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pedagogy is borderline quackery maria montessori developed her education methods using scientific experimentation with good outcomes.[0] various ways to teach

by em-bee 1y ago

pedagogy is borderline quackery maria montessori developed her education methods using scientific experimentation with good outcomes.[0] various ways to teach have been tried and we know the results. it is baffling to me why the ones that work aren't applied more. of course not all of them are universally suitable. waldorf for example apparently also has decent results, but if there is one that i would put on the top of the list of education quackery, then waldorf would be it. so where do the good results come from? because they do one thing right: "Its educational style is holistic, intended to develop pupils' intellectual, artistic, and practical skills, with a focus on imagination and creativity. Individual teachers have a great deal of autonomy in curriculum content, teaching methods, and governance."[1], which is something that could be applied without basing it on steiners esoteric ideas. it looks like it is not just quackery that is the problem. it is politics, NIH, probably the unwillingness to admit that they are wrong. unwillingness to change. in that context it is surprising that ITA got even off the ground. but it is also wierd that apparently the reason ITA fell out of fashion was not because it failed on its own but because that educational theory turned away from phonics.[2] that's like one mistake cancelling out another. even more surprising is that the ita foundation appears to be still active. WAT? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet

pm215 1y ago
With that kind of "separate specialist school" setup I think you would also need to be careful when analysing outcomes to avoid confounding effects from "the parents are actively interested and engaged in their childrens' education, and have the resources to support it", which I suspect is pretty well correlated with good outcomes.
- aidenn0 1y ago
  Don't also forget sampling effects; if you randomly assign children to schools that are of different sizes, the small schools will have higher variance and thus tend to represent both the best and worst items in the set.
  - MarkusQ 1y ago
    And if you _don't_ randomly assign, the effect is even stronger: students who are being well served by the standard/control school don't opt to change, while students who aren't are primed to jump as soon as the option is provided. So the alternative/trial school gets both ends of the bell curve on almost every metric (the main exception being athletic performance, since the larger school typically has more team sport options).

by em-bee 1y ago

pm215 1y ago

With that kind of "separate specialist school" setup I think you would also need to be careful when analysing outcomes to avoid confounding effects from "the parents are actively interested and engaged in their childrens' education, and have the resources to support it", which I suspect is pretty well correlated with good outcomes.

aidenn0 1y ago
Don't also forget sampling effects; if you randomly assign children to schools that are of different sizes, the small schools will have higher variance and thus tend to represent both the best and worst items in the set.
- MarkusQ 1y ago
  And if you _don't_ randomly assign, the effect is even stronger: students who are being well served by the standard/control school don't opt to change, while students who aren't are primed to jump as soon as the option is provided. So the alternative/trial school gets both ends of the bell curve on almost every metric (the main exception being athletic performance, since the larger school typically has more team sport options).