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Health & Fitness

Let's Stop The Education Philosophy Pendulum

We recently reread an opinion piece from The Atlantic that was published back in October of 2012 and it has us pondering what seems like yet another swing of the education philosophy pendulum.  The basic thrust of the article, “It’s Not Just Writing: Math Needs A Revolution, Too” is that the most recent trend in K-6 mathematics education in the United States, so-called “reform math,” is short-changing our children by eliminating many of the in-class opportunities for children to master math facts.  The idea is that math facts/drills, i.e. “rote learning” will be something that children will learn outside of the classroom and that, according to the piece’s author, learning these facts has been jettisoned so that “understanding takes precedence over procedure and process trumps content.”

We don’t fancy ourselves education policy wonks, so it’s rare that we will weigh in on debates regarding national trends in pedagogical philosophy, or even pick a side.  Consistent with that position, we will hesitate to form a judgment regarding the aforementioned claim since we don’t possess the data that might definitively tell us one way or another what pedagogical philosophical position is “best.”  We do, however, wonder why such debates seem to always be framed as a “zero-sum, either/or” contest for the soul of education in America.  Debates framed in this way permit choices that are at best characterized as binary without allowing for the possibility that the “best” choice, depending on how “best” is defined, might be some combination of the offerings.

In a country such as America with a heterogeneous population, if we want “best” to mean both providing equal educational opportunities for every one of our potential students AND having that body of students perform at a high level compared with the rest of the industrialized world on whatever universal measure is used, we must recognize that the uniqueness and enormity of that challenge is something that an “either/or” solution may never adequately address.  We have to allow for the possibility that the “best” solution may be some combination of pedagogical philosophies, or that maybe even that pedagogical positions and their respective implementations are only just PART of the solution.

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We live in an increasingly complex world, yet we often insist on trying to solve some of our most pressing challenges with only simplistic solutions; the pendulum swings on.  This makes no sense.  In a rush to arrive at a simple, seemingly expedient and “sellable” solution, we often don’t take the proper amount of time and consideration to first ask ourselves the right “upstream” questions like, “What do we mean by ‘best’?” or “How important is this issue and what sacrifices are we willing to make to achieve our goals?”

Here’s a position we WILL take:  We think the education of our nation’s children is more paramount than ever to its survival and that a serious debate about our goals and the sacrifices that must be made to achieve them is long overdue.  This debate should include matters like the aforementioned pedagogical philosophy choices, but it has to go deeper than that.  It has to include a realistic set of expectations for our nation’s schools and the national will to provide them with the resources necessary to meet those expectations.   The question is:  Are we ready to have such a debate?

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