On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 5:04 PM, Edward Cherlin <<a href="mailto:echerlin@gmail.com">echerlin@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="Ih2E3d">On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 7:49 AM, Samuel Klein <<a href="mailto:meta.sj@gmail.com">meta.sj@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><div class="Ih2E3d"><br> > Interesting point.  I do worry about mindful observation being biased by the<br> > unconscious need to be fashionable -- something that affects all sorts of<br> > experiments, scientific or not.<br> <br> </div>Or the need to be unfashionable, as the case may be.<br> <div class="Ih2E3d"></div></blockquote><div><br>Just so.<br> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d"> > > However, Wheldall is concerned that low-progress readers do not learn to<br> > read naturally. "They will only learn to read with careful, systematic<br> > instruction to which phonics instruction is central," he says.<br> <br> </div>The history of science is littered with overambitious claims for<br> research results. </blockquote><div><br>Indeed.  We should be as wary of results we like as of those we do not.<br> <br><br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> See Maria Montessori, among others who document<br> a sudden explosion into reading, where children go from knowing the<br> alphabet to reading anything within their comprehension all at once,<br> with no detectable progression.<br> <div class="Ih2E3d"></div></blockquote><div><br>{{cite}}<br> Good example.  Can we list others? <br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> Agreed -- "How wide should the net be cast in this discussion?" is another<br> <div class="Ih2E3d"> > good one.<br> <br> </div>We are talking about the construction of entire human beings here.  What could we leave out?<br> <div class="Ih2E3d"></div></blockquote><div><br>If we leave nothing out, then we may fail to be productive in our lifetimes thanks to constant diversions and distractions.  There are progressions of thought and discussion which, like space-filling curves, manage to fill finite area despite the narrow focus of any particular thread... my question can be improved to, "how wide should the net be cast over the next month in this discussion".<br>  </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d">> Which war(s) are we prepared to fight and which ones not?<br> <br> </div>We are already engaged in several, and the larger society has more waiting for us. It is not our choice.<br> <br> * Software freedom<br> * Child-centered education<br> * Freedom of thought and of speech<br> * Fundamental human rights of all kinds<br> </blockquote><div><br> others.We can (and should) prioritize one war without deprecating  Fighting wars on multiple fronts without priorities, and treating setbacks in all of them as critical brinks which demand diverting all available resources to recovery, is a recipe for constant inefficiency and confusion.<br>  </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Our most serious opponents are well-organized on a narrow range of<br> issues, extremely well funded, and implacable. To many of them, we are<br> the greatest threat to humanity ever.</blockquote><div><br>I don't think there is a single group who currently considers "us" or "our projects" to be the greatest threat to humanity, or even on the list of such threats... for any definition of "us".<br>  </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Education is the front line on the battleground. Hence religious<br> home-schooling in the US.</blockquote><div> <br>Those are complaints about how current school systems teach, not about the idea of exploration as a path to learning and discovery.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> > Another good one.  A related question : when is it acceptable to dismiss<br><div class="Ih2E3d"> > commonly-held beliefs as obviously wrong (is it ever acceptable?) and when<br> > should they be addressed in detail?<br> <br> </div>Wrong question. When do you need to explain why something is wrong,<br> and when can you just say so and move on? Depends completely on the<br> audience, and the purpose of the occasion. In some cases a third<br> strategy is indicated: Silence until you get to a safe distance.<br> <div class="Ih2E3d"></div></blockquote><div><br>I would suggest that for every commonly-held belief that appears to be wrong, a serious discussion of the merits and demerits of the underlying observations, and of the analysis leading to said belief, is necessary.  It may not be appropriate to discuss with every audience, but it should be publicly available and open for dialogue, say on a well-known wiki.<br>  <br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">We will find that some in any community, and many in some<br> communities, will have nothing to do with us and our ideas, and will<br> work to undermine any good that we think we are doing, because to them<br> it is ultimate evil.<br> <div class="Ih2E3d"></div></blockquote><div><br>I don't know what you consider to be 'us and our ideas' here, but I think that almost every community respects the notion of education as a path towards practical, spiritual, and collective societal improvement.  Different communities may privilege learning some things and deprecate learning others.  I have never been part of a community that did not have implicit ideas of what should 'always' be learned and what should 'never' be learned by good people.<br> <br>It is good for us to debate what should and should not be learned. Some will say that /everything/ should be learned, both how to inspire and discover and create and how to manipulate and destroy.  Some will focus on specific things that should be learned, both positively and prophylactically.  <br> <br>However, we should not mistake disagreements about what should be learned for disagreements about the value of education.<br><br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="Ih2E3d">> Highlighting some major differences -- as perceived internally, and as<br> > perceived by visiting educators from elsewhere -- will be useful.<br> <br> </div>Differences between what and which?<br> <div class="Ih2E3d"></div></blockquote><div><br>Between learning environments and priorities in different countries -- say, a specific country in Europe and a specific LDC.<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="Ih2E3d">> Negative results are also very interesting : what are major educational<br> > initiatives (in a given region/country) that have been tried without<br> > success?  What are narrow areas in which they dramatically succeeded or<br> > failed?<br> <br> </div>Interpreting negative results is a dicy business. There are too many<br> reasons why an experiment can fail besides the failure of the<br> experimental hypothesis. The most common are human, not technical:</blockquote><div><br>Yes, those are quite common.  However, we should actively share and discuss negative results, rather than discarding them.<br> <br><br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> This editorializing in what purports to be a news story seems to be<br> typical of the increasingly shoddy reporting at the NYT in recent<br> years. No numbers, no analysis, no comparison with districts that did<br> get good results. Argument by anecdote.<br> </blockquote><div><br>I do not wish to defend the NYT or their practices, but I have not seen a good set of numbers, analysis, or comparisons of districts implementing 1-to-1 computing projects anywhere in the last couple of years... but rather descriptions and analyses by anecdote.<br> <br>This is probably a good thread for the research list (copied). <br><br>SJ<br><br></div></div>