-Caveat Lector-
Wall Street Journal 12 v '99,
Lynne Cheney [Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute].
//////
Effective Education Squelched
After principal Eric Mahmoud introduced a new curriculum at Harvest
Preparatory, a Minneapolis elementary school that serves many children from
poor families, test scores shot up. Kindergartners, whose reading results
had been at about the national average, were now in the 89th percentile. The
new curriculum that proved so effective at Harvest Prep was actually a
venerable program with a remarkable record of success. It is called Direct
Instruction, and if you haven't heard about it, the reason may be that the
nation's education schools don't want you to. In their view, Direct
Instruction is pedagogically incorrect. Direct Instruction teachers,
operating from detailed scripts, tell kids what they need to know, rather
than letting them discover it for themselves, as ed schools advise. Direct
Instruction teachers drill students on lessons (a method education
professors sneeringly call "drill and kill"). They reward right answers and
immediately correct wrong ones, flying in the face of ed-school dogma
downplaying the importance of accuracy.
How well Direct Instruction works first became evident in 1977, when
the results of Project Follow Through, a huge educational experiment
undertaken by the federal government, were made public. Kindergartners
through third-graders who were taught by Direct Instruction scored higher in
reading and math than children in any other instructional model. The Direct
Instruction children not only proved superior at academics, but also scored
higher on "affective" measures like self-esteem than did children in most
other programs--several of which were specifically directed toward making
children feel good about themselves. ?.[Yet] still the ed schools continue
their not-so-benign neglect. In recently reviewing dozens of textbooks used
to teach future teachers, I found exactly one mention of Direct Instruction,
a reference a few sentences long that described it as "prescriptive"?.
\\\\\\
Any teaching that works is suspect in the eyes of modern educationalists.
Used to arguing against streamed learning and track choice, educationalists
even reject the rote learning that will allow pupils to pass the babyish
exams that are routinely set in today's schools.
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