Educational Planning (Idealism Tempered in Reality's Forge)
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Educational planning should be based on realistic assumptions concerning the children that enter our classrooms. We must recognize that they are a diverse group and that a one-size-fits-all approach in not going to work very well for many students. The notion that all children can live up to a single standard is so obviously at odds with human variability the one wonders how "No Child Left Behind" ever became the law of the land.
Nature treats some individuals much more kindly than others. Children at birth are not all equally strong or healthy or – presumably – intelligent; and those with superior natural endowments have a much greater chance of succeeding than do their less fortunate peers.
Nurture may diminish or increase the inequalities among those children who show up in our nation’s classrooms. If a child has been healthy and well-nourished and loved and well-educated during his preschool years, he may already be far ahead of the child sitting across the aisle who has enjoyed less favorable treatment.
A second assumption that has gained ground in recent years is that a student's behavior is the best available mirror for reflecting what he has learned. When teachers frame their goals and their activities in terms of student behaviors, they enhance everyone's understanding of what education is all about.
If a teacher runs an activity centered classroom, his students are probably going to learn more efficiently (and be less bored) than in classes where they are seldom asked to do anything other than to listen.
John Dewey’s belief that the schools must teach the whole child is just as valid today as when he advanced that belief a hundred year ago. Schools must be concerned with their students’ growth not only in the cognitive but in the affective and the psycho-motor domains as well.
Dewey’s emphasis on democratic schools in the minds of some was equated with permissive schools. Actually living in a democracy in no way implies living lawlessly. In fact, when teachers plan well-regulated activities for students, their classrooms become more self-disciplined environments than ones in which the “kids” merely listen to the teacher’s lectures.
The central purpose of student evaluation should not be to stack the deck but rather to measure each student’s progress. Not all children will ever run a mile in eight or even ten minutes; but we should be pleased to see that a child has improved his time – even if it is from 20 to l9 minutes.
As a teacher I became convinced that evaluation in the schools should be an open, continuous, collaborative process involving students, teachers, administrators and parents. Fortunately, digital technology has facilitated the information sharing process, so that all parties with a right and a need to know about a child’s progress can have immediate access to relevant information.
The two major deficiencies that I see in our schools today are these: (l) They hand out too many credits based on social promotions and not of accomplishment and (2) They do an inadequate job of teaching hard-headed critical thinking skills. Industry and healthy skepticism are two very important attributes of successful adults.
Even though our schools have come in for some pretty harsh criticism, in large part because of the unrealistic expectations engendered by “No Child Left Behind,” they actually do a very credible job in educating the country’s youth. A good many effective teachers and administrators will find the suggestions in this book in no way revolutionary or controversial.
Douglas Patterson
With the exception of a three year stint in the U.S.Army, I have spent my life in and around the public schools. My parents were both teachers, and I have taught language arts courses at the high school level for a total of 37 years. I was born during the great depressions and grew up in Southern Idaho (both literally and figuratively) just north of Poverty Flat. I lived in the very small town of Bellevue, Idaho, that had a population of some 500 people and an equal number of dogs. In this rural environment, I enjoyed a Tom Sawyer like life, not on the Mississippi but rather on the Woodriver where my friends and I fished an swam and roamed the riverbottom and the surrounding hills from morning til night. My parents never locked the doors to our house, and we never worried much about it being burglarized. (For you skiers,Sun Valley is seventeen miles north of this town.) After graduating from Hailey(now Woodriver) High School,I enrolled at the University of Oregon at a time when the school had a student body of 5,000 students and the football team rarely won a game. After graduation, I spent a marvelous tour of duty with the U.S. Army which took me to Europe. I was stationed in Germany for a couple of glorious years and became a dedicated Europhile. After I was discharged, I started my teaching career in the small town of New Plymouth, Idaho, near the Oregon border. After three years, I moved to Yakima, Washington, where I worked as an English and German teacher for the next 34 years. After retiring,I quickly grew bored and began writing books primarily for my own amusement. Four of the books that I am publishing with Smashbooks are language arts textbooks focusing on linguistics, critical thinking, and literal and literary composition. The other two deal with self-improvment and very basic economics. Because breaking into the traditional publishing business has always been such a long shot,I was very pleased to see ebook publishing develop into a platform for people like me who are looking for an inexpensive way to offer their materials to the public. Since they say that confession is good for the sould, I must admit that my picture was taken by a yearbook photographer at least twenty-five years ago. I have no defense except to say, "Vanity thy name is not woman alone!"
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Educational Planning (Idealism Tempered in Reality's Forge) - Douglas Patterson
Educational Planning
By Douglas D. Patterson
Copyright c 2013 by Douglas D. Patterson
Smashwords Edition
Table of Contents
(automatic)
Introduction
Part I – National, State and Local Educational Goals
Chapter 1 – Writing Behavioral Objectives
Chapter 2 – The Affective Domain
Chapter 3 – The Cognitive Domain
Chapter 4 – The Psycho Motor Domain
Part II – Planning Classroom Activities
Chapter 5 - Course Planning
Chapter 6 – Writing Lesson Plans
Part III – Assessing Student (and Teacher) Success
Chapter 7 – Student Grading
Chapter 8 – Standardized Testing
Chapter 9 – Teacher Evaluation
Introduction
The earliest schools in the western world were seminaries in which scholars studied the word of God as conveyed in the Bible and as explained by church authorities. Religious education has as its goal inculcating in each new generation the beliefs and the ideals and the values of the churches, and this objective was reflected in the way that the schools were conducted. Teachers were givers of knowledge and students were recipients who were expected to accept the truths and to apply them in their daily lives.
Authoritarian Education
The early public schools in America, not surprisingly, had their roots fixed firmly in the seminary. Their task was to teach the four Rs: reading, writing, arithmetic and religion. The teachers were givers of knowledge. One of their most important sources was the Bible. Students were not to question the WORD but rather to learn the truth and to apply it in their daily lives. Even into the early l960s, many states still required teachers to open each day with a prayer and/or a reading from the Bible. Many religious folks viewed involvement by the federal government in the educational affairs of a community a violation of their First Amendment religious rights. Education was a state and a local domain; and in most communities the line between the schools and the churches was by no means clearly drawn.
Language instruction was conducted in a similar top-down manner. Noah Webster had become the most respected authority on American English. His dictionaries set the language standards that were taught in the schools, and the job of the students was to conform to the linguistic norms that he had established. Webster’s Dictionaries were treated as linguistic Bibles whose definitions and rules were not to be questioned.
One aspect of religious education that persists even today in our public schools is an extreme emphasis on deductive reasoning - the thought process by which we apply general principles to draw specific conclusions. This emphasis is still evident in the math curricula of modern schools which focus primarily on algebra and geometry and other such courses. These subjects are basically exercises in deductive reasoning. Even at the beginning of the 21st century, courses dealing with inductive reasoning receive short shrift in most public schools’ curricula.
Prior to the mid-20th century, most children attended school for a few years; and then they went to work at gainful employment on the farm or in the factories. Learning to live by the rules and to do as they were told was high on the agenda. People who were destined to spend their lives doing manual labor were perhaps better off not learning to be independent and creative thinkers. If the schools taught the children their ABCs and how to cipher and how to live according to God’s word, they had accomplishing their mission.
A Socio-Economic Revolution
During the 20th century, our society experienced many revolutionary changes. The population of the country, as a result of a high birthrate and of liberal immigration policies, expanded rapidly. Whereas a majority of Americans in the year 1900 still lived on farms, the agricultural revolution during the 20th century made it possible for fewer and fewer farmers to grow the country’s food. Fortunately, the industrial revolution was opening up jobs in factories which initially absorbed the unneeded farm workers. Eventually free trade and permissive immigration policies coupled with automation eroded the position of the American blue collar worker and have forced him to upgrade his skills or to live off meager government benefits which tend to be grudgingly bestowed.
The labor of children was no longer essential; and child labor laws eventually barred employers from using the inexpensive labor of minors to undermine the jobs and the bargaining position of adult workers. Since the children were no longer occupied in the workplace, society was faced with the problem of what to do with all that youthful talent and energy. An idle mind
as they say, is the Devil’s workshop,
and society could ill afford to allow hordes of young people to fritter away their lives in the streets.
America turned to the schools to keep its youth productively employed. Most children today spend a large portion of their young lives at school; despite all of the talk about the drop-out problem, the percentage of American teenagers and young adults who eventually receive high school diplomas and college degrees is impressive.
Whereas advanced schooling was once the domain of wealthy and extremely talented youngsters, today high schools and even the colleges have been democratized. Students from all socio-economic backgrounds converge each day in the nation’s classrooms.
The schools took on a triple role. They became the nation’s baby sitters; they are expected to socialize sometime obstreperous children, and at the same time teachers are expected to help young people