Education Insidious Terms and Phrases (E. D. Hirsch Jr.)

Education Terminology Every Parent Must Understand

This page offers a condensation of the Critical Guide to Terms and Phrases, an appendix in the book: The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them by E. D. Hirsch. The condensation was produced by the Texas Education Consumers Association for their web site, which is currently down for renovation.

Table of Contents

• Summary
• Terms Grouped by Themes and Their Supporting Phrases 

 Summary
Teachers and administrators use jargon which is sometimes unfamiliar to parents. When faced with strange jargon, parents are reluctant to ask questions or debate educators for fear of sounding ignorant. When parents do gather the courage to argue, educators sometimes use their jargon against us. For example, if you were to express a desire for traditional teaching methods, the teacher may use perjorative terminology to thwart your complaints. You may be told that traditional education is "just" drill and kill or rote-learning. The implication is that you are misguided, ignorant of childrens' developmental processes, and perhaps even mean-spirited. Then the teacher tells you: "We are a child-centered school, so we do not use those old-fashioned methods anymore because research has shown that our child-friendly methods are better."
This use of jargon implies that the teacher cares more about your child's education than you do. After all, the teacher has been trained to use the most progressive methods available, so his or her knowldge on this subject shouldn't be questioned. What the teacher neglects to tell you is that the "research" she refers to is not necessarily supported by mainstream scientific inquiry (i.e., published in scientific journals within a specific discipline such as psychology). 


By using terminology that has either negative - or positive - sounding connotations, educators can succeed in silencing your opposition, simply because you don't understand the meaning of the words and phrases. Therefore, you should arrive at the teacher conference knowing the language teachers speak, just as you would have to do if you visited a foreign country. 


The following terminology is quoted and summarized from The Schools We Need & Why We Don't Have Them (1996), which was written by Dr. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., and published by Doubleday (1-800-323-9872). The publisher describes the book as follows:

"As renowned educator and author E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues in The Schools We Need, in disdaining content-based curricula for abstract--and discredited--theories of how a child learns, the ideas uniformly taught by our schools have done terrible harm to America's students. Instead of preparing our children for the highly competitive, information-based economy in which we now live, our school practices have severely curtailed their ability, and desire, to learn."

We are grateful to Dr. Hirsch for providing readers with a glossary such as this in his book. By doing so, he has given education consumers a powerful arsenal for defense.
In addition to this book, Dr. Hirsh has established the Core Knowledge Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to excellence and fairness in early education.



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Terms Grouped by Themes and
Their Supporting Phrases


(quoted from pgs. 240-241)

Tool Conception of Education:

• accessing skills
• critical-thinking skills
• higher-order skills
• learning to learn
• lifelong learning
• metacognitive skills
• problem-solving skills
• promise of technology

 

Romantic Developmentalism:

• at their own pace
• child-centered schooling
• developmentally appropriate
• factory-model schools
• individual differences
• individualized instruction
• individual learning styles
• multiaged classroom
• multiple intelligences
• one size fits all
• student-centered education
• teach the child, not the subject

 

Naturalistic Pedagogy:

• constructivism
• cooperative learning
• discovery learning
• drill and kill
• hands-on learning
• holistic learning
• learning by doing
• open classroom
• multiaged classroom
• project method
• rote learning
• thematic learning
• whole-class instruction
• whole-language instruction

 

Antipathy to Subject-Matter Content:

• banking theory of schooling
• facts are inferior to understanding
• facts are soon outdated
• intellectual capital
• less is more
• mere facts
• rote learning
• textbook learning
• transmission theory of schooling
• teaching for understanding

Antipathy to Testing and Ranking:

• authentic assessment
• competition
• exhibitions
• performance-based assessment
• portfolio assessment 

source : http://www.nychold.com/hirsch-termin.html 

See a more complete version of this Glossary at :  
Hirsch - Critical Guide to Educational Terms and Phrases