Singular Minds
September 17, 2005 • Volume II, Issue 1
Prolinguistica Dyslexia Correction Center
Laura Zink de Diaz
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Quote of the Month #1
Q: Is there any relationship at all, by any stretch of the
imagination between algebra and higher order thinking or critical thinking?
A: There could be. It would depend on how it’s taught.
In most schools it probably doesn’t do anything for critical thinking.
America mostly teaches math by describing a procedure, giving an example or
two, then some seatwork and then some homework. Then it moves on to another
procedure...
Quote
of the Month #2
Q: How can the powers that be insist on using “ scientifically
based research methods” that were conducted under tightly held rigidly
controlled experimentally conditions and apply them to the real world?
A: They can’t. And they aren’t—-except to
public schools. ... There doesn’t seem to be any appreciation of the speech
that Alan Roses gave a couple of years ago. Roses pointed out that 90% of approved
drugs only work on 30-50% of the people who take them. Roses is a vice president
at GlaxoSmithKline and he was arguing for genetic tests to try to match treatments
to patients better. If you find out that phonics works better for initial reading
(which the evidence, so far as I know, denies), that just means you have a statistically
significant difference between the average scores of two (or more) groups that
someone might have converted into an effect size. In any case, what works better
on average will fail miserably for some children.
both quotes from Gerald Bracey in an interview found at:
http://www.educationnews.org/an-interview-with-gerald-bracey.htm
Gerald W. Bracey is an associate professor at George Mason University, Fairfax,
Virginia and an Associate of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation,
Ypsilanti, Michigan.
PDCC News
Again, apologies for the lateness of this month's edition of Singular Minds.
In the last days of August I flew to Quito, Ecuador to do a program with a young
man. Our work together took longer than I'd planned, which brought me back to
the US rather behind schedule. But it was well worth it, both because of the
wonderful opportunity to get to know a great fellow and his family, and the
chance to see a really lovely country.
I read before the trip that Quito is considered the most beautiful city in South
America. From what I saw of it, that statement may well be true. It's at 9,250
feet, and it took several days to adjust to the altitude, but once I'd caught
my breath and ventured out to explore a bit, what I saw was fascinating. Ecuador
has a "dollarized" economy, which means you don't need to exchange
any currency when you get there - they're using ours! (Prices are lower than
they are here though...!) I was surprised at how clean the city is. You expect
a huge metropolis to have a certain amount of trash on the streets, in the darker
corners. But Quito looks like a city inhabited by 1.8 million very orderly people!
There's a hill in the middle of the city called El Panecillo, from which you
can look out over the valley, completely filled by the city - and it's as shining
and clean as could be. From atop Panecillo you can also see, to the south, the
snow-capped peak of Mount Cotopaxi, the tallest active volcano in the world.
In the Centro Historico, the old quarter of the city, as much as possible from
the colonial period has been preserved, so that you feel as if you just stepped
back a couple of centuries when you walk through plazas, passing ancient churches
and government buildings, or drive along the brick and cobblestone streets.
I count myself very fortunate to have had an opportunity to travel out of the
city for a quick drive through three small cities a little to the north, as
well as a trip to the Equator. Moving out of Quito and into the countryside
you see many people who still use traditional garb: men with long black hair
tied back in a pony or pig tail reaching the middle of the back, women in long
black dresses, white embroidered blouses, a "manta" of a single, rich
color, usually folded neatly and worn on the head as a sort of layered cloth
hat. It's very interesting that there's a large monument to "La Mitad del
Mundo" - the Center of the World - about 20 kilometers north of Quito,
but it's not actually ON the equator. To experience the equator itself, you
must go about two blocks away from the monument and visit a small museum called
Inti-Ñan. There you can see for yourself that water poured through a
drain on the "actual" equator flows straight down the pipe, no swirling,
while water swirls vigorously clockwise or counter clockwise, when you move
the drain only a couple of feet to the north or south. You can also balance
an egg on the head of a nail pretty easily if you're on latitude 00 00 00. A
fascinating country. I hope to be able to post some of my photographs from this
trip. I'll provide the URL here once I get the picture page going.
Clay Night
Clay night for October should be the 13th. However, it looks like I'll be out
of town (possible program in Puerto Rico that week), so for now, consider it
cancelled. If it's possible to hold it, I'll notify those of you who are local
clients a day or two before.
Support Group
Support Group will be the October 20 at 7 pm.
Good
Stuff to Read
Too
much learning damaging children's play, says report
Thursday September 8, 2005
The Guardian (UK)
Young children are being denied the chance to play at being pirates and astronauts
because they spend so much time learning to read and write, according to research
published today.
Role play games such as pretending to be doctors or police officers are vital
to help children learn how to make friends and develop their imagination, the
University of Plymouth study found. But the pressures of the formal primary
school curriculum, such as the drive to teach literacy, mean there is too little
time for play, the research said. Parents' groups backed the report's findings
and warned that children were being pushed into formal education too young.
Read the rest at: http://education.guardian.co.uk/earlyyears/story/0,15612,1564667,00.html?gusrc=rss
Reading
at Grade Level
Definition:
Reading at grade level is reading at an average level for a given grade. For
example, a third grade child who is an average third grade reader is reading
at grade level. It is mathematically impossible for all children to read at
grade level. When below-average readers read better, the average changes. It
is also mathematically impossible, long-term, for all children to read at or
above the 50th percentile on norm-referenced tests (e.g., the SAT 9). Norm-referenced
tests are, by definition, constructed so that 50% of the test-takers will always
be in the bottom 50%. When this changes, the test questions are changed so that
once again 50% of the test-takers will be in the bottom 50%.
Read this and more at an incredibly useful and very low key site: http://www.edresearch.info/
At this site you will also find the following interesting information gleaned
from many generally ignored (not to say suppressed) "scientific" studies
on reading instruction:
- Children in reading classes that emphasize meaning rather than phonics,
consistently outscore students in phonics-based classes.
- When children are tested on reading words from a list, and are then re-tested
on those words in context, they consistently can read most of the words they
missed on the list, when they encounter them in context, with anywhere from
a 43% to 82% gain.
- Children and adults have difficulty separating spoken words into their constituent
phonemes, and adults who already read, use their knowledge of spelling to help
them complete such tasks, often failing anyway; this holds true even after training
in phonemic awareness.
Finally,
some good news:
NCLB Left Behind: Report Finds 47 of 50 States in
"Some Stage of Rebellion" Against Controversial Law
Study: UT, CT and CO Already in Open Revolt
USNewswire -- August 17, 2005
Washington -- The grassroots rebellion against the controversial No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) Act already has spread in some form to 47 of the 50 states and
is likely to flare up in particular in such states as Minnesota, Maine, Nevada,
New Jersey and Virginia during the 2005-2006 school year, according to a new
report from NCLBgrassroots.org, a project of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Civil
Society Institute (CSI). The report... provides a detailed national overview
of the growing state and local dissent against NCLB ... documented in terms
of anti-NCLB legislation (21 states); opting out/waivers/ exemptions (40 states);
litigation (four cases, with more in the offing); NCLB unfunded-mandate cost
studies (21 states); and NCLB school failure rate studies (including one by
MA showing NCLB will flunk 75-90 percent of schools over time).
You can read more about this at: http://www.NCLBgrassroots.org.
Recent
Cuts Reversing 50 Years of Progress in School Libraries
CHICAGO, Aug. 16 PRNewswire
-- As millions of American children prepare to head back to school this fall,
more will be attending schools without libraries. ... The once-remarkable nationwide
growth of public schools with library media centers (+64%), schools with a librarian
(+39%) and pupils in schools with a librarian (+167%) has been undermined in
the past five years by substantial cuts to school library funding. ...Since
1965, more than 60 education and library studies have shown that school library
media programs staffed by qualified library media specialists have a positive
impact on student academic achievement. In response to the urgent need to support
and maintain school library programs and certified school librarians across
the nation, the ALA has convened a new task force on school libraries to assess
U.S. school library service and make recommendations to strengthen services
for children nationwide.
You can find more information on school libraries and student achievement
at:
http://www.ala.org/aaslTemplate.cfm?Section=studentachieve
No
Emotion Left Behind
By Timothy P. Shriver and Roger P. Weissberg
THE debate over education reform has tended to divide children's learning along
two axes, the emotional and the academic. Either we can address children's academic
performance, the conventional thinking holds, or we can address their emotional
and social needs. ...The two kinds of learning are intimately connected. That
means that promoting students' social and emotional skills plays a critical
role in improving their academic performance. ... Along with Joseph Durlak,
a Loyola University psychologist, one of us (Roger Weissberg) recently conducted
the largest-ever quantitative analysis, encompassing more than 300 research
studies on this subject. The results, which will be presented later this week
for the first time, show that social and emotional learning programs significantly
improve students' academic performance. The review shows, for example, that
an average student enrolled in a social and emotional learning program ranks
at least 10 percentile points higher on achievement tests than students who
do not participate in such programs. Moreover, compared with their counterparts
outside of these programs, social and emotional learning students have significantly
better attendance records; their classroom behavior is more constructive and
less often disruptive; they like school more; and they have better grade point
averages. They are also less likely to be suspended or otherwise disciplined.
Read more about this at: http://parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=6250
Phonics
has a phoney role in the literacy wars
Children do not need to sound out words to read them, writes Mem Fox.
WHAT is the role of phonics in learning to read? And what is phonics exactly?
...Phonics is the ability to break up the words on a page into sounds - for
example, seeing the word "cat" and being able to say its individual
sounds: kuh-a-tuh. Making the right sounds is phonics, but phonics is not reading.
Reading is making sense from the page, not sounds. We can all make the right
sounds in the Bahasa Indonesian sentence below without understanding it: "Terima
kasih banyak, kakek," kata Jessie. ("Thanks a lot, Grandpa,"
said Jessie.) But getting the phonics right is pointless when there's no sense
to be had. Parents often make the understandable mistake of believing that phonically
sounding out words is reading. But we do most of our reading in silence: the
meaning is on the page, not in the sound. ... So, hey, waht does this say abuot
the improtnace of phnoics in raeidng? Prorbalby that phonics ins't very imoptrnat
at all. How apcoltapyic is that, in the cuerrnt licetary wars?
Read the rest of Mem's commonsensical essay, which ends with the delightful
statement that, "Less heat and more light would be enormously useful in
this debate," at:
http://susanohanian.org/show_inthenews.html?id=42
Supernanny
State
Alfie Kohn
A despot welcomes a riot. Disorder provides an excuse to rescind liberties in
the name of restoring calm. There are only two choices, after all: chaos and
control. The creators of Supernanny and Nanny 911 understand this. Each week
they poke their cameras into a dysfunctional suburban home where the children
are bouncing off the walls and the parents are ready to climb them. There's
whining, there's yelling, there's hitting...and the kids are just as bad. But
wait. Look up there: It's a bird. It's a plain-dressed, no-nonsense British
nanny, poised to swoop in with a prescription for old-fashioned control. Soon
the clueless American parents will be comfortably back in charge, the children
will be calm and compliant, and everyone will be sodden with gratitude. Cue
the syrupy music, the slow-mo hugs, the peek at next week's even more hopeless
family.
Read the rest of this insightful essay at: http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=4634
Alfie Kohn's latest book is "Unconditional Parenting: Moving From Rewards
and Punishments to Love and Reason" (Atria)
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That's it for this month. I hope you all had a wonderful - if hectic - start
of the school year! As a result of the possible work in Puerto Rico early in
October, that issue of Singular Minds may be late. I apologize ahead of time!
Have a great month!
Laura
Next Issue of Singular Minds: Mid-October? 2005
Got a topic you’d like to see addressed in Singular Minds? E-mail questions,
proposals, letters, and/or stories to: singularminds@prolinguistica.com
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