A big rugby international today to watch on the telly, the first since you know what (although maybe you don't – I suppose the world does contain such people) and other stuff I'm pressing on with, plus a blogging social this evening. So today just this little mention of the latest manifestation of the Home Educating House Dad. As usual, it looks good. I will be going there very regularly.
Thanks to Alice for the tip, and to Michael himself for commenting on the previous posting here.
More words of wisdom from home educator Julius Blumfeld:
When we started home education we were slaves to the school timetable. If school children were learning, for example, to tell the time aged five, then so must our children learn to tell the time at age five.
So when (I shall call her) Agnes had her fifth birthday, Mrs. B began the immense task of teaching her how to tell the time. Believe me it isn't easy. Much effort was spent and not a few tears were shed. Eventually, after many months, the effort began to pay off. Finally, some time during her sixth year, Agnes began to manage it. Hallelujah.
But the memory of all the effort involved was such that when (I shall call her) Janet reached her fifth birthday, Mrs. B decided to put off the wretched task for a bit longer. Weeks passed. Then months. Eventually I could stand it no longer. "She's six and a half and she can't even tell the time" I said. "What will the neighbours think?" So Mrs. B gave in and promised to begin teaching Janet how to tell the time.
So off I went to work. And when I came back that evening, Janet could tell the time. Well perhaps I exaggerate. But it certainly didn't take very long. Nor is it anything to do with Janet being cleverer than Agnes. It is simply that teaching the average a six and a half year old to tell the time is far easier and quicker than teaching the same thing to the average five year old.
As time has passed, we have seen the same thing over and over again. Something that takes weeks or months to learn at age X, takes a fraction of the time at age
X + N.
On the other hand, of course, if a child needs to know how to do something now, it is no use leaving it until they are older, even if the learning process will be quicker when they are older. No doubt a child could be taught to read more quickly age 17 than age seven, but that is no argument for leaving reading until a child is 17.
So there is a balance to be struck between needing to know and needing to know now. If a child learns too soon, huge amounts of time are wasted. If a child learns too late, opportunities to use valuable skills and knowledge may be lost.
The implications are obvious. A system of education that treats children as an undifferentiated mass will either end up wasting huge amounts of time in teaching subjects at too early an age, or will deprive children of knowledge they should already have acquired. Either way, the process will be hugely inefficient.
I have no idea how schools can address this problem, except perhaps this thought. One of the lessons of home education is that full time formal education for children is largely a waste of time. If things are taught at the right age for the child, the entire primary school curriculum can probably be mastered in about six months (albeit spread over a number of years). So why not cut the school day from seven hours to two and let children decide which classes they want to attend and at what age?
There are of course many reasons why this is unlikely to happen any time soon. But perhaps the main reason is this. Although dressed up as places of learning, the primary function of schools, especially government schools, is child minding – keeping children off the streets while their parents do other things. Far from efficient teaching and shorter school hours being a desirable goal, it is probably the last thing most parents want.
I leave others to work out the implications of that.
Julus
Talking of James Tooley (see below), I've only just encountered news of this:
Government Failure: E. G. West on Education
Edited by James Tooley and James Stanfield
Institute of Economic Affairs, December 2003-12-18This selection of E.G. West's papers contains a wealth of economic and philosophical analysis which can guide policymakers in the field of Education. They also show how state monopoly provision of education has led to a particular model of schooling which does not work for many of those who use the education system – parents and children.
Perhaps the most valuable contribution of these papers, though, is their historical analysis. The extent to which education systems developed in the UK and the USA before either compulsory schooling or dominant state finance emerged is remarkable. E.G. West also analyses the debate between those who believe that the state should control education in order to shape the thinking of the younger generation, and those who believe in a pluralist system. He demonstrates how universal state provision of education is the model that is least likely to benefit the poor, although they could benefit substantially from programmes to help them fund their education.
In an era when there is increasing dissatisfaction with state education provision, but in which the state has ever greater control of the curriculum – including the teaching of 'citizenship' – and management of schools, the papers in Occasional Paper 130 have never been more relevant.
Perhaps Mr Clarke would like to put that bit about state provision being the worst for the poor in a frame and hang it on his wall. And then again, perhaps he wouldn't.
Here in Britain, it is genuinely hard to know whether education is getting better or getting worse. A lot of both is my impression.
But here's a part of the world where they don't seem to have much doubt. Things in Ghana seem definitely to be getting worse:
The Vice Chancellor of the University College of Education, Winneba, Prof. J. Anamuah -Mensah, has expressed concern about the rapid fall in education in the country and called on all stakeholders to put their hands on the wheel to find a lasting solution to the problem.The Chancellor observed that, nowadays, when one read or listened to the sort of a English being spoken by university students on campus, the person would begin to wonder whether these students went through the education system before gaining admission to the universities.
Studies have in fact shown that our high school graduates lack basic skills – the ability to read, write a paragraph, do simple computations and engage in critical thinking and problem solving. "Our nation is at risk and will continue to be so if nothing is done to improve the quality of education in this county," he said.
Prof. Anamuah-Mensah who was speaking at the launch of the 10th anniversary celebration of the Nest School Complex in Takoradi last weekend said our education system actually needed a major surgery because most of our schools, especially those in the northern regions, did not have full complement of trained teachers.
He mentioned the high pupil/teacher ratio especially in the urban areas, poor supervision and monitoring, weak management capacity, lack of instructional materials, lack of library services, de-motivated and non committed teachers and poor conditions of service as some of the problems that have bedeviled our educational system, that needed to be addressed.
Prof. Ananuah-Mensah who is also the chairman of the educational review committee, which was appointed by the government to review our education system, said the aforementioned problem, coupled with the fact that about 791,000 Ghanaian children who should have been in school were not showed the kind of depth in deterioration, our education system has sunk.
Looks like a job for Professor Tooley.
When you read the words "article about education" do you expect soon to be reading something like this? I'm guessing not.
Despite claims of wrongdoing at one top for-profit college, analysts remain bullish on it -- and the sector -- as enrollment surges.For several years now, stocks of companies that offer college and alternative degrees have gotten high marks from investors for their juicy returns. These outfits' revenues and profits have soared as adults flocked to their schools seeking skills that would make them stand out in a tight labor market. As a result, a $100 investment in Career Education Corp. (CECO) when it went public at $4 a share in 1998 would have been worth $1,000 -- 10 times as much -- by the end of 2002, according to the company's Web site.
But recent allegations against CEC, one of the biggest companies in the business, that student records were tinkered with at two campuses have sent the sector into detention. Shares of the post-secondary educators fell more than 10% on average in the week after the latest charges against CEC surfaced in a Dec. 3 newspaper report. They've since recovered some after Hoffman Estates (Ill.)-based CEC vigorously denied the claims.
You can imagine what an opponent of private sector education would make of this. Profits ("juicy retruns"!) despite wrongdoing, student records tinkered with. But of course to me all this is evidence that even allegations of wrongdoing, let alone the reality of it, are costing people money.
The difference between capitalism and state control is not that capitalism never makes mistakes. It constantly makes mistakes, in fact it makes a hell of a lot more mistakes, because it attempts so much more. (See this blog posting for a taste of the capitalist attitude at a personal level.)
The difference is what happens to capitalism, and to capitalists, when those mistakes are made and then noticed. The news of them causes shares to drop in value and for greedy, selfish go-getters to demand that the mistakes be corrected forthwith. If the mistakes are persisted with, shirts are duly lost and enterprises duly collapse.
When the state makes a mistake it is just as likely to get twisted into an argument that the people who made the mistake should have more money given to them, rather than less. Shutting down anything in the public sector is a huge effort of selfless will on someone's part.
But shutting a messed up business happens automatically, as a natural consequence the way that the system works. Greedy, selfish people demand it, and it happens. Thus it is that, in the private sector, the mediocrity that was acceptable this year becomes, by a process of evolutionary improvement, unacceptable incompetence next year, and the average keeps on getting better and better. Capitalism gets better and better, disaster by disaster.
The USA is now leaping ahead in education. This article, about some of the stupid things it is doing, proves it.
Today I bought, for 50p in the local gay charity shop, a copy of the 1998 edition of the Good Schools Guide. There is a website associated with this book, but I have yet to make much sense of it. So here's a taste of what it's like. Here's what they say about the then (and for all I know still) headmaster of the school I went to, Marlborough College, Marlborough, Wilts:
Head (Master): Since 1993, Mr E J H Gould, MA (fifties). Previous post head of Felsted, where he earned the nickname of 'Basher' – one which stands him in good stead here. Looks like a professional bouncer. Read Geography at Teddy Hall, Oxford, collected four and a half blues (rugby and swimming), rowed for Great Britain, etc, etc. Before Felsted was housemaster at Harrow. Comments he is homing in on three main things: 'confidence, morale and attitude – none of which you can pass rules on'.One or two changes among the governors in recent years and not before time – and fewer clergymen.
Basher. Ah, the delights of a refined education. "Teddy Hall" by the way, is posh speak for St Edmunds Hall, one of the Oxford University (I think – if not then Cambridge) colleges.
Got a nasty headache and need to go to bed, so not a lot of homework today, I'm afraid.
Rebecca Fraser does a plug in the Telegraph for her own book about Britain's history. Fair enough. She's in favour of a more systematic and chronological approach than is now the tendency in schools, regretting the way that the National Curriculum jumps about illogically, emphasising this period but ignoring that one, and doing it in a random order.
I was made to learn history dates at school, and whereas I didn't and don't like being made to do anything, this particular piece of compulsoriness still makes sense to me. This is how I would sell history to any pupil customers I was trying to interest. How can you get to grips with history without knowing very approximately (and then in ever greater detail) when everything in the past happened? How can you get into the minds of people in the past, which is what the newer syllabuses are supposed to do best, if you don't know what major historical dramas and upheavals these people have just been through?
Take a really huge history date, like the Black Death. 1349 was the date I was taught for that horror. Setting aside the fact that "1349" is probably a bit too exact for this horror, how can you expect to make sense of how it was to be alive in Europe in the year 1400, say, if you ever for a moment forget that half a century earlier a third of the population of Europe was wiped out in a horrible plague?
Perhaps one of the less obvious effects of 9/11, an event we refer to now and may always refer to by its date, will be to slam back into the head's of history teachers and history students that when things happen is often one of the most memorable things about things. Where were you when …? A major date is not just a matter for historians. It's part of the experience of life itself. And of course yesterday, December 14th 2003, was another pretty big date, I'd say.
If you still doubt any of this, try saying "1966" to an English soccer fan.
Looking for more reactions to the capture of Saddam Hussein, I came across this, from way back in October:
Calculating terrorists long ago determined education is a major battleground in their global struggle. The war for brainpower matters, since creative minds seed the future.Al Qaeda has its own school system. Al Qaeda-backed madrassahs serve as Islamo-fascist recruitment and training centers, with the Koran as interpreted by Osama bin Laden their core text. Graduates hijack jets and commit mass murder.
"Alternative" education, of course, challenges the terror cadres' noxious curriculum. Thus, the terrorists wage war on "Western" education. The war on liberal education rarely makes the news because sources are so effectively silenced. Islamist terrorists use a mafioso method, personally threatening Muslim intellectuals and scholars. Here's the offer the scholar can't refuse: Shut up, or we kill you. In lands without the rule of law, radical guns hush rational voices.
This war, however, was a footnote to a recent headline. The U.S. convoy ambushed by Hamas killers in Gaza Oct. 15 carried diplomats preparing to interview Palestinians for Fulbright scholarships. Getting an American education is an attractive proposition, particularly for students in the world's more bitter and chaotic corners.
And we are also, after decades of ignoring it and hoping it will go away (not an unreasonable attitude I'd say), educating ourselves about Islamo-fascism. Fulbright scholarships to get Palestinians to come to the West is all part of that.
