CTK Insights

In a recent article in the Scientific American Linda Baker wrote

Over the past 20 years educators have fought over the best way to teach numbers to kids. Advocates of traditional math tout the practice of algorithms and teacher-centered learning, whereas reform-math proponents focus on underlying concepts and student inquiry. In the face of continued declining scores in the U.S., these so-called math wars have heated up recently with the circulation of petitions, the release of contested curriculum guidelines and, in one case, the filing of a lawsuit. At stake is the ability of American high school graduates to perform everyday math tasks and compete in a global economy.

A paraphrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise is called for:

Education (life in the original) was a damned muddle ... a football game with every one off-side and the referee gotten rid of - every one claiming the referee would have been on his side ...

One would assume that in 20 years' time the educators should have been able to collect some statistics to substantiate their arguments. It's a shame that 20 years of educational research has nothing to show for it.

I am getting an impression that educational trends are driven by speculation (as opposed to any vestige of science) and stamina of the individuals capable of assuming a leadership position.

New York Times reported on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 that

Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration's Education Department, is in the final stages of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took on American schooling.

Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of two conservative research groups.

The turnaround of such an influential educator sent ripples in the educational circles.

"She has done more than any one I can think of in America to drive home the message of accountability and charters and testing," said Arthur E. Levine, a former president of Teachers College, where Dr. Ravitch got her doctorate and began her teaching career in the 1970s. "Now for her to suddenly conclude that she's been all wrong is extraordinary - and not very helpful."

It would ease my bewilderment to learn that either of Dr. Ravitch stands - the old and the new - has been based on some scientific evidence, but this does not appear the case. On the other hand, the last quote indicates the level of discussion in math education. "... not very helpful". I'd think that her defecting to the other side in the math wars is either right or wrong, but helpful? Who to?

Related posts:

1. The case for a reform