Even the images you get from google with "school" aren't really that good. This is one of the better ones.
They're barracudas.
Happy Easter.
This is the last excerpt I will be posting here, for the time being anyway, from The Test of Courage, which is about the life and achievements of the extraordinary language teacher Michel Thomas.
Once again, we are told how well it all worked, but not, in the end, what "it" actually consists of. What is this "method" that is so wonderful? And to what extent does it depend on having teachers as talented as Thomas himself to make it work? I get the feeling that this man has not been as forthcoming in answering such questions as he would have needed to be to have as much influence on the regular school system as he clearly wanted to and wants to.
But rather than italicise here at length, I will let this further excerpt speak for itself, and then, when I have done some further digging into the Michel Thomas phenomenon, I may then do some further non-italicised writing about him in later postings. But no promises.
In the early 1970s Michel was approached by Andrea Kasza, principal of Norwood Elementary School in the heart of South Central Los Angeles. The principal had a serious and fundamental problem with her five hundred pupils. The school had originally been split between sixty per cent black and forty per cent Hispanic students, but was moving rapidly towards a Spanish-speaking majority. None of the new arrivals spoke English, and there was not a single Hispanic teacher on the staff. 'There were only two who knew any Spanish at all - one of whom was Jewish, and the other Japanese.' There were no government programmes at the time to help, and while Kasza attempted to hire Spanish-speaking teachers, she sought desperately for something to fill the gap. 'I wanted the staff to learn enough Spanish quickly to be able to communicate with the students. I had heard about Michel's Foundation and contacted him. We set up a class for twenty teachers who had no Spanish at all, and they took one of his crash courses.' It was an unqualified success. 'The teachers were very happy with the programme and many of them went on to become fluent in the language.'
During the course, Michel decided he also wanted to work with the young children, which he had not done before, to help them speak English. 'I didn't have the money to hire him for a year, and he did it pro bono,' Kasza said. 'It would never have happened otherwise.' Michel was given carte blanche for a year to teach not just languages but every subject. 'I had thirty kids in the class and divided them into two groups. One used a teacher and one used tapes, and I rotated them. It worked like a charm.' A six-week block was set aside when the primary school children who spoke only sub-standard barrio Spanish were taught nothing but English as a foreign language. 'A child in America must speak English or become a permanent second-class citizen. So they learned English and also had their level of Spanish raised. They learned how to speak and write in both languages in these six weeks.' The second six-week block course was in mathematics, again using a rotating combination of teachers and tapes.
Kasza watched Michel at work and devised a curriculum over time to enable ordinary schools to adopt the method without disruption. The programme started with kindergarten and spread to involve all grades and the entire staff. The Spanish community approved because the programme maintained the use of both languages. The school became recognised as having the best transition programme in the country, and people came from all over the world to study it. 'We developed an outstanding programme,' Kasza said.
'The teachers loved it, the children loved it, the parents loved it and we had great press.'
The courses were given the official endorsement of the California Teachers' Association and the National Education Association. Michel was greatly excited and waited for the various state and federal educational bodies to express interest. 'I waited for the phone to ring. I expected the Education Department to hammer on my door. Instead, there was silence. Nothing.'
'I don't know why people don't support things,' Kasza said. 'It's so difficult to create change. Certainly don't look for it in the language departments of the universities. They're the most resistant to change of any educational group I know. They ignore the practitioners. A new approach means asking a whole department to change its attitude, and that's the problem. In the academic world people get comfortable with what they're doing. What would happen to all those Spanish professors with tenure? They'd have to change their ways. If the man who invented the paperclip needed the approval of a university department we would never have had the paperclip. They would say people had never used paperclips before, so who needs them?'
I have tried typing "education" into google and picking the images option, and I have tried typing "school" into google and picking the images option, but the best source of pictures for here looks like when I type in "teaching" and pick the images option. Best image so far:
Ah yes, those silly, silly women. And in 1917, no men were doing anything silly, anywhere, were they?
Nevertheless, interesting stuff about the cars you need to teach driving. There's a case where the discovery method can't be allowed to just let rip.
Tomorrow night at the Evans household I am to speak, at the April 2004 "Putney Debate". I use inverted commas because there is not usually much in the way of a debate at these events, more a talk and comment that is mostly in approximate agreement. But education is sometimes different, because when it comes to education there are two entirely distinct paradigms, both recognisable as libertarian, which tend to vie for supremacy. Basically the battle tends to be freedom for parents versus freedom for children. Not that even those two attitudes always conflict, because parents are surely more likely to want the sort of education that their children are going to approve of and make something of. And children are likely to want the kind of education that their parents approve of, because they tend to inherit their parents' tastes and values.
I may say some of the above, but my main approach will be to try to stir up a good discussion about education, and then take notes of anything said that strikes me as interesting, so that I can pass it on here.
I sometimes do a little talk about how to give talks, and the most important thing about talks, I am completely convinced, is that you have to have something you want to say to the people you are talking to. It sounds obvious, and it is, but it is easily forgotten. Yet until today I had failed to ask this question of myself, about this talk. And the main thing I want to say to these particular people, I realised this afternoon, was not this or that opinion of my own on the subject, but: "Tell me what you think/remember/recommend on the subject." Truly. I am genuinely more interested in what they say in the after-talk discussion than in anything I might say to them.
This is because I have come to regard personal thoughts/memories/recommentations as more interesting than most educational newspaper stories. These mostly seem to consist of statistical generalisations of dubious provenance, and politicians saying that things in general are either getting in general better or in general worse. And I now prefer the particular.
I believe the world of education should follow a laissez faire approach, let people sort things out for themselves – in other words treat education the way the world ought to treat the rest of the economy – not because this will result in an X or Y per cent improvement in educational outcomes of this or that pre-determined sort, but because just what constitutes a desirable educational outcome is best left to free people to decide for themselves. I don't believe in national standards, and in national statistics, and in the arguments that accompany the publication of these statistics. I believe people should set their own standards, and pursue their own preferred outcomes.
I personally believe that teaching people to read is the most important teaching job there is, because reading opens all other learning doors. And I even think that there is a best way to set about doing this, but I don't think that these priorities should be imposed forcibly on people who don't agree with them. I think persuasion will be quite persuasive enough.
That however is a big picture thought, and as I say, I now prefer the small picture thoughts. I find the individual insights of individual people concerning the educational circumstances about which they are truly well informed to be the interesting ones.
As for any individual insights of this sort that I might offer myself, this talk is taking place at the worst possible moment for me. I am about to become one of those Volunteer Reading Helpers, which when it happens will provide a steady stream of insights from me, but that hasn't started yet.
Nevertheless, I'll think of some things to say myself, if only out of politeness.
Anyone grumbling about education in Britain would do well to read the stories that emerge these days from the world of African education.
Consider this:
What appeared to be a peaceful protest by students of Ekiti State College of Education, Ikere-Ekiti, in support of the acting provost whom they preferred to continue in office, turned bloody with several students killed when armed policemen shot at them unprovoked.Two students of University of Ilorin were killed during a recent protest over water scarcity on the campus.
At the University of Lagos, a bus driven by officials of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) killed a final year student.
Lagos state University (LASU) records an average of a student killed quarterly by cultists.
Not quite long, Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Edo state, was in the news when five students were killed on a single day by a cult gang simply because the deceased spearheaded anti-cult campaign on campus.
Student killings were reported at the polytechnic Ibadan, University of Benin, Delta State University, Abraka, University of Calabar, University of Port Harcourt, Enugu State University of Technology (ESUT), Federal University of Technology, Minna, University of Uyo, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, just to mention a few.
During this current academic session soon to end, no institution of higher learning in the country was spared the spectre of violent, tragic death of students killed either by police or cultists. To be exact, more of the student killings were caused by cultism – a deadly menace which has remained intractable.
Students killed when protesting over water scarcity. Deadly cults. It puts arguments about top-up fees into perspective, doesn't it?
I have just done a posting at Samizdata entitled Anti-Americanism as teacher testing which may be of interest to readers here, in which I make use of a classroom analogy to explain (at least part of) the current wave of anti-Americanism that the world is now indulging in/suffering from.
The piece isn't really about classrooms at all, but I do deviate a little into education theory, concerning the claim (mostly bogus I think but in some cases true) that "children need limits".
… and the nearest thing to a philosophy of education to be found in this book about Michel Thomas is the following:
'We handicap and hobble and put a heavy lid on the immense innate learning potential of the human mind that is in everyone. Education has become a conspiracy between parents and governments to control children. Every child is institutionalised at the age of five or six and sentenced to at least ten years' hard time until so-called graduation. Children serve time by law, and I call it a conspiracy because parents consent to it and the government enforces it. So children become prison inmates – except unlike prison inmates they do not have a voice with which to protest, or advocates to protect their rights. Children don't have anybody. They have to serve their time unconditionally. After such an experience many naturally feel they have had enough of education and learning. They have no wish to continue. School's over and done with – learning's finished. From childhood on we are conditioned to associate learning with tension, effort, concentration, study. In essence, learning equals pain. The educational experience has been a painful one, and has capped the immense learning potential of each child. This is a tragedy.'
Conventional teaching, Michel argues, closes rather than opens the mind and cripples even the best students, blocking the subconscious because of the tension it creates. 'Why not make use of the full potential of the human mind, by combining the conscious and subconscious? And you can only tap into that if someone is in a relaxed and pleasant frame of mind. It is important to eliminate anxiety and tension. Then and only then is a person completely receptive to learning. People do not want to expose themselves to more pain, or face what they think are their own inadequacies. Yet these are the very people who become most excited when they see that they can absorb and progress quickly and easily.'
Michel's approach overcomes the most stubborn cases, and he insists there is no such thing as someone being unable to learn. He emphatically rejects the idea that a person has to have a gift, or 'ear', to be able to learn a language. 'Have you ever met anyone, however stupid, who cannot speak their own language? Everyone is gifted. Anyone who can speak his native tongue has already proved his gift for language and can learn another.'
I don't know for sure if Michel Thomas is a great teacher, but I am fairly sure he is, despite the fact that the picture of him at his website makes him look like he is wearing a cheap wig.
To try to find out how he does what he does, I have been reading a biography of Thomas called The Test of Courage by Christopher Robbins.
However, most of this book is about Thomas' experience battling with the Nazis and their various allies, collaborators, sympathisers and apologists. I have searched in vain for a systematic statement of his philosophy of education, for his one or two page explanation of how he does it, whatever exactly 'it' may be. Basically, Robbins is not telling us how Thomas teaches. He is telling us what else he has done, and what experiences he brought to teaching.
But there are a few clues, of which the description that follows, very long by the standards of blog postings, is one. You may not want to read all of it, but I found it fascinating, and inspiring. Is it really possible to teach as successfully as this?
The proof of the system, for anyone who cared to investigate, lay with the students. Sometimes, these came from the most unpromising backgrounds and circumstances, such as a class of fifteen-year-old black ghetto youths in a Los Angeles inner-city school still reeling from the aftermath of the Watts riot. Academic activity had been brought to a grinding halt after a series of student sit-ins developed into violent demonstrations culminating in a full-scale riot which almost completely destroyed the school. Teachers walked out, claiming unreasonable working conditions. The principal had a breakdown and had to be replaced. The new principal appealed for outside help. In the circumstances it seemed an almost quixotic gesture on the part of Michel to volunteer to enter the war zone to teach for a week. 'One of the criticisms of the militant community then was that what was taught to black youth was irrelevant. So I thought the most irrelevant thing I could do was to drive down to South Central and teach French.'
Continue reading "Michel Thomas teaches French to twenty-four eighth graders from the ghetto"
I missed this when it was first posted. It's called "A Free Market in Education", so it's right up my street. It's about the economics of home schooling, and the fact that the Economist is impressed by said economics.
One homeschool family started a homeschool retail business in 1994, and spent the last 10 years learning how to successfully serve other families that teach their own children at home. Nathan and Lindley Rachal have decided to take what they learned as homeschool entrepreneurs to serve other homeschool businesses. They have founded the homeschool books and business association, with a trade journal, "The Connection," and a website at www.hsbba.com. Their mission is to make sure that other homeschool families don't have to "reinvent the wheel" as they step out to bring new products to market.Free minds and free markets have made America great, and homeschoolers are well on their way to establishing a lasting tradition of entrepreneurship in education. As more families choose homeschooling and more homeschoolers serve this market, the "Economist" story will not be the last on homeschool capitalism. Next stop, Wall Street Journal?
Hallelujah!
To be a bit more serious than that, one of the fatal defects of the "progressive" tradition in education has been its besottedness with "democracy" - used pretty much as a code word for socialism, state control, etc. – and its hostility to "capitalism". And the problem with that is that this means favouring freedom in education, but opposing it everywhere else, because "capitalism" is what free people do when they are left to get on with doing what they want with what is theirs. The marriage of progressive educational thinking with entrepreneurial and pro-capitalist thinking is thus a switch of great historic significance.
The fun really starts when entrepreneurial thinking starts to penetrate the lives and thoughts of children, with a continuum being established between the education of themselves that they boss at their schools (or whatever) and the larger enteprises they later boss in the big wide world out there. At the moment, you pretty much have to drop out of education to become any sort of serious entrepreneur.
Category: Economics of education • Education theory
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Here is a useful, as opposed to snide and Guardian-readerish, summary of Conservative Party education policy. Their opposition to university fees …
On universities, meanwhile, the traditional Tory line of slimming down state involvement is reversed: the party is committed to abolishing fees, which inevitably means the state being more involved.
… is highlighted, quite reasonably, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
The BBC reports how Britain's Universities already operate a market, when it comes to students from abroad, which for these purposes now means outside the EU.
Although it gets little attention, there are already high-cost, variable fees in British universities. They are the focus of a fast-growing and competitive marketing sector.Large numbers of part-time students face variable fees, of course.
But the boom area – big business for many universities – is international students.
For these purposes that means any students recruited from outside the European Union. The latest estimate is that there are about 175,000 overseas, fee-paying students in Britain.
There are no limits imposed on fees for non-EU students. Undergraduate fees of £7,000 - £9,000 a year are typical and they can be much higher for postgraduates, especially on MBA courses.
Universities of all types are now investing heavily in this growth market. Overseas recruitment has grown by about 6% a year for the past five years.
It is estimated that overseas students are worth about £1bn in fee income to universities and contribute about £8bn to the UK economy.
The expansion of overseas recruitment – Tony Blair's initial target was an extra 50,000 students - is one government education target which has been met with room to spare.
Yes, I've already reported on a slice of this particular action.
