On bullshit: the value of clarity, precision and economy
"Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear." Ezra Pound I've always been of the opinion that saying what you mean clearly, precisely and without undue verbiage is something of a boon to understanding, but it would appear that to some such writerly virtues actually reduce meaning. For instance in this publication from Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain we're told that Today’s [...]
What’s the starting point for all learning?
"No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious." George Bernard Shaw UPDATED 7th February 6.30pm This morning in answer to a question about whether children should be taught to challenge 'neat interpretations', I suggested that it's usually a good idea to know something really well before you start questioning it. In response I was told by a Head of English who has now asked for [...]
Romanticism & the Enlightenment: Meta-beliefs in education
"Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses." James Baldwin Before claiming, as so many seem wont to do, that the dichotomy between progress and tradition is a false one, it’s worth exploring how our beliefs about education have been shaped. In the early 18th century the ideals of the Enlightenment – [...]
Reading difficulty is a teaching problem not an intelligence problem
Education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Children don’t have to go to school to learn how to walk, talk, recognize objects, or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these tasks are much harder than reading, adding, or remembering dates in history. They do have to go to school to learn written language, arithmetic, and science, because [...]
More guff on creativity
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. (One of my favourite fake Einstein quotes.) What is it about creativity that makes so many otherwise sensible people say such silly things? Most of us can only watch in awed wonder as the truly creative turn out one marvellously realised idea after an other. There's a tendency to see it as evidence of some sort of mysterious, spooky 'otherness' which us normal [...]
Learning about learning: What every teacher needs to know
When I trained to be teacher I was told little or nothing about how children learn. Because a lot of what we intuitively suppose about the process of learning is often flatly contradicted by cognitive science this was a huge handicap. Since you can't think about stuff you don't know, I spent all my time pontificating on the process of teaching, but lacked the theoretical framework and knowledge base to consider how my students learned. [...]
January on The Learning Spy
Here, for your delight and edification, are the blogs I wrote during January: 1st January - New Year’s resolutions for teachers and school leaders Make this year better than last! 2nd January - Varieties of boredom How and why some varieties of boredom might not be a bad thing but others are dreadful. 5th January - Can anyone teach? Well, that depends on what you think education is for An exploration of the [...]
Some assumptions about scripted lessons
"So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language." Michael Polanyi In this post I wrote about the fact that one of the tenets of Direct Instruction (note the capitals!) is scripted lessons which aim for 'flawless communication'. Let me [...]
Scripts: whose lesson is it anyway?
When I was 16, Whose Line Is It Anyway? first aired on UK television. The show, hosted by Clive Anderson, asked four comedians to ad lib responses to various prompts and scenarios, much of it shouted out by audience members. The whole thing was completely unscripted with the comedians having to make everything up on the spot. The results were anarchic; always daft and occasionally hilarious. I'd never seen [...]
Proof of progress – Part 1
Measuring progress is a big deal. I've written before about the many and various ways we get assessment wrong but, increasingly, I'm becoming convinced there are some ways we might get it right. As regular readers will know, I'm interested in the potential of comparative judgement (CJ) and have written about it here and here. Greg Ashman mentions the process obliquely in his new book: When we measure on an absolute scale [...]
Ouroboros: a review
I've been following Greg Ashman's writing for some years and have always been struck by his clarity, precision, humour and single-minded sense of purpose. I haven't always agreed with everything he's written but I've been persuaded by an awful lot. Naturally, when I discovered he was writing a book I was keen to read it. The concept or conceit of Ouroboros is that education is constantly eating its own tail. New [...]
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