John Strain, who identifies himself as a psychiatric social worker and who maintains a blog, recently wrote about his response to a segment on the Today Show (morning news magazine on US television). He used the segment to present his views about education, especially about providing services to some students under the guise of gifted education and to others in the form of special education.
Back to my rant, these days and for some time, children are segregated. Not racially, that would be bad, but, so-called gifted children are pulled out of regular classes along with behavior disordered and learning disabled. They all have special classes, while the left over kids are considered the average Joes.
Studies have shown how children live up or down to their expectations. Here is an example. A group of children with similar educational abilities were divided into two categories. One group went to a teacher who was told that the children were gifted. The other group of children went to a teacher who was instructed the children were learning disabled. After a time of instruction, the perceived gifted kids did well, as expected and the perceived slow learners did poorly, as expected. In spite of this research, we continue to segregate and have expectations.
Mr. Strain describes an experimental-control study about self-fulfilling prophecies that I didn’t know existed. He did not provide the citation so that readers could check his analysis of the research. But I think his analysis is inaccurate. Self-fulfilling prophecies have not been demonstrated in the way Mr. Strain indicates. There may be a study here or there with results vaguely similar to what he describes, but the literature reveals a much less clear outcome. Jusim and Harber (2005; Journal of Personality and Social Psych, vol. 9, pp. 131-155) reviewed research on self-fulfilling prophecies and found that the effects of self-fulfilling prophecies are small and usually fade over time, their effects on intelligence remains unclear with mixed outcomes, and teachers’ expectations probably are more likely to be correlated with student outcomes because they are accurate than because the students fulfill those expectations.
Here’s another point that Mr. Strain makes:
The [Today Show] segment was the classic argument about how to educate children. One point of view was to pump little minds full of facts and expose them to the world ASAP. The other point of view says you cannot rush development. Children learn better if it comes through discovery and exploration, and too much emphasis on education only puts pressure on them and sours them on learning in the long run.
If you cannot guess my point of view, it is the latter of the two. I have seen it with my own son. There were tasks I tried unsuccessfully to teach him. I got aggravated and aggravated him, then it seemed, overnight he would just start doing it. I realized that just because a three year old could tie a shoe does not make a 5 year old who cannot tie a shoe a moron. By age 10 everyone can tie their shoes, even kids who do not have arms. This is an example of development and how you cannot rush it.
Based on his analysis here, I suspect that Mr. Strain knows pretty little about effective teaching. I realize that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but I wish those opinions would be founded on reason and evidence. From the research we know a lot about effective teaching, and though Mr. Strain might characterize it as “pumping little minds full of facts,” the case that students wtih disabilities need it is quite strong.
Those of us who work in special education could do without ill-informed critiques such as this one.
Link to Mr. Strain’s blog entry.
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