tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post6016877807607807129..comments2024-03-26T14:44:37.985-04:00Comments on D-Ed Reckoning: Alfie Kohn and the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effectKDeRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06853211164976890091noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-5150279713883734632009-02-17T12:44:00.000-05:002009-02-17T12:44:00.000-05:00That misses the point. Race is not causal in instr...<I>That misses the point. Race is not causal in instruction. It's the characteristics of the instructional program that are causal.</I><BR/><BR/>I'm not I understand, Dick. Are you saying that instructional programs should have the same effect on all groups of students regardless of innate and/or SES characteristics or their abilities coming into school?KDeRosahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06853211164976890091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-7435713209875110782009-02-17T12:23:00.001-05:002009-02-17T12:23:00.001-05:00Dick, you've evidently managed to annoy me enough ...Dick, you've evidently managed to annoy me enough that I am willing to devote hours to poking holes into your statements. Which is probably a good thing, overall.<BR/><BR/>You keep talking about "arbitrarily set cut scores on ungrounded tests are treated as degrees of "proficiency."<BR/>You don't say specifically which tests you are talking about. But out of curiousity and irritation I got driven into digging around in the NAEP, and those guys publish a lot of data on what the tests try to measure, the differences between different skill sets, etc. See http://nagb.org/publications/frameworks.htm<BR/><BR/>Now there always is an inherent aspect of arbitrariness in any achievement test. Why do we choose to teach some skills and not others, given the vast range of things that could be taught and be useful to at least one person, somewhere? But the NAEP tests at least appear to be based on consulting with experts and they have some explanation in their framework of why they chose to measure certain things.<BR/><BR/>I think you are being overly-hasty in dismissing achievement tests as ungrounded.Tracy Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08999246551652981965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-69987823105235342782009-02-17T12:23:00.000-05:002009-02-17T12:23:00.000-05:00"If half the population were black and the other h..."If half the population were black and the other half northeast Asian, so you really think there will be no variability between both groups on, say, a math exam?"<BR/><BR/>That misses the point. Race is not causal in instruction. It's the characteristics of the instructional program that are causal.<BR/><BR/>Zig made the decision early on that scripting is "the only way to go" because of the difficulty experienced in "training teachers."<BR/>Scripting is "a way" but it's not the "only" way to go.<BR/><BR/>The story is told of BF Skinner. A student told him that a rat wasn't performing the way Skinner's textbook said it should. Skinner told him, "The rat is right. I was wrong. The rat is always right." <BR/><BR/>That doesn't imply that you always have to go with teachers. It does imply that it's not reasonable to treat variability as "user error." <BR/><BR/>"Krohn's criticisms amount to quibbles at the edges of reliability rather than hard evidence that there is no empirical support for DI, as he claims."<BR/><BR/>Fully agree..Dick Schutzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09815175767173164494noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-32768764055184423192009-02-17T08:05:00.000-05:002009-02-17T08:05:00.000-05:00Once again, Alfie has a point here and there.No do...<I>Once again, Alfie has a point here and there.</I><BR/><BR/>No doubt. These social science experiments are always messy.<BR/><BR/>But, and here's the important point, Kohn's points do not add up to hard evidence that there is no empirical support for DI.<BR/><BR/><I>It's not reasonable to attribute DI variability within schools and districts and among districts to "demographic factors and experimental error." Demographic factors and experimental error aren't causal. DI is causal.</I><BR/><BR/>Why not. If half the population were black and the other half northeast Asian, so you really think there will be no variability between both groups on, say, a math exam?<BR/><BR/><I>And without trying to sort out the details, some of what Kohn has to say about the tests involved can be substantiated.</I><BR/><BR/>Again no test is perfect, but Krohn's criticisms amount to quibbles at the edges of reliability rather than hard evidence that there is no empirical support for DI, as he claims.KDeRosahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06853211164976890091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-3831730437198497202009-02-14T20:41:00.000-05:002009-02-14T20:41:00.000-05:00There are even more pertinent points in the Chrich...There are even more pertinent points in the Chrichton speech you flagged Ken:<BR/><BR/>“Endless presentation of conflict may interfere with genuine issue resolution. There is evidence that the television foodfights not only don't represent the views of most people-who are not so polarized-but may tend to make resolution of actual disputes more difficult in the real world. At the very least, they obscure the recognition that we resolve disputes every day. Compromise is much easier from relatively central positions than it is from extreme and hostile, conflicting positions: Greenpeace vs the Logging Industry.”<BR/>----<BR/>Your indirect exchanges with Kohn may not be a foodfight, but they seem pretty close to me. More Chrichton:<BR/><BR/>“Let me point to a demonstrable bad effect of the assumption that nothing is really knowable. Whole word reading was introduced by the education schools of the country without, to my knowledge, any testing of the efficacy of the new method. It was simply put in place. Generations of teachers were indoctrinated in its methods. As a result, the US has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the industrialized world. The assumption that nothing can be known with certainty does in truth have terrible consequences. <BR/>________________<BR/><BR/>Yep, Kohn and many others could well read that and take it to heart. If Crichton can see things like this, you'd thing Kohn et al could see them. More:<BR/><BR/>“As GK Chesterton said (in a somewhat different context), "If you believe in nothing, you'll believe in anything." That's what we see today. People believe in anything."<BR/>----------<BR/>Actually when it come to education, people believe worse than nothing. Most believe authorities who annually proclaim, "We're making gains." And arbitrarily set cut scores on ungrounded tests are treated as degrees of "proficiency. More:<BR/><BR/>“. . . since we're awash in this contemporary ocean of speculation, we forget that things can be known with certainty, and that we need not live in a fearful world of interminable unsupported opinion. But the gulf that separates hard fact from speculation is by now so unfamiliar that most people can't comprehend it.”<BR/>__________<BR/>Go figure.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-24579113544727955132009-02-14T14:37:00.000-05:002009-02-14T14:37:00.000-05:00It isn't just Kohn who is afflicted with Gell-Mann...It isn't just Kohn who is afflicted with Gell-Mann Amnesia. The malady is pandemic across EdLand.<BR/><BR/>In his autobiographical history of Follow Through, Zig presents persuasive evidence that the consequences were all about politics and nothing about the results. So it is today!<BR/><BR/>DI was not the only casualty in the Reading War. Jeanne Chall modestly declared "Mission Accomplished" in 1967.<BR/><BR/>http://education.stateuniversity.<BR/>com/pages/1819/Chall-Jeanne-1921-1999.html<BR/><BR/>"With beginning reading instruction now on the national agenda, the Carnegie Corporation funded a study that Chall conducted from 1962 to 1965. She reviewed the existing research, described methods of instruction, interviewed leading proponents of various methods, and analyzed two leading reading series of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The results appeared in her Learning to Read: The Great Debate (1967).<BR/>Chall identified what she called "the conventional wisdom" of reading instruction: that children should read for meaning from the start, use context and picture clues to identify words after learning about fifty words as sight words, and induce letter–sound correspondences from these words. Like Flesch, she concluded that this conventional wisdom was not supported by the research, which found phonics superior to whole word instruction and "systematic" phonics superior to "intrinsic" phonics instruction. She also found that beginning reading was different in kind from mature reading–a conclusion that she reaffirmed in her Stages of Reading Development (1983), which found that children first learn to read and then read to learn. She recommended in 1967 that publishers switch to a code-emphasis approach in children's readers, which would lead to better results without compromising children's comprehension."<BR/><BR/>That was over 40, yes FORTY friggin YEARS ago. While "phonics" found favor in the late 1990's, the favor was again overshadowed by politics. Whole Language just put on the mask of Balanced Literacy and continues to thrive.<BR/><BR/>Once again, Alfie has a point here and there. It's not reasonable to attribute DI variability within schools and districts and among districts to "demographic factors and experimental error." Demographic factors and experimental error aren't causal. DI is causal.<BR/><BR/>And without trying to sort out the details, some of what Kohn has to say about the tests involved can be substantiated.<BR/><BR/>So if he cares to Kohn could well counter punch, Ken. And the deRosa-Kohn skirmish will continue as a small part of the larger Wars.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-62890950021955730612009-02-14T13:27:00.000-05:002009-02-14T13:27:00.000-05:00Interesting read. I appreciate the change in tone...Interesting read. I appreciate the change in tone, and, although I'm not convinced about the whole "Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" thing, I'm definitely more likely to look at Kohn with a more skeptical eye.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com