Personal Education Blog

EDUCATION’S FLY IN THE OINTMENT

by Robert DePaolo

As a grizzled veteran with thrity years worth of experience in public (and private) school systems I have been alternately fascinated and appalled by the relatively poor academic achievement levels among American students. As a school psychologist, I have also seen many students who would have “made it through” in previous times now being identified as learning disabled and/or attention deficient.

Like many others i’ve looked at numerous factors extant in the public school system in trying to figure out why these trends have emerged.  I’ve also taken into acount the explanations and ostensible remedies served up by politicians on the left and right, by parents, educators, beaurocrats and others. Since, among my professional responsibilities is to administer intelligence tests I’ve been able to determine – beyond any doubt - that most students in and out of special education have the necessary cognitive abilities to succeed - all things being equal. As someone with a fair amount of knowledge regarding child development I also understand that while a learning disability is defined as a discrepancy among intellectual skills and between Intelligence and academic performance,  most if not all people, regardless of their circumstances, would tend to show strengths and weaknesses in their test profile – simply because nature is not a cookie cutter.

The question is; why do some students lack the ability to keep up in class? Although I’ve spent a lot of time observing children in classrooms, the answer did not occur to me until recently. In the past I seldom paid much attention to curriculum. This error of omission came about for two reasons. First, teachers most often had me observe students in open-ended periods such as recess, when they were more prone to acting out. The second reason is that I simply assumed the curriculum was developmentally appropriate. After all, it is typically handed down from people with considerable expertise in the field, both state-wide and nationally.

But every now and then I would get a counseling  referral regarding a student presumed to be depressed. In several instances I probed in atempting to find the source of the mood disorder, only to have the students tell me they were sad and frustrated because they had absolutely no idea what was being taught in class. It had nothing to do with their home life. School – they implored me to understand - was the problem. That was why they frequently called in sick.That was why they acted out so as to get taken from the classroom and why they actually preferred being lectured by the principal to enduring the painful confusion and alienation they felt in class.

It was after a number of such encounters with students that I began to pay closer attention to the curriculum as a possible antecedent of student pathology. My first real academic observation was of a second grade class, where the teacher was discussing iscoceles triangles, the difference between squares and parallelograms and other bits and pieces. She drifted from one topic to another , hoping the students would have some sort of Eureka experience and tie it all together. None that I observed did.   It was a disheveled, incongrouous lecture which for most students might as well have been in Greek. I then observed other classes, where similar mix and match non-thematic curriculum items were being offered. After a while it occured to me that the reason there are so many confused, inattentive, “learning disabled” students is due to an absurd curriculum being hoist upon students well before they are developmentally ready to absorb such material.

But it isn’t just development. After talking with teachers (all of whom were involved, caring and hard working professionals - themselves frustrated) it occured to me that there is a new curriculum theory in education that has simply failed. Many teachers know this but are playing the hand they’ve been dealt. The current thinking is that children learn best when concepts rather than rote memorization of facts are involved. Some gurus in the field have come to believe that rather than teaching children the times tables by recitation, they should present them with multiple examples of math facts in the hope that the children would eventually put together the times tables on their own. 

The problem with this approach (which we in the field of psychology call the “instances of the concept method”) is that it can only take hold after the instances are taught. “The fact precedes the concept.”…is a tenet well supported by research on learning. Furthermore, categorical learning must precede systems learning. For example, one doesn’t teach the word “fruit” before the child has learned to identify apples and oranges individually.  One doesn’t teach language arts until the child first learns the ins and outs of grammar and  penmanship. Concepts, by definition provide no framework or foundation in memory. Since they are abstract and not tangible they cannot serve as a cognitive anchorpoint. And when the curriculum is laden with concepts beginning in the first grade, it will tend to produce sad, angry, attention deficient students who can’t keep up.

I’ve also asked myself a question that is somewhat, but not entirely grounded in a good ol’days mentality. Specifically, why is it that students whose only technology consisted of cardboard alphabet letters atop the blackboard, with no computers, teacher’s aids, no special education and few if any books other than those passed out in Fall before each class, could become so well educated. More particularly, how could the boomers possibly have become more proficient in reading and math than today’s students with no reading specialists, after school programs or other support systems?

I’m convinced part of the answer lies in the curriculum. It is categorically incomprehensible, which is why in “social studies” classes many students are unsure about what they are suposed to be learning. It is why language arts classes are so generic that students can’t concentrate on just reading or writing.  Indeed the problem inherent in students not knowing what exactly they are studying is formidable and actually prevents conceptualization of the curriculum.

My sense is that perhaps a review of current curriculum practices is needed, with consideration given to rote memorization/recitation methods, narrow subject descriptions, eg. rather than social studies, divide classes up into history, geography etc. and that teachers be allowed to spend more time drilling in specific skill areas than presenting a potpouri curriculum that students simply cannot grasp. 

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