#knowledge

Apr 20
2 min

‘Rigor’ is a Potemkin village

High school rigor is often a facade, writes Natalie Wexler on Forbes. It’s a “Potemkin village.” High school graduates in the class of 2019 took more “advanced” and “honors” classes and earned higher grades, but didn’t do any better on tests, notes a recently released federal study. Grade inflation and course-title inflation combine to create the illusion of competence. Some school districts, seeing a lack of minority representation in honors classes, have tried to solve the

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Teach history, not ‘social studies’ units

Joanne Jacobs

Oct 17, 2018
2 min

Teach history, not ‘social studies’ units

Periodically, my eighth-grade teacher would fill the blackboard with everything we should “know” for the test. I remember “1777” (battle of Saratoga, turning point of the Revolutionary War). I also remember that he was annoyed when I told him he’d misspelled “Pocahontas,” and tried to bully me into backing down. The Battle of Saratoga in 1777 was the turning point of the Revolutionary War. Even then — 1965-66 — teaching history as a memory challenge was out of date. Only 36 p

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Which classroom do you want for your child?

Joanne Jacobs

Oct 10, 2018
1 min

Which classroom do you want for your child?

Pray that your children get the first classroom, tweeted ResearchED founder Tom Bennett in response to the graphic by Deeper Learning. Blake Harvard, who teaches AP Psychology, defends the traditional classroom with a “sage on the stage” teacher. The “deeper learning” classroom has no monopoly on content, communications, collaboration, critical thinking, positive mindset and lifelong learning, Harvard argues. In his traditional classroom, students “interact verbally, self-ass

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Joanne Jacobs

Apr 15, 2018
2 min

We’re teaching reading wrong

We’re teaching reading wrong, writes Natalie Wexler in The Atlantic. U.S. schools spend a lot of time on reading skills in the early grades, very little teaching history, science or the arts. If students struggle with comprehension, “history and science may continue to be relegated to the far back burner through middle school.” Reading proficiency hasn’t improved in 20 years on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), writes Wexler. The latest results showed gain

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History is taught as texts without context

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 20, 2018
2 min

History is taught as texts without context

Studying texts, without context, is no way to learn history, writes Will Fitzhugh on Diane Ravitch’s blog. But it’s the Common Core way. A notorious lesson called for teaching the Gettysburg Address without discussing the Civil War. Teachers were told: Refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset. It may make sense to notify students that the short text is thought to be difficult and they are not expected to understand it fully on

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Facts — not thinking skills — fight ‘truth decay’

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 6, 2018
1 min

Facts — not thinking skills — fight ‘truth decay’

“Critical thinking” is all the rage in schools, counters writes Chester E. Finn, Jr. in Education Next. “As construed and applied” in our schools it may contribute to “truth decay.” Teaching thinking skills often replaces teaching “actual information,” Finn writes. How often have you heard education savants and practitioners say something like this: “In the age of the internet, we don’t need to supply kids with information. That they can always look up. What we must do is wor

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To teach reading, teach history, science …

Joanne Jacobs

Nov 30, 2017
1 min

To teach reading, teach history, science …

Reading isn’t a “general skill that can be applied with equal success to all texts,” writes cognitive scientist Dan Willingham in the New York Times. “Comprehension is intimately intertwined with knowledge.” Credit: Lilli Carré In the early grades, teachers should spend less time on literacy and more time teaching science and social studies, he writes. The more students know, they more they’ll be able to understand when they read. Year-end standardized tests should reflect wh

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Is personalization a fad? Curriculum matters

Joanne Jacobs

Nov 7, 2017
1 min

Is personalization a fad? Curriculum matters

If students choose what to learn, pursuing their own interests, they’ll be engaged and active learners, say some personalized-learning advocates. Not so fast, write Amber Oliver and Michael Horn on EdSurge. Curriculum — what students are learning — matters. Personalizing learning “will be most powerful when it is coupled with intentional, coherent and rigorous instruction.” Otherwise, it will be just a “fad.” Yes, tapping into and developing children’s interests and instillin

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Joanne Jacobs

Jul 12, 2017
2 min

Teach the language of power, privilege

A “language of privilege” excludes those not born to the educated classes, writes Robert Pondiscio,in response to New York Times columnist David Brooks’ “prosciutto-handed tale” of social barriers to upward mobility. “Language is a cultural artifact, filled with assumed knowledge, allusions, and idioms that are a reflection of the culture that built, uses, and sustains it,” writes Pondiscio. It can be taught. But the idea that American schools should explicitly familiarize ch

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Joanne Jacobs

May 29, 2017
2 min

How your brain beats Google

Google is all very well, but you still need your brain, writes cognitive scientist Dan Willingham in the New York Times. The more you know, the clearer and faster you can think. Jonathan Rochelle, the director of Google’s education apps group, “cannot answer” why his children should learn the quadratic equation, according to a recent New York Times story. After all, they can just “ask Google.” “With the right knowledge in memory, your brain deftly puts words in context,” Wil

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Joanne Jacobs

May 28, 2017
2 min

Teach the controversy — but how?

In The Case for Contention, Jonathan Zimmerman and Emily Robertson argue for the Enlightenment tradition, writes David Steiner in an Education Next review. “Leading students in discussion of controversial issues can be regarded as essential to effective and efficient education,” writes Steiner, a Johns Hopkins education policy professor. Discussing controversial issues teaches students to “formulate and evaluate arguments.” Teaching controversy always has been difficult, writ

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Joanne Jacobs

May 25, 2017
1 min

Confident — and incompetent

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge,” wrote Charles Darwin inThe Descent of Man (1871). He was on to something, writes Kate Fehlhaber on Aeon Ideas. Eighty percent of drivers rate their skills as above average, one study found. “Similar trends have been found when people rate their relative popularity and cognitive abilities,” writes Fehlhaber. The incompetent tend to be incompetent about recognizing their mistakes. In a semester-long study of col

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Joanne Jacobs

Apr 10, 2017
2 min

For a more perfect union

Elementary schools have contributed to national discord by neglecting to teach American history and civic principles, writes E.D. Hirsch Jr. in Democracy Journal. America is not a melting pot, but a mosaic that’s held together by “our national language and its public culture, including laws, loyalties, and shared sentiments, that make the language intelligible,” he argues. Over the past six decades, changes in the early grades of schooling have contributed to the decline of c

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Joanne Jacobs

Apr 6, 2017
1 min

Teach knowledge to fight ‘fake’ facts

“Media literacy” — teaching students to distinguish between “fake” news, propaganda, hype and reliable information — is all the rage, reports CNN. The New York Times looks at a Brooklyn middle school where teachers help students analyze “whether an article or a video is real — and if it is real, whether it is, for example, a news story or an advertisement made to look like a news report.” Teachers can fight “fake facts” by teaching real facts, writes Matthew Levey, founder an

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