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Why Our Schools Are Failing Our Children

An Excerpt

By Jann Flury, Co-ordinator
Education Council of Canada

Just as the purpose of a flying school is to teach students to fly, the purpose of public school is to teach students the basic academic subjects needed to enter the workforce or go on to higher learning. Achieving this goal has little to do with "choice," funding, class size, or catering to the needs of individual students. It has everything to do with teaching and learning. Learning reflects teaching quality, which, in turn, depends on teacher selection and training. Unfortunately, teacher training has been inadequate for decades now, because teacher-training institutions do not see academic achievement as the primary purpose of public education.

Direct instruction is natural and the most logical way to teach a child new skills. It's a show-and-tell technique used by parents since time immemorial. The teacher or parent explains and demonstrates a task to be learned step-by-step, and then, the learner repeats it until the task is mastered. Repetition and practice are the key elements of basic learning. Direct instruction is based on the premise that learning is made easiest if misinterpretations are avoided. Therefore, clear step-by-step instructions are given at the outset.

Direct instruction is teacher-directed and follows a detailed, sequential curriculum that builds on previously acquired knowledge.

As far back as the late 1960's, Siegfried Engelmann at the University of Illinois recognized the need to revitalize direct instruction and teacher-centered methods of teaching. Variously known as systematic teaching, explicit teaching, active teaching, or direct instruction, Engelmann detailed the method and developed it into a highly structured, scripted, systematic teaching program, which he then dubbed "Direct Instruction" (DI).

Reading forms the cornerstone of education and represents the quintessence of learning. Learning to read in the first year of school is the key to all future academic learning. DI is a method by which regular and disadvantaged students alike can learn to read in grade one. Engelmann's DI and other teacher-centered, direct instruction, remains the most effective methods for teaching core academic subjects in the early grades. Students enjoy learning through DI, because they realize they are making headway in decoding skills and reading comprehension. Competition among classmates thrives, and classroom behaviour problems often disappear as children's efforts focus on learning. And as a bonus, learning to read early saves a ton of money on remediation and special education in later grades.

The effectiveness of DI is well documented. According to a Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Report, entitled "Direct Instruction and the Teaching of Early Reading, Wisconsin's Teacher-Led Insurgency," 25 years of empirical evidence shows DI to be a superior teaching model. In 1999, the American Institute for Research found that DI and two other approaches were the only ones of 24 school-wide reform models that showed positive effect on student achievement. And the longitudinal study, "Project Follow Through," which was the largest experiment in teaching methods ever undertaken in America, showed that DI works best for teaching disadvantaged children. (More information on the effectiveness of DI and teacher-centered methods is available on the Education Consumers Clearinghouse website at: http://www.education_consumers.com.)

Much of the pedagogical establishment ignores the clear evidence that DI is the most effective way to teach reading and other academic subjects. "Progressive" educators claim that DI is only for the disadvantaged, that it is dated and could be damaging. One group even suggests that DI might induce criminal behaviour. Clearly, such irrational arguments stem from something other than logic. Although the effectiveness of DI is irrefutable, teacher training programs all but ignore this teaching method. A survey of first year teachers in Wisconsin, for instance, showed that DI is virtually excluded from teacher training. Instead, new teachers who learned something about DI got their knowledge mostly from cooperating teachers during student teaching practice.

The initiatives to implement DI must come from responsible classroom teachers and individual schools across the country. In fact, DI is gaining ground and making its mark through individual school initiatives and special programs like "No Excuses." That program has proved highly effective in teaching disadvantaged students, using teacher-centered direct instruction methods. Log on at: http://www.noexcuses.org

The public education systems across Canada and the United States are foundering, not because there is something wrong with our younger generations, but because of an intransigent "progressive" pedagogical establishment at the university teacher-training level, which refuses to concede the failure of its teacher-training programs. The establishment continues to brainwash new teacher trainees to use child-centered teaching methods and Outcome Based Education.

Regional governments across Canada and the United States could improve teaching and learning immensely by encouraging teacher-centered, direct instruction training and certification programs in newly established teacher-training colleges.

Copies of the full article are available by contacting: realwcto@interlog.com

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