The latest edition of the Carnival of Education is up, hosted by the delightful Jenny D. Her "Editor's Choice" pick is NewOldSchoolTeacher, blogging at Oh, snap!, who has a funny, understated description of herself on her site:
I am a student at a graduate school of education. Unfortunately, I am also smart and care about education. You see where I'm going with this.
Oh, yes we do. Don't miss her tale of terror, "Teaching a lesson in a progressive school", where the official position is to be "against" quizzes. I love her comments on why the little facts and details are important:
My teachers and others want kids to understand the "big ideas" in history, rather than memorizing facts and details. But I just don't think you can teach these big ideas directly. They are empty and meaningless by themselves. You teach the small stories, the facts, the dates, the chronology, the events, and then out of these, patterns begin to emerge. That's the beautiful part, when the students start to see them. It's like giving them tree after tree after tree, and suddenly they realize it's a forest. Or it's like that painting, by...Seurat? The one with all the little dots. There is no picture without all the dots!It's funny, because I feel that the teaching strategy I am suggesting is actually more constructivist than my constructivist teachers. It doesn't involve lots of group work, and it doesn't shun facts, and there would have to be a lot of teacher support and prodding, but I think students could come up with a lot of "big ideas" on their own, without us directly telling them. Giving them the facts, rather than a somewhat revisionist thematic interpretation of the facts, actually gives them more power, and a forest full of trees.
No wonder "progressive" teachers hate standardized tests. We keep focusing on those damn trees - sometimes down to the level of individual leaves - while they keep trying to convince students that seeing the forest as a whole is the only important goal.
Posted by kswygert at October 12, 2005 12:39 PM