Well said, Marion. The idea that kids are empty ciphers to be filled with information and then dumped into the workplace so that people like Gates, Bloomberg et al can prosper is the most insidious and inhuman 'theory' of learning one can imagine. It contains not one iota of real knowledge about how humanslgrow. We should have learned enough to know that ANYTHING promoted by George Bush cannot posssibly be based on a reasonable view of the world or the people in it. He is and almost mindless war criminal and a perfect example of what our education can and too often does produce: unthinking xenophobic robots. That Obama can champion the same ideas through Duncan and thousands of brain-washed followers has very dangerous consequences for the health of this nation. Soon we will be able to measure everything but there will be nothing o f consequence to measure. It's time for all educators who have any conscience left to rebel against the unspeakable paucity of this race to vacuity. Let's stand up and be counted.

Thanks, Marion.

Parents, teach those kids yourselves!

.......and that is why in the USA there is a growth in the homeschooling of children......

Because it is self evident to me that the administration of public education has nothing to do with HOW KIDS LEARN.

Basing a national agenda of learning based on anything except learning theory is appalling and demonstrably failing A LARGE % of the student population.

Thank you for a well crafted article Marion. It is time Corptocracy got OUT of education reform and actually went back the what EDUCATIONALISTS know works. The Tabla Rasa perception of students went out in the dark ages...

a quote by Bandura comes to mind.

"it is not always beliefs that change in the direction of social reality. Acting on erroneous beliefs can alter how others behave, thus shaping the social reality in the direction of the mistaken beliefs . . . As with all human transactions, the influence process is best represented by bidirectional causality between belief and social reality."

You would almost believe it was deliberate.

Amen. People like Gates pretend to 'know' about learning and education but have the money to make changes that will lower the standard of thought in every classroom. Their real goal is to privatize education and gobble up what is left of the tax money and put it in their coffers.

This week even Oprah joined the beat up a teacher crusade. I have a question for her. She is overweight. She has done numerous programs on the causes of obesity. She has access to personal trainers, medical professionals and psychological gurus and yet with all of her 'obesity education' she is still fat. Are all those professionals who provided her with knowledge simply incompetent ?

I worry for the next generation of children. When the plutocrats finish with school will they ever be able to think.

I would strongly suggest investigating the Soka learning method. Originally started in pre-war Japan by an educator Tsunasaboro Makiguchi, it opposed conventional Theory T methods and was so revolutionary that the founder was thrown in jail by the Japanese thought police at that time. Since then there is a emerging Soka school system in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore and Soka University here in the US.

We learn by doing. Project based learning teaches thinking, and it it the cognitive skills that we need to encourage. 18th century education worked in a period when little changed generation to generation in terms of the knowledge base. It it the use of information that our kids need to understand, not only how to get it how to make it work for them, how to evaluate, to be critical of the source.

The baby Einstein - sit your kid in front of a TV worked in reverse - those privileged kids were dumber than average!

Now we learn that aerobic exercise promotes growth of the parts of the brain which aid in self control and focus. In the meantime we cram so much rote into school that there is not time for recess. America is filling up with obese, lazy and bored dullards. Play is how children learn, directed play directs learning.

I think it comes down to your vision for the future - are we preparing wage slaves? Then train kids to accept boredom and have them do busy work.
Are we wanting people that can work together to solve problems and create new products, create new ideas? Then we need to teach that by having them do that.

How to Think Critically

The problem with most people is they don't know how to think in the best ways possible. Not only is there a way to think that will consistently yield better results, but there are actually several distinct ways of Critical Thinking. What you are trying to accomplish from a particular problem or project, will determine the best way of thinking that is best suited for that occasion.

CriticalThinking.Org

The American education system is little more than a brainwash to make the masses conform to the expectations of the latest reigning power.
The world has been dragged into a hopeless dead end with no chance of survival!

I recommend that we all not be particularly impressed by Bill Gates wading into this with a bunch of other people's money -- we should take note that his primary objective over the next several years is to obtain unlimited importation of Asian, Indian, African, etc., "guest workers" (as opposed to the limited tens of thousands that they have been importing to date) so that Microsoft and the other big multi-nationals doing business in the US don't ever have to hire another US citizen. So he and his ilk care nothing for whether or not the education system works because they have no intention of using any of the products of it.

As someone who grew up in a country with an exam-oriented system (Malaysia) but had the benefit of 2 years in American public schools (mid-8th to mid-10th grades), I am appalled and disgusted that some Americans think that putting more standardised tests into their system is a good thing.

Overemphasising standardised exams makes a joke of learning, because test-taking becomes a meta-game in which the objective is to beat the test, not to internalise and synthesise the content being tested. Students come up with all kinds of arcane strategies like poring over previous years' exam papers to "forecast" what might come up this year.

Adults in my home country have been so brainwashed into the idea that exam scores are an objective indicator of how smart you are and what you can achieve in life that there has been public outcry at the recent suggestion by the government that they might do away with the primary and lower-secondary national exams.

Interesting - do any of these promoters of the Theory T concept remember coming to school with nothing in their heads? Are they sending THEIR children to school with empty heads?

This is ridiculous. Every student comes into school with their own knowledge & experience base. They all have different ideas of the value of education.

One nice thing about Theory T is that everyone could be taught the same way.

What happened to the idea that teaching techniques had to be backed by research to prove their validity?

I think that Theory R educators need to get on board the charter school bandwagon. As long as know-nothings are in charge of the public schools, they'll simply get worse and worse. So, what's stopping us from using charter school funds to create appealing alternatives? The Bloomburgs and Gateses, who would never subject their own children to Theory T educations (wanna bet?), will not be deterred by reason or evidence. So it may be that, as is implicit in the beliefs of homeschoolers, it's time to write off traditional public education. In that sense, the homeschoolers who have commented here have it right, but I think the power of school to socialize in a positive way is an important element that's missing in the homeschool movement. Charter schools provide the opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of Theory R to parents--if not to the ironically self-styled "new progressives"--and might actually be the way to save American education. Otherwise, it's not only public education we will be writing off.

This article is brilliant as far as it goes.

If there are great teachers out there, the hypothetically others to "Transfer", I have yet to see them at my level, I repeat my level, except for the odd outlier.

It is left to be said that those of some genius, and the truly brilliant will always find their way to know.

For the rest of us, myself included, who are neither, the "elites" require that we be docile subjects of "Transfer"; clogs in the wheel of monopoly capitalism no less.

My secret to success, actually failure, is that I daydreamed my way though school. A wandering mind does escape.

Cognitive theories of instruction, such as your "Theory T" have a lot going for them in the views of the elites who are in power. They give off the stink of elite, Victorian, Anglo-Saxon schooling. They are a lot cheaper to support. They emphasize unquestioned obedience to "authority." They allow ideologues to control thoughts and ensure conformity. What's not to like, especially if you are pushing for a dictatorship where people are not encouraged to think?

It's just fascinating that, in their attempts to "help kids learn," the "progressives" are tossing out decades of learning about how people best learn -- yet our society is so desperate and so ignorant that we're sucking it up!

As a retired teacher I resonated with Brady's insightful essay and especially her clever labeling of "Theory T" and "Theory R." The top-down programs of Bush and Obama are totally misconceived and doomed to fail. We tried No Child Left Behind for 8 years and SAT and other measures have shown no gains as a result. We are only dumbing down our children. Ms Sears comment recommends that new flick on education, but from the several reviews I've read, it is a simplistic critique that only promotes more charter schools that take resources from the public schools without taking the special needs kids and the ones who don't speak English. Such schools only further class demarcation and privilege, a direction we've been going in since Reagan. I don't plan to see that movie and I don't plan to support Race to the Top or other misguided policies.

Bill Gates made his money by suing, and buying the work of others. He also dropped out of school, persuing his Masters was just a waste of time. Strange. At one time writers would condemn Gates for being a gangster, but some years later decide he's a good ol'sport, trying to make the world a better place. Not having to buy any MS software makes the world a better place for a lot of folks. The elite always love to lie about the need for "good training" and the "proper skills", when they've spent the last 35 years looking for the absolutely cheapest people they can find to do the job.

R Theory is Correct. Kids learn by doing things and by doing them wRong. Unfortunately, we have a failure based system, the T system is really the RXF system -- red X's and F's. Instead of viewing mistakes as a learning tool, its used as a way to start a child on the path to being Left Behind (pun intended).

Nor does T theory recognize that there are many forms of intelligence. A great writer may flunk algebra repeatedly. A born leader may not have the patients to learn via transfer.

So thanks for this great article and contribution to the educational field.

Thank you, Tanya: I'm not sure who usurped the term "Progressives" in "New Progressives" - Used-Car-Salesman Arne Duncan's a good bet - but there is NOTHING progressive about top-down anything. But, no, Liberals don't buy it - well-heeled Libertarians push it on us because . . . well, because they can. They are well-heeled because they are the bought-and-paid-for Management Class . . . sorry, no! Not progressive by any measure; as you say, Fascist (as Mussolini termed it: Corporatist).

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