A NYC teacher/blogger gives a vivid description of what happens when schools of education get their hands on some actual education:
What are some of [the] reforms that are driving inspired, and individualistic teachers, in record numbers, out of New York City and into the embrace of suburban districts? Among the most idiotic of all is the disgraced but still mandated "workshop model." It is the new predator in town. If you are the parent of a child in public school, make sure you secure your child and guard against its ravages:According to this model, which is as much a cult of method as it is an aberration of curriculum, teachers are forbidden from spending more than ten minutes on direct instruction during a forty-five minute subject class. Master, veteran teachers have been severely disciplined for straying from this lockstep mandate.
Classic literature is banned from most classrooms. Textbooks have been banned in many districts. Dictionaries have been put out as garbage because they are dictionaries, not because they are old or damaged.
Use of red pen to grade papers has been prohibited. That color is considered to be suggestive of bloodshed, humiliation, and trauma.
Some principals have ordered teachers to restrict all observations of any child's work and behavior to praise...
Students with the weakest skills are denied the personal attention they need because teachers are browbeaten into compulsory small group activities which encourage and lock the less proficient students into dependency on the more adept ones...
The workshop model is the freak of Columbia Teachers College. Except for the folks who are making money on the model, practically no educational researchers, historians, or teachers in the field think it is anything but a wicked waste of time.
(Via Joanne.)
Posted by kswygert at September 7, 2005 11:59 AM