Achwienichtig
Member
So, I recently downloaded the audiobook "The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them" by E.D. Hirsch. I have gotten about a quarter of the way through, and I must say, it has already made me rethink a great many of my beliefs concerning both how schools are actually run and how they should be run.
A little background on myself: I have a good foundational knowledge (though not exhaustive by any means) of education theory. I've taken grad coursework on the philosophy of education, and I am pretty well versed in Jean Jacques Rousseau (the first person to really delve into the subject) and John Dewey. My own education was a mixture of homeschooling, unschooling, and private schooling. My knowledge of the public school system is woefully inadequate beyond what I have heard about in the news and what I have been told by a few educators themselves.
Most of what I have heard in my coursework, the popular media, and the few educators I talk to goes along this line: The education system is broken. We are teaching to the test rather than engaging the students in actual learning. We are not teaching our students in ways that develop their characters. School is not arranged in a way that retains the child's interests. It is boring drudgery over scattered facts. What is needed is an education system based on the psychological development of the child. (Some educators also believe in trying to develop the child's moral sense, but that is not a very P.C. thing to say.) We also need to find ways of conveying facts meaningfully, through activities that integrate the child's already existent interests with new facts and interconnections.
This theory of education has always made sense to me, but Hirsch has really got me rethinking all of this. According to Hirsch, the above paragraph has it completely backwards. He says American education (and he has America specifically in mind) has been trying since the 1920's to work with the child's psychological development by way of integrated activities that maintain the child's interest. The result: utter failure! What has resulted is a complete lack of standardization of curriculum between schools and even between grade levels and teachers within the same school, and the child fairs much worse in this environment.
If other people are interested in discussing this further, we can go into the specifics of Hirsch's arguments later. I would like to open up discussion about education in general. I am particularly interested in comparing educational theories at work in other countries. I'm also interested in learning about the various theories of education that I might not be as well educated in.This thread doesn't need to be about Hirsch in particular. He just happens to be the figure that has me rethinking my theories at the moment. Specifically, he has got me entirely rethinking my opposition to the Common Core Curriculum (another topic we can talk about).
Open for discussion
A little background on myself: I have a good foundational knowledge (though not exhaustive by any means) of education theory. I've taken grad coursework on the philosophy of education, and I am pretty well versed in Jean Jacques Rousseau (the first person to really delve into the subject) and John Dewey. My own education was a mixture of homeschooling, unschooling, and private schooling. My knowledge of the public school system is woefully inadequate beyond what I have heard about in the news and what I have been told by a few educators themselves.
Most of what I have heard in my coursework, the popular media, and the few educators I talk to goes along this line: The education system is broken. We are teaching to the test rather than engaging the students in actual learning. We are not teaching our students in ways that develop their characters. School is not arranged in a way that retains the child's interests. It is boring drudgery over scattered facts. What is needed is an education system based on the psychological development of the child. (Some educators also believe in trying to develop the child's moral sense, but that is not a very P.C. thing to say.) We also need to find ways of conveying facts meaningfully, through activities that integrate the child's already existent interests with new facts and interconnections.
This theory of education has always made sense to me, but Hirsch has really got me rethinking all of this. According to Hirsch, the above paragraph has it completely backwards. He says American education (and he has America specifically in mind) has been trying since the 1920's to work with the child's psychological development by way of integrated activities that maintain the child's interest. The result: utter failure! What has resulted is a complete lack of standardization of curriculum between schools and even between grade levels and teachers within the same school, and the child fairs much worse in this environment.
If other people are interested in discussing this further, we can go into the specifics of Hirsch's arguments later. I would like to open up discussion about education in general. I am particularly interested in comparing educational theories at work in other countries. I'm also interested in learning about the various theories of education that I might not be as well educated in.This thread doesn't need to be about Hirsch in particular. He just happens to be the figure that has me rethinking my theories at the moment. Specifically, he has got me entirely rethinking my opposition to the Common Core Curriculum (another topic we can talk about).
Open for discussion