Hey all you teachers out there

[Ohiogal]

Do you think this guy is spot-on with his findings?

"Ted Dintersmith is a successful venture capitalist and father of two who has spent years devoting most of his time, energy and millions of dollars of his personal fortune to learning about — and advocating for — public education and how it can be made better for all children.

In this post, he writes about what he saw and offers advice to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who recently said on “60 Minutes” that she had never “intentionally” visited an underperforming school."


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/03/15/heres-what-our-secretary-of-education-needs-to-hear-by-a-venture-capitalist-who-visited-200-schools-in-all-50-states/?utm_term=.64f10182bacc

[Squinch]

1. Not a teacher, but I work in many schools and have a lot of training in child neurology. And I

don't necessarily agree with the guy. I am seeing a lot of buzz words like "project based learning" and "core competencies" and blah blah blah.

The best school system in the world is in Finland. Finland did something very basic. They looked at the neurological development of children and they designed their curriculum based on what children best learn at what ages.

Our system works at cross purposes to normal neurological development, forcing children to do things long before their brains are ready for them. Then we punish the kids because they can't do those things. This causes frustration and inability in the early grades that is never really made up in the later grades.

In Finland school is for play and exploration until about age 7. There is no testing until about grade 7. There is no torture of 5 year olds by making them sit at a desk for 6 hours a day, so the children learn self-regulation naturally and the incidence of ADHD is much lower. There is no billion dollar industry that tries to put every square peg into a round hole.

So start there. Do what the brain is ready for when the brain is ready for it. And certainly get rid of common core. Those who are smarter or those who are slower are punished by common core.

I could go on, but that is where we should begin.

And for those who are going to say "But Finland is very homogenous and doesn't have our problems," I will say that Norway, which is almost as homogenous, has a curriculum more like ours. The Finns blow the Norwegians out of the water academically.

[Ohiogal]

2. I have read about Finland before

and one of the key elements, as you said, was that they look at how a child's brain develops and design their curriculum around that.

The article I read, which was about 7-8 years old and in Smithsonian magazine, also mentioned that at that time there were lots of Russian and Ukranian immigrants to Finland, children who had to learn Finnish in order to do well in school. So they aren't as homogeneous as many people think. The schools hired tutors to teach them Finnish (which isn't an easy language to learn), of course, we do that here. But another thing that jumped out at me was that they look at the whole child. If a child is from a low-income family, they make sure that child has enough to eat and adequate medical care. And the let TEACHERS evaluate the kids' learning, not administrators or politicians or any wealthy person with an agenda. And there's a lot less testing going on over there. And a lot more recess, fresh air, go outside and just play. So a lot of what you brought up makes sense. I don't know why we can't take a look at their system and borrow a few things that might work over here.

[Squinch]

4. We can begin by getting academics the hell out of kindergarten, and now pre-k.

Those years should be about shape and texture and exploration and play and sitting still for short periods with rewards of big bursts of movement.

All those things are so important to brain function, and to feeling at home in the world. Our kids get NONE of it.

[YvonneCa]

3. Yes. n/t