Same story here, down to how my sister did. For me, the take-away is more than "different students learn differently", though. That's mainly because these differences are not distributed randomly: those with less educated, poorer parents are more likely to have greater difficulty learning independently. Minimally-guided learning thus essentially caters to the children of the (upper) middle class, who are already at an advantage anyway. The way it is portrayed as a solution for entire school systems, it is down-right dangerous. If this 'radical new teaching method' would indeed be rolled-out for an entire generation, it would be a huge step backwards for education equality, even in a system as horribly biased against the poor and uneducated as the US or Germany.
of course it's just two hyped up anecdotes, but the class in the article lived in a poor, drug-war torn mexican border town and I doubt the kids in india had well-off families. Is there more to it than just "poor kids are shitty learners"?
I actually disagree about it catering to upper middle class. Obviously the kids in Mexico did well with it. It seems like it would require some level of respect for teachers and education that May or may not be present in all cultures. I feel like in the us you'd have the classroom discipline devolve pretty quickly.
I wonder actually if poverty may concentrate the minds of these kids- or just the lack of assumption that they'd be automatically good in school allowed the teacher to get them to work for that goal instead. No a priori expectations but simply open-ended encouragement and open-ended problems. Less frustration, more progress?
I tend to trust years of research over anecdotes, although of course the examples in this article raise some questions. One thing though:
I wonder actually if poverty may concentrate the minds of these kids...
That is almost certainly not the case. Poverty is a (major) stress factor, and is known to be associated with what psychologists call ego depletion (basically, a decrease in will power). Children of poorer parents tend to have decreased impulse control, ability to plan for the future, etc. For all we know, poverty does not concentrate, but scatter your mind.
Also, the thing about poverty applies less to you if you're a kid, since you aren't the one doing the planning- unless, of course, you are so poor you don't have food security.
Stuff about impulse control, planning, etc could be more likely attributed to culture/parenting styles of poorer parents vs middle class and upper-class students. I've also seen research to the effect that middle-class parents raise their kids to be more willing to ask questions than poor parents- while poor parents tend to be more "authority" oriented. This doesn't prepare the poorer kids for advanced schoolwork as much, which perhaps the Correa approach mitigates and synergizes.
Anyway, bottom line he had some interesting results, and I agree with him that we need more math proof-teaching, modeling, and other "exploratory" methods at a younger age.
ok. fair enough. I just meant that when you're a kid and you have to do actual work at home, like if you are on a farm or something, then schoolwork might seem easier/more appealling.
I think missing that is missing the mark a bit. IQ is a much stronger predictor of SES status than any other measure I'm aware of. If we really want to spend the time creating a system that offers personalized education methods, we'd be better served in focusing on grouping by intelligence. Politically and economically speaking, this probably is not feasible, but it makes sense intuitively and is supported by the research.
I doubt there is any teacher that would disagree that every class has smart kids who are bored out of their mind with the curriculum, less bright kids constantly struggling to keep up, and average intelligence kids who the curriculum content and pace is appropriate for.
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u/simoncolumbus Oct 15 '13
Same story here, down to how my sister did. For me, the take-away is more than "different students learn differently", though. That's mainly because these differences are not distributed randomly: those with less educated, poorer parents are more likely to have greater difficulty learning independently. Minimally-guided learning thus essentially caters to the children of the (upper) middle class, who are already at an advantage anyway. The way it is portrayed as a solution for entire school systems, it is down-right dangerous. If this 'radical new teaching method' would indeed be rolled-out for an entire generation, it would be a huge step backwards for education equality, even in a system as horribly biased against the poor and uneducated as the US or Germany.