cheating. Other systemic features also contribute to superficial learning:
No one ever asks students to keep their learning permanently.
Review questions discard much prior instruction and limit what they study seriously.
Scheduled tests give an unreal picture of what they actually know.
Cramming for tests guarantees rapid forgetting.
"Finals" tell them they can dismiss that knowledge.
They lack a personal hard copy with which to review and retain material.
Student relationships are "distractions" rather than aids to learning.
Boredom often pervades classrooms.
A nationally recognized school consultant mentioned to me that he’d given students a major test, repeated it a month later without warning and most failed it.
The key to change occurred to me one rainy Saturday afternoon in Seattle as I watched my middle-school son play soccer. In their top-tier classroom, his teammates I knew were mostly bored and grudging but on this mucky playground they dashed about — enthusiastic, connected and interested.
A realization burst upon me, “It’s not the boys, it’s the conditions!” They weren't lazy, uninterested, resistant or indifferent, but responded to their experience. A boy checked out in the classroom was all-in on this muddy field — driven by skill development, performance, peer approval, applause and group support. Central to these conditions is that skill depends on practice. Here are three clues to its critical role in learning:
1. A study years back asked, "What classroom activity produces the most learning?” It concluded that students spend 40-80% of classroom time in the effort to recall.
Try this yourself. Visit a class, pick a student, and with your phone's stopwatch, time how long they exert “the effort to recall” during a given hour — answering a teacher’s question, explaining to another student or writing from memory. You'll probably note what research has found — 80% of student comments in class are in 30 words or less. The student you select will probably spend less than 1% of their time in the effort to recall — the complete absence of the activity deepening their learning.
2. Military training honed through generations has found that for a given soldiering skill, recruits should spend 5% of the available time in explanation, 10% in demonstration and 85% in practice. To improve at something, practice it, practice it, practice it. Call up, express and apply the model in your mind.
3. Finally, “If you want to learn a subject, teach it.” Why? You constantly exert the effort to recall. For students the activity in the classroom and at home is absorb, explain, absorb, explain, absorb, explain, etc.
In sum, all skills including knowledge develop by well-directed practice. Students truly know what they can explain without help at any time, and are proud to demonstrate their knowledge to a peer. With proper practice, all students can master an entire curriculum; principles of memory enable perfect mastery of difficult material.
Teachers interested in applying these ideas or parents wishing to aid learning at home are welcome to contact me at jensenjohn794@gmail.com or call me at 520-833-1526.
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John Jensen is a retired licensed clinical psychologist living in Post Falls.