THE EDUCRATS ARE AT IT AGAIN: Remember the disaster that befell a generation of public school children when "Whole Language" was the hot way to teach reading and writing? The educrats thinking(?) behind "Whole Language" (don't you just love the high-sounding marketing labels they put in this stuff?) was that children should be allowed to bring their "native intelligence" to teach themselves to read and write, while teachers served as "facilitators." Kids could just use "found" spelling to write words the way the kids thought they should be spelled; and they could just use "found" pronunciation to read words the way they thought they should sound.

The result was a generation of kids cheated out of actually being taught to read and write. Business is still paying the price in the workplace because taxpayers didn't get what they paid for in the schools.

Now, having had their knuckles slapped for that debacle, the educrats are now back with a new version of "found" learning that they're marketing under another high-sounding name: "Cognitively Guided Instruction" or "CGI" as it's popularly known. This time they are applying it to Math instruction in the schools...or should we say, lack of instruction because once again the (lame) idea is that (quote from one of the proponents) "children bring intuitive knowledge" of Math to bear on solving Math problems and don't need to be taught the formal methods of Math.

Teachers using the CGI method are told to allow children to solve Math problems "their own way," and not to worry about teaching the classical methods. Only after the children have solved the problem their way are they shown the "other" way.

As with the "Whole Language" mess, CGI actually flies in the face of everything known about how to teach children. In fact, CGI is hugely demotivational for children and creates a phenomenon known as "Negative Interference." Negative Interference is what blocks learning and confuses children when they have to unlearn a wrong or inefficient way of solving a problem and replace it with the correct or efficient way. The result is learning setbacks and confusion. In addition, after proudly solving a problem their "found" way, kids are then demotivated by being told that their way isn't the best or most efficient way.

We have schools in order to teach children the hard-won ways that human minds have developed over ages and passed down to us through books. Why are the educrats always looking for ways to abandon classical knowledge?

The educrats in school district offices know they can get away with this sort of thing because school board trustees come and go, but educrats stay. Trustees have to rely on the educrats on their district staff to provide them with expertise on instructional methodology...and the educrats know that.

If you know any trustees, alert them right now to the fact that the failed "Whole Language" system has again reared its ugly head, popping up this time in Math and reincarnated as "CGI." Already, taxpayers are paying for teachers to be sent to expensive seminars to be "trained" (brainwashed) for delivering CGI into the classrooms onto innocent children. Tell your local school board trustees to pull the plug on CGI before we have another generation of children shortchanged in their education.

Alwissend