This is my penultimate post on Daisy Christodoulou’s book, Seven Myths About Education. In the previous post, we highlighted the myth that teachers should be teaching transferable skills. Today Christodoulou slaughters another sacred cow in myth 6.
Myth 6: Projects and Activities are the Best Way to Learn
There is a movement in education which frowns upon the compartmentalization of knowledge into subjects and a consequent push for more project-based learning. This has lead to what is called enquiry pedagogy. The goal is to produce more autonomous learners, and the means is project-based learning where ‘real-life’ type projects are given to students. Sounds great. Students are given opportunities to play experts in role play.
Why is this a myth?
First of all, there is a huge difference between experts and novices. Experts have a huge body of background knowledge that is stored in long-term memory. This is available to be called upon when necessary as we have discussed in earlier posts. This body of knowledge in an expert leads to a qualitative difference in thinking between experts and novices. Children do not have this extensive background knowledge, so functioning as an expert in a ‘real-life’ project is an unattainable goal. Christodoulou strongly argues that it is not even a realistic or legitimate aim for secondary school to produce experts, and it is a mistake to look at what experts do and think that is how we produce experts.
So does this mean we don’t believe education is about producing problem-solvers? Of course not. We do want to produce children who are able to solve real-world problems. But how we go about doing this is the key question. Does project-based learning or activities facilitate or hinder our goal? Again, for Christodoulou, the answer is rich knowledge-based instruction. We don’t produce experts by getting them to act as problem-solving experts by doing real-world projects. We set children on the way to being experts by giving them the gift of knowledge.
Christodoulou uses the analogy of training in football to help the reader understand her point. One does not chuck children into 11 a side games. Yes, children play soccer games, but in training, the whole game is broken down into smaller activities like dribbling and tackling, which are practised. This transfers over to the realm of say English. More practice controlling sentences leads to better writing.
An example of what not to do is given in the chapter. Christodoulou mentions the vital importance of getting pupils thinking about the right things. So, for instance, if a teacher were to teach a unit on the Underground Railroad, an activity of backing cookies (perhaps a type of food eaten on the Underground Railroad) would be a failure as a lesson, as it is not an effective way of getting deeper thinking about the Underground Railroad.
The Poison in this Myth
The most iniquitous aspect of this myth is the way it further disadvantages the already disadvantaged. Projects require background knowledge. “Pupils who will do the least badly at such projects are those who have gained background knowledge elsewhere.” This will typically be children from wealthier backgrounds. If we care about aiding students from ‘disadvantaged backgrounds’, the best action we can take, is to give them the requisite knowledge they need.