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Mar 2009
HW Quality = School Quality
March 31, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: (Letter 1)
I was asked why I gave homework and answered that
is was to satisfy students and parents who equate
the quantity of homework with the quality of the
education being offered.
As a student, I could sniff out busy work in an instant, and so can most students. I despised it, and I will not subject my students to that form of “edumacation.” So, how many math problems are needed to nail down a concept? How many chapters of a textbook need to be outlined? Lansdale, PA (Letter 2) My 5th-grader is bringing home very little homework. She is getting time at school to do most of it. She’s making good grades but I’m wondering what her teachers are not teaching if she has enough time at the end of her classes to do most all her homework. Some days she brings no homework at all home. Should I be concerned? Boston, Mass. |
The Assessment: There are two juxtaposing voices within the American School System. One is from the service provider’s position as with the teacher submitting the first question. The other is from the consumer’s point of view, the parent, as revealed with the second question above.
The amazing thing about these two letters is that their views are usually in reverse. Teachers are usually the ones that give out busy work or “one size fits all” homework and parents often think their children are inundated with too much homework.
As for the teacher, I admire his perspective. My guess is that not many of his colleagues at his school share his belief that homework is to extend learning and not for “edumacation” (numbing of the brain by monotone worthless doing.)
If all teachers were like him, then students would be getting value from their homework. Sadly, most teachers issue large homework assignments without regard to how much they are giving and the quantity results in “edumacation.”
If students are on overkill, then they must concentrate more on finishing the work than thinking and learning.
Each night, students must calculate how much time it will take to complete all homework assignments in a manner that shows their intelligence and with presentation that honors their dignity (clean, neat work to hand in as opposed to crumpled, torn paper with smudges on it).
Homework should uplift, not destroy a child’s personal and home life yet this is exactly what happens when teachers assign large quantities of busy work.
As for the mother, she is questioning whether it should be quantity over quality, and the answer is absolutely not.
Most children go to school and simply get assignments each day that the parent must use as if he or she is home schooling every night. The cramming and the fatigue of the day together with the fear of a bad homework grade result in fighting and screaming during family time at home.
It is no wonder so many children tell their parents they don’t have homework when they do or that they hide their poor grades from parents.
What To Do: We must recognize that rather than an American School System we have an American Do What You Want School System.
Schools have the right to overload a child with homework and destroy family time. The amount has become synonymous with the image of the school. It is good, mediocre or poor school with the school that hands out the most homework getting the “good” moniker.
The value your child places on himself or herself will be tied in great part to your perception of his or her achievement. If you think the school is mediocre, then your child will think A’s are a mediocre achievement. This could unwittingly belittle children and give them the idea that they have a limited capacity for achievement.
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Superintendant Demands Board Attention
March 24, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I am on a school board with a brilliant 37-year-old school superintendent who gets good results but wants total command and attention yet he’s oblivious to his 6-year-old-son’s hyperactivity. At times, the child is uncontrollable in school! Should we speak to him and suggest he get his son tested for ADD/ADHD? |
The Assessment: By your indication, you are speaking for the board, using the plural pronoun, “we.” You say he wants total command and attention, inferring you have abdicated or at least have allowed him to usurp the board’s authority. I am always concerned when I get letters that indicate a board fears its school superintendent.
You believe he is “successful” and “gets good results,” yet what does this mean? Ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different answers because we have no unified, national definition of what “good results” or “success” is.
Your superintendent may need to learn the story of the cobbler’s son.
Regarding the child, there is absolutely no way you can know why this child is out of control. ADD/ADHD may not even remotely be the issue. (For additional information, see my recent columns on ADD/ADHD.) The child may be exhibiting learned behavior from his father, i.e., how his father deals with the board and others, I suspect.
Maybe teachers are afraid of setting boundaries for the child in fear of repercussions from the superintendent. Has anyone taught his child that regardless of what his father allows him to do at home, the child has different rules to follow at school? Maybe Dad’s autocratic rule at the office goes home with him and school is the only place where the child can escape his father’s heavy hand and be just like him.
This man may be so focused on ruling at school that he is not parenting at home. Maybe he lacks parenting skills or possibly he is guilty of “children gone wild” parenting (letting them do as they please).
What To Do: The only way to help the cobbler’s son is to change yourself first. Take back your power, yet do it in a compassionate and tactful way by speaking with him privately about his domineering tendency. And take him off the pedestal the board has him on. He is only human and may need a reminder that he is demanding is a poor substitute for cooperation and collaboration with the board.
Next, focus on the child’s issue. Speak to him about his son’s behavior as if he were any parent in your school system, again in a tactful manner. Most important: under no circumstance should you recommend testing for ADD/ADHD. You absolutely do not have the adequate information to know why the child behaves as he does and neither do I.
The child may not have been taught proper school behavior or he could have a receptive/expressive language disorder. He may be the child of a previous marriage searching for his position in a new family, or he could have a developmental delay in sequencing causing extreme anxiety, distraction and frustration as he attempts to learn basic skills. He may have a fine motor coordination problem that does not allow him to do all the written work expected of a first grader. The list of possibilities goes on and on.
By asking him questions about the child, you may get a better indication of why the child is acting the way he is. Only then will you be able to suggest to him that he might want to start with having the child tested by a qualified education counselor and/or seen by a developmental pediatrician. Professionals should do the diagnosing, not you or the father.
Hopefully pointing out to your “successful” superintendent that his child has no shoes will make him think twice about his own ego and how he deals with all those around him.
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Homework: The Good, Bad & Ugly
March 17, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: We’re back from spring break and teachers are loading down my children with homework. This has been a problem all year but their teachers are really dumping it on now. Is there any literature on this? What would you advise? |
The Assessment: Once upon a time, homework was beneficial for children. Instead of being what it should be, it has become a joke in this country. There are parents that think the more homework a school dishes out, the better that school must be. Seeing the marketing benefit to this, many schools, especially private, have touted this fact in their advertising.
After 30 years of seeing what comes into my after school program as homework, I am totally amazed that our children are learning anything. The quality of learning is the poorest I’ve ever seen. Children are memorizing and not understanding what they “learn” nor are they being asked to demonstrate application of knowledge. They are certainly not developing critical thinking skills.
Another incorrect supposition that has permeated schools in this country is that “more is better.” Alas, we have sacrificed quality for quantity.
What To Do: There are three kinds of homework:
Parents are finally getting fed up with the first two kinds of homework and there is a movement slowly developing in the country against all homework as a result.
I suggest you read the book, “The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Children and What Parents Can Do About It,” by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish. There is not one example I have read in the book that I haven’t lived through when counseling families in the last 30 years, yet I caution you. While this is a good book, there is a case for homework, when it is homework that develops recall of unmastered basic skills and develops the mind. Bad homework is simply a symptom of a bad system.
Make appointments with your children’s teachers to discuss the three kinds of homework and ask them what you can do to make sure your children are getting only mind wealth-building homework. Talk with other parents and find that agree with useless hmework, suggesting they meet with teachers on this issue as well.
In recent years, parent-led coalitions have had the most success in changing the system, so build a coalition of parents to lobby the school for change in the status quo from doling out stupid and destructive homework to assigning the mind wealth-building kind. After all, you are the CEO of your child’s education until he or she is old enough to assume that role. The teachers and schools are merely the taxpayer’s hired hands and you’re throwing away yours and other taxpayer’s money if you do not get educated on this issue and work to settle for nothing less than an a mind-wealth education for your child.
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Documentary Shows Disparity In Education
March 10, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I have a 13-year old son and an 11-year old daughter in the public school system. They are making good grades, As and Bs. I thought they were doing fine until at a recent parent-teacher conference, we watched the movie, “Two Million Minutes.” Now I’m worried that their As and Bs mean nothing. Have you seen this movie? What do you think about it? What advice can you give on this? |
The Assessment: 2 Million Minutes is Robert Compton’s documentary on the tsunami of global literacy being led by India and China. It infers children in the United States school systems are less concerned with learning and more concerned with sports and social activities. The inference is that our decades-old education model is not working, which is what I’ve been saying for many years.
I have worked with students for 30 years and I see A and B students every day that have learned nothing. They memorize well but they can’t apply what they’ve memorized. Their parents see this and bring them to me because I teach children how to become the CEOs and visionaries of their own education, how to set goals for themselves, and how to mesh their talents with their passions. This is what India and China seem to be teaching, based on my interpretation of his documentary, and what we are not teaching in our school systems.
These children I counsel do not know how to plan their future with even the slightest research, imagination or wisdom since many a career they are contemplating will soon disappear or doesn’t pay the six-figure salary they thought it did.
An A means nothing if a child cannot take what he or she has learned an apply it to create new knowledge.
I congratulate Compton. Someone in this country finally asked the “right” question: Is the U.S. school system educating our current and future generations to know how to collaborate and work with the global economy/community? Compton’s documentary reveals how well China and India, emerging super powers, are educating their future leaders. Above all, he infers that countries interested in progress, and in the future of their children, are not using the U.S. school system as a role model for education. WHY? Because our model no longer works and each day we delay creating a new one, we are teaching our children to be the laborers for these new emerging superpowers.
Compton was motivated to search further when he realized that first graders in India and China had aspirations. As a result, he continued his efforts with two more documentaries, 2 Million Minutes In India, A Deeper Look, and 2 Million Minutes In China, A Deeper Look.
What To Do: Go back to your parent-teacher association and suggest your group watch these additional two documentaries then recommend all three be shown to the students. Start a dialog at parent-teacher meetings about things at your children’s school that need to change so that they not only keep up with this global literacy movement but that they get ahead of it and if need be, draft suggestions for change that your parent-teacher group can present to the school administration and to your local school board as well as to political/community leaders.
After your children have seen all three documentaries, sit down with them and discuss them. Then ask your children what their goals for their lives are and if they do not have any yet, start the process now. Have them research the fields they may want to go into.
Make sure your children are applying what they have “learned” for those good grades. Ask them to demonstrate to you how they might apply their knowledge. And remember, you ultimately are responsible as the parent for making sure they get the education they need to be the CEO of their successful adult life.
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2010 Education budget proposal
March 03, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: President Obama’s education section of the 2010 budget to me just says more money for more testing. Why can he not see testing and standards cannot take the place of learning and knowledge? |
The Assessment: The following excerpt is taken from Obama’s recent budget proposal under the category of education:
“Strengthens and reforms public schools to meet the needs of all students, by helping States to develop high quality, rigorous standards and assessments, vigorously supporting and rewarding effective teaching, and investing in and widely disseminating effective approaches to improving student achievement to help all students make progress toward high standards.”
I had such hope when he was elected that he would actually bring about the change he promised, yet these words are just more political “lyrics” put to music and sung as powerfully as Aretha Franklin sang at his inauguration.
They render the illusion that our values, hopes and dreams as American citizens finally deserve action rather than lip service, and a firm promise rather than rhetoric, yet this is what we got: lip service and rhetoric with a big chunk of money to keep alive an antiquated education model rather than creating a new education paradigm.
His words from that same speech to Congress are as superficially heart-throbbing as the others:
“In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer a way to opportunity, it is a pre-requisite.”
Yet, in the context of education, what is knowledge?
What To Do: What we need to do is make sure children are learning to use the strategy, Data-Info-Knowledge™.
Data is what a teacher gives a student. There are two types of data: what we can change and what we cannot.
I must take the data and covert it to Information. Recently, a couple brought me their son, who is having a problem with math, for testing. He has a grade of C- and I can change that. I cannot change that he is 10 years old or the problems in the home and from outside influences. Until I can express in my own words the data that has been given to me, I am a person who happens to know nothing unique.
Students go to school not to receive knowledge but to receive data (a skill perfected in elementary school). Teaching to standardized tests does nothing but show the level to which a child can memorize data and nothing more.
When children acquire the skills to access data on their own, they must enter into the process of creating their own information (a skill introduced in elementary school but weighted much less, and mastered by the end of middle school). It is at this point that our children begin creating their own Knowledge.
When a child merely recalls on tests or aloud what teachers have said, he/she is merely recalling data and someone else’s information. It is never their knowledge. Knowledge had to come from them. That is the crossroad all future students and workers must come to.
I am sick of hearing the counterfeit phrase, “Knowledge is power.” It is not!
We are living in an era of the redistribution of power and wealth, which I first stated was happening at least 20 years ago. I also said at that time the phrase should actually be, “He or She Who Creates New Knowledge Will Rule And Lead the Rest.”
This is what other countries are doing and it would be wise for President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to demand a new education paradigm based on this.
As I have often heard, “The person who knows how will always be needed, but the person who knows why will always be the boss.”
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