Silly History Lessons from Britain

A great post here:

Here is list of the top ten inane history lessons I have encountered in two years as a history teacher. I may add, these were all pitched at pupils between the ages of 11 and 16:

1. Study the Battle of Hastings through re-enacting it on a field with softballs.
2. Study the Doomsday Book through completing a survey of pupils’ possessions in the classroom.
3. Study King John through composing a song defending his kingship, in response to ‘The Phoney King of England’, a song from a Disney cartoon.
4. Spend three lessons making castles out of cardboard boxes.
5. Study Henry VII by asking ‘Was Henry Tudor a Gangster?’.
6. Study the marriages of Henry VIII by role-playing an episode of Blind Date.
7. Make pupils gather under their desks in order to experience life on a slave ship.
8. Study the Industrial Revolution by acting out pitching inventions on Dragon’s Den.
9. Create a facebook page for Adolf Hitler, circa. 1921.
10. Make plasticine models to represent Hitler’s main aims as Führer.

. . .

Aside from their ineffectiveness, what is most disheartening about active teaching methods is that they imply history is insufficiently interesting to be taught in its own right. Many teachers seem to believe that without, games, activities, and contrived ‘contemporary relevance’ history is boring. How can the unfolding story of mankind possibly be boring? A good history teacher makes the story of mankind interesting in and of itself. Those who resort to creating facebook pages, making models, dressing up, cookery classes and Mr Men – and in doing so betray the integrity of their subject – are quite simply cheating.

Genius

The question is why more teachers don’t realize this . . .

“Africa Tissue Box Project”

From a sixth grade classroom in Katy, Texas (a nice suburb of Houston):

Flip Cameras in English (UK)

From the invaluable Scenes from the Battleground blog, a critique of teaching videos held out in the UK as “best practices”:

This one has to be seen to be believed (at least if you are not used to what goes on in schools), we have good practice in English. A subject that, once upon a time, you may have thought had a lot to do with reading and, dare I say it, writing. Not according to OFSTED [Office for Standards in Education]:

. . . Narrator: Underpinning the practice of speaking and listening is an emphasis on collaboration between all students.

Alys Winstanley: We do a lot of group work, a lot of collaborative work. So I think the students are keen to see each other succeed. And they can recognise good work when they see it… I think collaborative work is really important in getting that positive supportive atmosphere between students.

Teacher: We have found as a pattern that boys like to be up out of their seats. They like to have the freedom to be trusted. Learning beyond the classroom which is a Key Stage 3 term is something that we’ve really sort of taken and run with in the English Department here

Narrator: The use of flip cameras has proved to be a key tool in drawing students, especially boys, in to the process of learning.

Of course, there will be those who watch this and will be baffled as to what’s wrong with any of this. If I was an expert in English teaching I’d know that having a chat and filming themselves with flip cameras (according to one of the teachers this is “essential in all English departments”) was actually the key to effective teaching. Perhaps, when a GCSE English exam can involve analysing reality TV or an interview with Lady Gaga this sort of thing can contribute to getting qualifications. But can we at least consider the possibility that this isn’t what should be accepted as “good practice” for all schools to follow?

Comments Inspired by the Cartoon Below

This:

My oldest child had group projects in which the entire period was spent arguing whether the members’ names should go on the top of the page, in the space labeled, “name.“

This:

Please, triple it for those projects done outside of school; scheduling and transportation are nightmares. One MS teacher told me that she used to love group projects and assigned lots of them – until her child had one and she saw all of the problems at first hand. She never assigned another one. They’re unfair, they’re huge time sinks, they’re usually of dubious academic value, they usually emphasize arts and crafts far beyond the reasonable and they positively encourage cliques and bullying. Particularly in the heterogeneous, mainstreamed classroom, they specifically disadvantage the lower-ability, the shy, the ASD kids, the ADD/ADHD and any kid who is “different”; the most socially adept or powerful are able to create classroom hell for the lower-status kids.

This:

The motivation for all these projects seems to originate from the misconceptions that educators have of teamwork in the “real world”. Teaching is among the most solitary of jobs so teachers are by far the least likely to have any experience in this realm.

This:

Almost every discussion I’ve had with fellow profs on this topic has turned to the bitterness we feel having been made to do group work – it seems there was a large number of “social engineer” teachers out there who somehow believed the slackers would straighten up and fly right if they were just put in a group with a diligent student. No, more likely the diligent student did most of the work and silently resented the slackers.

This:

Some teachers deliberately create groups where someone will do no work. My DD had a MS science teacher like that; it was a mixed class that had a few honors kids (all-honors classes were full), most regular and a few spec ed. The teacher assigned the groups and the honors kids were always given a spec ed kid who cried and threw tantrums if asked to do ANYTHING. After a semester of this, the honors kids asked for her to be reassigned, the teacher refused, one of the kids accused the teacher of not wanting to deal with her himself and the teacher agreed. He was being paid to deal with her; her classmates weren’t. He was an awful teacher, attitude and content-wise, and the projects were a waste of time.

This:

I hated group projects for all the same reasons that others have already stated (i.e., slackers getting a free ride), but believe it or not, things sometimes go the other way, too: When I was in fifth grade I was in a small group of advanced readers that had been assigned to read “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” (gag, I know) and then create a filmstrip on it. I got stuck with two boys who hogged the drawing of practically the entire strip, and they deigned to let me illustrate one half of a slide or some such minuscule portion of the strip. The teacher ended up giving me a poor grade for my “lack of participation,” never taking into account the fact that I had been shut out by a couple of forceful personalities. That was forty years ago, but I still remember the injustice of it all.

A pox on all group projects.

Great Cartoon

Via the Apartment 11d blog:

This High School Student Wasn’t Happy

about an assigned project (language alert):

Basically, this thread is about stupid projects you’ve been assigned. I’ll start by telling one i’ve been given today.

Today, my stupid, mentally unstable History teacher had us do a fucking elementary school project. We were supposed to build a castle out of cardboard boxes. This sounds like something you’d give to a 4th or 5th grade class. Hell, I actually was assigned such a project back then. Definitely not something you’d give to a classroom of 9th and 10th grade students. How are we even supposed to get this trash to school?

In other words, i’m prolly not doing this thing.

He drew this response from someone else:

One of my final projects in school, in my English class had to do with the book, Invisible Man. We first had to write an essay about what we basically thought the main character was. We had to describe him basically. And along with that was a collage that was supposed to basically be the visual version of the essay. We had to go through magazines, cut out pics that we thought described the main character and post them on a poster so that it made a collage. Pretty creative project, huh?
Well, being the person I am, in the essay I decided to say that Invisible Man couldn’t be described, that he was some sort of enigma. People who’ve read this book will probably be able to agree with me because if you read the book, you’ll be able to see that the main character always changes who he is. At one point, he is an ass-kissing college student, at another, he his a some sort of hobo wandering aimlessly, and then he turns into some sort of leader, and some other things too. Rather than actually say all of those things, I thought that saying that he was just simply a mystery and truly unidentifiable would be the best way to put it. I mean hell, that’s creative and a hell of a way to think outside of the box.

So that’s what I said in the essay. On the collage, I put nothing on it. Why? Because like I said, he is unidentifiable, and there was no use trying to identify him. So I turned in the collage not blank, but full of unidentifiable objects (that’s the way I saw it at least).

A couple of days later, my teacher told me that she understood why I did what I did, but “it’s kinda hard to grade a collage with nothing on it.”

So basically, she knows that I’m thinking outside the box, but it’s not worth a decent grade.

What did I learn that day? Don’t do unconventional things and expect a conventional result.

This Mom Needed Advice

because her daughter wouldn’t do projects. Part of the mom’s plea for advice:

I need some help, Moms! My 11 year old daughter refuses to do school projects. She is in 5th grade & does her classwork & homework just fine, but will not do her projects! She has been turning them in late all year long & I always end up doing a lot of the work just to make sure it gets done. I’ve talked to her teacher & she has made accomodations for her as she is ADD (just attention no hyper). She is on meds & it does help her stay on task when doing things but it’s not a magic pill that gets her to do something she plain out doesn’t want to do. I’ve punished her, yelling to the point where I’m crying from frustration & she’s crying because she doesn’t like to be yelled at, taken away priveleges, tried reward systems, etc. Nothing seems to work! She already stays in at recess to work on them but I feel that’s not fair to the teacher, or the other kids that do the work at home like they’re supposed to. At this rate she is never going to survive in Middle School, as I’m sure they won’t accomodate her to the point that her teacher now does & I don’t even want to think about High School. I’m at my witts end & I don’t know how to get her to realize that just like homework & classwork it needs to be done. She says it’s stupid.

Lots of people give this mother advice, mainly consisting of letting the daughter experience failing grades as the consequence of not doing projects.

What no one says: maybe the daughter is exactly right that her assignments are stupid. No one questions the sanity of a schooling system in which children are routinely asked to do inane projects on the pretext that it’s going to benefit them.

This Parent Isn’t Happy

about school projects. Enjoy a rant here:

. . . I suddenly realized that my Mom wasn’t born with this science project talent. Rather she developed it by doing all my projects throughout elementary school. Is this the real reason that we have projects? So parents can learn how to do projects for their kids. Science fair night at Buttonball School in Glastonbury will likely be nothing more than three dozen parents all looking at the projects and seeing who’s the most talented parent. Which started me thinking about some school projects that I’d like to do…
…

Here are some science projects that I’d like to see:

How quickly would the schools stop assigning independent projects if, as parents, we came up with some real life projects. The type of project that actually sheds light on how parent’s are responsible for almost all projects – and NOT their kids.

These could also be projects that are “fun” for parents.

Teacher and Administrator Pay Analysis: Compute the true value of teacher pay by annualizing it with vacations, summers off, half days and shortened days factored in. Most of this information is freely available from the town. Imagine the look on the face of your child’s teacher as he walks by your display and spots his annualized salary – increased for time off, in service, summer vacations – on display for all to see.

Sure, teachers have tough jobs. So do most of us. Too bad I don’t get out of work on a regular basis at 1:05. How cool would this science project be?

Mr. Smith’s Annual Salary – $50,000

Mr. Smith’s Annual Salary $50,000 + value of early dismissals $10,000 + summer vacation $20,000 + school vacations $2,000 = $82,000

From a Facebook friend . . .

We just finished [daughter's] first grade Christmas Tradition poster. Once again more effort went into this project than many of my college assignments, but I really outdid myself this time. I wonder if it sent the wrong message when she went to re-arrange something and I shouted out at her to stop messing up my work?

Some educators seem oblivious to the fact that even if making a poster had much educational value, that value is going to the parents most of the time, not the children.