Article on Play versus Direct Instruction

[TeachingMyToddlers]

Here's an article that NAEYC just released. Interesting stuff!

http://www.naeyc.org/content/research-news-you-can-use-play-vs-learning

We want children to be both knowledgeable about facts and details and be creative and good problem solvers. We want young children to know that 2 + 2 = 4, but also use that knowledge across a range of situations beyond answering a single test item. Shouldn’t that mean there is a place for both direct instruction and play?

Yes, you do not have to choose, there is room for both and IMO, it can be at the same time by making it a game, like Little Reader

Thoughts?

[DadDude]

What an earth-shattering revelation!  We don't have to choose?  I'm...I'm speechless!

Seriously, it's sure nice to see some from the NAEYC saying this sort of thing.  I thought the only real vexed question is whether any amount of direct instruction is permissible, for the "play only" advocates.

[Kimba15]

Great article find TMT.

I don't and never have agreed with the play-only advocates. I think children need both activities. This is why I am a huge advocate of Montessori method. The children are allowed to discover but there is control of error in the equipment so the children 'discover' what the correct answer is while 'playing'. The children are taught how to use the equipment correctly and they are allowed to handle the materials for as long as they like. Montessori believed that the children must be shown how to use the equipment correctly and that they were not allowed to use it in any other manner but all the children seem to become excellent problem solvers and creative thinkers????

One of the best books I have ever read on the MOntessori method is Montessori-The Science behind the Genius. I think people in congress or in House of reps here in Oz should give it a read.

[fma001]

I've always found the play vs academics argument odd. I didn't grow up in the US. I started school at 4 and did both academics and play for the first two years of school. I learned to write all my letters and numbers at the age of 4. I was a fluent reader by age 6. I had a good foundation in math. Yet I also spent a lot of time doing free play and art activities. I don't think there are any preschools, even those considered to be academic, that don't have a significant amount of play.

I'm a bit troubled by the study relating to the novel toy in the NAEYC article. Is this all that the play-based argument is based on? There is an obvious limit to what children can learn from hands-on exploration. We shouldn't be limiting the kinds of skills children learn in the early years to problem solving and creativity alone. I'm also troubled that these studies looked at a very short-term effect. Is there any evidence that kids who engage in play-only learning are more creative or better problem solvers in high school, college or the work force than kids who engaged in both direct instruction and play? It isn't wise to completely alter how children are educated based on such short-term results.

Author Katharine Beals had an interesting blog post on this recently. She said that the backlash to teacher-led learning is partly due to concerns that children have less time for free play because they are spending more time in structured activities and in front of screens.

"But does the remedy lie in altering what happens in our elementary school classrooms--specifically, in having children spend less time in structured, teacher-directed math and reading activities? Much of the problem, after all, is in what's happening--or not happening--after school, and (reluctant though people are, especially those in the business, to realize this) there's a limit to what schools can do about broader societal problems. Indeed, in their drive to be all things to "the whole child," schools have already seriously compromised our children's academic and vocational futures."
http://oilf.blogspot.com/2011/12/justifications-for-more-open-ended-play.html

[sonya_post]

I have another question related to this. It seems this question is rarely ever asked.

"To what end are we educating our children?"

Is it merely to get a good job or to create good problem solvers? What one believes about the purpose of education and it's intended outcome drives how one thinks about this issue and a host of others. How you answered the question "Why do we educate?" will determine how you feel about play vs teacher led, homeschooling vs. public school, early education vs. waiting till school age for formal education. And many , many others.

My idea of an educated person is very different than my local school district's idea. Not just in the way my child learns, the quality of the material, or the standards rather, their goals for education and mine are not even compatible. It would be interesting to poll BK members on what they believe the purpose of education is.

[fma001]

Sonya,

I think most people on BK would say that knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge are positive and good things. Oddly enough, many educators treat knowledge and the process of acquiring it as necessary evils. It is thought to be a bad thing if a 3 year old can pick up a book and read it to themselves. If adults think learning is bad or hard, we can't reasonably expect children to feel positive about it. I think the academic superiority of Finnish and many Asian students is not just due to their teaching methods. Learning is valued and respected in those cultures. Kids absorb the values of the adults around them. If adults hate learning, kids will to.

[Tanikit]

I liked what Sonya asked: To what end are we educating our children?

My father recently sent me an article about a man who took the grade 10 evaluation exams - he was an engineer and had all sorts of degrees and work experience but he failed the math exam outright and scored 62% for reading and language arts. He said that he is successful in the work place so why are they evaluating students on what they have no need for in the real world.

That said I think there are only really two things that children need to know before leaving school:

1. The difference between wants and needs and what human needs really are so that they know what to aim for if their circumstances become difficult and that they can live with very little - in fact knowing about needs even means you must know how to look after yourself in various circumstances such as what to do in a fire etc (you need oxygen and so on)
2. You need to know how to research and find out how to get the information you need to be able to do/have what you need/want.

Children should be taught how to ask for help - from people, books, the internet etc. This implies that they need social skills to be able to ask for help and also preferably how to read so that they can find out information for themsleves.

The reason people learn math at school I believe is that it follows a sequence - you need to know the initial things to be able to work out harder problems - so looking for a way to do a hard problem might mean you need to learn too much at an older age and it would take too long.

Play only does bother me as just playing with no input from anyone will lead to a child who does not have a base in language and vocabulary - vocabulary is only picked up if play occurs with someone who can talk anbd can use more advanced vocabulary than the person playing. Leave a baby alone to "play" and they will learn some things but no language.

[sonya_post]

I am not saying I agree or disagree but here are some quotes to ponder:

The object of education is to teach us love of beauty. - Plato

The unexamined life is not worth living. ... Wisdom begins in wonder. - Socrates

And in a wonderful display of even handednesss toward our eastern brothers and sisters:

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. - Confucius

The Truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction. Gandhi

[fma001]

"He said that he is successful in the work place so why are they evaluating students on what they have no need for in the real world."

The problem is what students need to know for the real world differs based on occupation. What an engineer thinks is unnecessary in the real world, may be completely necessary in another field. A K-12 education should expose kids to many different subjects and skills, so they can know what their strengths and interests are. A child who has never been exposed to something might miss out on what is of most interest to them and end up stuck in a career that isn't really for them.

When I was in college, I took Geology as the requirement for science. A student in my class told me he was so fascinated by Geology he had decided to major in it. I asked him if he had ever studied Geology before. He said he hadn't. It was all completely new to him. I had actually learned a huge amount of geology (as part of Geography class) in primary school. I actually already knew a lot of what I was learning in my Geology class because I remembered so much from school years before. Yet, for this student, he had never been exposed to Geology at all in his K-12 education. He wouldn't have even known about it if it hadn't been for the fact that the university required everyone to take a science class and Geology was most convenient to his schedule.

So, we need to be really careful about determining what kids need and don't need to know in school or they may miss out on what they really want to do with their lives. We shouldn't be limiting what they learn to what someone in some particular field thinks is needed for the real world.

[DadDude]

Very interesting!  I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately.  I asked this question on Quora last night before I saw Sonya's addition:
http://www.quora.com/Education/Is-gaining-knowledge-the-main-purpose-of-education-Why-or-why-not

And I make the case (sort of) that knowledge is the aim of education (who'da thunk?) in this blog post:
http://larrysanger.org/2011/12/manifesto-for-schools/

[sonya_post]

Daddude,

I was hoping you'd weigh in on the question. I do not intend to offer my answer - well, at least not yet. Rather, I see myself more taking the role of bomb thrower/devil's advocate. Just for fun and for stimulating the conversation into a real debate. I like debates; they are fun, but I also think this is something we must all give serious thought to. When Alice was walking through Wonderland, she found herself at a crossroads. She was confused over which way she should go. Startled by the Cheshire Cat up in a nearby tree, Alice asked the Cat which way she should go. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. Alice replied, “I don’t much care where.” The Cat saucily answered, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” We are spending nearly a trillion dollars on education in the US. We had better care.

On to your essay - bomb thrower, remember?!?! So are you saying that the purpose of education is the piling up of facts and information. How does one stop the pursuit of knowledge from becoming just "one damn thing after another," and the ultimate exercise in futility. The French existentialist philosopher Sartre understood this when he said somewhere that without an infinite reference point, all finite points are absurd.

Really, why is that the purpose instead of some other? Why does having a bunch of knowledge make any difference to a factory worker? While, that may not be the hope and dream you have for your child, somebody's child will have be a cog in a factory wheel.

Einstein said, "It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. (A point your clearly made in your essay) The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think, something that cannot be learned from textbooks."

Sonya

[Tanikit]

I like this discussion - and I agree that we do not go to school to learn only what we need to know - there actually isn't all that much that we do need to know. Interestingly enough though countries that are democratic are often the ones that are forcing students into studying various courses to enable the country to function better - so they push science if they want more engineers and encourage students to go into certain occupations if there is a shortage of it and yet in the meantime they tell everyone that you actually do have a choice and that it is all about what you want - life isn't like that. It isn't so much about what what one student wants but rather what the government deems necessary or wants for itself.

This is even more evident in countries where certain parties rule for very long periods of time - usually it is in poorer countries and very often they want the masses to stay ignorant because then they will continue to support whoever is in power and not push for change.

Actually what makes anyone do anything at all is two things: desire and fear - fear stops you doing something, desire makes you do it - if for example you are afraid of heights and someone told you to jump off a very high bridge you probably wouldn't because your fear is too great, maybe depending how afraid you were you might do it for $100, or more or you might only if your child was drowning in the water below and your desire to save them was greater than your fear.

What does that have to do with education? It means that chikldren will only learn what you are trying to teach them if the desire to learn is high (either it must be fun or else they must see the point and understand) or else they must be afraid of something else (often theiur parents or teachers) Which makes me disagree somewhat with Plato - he is almost saying that the object of educating someone is for them to want to be educated which would have to make wanting education to be a human instinct and perhaps it is.

What I want to know is: I believe it is a human trait to think - it is part of what it means to be human - you shouldn't have to train someone to do it - isn't it the education we are giving that is training people NOT to think - to go along with the masses - humans are being taught to be sheep - it is not how we are born.

[sonya_post]

Tanikit,

I had to think about this a couple days. Actually, we are recovering from the "plague" at our house, so I wasn't mentally prepared to give a good response.
While I have an opinion about all of this, I want to avoid giving it for now.

You say that you disagree with Plato on the ground that he seems to be saying that education is a human instinct. I am not sure that is Plato's point. I think he is saying that the purpose of education is to train people to love what is beautiful. That loving the objectively beautiful must be trained into a man.

I submit to you that education is a certainty - whether we desire it or not (though on principle I agree with you about desire. We only do what we want. If we give our wallet to a mugger we wanted to live more than keep our wallet). All humans are being educated all the time. We are being taught and trained whether we like it or not. It is  inescapable. If a child, or adult for that matter, is allowed to lazy around on the couch all day and not exercise his muscles or brain in productive play or work, he has not escaped an education. He is being educated in the way of the sloth. He is being trained to be lazy.

At this point it might help if we define our terms - what do we even mean by education? Is it merely what happens in a formal setting in a classroom, or does it encompass all that is being learned in all of life. I am refering to the latter. Much of what you need to learn or wish you could unlearn happens without you even being aware of it.
 
If thinking is a defining trait of human beings, it does not automatically follow from that premise that all humans are good at it.

That is all for my 17month old desperately want to push all the buttons on the keyboard,

SOnya

[tlyoung]

I also like this discussion too. I agree with the reason many subjects are taught in schools. My 2nd cousin was kicked out of HS, the reason does not matter. He was tutored at home to get his HS diploma. He never took chemistry or physics in a real lab setting. He knew he excelled at math and took physics in college to satisfy the lab science requirement. He loved physics,has his PhD and and is in research and teaching. If he had not taken that required course he might not have even graduated from college. You never know what a child will excell at if they are not exposed to many challenging subjects.

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