E.D.Hirsch was “campaign for cultural literacy”, which means he believed that people are suppose to be familiar with a wide range of things such as “historical reference”, “street signs”, “use of trivia in creation of a communal language”…etc. in order to communicate and understand complex comprehensions. All these trivia are within the dominant culture, and is required to know in order to have the basics of knowledge to make sense of everything in the world. In addition to that, Hirsh wrote a book in 1986 named “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know” to help people, mostly immigrants or people who do not have the chance to learn the same thing as most of the normal Americans learned as a way to catch up. One of his quotes described, “not every child is learning about James Monroe in the first grade” reveals his perspective on education is all relying on background knowledge in order to move on to the next level. Although many people disagree with him and described it as “the culture wars have ended”, Hirsh’s belief is not completely unreasonable compared to Theodore E. Sizer’s theory on education even though his technique to learn is “mere rote learning”, in other words transcendent educational paradigm.
On the other hand, Sizer formulated the idea of “education must rooted in a kind of democratic pluralism”. He believed that school should measured students’ abilities based on the standards that they shaped themselves. As he argued, “schools should abandon one-size-fits-all education methods like standardized tests, grading and even the grouping of students into classes by age”. He believed students should be able to ask good questions and often practice more critical thinking using the habits of mind. Instead of following the “national standards” that Hirsh suggests, Sizer thought that will just lead to more tests that might not measured the strength of the students. Instead, he believed that “when smart, devoted people are given room to shaped standards, students succeed”. This means students should not just memorized what the teacher is given during lessons, but be able to come up with their own thinking and make sense of things to value the meaning of learning. Students should be open to form their standards depending on where they are at, and tests or grades sometimes really do not mean anything other than measuring how much the student memorize the materials. “Inspirations, hunger; these are qualities that drives good schools” as he stated in Horace’s Compromise shows that school is not just about learning the basics, but coming up with your own motivation to learn, the desire to know, and make sense of things out of curiosity, in other words immanent educational paradigm.
Although Sizer and Hirsh’s ideas for ideal school are completely the opposite of each other, I think that both of them are actually directing to the same direction-contributing by forming better education for students. When asked about their grade-level, both are completely different whereas Hirsh is mostly focusing on elementary, and Sizer is mostly on high school. Sizer said “students should be able to read and know basic number facts by the end of the first grade” and Hirsh stated that “students should leave school as well-informed skeptics, able to ask question as a matter of habit”. This shows that although they have very different ideas about school, they are not even directing to the same targets other than is for school in general. But discussing about methods, I think these two contradicting ideas could actually adapt to work together.
Based on my own personal experience, I believe combining the two will help the students the most. But all in all, it depends on the student’s own situation. As for me, studying earlier in China for close to 10 years, everything is “rote learning”. Not only being forced to memorize the whole passage for Chinese, math never explain the formulae but being forced to remember for the convenience of problem solving. This might sound absurd to a lot of people, but after immigrated to U.S., math is never on my way and it makes more sense as I learn along because of the years of memorization. I am no longer being force to memorize the whole passage that means nothing after all, but everything, especially math/science starts to make more sense for me as a passionate learner after attending to schools in U.S. (I don't know it has to do with age or the different types of teaching method) This supports my argument that combining the two is actually beneficial for the student in my case. There is certain thing that needs to be forced to remember such as the multiplication table or other basic knowledge as Hirsh claimed. Without it, nothing makes sense as you learn along. In addition to that, learning how to make sense of what you learn requires you to understand the materials that is being given first, then tries to understand them as a whole of answering the questions with "why". However, I do not fully agree with Hirsh's idea of just providing materials to students so they can memorized it without fully understanding them for subjects like history or social studies.
As for other people, I think it depends on their way of learning. Some people learn it better by rote and they have the ability to make sense of it as they learn. But as for my situation, although I don’t fully get it, by knowing how to solve things, I can make sense of it afterwards. This shows that maybe we can use Hirsh’s theory for the early childhood schooling, and then switch to Sizer’s to develop habits of minds after having the basic knowledge of things so people can build from it. Also in many cases, tests do not measured the students’ ability of the materials, and students should find a school that fits their own habits of learning in order to get the most out of their learning experience at school. Such as SOF, people do exhibitions instead of taking regents to measure their abilities. Although grading and tests are hard to avoid, and they are useful in many ways to sort students in the society, students should be responsible and have the right to choose the way they want to learn. If the student only memorize the material for tests but never understands it, then they should know they need to pick a school that believes in Sizer’s idea. But in either way, I believe the best way is to combine both and find the balance between the two. I think it is necessary to learn certain basic knowledge of things, but at the same time be able to use the habits of mind to develop our critical thinking to know the meaning/significance of knowledge. Simply only following one or the other will not be as helpful as combining the ideas to help the students to achieve as much as they can.
No comments:
Post a Comment