Best education reform books according to redditors

I disagree.

Most people's notion of "improving" involves their intellectual brain doubling-down on denial and oppression of their natural, animal brain. And this leads to dysfunction, not improvement.

For example...

> if people were to just "be themselves", they'd never improve.

curiosity is a human trait. Ever hear of it? It leads to things like space missions to the moon.

For a better discussion of what I'm talking about, see "Summerhill School" by Neill. Takeaway from Neill's experience: if you provide children with healthy access to psychologically healthy adults, and otherwise leave them the fuck alone, they turn out fantastic. Likewise, if you abuse them horribly improve them since preschool, they turn out all fucked up. Hence the society we see around us.

Your focus on detention is arbitrary. It's like saying it's unfair that hostages don't have access to pizza. Maybe, but the whole state of being-a-hostage is unfair. Instead of obsessing about their lack of pepperoni and mushrooms, why not, instead, focus on the actual problem?

• We force children to go to school.
  
• We force children to study specific subjects at school.
  
• We force children to do homework after school.
  
• We stigmatize them if they fail at school.
  
• We use school grades as one metric of mental health.
  
• In most schools, we force children to be subject to archaic. pedagogical methods--once that have been proven to be ineffective.
  
• And, yes, we force children who have (in my view) naturally bucked against this system, to stay in school longer than kids who accept it.
  
• In most schools, children learn very little, especially given the amount of time the spend there.
  
• In many cases (e.g. when forced to read Shakespeare), they often develop a lifelong hatred of the subject.
  
• Many children spend years in school being bullied, mocked, and ostracized.
  
• Throughout this time, they're repeatedly told all this is "good for them," and, in the end, like serial abusers, they inflict in on their own kids, telling them it's good for them.
  
  All of this stuff has been studied for decades. We know that most schools are run horribly, according to unsound educational principals. But that never changes.
  
  When psychologists or neuroscientists discover something about learning or education, it takes years or decades to affect classroom practices, if it ever does.
  
  Schools aren't generally affected by Science. Instead, they are buffeted by politics and held fast by tradition.
  
  See
  
  
• Wounded By School
  
  
• Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes
  
  
• The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing
  
  
• video: The 3 Most Basic Needs of Children & Why Schools Fail
  
  
• Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood
  
  
• [A Mathematician's Lament (PDF)] (https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf); longer book version: A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
  
  
• Ken Robinson's TED talk: Do Schools kill creativity?
  
  
• How Children Fail
  
  
• Unschooling
  
  
• Why do we get frustrated when learning something? (written by me)
  
  I am skeptical that I will CYV, even though I believe that this is the best argument against it--not your view that detention is wrong, but that it's not even worth talking about. Sure, detention is a bad thing--but not the worst thing--about a horrible, corrupt, abusive system.
  
  I'm skeptical, because the system is so deeply entrenched in our culture. And the most people can do is argue about small tweaks: whether we should use this textbook or that, the length of Summer break, the size of classrooms, etc.
  
  The debate about Creationism vs Evolution in schools is a good example. If the Evolution folks (or the Creationist folks) win, they will pat themselves on the back and walk away happy, never glancing back and noticing that the same shoddy educational methods are being used now as before--with just one correction.
  
  Yes, Dominoes is bad pizza. It won't suddenly become good pizza if you put it in a less-ugly box. I agree that the box is ugly, but why focus on it? It's not the core problem.

You may be interested in Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality by John Marsh, which makes the argument that education is not the silver bullet for education so many of believe it to be. I don't agree with all of his claims, but it really helped me investigate my belief that education is the best way to alleviate poverty.

It's just one more buzzword in a staggering array of buzzwords that have everything to do with sounding impressive to adults while not making a damn bit of difference to your students.

Having said that, you still have to play the game and jump through the hoops. An Amazon search for "best teaching practices" yielded a ton of results.

Here's one

Here's another

One more

If you want to buy the book

Jesus, ever hear of a paragraph?

>This is similar to the voucher debate where good schools get better and bad schools get worse only now smart kids get better teachers and under-performing students get little and less.

Why shouldn't smart, high achieving kids get the best teachers? Do you deny that all kids learn at different rates?

>The second flaw in the classical capitalistic economic model as it applies to teachers is that Education is a fundamentally Socialist.

No Comrade, it isn't. First, education is a private good, not a public good. Second, the overwhelming majority of what we learn is done on our own. Consider the incredible success of the Khan Academy, for an example of individuals doing it for themselves. There is absolutely nothing "fundamentally socialist" about education.

Oh, and read this book.

E: added links

Has anyone been able to find the actual list of shooting that are referenced by the graph from the underlying source?

Because the graphs don't match up with the Wikipedia list of US school shootings by a wide margin. Maybe they use a different data source for there list but it seems odd.


>James Alan Fox and Emma E. Fridel, “The Three R’s of School Shootings: Risk, Readiness, and Response,” in H. Shapiro, ed., The Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education: Forms, Factors, and Preventions, New York: Wiley/Blackwell Publishers, June 2018.

The only reference to the "Three R's of School Shootings..." book seems to be in this article and others like it. I would assume it hasn't been published yet, but who knows.

James Fox is a professor at Northeastern and seems to have published many works on mass killing, but I can't find this title anywhere for him.

Anna Fridel is a doctoral candidate at NE and only has one published work.


The second source, "The Wiley Handbook.." does seem to exist and it is by another NE professor Harvey Shapiro who I can't find much on him other than a recent arrest, but the book exists and just hasn't been published yet.

Wiley Handbook on Violence in Education

Amazon isn't even published yet.

I would assume some of this data was sourced from the School-Associated Violent Death Study by the CDC, but again their data doesn't really line up with that either.

So bottom line is I wouldn't trust the article or its assertions until we can see the underlying data.

I just bought a book called Teaching as a Subversive Activity at a thrift store. I am in the middle of reading it.
Great read so far. It's right up the guy in the article's alley.

The left rarely advocates for zero tolerance policy. It's old and archived, but the Geek Feminism Wiki lists Zero Tolerance as a red flag, preferring instead "A scale of consequences that takes into account multiple factors, but which includes the possibility of complete and permanent exclusion when that is the consequence that is called for." Guidelines on how to write a Code of Conduct for a con will rarely mention "zero tolerance" at all. Papers have been written on how zero tolerance disproportionately affects minorities, with the case in front of us being an example. There are books exploring zero tolerance policies, and while I haven't read that one myself, the summary doesn't put such policies in a good light, and ends with a recommendation for a three chance system.

There is no one in this thread arguing that this policy is a good idea. This is entirely a misapplication of what leftists actually argue. Zero tolerance policies are a lazy excuse for avoiding nuance, pushed largely by school administrators who are using their brains less than the students they're supposed to be teaching.

In my opinion, teaching is a profession that requires an understanding of Cognitive Science and Educational Theory before you step into a classroom. That being said, Teacher Education is often terrible so you aren't far behind.

I highly recommend that you read:

• Explicit Instruction by Anita Archer
  
• Embedding Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam
  
• Why don't students like school? by Daniel T. Willingham
  
• Why Knowledge Matters by E.D. Hirsch

Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto

The opening essay of this short read is a condemnation of traditional schooling techniques---and it's also the speech he delivered when he (again) won the NY Teacher of the Year award. Gatto gets at the heart of why public schools consistently produce pencil pushers, not leaders. Every teacher should read this book.

How to Survive in Your Native Land by James Herndon

If Dumbing Us Down is the manifesto in favor of a more liberal pedagogy, Herdon's book is a memoir of someone trying to put that pedagogy in action. It's also a simple, beautiful easy to read book, the kind that is so good it reminds us just how good a book can be. I've read the teaching memoir that made Jonahton Kozol famous, this one is better.

The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori

In the early 1900s, Maria Montessori taught literacy to children that society had otherwise assumed were unreachable. She did this by using the scientific method to study each child's learning style. Some of what she introduced has been widely incorporated (like child-sized furniture) and some of it seems great but unworkable in overcrowded schools. The bottom line is that the Montessori method was one of the first pedagogical techniques that was backed by real results: both in test scores and in growing kids that thrive on learning and participation.

"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity by Beverly Daniel Tatum

While not precisely a book on how to teach, this book is incredibly helpful to any teacher working with a diverse student population, or one where the race they are teaching differs from their own. It explains the process that white, black, and children of other races go through in identifying themselves as part of a particular race. In the US, race is possibly the most taboo subject, so it is rare to find a book this honest and straightforward on a subject most educators try not to talk about at all. I highly recommend this book.

If there is any chance you will be teaching history, definitely read:

Lies My Teacher Told Me and A People's History of the United States (the latter book is a classic and, personally, changed my life).

Also recommend: The Multi-player Classroom by Lee Sheldon and Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov

Finally, anyone who plans to teach math should read this essay, "Lockhart's Lament" [PDF at the bottom of the page].

PS, I was tempted to use Amazon affiliate links, but my conscious wouldn't let me.

Absolutely - history has shown us that public education can be used in exactly that way, in Nazi Germany and the former USSR. I think in a lot of ways those specific programs you mention are detrimental since they do more to just enforce meaningless metrics and quotas than they do to cultivate thinking young minds.

We need smarter teachers. And you know what: you get what you pay for. Teachers are so underpaid but they alone are going to be responsible for the quality of future generations, so we're only cheating ourselves. But if we were serious about our future as a society, we'd have better paid teachers, and more of them, and they would be free to be independent and come up with innovative lessons instead of teaching off rubrics which might not work for every class and child. This book made me want to be a teacher.

This feels in contradiction with basic principles of something like anarchism.

There are a number of school models like Sudbury and ALC that are even more radical than Montessori and are what generally known as "democratic schools". E.g. https://www.amazon.com/Free-Last-Sudbury-Valley-School/dp/1888947004

Great lecture.

In case anyone's interested, here's a really good series of books on the topic of education reform:

Horace's Compromise

Horace's Hope

Horace's School

https://www.amazon.com/Got-Schooled-Unlikely-Moonlighting-Education-ebook/dp/B00A287N8C

Anyone can get there: https://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Professional-Pickpocket-Learning-How--ebook/dp/B010NSGBJW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469721868&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+pickpocket#nav-subnav

>but it's not like our government controls the means for food production and I hope they never do.

My main point is that government bureaucrats are faced with the same backwards incentives regardless if they are producing food or providing the service of education. Removing competition means no accountability and no pressure to increase quality or reduce costs.

>What is your stance, how would you like our educational system to operate?

I'd like it to operate with zero state involvement.

As to the first part:

It's not that you ask me to back up my claim that rustles my jimmies. I'm taken to task for claims all the time. I majored in Math and will be starting up a masters program soon. I'm used to having my statements challenged.

And while it's true you can't read tone that just implies you need to be even more careful with how you word things. I asked a few people about that message, and from context the three others I asked agreed that it came off as derision. And I'm sure you realize there is a difference between legitimately asking a question, and asking a question derisively.

Probably best we let the misunderstanding go though. So I'll just move on to the second part:


Since you were legitimately asking let me explain a few things about myself. I teach secondary mathematics, in particular I teach several blocks of algebra II. It's honestly pretty heavenly compared to some places where a teacher might have 2-4 preps.

The problem for most of my students is one of transfer. They can understand routines, but not see the connections to other content they have learned. Hell, they may even be able to parrot the quadratic formula, but not actually understand any of it. They can perform the calculations, but don't actually understand anything to apply the reasoning of the problem elsewhere.

I can show you a specific example of a problem I've given recently where I noticed this, but it's up to you. Formatting would make it... kinda screwy, but I can draw it up somewhere and link a video or post a picture on imgur. Just let me know.


So how do we fix problems of transfer? Research by Marzano (who literally wrote the book on instructional techniques,), by Perkins, and by Newmann and Associates (though Newmann's work is getting on in years,) suggests that problems with transfer (and motivation, and general problem solving ability, etc etc) can be solved through authentic, inquiry based coursework with an emphasis on understanding of content over rote memorization.

I don't disagree that rote memorization is necessary. You simply must do quite a bit of it. But with a rote understanding you only get so far. Especially when problems become more abstract, and when which technique to apply isn't spelled out for you.

Its like being able to read Brave New World, but not actually being able to analyze it. In the worst cases it's like being able to analyze Brave New World, but not being able to apply those same analytic techniques when reading 1984.

There's mountains of research out there to support a more constructivist pedagogy.

This outlines a great deal of what I believe, and has links to papers which support the general philosophy. Most of the site is concerned with science education however. Still a pretty good read.


With that we'll head back to the original question.

> What can a person learn about the value and properties of numbers that is not native to rote mathematics but is enlightened in new math?

All sorts of things. But let's be careful and define 'new math.' When I talk about it I mean an inquiry based problem, which relies on a method that isn't mechanically the same as the rote method.

So in the problem at the top of the thread (which is a terrible problem mind you,) the student is asked to play 'spot-the-error' with another students work. There are several issues that make this a shitty problem, but not one without potential. Let's see what those issues are, and why they impede the understanding we want to generate.

What they want the student to see is that you can break subtraction down into parts, essentially taking a huge problem and cutting it into managable pieces.

Instead of just setting up the regular old method, we instead first subtract three 100's, then (and this is what's wrong in the question if memory serves,) subtract a ten, and then subtract 7 1's. Students are basically looking at the decimal expansion.

Then they connect it back to material they learned. They know about number lines. They are forced to connect the routine to their prior knowledge. This is how you build up the ability to transfer content knowledge.

So now students see "Ah, even though I've got a more efficient method of doing this, this lets me see things I've learned with before."

Moreover this re-enforces the idea of subtraction as simply moving backwards along a number line. This makes for a significantly more solid foundation for being introduced to negative numbers.

And once you've got simple counting down you can look ahead to multiplication. Maybe we can find a way to explain that using a number line. Drawing a connection to what a child knows, and showing how our new idea is just a natural extension.

Those skills, visualizing and breaking down problems, analyzing what the components mean, and using your prior knowledge to extend what you already know in order to find a solution, those are the skills you want. Again, I'm not suggesting we supplant routine and mechanical understanding with conceptual understanding. That would be just as problematic (read: dumb.) Instead I'm suggesting that conceptual problems (the new math,) enhance students abilities to tackle questions rooted in the higher order parts of Blooms. And that isn't some random claim pulled out of a hat, it's a claim backed up by a significant portion of the research in modern pedagogical theory.

I read in a book called 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon' about China's awful education system that their government once offered quite substantial funding to a domestic academic/industrial team with the goal of having them develop the first entirely Chinese microprocessor, only for the team to invest all of their efforts into discovering a way to scrub the unique identifying features from Samsung chips to allow them to present the Samsung hardware as their own work.

When you say they aren't as good at fabricating things that is almost beside the point imo, the really intractable problem in China is that they continue to train generation after generation of kids to not think for themselves and pursue anything in life only insofar as it brings money/honour to themselves and their families. I don't think there is anyway China could stand on its own (in the next couple of decades, at least) and develop totally independent technology from the ground up.


Edit: The book link, and corrected the name in the text: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whos-Afraid-Big-Bad-Dragon/dp/1118487133/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+big+bad+dragon&qid=1571266427&sr=8-1

have you gone to PD about classroom management and active learning strategies? I felt like I was really boring last year because I would just lecture to them (8th graders) for 20+ minutes and then pester them to quietly do their work for the rest of the period -- it was a losing battle every time.

after PD and reading the books they told us to, like Why Didn't I Learn This in College?, which I highly suggest, and watching some youtube videos about different activities and ways to engage the students, I feel like I have a better handle on how to get them to stay attentive and interested in the subject, while also enjoying the material and opportunities to work with their classmates collaboratively.

I also just read this thread yesterday about how to start a class effectively and refocus their energy

good luck!

There's education, then there is education. The US has yet to unify what it considers to be a nationally accepted curriculum and as such schools have been able to pick and choose subject matter to teach and not teach. If you want to understand what modern education is here is some suggested reading which explains how schools are structured and why they are built the way they are.

If you are interested in learning about one of the founding fathers A. S. Neill wrote about the school he founded in his book Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312141378/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_YUfuybCMVVWD7

I'm reading Market Education right now, might be of interest to you

http://www.amazon.com/Market-Education-Unknown-Frontier-Economic/dp/1560004088