Bausell - Too simple to fail: a case for educational change

TOO SIMPLE TO FAIL

A Case for Educational Change

R. BARKER BAUSELL, PH.D.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bausell, R. Barker, 1942
Too simple to fail : a case for educational change / R. Barker Bausell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-19-974432-9
1. Effective teaching. 2. Motivation in education.
3. TeachersConduct of life. I. Title.
LB1025.3.B3894 2010
371.207dc22

2010014549

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1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

Dedicated to

Nellie B. Bausell

Rufus B. Bausell

Devoted Parents and

Great Elementary School Teachers

INTRODUCTION
Obsolete from Every Perspective

CHAPTER 1
The Science of Learning

CHAPTER 2
Dueling Theories

CHAPTER 3
Dueling Political Perspectives

CHAPTER 4
The Theory of Relevant Instructional Time

CHAPTER 5
The Science of What Could Be

CHAPTER 6
The Theoretical Importance of Tutoring and the Learning Laboratory

CHAPTER 7
Demystifying the Curriculum

CHAPTER 8
Using Tests Designed to Assess School-based Learning

CHAPTER 9
11 Strategies for Increasing School Learning

CHAPTER 10
Toward a More Focused Science of Education

CHAPTER 11
Implications for Reducing Racial Disparities in School Learning

CHAPTER 12
Getting There From Here

I would like to thank my graduate advisor and collaborator, William B. Moody, for giving me the opportunity to conduct much of the research that, decades later, largely informed the theory of school learning introduced here. Appreciation is also extended to Jodi Narde (Assistant Editor at Oxford) and Jais Alphonse (Project Manager) for their competence and conscientiousness in smoothly guiding the production process to fruition. The book was greatly improved by Marion Osmuns sage advice in helping me to shape its direction (and for reviewing multiple versions) before encouraging me to submit it to Oxford University Press. And finally a special acknowledgment to my editor, Abby Gross, for her unwavering support, enthusiasm, and belief in the importance of the project.

Thirty-five students sit facing a single teacher. The teacher has just provided a brief but coherent introduction to a new topic, but one portion of her class couldnt follow what she was saying because they have had too little previous instruction on the subject at hand. Another portion of the class is terminally bored because they had previously learned 90% of everything the teacher said (or will say during the upcoming school year). A third contingent is distracted by two misbehaving boys seated at the rear of the room.

Recognizing these problems, and hoping to reinforce the main points of her lecture, she reseats the two boys on opposite sides of the room and has all the students open their textbooks to read the same page. Unfortunately, the same part of her class who couldnt follow her lecture, along with a significant portion of the students who were distracted, also has trouble reading the textbook. And of course the students who already knew what she was talking about already know everything contained on that particular page in their textbook.

Sensing that something is amiss, the teacher decides to vary her routine a bit and have everyone come to the front of the room and sit on the floor surrounding the chalkboard. Following a few minutes of jostling and confusion, the class then watches a student attempt to solve a math problem based upon what has just been taught and read about (by some). This particular student fails miserably and cant follow the teachers attempts to help him discover his error. The remainder of the class isnt at all interested in this process since some of them would have never made such an egregious mistake, some of them cant follow the teachers explanation, and some simply arent paying attention.

Later, with the students back at their desks, the teacher poses a question to the class on the topic. Some students raise their hand whether they know the answer or not; some wave their arms frantically because they are sure they have the correct answer (or simply want the attention); and everyone else waits for either the correct or the incorrect answer, or pays more attention to the myriad other competing activities that are constantly going on in the classroom, somewhat analogous to a cocktail party in which we stand in a crowded room with sounds and conversations going on all around us and must decide to what we will direct out attention and to what we will only pretend to do so.

What these and most other classroom instructional activities have in common is their mind-boggling inefficiency, the amount of time they consume, and the fact that at any given point in time only a portion of the students involved will be actually attending to themeither because the instruction isnt keyed to their particular needs or they are free to attend to competing activities that they find more interesting. And as if all of this were not enough, the teacher herself is most likely ill trained for her job. She probably graduated from a university-based school of education, which may have been staffed by faculty who knew very little about how to maintain order in a public school classroom, make instruction relevant for as large a percentage of such a classroom as possible, foster learning under typical classroom conditions, or even how to teach the types of content she is now charged with covering. And if teaching children to read is part of our teachers duties, she may have never even been given a cursory lesson on basic phonics instruction. In fact, it is possible that this teacher may never have enrolled in a single course that actually prepared her to teach children to read, to write, or to understand mathematicsperhaps because her faculty were never taught that themselves. An accident of history, perhaps, due to the disciplines early thinkers (such as Herbert Spencer, John Dewey) who were less concerned about increasing the amount students learned than they were about the philosophical and social implications of schooling. Or, of later popular theorists such as Jean Piaget, whose work would ultimately wind up having no recognizable application to classroom instruction.