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"ALL OUR CHILDREN LEARNING" (BENJAMIN BLOOM).
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Critical review of work on educational reform, role of parents, theory, resource allotment, curriculum, Mastery learning, grading.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Critical review of work on educational reform, role of parents, theory, resource allotment, curriculum, Mastery learning, grading.
Paper Introduction:
Benjamin Bloom's All Our Children Learning: A Primer for Parents, Teachers, and Other Educators is, as its title suggests, a compendium of information and articles by Bloom designed to guide parents in educating their children as much as the children's offical teachers. Beginning with overviews, he then addresses the path from home to school and the home's effect on school, school itself, and the process of evaluation. Bloom, author of Bloom's taxonomy, works at the University of Chicago, where John Dewey established a department of pedagogy as well as what amounted to a school of philosophy. He could thus be expected to propose ideas similar to or in harmony with Dewey's ideas of looser structure, investigation over instruction, and philosophical indeterminism. For the most part, this is the case. The ideas remain interesting; the question is whether they are
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Thereare various methods (stimulated recall, interviews, or questionnaires)"(3). Benjamin Bloom's All Our Children Learning: A Primer for Parents,Teachers, and Other Educators is, as its title suggests, a compendium ofinformation and articles by Bloom designed to guide parents in educatingtheir children as much as the children's offical teachers. Bloom gives some examples of what he means by "innocence" but theeducational example is most relevant. A series of successes, however arranged, would thus not beperceived as arranged but as one's lot in life, and the student may belikely to come to expect success, or maybe even connect it with work. Bloom begins the section on home influence on education with "EarlyLearning in the Home" wherein he states the most profitable educationalinvestment is at the early ages (68). "Introduction to Evaluation." All Our Children Learning: APrimer for Parents, Teachers, and Other Educators. And without sequence thechild does not learn to connect ideas; without connections, the child doesnot learn to think. Anderson's introduction to the section on curriculum describesBloom's attitude toward curriculum: "Bloom believes that importantdifferences exist between curriculum and instruction" (121). Bloom also notes the importance of the first three grades inlearning, accounting for 5 percent of variation in achievement in 12thgrade (1 6). The problem is that what is "known and true" islargely a matter of faith, not fact. New York: McGraw Hill, 1981.Bloom, Benjamin, Ed. Benjamin Bloom. Whatthe student does when the researcher leaves is another matter. The most pervasive and well-knownexample is evolutionism, the hypothesis that one species evolved fromanother, all originating with one spark of spontaneous life. New York: McGraw Hill, 1981.Madaus, George. Workers performed better, the researchers found, because they werewatched. Success encourages; failure breeds despair. In a way, this already is the case in most schools withwhat is called the three, five, or seven step lesson plan. In chapter 13 (245) Bloom states the evaluation changes made at theUniversity of Chicago. Ed. When the first baby-boomers came to school the schools, which should have been checking birthrecords and property sales, were surprised. The only arguments against it are thedifficulty of changing how things are done, yanking resources from thosewho have long received them, and agreeing on new allotment procedures.Bloom, however, even proposes redoing salary schedules to reflect thegreater importance of primary grade teachers. Dave's1963 study which identified variables in the home that determined how muchacademic success was encouraged, covertly or overtly (92-93). Bloom addressed this earlier in the book more cogentlyin calling for more attention on the primary grades than the upper grades;more attention to fostering a love of learning (and success at it) for allstudents of whatever ability instead of focusing on college as a goal.Therefore, the main problem in this section is the simple fact that noidea, no matter how good, even if it is Bloom's, will succeed against theunmotivated student. By nineteen years ofage, the child must leave the high school. Bloom is certain they will work, andmusters enough studies to prove they should at least be implemented, if notwholeheartedly embraced. This belief irritates theteacher because the student does not believe that hard work and studyingwill produce good grades or other forms of success, but that success orfailure happen because they happen to whom they will happen and one cannotchange that. To work with educational lingo, aiming high is pointless if oneuses the same bow. In the 196 s manyhigh schools in California required foreign language instruction forgraduation. This wasdemonstrated when researchers wanted to study the effects of lighting onworker performance. Besides the question of what kind of intellectualdevelopment and which culture, there is the broader problem of overtlyreplacing the home with the school. The theme overall is that of educational reform, as with all suchbooks on education. He notes that "less than a decadeago" the educators concept of the students' capacity for learning wasdifferent, being based on the "bell curve." At the time he wrote (1981) andeven more so now, a teacher is willing to aim for all students mastering asubject, not just most. What does one do when the home/parentculture is contrary to the dominant/school culture, and education is notvalued as such? They installed an independent team of evaluators whoas experts in evaluating would perform this necessary task as well asexperts in teaching teach. They thenshould be acted upon, and Bloom notes they often are not (232). Bloom adds "Undoubtedly it would be best if theintellectual training of the child in the early years could be done in thehome and by the parents. The section "Home and School" deals with the relationshipbetween learning in the home and learning in school; this distinctionindicates that Bloom does not include home schooling in his analysis but isinstead analyzing only the one-to-many ratio of classroom education,principally public education. First,many of the schools these methods were tested at were not the standardpublic school, much less the standard urban public school. However, while formal daycare and nursery schoolattendance has increased, students performance has devolved to the pointwhere the State of California released the April 27, 1995 schoolperformance results which placed California at the bottom. Bloom,author of Bloom's taxonomy, works at the University of Chicago, where JohnDewey established a department of pedagogy as well as what amounted to aschool of philosophy. Secondly, with teachers not immediatelyresponsible for results, students are more easily encouraged to takeresponsibility themselves for their own learning and not look to theteacher approval as the source of their success. They decreased the lighting and workers performedbetter. Anderson continues "curricular changes canbe made without altering instructional methods." However, he notes, newobjectives with old methods simply achieve the old objectives. Class sizes swelled to thirtyor forty students, but administrators were unable to hire enough teachersto compensate and class sizes have remained large since. His first recommendation is to shift resource allotment fromlater to early years, and his arguments for this, in addition to thatmentioned above, are indisputable. Before World WarII the typical class size was about 2 students. Despite the editorial mistake at the bottom of page 89, Bloomsuccessfully conveys the main theme of the second section: "the differencesamong the schools are relatively small when compared to the differencesamong the home environments" (9 ). Indeed, the child who grows upassociating the love and approval of the first adults he or she knows withlearning and education will have a potent desire for learning andeducation. Likewise, the author does not consider the possibility thatstudents simply will not learn because they do not want to, unless someonestands over them constantly. Testing is described, subject taught, students tested. "Introduction to Instruction and CurriculumDevelopment." All Our Children Learning: A Primer for Parents, Teachers,and Other Educators. The ideas remain interesting; the question is whether they areworkable. Mastery learning tries to arrange success, but firstmust arrange participation. Therefore the objective, the"specification," (223f) must be explicit. Bloomhas found that most students can learn at a high level (124) and theevidence for this (and other statements) is referenced on that page. They wereprivate schools such as the experimental school John Dewey started to workout his models at the University of Chicago. NewYork: McGraw Hill, 1981.----------------------- 6 Implicit specifications can bealtered by social or other pressures even without the teacher realizing it.They should be carefully determined, analyzed, and agreed upon. But he has his reasons: "thework of the pupils in these early years must be one of constant success"(1 8). There may be noconnection; Bloom cites studies showing the beneficial effect of earlyschooling on later performance. Bloom notes (137) that Mastery learning not only builds theconfidence of the students by arranging success for him, and that thestudents' ability to learn will be augmented by teaching skills applicablein any subject, but that the students' own mental health will be benefitedby a lower anxiety over something they must do at least until they aresixteen years old. Bloom notes"one method of appraising the level of time-on-task is by observing atvarious intervals whether or not a particular student is overtly engaged inthe learning--" and then "a second method is to determine the extent towhich the student is covertly (in thought) engaged in the learning. Yet, they will remain unadopted until anadministrator perceives that there is no other way out of the mess publicschools have become. There are a few suggestions for obtaining participation by thestudents. "It is likely that speical nursery schools and kindergartenswill need to be organized to provide culturally deprived children with theconditions conducive to their intellectual development and the learning-to-learn stimulation which is now found in the most favorable homeenvironments" (1 6). Here Bloom's analysis is cogent and useful, citing R.H. Madaus states first that evaluation is based on "value" judgments andthe "philosophy" of a school (2 3). Now, despiteevidence on the benefits of smaller class sizes, administrators areunwilling to change what became established by default, even though itclearly does not serve the students well. Anderson then describes how the program of "learning for mastery" canbe implemented within the existing curriculum. Naturally,while the foreign language is best done in the first two years (i.e., asearly as possible) the college question is usually decided in the last twoyears. There are also many studies on theemotional and affective effect of parental absence on the child'sdevelopment. In the 197 s, many of these high schools decided to leave theforeign language question to the individual student to determine on thebasis of whether he or she was going to college or not and which one: theUniversities of California required two years for admission. Many differentforms of evaluation were used to more thoroughly assess actual learning. Despite newcurriculum, how well the child learns depends on how well the child istaught. Public schools are operated by peopleso they operate the same way. Objectives andgoals comprise the curriculum, along with the material assembled toimplement them. While the prescriptive element clearly is oriented towards the publicschool, the primary fault of the models is the experimental element. For the most part, this isthe case. The problem here is that the researcher is making the student aware ofbeing watched by a lot of adults who will be quizzing him on what wastaught. The one who believes in God will proposea model that includes the supernatural in its operation (such as prayer)while the evolutionist will deny the supernatural exists. They increased the lighting in the work area andworkers performed better. All Our Children Learning: A Primer for Parents,Teachers, and Other Educators. Beginning withoverviews, he then addresses the path from home to school and the home'seffect on school, school itself, and the process of evaluation. Thus, a"systematic ordering" will actually be a systematic elimination of opposingopinions from educational thought and practices. Students were alsofamiliar with the types, forms, and models of evaluations they wouldencounter so they could themselves plan for the evaluation. If forno other reason parents should read this book to know that fact. He states that his main desire is therefore "the systematicordering of our basic knowledge in such a way that what is known and truecan be acted on" (15). Thisphilosophy is necessarily atheistic; Dewey and Bloom believe it and applyit throughout their philosophies. Are more schools and more teachers teaching formastery or are they still teaching with an eye to A, B, C, D, and Fail? Additionally, "instructional changes can be made without makingcurricular alterations" (123). Hiscritique of the current method of specialization by subject and age arguesthat a key ingredient of "sequence" is lacking. The illogic of this situation is not questioned; Bloom's suggestionsare not implemented (except on an individual basis by a teacher who hasread his work.) In a human being, change does not happen unless it is forced or it ischosen, and it is not chosen unless the person perceives the situation asone where there is no other choice. Bloom's prescription from this section begins with the nurseryschools and kindergartens where he sees early childhood educationhappening. Bloom notes the difference is speed, so that given time, all cansucceed. Change has not come except that thoseoperating them believe there is no other way to do things. If they cannot do it adequately, it would appearthat the schools are the most logical social institution to do it." Atleast some parents would dispute the right of government to force its willon the child to the exclusion of their own culture. Havethey been implemented? As already noted, the question of whichvalues and what philosophy will be chosen as the one to guide the childrenopens the can of worms labeled "religion in the schools." More important isthat someone actually is saying as much: no one will dispute that aschool's choices, from curriculum to evaluation, is guided by one or moreperson's beliefs, but many parents do not consciously realize that. The actual implementation of the "learning experiences"(122) is the instruction. This seems obvious, but in fact many teachers state thedesired outcome as "An `A'." Since Bloom wrote this book there has been amovement to specify the objective in each lesson, but the evaluation mustadequately test for this stated objective. Areschools demanding the students rise to higher standards or are schoolslowering standards so that failure is not so evident? Thedifference between success in the few schools and failure in the many,however, is not one particular method or another, but the students'motivation to learn. He describes the programsimply as telling the student what is to be learned and then stating whatthe standard is. He could thus be expected to propose ideas similar toor in harmony with Dewey's ideas of looser structure, investigation overinstruction, and philosophical indeterminism. This isparticularly important when the school's population consists of a culturethat is given to fatalism or superstition wherein a person believes he doesnot have control over what happens to him. This is true, but how much time can be given? An essential difference is that curriculumdevelopment is necessarily long-term planning, while instruction is day-to-day work. The primary revision thatwould coopt student interest is in the fourth section, where Bloom proposesa complete revamping of the assessment methods commonly used in schools. Thus, thewriters of the CTBS, CLAS, SAT, and a host of other standardized tests aremuch more influential than people used to admit. Secondly,when evaluations influence students (grades, promotion, etc.) or teachers(effectiveness, programs, etc.) "then it becomes the basis for decidingwhat is important in the learning process and what is not" (2 4). He notes the scarcity of nurseryschools: "at present, about 2 percent of 4-year-old children are in nurseryschools." One may feel certain to say that this percentage is much largerfourteen years later. The significance of Bloom's suggestions as a whole can be looked atfrom the perspective of the ensuing fourteen years since publication. Second, in any groupexperiment there is the problem of experimenter interference. Bloom notes that Mastery replaces competition withcooperation, but often the element of competition is seen from theteacher's viewpoint, not the student's (135). However, Bloom is often disarminglyself-effacing and willing to include himself in the mistakes that were madein education. Bloom's ideas seem to haveencountered a similar reception. Instead of repeating a grade Bloom proposes "ungraded school." Manyothers have proposed competence based advancement rather than age basedadvancement, but the response is always the fear of harming the child's"socialization." In fact, the primary objection to home-schooling is "Whatabout the child's socialization?" Bloom's focus, however, is the child'seducation, and as he stated in the introduction, his desire to settle onceand for all what educators are doing and what they are not doing. The teacherannounces the lesson each day, and goes through however many details theadministrator has determined are necessary from objective to activity toevaluation. Ed. The student knows someone is watching, does not expect to be ableto slink into the woodwork and hide, and the student pays attention. Bloom speaks of a period of "innocence in education," by which hemeans that educators did not really know much about what they did and howwell it worked. On page 133 he clarifies that "all means the 95percent of students who are not excessively bright (and can learn whateverhappens) nor excessively handicapped (and cannot learn at all.) Previouslysome were even "expected to fail." Causes lay "outside the school's orteacher's responsibility" (17) but there was "equality of opportunity"(18). (The recent furor over theCLAS tests in California did, however, make more people aware of thisinfluence.) The first prescription Bloom makes about evaluation is to specifydesired outcomes. Benjamin Bloom. Anderson suggests a trained tutor: one on one education,essentially (125). In the Introduction Bloom states that how quickly theideas listed here are implemented depends in part on "the public demand forimprovement in school learning" (1). Works CitedAnderson, Lorin W.
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