The thing about this article is that it actually makes a lot of interesting points, but throws in just one that's ridiculous. The whole idea of engagement vs. lecture is interesting, to me.
That's what I found, as well, almost.
I think there is more than one point that is ridiculous, or at least wrong.
The author seems to elevate one learning mode over another. She criticizes the "bank" model, in which teachers impart knowledge to students, who store it and withdraw it at test time. This, she believes, is superior to an educational experience where students cooperate to discover knowledge. She notes that women tend to do better in the cooperative model.
I seriously doubt that's true, in a couple of different ways. First, I think there are certain subjects, especially mathematics but others as well, where the "bank" model really is what works best. If you get a bunch of students together to try and discover how to solve a system of linear equations, you aren't going to stumble on Gaussian elimination. Sometimes, the teacher really does know best, and the best way is to have him present the material, as a right answer, and make himself available for questioning if there are portions of the material not understood.
I strongly suspect that in the cooperative model, females really did do better in comparison to males, but I'll bet that for the "bank" model, the average student just learned better.
Reading through this paper, though, I wondered just how influential this mode of thought has been. I suspect very. One thing I noticed as my son grew up was the extreme emphasis on "group work" in lots of classes, all the way into high school. Instead of traditional learning methods, the class would be split into groups, and each would give a presentation after a day or two of work.
I found it hideous. It resulted in a lot of what I ended up calling "art project assignments". Whether in literature, or science, or language classes, they were graded on their ability to make a presentation. These kinds of projects were especially prevalent in 5th through 8th grade, and it seemed that the whole teaching method was not very effective, and was very biased against boys. They just didn't have the social skills to do well in the groups, but the girls' work, which was better than the boys, was still mediocre. I never thought anyone left those classes actually understanding science.
