This is, as always detailed and pithy. We too believe content connections are essential, and have created a library of discussion documents, designed for kids and parents to use at home. Especially over summer. Check out a few here… https://kidsreadnow.org/discovery-sheets/
I love the quality of thought in your writing; that's why I follow your work. I will suggest, however, that your premise in the last paragraph in your recent post is worth exploring. The idea that we must supply information that is memorized rather than nurturing situations in which information is discovered based on learner curiosity and/or facilitator enthusiasm is pivotal for how we think about teaching and learning.
When we focus on memorization we are quite challenged as to how we make learning engaging. Since schooling over emphasizes memorization, by validating this approach might we be misguiding educators steeped in this traditional approach? I fear so!
Children can reason based on life experiences, stories and poems and other engaging "media". Agreed, information is needed for reasoning to occur, but the current teacher, textbook, and worksheet strategies for communicating information are deadening. Don't you think we should shift our focus to discovery built on questions & concerns that originate in and therefore animate students?
2. Explicit instruction doesn't have to focus on memorization, in the sense that kids are committing lists of facts and dates to memory. There are far more engaging ways of getting information to stick -- e.g., by having back-and-forth conversations (in which students are both asking and answering questions) and writing. But the bottom line is that the more information about a topic that students have in long-term memory, they better able they will be to think critically about it and to pursue it more deeply. Students often get very curious about topics that they have been introduced to through explicit instruction, if it's done in an engaging way. On the other hand, if you don't know about a topic -- if you don't even know it exists -- it's hard to ask questions or even become curious about it.
3. It's possible to impart a lot of information through narratives and engage kids deeply. Explicit teaching doesn't have to take the form of a lecture. Reading aloud from a biography, a historical novel, or a narrative about a historical or scientific event--and having discussions about the content, or asking kids to write about it--can build a lot of knowledge in an engaging way. Teachers have told me that when kids are introduced to a topic in this way, they often ask lots of questions and want to learn more about it.
4. In the elementary classrooms I've been in (and there have been quite a few), the emphasis is definitely NOT on memorization, unless you count memorizing things like the definition of "author's purpose." The focus is on getting kids prepared for standardized reading comprehension tests, and those are the kinds of things the tests seem to be assessing. In the relatively few classrooms I've been in where the focus is on explicit teaching that builds kids knowledge of the world, the kids have been FAR more engaged.
Engagement begins with impactful sensations that result either from novelty, intensity, or beauty. At certain stages that we should research in terms of age, developmental, and idiosyncratic factors, ideas can be sufficiently impactful to elicit interest and exploration.
We can view the inefficiencies in our curriculum as related to a lack of impactful sensations and interesting ideas. The impact of textbooks and worksheets elicits yawns. The beauty or relevance of knowledge taught for tests rarely rises to concepts worthy of enthusiastic exploration. Thus, far too often, school is about memorization and is described as boring for students, and if asked, most likely for teachers.
Training teachers to better manage a less than inspiring curriculum is a frightening proposition.
Whether or not the gaps between student populations can be partially attributed to disparities in teacher effectiveness (and many studies, in contrast with the one cited above, support that notion), it seems self-evident that more effective teaching overall would help to improve student achievement. To that end, providing teachers with more evidence-based curriculum, along with curriculum-centered training, would probably help--but it’s not enough. For example, teaching reading, as Louisa Moats has famously noted, is indeed rocket science. Teachers need not only rocket-specific (i.e., curriculum-based) training but also extensive and deep knowledge of scientific evidence about the space in which they are navigating. Per the National Council on Teacher Quality, only about half of teacher-prep programs provide solid background in evidence-based reading instruction. We can’t just give teachers the manual for the rocket; they need to learn and practice rocket science. Curriculum alone is not the answer. Background knowledge is critical.
This is a very interesting essay, thank you. I think you might be interested in the analysis idea of last year's ACT scores... Ambition, self perception, and personal aspirations outweigh a number of other factors...
Thanks for the link. I agree that things like ambition and self-perception are important in test outcomes and academic outcomes generally. But I also think that a curriculum that builds students' knowledge of the world, beginning in elementary school, has the potential to change the way they perceive themselves.
It's hard to see yourself as potentially academically successful, or to formulate ambitious goals, when your experience of school is essentially telling you you're a failure. This isn't the fault of individual teachers any more than it's the fault of individual students. It's a systemic problem -- and the system is causing many individuals (both students and, sometimes, teachers) to feel like they're failures rather than seeing that the system has failed THEM.
Education is the process of symbolizing rich concrete experiences so they can be reflected on, then contemplation can inspire unlimited imagination, humility, and gratitude. Education is also the pathway to inspire and test imagination and learn to navigate the many tides of shifting reality.
As educators we need to touch the place where discovery of knowledge creates enthusiasm. When wild-child, Helen Keller, is simultaneously touched by gushing cold water and a symbol for the word water, communication and thus civilization begins. It begins not as language for command and control but as touch, pleasure, and language that makes reflection possible. This suggests that education is the movement from pleasing, concrete, sensory experience into reflection by deepening our awareness of symbols.
As educators we speak of two kinds of symbols—word and number, spoken language & math. These two symbol systems go to the heart of our means to manage ourselves in an ever-changing world and society. Navigating the movement between outer and inner worlds through words and numbers enables all the knowledge we value and that schools are responsible to develop.
SEL, STEAM, and civics are built on these symbol systems as surely as the arc changed architecture, music expresses feeling, math is the language of engineering, and poetry and story are pathways to our evolving humanity.
Until our schools explore the vital heartbeat of language as the beginning place of personal identity and civilization and our curriculum reflects the beautiful and amazingly interconnected mystery of being in creation and creation blossoming in being, our schools will continue to fail to fully engage and humanize our potential. Where education fails, we harvest suffering; where education succeeds, we inspire a humble, creative future.
While many, many important points are made in this well written article, I'm surprised and concerned that the relevance, the beauty, of what is taught is ignored. Memorizing geographical or historical facts and related vocabulary fails to give students what they most need--agency, curiosity, belonging. relevance and teamwork. As long as we measure educational success in terms of test scores rather than an eager to learn creative mind set, our curriculum does students and teachers a huge disservice.
Education should not be indoctrination into knowledge, Knowledge should inspire identity and imagination. Let's stop figuring out better ways to fill the bucket and start lighting the flame. One spark is to empower students rather than test scores to evaluate progress. The research clear, our current testing system is top down, judgmental and authoritarian. All antithetical to learning and developing executive functions.
I can't address every aspect of education in one post, but I have said many times elsewhere, both in writing and in speaking, that standardized tests should NOT be considered a guide to instruction--as they have been all too often in recent years. Reading tests are essentially, as cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has observed, knowledge tests in disguise. So what they can tell us is basically that some groups of students have had less opportunity to acquire academic knowledge than others.
The idea that test prep consists of "memorizing geographical or historical facts and related vocabulary" is a common one, but in fact that's not what instruction geared to standardized tests generally looks like, for the simple reason that there's no way of knowing what facts will be useful for the test. Test passages are on random topics, which are usually chosen to avoid anything kids might have learned in school. The idea is that they're testing comprehension skills, not knowledge--which of course isn't actually the case.
Clearly, education shouldn't END with memorizing factual information, but if it doesn't begin there, students won't have the raw material they need to engage in analysis and critical thinking. If we want students to have agency, we need to supply them with information. And once we give them information in an engaging way, it sparks their curiosity.
I think it's interesting that 1998 was the year that reading scores stagnated and began falling. In 1983, the childhood vaccination schedule drastically changed, with all children being born in mid 1982 and later being subject to a lot more shots than earlier generations. The incidence of autism, a condition that especially impacts social understanding and verbal expression (i.e.humanities more than math) also began increasing on that timeline. Poor children, relying on the health dept and medicaid would have been especially impacted by vax policy changes. We also know that black kids (historically less well-off than most other groups) have higher levels of autism. Your data shows they have worse test scores. The quantity of IEPs is up. Health is just another factor to consider as we try to solve the conundrum of why many children are not learning effectively or showing proficiency. On average, they may be too sick, even subclinically, to do it. Is this fixable in a classroom setting?
Not to minimize possible health factors, but I've been in classrooms full of poor kids who have presumably been vaccinated, and when they have the benefit of a curriculum that builds their knowledge about the world they are capable of thinking logically and analytically and expressing themselves in ways that astound their teachers. I've often heard from teachers of diverse groups of kids that it's the kids who have IEPs, or who are still learning English, or who would have been in the lowest reading groups who blossom the most, making insightful contributions to class discussions. So generally speaking, I do think this is fixable in a classroom setting.
By "this", I meant health conditions that affect learning, whether it's ADHD, Autism, anaphylactic allergies, OCD, or anything else. Good curriculum and implementation can certainly counterbalance and overcome a number of issues resulting from poverty. I just think there is more to it.
This is, as always detailed and pithy. We too believe content connections are essential, and have created a library of discussion documents, designed for kids and parents to use at home. Especially over summer. Check out a few here… https://kidsreadnow.org/discovery-sheets/
Natalie,
I love the quality of thought in your writing; that's why I follow your work. I will suggest, however, that your premise in the last paragraph in your recent post is worth exploring. The idea that we must supply information that is memorized rather than nurturing situations in which information is discovered based on learner curiosity and/or facilitator enthusiasm is pivotal for how we think about teaching and learning.
When we focus on memorization we are quite challenged as to how we make learning engaging. Since schooling over emphasizes memorization, by validating this approach might we be misguiding educators steeped in this traditional approach? I fear so!
Children can reason based on life experiences, stories and poems and other engaging "media". Agreed, information is needed for reasoning to occur, but the current teacher, textbook, and worksheet strategies for communicating information are deadening. Don't you think we should shift our focus to discovery built on questions & concerns that originate in and therefore animate students?
Thanks for the kind words. There's a lot to unpack here, but briefly:
1. There's lots of evidence that when learners are new to a topic, explicit instruction works better than minimally guided instruction (inquiry, discovery, etc.) For a summary of that evidence see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27699659_Why_Minimal_Guidance_During_Instruction_Does_Not_Work_An_Analysis_of_the_Failure_of_Constructivist_Discovery_Problem-Based_Experiential_and_Inquiry-Based_Teaching
2. Explicit instruction doesn't have to focus on memorization, in the sense that kids are committing lists of facts and dates to memory. There are far more engaging ways of getting information to stick -- e.g., by having back-and-forth conversations (in which students are both asking and answering questions) and writing. But the bottom line is that the more information about a topic that students have in long-term memory, they better able they will be to think critically about it and to pursue it more deeply. Students often get very curious about topics that they have been introduced to through explicit instruction, if it's done in an engaging way. On the other hand, if you don't know about a topic -- if you don't even know it exists -- it's hard to ask questions or even become curious about it.
3. It's possible to impart a lot of information through narratives and engage kids deeply. Explicit teaching doesn't have to take the form of a lecture. Reading aloud from a biography, a historical novel, or a narrative about a historical or scientific event--and having discussions about the content, or asking kids to write about it--can build a lot of knowledge in an engaging way. Teachers have told me that when kids are introduced to a topic in this way, they often ask lots of questions and want to learn more about it.
4. In the elementary classrooms I've been in (and there have been quite a few), the emphasis is definitely NOT on memorization, unless you count memorizing things like the definition of "author's purpose." The focus is on getting kids prepared for standardized reading comprehension tests, and those are the kinds of things the tests seem to be assessing. In the relatively few classrooms I've been in where the focus is on explicit teaching that builds kids knowledge of the world, the kids have been FAR more engaged.
I'll leave it there!
The real explanation is the following:
Engagement begins with impactful sensations that result either from novelty, intensity, or beauty. At certain stages that we should research in terms of age, developmental, and idiosyncratic factors, ideas can be sufficiently impactful to elicit interest and exploration.
We can view the inefficiencies in our curriculum as related to a lack of impactful sensations and interesting ideas. The impact of textbooks and worksheets elicits yawns. The beauty or relevance of knowledge taught for tests rarely rises to concepts worthy of enthusiastic exploration. Thus, far too often, school is about memorization and is described as boring for students, and if asked, most likely for teachers.
Training teachers to better manage a less than inspiring curriculum is a frightening proposition.
Whether or not the gaps between student populations can be partially attributed to disparities in teacher effectiveness (and many studies, in contrast with the one cited above, support that notion), it seems self-evident that more effective teaching overall would help to improve student achievement. To that end, providing teachers with more evidence-based curriculum, along with curriculum-centered training, would probably help--but it’s not enough. For example, teaching reading, as Louisa Moats has famously noted, is indeed rocket science. Teachers need not only rocket-specific (i.e., curriculum-based) training but also extensive and deep knowledge of scientific evidence about the space in which they are navigating. Per the National Council on Teacher Quality, only about half of teacher-prep programs provide solid background in evidence-based reading instruction. We can’t just give teachers the manual for the rocket; they need to learn and practice rocket science. Curriculum alone is not the answer. Background knowledge is critical.
This is a very interesting essay, thank you. I think you might be interested in the analysis idea of last year's ACT scores... Ambition, self perception, and personal aspirations outweigh a number of other factors...
https://quillette.com/2022/07/16/the-act-discriminates/
Thank you again for this interesting read, Frederick
Thanks for the link. I agree that things like ambition and self-perception are important in test outcomes and academic outcomes generally. But I also think that a curriculum that builds students' knowledge of the world, beginning in elementary school, has the potential to change the way they perceive themselves.
It's hard to see yourself as potentially academically successful, or to formulate ambitious goals, when your experience of school is essentially telling you you're a failure. This isn't the fault of individual teachers any more than it's the fault of individual students. It's a systemic problem -- and the system is causing many individuals (both students and, sometimes, teachers) to feel like they're failures rather than seeing that the system has failed THEM.
Yes, I agree with you in general.
Education is the process of symbolizing rich concrete experiences so they can be reflected on, then contemplation can inspire unlimited imagination, humility, and gratitude. Education is also the pathway to inspire and test imagination and learn to navigate the many tides of shifting reality.
As educators we need to touch the place where discovery of knowledge creates enthusiasm. When wild-child, Helen Keller, is simultaneously touched by gushing cold water and a symbol for the word water, communication and thus civilization begins. It begins not as language for command and control but as touch, pleasure, and language that makes reflection possible. This suggests that education is the movement from pleasing, concrete, sensory experience into reflection by deepening our awareness of symbols.
As educators we speak of two kinds of symbols—word and number, spoken language & math. These two symbol systems go to the heart of our means to manage ourselves in an ever-changing world and society. Navigating the movement between outer and inner worlds through words and numbers enables all the knowledge we value and that schools are responsible to develop.
SEL, STEAM, and civics are built on these symbol systems as surely as the arc changed architecture, music expresses feeling, math is the language of engineering, and poetry and story are pathways to our evolving humanity.
Until our schools explore the vital heartbeat of language as the beginning place of personal identity and civilization and our curriculum reflects the beautiful and amazingly interconnected mystery of being in creation and creation blossoming in being, our schools will continue to fail to fully engage and humanize our potential. Where education fails, we harvest suffering; where education succeeds, we inspire a humble, creative future.
While many, many important points are made in this well written article, I'm surprised and concerned that the relevance, the beauty, of what is taught is ignored. Memorizing geographical or historical facts and related vocabulary fails to give students what they most need--agency, curiosity, belonging. relevance and teamwork. As long as we measure educational success in terms of test scores rather than an eager to learn creative mind set, our curriculum does students and teachers a huge disservice.
Education should not be indoctrination into knowledge, Knowledge should inspire identity and imagination. Let's stop figuring out better ways to fill the bucket and start lighting the flame. One spark is to empower students rather than test scores to evaluate progress. The research clear, our current testing system is top down, judgmental and authoritarian. All antithetical to learning and developing executive functions.
I can't address every aspect of education in one post, but I have said many times elsewhere, both in writing and in speaking, that standardized tests should NOT be considered a guide to instruction--as they have been all too often in recent years. Reading tests are essentially, as cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has observed, knowledge tests in disguise. So what they can tell us is basically that some groups of students have had less opportunity to acquire academic knowledge than others.
The idea that test prep consists of "memorizing geographical or historical facts and related vocabulary" is a common one, but in fact that's not what instruction geared to standardized tests generally looks like, for the simple reason that there's no way of knowing what facts will be useful for the test. Test passages are on random topics, which are usually chosen to avoid anything kids might have learned in school. The idea is that they're testing comprehension skills, not knowledge--which of course isn't actually the case.
Clearly, education shouldn't END with memorizing factual information, but if it doesn't begin there, students won't have the raw material they need to engage in analysis and critical thinking. If we want students to have agency, we need to supply them with information. And once we give them information in an engaging way, it sparks their curiosity.
I think it's interesting that 1998 was the year that reading scores stagnated and began falling. In 1983, the childhood vaccination schedule drastically changed, with all children being born in mid 1982 and later being subject to a lot more shots than earlier generations. The incidence of autism, a condition that especially impacts social understanding and verbal expression (i.e.humanities more than math) also began increasing on that timeline. Poor children, relying on the health dept and medicaid would have been especially impacted by vax policy changes. We also know that black kids (historically less well-off than most other groups) have higher levels of autism. Your data shows they have worse test scores. The quantity of IEPs is up. Health is just another factor to consider as we try to solve the conundrum of why many children are not learning effectively or showing proficiency. On average, they may be too sick, even subclinically, to do it. Is this fixable in a classroom setting?
Not to minimize possible health factors, but I've been in classrooms full of poor kids who have presumably been vaccinated, and when they have the benefit of a curriculum that builds their knowledge about the world they are capable of thinking logically and analytically and expressing themselves in ways that astound their teachers. I've often heard from teachers of diverse groups of kids that it's the kids who have IEPs, or who are still learning English, or who would have been in the lowest reading groups who blossom the most, making insightful contributions to class discussions. So generally speaking, I do think this is fixable in a classroom setting.
By "this", I meant health conditions that affect learning, whether it's ADHD, Autism, anaphylactic allergies, OCD, or anything else. Good curriculum and implementation can certainly counterbalance and overcome a number of issues resulting from poverty. I just think there is more to it.