Here at Life Tools Tutoring, we tout a ‘back to the basics’ strategy when it comes to our approach to tutoring and teaching. Educators have been modeling successful teaching techniques for centuries, and we as a society are blessed to be able to choose the best of those techniques to educate our children. Unfortunately, in our technology driven age, many of these tried-and-true techniques have been abandoned in the prideful notion that new and digital must be better.
In spite of the fact that the ACT test has recently been ‘dumbed-down’ significantly in order to stop the declining test scores, and the fact that Wisconsin State Superintendent Jill Underly recently lowered proficiency standards to make the state assessment scores look less dismal, the average public-school student in Wisconsin is receiving a powerfully inadequate education. Part of the answer to this growing crisis is returning to the education philosophies that created generations of students well-prepared for the workforce or for additional post-secondary education.
What is so different in the current education model that has led to this free-fall in academic achievement? To answer this question, we will leave aside the discussion of mission creep that has infected all our schools. Although fault can be shared by all, schools are now far more distracted by mental health, social engineering, facilities and sports than on education. Schools will either re-discover their true purpose, or entirely new education models will continue to be introduced and thrive in their stead.
Assuming public school educators have the ability and passion to re-discover that primary mission of education, we must look backwards, to a certain extent, to see where we need to move in the future. Mike and I can look back to our own educational experience to know what quality education looks like and offers.
The first step to rediscovering quality education is to increase the rigor of our academic offerings and to utilize the vast majority of the school day with teaching and learning. Currently, much of the school day is wasted on ‘study-time’, social time, and vacuous subjects.
A proper math class should be primarily composed of instruction by the teacher; if the teacher is not teaching, kids are not learning. The team model of learning where a group of disinterested 12-year-olds squeeze their desks together and teach each other math is a ridiculous model on its face and has proven to be an abject failure. In addition, the CPM math curriculum adopted by the state has also been an abject failure. This curriculum introduces a new concept by asking students to think through how they would go about answering the problem and to consort with their classmates to arrive at a solution. Math is not philosophy. Math is math. The lesson in the CPM textbook then provides two or three practice problems on that concept, and then ten or so other practice problems on concepts that were covered weeks or months ago. The traditional, effective math textbooks taught a student (with the support of the teacher) how to work through a problem and then offered 30 practice problems allowing the student to fully comprehend and drive the concept home. Educators who wanted to make a name for themselves and ‘big textbook’ who wanted to sell millions in new textbooks led this charge, and it has had devastating effects on our students over the past two decades.
Did you know that many public-school districts also abandoned phonics during this time as well? Yes, phonics…Long a, short a, i before e, consonant blends, what does the silent e do to the word, etc. Many of our kids were not being taught those basic reading skills. The big news in some districts recently is that they have decided to give phonics a try again in a desperate attempt to stop the free-fall in reading proficiencies. This is an important first step, but what confused and misguided bureaucracy would choose to make this ill-fated decision to begin with, and what is to prevent them from doing it again?
The reading curriculum is closely aligned with the writing curriculum. Spelling needs to be taught again to allow students to see how words are constructed and to use that knowledge to spell new words and/or decode words they are unfamiliar with. Some schools are introducing spelling once again but are generally sending a list of ten words home for the student to memorize. That is not how spelling is taught. Again, the ‘old-fashioned’ spelling workbooks focused on a phonics concept (eg: the ‘au’ sound) and then provided several pages of lessons to use the words in context, and this actually worked. And yes, there was a spelling test at the end of each week. Cursive writing needs to be re-introduced as well. Writing with a pencil allows students to see and understand words as a collection of letters and sounds; starting at this foundational level is the key to creating effective writers and communicators.
Science, history, basic shop, civics, and personal finance are other subjects that should be taught to every student, using the traditional techniques/textbooks. Science that focuses exclusively on climate change and dying polar bears excludes the real knowledge offered by Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc. that are necessary for a basic understanding of our world around us, and fundamental to those pursuing careers in the sciences. History, beginning with a study of ancient human societies, should be taught, and much of the social studies curriculum, created for the sole purpose of political indoctrination, should be abandoned. Much can be learned from human history, including the fact that we are not as unique and progressive as we think we are.
But, you may say, we are firmly implanted in the digital world. Every student should have access to a personal computer so they can access the internet and use all the educational tools technology has to offer. To date, utilizing technology has most definitely contributed to the downward trajectory of our students’ education. As would be expected, teachers and students use technology to make their lives easier, not to teach / learn more effectively. Instead of teaching a class on the revolutionary war, the teacher will have the student read an article on the internet and answer questions associated with that content; the student, in-turn, will highlight the key words in the question, have AI find the words in the article, and then cut and paste the answer on the line. If a word is spelled wrong, the student will utilize spell-check to fix the problem, without taking a moment to see what the correction entailed. This is education without learning.
There are private schools, charter schools, and homeschoolers that are leading the charge to rectify the broken educational system by going ‘back to the basics’, and they have impressive results to show for their efforts. The public education sector will either join in that effort or will be replaced completely by digital education. After all, if my child is being taught by the internet, she can do that from home.