Intellectification: Identity and intellectual Classism

I was reminded recently that certain cities are known for their intellectual snobbery with regards to the the school or schools attended. Intellectual classism was a term that was first applied to the African-American community. It is in essence the division between “smart” black people and their “ghetto” counterparts. http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2010/03/culture-wars-standing-in-way-of-progress/ The term now is not limited to just one group however, it can be applied to others. I wondered if there was a word for educational or intellectual classsism. 

Not finding a word readily, I coined intellectification, The identification of oneself with (superior) intellect.

In the process of investigating intellectual classism I came across a really worthwhile blog.
http://educationandclass.com/2013/06/. It's one thing to do the analysis but quite another to address the educational issues. Reading this blog is like a breath of rich oxygenated air. It combines research, practice and a wide variety of commentary on resources.

Jane Van Galen is a professor at the University of Washington who works with education students developing college vision in area high schools. More at
http://www.bothell.washington.edu/research/research-in-action/jane-van-galen

Education Success? Praise Effort!!

Why do even some smart kids lack the motivation to succeed academically? In reading some of Carol Dweck's research (http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/index.html) it's almost explainable. We in the educational world have perhaps been praising the wrong things. We praise intelligence in the elementary school and they get to high school thinking they are intelligent and promptly fail to meet the minimal expectations. No motivation to tackle difficult problems and little tolerance for subjects (Math and Science) that challenge their intelligence. Perhaps we spent too much time praising intelligence and not enough time praising effort.Here's the research according to NY Times: http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”

Why just a single line of praise? “We wanted to see how sensitive children were,” Dweck explained. “We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect.”

Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.

If we want high schoolers in MST then we might heed the implications of this research!!

This is follow up to the blog posting on http://tyrrellseducation.blogspot.com/2013/06/why-students-dont-like-school.html

Standardized Test from 8th grader

Just had to put this Washington Post article there!!

Standardized Test by 8th grader

Here's a sample

By the way find a musical on standardized testing on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnc0y6UY5jU

Communities Educate not Schools

Axioms and presuppositions are mostly held without acknowledgement. Like automatic spell check, we deem the educational process of young-ins to be bounded by the four walls of the school. Now we know, of course, as wonderfully intelligent educators that it is not true. But see the thing is we don't act like that is the case. If we were to examine our conversation it's about testing, teacher evaluation and lesson plans for school based education. The closest we get to thinking otherwise is talking about parent involvement and in the more dark corners we ask why parents are not doing their job.

Such suppositions were not always the case. After doing a little background reading on Lawrence Cremin from Columbia and his 3 volume magnus opus works on American Education (one of which won a Putlizer Prize), I was chagrined at my feeble knowledge of education history. One of the axioms Cremin suggests is that for a long period in the 1800s, that learning was spread around through multiple sources in the community including the school. The industrial era model changed all that and the axiom for along period of time is that learning is centered in the school.

Whatever we think "21st century" education will bring to the American society, we most certainly know it will be about decentralization of learning. Already we talk about distance learning and online courses. However, I never fully grasped the point of community education until I started reading about the "Learning Dreams" Group. Based out University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development, this group has in essence returned to pre-industrial model of community based education. Professor Stein and his group have a new vision for education that may well fit better with real "21st Century Education" than all the tech models we educators promote. I will let their web description do the talking and leave the link.


"Learning Dreams creates a culture of learning. We provide intense home and community-based support for parents and children to help them become active members of a culture of learning. Learning Dreams works with the parent's deepest motivations, their personal dreams and hopes for their own lives and the lives of their children. We build their strengths and continue to support them over time as they make progress realizing their learning dreams.

Learning Dreams breaks out of the mold of waiting for schools to tackle issues that belong to the family and their community. That is why Learning Dreams offers new hope.

Working with many families in a community over time, Learning Dreams re-energizes and builds sustainable support for an enduring culture of successful learning. Learning Dreams assists families to connect with libraries, employment centers, community colleges, and other resources. Using a family's own dreams as a motivating force, Learning Dreams links them to the vast local learning network. In this process community institutions also become more effective at connecting to families and the learning network becomes more creative and inclusive."

http://www.learningdreams.org/

Protestant Origins of Public Education

I started re-reading Charles Silberman's book "Crisis in the Classroom" as a part of a mental exercise program called Edsanity. Mental Actin and Myosin. Yes, Virginia there is a history of education!! At any rate- started reading page one and I immediately encountered and had to research the quote from the 16th century. Here it is in part.
"the education I propose is one in which all men who are born into this world should share.....Our first wish is that all men should be educated to full humanity; .... Our second wish is that every man should be wholly educated"

Move over  Horace Mann and John Dewey. The author of the quote above was 2 centuries before you "Fathers". In fact of matter, John Amos Comenius was not the wonderful secularist that present contemporaries like to brag on. He was a Moravian Church (Czech) leader whose theology extended back to John Hus. Unity of the Brethren a small but influential protestant group in the 16th century. Protestants advocating public education?

A contemporary of Galileo, Descartes, Rembrandt, and Milton, Comenius contributed greatly to the Enlightenment. He was the first to use pictures in textbooks (The Visible World In Pictures, 1658), and believed in what might be called a holistic concept of education. He taught that education began in the earliest days of childhood, and continued throughout life. He advocated the formal education of women, an idea which was unheard of in his day. His philosophy of Pansophism (meaning 'all knowledge') attempted to incorporate theology, philosophy, and education into one. He believed that learning, spiritual, and emotional growth were all woven together. What Comenius referred to as the Via Lucis, or 'way of light,' was the pursuit of higher learning and spiritual enlightenment bound together. His educational thought was profoundly respected in Northern Europe. He was called upon to completely restructure the school system of Sweden, and there is some evidence he was asked to become the first President of Harvard, an honor he declined because of his leadership of the troubled Moravian Church.  

http://comeniusfoundation.org/pages/why-comenius/comenius-biography.php

Why Students Don't Like School

Ever wondered why you haven't heard about Learning Styles in a while? Seems like there may some controversy in the educational ranks. Please don't tell me it's true. Well- Daniel Willingham the author of the 2009 "Why Students Don't Like School" would not say it's controversy. http://educationnext.org/reframing-the-mind/   

Often reading educational research is like marching through  swamp with hiking boots. You can usually get through if it's a short distance. After reading "Why Students Don't Like School" I could finally see some solid ground. Here it is the long and the short. Thinking is hard work. Students (or any of us)  don't want to work hard.We can reject that premise or "work" with it. Daniel Willingham, a Professor of Psych at U of Virginia works with it and rhetorically asks, if people think badly and try to avoid it, what does this say about student’s attitudes toward school? So what to do? Fortunately, Willingham produces the ace.

"We get a sense of satisfaction, of fulfillment, in successful thinking. When you solve a problem, your brain may reward itself with a small dose of dopamine, a naturally occurring chemical important to the brain’s pleasure system.". The key then is to find "success" in thinking through problems. The caveat however, is that we get little or no pleasure if we find the problem too easy or too difficult. For those of you ancient educators sounds like Zone of Proximal Development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development in the cognitive realm. This analysis of the kinds of mental work that people seek out or avoid provides one answer to why more students don’t like school.

Successful thinking relies on four factors: information from the environment, facts in long-term memory, procedures in long-term memory, and the amount of space in working memory. If one of these factors occurs inadequately, thinking will likely fail. 

Premise number 2 knowledge must precede skill. Here's my take. Reading comprehension depends on gaining knowledge. Emphasis on Fluency (skill) actually exasperates this process. Students believe they can read because they read fast. Students are surprised and feel unsuccessful when they cannot handle comprehension tests. Notice unsuccessful. That's Willingham's point!!

I give you both an online book outline (wikisummaries) and the link for that outline.

Contents [hide]

1 1. "People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking."

2 2. "Factual Knowledge must precede skill."

3 3. "Memory is the residue of thought"

4 4. "We understand things in the context of what we already know, and most of what we know is concrete."

5 5. "It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice."

6 6. "Cognition early in training is different from cognition late in training."

7 7. "Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn."

8 8. "Children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work."

9 9. "Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill, must be practiced to be improved."

http://www.wikisummaries.org/Why_Don't_Students_Like_School