A Vision for Who Our Students Need to *Be*
I found that I was disagreeing with much of the start of the post. It is about wanting to have students be better thinkers and questioners. I agree with that part, but how do you teach these skills without teaching some content to think about?
It seems that one side of the reform only wants to test and gather data and another side want to be devoid of content that can be tested. I want a middle ground. You need content because at some point a student will finish school and need to get a job which will require skills and some content knowledge. Tests are shown to help thinking because they require you to use your brain for retrieval of information which I would think is needed for creative thinking. If the only questions are lower level thinking questions - simple fact questions, then nothing is gained. But to think you need something as the basis of your thinking. If I ask my students Why is air quality important? and they know nothing about air quality how do they answer the question? Sure they can give a general answer like good air quality is important to life. But what did that say? To put some thought into the answer they need content.
Will's daughter is taking physics, according to the post, would he expect her not to study physics content in the class? How will she be able to grapple with Newton and his laws if she has no idea about what they say?
I keep coming back to this as I read blog post about ed Reform. It is possible that because of the students I teach, I teach at Shenandoah Valley Governor's School, and I teach on the STEM side. My students are motivated to do well, not necessarily to learn, but to do well. Many do want to learn, but they are overloaded with activities. I teach a dual enrollment class and thus a certain amount of content is expected. I do want to go beyond the standard content and have the students think about what they are studying.
My thoughts for the day on this topic.
