> This could become a real concern, but, I think, a manageable one.
E.D. Hirsch has opinions on how this could go wrong. He is, of course, an arch-traditionalist. Going off "The schools we need, and why we don't have them" - one of his arguments is that children of itinerant workers who follow jobs around as they come and go can end up changing towns/states, let alone schools, several times a year (Ch. 2.4). Once a school has a reasonable proportion of these kids, and tries to do its best by (correctly) not assuming any background knowledge, the one who does stay in the same school throughout their childhood ends up "made to read Charlotte's Web three times in six grades" (Ch. 2.3, page 29). Hirsch mentions statistics that some NYC inner-city schools have turnover rates of more than 100% in each academic year, that the average Milwaukee school has a 30% yearly student turnover rate etc.
To quote Hirsch on something that could be a literal reply to this post (Ch. 2.4):
"Consider the plight of Jane, who enters second grade in a new school. Her former first-grade teacher deferred all world history to a later grade, but in her new school many first graders have already learnt about ancient Egypt. The new teacher's references to the Nile River, the Pyramids, and hieroglyphics simply mystify Jane, and fail to convey to her the new information that the allusions were meant to impart. Multiply that incomprehension by many others in Jane's new environment, and then multiply those by new comprehension failures which accrue because of the initial failures of uptake, and we begin to see why Jane is not flourishing academically in her new school."
Hirsch's solution of course is One Curriculum To Bind Them All, ideally at the national level - or at least a Common Core taught throughout all schools. One can have separate debates on (1) whether that is a good idea, (2) whether that is a workable idea, and (3) what content should be in such a curriculum, and where.
I am quoting this not necessarily because I agree, but because I think it's on topic and contributes to the debate. I would add personally that Jane's possible struggles to make new friends from scratch and integrate into a new community, as well as the deprivation that might have prompted her parents to move mid-school-year in the first place, would disadvantage her even in the best-designed school system. I don't think there's any really good solution to this problem (and no, "don't teach them anything, just let them discover themselves" doesn't count).
If the question becomes, what is the best we can do under the constraints we're working with, rather than some abstract notion of "goodness", then I do strongly endorse cumulative content though.
> "I don't think there's any really good solution to this problem"
Yeah, that's really good wisdom there — I hadn't quite put my finger on that. And reading your comment makes me remember why I first fell in love with Hirsch's curriculum (limitations and all) when I first discovered it: just his clear-eyed view of "CONNECTING THINGS SENSIBLY IS REALLY QUITE IMPORTANT", and his chutzpah in being willing to make something to fix it.
I believe I heard you say there are some things that must be learned via some rote or non-narrative means. Would you provide examples and explicate why this is so? Thanks.
A helpful question! I think it's possible to come away from Egan thinking that "everything needs to be a story", and he's definitely not saying that — but he is saying some things that are CLOSE to that. I bet if I try to answer this definitively in a single comment, I'll only confuse the matter, so I encourage you (and all of you) to ask clarifying questions here, or propose examples.
To kick things off, I'll suggest that some things (like, oh, multiplication facts) are best taught NOT as a story. Rather, they're best taught through chants and through images — I'll be writing about this as Multiple Representations° in two weeks. [Counterexample: why was six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine...]
And I typically take the word "rote" literally — "to do again and again". (Hence "rotate" and an old-fashioned "rotary" phone.) If that's what we mean, then everything is best learned through rote, even (and maybe especially) stories.
But if by "rote" we mean "getting words into our heads without first understanding what they mean", then Egan's typically against that, with maybe two "however's": (1) Some things are best understood gradually once they're in our heads — a poem is a good example. (I've recited and mulled over "The Raven" hundreds of times, but just a month ago I noticed something BIG I had always misread.)
And (2) We mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good; I've found it's much better to bring Egan's methods slowly into practice WITHOUT MESSING UP EVERYTHING than to try to jump in all at once. (And doing something drastic, like telling a classroom of kids not to learn multiplication facts, risks hurting some of them.)
The Ed Psych take on this is that humans can hold 7 (plus or minus around 2) "things" in their working memory at once, and so to solve a complex problem with 5 sub-problems, each sub-problem has to be trained to the point that it becomes a single "thing". The obvious example that Brandon gave too is basic math - when you're trying to do 12 x 7 by any of the "break it into smaller problems" ways, the answer to the sub-problem "2 x 7" has to come automatically enough that you don't have to clear your working memory, solve that problem, and then try and remember what you were trying to use it for in the first place. But you should be able to find examples like this across all subjects.
That is not saying that things necessarily must be learnt by non-narrative means, but it is saying that things need to be practiced again and again to the point of unconscious recall. You could debate whether a Church School that, in order to instil the right values in their pupils, tells the story of The Good Samaritan again and again (maybe including song and dance and acting out and storytelling and many other means), is doing "rote learning", but they are doing "learning by repetition" to the point that if you asked a pupil what how the story meant, they could probably tell you without having to think too much about it.
> This could become a real concern, but, I think, a manageable one.
E.D. Hirsch has opinions on how this could go wrong. He is, of course, an arch-traditionalist. Going off "The schools we need, and why we don't have them" - one of his arguments is that children of itinerant workers who follow jobs around as they come and go can end up changing towns/states, let alone schools, several times a year (Ch. 2.4). Once a school has a reasonable proportion of these kids, and tries to do its best by (correctly) not assuming any background knowledge, the one who does stay in the same school throughout their childhood ends up "made to read Charlotte's Web three times in six grades" (Ch. 2.3, page 29). Hirsch mentions statistics that some NYC inner-city schools have turnover rates of more than 100% in each academic year, that the average Milwaukee school has a 30% yearly student turnover rate etc.
To quote Hirsch on something that could be a literal reply to this post (Ch. 2.4):
"Consider the plight of Jane, who enters second grade in a new school. Her former first-grade teacher deferred all world history to a later grade, but in her new school many first graders have already learnt about ancient Egypt. The new teacher's references to the Nile River, the Pyramids, and hieroglyphics simply mystify Jane, and fail to convey to her the new information that the allusions were meant to impart. Multiply that incomprehension by many others in Jane's new environment, and then multiply those by new comprehension failures which accrue because of the initial failures of uptake, and we begin to see why Jane is not flourishing academically in her new school."
Hirsch's solution of course is One Curriculum To Bind Them All, ideally at the national level - or at least a Common Core taught throughout all schools. One can have separate debates on (1) whether that is a good idea, (2) whether that is a workable idea, and (3) what content should be in such a curriculum, and where.
I am quoting this not necessarily because I agree, but because I think it's on topic and contributes to the debate. I would add personally that Jane's possible struggles to make new friends from scratch and integrate into a new community, as well as the deprivation that might have prompted her parents to move mid-school-year in the first place, would disadvantage her even in the best-designed school system. I don't think there's any really good solution to this problem (and no, "don't teach them anything, just let them discover themselves" doesn't count).
If the question becomes, what is the best we can do under the constraints we're working with, rather than some abstract notion of "goodness", then I do strongly endorse cumulative content though.
> "I don't think there's any really good solution to this problem"
Yeah, that's really good wisdom there — I hadn't quite put my finger on that. And reading your comment makes me remember why I first fell in love with Hirsch's curriculum (limitations and all) when I first discovered it: just his clear-eyed view of "CONNECTING THINGS SENSIBLY IS REALLY QUITE IMPORTANT", and his chutzpah in being willing to make something to fix it.
I believe I heard you say there are some things that must be learned via some rote or non-narrative means. Would you provide examples and explicate why this is so? Thanks.
A helpful question! I think it's possible to come away from Egan thinking that "everything needs to be a story", and he's definitely not saying that — but he is saying some things that are CLOSE to that. I bet if I try to answer this definitively in a single comment, I'll only confuse the matter, so I encourage you (and all of you) to ask clarifying questions here, or propose examples.
To kick things off, I'll suggest that some things (like, oh, multiplication facts) are best taught NOT as a story. Rather, they're best taught through chants and through images — I'll be writing about this as Multiple Representations° in two weeks. [Counterexample: why was six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine...]
And I typically take the word "rote" literally — "to do again and again". (Hence "rotate" and an old-fashioned "rotary" phone.) If that's what we mean, then everything is best learned through rote, even (and maybe especially) stories.
But if by "rote" we mean "getting words into our heads without first understanding what they mean", then Egan's typically against that, with maybe two "however's": (1) Some things are best understood gradually once they're in our heads — a poem is a good example. (I've recited and mulled over "The Raven" hundreds of times, but just a month ago I noticed something BIG I had always misread.)
And (2) We mustn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good; I've found it's much better to bring Egan's methods slowly into practice WITHOUT MESSING UP EVERYTHING than to try to jump in all at once. (And doing something drastic, like telling a classroom of kids not to learn multiplication facts, risks hurting some of them.)
The Ed Psych take on this is that humans can hold 7 (plus or minus around 2) "things" in their working memory at once, and so to solve a complex problem with 5 sub-problems, each sub-problem has to be trained to the point that it becomes a single "thing". The obvious example that Brandon gave too is basic math - when you're trying to do 12 x 7 by any of the "break it into smaller problems" ways, the answer to the sub-problem "2 x 7" has to come automatically enough that you don't have to clear your working memory, solve that problem, and then try and remember what you were trying to use it for in the first place. But you should be able to find examples like this across all subjects.
That is not saying that things necessarily must be learnt by non-narrative means, but it is saying that things need to be practiced again and again to the point of unconscious recall. You could debate whether a Church School that, in order to instil the right values in their pupils, tells the story of The Good Samaritan again and again (maybe including song and dance and acting out and storytelling and many other means), is doing "rote learning", but they are doing "learning by repetition" to the point that if you asked a pupil what how the story meant, they could probably tell you without having to think too much about it.