Re: Is this OT?

[John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

> Sorry but 'research based curricula' won't have a chance unless
> the students
> are in a safe and relatively distraction free environment in which to use
> it.   PER has the cream of the crop to work with even in the high schools.
> How many gang members take physics?  In schools where teachers fear for
> their safety (as obviously many of the students do), where police
> patrol the
> corridors, where students move between schools such that only 20% of the
> students who started the year finish in the same school, schools where the
> two parent families are only 25%, etc.,etc. are not going to be
> cured by any
> 'magic bullet' curriculum.   Let's get real here!
>
> Rick

It certainly is true that schools that have severe social problems will not
improve by just putting in better teaching, but I doubt that simple fixes
like uniforms will work either.  Nor did I claim that improved curricula PER
or any other would solve all problems.  I was mainly aiming at the idea that
residential schools can achieve much better results.  I merely claimed that
researched curricula is much more effective than a residential program.

The solutions for such schools lie in improvements starting at the
pre-elementary level all the way up.  Students can be trained to think and
act differently, but this does not happen with the usual school routine and
curricula.  The most successful training program for youths who are in
trouble uses cognitive therapy.  This form of therapy, delivered to groups,
gets individuals to think about consequences and actions very carefully.  It
literally changes the way that they think.  It uses techniques which are
very similar to PER.  (NOTE I am not claiming that PER changes attitudes of
troubled students.)  And of course such schools should have bigger budgets
to be able to have smaller more manageable classes with the necessary
security and discipline.

One thing that I would do in the elementary schools in problem areas would
be to give the students a dose of Feuerstein's "Instrumental Enrichment".
This particular curriculum actually improves the students ability to think,
and it works very well with students who are lower than average.  Beyond
that I could not say what is needed.  Most solutions to the problems of
troubled schools are proposed by people who have not really studied the
problems carefully and have never had to deal with them directly.  One
parent who substituted at our school said that she did not understand any of
the real problems that teachers have until she tried it herself.  There is
some evidence to show that once students actually achieve at school and have
some hope that the discipline problems decline.

A good example of how "facts" can mislead is the declining murder rate in
recent years.  A recent report in a forensic medical journal shows that this
is largely due to better emergency room care.  In other words the attempted
murder rate has not decreased much, just the successful murder rate has gone
down.  Now there may actually be an improvement in the attempted murder
rate, but it is smaller than previously thought.  Of course various people
have attributed the large decrease in murders to demographics, getting tough
...

BTW the curricula that I mentioned were not designed by PER, but resemble
PER in many respects.  The middle school curriculum improves student
achievement a large amount.  Feuerstein has worked with troubled youths in
Israel for years and has been able to raise IQs as low as an estimated 65 to
normal or above.  Both of these could be useful in troubled schools provided
other problems are being solved.  They also can be used in untroubled
schools, and would have beneficial effects there.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX