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Archive for May, 2011

STEM or Not: Why Science History Matters

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

With so many initiatives focused on STEM education, we frequently rant about neglect of the rest of the liberal arts. But it’s true that our students’ science knowledge falls far below where it should. And, even for those of us non-scientists, this is problematic. We sift through the latest nutrition fads and medical research with little frame of reference. And so we often discount valuable research, as Dan Willingham writes in Scientific American.

He proposes a solution: Teach science history in addition to science content.

“Through the study of the history of science, students might gain an understanding both of their own motivations for belief and of science as a method of knowing. If a student understands how a medieval worldview could have made a geocentric theory of the solar system seem correct, it is a short step to seeing similar influences in oneself.

“Science history can also help students understand why scientific knowledge grows ever more accurate. … By studying how new observations led to the revision of important theories … students see that science is not about immutable laws but provisional explanations that get revised when a better one comes along. They also see that scientists’ readiness to change their beliefs to align with data is a source of great strength, not weakness, and why near consensus on issues such as global warming or vaccine safety is so impressive.”

Unfortunately, most textbooks relegate science history to sidebars and inserts. For teachers seeking inspiration, The Story of Science is a notable exception.

Posted in Math and Science | 1 Comment »

A Small Town Epitomizes a National Problem

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

The hometown of writer Michael Sokolove is the kind of job-starved, blue-collar town where it’s near-impossible to argue that a good job isn’t the end goal of education. In Levittown, PA, “the schools are counted on to round out children — to educate them in the basics, push gifted students higher, pull up the lagging ones, and to give everyone a degree of culture and a vision of what exists beyond the horizon.”

But here, as in so many cities and towns across the country, there are students who need to be pushed yet higher. Students like Kevin McCann, a senior at Truman High, who told Sokolove, “I think education is about finding out what you want to do in this world.”

And then, discussing his just-lost dream of attending Vanderbilt, “he said he felt that he was not admitted because Truman’s course offerings were not rigorous enough.”

More students than not miss out on their top-choice of college. But when a student does everything he or she can do – as band-member and top student Kevin did – it’s a tragedy when a school can’t offer the courses that meet the standards of top colleges and universities.

And perhaps a greater tragedy that only expensive courses labeled AP and IB (too often advanced in name only) signal the depth of content and the level of rigor required by these colleges.

The New York Times calls Levittown’s tough financial decisions “The Math of Heartbreak.”

Posted in Curriculum | 1 Comment »

What We’re Reading

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Must-reads, in our opinion, from this week’s education news.

Deep Thoughts about “Deeper Thought,” The Huffington Post

Peter Meyer wonders what students are thinking critically about.

Specialists Weigh Common Core Social Studies, Education Week

Social studies specialists are attempting to get their subject off the sidelines – but they’re afraid of specifics.

How a Teacher Turned a “B-Track” Class into Honors, The Washington Post’s “The Answer Sheet”

This week’s inspiration; you’re welcome.

The College Majors That Do Best in the Job Market, The New York Time’s “Exonomix”

My humanities major doesn’t clock in too favorably.

In Defense of the Liberal Arts, Newsweek

Solace: “The next chapter of the nation’s economic life could well be written not only by engineers but by entrepreneurs who, as products of an apparently disparate education, have formed a habit of mind that enables them to connect ideas that might otherwise have gone unconnected.”

Happy Friday.

Posted in What We're Reading | No Comments »

What Will They Think Critically About?

Thursday, May 19th, 2011

Some wonderfully “Deep Questions about ‘Deeper Thought’” … and the Common Core State Standards from Peter Meyer:

“Teachers don’t teach standards; they teach ‘the stuff of knowledge,’ in Ted Sizer’s words. Standards come from that stuff, not the other way around. We get our history standards from—where else—history; more specifically, from the events and facts of history. Our students need to learn it. We get ELA standards from great literature—our children need to read it.”

Read on, here.

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Standards | No Comments »

Next! Social Studies

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Education Week reports that social studies experts from at least a dozen states are meeting with leaders of content-area groups in Charlotte, NC this week to discuss how to raise the profile of that subject in today’s math and reading-heavy classroom. We share their deep concern about the low priority given to social studies―and in fact will be out soon with some new data on this. We’re glad to see an organized, state-based effort coming together to address the problem.

But this effort’s focus could use some refinement. Kathleen Swan, the University of Kentucky professor who is organizing the discussions, says they are not intended to lead to CCSS-style common standards. That’s fine, indeed preferred, as long as this effort presses states to address the chief weakness shared by almost all current state social studies standards: a lack of specificity with regard to the knowledge students need.

Unfortunately, the group (unnamed as of yet) seems to be on track to avoid any press for specificity. Evidenced by the fact that their sole product so far is a one-sentence definition of social studies―so concerned with inclusiveness that it contains 11 commas. They are being showered with advice to avoid any mention of specific events, people, or ideas because of the criticism that met the attempt to create national U.S. history standards back in the mid-90s.

But that’s the wrong lesson to learn from that controversy. I should know because, at the time, I was working for those standards’ funder and chief critic―former National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Lynne Cheney. Those standards attracted Cheney’s ire, along with that of countless historians, President Clinton’s secretary of education, and the entire U.S. Senate, not because they were specific but because they got so many of the specifics so horribly, horribly wrong. The authors of those standards were intent on importing a rigid, deeply revisionist version of U.S. history into classrooms nationwide. Recently, new Texas history standards attracted a similar volume of criticism for pushing a different but similarly problematic version of history for use by schools in that state.

The goal of any effort to set history or social studies standards for one state, a consortium of states, or the nation should not be to avoid specifics. It should be to get the specifics right—and to introduce students to informed perspectives on any topic that may remain in dispute. We can agree on 99% of the events, people, and ideas students need to learn about in Kindergarten through 12^th grade. We just have to have the courage to acknowledge it. And to deal intelligently with the 1% of topics that present a challenge.

Lynne Munson

Posted in History/Social Studies, Standards | 1 Comment »

Honors Content for ALL Students

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

In the latest installment of The Answer Sheet’s “Faces of Learning,” a student remembers how her “B track” class lacked access to quality content:

“I wondered how it was that others read novels and were able to take trips to Washington, D.C. when I was not. I knew what experiences I was missing by being a member of the band and sitting next to my Anglo band member friends in the clarinet and flute sections who seemed to always be reading interesting books and had more challenging homework assignments than me. They would innocently ask me if I had read John Steinbeck, George Orwell, or Lord of the Flies. My band friends would tell me what these texts were about and I wondered why I never got them assigned to me in my classes.”

And she remembers a wonderful 11^th grade teacher who insisted on treating her class, regardless of its “track,” like honors students.

“… [T]his class also empowered me to imagine that I, too, could thrive in that environment. Mrs. Eli’s class liberated me from a subterranean, subaltern fear that I would never be ‘college material.’ In turn, I realized that I could rise to standards that were much higher than those that were set for me in my regular classes. It is therefore no accident that I later went to college and majored in English and minored in Spanish in the same hometown university to which Mrs. Eli’s class had sent me.”

Posted in English/Language Arts | No Comments »

Arts Ed: Exercise for the Creative Mind

Monday, May 16th, 2011

Today, we’re reading a piece by Michael Kaiser, the President of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He highlights the President’s Committee on the Arts & Humanities’ new report and its call for “reinvesting in arts education.” It is the job of those in the arts, he writes, to create smarter, stronger more efficient arts programming for children—programs that ”exercis[e]” creativity:

“Will someone with no arts experiences as a child automatically become a subscriber or donor to the arts when they hit middle age? Will they volunteer at a local dance school? Will they be willing to join the board of a theater company? I doubt it. …

Who better to play a role in exercising the creative minds of our children than we in the arts? How are students going to build confidence in their abilities to create if they are not given access to education that goes beyond reading, writing and arithmetic?

Those who argue that investing in arts education is frivolous are simply wrong. …

[A]rts organizations are going to have to do more and better arts education in the coming years; we are going to have to work together to create smarter, stronger more efficient arts programming for children.

The health of our field and of our nation is at stake.”

Posted in Arts | 1 Comment »