January+11

Read through the following blog post and respond the question:

// from "The Fischbowl" //

Let me clarify. I'm not asking do you believe in Algebra in the same sense as do you believe in the tooth fairy (full disclosure: I do not). I'll posit that Algebra exists. Rather I'm asking if you believe in Algebra as a separate course/curriculum that we should teach in high school.

After my last post, Dean Shareski wrote a thought-provoking post that asked whether it was possible to offer a customized educational experience in a standards-based system of education.


 * Our current system and structure fights personalized learning with nearly every new policy and protocol it can generate. The system craves standardization while we desperately need customization. These competing ideals butt heads constantly and for those teachers who do believe in personalizing learning, they live in perpetual frustration. . . In the end, without a restructuring of time and current curriculum requirements the best we can hope for is small pockets of success or the .02 percent of students whose passion happens to be trigonometry or Shakespeare.

Dean later acknowledges, however, that while he wants personalization, he also wants students exposed to a broader range of ideas:


 * While I'm busy advocating for changes that might support an education that fuels and fosters students' passions, I worry that we lose sight of what a liberal education is all about. They don't know what they don't know. Providing students with broad experiences that invites them to develop a variety of skills, understand and appreciate diverse perspectives and potentially uncover hidden talents and interests speaks to a fairly well accepted purpose of school. . . If we were truly starting education from scratch today, I can't imagine we'd build the same system we have. There would be lots of discussion as to what types of content all students need. Even if core content and skills could be determined, we'd never teach them all as segmented subjects taught in isolation in 45-minute increments.


 * And therein lies the dilemma - is it possible to provide in a systemic way a customized educational experience for all students that both allows and encourages them to pursue their passions, but also exposes them to the wide range of human endeavors that they may have little or no knowledge about and therefore wouldn't be able to even know if they were passionate about in the first place? **

Based on our review of Differentiated Instruction and what you've learned about Personalized Instruction, post your response to this question in the discussion area and then respond to at least two other people's posts, as well .

 //Full Article: // The Fischbowl: Do You Believe in Algebra?