alfiekohn.org

The broader implication is that a preoccupation with the degree of difficulty — and how best to provide scaffolding – serves to distract us from the far more important question of what we’re asking students to do. But if the goal were to help students find their own way into the topic, to construct meaning in order to understand what they’re doing more deeply, then scaffolding, at least as the term is typically used, would not be particularly useful.[4] Too often, however, the problem runs deeper: Indeed, a failure to ask the four questions I’ve offered here may explain why the idea of scaffolding has been appropriated by behaviorists — people who still champion direct instruction, still make kids practice a series of skills devoid of context, still offer rewards for success (or compliance) as if they were training a pet. * Above all, the process of devising appropriate scaffolding would not displace the more important task of working with students to devise a thoughtful, question-based, learner-centered curriculum that involves understanding ideas from the inside out.

Their questions on this topic were based on the assumption that a country like the United States, where the idea of democracy is constantly invoked, surely must involve children in meaningful decision-making from their earliest years. That story about the Soviet teachers came to mind recently when I read that a federal lawsuit was filed charging the state of Rhode Island with failing to provide students “a meaningful opportunity to obtain an education adequate to prepare them to be capable citizens. Thus, when the lawsuit goes on to criticize current civics education by citing the percentage of eighth graders who didn’t reach the (arbitrary) threshold for proficiency on a national exam of civics facts, the effect is to reinforce a reliance on the very testing that undermines meaningful learning – of democracy or anything else. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), funded by the Koch brothers to pursue a wide-ranging right-wing agenda at the state level, has pushed for legislation that would deny a high school diploma to students who failed a mandatory multiple-choice test of civics facts.

Sometimes they’re asked reasonable questions by open-minded parents who simply don’t understand: “Why don’t you give tests? Eventually I started thinking about creating additional Why Sheets to help administrators defend enlightened schoolwide policies: why we don’t track students; why we push back against standardized testing and never brag about high scores; why we have multiage classrooms; why we’ve replaced report cards with student-led parent conferences; why we use a problem-solving approach to discipline in place of suspensions and detentions; why our commitment to building community has led us to avoid awards assemblies, spelling bees, and other rituals that pit kids against one another. I say this because, while some of my email consists of questions from teachers and administrators about what they should do, a lot of it concerns how to explain what they’re already doing, how to defend themselves to curious, skeptical, or hostile administrators, colleagues, or parents. They take time to research, write, and polish, but once an elementary school teacher has drafted a short piece to explain why she teaches reading in a context and for a purpose (rather than cultivating a phonics phetish), or once a high school teacher has crafted an explanation for why he rarely lectures or relies on textbooks —

For example, a 2008 study by Thane Pittman of Colby College and his colleagues found that when people put off doing something — which often happens when a task seems unappealing — a reward offered for finishing early either didn’t help or actually led to increased procrastination. They followed more than 15,000 students in fourteen California school districts, watching to see whether those who received a reward for exemplary attendance in the fall would come to school more often in February as compared to those who hadn’t been rewarded. In fact, by now it should be clear that the trouble doesn’t lie with the type of reward, the schedule on which it’s presented, or any other detail of implementation; the problem is with the outdated theory of motivation underlying the whole idea of treating people like pets — that is, saying: Do this, and you’ll get that. Indeed, various researchers over the last half-century have admitted to being surprised by the ineffectiveness or destructiveness of rewards when money was offered to adults for succeeding at a tricky task, when movie tickets or praise was offered to children for tasting an unfamiliar beverage (kids in both groups ended up liking the beverage less than those who received neither a tangible nor a verbal reward), when merit pay failed to improve teachers’ performance, and when incentives didn’t increase seat belt use or help people lose weight and keep it off.