Subject: 12/10/04 WSJ Article on How Schoolchildren Learn

Posted by John Gunkler on 12/18/2004
In Reply To:12/10/04 WSJ Article on How Schoolchildren Learn Posted by Bill Ellis on 12/17/2004

Message:

This idea ain't got a chance. Teachers will never accept Kolderie's ideas (or, at least, never put them into practice) in a million years.

We recently went through adopting a small piece of this in Minnesota. After years of work, very properly involving teacher representatives (and people representing just about every other constituency in education as well), the state of Minnesota came up with a new way of evaluating the progress of K-12 students. It involved having students doing "projects" that were multi-disciplinary as a part of their graduation requirements. After much approval from every constituency, and with political support, the method was "adopted" -- only to be shot down in a heap after protests from teachers and parents about how difficult it was to implement (something that had been quite thoroughly tested, by the way.)

It was incredible how quickly this bit of (much needed) school reform was killed!

So, there is no hope for anything like what Kolderie suggests -- at least in Minnesota (one of the "most progressive" states, which has a reputation for "valuing" public education, etc., etc.)

In fact, short of a crisis/revolution (where we lose 85% of all current teachers and administrators, we suddenly begin paying salaries that make teaching more attractive than most jobs in business, teaching becomes one of the jobs most sought after by the best and brightest college students, etc.), nothing of much substance is going to change in American education.

As always, good, caring teachers will continue to fight the system and do their best for our kids, and we'll just have to hope that's good enough -- and that we're lucky enough that our own kids happen to get one or two of these wonderful teachers in their lives. This hasn't been enough lately (hence the scores compared with the rest of the world), but what else can we hope for?

Follow Ups:

Kolderie Book - Andy Smith 12/18/2004 
Kolderie Book - Bill Ellis 12/18/2004