4 August 2011

Kam’s talking about homeschool

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: schooling.

Writer – Director Kam Raslan’s latest piece in Talking Edge is out. If you are a reader of The Edge business weekly, you will be familiar with Kam’s column (Options pullout) which purports to be replies to real letters in his mailbox. It’s consistently clever and always tongue-in-cheek, and this time he trains his wit on homeschooling while taking yet another swipe at the country’s education system.

Dear Kam,
Who do I need to talk to if I want to home-school my children?
Full-on Mum

As far as I know, I don’t think you have to talk to anyone if you want to home-school your children. I might well be wrong but I think nobody will notice if your children don’t ever go to school. All you probably have to do is not send them to school.

I’m not really sure if home schooling is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, you will probably give your children a better education at home than they would get at a local school, but on the other, going to school is about more than just studying. It’s also about a child becoming independent and learning how to interact with other people. You probably can’t teach “people skills”; it’s something children need to find out for themselves. School is also about learning how to deal with authority. I’ve met so many people who first sensed that something was not quite right with the country when they realised that what they were being told at school was utter rubbish.

Perhaps I’m not entitled to venture an opinion because I did not go to school in Malaysia. I went to school in Britain and although I had the best education that money could buy, I still failed all my exams. Somehow I managed to learn how to read and write and I also learnt how to finish the sentence, “I cannot hand in my homework because …” in many exciting and creative ways. I did my A Levels in a tutorial college where classrooms only had five students. If any style of education could have squeezed a result out of me, it should have been this. I took two years to study for my A Levels and I still managed to fail them all, and by very convincing margins.

(You can read the rest on his website)

I thought it might be good to read what you have to say about Kam’s comment that school is also “about a child becoming independent and learning how to interact with other people. You probably can’t teach “people skills”; it’s something children need to find out for themselves. School is also about learning how to deal with authority.”  He’s got his tongue firmly planted in cheek as usual, but the bit on interaction and authority should make for an interesting discussion.

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28 May 2009

Ten mistakes that schools make

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Education; schooling.

Anyone who has ever sat through a normal class will immediately agree that what is taught is not the same as what is learnt. It’s such a simple principle, yet one of the most overlooked. The most colourful curricula and the most dedicated teacher do not guarantee that learning has taken place. I know that sounds so discouraging, especially to a homeschooling mom or dad who thinks that the right curriculum and a whole load of enthusiasm get the job done.

Consider this provocative list of top ten mistakes in education and you’ll see what I mean. I say provocative because it turns what a lot of people believe education is all about on its head, homeschoolers included. Although the author had in mind teaching structures in traditional schools, the list is just as relevant to parents who educate their children at home.

Mistake #1: Schools act as if learning can be disassociated from doing.
There really is no learning without doing. There is the appearance of learning without doing when we ask children to memorize stuff. But adults know that they learn best on the job, from experience, by trying things out. Children learn best that way, too. If there is nothing to actually do in a subject area we want to teach children it may be the case that there really isn’t anything that children ought to learn in that subject area.

Mistake #2: Schools believe they have the job of assessment as part of their natural role.
Assessment is not the job of the schools. Products ought to be assessed by the buyer of those products, not the producer of those products. Let the schools do the best job they can and then let the buyer beware. Schools must concentrate on learning and teaching, not testing and comparing.

Mistake #3: Schools believe they have an obligation to create standard curricula.
Why should everyone know the same stuff? What a dull world it would be if everyone knew only the same material. Let children choose where they want to go, and with proper guidance they will choose well and create an alive and diverse society.

Mistake #4: Teachers believe they ought to tell students what they think it is important to know.
There isn’t all that much that it is important to know. There is a lot that it is important to know how to do, however. Teachers should help students figure out how to do stuff the students actually want to do.

Mistake #5: Schools believe instruction can be independent of motivation for actual use.
We really have to get over the idea that some stuff is just worth knowing even if you never do anything with it. Human memories happily erase stuff that has no purpose, so why try to fill up children’s heads with such stuff? Concentrate on figuring out why someone would ever want to know something before you teach it, and teach the reason, in a way that can be believed, at the same time.

Mistake #6: Schools believe studying is an important part of learning.
Practice is an important part of learning, not studying. Studying is a complete waste of time. No one ever remembers the stuff they cram into their heads the night before the exam, so why do it? Practice, on the other hand, makes perfect. But, you have to be practicing a skill that you actually want to know how to perform.

Mistake #7: Schools believe that grading according to age group is an intrinsic part of the organization of a school.
This is just a historical accident and it’s a terrible idea. Age-grouped grades are one of the principal sources of terror for children in school, because they are always feeling they are not as good as someone else or better than someone else, and so on. Such comparisons and other social problems caused by age-similar grades cause many a child to have terrible confidence problems. Allowing students to help those who are younger, on the other hand, works well for both parties.

Mistake #8: Schools believe children will accomplish things only by having grades to strive for.
Grades serve as motivation for some children, but not for all. Some children get very frustrated by the arbitrary use of power represented by grades and simply give up.

Mistake #9: Schools believe discipline is an inherent part of learning.
Old people especially believe this, probably because schools were seriously rigid and uptight in their day. The threat of a ruler across the head makes children anxious and quiet. It does not make them learn. It makes them afraid to fail, which is a different thing altogether.

Mistake #10: Schools believe students have a basic interest in learning whatever it is schools decide to teach to them.
What kid would choose learning mathematics over learning about animals, trucks, sports, or whatever? Is there one? Good. Then, teach him mathematics. Leave the other children alone.

The above was written by Dr Robert Schank, founder of Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. If you want to be a better educator – whether you’re homeschooling or unschooling or teaching in a traditional school – you’ll want to pay his site Engines for Education a visit.

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9 May 2009

What half-decent parents do

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News; schooling.

Brit journalist Rod Liddle who writes for The Spectator thinks homeschooling is a farce and that we should leave teaching to the professionals. Titled, Who is right about homeschooling? you can read it here. Hmm. But I found a reply by one Amanda Craig to Liddle’s rather cynical take on homeschool (or ‘truancy’ as he prefers to call it). I’m reproducing her response here:

From Amanda Craig

Sir: I was interested in Rod Liddle’s article ‘Who is right about home schooling?’ (23 September) because I too have children at top private schools and have noticed large gaps in their general knowledge thanks to the detestable National Curriculum.

However, the solution is quite simple and does not necessitate removing them from their friends.

Stick a map of the world and a map of Britain up where they have meals, and they will learn geography. Make a time-line with them, and they will learn history. Listen to Radio Three in the car if you do a school run, and they will learn more about classical music than in a hundred music lessons.

Teach them, formally, how to draw. Watch familiar DVDs in foreign languages. Walk with them for at least half an hour every day, and talk to them about anything under the sun, including politics. Above all, keep reading to them every night, until they can read Jane Austen. It will only take an hour out of each day at most, is a total pleasure, and makes a huge difference to a child’s knowledge and self-confidence.

I went to a progressive boarding school where, as an academic pupil, I learnt almost nothing worth knowing. However, I got into Cambridge because I had a mother who followed these principles. All half-decent parents home-educate their children, in effect, until children learn to educate themselves.

Amanda Craig London NW1

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1 September 2008

Do schools kill creativity?

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Education; schooling.

If you have not visited the TED website before, please do. TED means Technology, Entertainment, Design – an annual conference that attempts to provoke and inspire by bringing together some of the world’s most influential thinkers and performers. There’s a lot that’s fascinating, and certainly, a lot more that won’t necessarily go down well with everyone. But there’s so much that are provocative in the best ways.

Here’s a talk by Sir Ken Robinson that’s simply titled, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” Now with a title like this, you wonder if there’s something that might resonate with homeschoolers.

Sir Ken argues that we’re living in a world where our definition of intelligence has shifted, and where paper degrees do not mean as much as they used to. He tells his audience that intelligence is (a) diverse – multi-facetted and varied, (b) dynamic – interactive, and (c) distinct – creative (“Creativity is having original ideas that have value”).  And creativity is sadly neglected in our schools today, to the detriment of society. Check out Sir Ken.

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21 January 2006

When schools are ‘teaching disabled’…

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: schooling.

“If it is our schools which are ‘teaching disabled,’ the symptoms of this lack would still be visible primarily in the students and not necessarily in the schools or teachers. When a doctor is incompetent, it is the patient who dies” (The Paideia of God, Douglas Wilson).

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3 December 2005

Preschool for a head start?

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: schooling.

I get nervous with all the hype over preschool. California’s initiative in pushing for the Preschool for All Act, if successful, could help make Universal Preschool a reality. The fact that advocates are talking about compulsory preschool for 4-year olds as if it would solve social ills and correct educational deficits, is disturbing.

Here in Malaysia, the education ministry too harbours similar ambitions but infrastructure and funding at this moment are major obstacles in the way. I’m glad for that. Some zealous educators point to Head Start as evidence that preschool works. Wendy McElroy sounds the alarm in an article in Foxnews titled, Will Universal Preschool Give All Kids a Head Start? and points to new studies that show otherwise:

McElroy also has this to say about government’s dangerous presumption:

I understand there is a place for preschool, but I certainly don’t see why the state should usurp the role of parents and take over their kids at such an early age or at any age. Compulsory preschool! This then is the bigger issue and it is utterly appaling to me. Is not the damage done to families by state-sponsored schooling already self-evident?

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4 May 2005

Deschooling

Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Books; schooling.

“Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions that claim to serve these ends, and their improvement is made to depend on allocating more resources to the management of hospitals, schools, and other agencies in question.”

Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

What Illich was criticising was the way schools (and other similar public agencies) turn us into slavish consumers who must depend on professional producers (whether government bureaucrats or corporations) to tell us what’s good or right for us. When homeschoolers take responsibility for their own education, they are resisting what he called “approved measures of social control.” You could say homeschooling is a form of deschooling in practice, because we see education as a lifelong commitment to formal and incidental learning utilising new approaches that foster life values, not dead knowledge.

I would take that to mean values that express love for God in heart, soul, mind, and strength – and love for our neighbour as we love ourselves.

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