Wrong Premises, Wrong Conclusions
By(This post will concentrate on the humanities. For the same ideas on the theme concerning math, though related, I will limit myself to once again calling attention to Jaime Escalante, who turned ‘poor’ Garfield High School into one of the top math schools in the nation–with very little money. He got students to 1.value education and therefore 2. work hard. These methods have fallen out of favor).
If you attempt to achieve a true result from a false premise you will almost literally bang your head against the wall.
If you were to watch Tiger Woods make an incredible shot (I know, I’m short on analogies, but sports are visual and not everyone knows Maradona) and conclude, ‘Hey, he made that shot because he has expensive golf clubs’, you would go out and get yourself some first rate golf clubs and proceed to make your lousy shots with them. Even then, while not being the impetus behind the skilled shot, they help a bit–unlike books, which if readable offer no advantage intellectually by having a new cover.
If you look at the best educated people and think ‘Wow, they went to shiny new schools, THAT’S why they’re well- educated’ then you pour billions of dollars into shiny new classrooms (and, let’s say, shiny new techniques) (While, of course, ignoring the lives of people like Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Malcolm X, and hundreds of thousands of significant less-luminous others who got educated with little money).
That’s why whenever I see money poured into a school under the premise that it takes a lot of money to get educated or that it is the key to a ‘first-rate’ education I pad my walls.
The foundation of a solid education is a high reading level. Really, it’s that simple. Yes there are other factors, but as I tried to reason with the English department at my school a few years ago:
1. You never see a low-achieving school with overall high reading levels
2. You never see a high-achieving school with low reading levels.
Where should your emphasis be?
What do you need to attain high reading levels?
1. Books
2. Reading them, preferably from a very early age.
3. A huge working vocabulary. This will stem easily from the first two steps here if done right.
Books are anywhere from free (public library or school library) to .25 cents at the nearest used bookstore for access to the greatest minds the world has ever known.
Success in school is directly tied to reading levels, not money.
It does not take a lot of money to attain a high reading level. Books are cheap.
You can’t pour money on someone’s head and make them educated.
As long as schools think that money is the key to education they will fail, because they are operating under the wrong premise.
The key to education is not money, but value.
Put a billion dollars into a low-achieving school and you might as well flush it if you don’t understand why it is low-achieving (if victim is anywhere in your thesis go ahead and flush it).
To spend your time reading to your children from a young age (and which is the greatest predictor of academic success, NOT how rich you are) you need to value that.
I did not grow up rich. I guess lower middle class when it came to income. I did have access to a ‘first-rate’ education which I will explain later.
There was one area where my mother never put any restraints: how many books I could get at the book fair at school every year. She did not have a lot of money; she just chose to use it for books. That’s called value. Trips to the library.
If you want to see a school improve follow these steps:
1. Arrange it that there is no disruption in classrooms
2. Concentrate on High Reading Levels
3. Realize that it is value, not money, that leads to a solid education.
This takes time. It may take 12 years, to start with kindergarden and see the progress, because reading at high levels is difficult if you haven’t had the foundation. You will have to work harder, unpopular as that may sound. I guarantee no state that has won the race to the top can substitute anything for high reading levels and hard work.
The concepts are very simple. They are being unnecessarily complicated. Books. Studying. Hard work.
It’s that easy.
Hi,
I’ve been teaching English 10-12 for ten years and can maybe share some tips for you, “k”. It sounds like you have started with a good idea: start with books that you know almost every kid will like. Then, even if you don’t like the book, act like a fool like you do. Next, always model good reading skills for fiction and nonfiction, no matter how hard or how short. Try the website Adlit.com (Adolescent Literacy) which has a whole page full of easy, printable techniques and activities for before, during, and after reading.
Good luck, and keep making them read every day, and you will see some results,
Melissa
Hi K–
I have only a very general answer here which is to read the book ‘FLOW’ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. We are frustrated when things are too difficult or too easy for us and this book explains the psychology of optimal achievement beautifully. Inherent in the explanations would be why social promotion makes all involved so miserable.
I have students with many different reading levels in my 7th grade independent reading/homeroom class. Some students are years ahead while others continue to lag behind. I personally struggle on how to get students to have a love of reading – many are hesitant because they are so far behind. Students get overwhelmed with the amount of reading and the difficulty and give up. Does anyone have some suggestions on helping instill the value of reading starting in middle school? I am not a literacy teacher but I have discovered some series (Wimpy Kid, Bones, Hunger Games) that students seem to really enjoy and had a little success.
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Best wishes
Hello, I agree with you that students need to concentrate and work quietly on their assignments. I am an elementary art teacher and at that level the students work much better individually. There is way too much dialog in the form of “he is copying me”, “he said this or that”, etc. As a mother I have had one of my son’s teachers (8th grade)say he was talking and I asked “in what way?” and the response was he was doing group work but talking too much. Why would you put students in a group work, discussion situation and think they would not do just that? At least guidelines should be set up for that. My son is a self-tattler and tells me when he does wrong or right, believe it or not. He states they were discussing the subject but got carried away.
I am a 21 year teacher and last year, my first year back in elementary I thought I had the perfect lesson planned with 2nd-5th grade classes all working in groups of four to identify, catagorize and cut out and paste 4 of the 8 elements of art. The students did a great job but it was way too chaotic and went on for several class periods. I learned my lesson!
Thank you for my free introduction course and I have used your tips and they have worked wonders with my elementary students. I used to work in a Special Education Center for 18 years with 6-12 grades and it was based on behavior and a point sheet and the discipline was not that effective because there were too many warnings and people not being consistent since we had counselors, security, etc. and no one was on the same page and because of this I feel the school was not effective. There was a big “Behavior Manuel” and people including administration bent the rules or changed them without amending the book. The poor teachers who really tried to follow what was in the manuel never had a chance because the lack of consisitency.
Thank you again, Katrina Pierre