{"id":3191,"date":"2015-11-09T11:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T17:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=3191"},"modified":"2015-11-09T11:34:02","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T17:34:02","slug":"the-purpose-of-schools-and-the-summer-slump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/11\/the-purpose-of-schools-and-the-summer-slump.html","title":{"rendered":"The “purpose of schools” and the “summer slump”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You\u2019ve surely heard this before: \u00a0we need to adopt year-round schools to end the \u201csummer slump\u201d \u2014 that is, the fact that students forget so much of what was learned during the school year, over summer break, requiring that a sizeable portion of the next year\u2019s instruction is simply a repeat of the prior year\u2019s material.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a quote from a long piece at the Washington Post, \u201cA venture capitalist searches for the purpose of school. Here\u2019s what he found.<\/a>\u201d (as linked to by Sarah Hoyt at\u00a0instapundit.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In my travels, I visited the Lawrenceville School, rated as one of the very best high schools in the United States. To its credit, Lawrenceville conducted a fascinating experiment a decade ago. After summer vacation, returning students retook the final exams they had completed in June for their science courses. Actually, they retook simplified versions of these exams, after faculty removed low-level \u201cforgettable\u201d questions The results were stunning. The average grade in June was a B+ (87 percent). When the simplified test was taken in September, the average grade plummeted to an F (58 percent). Not one student retained mastery of all key concepts they appear to have learned in June. The obvious question: if what was \u201clearned\u201d vanishes so quickly, was anything learned in the first place?<\/p>\n

The holy grail in our high schools is the Advanced Placement (AP) track. Pioneered 50 years ago by elite private schools to demonstrate the superior student progress, AP courses now pervade mainstream public schools. Over and over, well-intentioned people call for improving U.S. education by getting more of our kids \u2014 especially in poor communities \u2014 into AP courses. But do our kids learn in AP courses? In an experiment conducted by Dartmouth College, entering students with a 5 on their AP Psychology exam took the final exam from the college\u2019s introductory Psych course. A pitiful 10 percent passed. Worse, when the AP superstars did enroll in intro Psych, they performed no better than classmates with no prior coursework in the subject area. It\u2019s as though the AP students had learned nothing about psychology. And that\u2019s the point.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, the \u201cexperiment\u201d in the first paragraph is a bit fuzzy, and seems possible that the B+ and the F are not apples-to-apples, if they didn\u2019t remove the \u201clow-level\u201d questions and re-grade the June exams. \u00a0The example of the AP exams is more concerning, considering how much these exams are growing in importance (even to the point of Illinois legislating that it\u2019s state schools accept them<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The author\u2019s main point is that students should chiefly be learning grander \u201chigher-order thinking skills\u201d rather than rote memorization of the sort that\u2019s rewarded on multiple-choice standardized exams. \u00a0You can read the whole argument at the Post, but it\u2019s nothing you haven\u2019t heard before. \u00a0And yet \u2014 you can\u2019t have one without the other. \u00a0You can\u2019t move to critical thinking if you don\u2019t have a fundamental knowledge base. \u00a0These are some of what the author lists as irrelevant: \u00a0\u201cfactoring polynomials, memorizing the definition of mitosis, past participles, conjugating French verbs, facts about the Mesopotamians.\u201d \u00a0\u2014 all of which I would say are quite relevant: \u00a0you can\u2019t learn more complex skills unless you\u2019ve mastered the basic core of algebra; you can\u2019t move on to higher levels of science without knowing about cell reproduction; you can\u2019t learn a foreign language without, well, memorization; and it is important to be grounded in history to understand the fundamentals of how the world works.<\/p>\n

But there is a bigger challenge: \u00a0what do you do about the fact that so much knowledge is learned, then lost? \u00a0Let\u2019s face it: \u00a0I have forgotten far more about actuarial mathematics than I have retained from my years in exam-taking.<\/p>\n

There are some subjects where there is a \u201cnatural\u201d reinforcement: \u00a0for instance, reading comprehension skills, or grammar and writing, for instance. \u00a0Others may have interconnected topics but may require intentional review: \u00a0for instance, there seems to be an increasing emphasis on review in math, so that kids don\u2019t just learn regrouping for addition and subtraction, and leave that sit while they move on to multiplication and division.<\/p>\n

Other subjects have more discrete subject matter \u2014 e.g., \u201cscience\u201d consists of units of study which you can\u2019t readily chain into a set of materials that build on each other from one year to the next. \u00a0At the younger levels, you might learn about the planets, or do simple experiments on the states of matter; then you move into things like the cell, or the basic concepts of the periodic table, before ultimately moving into biology, chemistry, physics in-depth in high school. \u00a0Yes, there is the overarching concept of the scientific method, but you can hardly learn anatomy via a set of hypotheses; you have to simply learn content, and a lot of it.<\/p>\n

And history? \u00a0Yes, students will forget much of their World History class over the succeeding summer; but adopting a year-round calendar doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s any greater degree of retention the next year when American history is studied. \u00a0But this doesn\u2019t mean that history shouldn\u2019t be studied, or that that there are easy remedies to be found if only we \u201cengage\u201d students (which typically seems to involve doing special units on narrow topics to the exclusion of the larger context). \u00a0Many years ago, I toyed around with the idea that if I ever taught history again, I\u2019d create a course with two components: \u00a0a core timeline and set of basic facts to be memorized, and tested repeatedly over the course of the semester, to hopefully boost retention more than one semester-end exam; plus in-depth reading that builds off this core framework.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: \u00a0it\u2019s a matter of both\/and, not either\/or, when it comes to core learning vs. critical thinking skills.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve surely heard this before: \u00a0we need to adopt year-round schools to end the \u201csummer slump\u201d \u2014 that is, the fact that students forget so much of what was learned during the school year, over summer break, requiring that a sizeable portion of the next year\u2019s instruction is simply a repeat of the prior year\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe "purpose of schools" and the "summer slump"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You've surely heard this before: \u00a0we need to adopt year-round schools to end the "summer slump" -- that is, the fact that students forget so much of what\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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