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Yeah, there’s nothing progressive about not teaching kids to read. The “just throw them in the pool and expect them to swim” approach is particularly harmful to

by api 3y ago

Yeah, there’s nothing progressive about not teaching kids to read. The “just throw them in the pool and expect them to swim” approach is particularly harmful to kids with ADD type difficulties. Replace conservative with evidence based. This sounds like one of those “sounds right to me” ideas pushed by someone with charisma who was positioned properly in the educational world to be listened to. In any field there occasionally seem to be these ideas that emerge fully formed with a hallelujah chorus. These days it’s usually accompanied by a book, a book tour, podcast interviews, and a TED talk. Everyone who is anyone agrees that this idea is the smartest thing ever and probably right. The person behind it is very often from New York. When this happens, get skeptical.

zozbot234 3y ago
> In any field there occasionally seem to be these ideas that emerge fully formed with a hallelujah chorus. These days it’s usually accompanied by a book, a book tour, and a TED talk. Meh. The flipped classroom was one of those ideas, and it seems to work just fine.
uxp100 3y ago
I don’t think just being evidence based is going to cut it. Yada yada yada, replication crisis in psychology (and every other science, including physics.) There was a time when evidence based teaching included “Power Poses.”
giantg2 3y ago
"Replace conservative with evidence based." I think it doesn't matter what it's called. Most of the fads do have evidence. It's just that it might not be measured in the right way, or ignoring other effects. As an example, the balanced reading approach has evidence that it does work. However, the practical implementation of this approach has numerous interpretations. It's supposed to include balanced meaning between meaning and phonics. It's not supposed to be putting kids in the position of independent reading prior to being able to read. That's just a shitty school, lesson plan, or teacher. Its also supposed to include 1-on-1 reading instruction. I wonder how many kids are getting that at school with the instructor to kid ratio... Now, maybe the systemic phonics approach will work better, but that's possibly due to the key resources (essentially lesson plans and materials) that the school is using. If it doesn't include forcing kids who don't know how to read to read independently, then any implementation would be an improvement over that, including if it was still an alternate implementation of the same system.
Kamq 3y ago
> Replace conservative with evidence based. Sure, but that implies a system of pilot studies and increasingly larger studies to make sure that the intervention scales and it wasn't working due to factors inherent to the original population. You need to create an entire body of evidence, because every random fad has at least a single study to back it up. But single studies aren't that predictive, that is to say P(discovering some new fundamental truth | single study published) is rather low, as the replication crisis is showing us. Your changes are probably going to take 20-40 years to iron out all the details and suss out all the subtleties. And real, useful, interventions are going to be delayed in exchange for preventing harmful interventions from propagating. That puts you pretty deep into conservative, risk-adverse, territory. Firmly in the Eisenhowerian "Let us make our mistakes slowly" camp. I feel like the characterization is accurate here.

by api 3y ago

zozbot234 3y ago

> In any field there occasionally seem to be these ideas that emerge fully formed with a hallelujah chorus. These days it’s usually accompanied by a book, a book tour, and a TED talk. Meh. The flipped classroom was one of those ideas, and it seems to work just fine.

uxp100 3y ago

I don’t think just being evidence based is going to cut it. Yada yada yada, replication crisis in psychology (and every other science, including physics.) There was a time when evidence based teaching included “Power Poses.”

giantg2 3y ago

"Replace conservative with evidence based." I think it doesn't matter what it's called. Most of the fads do have evidence. It's just that it might not be measured in the right way, or ignoring other effects. As an example, the balanced reading approach has evidence that it does work. However, the practical implementation of this approach has numerous interpretations. It's supposed to include balanced meaning between meaning and phonics. It's not supposed to be putting kids in the position of independent reading prior to being able to read. That's just a shitty school, lesson plan, or teacher. Its also supposed to include 1-on-1 reading instruction. I wonder how many kids are getting that at school with the instructor to kid ratio... Now, maybe the systemic phonics approach will work better, but that's possibly due to the key resources (essentially lesson plans and materials) that the school is using. If it doesn't include forcing kids who don't know how to read to read independently, then any implementation would be an improvement over that, including if it was still an alternate implementation of the same system.

Kamq 3y ago

> Replace conservative with evidence based. Sure, but that implies a system of pilot studies and increasingly larger studies to make sure that the intervention scales and it wasn't working due to factors inherent to the original population. You need to create an entire body of evidence, because every random fad has at least a single study to back it up. But single studies aren't that predictive, that is to say P(discovering some new fundamental truth | single study published) is rather low, as the replication crisis is showing us. Your changes are probably going to take 20-40 years to iron out all the details and suss out all the subtleties. And real, useful, interventions are going to be delayed in exchange for preventing harmful interventions from propagating. That puts you pretty deep into conservative, risk-adverse, territory. Firmly in the Eisenhowerian "Let us make our mistakes slowly" camp. I feel like the characterization is accurate here.