Job Discussion Forums

[moonraven]

Stephen--I don't insult you on this forum--why do you persist in doing so to me?

To give you an idea of my "out-dated" pedagogy, I am highly in demand here in Latin American universities specifically because I am an excellent teacher and an excellent trainer of professors. People with "outdated" pedagogy--mechanical drills, for example--are not hired as Deans where they supervise and train professors in disciplines as diverse as Economics, Sciences and Math, English, Art, Philosophy, etc.

They also don't design and give courses like the one I just finished giving yesterday, Estrategias de Aprendizaje (Learning Strategies)--with uniformly excellent student evaluations. Who would have thought such a course would be the biggest hit on this campus with 18 year olds?

The students wrote in their evaluations that it was a hit because the profesora was creative, dynamic, entertaining, proceeded step-by-step so that they really learned, showed them how to form effective learning teams, had unlimited patience, gave them confidence in themselves so that when they had to teach the class they felt proud of how they taught, challenged them to think critically and helped them to develop the infrastructure necessary to succeed in their university studies. Several even had the presence of mind to quote Paulo Freire--whose revolutionary pedagogy has not been surpassed: "There is no learning without reflection."

These students are kids from "ranchos" in a very impoverished area of Mexico, whose education before they arrived at the university largely consisted of cooling their heels in classrooms without teachers. They can now, among many other things, use and explain several models of decision-making and reasoning, tell you how to differientiate propaganda from information, develop compensation strategies for right or left hemispheric dominance, write an extended critical essay, develop and implement individual strategies for satisfying all of the needs on the hierarchy of needs, and teach a class--in functional teams--on how to study for exams, overcome math anxiety, administer their time for academic success, and improve concentration. They learned these skills in 8 weeks, one hour a day--a total of 40 hours.

I challenge you to achieve even a fraction of what I achieve--with my "outdated" pedagogy.

You know, I used to think you were a fairly smart guy, Stephen. Now you appear to be just another blowhard.

[dmb]

moonraven, why don't you give us all a break and save us time. Just tell us what you HAVEN'T done and what you are NOT an expert in?

[moonraven]

I have not done, nor am an expert in, an entire universe of things.

The more you do, the more you know, the more you master, the more you realize that you know almost nothing.

That does not, however, take away from what you have achieved, nor does it justify insults and attacks from envious people.

[stillnosheep]

Bear DuMB: we're really sorry that other people have more knowledge and experience than you. Now go away and live with it.

[dmb]

dont worry sns. Ignorance is bliss.

[OzBurn]

I have found drills quite useful in learning, and teaching, any number of things. They are particularly useful in learning foreign languages, music performance, sports and other athletic or quasi-athletic activities (such as typing), and basic academic skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. They are not particularly useful for most students once they have reached an advanced level of "knowledge courses," such as university-level courses in philosophy, although even in these areas, they have their role. (For example, there is a kind of drill you can do to help achieve fluency in presenting a speech or lecture.)

I started my teaching career with students who had never had drills in anything. When they came to us, they were illiterate or subliterate. They had undergone years of constructivist pedagogy, the kind that is fashionable now in American universities and K-12 schools and that excites such ardor in MR. At my school, they performed many, many drills in many, many subjects, and they overcame their illiteracy and innumeracy. In the long run, they felt much better about themselves, often started reading self-chosen materials with interest and enthusiasm, and were able to go on to other schools with success. I suspect that their prior teachers would have reported great successes, just as MR does with her classes; however, I have seldom seen a teacher who did not believe he was doing a great job. Whatever their teachers' beliefs, their students came to us illiterate and usually emotionally traumatized by years of failure.

Drills are particularly useful in teaching ESL. They speed up
the mastery of grammar, reading, and vocabulary. Students usually find a *properly designed* drill rewarding, because it produces relatively rapid gains in skills. Thus, although drills excite the rage of many constructivist teachers such as MR, that is not because students dislike them or because they don't work. It is because drills contradict many professors' own preconceived notions of the right way to learn.

Of course, some students dislike drills because the drill may rapidly reveal what they know and don't know, and because drills require focused work, which is repugnant to some people.

Although constructivist pedagogy dominates the academic world, that is not because it works well or has research evidence to support it; it is simply because that is the way the wind is blowing now.

Student-centered drills with flashcards can ensure rapid learning, permanent retention, and automatic understanding of vocabulary, facts, and key sentence patterns. They make automatic skills that should be automatic.

It is true that drills can be boring and punitive. However, so can the communicative exercises that are so popular in ESL today. Everything depends on how the drill (or communicative exercise) is done and where it fits in the curriculum and whether it is appropriate for the student(s).

It is also true that without emotional rewards of some kind, no learning will take place; but it is not true that drills have no emotional rewards. The rewards come from performing a useful skill more quickly, accurately, and easily, and from the greater ease that follows when the student must communicate about something, either in class or out of it.

[moonraven]

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Drills, like any other element that relies on memorization and repetition, does not provoke consciousness in anyone.

[lagerlout2006]

Hablo
Hablas
Hablies
Hablamos
Hableis
Hablan

Something here is wrong but my point would be that I haven't thought of this since....1998 or so and it's still in my head thanks to grilling memorization...

At some beginner level this old school rote method stuff is essential...

But yes drills need to stop at some point and one needs to actually start speaking!

[moonraven]

I found out last year when I was observing one of my prof's Calculus class that I remembered as if it were yesterday what I had not thought about in 40 years--but not because Calculus had been drilled into me.

Lout: Here in Mexico it would be hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, hablan, hablan. Another reason to communicate in the language where you are instead of drilling....

You drillers just keep on drilling. When you strike oil the world will beat a path to your door.

[OzBurn]

The point of a drill is not to "provoke consciousness," whatever that may mean. It is to ensure mastery of a key point, a key skill. MR asserts that memorization of something, and the automaticity of performance that comes with it (correctly done), is useless. This goes against a huge amount of experience of successful teachers -- teachers whose job is to improve skills, not hold forth in university classrooms. It also contradicts the research into what works. It also contradicts all of my experience as a student.

I have seen students go from utter illiteracy to competent reading in a year or less, based on a curriculum that was largely (not entirely) composed of explicit instruction and drills. These were students who were ten, twelve, fourteen years old and who had had YEARS of instruction based on the kind of pedagogy MR advocates. Their self-esteem had been destroyed by such isntruction, and the protracted and humiliating failure that went with it, and with their self-esteem had gone their ability to master their emotions and express them, and their ability to believe in themselves.

Now MR comes along, like a host of other fantastically arrogant American profs, and announces that no one must ever drill anyone in anything. Never mind the evidence. Never mind the millions of students who have been rendered illiterate by these kinds of attitudes and the "whole language" philosophy. Never mind what generations of experienced and successful teachers say. Never mind what scientific research on learning (including learning of languages) says. That's their philosophy, birthed somewhere in a classroom in America, and it is now being exported to the rest of the world with all the fantastic arrogance of American academia, supplemented by endless amounts of constructivist psycho-babble and a reflexive hostility to practicing anything. In the case of MR, it appears to be a philosophy that is ultimately based on nothing more than her prejudices about the purpose of education, buttressed rhetorically though it may be by misreadings of research and theory in linguistics and cognitive psychology.

Has MR ever studied methods of drills? Does she know what different drills do, and what they don't do? Has she ever studied the actual effects of drills or read research on them? Has she ever read the research on the effects of explicit, skills-based methods such as Precision Teaching or Direct Instruction on students' skills and self-esteem? Has she ever used flashcards? Does she know the difference between methods of using them? Does she know anything about research on human memory? Is she familiar with the relationship between automaticity and "flow"? Does she really think that *memorization* has nothing to do with learning? Has she ever mastered or seriously tried to master a musical instrument? Has she ever been in a classroom where the students were using flashcards or audio-lingual drills? Has she ever studied the research on the effectiveness of the original audio-lingual programs? Has she ever studied a foreign language other than Spanish or a foreign language without a vast cognate vocabulary? Has she ever seen a classroom of illiterate seventeen-year-olds who have been taught their whole lives by constructivists, until they were dumped into special education classrooms and labeled as damaged goods? (Skip the stories about eighteen-year-old college students -- let's hear about successes with students who find learning difficult.) Has she ever brought a student of any age from illiteracy to literacy? Has she ever taught autistic children or children with attention problems or developmentally delayed children? Is she aware of the differentially negative impact of constructivist curricula on underprivileged and black and immigrant children? Is she aware that the only large-scale educational experiment to comprehensively examine how to raise students' IQ, skills, and self-esteem showed that a skills-based curriculum using (among other things) drills was the most effective, by far? How does a career in teaching philosophy prepare MR to hold forth on what works for students studying languages, and what doesn't? What experience does she actually have in teaching students English from square one? Has she ever read educational research -- actual research, not theories?

[moonraven]

The answer to all of the above questions in your rant is YES. I have also done extensive research in Learning Theory.

In regard to special needs students I have been extremely successful--perhaps because I was ADD myself. And I have taught true beginners English in record time. When I have prepared students for the TOEFL exam (over 1000 students), their AVERAGE score has been over 600. Many of my students also have taken the Michigan Certification exam and received their certificates. I am not beating the pan for exams, but the ones I just mentioned show objectively that my students have been more than qualified for whatever those exams are used for.

I reject your labelling me with the US brush. I am a Native American, promote no US educational theories or practices, and have spent 12 years in Latin America giving my best as an educator. My educational models are STILL two folks who focused much of their attention on Latin America: Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire, because that's the area of the world in which I teach. My languages are English, Spanish (100%--I teach, write, give conferences and publish in Spanish--learned with ZERO DRILLS), French, Italian, Portugese, Latin, German (used to do translations but now that language is evaporating from my stacks) and Irish (Gaelic). I couldn't care less if those don't meet your standards.

You have never seen a SINGLE ONE of my students, so don't come with your silly stories about MY kind of pedagogy. There are bad teachers out there--and they are way more than the majority--in every pedagogical stripe. I don't happen to be one of them.

You write repeatedly about the importance of "evidence", but you have presented none. I call that bogus.

[leeroy]

moonraven - have you ever made a mistake?

[Stephen Jones]

Dear Moonraven

You ought to go off and marry Ludwig. You appear made for each other.

More importantly you could then spend your time extolling your acheivements to each other and spare the rest of us your respective ego trips, which we don't give a monkey's toss about.

[moonraven]

I make mistakes all the time. I expect to continue making them, and learning from them--but not the same ones, over and over--drilling mistakes is not my line.

Stephen: You care enough about what I do to spend a fair amount of time attacking me and insulting me on this forum. Does that mean you have nothing better to do?

I, on the other hand, DO care about what's being done by other educators. Educators, however--not drill sergeants.

[dmb]

I've just had an idea Why doesn't moonraven just post her CV and then we choose to read about her achievements
Disclaimer: No malice intent.