Getting to Know the Boston Nannies

The results of this quiz will be emailed to me which will help me understand how my Boston Nannies conceive of education. Could you enter your name below so I know who's who?

Is learning difficult by its very nature?

Yes

Yes, but it doesn't need to be

Should a teacher be a "Sage on the Stage" or a "Guide from the Side"?

A common phrase in modern education is that a teacher should not be a “sage on the stage,” but rather “a guide from the side”. The idea here is that children ought to learn without direction through such things as homework, exams, lectures, note taking, and rote learning. They may need guidance and so teachers are to facilitate learning through fun activities and free-learning and play. Proponents of this idea often describe children as being like flowers which only need sunshine and water to grow. Critics say that intellectual growth is a fight against entropy and is wholly unnatural, it takes hard work to become educated.

Do you think that a teacher should be a sage on the stage or a guide from the side?


From 1-10, how strongly do you align with the "Sage" ideal or "Guide" ideal? Select 1 for "very strongly agree with sage" or 10 for "very strongly agree with guide" and 5 for no preference between the two.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Is the concept of a “canon” of literature outdated in the modern world? To succeed and flourish, do children need to have a solid grounding in the classics from Aristophanes to Zola or are these lessons unhelpful in our day and this is time taken away from more modern subjects?

Yes, I think we need to move past teaching children about these particular books and be open to new books and underappreciated alternatives.

No, I think we need to introduce children to the classics and greats that have been read for centuries.

Should a religious education be conducted from the outside-in, inside-out, or both?

A teacher should stick to teaching facts about religions as they would a science.

Religion cannot be understood until it has been lived. A teacher should teach the religion as though it were true.

Both!

No cheating for this one! In your head: what is 36 x 5? Write down your answer and describe how you worked out your answer.

The traditional method of teaching has been to teach “knowledge” and “facts” but a more modern approach has been to deprioritise these in favour of “skills.”

An example of skills-over-knowledge pedagogy is teaching a student how to look facts up on Google, Wikipedia, or a textbook rather than simply teaching the facts. Another example would be to teach a student how to use a calculator rather than teaching long division.

The argument for this teaching method is that with the internet anyone can access information extremely fast and the need for memorisation has fallen away.

Recent critics have claimed that this gets things the wrong way around. Knowledge begets skills, but skills do not beget knowledge. Which makes more sense to you?

You need to know pure facts and knowledge in order to be skilled in a domain. Knowledge begets skills.

Without the skills required to pick up knowledge, how will you ever be knowledgeable about a domain? Skills beget knowledge.

I don't know.

Rousseau and the Romantic poets believed that children were innocent and free of original sin. Children did not need correction because it was society which introduced evil into their nature as they matured.

The goal of moral education therefore was not to teach children how to be good but rather to adapt institutions (such as the school) so that they did not interfere with the child’s natural development into an adult saint.

	Do you think children are born good or evil? Do they need to be turned into moral adults or are they born good and then corrupted?
From 1-10, how strongly do you align with the "born good" perspective or "born not-good" perspective? Select 1 for "very strongly agree that children are born good" or 10 for "very strongly disagree that children are born good" and 5 for no belief about the innate goodness of children.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Do you think that independent learning in a child is the mark of a good teacher? Is it a mark of a good teacher that they teach less, facilitate more?

A good teacher should be leading children to the right answer in the right way. Perhaps even as efficiently as possible.

A good teacher should be guiding children to the right answer in the way the child finds natural, encouraging independence and a lack of reliance on authority.

You want to teach your student about a famous American novel, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Do you:

Read the book together and then lead a discussion of its contents.

Devise a creative and fun lesson involving fancy dress and acting, concluding by asking the student what they thought of the book and its meaning.

No cheating on the next four questions, OK?

Question 1: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wrote which book under the pseudonym “Publius”?

Question 2: What are the three branches of the US government?

Question 3: Name a poem written by Walt Whitman.

Question 4: Who was Galileo?

The founder of Gallup Polls

The first European to discover the Galapagos Islands

The first person to observe mountains on the moon

Songwriter for various artists including David Bowie

Almost every fact, including the answers to the previous four questions, can be reached by a student on their phone in seconds. Given this, should information memorisation take second place to training in research skills?

Yes, we should teach students skills about researching facts rather than weighing them down with useless amounts of book knowledge.

No, we should teach students facts about the world.

Last question!

Can a child be reasoned into choosing good behaviour for itself? Is it necessary to discipline “bad” behaviour and reward “good” behaviour, or should the child be allowed to discover what goodness is itself?

Children need to have right and wrong explained to them so they can freely make that choice on their own terms.

Children need to be shown right and wrong and not allowed to stray from the straight path.

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