O.K, folks. Here’s your chance to vote for the first competitors in the Bogus Bowl. There are so many educational reforms that it’ll be hard to find the differences among them, but let’s start by considering these. Once we get some data about them, then we’ll match the winners (and the losers) from this competition with other reforms from other brackets.
Which of the following reform movements is the most bogus? (Sorry, but you only get to vote for one.)
- Brain-based instruction. (59%, 57 Votes)
- Differentiated instruction. (16%, 15 Votes)
- Block scheduling for classes at the secondary level. (15%, 14 Votes)
- Inclusion of students with disabilities in general education settings. (10%, 10 Votes)
Total Voters: 96
Loading ...Some of the losers (who might consider themselves winners?) from this poll may reappear in later comparisons. Maybe by the time the NBA champions are crowned, we’ll have a sense of consensus among the skeptical readers of Teach Effectively! about what we should duck.
Note: There’s a new Bogus Bowl up at Bogus Bowl II.
Dan Hodkins and the crockus the runaway winners!
Who?
[teehee] Thanks for the punch-up.
Perhaps I get too wrapped up in the use of terminology …but aren’t all education efforts ‘brain-based’ (meant in the cognitive sense). I mean, what other organ have we targeted in the past? OK…please don’t answer that.
Courtney, I gotta agree. In fact, that was part of the point to the post on LD Blog a couple of days ago. There really is something to brain-based, inclusive, differentiated, intensive instruction. What makes some folks squirm when these reforms are discussed, I think, is that the ideas are championed to an extent that exceeds the data supporting them and a rationale analysis of their relative importance.
Mayhap we should have a contest to assemble the most egregious examples of advocacy for each of these reforms.
This is a tough choice. I think all of them have some legitimacy on some grounds. As Courtney points out, education can’t be said not to involve the brain. Instruction has to be differentiated in some way to account for individual differences. Inclusion of most kids in some general education settings/classes has been a given for many decades. Savvy teachers have always used scheduling activities, too, as a way of dealing effectively with kids in schools. Actually, it’s hard for me to think of any legitimate educational reform that has no rational basis at some level. But all 4 of these reform proposals have been pushed into clearly bogus territory by witless advocacy.
I voted for block scheduling. As a foreign language teacher, it doesn’t work well, especially at the beginning and intermediate levels. I believe that at these levels, students need to have daily contact with the course material. The same is true of math, at least this is what I have heard from fellow math teachers.
“Witless advocacy” – a wonderful phrase and I wish I’d thought of it. All 4 of these “reforms” deserve to win. I’m very tempted to vote for differentiated instruction (“special ed lite”) or brain-based instruction (so much better than the pancreas-based kind), but I think I have to go with block scheduling, just because it affects so many more kids.
Courtney, this is good:
You have it there. However, the promoters of brain-based education haven’t quite caught up with you. They promote something new, and one of their principle rebuttals is that those of us who consider learning, memory, and related areas of psychology pretty important are basically burying our heads in the sand.
Someone sent me a note the other day talking about pancreas-based learning. Meanwhile, we have Eric & Diane Jensen’s recommendations that have enough currency to make it into Phi Delta Kappan!
Now, I can understand why a professional organization would foster conversation about contemporary ideas (and please see the commentaries on the Jensen PDK article). I endorse the idea of free and open debate. However, when an unarmed debater is cheered on, I have to wonder… sigh… where did our education system fail the cheerers?
I think this issue makes the case for teaching reasoning during the primary and elementary grades
Nuts I missed the vote for this one. Hands down has to be the Block Scheduling garbage. This is one of the few “initiatives” that still gets pitched and adopted from time to time that actually has stacks of objective research panning it and nothing but anecdotal evidence to support it.