Dev.SN

Backlash for Gates Foundation's Education Plans

posted by mattie_p on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:27PM   
from the corporate-sponsorship dept.

jcd writes:

"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the primary backer for the inBloom educational grading and service (which also acts as a platform for third-party applications), is catching flak for its role in encouraging the outsourcing of US Education. The article (cited by RMS today) argues that though the Common Core is a scary new concept that takes power away from state and local school governance, the real danger is allowing corporate enterprises to have so much control over our classrooms. The Washington Post also reports a case where Pearson included corporate logos and promotional materials inside its test booklets."

• Standards and Good Teaching Standards and Good Teaching (Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:49PM

  by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:49PM (#1998)

  The Common Core seems like another round of the culture wars that have been going on my whole life. Standards and testing are hotly contested because whoever controls them presumably controls funding for educators, a reliable voting block for one side of the political spectrum, and secondarily, can shape the minds of the next generation of voters. So we've been treated to endless rounds of school voucher proposals, No Child Left Behind, and now the Common Core. Back and forth. The discourse has withered to a binary choice between standardized testing and the risks of teaching to the test, and a loosey-goosey holistic approach that defies strict measurement and accountability.

  I believe it's the wrong conversation to be having. Our educational approach remains an essentially 19th century one (and perhaps older--I'm not a historian of pedagogy) whereby you learn English in English class, Math in Math class, Science in Science class, etc. But that seems ill-suited to our world. A few years ago I read an article [nytimes.com] about an experimental school in Gramercy in Manhattan that uses a project- and guided-play based approach to teaching students required concepts on the general philosophy that humans remember material in context and really achieve mastery when they use it in that context. The idea quite resonates with me, and I found I was jealous of those kids who have the opportunity to learn this way. Redesigning our education along these lines seems much more productive than rehashing a threadbare debate on testing vs. not testing.

       

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• Re:Standards and Good Teaching (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:19PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:19PM (#2046)

  Offtopic but I hate the world holistic. My employer uses it way to much.

  Parent

• Re:Standards and Good Teaching (Score: 2, Interesting) by Jameso_ on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:52AM

  by Jameso_ (252) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:52AM (#2154)

  I used to think that kind of thing might be a good idea until I attempted to tutor a student who was taking an "integrated math" class at a private school. The book, in an effort to give everything "context," had very poorly defined chapters that were an inscrutable morass of different topics, offering no opportunity to solidify one concept before flitting on to the next. What's more, every single problem in the book was a story problem, often making reference to information from previous problems, in an attempt to form some kind of hypothetical real-world narrative out of the concepts.

  The kid was really struggling, and I tried my best to help him, but to solve even one problem required explaining so many different concepts all at once that it was impossible to find any conceptual grounding. I eventually had to just tell his mother I couldn't help and suggested they talk to the teacher to see if there was anyone at the school who could try to tutor that mess of a class. Honestly, if I had been subjected to a class like that, I'm certain I would have failed as well.

  In short, I found tutoring to be most effective when a specific concept was outlined that could then be practiced until the student felt confident enough in their grasp of it that they would be emboldened enough to try to apply what they'd learned to something more substantial. Mixing everything up can be fun for the kids who already get it, but if someone is struggling, bombarding them with constantly changing topics just causes them to become overwhelmed and shut down completely.

  Parent