Saturday, December 4, 2010

One for when I get "spare" time

I'm wondering about the culture clash between standards-based education, which I wholly believe in, and "holistic" learning, where students learn things that are not necessarily part of the curriculum. It's something that bears closer examination.

I'm a proponent of standards-based education. From that perspective, my dogmatic twist on this thorny issue is that if you write the standards well, if you write them with big juju thinking skills at their heart, if you think "big" enough about them, then they can incorporate holistic learning practices. They don't have to be in conflict. The problem comes when your standards are a list of 200 things your students have to know before they can leave Algebra class.

But like I said, that's an article of faith with me. I'm pretty sure the research is there to back me up on this one. I'll just have to wait until I retire to look into it.

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