McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Linguist and author John McWhorter states that a seemingly fool-proof method exists for teaching poor, disadvantaged (and, yes, black) students to read at or above grade level. It’s been around for almost 40 years. The method is called Direct Instruction. But it’s not being embraced by school districts. (More on that later).
In a better America, schools that do not use Direct Instruction to teach kids from poor households should be seen as vaguely criminal. People should point them out as they drive by them, like crack houses.
In the early 70s, the Nixon administration commissioned Project Follow Through which determined that Direct Instruction was dramatically more effective than other types of literacy instruction. The DI teaching method is based on “sounding out words rather than learning them whole and on a tightly scripted format emphasizing repetition and student participation.”
The statistics are pretty amazing:
A half-day preschool program in Illinois showed that … DI can teach even 4-year-olds to understand sounds, syllables and rhyming. The students entered kindergarten reading at a second-grade level, with their mean IQ jumping 25 points. No fewer than nine other sites nationwide yielded results of that caliber. … Decade after decade, DI has continued to kick serious butt all across this great land. Houston, Baltimore, Milwaukee -- you name it; I am unaware of anywhere it hasn't worked.
But we all know words like “tightly scripted” and “repetition” give progressive educators the willies. They sound too much like rigid and old-fashioned. Ew.
Instead, as McWhorter points out,
... conventional teacher-training programs … keep alive the canard that teaching poor kids to read is an elusive, complex affair requiring a peculiarly intense form of superhuman dedication and an ineffable brand of personal connection with young people. The poor child, the popular wisdom tells us, needs freedom to move about the classroom, or Ebonics, or less soda, or more leafy green vegetables, or any number of things other than being taught how to sound out words and read. Distracted by the hardships in their home lives, surely they cannot be reached by just having the facts laid out for them the way lawyers' kids can be reached.
- Comment (21)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
Sep '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Ah yes, I'll take E.D Hirsch for $200 Alex. "Drill and kill". The Ed Wars have lasted longer than any war in human history.
Aug '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
This is tragic and scandalous almost beyond words. Why do we have to reinvent the wheel for every generation? How profound our cowardice is before the teacher's unions. Why? This is a plague, this brand of "liberalism". There's nothing liberal about it. It's darkest tyranny with a heart of darkness.
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
I don't understand why there needs a special method to teach poor black children how to read. There just needs to be a good method to teach all children how to read.
I went to a Christian elementary school run by an all-Chinese administration. Many of the students were also Chinese, and I was a minority in most of my classes. But we all learned how to read and write by the age of 4. The method used? Rigorous phonics drills ('S' - 'T', "ST" in "STOP!"). We all loved phonics drills because we'd get to shout them, and try to say them faster and faster as we got better at them. This isn't a method for rich kids or for white kids, but for all kids. It works.
May '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
One wonders why such a comonsense and clearly effective teaching program is not being implemented. I searched for more information, and on the web site of the National Institute for Direct Instruction, I found this paragraph on their "About DI" page:
"A crucial element in the implementation of DI in most cases is change. Teachers will generally be required to behave differently than before and schools may need an entirely different organization than they previously employed. Even staff members will be called upon to alter some operations."
There's the trouble. DI requires the entire system to adopt a new way of understanding their work. Reading further I find that DI reduces the emphasis on "teacher creativity and independence" and asks them carefully instruct all students until they achieve "mastery".
I take that to mean, "put the emphasis on the students and not the teacher". That's the part our current educational system cannot stomach.
(PS: I've enjoyed McWhorter's books and video courses on linguistics. Now I'm likely the articles he is writing. Someone to keep an eye on!)
Jul '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Now, can someone shine the Light on "whole math[?]"
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
G.A. Dean: One wonders why such a comonsense and clearly effective teaching program is not being implemented...
There's the trouble. DI requires the entire system to adopt a new way of understanding their work. Reading further I find that DI reduces the emphasis on "teacher creativity and independence" and asks them carefully instruct all students until they achieve "mastery".
I take that to mean, "put the emphasis on the students and not the teacher". That's the part our current educational system cannot stomach.
You're spot on here, G.A. This was one of the more eye-opening quotes in the piece:
Nov '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Whoa. I hadn't thought about it from that angle before. "Child-centered" classrooms are fashionable, and that phrase imparts a sting of guilt to those more traditional-minded teachers and schools. But perhaps it is some of the "active learning" environments that are too focused on the teacher.
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
GAD nails the problem. In any didactic exercise--my personal experience is with pitching investors on a new company idea--there is a tendency to tinker with a formula, no matter how successful, in order to make the experience more interesting for the presenter. We all avoid boredom. In my case, the fear of financial ruin forces me to more or less stick to what works--I have made a few memorable and mainly disastrous exceptions to this rule, but those anecdotes must await another day--but for a monopoly public teachers union there is no such existential threat attending poor performance. And so here we are: the producer-centric education system, where teacher enrichment trumps the actual education of children
May '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
sawatdeeka
Whoa. I hadn't thought about it from that angle before. "Child-centered" classrooms are fashionable, and that phrase imparts a sting of guilt to those more traditional-minded teachers and schools. But perhaps it is some of the "active learning" environments that are too focused on the teacher. · Nov 16 at 11:37am
Don't be misled by the term. "Child-centered" in the fashionable sense usually means "child-directed", which in practice means that the teacher just muddles along keeping the kids more or less happy.
The child focus I was perceiving in DI comes from the program's focus on student performance, rather than teacher fulfillment. The teacher is there to implement, not to have some sort of encounter group with the kids. And the instruction is based on the kids demonstrating mastery. In other words, they actually have learned the task.
(Note that what I know about DI is what I learned reading a web site and some downloaded guides this morning. So take my "insights" with caution.)
Nov '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
I second the promotion of E.D. Hirsch's brilliant contributions to the discussion. Here's an astute essay: http://educationnext.org/romancing-the-child/
And here is his site's excellent education blog: http://blog.coreknowledge.org/
May '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
I've always loved John McWhorter, except when he is promoting Mr. Obama (but if you heard his latest BloggingHeads conversation with Glenn Loury, that fascination seems to have worn off).
If only he were the Secretary of Education. Better yet, President.
Jul '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Oh, it's not just the kids. In the University, all kinds of novel schemes are developed to "teach" undergraduates (especially in the lower level courses) that place a maximum importance to minimizing the work of the educator. Powepoint means you don't have to think on the fly or prepare new material based upon class development. Group based learning is the practice where the smartest students teach the least able by grouping them together and giving them broad problems to solve over a class or several class periods. Assigning 1,000 homework problems is another way to minimize instructor work as Teaching Assistants do the grading, or even better, contract out one of those "online pedagogy" programs that grades the students as they go. Using those homework assignments as the bulk of the overall grade means students "who don't do well on tests" (dull students or those who were too lazy or partied too much to learn the material) won't sweat getting a C on the exam.
Me? I teach with chalk. I assign problems, but I don't collect and grade them. I give 2 exams, a midterm and a final. I've won teaching awards.
Aug '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
I work in higher ed myself, and I cannot recommend G A Dean's and Michael Tee's comments highly enough.
I have used DI methods. I live in Hong Kong. My daughter attends school with local Chinese kids, and although these schools are generally very good, I wanted to be sure she learned phonics from a native English speaker -- i.e., me. So I bought Sigfried Englemann's Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which is a pure expression of his DI method, and it worked like a charm. I had to break up a few lessons, so it took slightly longer than 100 days, but she was reading fluently at the end. She was not quite four years old when we finished.
Education history/theory is pretty simple: 'progressive' education methods were hatched in the early 20th century by the likes of John Dewey and William Kilpatrick, and they've been rehashed and recycled and repackaged and re-funded, funded, funded for a century. They don't work, but they make teachers and (especially) ed school profs feel creative and important. Implementing DI across the board in American schools would lead to a (positive) revolution.
May '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Perhaps a crucial difference between DI and "Holistic" Child-centered instruction is that the former requires a modicum of linguistic knowledge/understanding on the part of the teacher in contrast to the latter which is satisfyingly fuzzy. If you are a poorly educated, uncurious elementary school teacher, you feel more comfortable with a method that makes little demand on your skills.
May '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Mr Tall: I work in higher ed myself, and I cannot recommend G A Dean's and Michael Tee's comments highly enough.
...Education history/theory is pretty simple: 'progressive' education methods were hatched in the early 20th century by the likes of John Dewey and William Kilpatrick, and they've been rehashed and recycled and repackaged and re-funded, funded, funded for a century. They don't work, but they make teachers and (especially) ed school profs feel creative and important. Implementing DI across the board in American schools would lead to a (positive) revolution. · Nov 16 at 5:47pm
The problem is that there is a political agenda driving these theories. Dewey, Kilpatrick, Counts, and Freire regard schools, to a greater or lesser extent, as recruiting tools for "progressive democracy." It's not just about learning to read. It's about creating a new social order.
May '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Miraculously, George Counts' [Counts, G. S. (1959). Dare the school build a new social order? Carbondale, IL:Southern Illinois University. (Original work published in 1932).] daughter [No. I was wrong. Although her father's name is George Counts, he is not George S. Counts.] has published a dissertation that recapitulates these ideas for your listening and dancing pleasure, if you want to get up to speed:
http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/archive/spring2006/laurie_c_hill/hill_laurie_g_200601_edd.pdf
Edited on Nov 16, 2010 at 9:05pmMay '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Ursula Hennessey [...] You're spot on here, G.A. This was one of the more eye-opening quotes in the piece:
Nov 16 at 11:35am
The trick is how to make this NEA-proof. Human nature being what it is, stubborn, indifferent, and just plain swamped teachers won't try something perceived as difficult while their union stands athwart reality yelling "Stop!"
Aug '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
Couldn't agree more, outstripp; this is why the political battles with the teachers' unions turn so vicious and intractable: they're not just about the money. What's at stake is a whole way of looking at the world and organizing much of society. The teachers' unions and 'educators' have an enormous advantage in their rhetoric since they can retreat to the default argument that it's 'all for the children' -- no matter the real agenda they are pushing.
That's why any crack in the facade -- such as DI's success with poor kids -- is so valuable.
Oct '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
There's also a psychological component to the inane child-centered methodology: an enfeebled will. Teaching is really hard because it forces you to confront all the gaps in your knowledge. Faced with such gaps, it's really tempting to play some weird moral equivalence game and think "well if I don't know my subject perfectly, how can I demand that my students know it at all?" It takes a real effort to stand in front of a group of kids and say "You have to learn this material not because I've completely mastered it but because I demand it of you." I know we're talking about reading here, but I think this problem filters into all levels of instruction.
Another psychological problem: no more sharp division between adulthood and childhood. College grads today don't think of themselves as having passed a Rubicon that separates them from their charges. The young teachers aren't married, raising kids, paying mortgages. Those responsibilities give people an internal sense of power and control, a sense of "I am higher than you," that they once brought to classrooms.
May '10
Re: McWhorter’s “We Know How to Teach Black Kids”
This site:
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon1116ss.html
has a story that refernces the (surprise, surprise) Massachusetts curriculum that includes:
"the nation’s leading exemplar of what I have called the “instructionist” approach to education reform. Starting in the mid-1990s, a coalition of reformers pushed the state’s board of education to mandate rigorous curricula for all grades and created demanding tests linked to those curriculum standards. In its English Language Arts curriculum framework, the board even dared to say that reading instruction in the early grades should include systematic and explicit phonics."