The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
Tyler often insists that, appearances notwithstanding, he’s constantly popularizing free-market ideas. People just have to read him carefully and in the proper frame of mind.
I habitually insist that this isn’t good enough. Either you popularize your point bluntly and clearly, or you fail to popularize.
After rehashing this argument this morning, I ran back to his office and declaimed the following paragraph from educational psychologist Douglas Detterman, quoted in Robert Haskell’s Transfer of Learning. When Detterman began teaching…
I thought it was important to make things as hard as possible for students so they would discover the principles for themselves. I thought the discovery of principles was a fundamental skill that students needed to learn and transfer to new situations. Now I view education, even graduate education, as the learning of information. I try to make it as easy for students as possible. Where before I was ambiguous about what a good paper was, I now provide examples of the best papers from past classes. Before, I expected students to infer the general conclusion from specific examples. Now I provide the general conclusion and support it with specific examples. In general, I subscribe to the principle that you should teach people exactly what you want them to learn in a situation as close as possible to the one in which the learning will be applied. I don’t count on transfer and I don’t try to promote it except by explicitly pointing out where taught skills may be applied.
Emphasis added for self-referential reasons.
The post appeared first on Econlib.
You’ve told us what Detterman thinks but, uncharacteristically, you haven’t offered any reason we should agree with him. I’m open to being persuaded, but I’d like to be persuaded.
I don't like Detterman's philosophy of teaching at all. My style of teaching is based around the metaphors of a builder constructing a house or a mechanic fixing a machine. I fancy myself as the old hand while they are my young apprentices. I show them what tools are available and some of the things they can do. As those tools were handed to me by my elders i feel an obligation to hand them on intact to the youngsters, along with a few more I have picked up and cobbled together along the way.
"...teach people exactly what you want them to learn in a situation as close as possible to the one in which the learning will be applied."
This just looks like indoctrination and a man trying to replicate his own mind. There is no way we can know what enemies they will face and battles they will have to fight in the future, the best we teachers can do is try to make sure they don't have to face them unarmed.