A News Update from Learning Enhancement Corporation. | | | |
Learning Without Cognition is Like Flying Without Wings
Two recently published books provide fascinating insights into issues that have plagued public education – especially the need to educate children with a broad spectrum of abilities. The first is Let's Kill Dick and Jane by Harold Henderson, the story of Open Court , a publisher of educational curriculum now owned by McGraw Hill. Blouke Carus was the driving force behind Open Court , together with his wife Marianne. Their original inspiration was what they perceived to be the literary and ethical anemia of their son's elementary school textbooks compared to the more rigorous readers of their own early German education. |
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| The second is Building Wings, a first-person account of how Don Johnston founded a highly successful business creating and distributing software and books to help children learn. His success today wouldn't have been easy for his elementary school teachers to predict. In fact, he was 14 years old before he read his first book cover to cover. |  |
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| The two books approach their subject matter completely differently – Henderson from a broad historical perspective appealing to educators, industry players and policy makers – Johnston as a personal reflection appealing most to children with learning issues. But they both underscore, in their separate ways, the enormous challenges inherent in the U.S. objective of educating democratically, and the pitfalls of a one-size-fits-all education system. | ||
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As Henderson points out in Let's Kill Dick and Jane , in 1910 more than half of the students who started in first grade, dropped out by sixth grade. At that time, there were approximately 1.2 million students enrolled in high school. By 1955, there were 6.9 million enrolled in high school. Of the American soldiers who fought in World War I, only 20% had finished eighth grade. In World War II, almost 70% had done so. In other words, the U.S. had begun trying to teach not just the elite, but the large numbers of children “whose families pay little attention to written language.” | |
| The rest of the book traces Blouke Carus's and Open Court 's multi-decade struggle to promote basic improvement in the educational system by developing high-quality reading and math materials. One of the barriers to adoption of those materials was the fact that many students simply didn't come from the kind of background that developed the cognitive skills these high-quality materials assumed. The research work of the time (e.g., Bereiter and Scardamalia) started to point out the deficiencies in both progressive and traditional approaches to education and the importance of intentional cognition – in other words, developing the mental skills needed to learn and to become a more independent learner. Don Johnston, as he tells his story in Building Wings , was a classic example of a student who didn't learn the way his teachers were presenting the material and who needed to develop his own approach to learning. His tales of the embarrassment and shame he felt from not being able to read as his fellow classmates did will resonate with many struggling students. And his ultimate success in conquering those feelings of inadequacy should warm their hearts. Not every child can do what Don Johnston did – that is, figure out how he or she learns – at least, not without some help. But many children who read Johnston 's book will be inspired to try. Reading these books brought to mind a comment made recently by Steve Joel, Superintendent of the Grand Isle Public Schools in Nebraska , who said “Learning without cognition is like flying without wings.” If that is the case, then education is indeed, as the title of Johnston 's book suggests, about building wings. |
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Notes:Don Johnston and Jerry Stemach. Building Wings: How I Made it Through School. Don Jonston Incorporated, 2007. Harold Henderson. Let's Kill Dick and Jane: How the Open Court Publishing Company Fought the Culture of American Education. St. Augustines Press, 2006.
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