David Staples, the Wildrose and their war on teachers and learning

Here is Bruce McAllister and David Staples
 talking with Alberta teachers.

David Staples is a columnist who has an interest in education.

Bruce McAllister is a Wildrose MLA and education critic in the Alberta Legislature.

Together, they are waging war on teachers and learning by demanding that teachers teach in a way that mandates children play a passive role in school. Together, they argue there simply is not enough memorization and tests in school.

Standardized Testing

When the Wildrose and David Staples cite a real world need for annual standardized testing, I ask some questions:

1. As a columnist, can you share the standardized multiple choice test that the Edmonton Journal makes you do to keep you accountable and transparent? As a politician, would you be willing to take Alberta's Diplomas exams and have your results published for all to see?

2. As a columnist, can you share the standardized rubric that the Edmonton Journal uses to score and judge your columns? As a politician can you share the scoring guide that citizens use to score and judge your work?

4. As a columnist or a politician, can you show me the column you wrote or the bill you voted on where you are not allowed access to the Internet, fact-check or talk to anyone? 

5. As a columnist or a politician, if there were no standardized test scores, what would you know about education?

We need to stop thinking we can meet all
children's needs by pretending all children
have the same needs.

It is hypocritical for adults to demand students and teachers be held accountable in ways that they would not hold themselves to.

Standardized testing is what constitutes an amazingly contrived and unrealistic form of assessment that is used by people outside the classroom to judge and control what happens inside the classroom without ever visiting the schools.

Teachers are not afraid of accountability -- but they do oppose being held accountable for things out of their control. Teachers also know that there is nothing transparent about having children fill in bubble-tests.

The best feedback parents can receive about their children's learning is to see their children learning. The best teachers don't need tests because they make learning visible via projects and performances collected in portfolios.

This is a shift from test and punish accountability to more authentic public assurance. The Alberta Teachers' Association also outlines a vision for A Great School for All, and the Alberta Assessment Consortium offers A New Look at Public Assurance.

And here's my story about how I teach and my students learn without grades.

"Old" and "New" Math

Staples continued his war on learning with a column that featured Ken Porteous who is a retired chemical engineering professor from the University of Alberta. Porteous writes: 

The discovery approach has no place in arithmetic at the junior elementary level. There is nothing to discover.

If there was ever a need for a single statement that one could show people such that their response would predict whether they knew anything about how children learn -- this is it. 

To carry this mindset out to its (il)logical conclusion, I guess there is nothing left to discover in this world...

Teachers and other early childhood development experts who understand how children learn define their careers by children's Aha! moments. These are the moments when metaphorical lightbulbs illuminate on top of children's heads. Anyone with a clue about how children learn knows that these Aha! moments rarely, if ever, happen because kids were simply told to have them. Aha! moments are not passively absorbed or memorized -- they are actively constructed by the student with the artful guidance of a teacher.

The best teachers have teeth marks on their tongues because they know that when kids are simply told the most efficient way of getting the answer, they get in the habit of looking to adults instead of thinking things through for themselves. They understand that learning happens when the child is ready to learn, not necessarily when someone is ready to teach -- teachers call these teachable moments.

I am a huge supporter of teacher professional development where teachers learn how to be better teachers, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that a back to basics approach that romanticizes the past will make things better for our children.

Let's not pretend that traditional math instruction didn't confuse and turn a lot of students off of math. When adults think back on their schooling, it's easy to succumb to something called Nostesia which is a hallucinogenic mixture of 50% nostalgia and 50% amnesia which distorts rational thinking.

Wishing tomorrow to be just like yesterday won't make today a better place. We aren't going to get more children to love math by pretending that school already doesn't have enough lectures, direct instruction, worksheets, textbooks, tests and memorization.

Staples and the Wildrose would like Albertans to believe that they are waging war against the government and education consultants but the truth is they are also attacking teachers who work hard to engage students in a way that has them play a more active role in constructing their own understanding with the artful guidance of their teacher.

While some teachers and parents may agree with Staples and the Wildrose, it's important to note that many teachers in Alberta feel that they are doing more harm than good. When Staples and the Wildrose mislead the public by telling teachers how they have to teach, they make it harder for great teachers to do their job.

Here's my take on the math wars, and Alfie Kohn's article answers the question: What works better than traditional math instruction?

Columnists are not Journalists and (most) Politicians are not teachers

Staples is a columnist -- which is not the same as a journalist, and I fear that too many people don't understand the difference.

He is not required to check his biases or opinions at the door -- in fact, as a columnist,  he has a better chance of selling newspapers and collecting page-views online with his biases and opinions fully intact. Staples is biased because that is his job.

Research isn't sexy and it doesn't sell unless it's accompanied by sensationalism, and when it comes to sensationalism, Staples sells the Wildrose. Making claims that teachers are no longer teaching children basic arithmetic may make for a snappy headline and a wedge issue to gain cheap political points for the next election but it couldn't be further from the truth.

As a side note, when I tried to share my math post with Bruce McAllister on his Facebook page, he deleted it and blocked me. You'd think that the opposition party would have a keen sense of appreciation for opposition, but I guess not.

"I wish a columnist and politician with no teaching experience would just
 come in and tell me how to teach," said no teacher ever.

And yet Staples isn't always wrong -- he knows just enough about education to get in trouble. His columns are filled with half-truths that are supported by cherry picked research, revisionist history and preconceived notions. He props up math PhDs, engineers, testing consultants, bureaucrats and others who have expertise in areas other than teaching young children math.

Canadians love their Olympians, but nobody confuses a hockey players' expertise for a rhythmic gymnastics coach. Similarly, a PhD in mathematics or engineering is not a PhD in early childhood development, psychology or math education.

Mathematicians are not (necessarily) Math Teachers

The best math teachers understand math and how children learn math -- these are two different skills. It is irresponsible to simply assume that someone who is good at math knows anything about how to teach it.
Just because you know how to skate or shoot a puck doesn't mean you have a clue how to properly teach young children how to skate or shoot. If you want to coach organized hockey in Canada, you are required to be educated through a certification process. One expectation is for coaches to learn the content of hockey, and another expectation is to learn how to teach children to skate and shoot.

The teaching part is so important that even if you played hockey at a high level, you would still be required to take the certification program. Knowing how to play hockey or how to do math is necessary but not sufficient for coaching or teaching -- this is why we have coaching and teaching certification programs.

Getting advice on how to teach or play hockey from someone who has never taught or played hockey is kind of like getting advice from a virgin on how to get laid. Opinion needs to be based on experience and expertise -- Staples and the Wildrose have neither.

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for columnists and politicians -- what I'm saying is that columnists and politicians need to be kept in their place, because when David Staples and the Wildrose confuse having an interest in education with being experts, they mislead people.

Here are the math posts Wildrose education critic Bruce McAllister deleted from his Facebook page

When I shared my blog post on the nuances of the math wars on Wildrose Education Critic Bruce McAllister's Facebook page, he deleted it and blocked me.

I'm not the only one.

Dave Martin is a high school math teacher and he too had his math post deleted from McAllister's Facebook page. Dave has his masters in mathematics and blogs regularly about teaching math.

Why is McAllister and the Wildrose deleting and blocking math teachers comments from his Facebook page?

Of course McAllister and the Wildrose can choose to run their Facebook accounts in any way they like but it is dishonest to then say that they are listening to Albertans.

There are many more Alberta teachers who have written about math education, and you can check out some of those posts here. 

I can't share them with Bruce McAllister because he blocked me, but maybe you could.

"Old" and "New" math

There's a lot of talk about "new" math and "old" math.

If I had to distill the math wars down to a simple idea, I would probably say that constructivist (new) math calls for an increase emphasis on understanding while simultaneously calling for a decrease emphasis on direct instruction of facts and algorithms.

The math wars get heated when critics come to see these changes to mean an elimination of basic skills and precise answers.

I would like to address three frequently asked questions about constructivist math:

Math hasn't changed and neither have kids, so why are we changing how we teach math?

Maybe math and children haven't changed, but our understanding for how children learn math is more sophisticated than generations ago.

Memorization is important and it is a very real product of learning, but memorization is not the primary purpose. Memorization is something that happens because children learn and understand mathematics first.

In math there is one right answer. Doesn't this new math just confuse kids and convince them to hate it?

Let's not pretend that traditional math instruction didn't confuse and turn a lot of students off of math. When adults think back on their schooling, it's easy to succumb to something called Nostesia which is a hallucinogenic mixture of 50% nostalgia and 50% amnesia which distorts rational thinking.

I remember dividing fractions. I was told to flip the second fraction and then multiply. It was a trick that enabled me to get high scores on tests. To this day, I have absolutely no idea why I flip the second fraction and multiply. This felt like magic when it should have been math.

If we want to confuse and turn students off math, I can think of no better strategy than to make math a ventriloquist act where children are merely told the most efficient ways of getting the right answer. When students are simply told the most efficient way of getting the answer, they get in the habit of looking to the adult or the book instead of thinking things through.

Canada's ranking on international tests like PISA are dropping. Doesn't this mean we should go back to basics and traditional math?

Since 2009, Alberta has dropped from 9th to 10th place in world rankings. A 2 per cent drop in our raw scores on math over two years has led to hysteria. The sky is not falling. It's also important to note that the children who wrote the 2012 PISA test had "old" math for their first seven years of school and only 3 years of "new" math.

My point is not to indict "new" or "old" math. There are many variables that may be responsible for the score changes. One factor is class sizes are growing. Since 2009, Alberta has added 41,000 new students and only 106 teachers.

Too many people confuse causation and correlation in an attempt to draw convenient conclusions that they simply can't prove. No one can prove that the change in PISA scores were because of teacher instruction. For example, we know that the strongest predictor of student performance on achievement tests is socio-economic status.

By idolizing PISA rankings, we risk chasing after Asian countries who achieve high scores with very different priorities and questionable means. PISA envy can lead us to aspire to be more like top-ranking Asian education systems even though those same Asian countries are desperate to reform their schools to look more like ours.

The math wars, like all wars, are ultimately destructive. Let's keep in mind that too many of us merely endured math or flat out hated it. Either way, it's safe to say that not enough of us loved it.

And we aren't going to get more children to love math by pretending that school already doesn't have enough lectures, direct instruction, worksheets, textbooks, tests and memorization.

This is a shorter version of a longer post that I wrote on the math wars here.

Return of the Math Wars

The math wars are heating up in Canada.

First, some background: 

The math wars are nothing new. Some could argue they are timeless. Others might say they started in the late 90s when the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) published Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics which "called for more emphasis on conceptual understanding and problem solving informed by a constructivist understanding of how children learn."

If I had to distill the math wars down to a simple idea, I would probably say that constructivist math calls for an increase emphasis on understanding while simultaneously calling for a decrease emphasis on direct instruction of facts and algorithms. The math wars get heated when critics come to see these changes to mean an elimination of basic skills and precise answers. 

Let's run through some frequently asked questions from critics of constructivist math:

Math hasn't changed and neither have kids, so why are we changing how we teach math?

The argument isn't necessarily that math or children have changed, but that our understanding for how children learn math has evolved. Decades ago, when we embraced behaviourism and psychometric tests, education moved from an art to a science that said knowledge is acquired by internalization from reinforcement. Behavioural mathematics is about drill and reinforcement and might be summarized as all about teaching mathematics at students.

In his book The Glass Wall: Why Mathematics Can Seem Difficult, Frank Smith writes:

The constructivist stance is that mathematical understanding is not something that can be explained to children, nor is it a property of objects or other aspects of the physical world. Instead, children must "reinvent" mathematics, in situations analogous to those in which relevant aspects of mathematics were invented or discovered in the first place. They must construct mathematics for themselves, using the same mental tools and attitudes they employ to construct understanding of the language they hear around them. 

Maybe math and children haven't changed, but our understanding for how children learn math is more sophisticated than generations ago. Jean Piaget was an epistemologist who studied the nature and origins of knowledge, and his 60 years of research tells us that children learn mathematics by constructing them from the inside, with the artful (and scientific) guidance of a teacher and their peers. Constructivist math is less about teaching math at students and more about math learned by students.

Behaviourism and Piaget's Constructivism are both scientific theories that
have been verified all over the world. An interesting phenomenon in a scientific
revolution is that while the new theory makes the old one obsolete,
the old theory remains true within a limited scope. While Piaget's theory can explain
 everything behaviourism can explain, behaviourism cannot explain children's
acquisition of knowledge in a broader, deeper sense. Piaget's constructivism
goes beyond the primitive theory of behaviourism by encompassing it.

Memorization is important and it is a very real product of learning -- but memorization is not the primary purpose. Memorization is something that happens because children learn and understand mathematics first. Winning is an important part of sports, but we don't teach kids how to win -- we teach them how to play. Like winning, memorization has its place, but we need to keep them in their place. Like winning, memorization becomes ubiquitous because it is a feature of learning and understanding.

For more on what works better than traditional math instruction, check out Alfie Kohn's article on math.

In math there is one right answer. Doesn't this fuzzy math just confuse kids and convince them to hate it?

First of all, let's not pretend that traditional math instruction didn't confuse and turn a lot of students off of math. (Full disclosure: I grew up with traditional math instruction that included memorizing my times-tables and Mad Minutes! and I learned that I was terrible at math and hated it.) We have to be careful that our knee-jerk reaction to change isn't an act of Nostesia: a hallucinogenic mixture of 50% nostalgia and 50% amnesia that distorts rational thinking.

When my friend Dave Martin tells people that he is a high school math teacher with his Masters in Mathematics, people look at him like he's left-over mashed potatoes -- most people can't imagine why Dave would put himself through such needless torture. We have generations of adults who have graduated from traditional math instruction who break into a cold sweat when confronted with long division. For too many students, the extent of their enthusiasm for math climaxes when they are told they only have to do the odd questions. (Listen to Dave Martin debate math on CBC here.)

As for right answers, there is only one right answer if we limit ourselves to asking questions that have only one right answer, such as 4 + 3. Some of the most provocative questions that hook students' curiosity are questions that have no one right answer, such as how much does it cost to redesign your bedroom.

One of my favourite elementary math questions comes from Constance Kamii's book Young Children

Constance Kamii's three books on
Young Children Reinvent
Arithmetic are must-reads.

Reinvent Arithmetic:

Grandpa said he grew up in a house where there were 12 feet and one tail. Who could have lived with grandpa?

I like this kind of question because there are of course right answers, but there isn't one right answer. I also like it because it allows the children to construct mathematics out of the necessity of their reality. Constructivist teachers create questions, projects and games that give children the opportunity to invent arithmetic out of their reality.

It might defy common sense, but teaching children algorithms and tricks before they've had a chance to construct them for themselves actually sabotages and confuses children. Kamii writes:

It took centuries for mathematicians to invent, or construct, “carrying” and “borrowing.” When we teach these algorithms to children without letting them go through a left-to-right process, we are requiring them to skip a step in their development.

For generations, math students have asked out of frustration, "when will I ever use this?" To be clear, I'm not suggesting that everything in mathematics should be reduced to real-life application -- the significance of mathematics should not merely rest on its practical value; and yet, I would like to hear students say they use math to solve problems and understand the world rather than just to complete the odd questions from the textbook or worksheet.

I still remember being taught how to divide fractions in junior high. I was told to flip the second fraction and then multiply. It was a trick that enabled me to get high scores on the tests.

Here's the problem...

To this day, I have absolutely no idea why I flip the second fraction and multiply. I have no idea what the mathematical reasoning is. I can get the right answer on the test, but there is nothing mathematical about my (lack of) understanding for dividing fractions. If we want to confuse and turn students off of math, I can think of no better strategy than to make math a ventriloquist act where children are merely told the most efficient ways of getting the right answer. This is mindless math mimicry.

Graphics like this from Alberta's
 Wildrose Party is an effort to turn
 pedagogy into cheap political points.

The temptation to teach children carrying and borrowing as soon as possible comes from the need for efficiency, but this reminds me of what Martin Luther King Jr. said:

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

If a teacher is provided the appropriate professional development and they understand the theory behind Jean Piaget's constructivism, then this "new" math actually reflects the very essence of how people learned arithmetic before we had all these tricks and algorithms - essentially making this "new" math a very "old" math.

Canada's rankings on international tests like PISA are dropping. Doesn't this mean we should go back to basics and traditional math teaching.

PISA's rankings on their own are useless. If we focus too hard at the competitive rankings, and reduce the point of school to "test scores are low, make them go up", we risk ignoring the real lessons of PISA.

Corporate Reformers in the United
States use infographics like this to
encourage people to focus on
meaningless competitive rankings
while ignoring the real lessons
of PISA.

The real lessons from PISA are found from researching how each nation achieved their results and then assessing their methods via ethical criteria that is independent of their results. Things go very wrong when we allow education policy to be driven by circular logic: define effective nations as those who raise test scores, then use test score gains to determine effective nations. (Things go equally wrong when standardized tests move from a means to measuring education to the purpose of education.)

Since 2009, Alberta has dropped from 9th to 10th place in world rankings. Jonathan Teghtmeyer writes: 

A 2 per cent reduction in our raw score on math over a period of three years led to ministerial handwringing, parents initiating petitions, newspaper columnists launching crusades and CEOs descending from on high to chastise teachers.

It's important to also note that the children who wrote the 2012 PISA test had the old traditional math curriculum for their first 7 years of school and only 3 years with new curriculum. To be clear, this doesn't prove that "old" or "new" math is responsible for the change in PISA scores -- there are too many other variables, including other in-school factors, out of school factors and unexplained variations. When I take my umbrella to work it rains, but that doesn't mean my umbrella caused the rain. Too many people confuse causation and correlation in an attempt to draw convenient conclusions that they simply can't prove. No one can prove that the change in PISA scores were because of teacher instruction.

PISA's 2012 rankings show Finland has been replaced at the top with a handful of Asian countries (and cities). By idolizing the rankings, people might drop Finland like a hot-potato to chase after Asian countries who achieve their high scores with very different priorities and questionable means.

PISA envy can lead us to aspire to be more like top-ranking East Asian education systems even though East Asian education systems are desperate to reform their schools to look more like ours. Yong Zhao writes:

While the East Asian systems may enjoy being at the top of international tests, they are not happy at all with the outcomes of their education. They have recognized the damages of their education for a long time and have taken actions to reform their systems. Recently, the Chinese government again issued orders to lesson student academic burden by reducing standardized tests and written homework in primary schools. The Singaporeans have been reforming its curriculum and examination systems. The Koreans are working on implementing a “free semester” for the secondary students. Eastern Asian parents are willing and working hard to spend their life’s savings finding spots outside these “best” education systems. Thus international schools, schools that follow the less successful Western education model, have been in high demand and continue to grow in East Asia. Tens of thousands of Chinese and Korean parents send their children to study in Australia, the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. It is no exaggeration to say that that the majority of the parents in China would send their children to an American school instead of keeping them in the “best performing” Chinese system, if they had the choice.

If we change how we teach math, doesn't this mean our children will get a fundamentally different education than we got?

Yes.

If we want school to improve, then we have to allow it to change.

The nature of society's first reaction to changes
to school is resistance. It takes time for us to give
up our vested interest in our old ways of thinking.

People who argue that school doesn't need to improve (or should just go back to basics) are no different than a commissioner of the patent and trademark office resigning because everything that can be invented has been invented. If we are not careful, blind self-justification can mislead us to believe that the here and now is as good as it gets. Wishing tomorrow to be just like yesterday won't make today a better place.

Don't get me wrong. Change for the sake of change is no better than tradition for the sake of tradition. But let's keep in mind that too many of us merely endured math or flat out hated it -- I think it's safe to say that not enough of us loved it.

And we aren't going to get more children to love math (or school in general) by pretending that school already doesn't have enough lectures, direct instruction, worksheets, textbooks and memorization.