Why don’t teachers trust the experts?

[BradStevens]

I hav eonly read a small portion of this so far, but I found it interesting. You might as well: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1356&context=ugtheses

Why not trust that those teachers who are teaching from other materials are trying to do their best to educate their specific classes in the best manor they see fit?

It all comes down to you not trusting teachers and me not trusting 'expert' textbook writers or, more specifically, the politicians that make up the boards approving the textbooks.

Teachers ain't in it to get rich...textbook companies are. That's my viewpoint.

It's not a matter of trusting teacher motives. It's a matter of questioning (1) who is best equipped to make those decisions (e.g. a PhD from Harvard or Yale vs. a BA from SE Mizzou St) (2) having EVIDENCE to back it up, and using a system that can create such evidence, adjust to it, and be held accountable based on it.

I can't open your link, but will read it if you can find a good one.

Thanks, kraft, for engaging in a reasonable, non-personal debate. I think this is helpful.

 

[Baller23Boogie]

Indiana Elementary School moves to 4-day school week

A Lafayette elementary school will be implementing a four-day school week starting this upcoming school year.

www.wane.com

This came across my timeline and thought it was interesting.

4 days school week. Good or bad?

 

[BradStevens]

Indiana Elementary School moves to 4-day school week

A Lafayette elementary school will be implementing a four-day school week starting this upcoming school year.

www.wane.com

This came across my timeline and thought it was interesting.

4 days school week. Good or bad?

Bad. Add the time to the school day, and keep going 5 days.

What are parents who work going to do?

 

[zeke4ahs]

Bad. Add the time to the school day, and keep going 5 days.

What are parents who work going to do?

They’ll have childcare at school. It needs to be free though and I doubt that it is.

 

[kraft cheese+macaroni]

It's not a matter of trusting teacher motives. It's a matter of questioning (1) who is best equipped to make those decisions (e.g. a PhD from Harvard or Yale vs. a BA from SE Mizzou St) (2) having EVIDENCE to back it up, and using a system that can create such evidence, adjust to it, and be held accountable based on it.

I can't open your link, but will read it if you can find a good one.

Thanks, kraft, for engaging in a reasonable, non-personal debate. I think this is helpful.

Here's a different link. Full disclosure, it's 20 years old, but I think you'd agree that politics has only gotten worse, not better, in that time: https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/C_Matthews_Trouble_2001(MULTI UNCG AUTHORS).pdf

Here's another try at the original link/research: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1356&context=ugtheses

 

[kraft cheese+macaroni]

It's not a matter of trusting teacher motives. It's a matter of questioning (1) who is best equipped to make those decisions (e.g. a PhD from Harvard or Yale vs. a BA from SE Mizzou St) (2) having EVIDENCE to back it up, and using a system that can create such evidence, adjust to it, and be held accountable based on it.

I can't open your link, but will read it if you can find a good one.

Thanks, kraft, for engaging in a reasonable, non-personal debate. I think this is helpful.

Would you disagree that the 'lazy' or 'poor' teachers aren't taking the time and energy to come up with their own materials and sources that are outside of the textbooks provided? And that it's actually the top teachers that are seeing holes in what or how things are presented in textbooks and have given the extra time and energy to find and develop ways of teaching the same things in a different way/order?

 

[BradStevens]

Would you disagree that the 'lazy' or 'poor' teachers aren't taking the time and energy to come up with their own materials and sources that are outside of the textbooks provided? And that it's actually the top teachers that are seeing holes in what or how things are presented in textbooks and have given the extra time and energy to find and develop ways of teaching the same things in a different way/order?

If the textbooks are in use, yes, the more active teachers will be the ones to go above and beyond (unless they just want to teach the way they were taught, then you could say that's a decision based on convenience, I guess). We don't know that they are the better teachers, though, or even if they are, if their individually designed curriculum is better than the one provided.

As you'll see from many here, though, many districts aren't even buying textbooks anymore.

 

[kraft cheese+macaroni]

I don't get this type of thinking.

If we are going to take the financial incentives of the textbook publishers into account, wouldn't they make MORE money by developing a superior product, raising the test scores on which those politicians and local superintendents are judged?

Also, textbooks aren't written and developed by corporate bean counters--they are mainly written and developed by people who study this stuff for their careers and hold doctorates in the subject matter. Are they in on it, too? Such reasoning is another flavor of a conspiracy theory, isn't it?

Here's a random high school history textbook I found. Does anyone have any evidence its authors are "corrupt?"

The American Pageant - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I didn't mean to suggest authors are necessarily corrupt...but that editors/publishers might be. And one of the critiques of this book suggests the same thing that I have been suggesting:

Scholars including James W. Loewen and Ibram X. Kendi have criticized the book. Loewen noted in a 2011 article that the authors (of the 2006 edition) cited a few sentences from the South Carolina Declaration of Secession, in which that Southern state seceded from the Union, but managed to leave out any reference to slavery as a cause: "Why would Pageant use ellipses to cover up slavery as the cause? It is likely that Houghton Mifflin [then the publishers of the book] took pains to avoid the subject lest some southern state textbook adoption board take offense.​