Marcia says, "Show me the money". I know hers is a politically realistic statement but let me summarize it like this: Short term investment versus long term returns.

Why is it so difficult for legislators and voters to see the benefits of this?

I think because political leaders demagogue the intent and the process for political gain and voters mistrust government to properly manage the money.

Here's where the money comes from: The savings that come from diverting a bunch of kids from the prison system 15-25 years later.

Spend a little today, save a lot later.

Having had first hand experience with Full-day K, I can share that attending kindergarten 5 days a week rather than 5 half days per week, which are usually 2 1/2 hours long, makes a huge difference in a child's readiness for First Grade. Doubling the time in learning for 5 year olds is an incredibly wise investment. Some of the kindergarterners from Fullday K will be reading before they enter first grade and others will be powerhouse first graders ready to learn to read. Learning how to learn is the key to a great kindergarten experience. School districts will have to have enough classroom space because one classroom that was used for 2 half day classes will only be used by one class because it is a fullday K just like a third graders classroom used all day. School districts will have to add teachers to cover the extra class or two generated in each elementary school.

In my experience the learning gains, esrly identification of learning difficulties, speech issues, family issues, and identification of additional resources for struggling students cannot start soon enough. Senator Deckert's proposal deserves careful impementation and strong support from the State School Superintendent's office. Had Oregon chosen Fullday K over the CIM and CAM the students would be miles ahead academically and socially by now.

The good news is Fullday K is not a fad or an educational bandwagon..it comes with serious research and lots of success stories from other states. Many East Coast 5 year olds have been attending fullday K since the early 80's. The reason public school's went to half day K was to save dollars. I do not expect a Republican Governor to support Derkert's recommendation, nor do I expect Westlund, a Republican disguised as a Independent to fight for one of the best and proven educational ideas around. Stick with Blue and do what's right by our 5 year olds.

Idler said: "And, yeah, great idea: ship off tiny tots to be babysat all day long and pretend it has something to do with education."

I felt compelled to respond to this one as a teacher. I am currently teaching English as a Second Language in Korea. For a year, I taught kids who were 5 and 6 years old Korean age (this means they were 4-5 years old).

There are many diffrent methods to teaching, just because it "looks" like babysitting doesn't mean it is. You would be amazed at how much kids that age can learn. Yes, their attention span is limited, but they can pick up basic concepts including reading, writing and speaking.

I would welcome anyone here to visit one of the four Arthur Academy Charter Schools. We have half-day kindergartens. Many of the kids stay the other half day in a semi-structured day care for the convenience of the parents.

A half day of kindergarten instruction is more than enough for kids to learn to read and do math at levels far higher than what is commonly taught in Oregon's elementary schools.

The plain fact is that Oregon's elementary schools use instructional practices during the early ages that simply are not effective at teaching kids to read. Increase their time in class to a full day and the result won't be much better.

The issue is not time in class - it is effectiveness of instruction. Our results with a half day kindergarten are better than any full day kindergarten in the state.

Why? Because we use instructional methods that work.

School is out right now, but I urge anyone who is interested to see what we do to come by one of our four schools next fall and visit our classrooms to see what good early elementary instruction looks like. Just let us know you are coming and stop by about 10:00 AM to any of our campuses and we will happily let you observe. I guarantee you will be astounded.

We have schools in Reynolds, NE Portland, Woodburn and David Douglas. All our kindergartners learn to read.

A full day of ineffective instruction won't be any better than a half day. And I am sorry to say that the norm in Oregon is ineffective instruction.

Fully funding a full day kindergarten is not going to raise achievement if the people who run our half day kindergartens are the same who will run our full day kindergartens. Sorry.

Rob -- Can you help me understand why it is that conservatives have such an obsession with phonics? I mean, besides the obvious retort, "because it works!"

I don't know much about teaching little kids to read, but it seems to me that every educator I know would use any technique that actually works, holds up under research, etc. If that's phonics, great. If that's jumping on the desks, great too.

The conservative message/obsession on phonics almost seems to imply that conservatives have discovered a magic teaching method and that they believe the educational establishment is ignoring them, disbelieving them, etc.

I understand the ideological disagreement on teacher pensions, classroom vs. admin dollars, unionized janitors, you name it. But I don't even see what the ideological disagreement is on a particular method of teaching reading.

I'm honestly baffled.

When working with kids with disabilities, the sooner you can intervene the better for reading, writing, emotional and behavioral disabilities. In middle school I see too darn many kids who've been let slide because of the hope on someone's part that they will "mature out of it."

It doesn't happen. And trying to turn things around for a middle schooler after six or more years of struggling and failure is more expensive and more of a challenge than doing early, aggressive intervention. Sure, under earlier interventions, more kids will be identified. But...and this is the big but...these kids may well have caught up to their peers by middle school, as well as having compensatory skills in place.

I agree with this statement as well. As someone who had a learning disability (although minor), I agree the sooner the intervention the better. My disability was caught about half way through the fourth grade.

Even after my disability was diagnosed, my mother had to fight an uphill battle to get me the help I needed. This was of course years ago, so I don't know how the system is today.

If disabilities are caught early on, how is that not worth it. What about preparing our kids for the 21st Century?

The world has become a very competitive place; we need to decide if our children should be up to the challenge.

To Kari, teaching a child to read is not successful if only one method, such as phonics is the only method used in reading instruction. Good teachers of reading, teach a combination of phonics, whole language, reading recovery methodology, and run primary classrooms bursting with literature. Teaching letter sounds and the combinations of sounds certain letters make are great skills but taught in isolation without the context of meaning is folly. However, phonics is popular because parents and teachers can measure quite precisely the phonics elements a child has learned. One size fits all instructional methods usually don't apply to a percentage of students in any subject area. When we recognize that there are a mulitude of ways children learn, more children succeed.

In the research regarding Fullday K, the higher the education and income of the parents the more arguments are given to stay 1/2 day for Kindergarten rather than fullday.

Kari: I think a better question is why does the teaching profession reject empirically proven teaching methods such as systematic phonics?

The only reason I support phonics is because it is the most efficient way to teach early elementary children to read. I came to this conclusion after both personal and professional experience supporting the alternative methodologies.

I wrote an article for Oregon's Future Magazine a couple years ago that recounts my journey from being a supporter of "progessive" methods (I even moved to get my kids into a school district that was based on the methods) to the realization that not only are these methods inferior, but the teaching profession knows it full well and continues to push their favored methods.

Kari, the question does indeed have a political element that tends to line up on the fault lines of conservative/liberal. But ironically, it is a false dichotomy. My co-founder in Arthur Academy, Chuck Arthur, is a political liberal. The curriculum we use, Direct Instruction out of the U of O, was created by Sigfreid Engelman, a political liberal.

True liberals such as Bonnie Grossen, another politically liberal educator at the U of O realize that so-called progressive education methods are in reality "radically conservative," because the methods when used with low income children became more entrenched in the social class they inhereted from their parents.

Read the above link - I think you will find it fascinating.

This is a policy area that is the subject of vast amounts of literature that has been debated for decades. The book "Why Johnny Can't Read" was one of the first shots fired. Do you know the premise of that book? It was a lament that the falling reading ability of US children was because the schools had abandoned phonics. That was 1947. He wrote a followup in 1987: Why Johnny Still Can't Read.

The real question, Kari, is why do liberals tend to support teaching methods that long term empirical studies and vast amounts of educational research and literature show to be ineffective at ensuring low income and disadvantaged children acquire the gateway academic skill: reading?

patrick: No, not really. The research out of the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (This is an accumulated 30 years of research on this specific question of reading skill acquisition. The scale is beyond anything ever done. At any point in time there are about 30,000 individual students involved in clinical trials of different elements of the question of reading acquisition.)shows that about 60% of kids will learn to read in the way you suggest - they pretty much just pick it up because of innate ability.

It is the other 40% that are too important to write off. Progressive methods are shown by this same research to be wholly ineffective at teaching these kids to read.

The question of why the 60% learn to read easily is a very interesting one, that the NIHCCD has inquired into in depth. The convergence of the research is that these kids have an innate ability to hear the spoken language in a way that allows them to separate words into their constitutent parts. Ask kids to say "Cat." Nearly all five year olds can say it. Ask them to say "cat" without the "kuh." A lot of kids at that age have a hard time doing that.

This is a skill called "phonemic awareness" and it is a precurser and a marker for the ability to learn to read. About 40% of kids simply are not born with this innate ability, and it is these kids who struggle to read unless systematically taught.

The good news is that it is relatively easy to teach the skill of phonemic awareness. The tragedy is that our teaching profession is so wholly bought into the "whole language" methodology that rejects explicit and systematic instruction, that most of the time kids who could easily be remediated if their lack of phonemic awareness skill was identified early are allowed to struggle unnecessarily for years, until usually about the third or fourth grade when the reading vocabulary in the classroom gets extensive and sophisticated beyond the ability to memorize words by sight, which is largely how they are taught.

So these kids usually get a special education identification, where they sometimes then get what they need in the way of systematic explicit instruction in the skills they need. Not always, but there is a better chance in special ed they will get it.

But the kid, even if he gets what he needs in grade 4 by a special ed teacher, will struggle mightily to catch up. He's basically hobbled for life in most cases.

This is tragic because it is totally unnecessary. It has ruined the lives of millions of children. Liberals should be outraged.

But all we get from people like Kari is puzzlement that conservatives are "obsessed" with phonics.

I am obsessed with trying to make sure that every single child learns the gateway academic skill, without which he or she will certainly fail in life.

I am so obsessed with this I have founded four elementary schools whose mission statement is:

"Every single student, regardless of ethnicity, parental income, learning difference, culture, or native language, will become a fluent reader and master the academic and intellectual skills necessary to succeed at the next level of schooling."

We hope to open seven more such schools in the years ahead, and will do so as long as the education establishment isn't successful at stopping us. Read my last post on my blog to see the latest way they are attempting to keep us from their gates.

One of my Arthur Academy schools is in Woodburn. It has been operating for two school years. It is majority Hispanic, like the school district, and the free/reduced lunch percentage also mimics the school district's.

We just got back our test scores for the second year of operation. Not the Oregon statewide assessments - they don't kick in til the third grade, which is far, far too late if you want to identify and remediate any problems. We use the Stanford Achievement Test, which we administer to every child at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year to get a measure of how far they progressed during the year.

We also give every child another test of reading ability - a test that is individually administered (as opposed to given in groups) called the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test.

Our Woodburn kindergarten students gained an AVERAGE of 60 percentiles on the Stanford test. That is roughly four standard deviations of gain, on average. On the Woodcock, which gives a result expressed in grade level equivalence, our average kindergartner was reading at 1.9 at the end of kindergarten. That means first grade ninth month - so our average kindergartner was almost a year ahead in reading ability.

That is with a half day kindergarten. We provide optional day care for the rest of the day, which many parents take advantage of.

We are proving every day that native language and parental income DO NOT have to be destiny when it comes to learning to read.

Any educator who tells me that students' home situation is an insurmountable obstacle to academic success is telling me that she does not believe in public education, because the premise of our entire public school system is that no matter your circumstance of birth, every child has access to a school that will enable him to succeed in our society.

Which is an odd position, I think, for a public school educator to have. But I see it all the time.

jrw:

I totally agree that decoding does not teach comprehension. As you know, DI is more than just decoding, the program has writing, spelling, vocabulary, and reasoning components that are very well developed and field tested.

And yes, there are certain conditions such as Aspergers that require different strategies altogether.

I would imagin you agree, however, that although decoding doesn't ensure comprehension, without decoding there will never be comprehension. Which is to say that if you can't read the word you will never understand what it means.

So decoding is a necessary, but certainly not sufficient. Any comprehensive language program addresses all aspects of literacy. Certainly DI does.

Since when is reading the preeminent goal of kindergarten? There is MUCH more to learn that is more important than reading, like socialization and self-awareness.

Teaching reading teaches a skill, one that you can pick up at any time in your life if you haven't yet (not that I advocate deliberately refusing to learn how to read). Learning how to interact in group situations, and how to discipline yourself into performing tasks of responsibility--if you don't get that done early in a child's life, it is EXTREMELY hard to correct it later.

Using the word "efficient" to describe Rob's schools frightens me. Efficiency is the main problem with the public school system that Rob seems to rail against--push the kids through, teach them the specific items in the curriculum for that year, get them to pass the standardized test for their age group, and your school gets considered "successful."

That's not at all what education should be about. Education should be about EFFECTIVENESS, not efficiency. School is not an assembly line, where you simply add program bolts and fasten them with a matching nut. Phonics places all the focus on the mechanics of reading, which is all well and good--but it does little to teach about LANGUAGE, which has oral, written and social components. Phonics superordinates the first at the expense of the other two.

As someone with a child who just completed half-day kindergarten, I wish this initiative had blossomed three or four years ago. But for the rest of our state's children, I say Hallelujah!

I admire Rob Kremer for putting his sincere desire to help students where his mouth is..unfortunately he's a Ziggy Engelman zealot..couldn't resist the alleration. DISTAR, the forerunner of Direct Instruction was initially developed for special education students. The scipted instruction was developed in part to make it teacher proof..stay on script, do not have spontaneous teaching moments like pointing out the word "friend" has a little word inside it, "end." Or laugh at a word like "lamb" because of it's silent "b" sound , instead saying lam-buuu and giggling together about how silly the word sounds without a silent b.

Pat Allen makes a great case for parents reading to their children regularly because it will impart reading skills to our children. I recently attended a child's birthday party where the only gifts allowed to be given were books to be read by the parents to their children..a wonderful collection of children's literature was the result. Great idea!

jrw, you know your stuff when it comes to reading and instructional techniques.Impressive.

Fullday K benefits all kids from any socio-economic class especially it the day includes, art, music, PE, and maybe a little foreign language instruction. The curriculum can be unbelievably rich and is well received by most five year old sponges. A mix of reading methodolgies requires a skilled teacher..hence the appeal of Direct Instruction..which is mind numbing for most teachers to teach and mindnumbing to some, certainly not all students. Again, beware of magic bullets and one size fits all instructional approaches..we are all hard wired differently...the best parents and teachers take a long hard look at their children discovering the world of reading and adjust accordingly. Just as each of our own children in our families are incredibly different from one another, so too are a class of 20 five year olds.

jrw, would you mind contacting me offline? I wanted to ask you a question about the Reggio Emilia approach to beginning education...

torridjoe@yahoo

thanks!

Paulie and Torrid Joe:

Again, I invite you to come to an Arthur Academy and dispel your misconceptions about Direct Instruction.

First, it was NOT developed for special education kids. It is a general population curriculum. The fact that it is used in a lot of special education settings attests to its effectiveness.

Second, it is not "teacher proof" in the way you patronizingly suggest. It is very demanding on the teacher and teachers must be hightly trained and VERY attuned to the student's spoken and unspoken feedback. It is a canard that the anti-DI teaching professoriate loves to repeat.

Further, anybody who thinks that DI instruction is mind numbing for the kids simply has never seen it being done. That is laughable on its face. I challenge anyone to come to one of our Arthur Academy classrooms, watch the 45 minute reading instruction periods, and then tell me with a straight face that the kids are mind numbed.

Torrid Joe you inadvertantly expose a fault line in the public education debate when you write:

"There is MUCH more to learn that is more important than reading, like socialization and self-awareness."

I beleive that schools are primarily for academic goals. Reading is job 1 of school. Fail at that and you have ruined a child's chance of academic success. You apparently beleive that academics are secondary, and whatever you mean by "socialization" and "self awareness" is primary.

Your complacency about not teaching kids to read is shocking and sad. No it is not true that it is a skill that is easy to learn at any stage in life. That is demonstrably false. It is far harder to learn in fourth grade and beyond than in the early elementary grades. Kids who are not proficient readers by third grade are something like 80% likely to never be proficient readers.

Iowa is one state that estimates the need for jail beds 20 years hence based on a formula that includes 3rd grade reading scores. To be so cavalier about the schools teaching reading is outrageous.

However, the notion that the primary job of schools is non-academic actually puts you in company with the John Dewey progressives, who wanted to use the institution of public schooling as a tool to reshape society into their own vision of what society should be.

Pardon me, but leave my kid alone. I don't want your "socialization" applied to my kid. I can only imagine the things you would deem necessary to teach kids instead of academics. All sorts of "approved" attitudes, I would expect, would fall under your notion of "socialization." God only knows what you mean by "self-awareness." I hope I never find out.

I'm puzzled also why you would object to the word "efficient" when applied to teaching methods. If reading is a skill (it is) then why not teach it in the most efficient way possible? Piano playing is a skill. If I wanted to learn to play the piano, I could, I imagine, have someone play to me for hours on end, then sit down at the piano and try to figure it out myself. That is roughly the equivalent of today's whole language method of reading.

Would you pay for that kind of piano lessons? I'll bet you would fire the instructor, and demand one who broke the skill of piano playing into its most basic sub-skills, and then systematically taught each of these skills with a commensurate amount of practice between lessons.

Oh, but that treats every child like they are all the same. No, they have different learning styles, and nobody can say what the best way to teach the piano is. Hogwash. There are efficient ways to teach and less efficient ways to teach. I'll take the efficient way.

Finally - another canard is that Direct Instruction teaches decoding, but not language skills. Anyone who says this is talking out his ass. You know nothing about it, and the assertion is completely false. DI is a rich and comprehensive langauge arts program that starts with the language's most fundamental building blocks - the phonemes -- and progresses through grade five in a sequence that gradually moves from "learn to read" into "read to learn."

Direct Instruction should be the liberal's preferred curriculum. It was PROVEN to be the most effective at increasing the academic achievement of disadvantaged children. ALL the so-called "progressive" curricula were complete failures at doing so. It is one of the biggest ironies of the day that political liberals shun it out of ignorance and out of believing what is said about it rather than checking into it for themselves.

And what do I read on this board, but every ignorant canard against DI trotted out by people who have almost certainly never even once seen a DI instructional session.

Patrick:

Very good question, and an important one. What you have given an example of is "embedded phonics." A lot of schools or teachers will say "sure we do phonics," and point to precisely what you have given an example of.

Is that phonics? Yes. Is an empirically valid phonics curriculum? No.

An effective phonics program, according the the NICHHD research must have five elements:

1) Directly taught (rather than indirect through discovery activities) 2) Intensive (meaning focused attention is given to its instruction in specific instructional periods.) 3) Systematic (meaning the individual phonemes are taught in a sequence and at a pace that is predetermined after having been field tested to prove that it is effective. This is not at all a trivial question. Which phonemes should be taught first? How is mastery determined before moving on to the next? How fast can new phonemes be introduced and connected to the previous?) 4) Explicit (meaning the phonics should not be embedded and learned as a by-product of other activities.) 5) Comprehensive (meaning the program should cover not just all the phonemes, but all the rules, rule breakers, dipthongs, blends, etc that are required to decode words.

What your teacher has given your kids fails on all these fronts. Is it phonics? Yes. Is it a phonics program? Nope.

jrw:

Also totally agree on the difficulty of using DI with middle schoolers. Can be done, but is not easy. It is so much more attuned to the early elementary brain that has an innate desire for repetition.

Not sure what is better, however. I am not very familiar with the UK program, but it sounds as if it is more effective with older kids.

Chuck Arthur has used DI with middle school special ed kids and he says that it is very hard to bring them up to speed, but if he has the kid long enough he can get him to grade level at about a pace of 2 years improvement per year of instruction.

He says it is very hard. Which is why he moved to early elementary, and then to running his own schools - he figured it was easier to prevent reading failure altogether rather than try to remediate it on the back end.

OK, 'Ziggy Zealot Kremer" I confess to taking classes from Ziggy. I have also observed upward to 30 sessions of DI. Hell, I even taught using DI as the major instructional program. In my dark past I even acquired a Master's degree in Reading of all things. And yes, Pat Allen ,I am the Paulie you know..LOL!

Whole Language isn't the magic bullet anymore than DI is the magic bullet...a competent teacher 'mixes" approaches for students. Frankly, I don't know a teacher who utilizes some of the whole language approach without a strong dose of phonics thrown in..as Pat Allen mentioned, his kids bring home phonics work from the Sherwood Public Schools regularly.

Marcia, you are correct to remind me that a rich Fullday K program with art, music, PE, included in the curriculum costs money. I happen to think its a crying shame that the Saxton, Minnis, Westlund, McIntire mindset, coupled with No Child Left Behind, CIM/CAM thinking gutted the rich curriculum learners sorely need. I applaud you teaching to the neediest children. We need more just like you. At least we know the schools might get more money with Kulongoski in office because he supports K-12 education. Yeah, I know he made a correction in PERS that ticked off many PERS members..frankly he saved money for kids by doing so.

Rob wrote... The real question, Kari, is why do liberals tend to support teaching methods that long term empirical studies and vast amounts of educational research and literature show to be ineffective at ensuring low income and disadvantaged children acquire the gateway academic skill: reading?

I don't know. I'm honestly puzzled. (Unlike my sometimes-strategic puzzlement.)

If there really is long-term empirical data that supports a particular teaching method, why wouldn't anyone support it? Liberal, conservative, etc.?

Rob - you ask a rhetorical question: Why do liberals ignore this particular teaching method? I'll ask you right back: Why do you think that is?

I've read a lot of liberal philosophy, and involved in a lot of politics, and I can't figure out a reason why a particular teaching method would get cross-wise with our folks.

Rob in italics, me in regular: I beleive that schools are primarily for academic goals. Reading is job 1 of school. Fail at that and you have ruined a child's chance of academic success. You apparently beleive that academics are secondary, and whatever you mean by "socialization" and "self awareness" is primary.

Your complacency about not teaching kids to read is shocking and sad. No it is not true that it is a skill that is easy to learn at any stage in life. That is demonstrably false. It is far harder to learn in fourth grade and beyond than in the early elementary grades. Kids who are not proficient readers by third grade are something like 80% likely to never be proficient readers.

You misapprehend. I never said academics are secondary. I said there are things more important IN KINDERGARTEN than teaching reading. I also have no complacency about "not teaching kids to read." What I said was that there is time to teach reading down the road beyond kindergarten, and in fact some research that delayed instruction in actual reading (using the interim period for oral storytelling and learning about language rather than the mechanics of creating words) creates more competent and well-rounded readers. If you're going to challenge what I say, please stick to what I actually said.

However, the notion that the primary job of schools is non-academic actually puts you in company with the John Dewey progressives, who wanted to use the institution of public schooling as a tool to reshape society into their own vision of what society should be.

Pardon me, but leave my kid alone. I don't want your "socialization" applied to my kid. I can only imagine the things you would deem necessary to teach kids instead of academics. All sorts of "approved" attitudes, I would expect, would fall under your notion of "socialization." God only knows what you mean by "self-awareness." I hope I never find out.

More rambling based on false pretense. We were talking about kindergarten, remember? Not "schools." I never said I favored a non-academic approach to public education. I said that strictly defined academics are best left to wait until the child has developed himself into a reservoir capable of receiving academic instruction. I have to laugh at your charge that I want to use education as a tool to reshape society according to a particular vision--as if you don't? ALL schools do that.

What do I mean by self-awareness? I had thought that was fairly transparent, but OK: self-awareness is learning to self-calm, to realize when you are getting frustrated and how to express that frustration in a way that is socially appropriate. Self-awareness is learning that, even in a controlled setting where you are one of many, the power to achieve, excel and succeed are largely in your own hands. Self-awareness is learning that your actions and words DO have an impact on the world around you, for good or ill. Self-awareness is learning how to gauge your strengths and weaknesses, focusing on honing and applying strengths while shoring up weaknesses (and learning to accept that you will have some of each your whole life).

I'm puzzled also why you would object to the word "efficient" when applied to teaching methods. If reading is a skill (it is) then why not teach it in the most efficient way possible? Piano playing is a skill. If I wanted to learn to play the piano, I could, I imagine, have someone play to me for hours on end, then sit down at the piano and try to figure it out myself. That is roughly the equivalent of today's whole language method of reading.

Would you pay for that kind of piano lessons? I'll bet you would fire the instructor, and demand one who broke the skill of piano playing into its most basic sub-skills, and then systematically taught each of these skills with a commensurate amount of practice between lessons.

Oh, but that treats every child like they are all the same. No, they have different learning styles, and nobody can say what the best way to teach the piano is. Hogwash. There are efficient ways to teach and less efficient ways to teach. I'll take the efficient way.

Efficiency is for cars. It is not for people. Efficient instruction fulfills the basic requirement for the largest group of children in the smallest amount of time. All phases must proceed in exactly the same way in all cases, or efficiency is lost. EFFECTIVE teaching recognizes that all children do not come equipped with a "reading USB port" in their brains that allows the teacher to methodically place the reading memory stick in every child's theoretically equivalent brain. Is it efficient to have 100 keys for 100 locks? No, but I guarantee if you show up with 10, some number of locks will remain unopened.

Let me give you two examples of the difference between efficient instruction and effective instruction. In the US, generally speaking if you wanted to learn a trade you showed up at work and immediately jumped into the mechanics of performing that trade, starting with basic techniques and moving on to advanced concepts as you mastered them. In Europe, particularly Germany, if you wanted to be a carpenter it'd be literally MONTHS before you got your hands on a piece of wood and a saw. What did you do instead? Learn about the nature of wood--it's makeup, its different forms, how it can be manipulated, etc. Only THEN would you get the opportunity to implement that knowledge on a practical basis. Is that the most efficient method of getting product out to market? No. But there are few rivals in this world for German craftsmanship and quality in their products.

Let's use another example that's based in education, to stick with our topic. When I was in 7th grade back in the late 70s, the computer revolution had progressed far enough that "learning how to use computers" became part of the curriculum in my school. There were three classes of "Intro to Computing" going on during the period I had it: mine, and two others. In the other two classes, the teachers were math instructors who had learned how to program in BASIC. From day one, they put the kids on workstations and got them started on "10 Print Hi! 20 Goto 10" commands--the phonetics of programming, if you will.

Our class didn't get that. At first I thought I had been given the great misfortune of being taught by someone who was an actual degree holder in computer science, and who literally kept every single one of the student computers turned off for the first six weeks of the term. What did we do instead? We learned how computers work: input, processing, output. We learned the core elements of a PC, and we learned the absolute fundamentals of their function: 1s and 0s. I still can't believe it; that guy had the nerve to teach a bunch of 12 year olds Base 2 mathematics, machine language and assembly.

Was that efficient? Hell no; it seemed like forever, and we were way behind the other two classes when we finally got to use the computers. But I'll tell you, it didn't take long before we had caught up and moved right past them, performing fairly complex programming tasks in PASCAL while the other classes were still grasping BASIC commands piece by piece. To this day I credit my technical ability with computers to that man, whose name I have long forgotten. He understood the difference between efficient instruction and effective instruction, and I thank him for it.

Kari: It is a compelling question. I have discussed it at length with Chuck Arthur (remember - he is a political liberal.)

I think Torrid Joe gave you your answer. often, liberals see reading and math and academic achievment as secondary to other more pressing concerns that run in what would be called the "affective" domain: self esteem, sensitivity, diversity, etc.

"Instructivist" approaches offend the sensibilities of this kind of liberal, because they are inherently more authoritarian than the "constructivist" methods.

Torrid is a classic example. Did you see how he just dismissed academics as a central function of schooling?

Incredible. I am glad he is a city worker and not a teacher. We already have enough of his kind polluting our public schools.