Tag Archives: cognition/learning/understanding

Bernard Coard on the Implications of Placement of West Indian Children in British “Educationally Sub-Normal” Schools

Posted on February 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

“The implications for the large number of West Indian children who get placed in ESN [Educationally Sub-Normal] school and who can never ‘escape’ back to normal schools are far reaching and permanent. As demonstrated above, the West Indian child’s educational level on leaving school will be very low. He will be eligible, on reason of his lack of qualifications and his assessment as being ESN, only for the jobs which really-ESN pupils are able to perform; namely, repetitive jobs of a menial kind, which involve little use of intelligence. This is what he or she can look forward to as a career! In turn, though his getting poor wages, poor housing, and having no motivation to better himself, his children can look forward to s similar educational experience and similar career prospect! No wonder E.J.B. Rose, who was Director of the Survey of Race Relations in Britain, and co-author of the report Colour and Citizenship, states that by the year 2000 Britain will probably have a Black helot class unless the educational system is radically altered.”

Excerpted from: Coard, Bernard. How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System: 50th Anniversary Expanded Fifth Edition. Kingston, Jamaica: McDermott Publishing, 2021.

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Bernard Coard on the Experience of the Wrongly Classified Child

Posted on February 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

“The experience of being removed from a normal school and placed in the neighborhood ‘nut’ school, as everybody calls it, is a bitter one. The child feels deeply that racial discrimination and rejection have been practiced towards him by the authorities who have assessed him wrongly as being ESN [Educationally Sub-Normal]. Other Black children, who are young and unsure of themselves, may simply accept the judgement of themselves as being of low intelligence and give up any attempt to succeed academically. The immense influence of other people’s expectations in creating the child’s own self-image of his abilities and likely performance will be examined, with evidence, in Chapter 3.

On the other side of the coin, the teacher who is told by the educational ‘experts’ that a child is ESN, will obviously expect the child to be ESN. Therefore, the sort of work she will give the child, and the standard she will expect of him, will obviously be much lower than in a normal school. This means the child will learn much less than he is really capable of, and will be very frustrated day by day in the class room. That such children quite often ‘act up’ and become behaviour problems under these circumstances is to be expected”

Excerpted from: Coard, Bernard. How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System: 50th Anniversary Expanded Fifth Edition. Kingston, Jamaica: McDermott Publishing, 2021.

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Teach the Child, Not the Subject

Posted on January 17, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Teach the child, not the subject: The quintessential slogan of the progressive, child-centered movement of the 20th century. It is certainly true that the health and welfare of the child are more important than the academic subject matter. However, the slogan sets up an unfortunate and unnecessary dichotomy between the child’s social, physical, and emotional well-being and the teacher’s responsibility to teach the child the knowledge and skills that are essential elements of a good education. Both are important.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Think-Aloud Strategy

Posted on January 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

“think-aloud strategy: The process of talking explicitly about what one is reading. The think-aloud process, which involves questioning, accessing prior knowledge, and making predictions, helps students recognize the strategies they are using to understand a text.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Visual Memory

Posted on January 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

“visual memory: The ability to take in, store, and retrieve information presented visually. Short-term visual memory is the ability to hold visual information in short-term memory in order to process it, either moving it into long-term memory or shifting focus.

Visual working memory (or nonverbal working memory) involves the ability to hold visual information in mind while considering it, reflecting on it, or in some other fashion processing it.

Long-term memory also involves visual forms, in which images are stored on a long-term basis and available for recall.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Term of Art: Theory Theory

Posted on January 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

“theory theory: The idea that very young children actively construct and test theories about how the world works. According to this concept, a child holds an established theory until he or she encounters and anomaly that forces a paradigm shift and the adoption of a new theory. Theory theory is an application of the ideas first expressed by Thomas Kuhn in 1962 in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. See also paradigm.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Visual Discrimination

Posted on January 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

“visual discrimination: The ability to distinguish between visual objects, usually those with a similar appearance, such as between the letters ‘p’ and ‘q.’ Good visual discrimination skills are essential to early reading.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Term of Art: Multiple Intelligences

Posted on December 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

“multiple intelligences (MI): The theory that many people have many ways of demonstrating their capabilities and that rather than being a single entity, intelligence is made up of distinct learning proficiencies that can work individually or together. In 1983, psychologist Howard Gardner introduced the concept of multiple intelligences in his book Frames of Mind to show that the usual school-based emphasis on rationality and logic is not the only way to be ‘intelligent.’ There is now a huge following for MI; many schools have adopted some version of it, and related training and professional development programs have proliferated. Gardner originally identified seven intelligences, only the first two of which are typically valued by schools: verbal-linguistic (the ability to use language to convey information well and to analyze language use); logical-mathematical (the capacity to analyze problems logically, grasp abstractions, recognize codes and patterns, and investigate issues scientifically) visual-spatial (the ability to recognize and manipulate the relationships of object, concepts, or images in different dimensions); musical-rhythmic (sensitivity to pitch and rhythm of sounds, as well as skill in performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns); bodily-kinesthetic (the ability to use body movement to connect with information, solve problems, and convey ideas); interpersonal (the awareness of others’ intentions, motivations, and feelings, and the ability to interact with others with understanding); and intrapersonal (the capacity to understand oneself and to recognize one’s own feelings, fears, and motivations). Gardner subsequently added and eighth intelligence: naturalist intelligence, or the ability to recognize, categorize, and draw on certain features of the natural environment. Critics say that these intelligences are actually aptitudes or abilities, or variations of rational thinking, rather than what most people consider general intelligence, and that no one can function successfully in the modern world without the linguistic and logical skills valued by schools.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Total Physical Response

Posted on December 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Total Physical Response: A language teaching method based on the belief that students will learn better when full bodily motion is involved in the process. Developed by educator and researcher James J. Asher, TPR is supposed to replace the traditional learning strategy of sitting at a desk and reading a book. Verbal commands are replaced by physical ones. For example, teachers may teach the alphabet by having students like on the floor to form letter shapes or have students learn punctuation by mimicking the shape of a period, a comma, or an exclamation point. There is some historical precedent for TPR; in the early 19th century, some pedagogues believed that students would learn the alphabet if they ate biscuits in the shape of letters, an ineffective practice that eventually disappeared.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Speech Disorders

Posted on December 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

“speech disorders: Individuals express thoughts, feelings, and ideas out loud to one another through a series of complex movements that mold the basic tone created by the voice into specific sounds. Speech is produced by precisely coordinated muscle actions in the head, neck, chest, and abdomen; this gradual process requires years of practice to master in order to produce understandable speech.

By first grade, about 5 percent of children will develop a noticeable speech disorder, most of which will have no known cause. Most speech disorders in the preschool years occur in children who are developing normally in all other areas, although speech disorders also may occur in children who have developmental disabilities.

One of the most common categories of speech disorder is stuttering, a condition in which there is a disruption in the flow of speech. Stuttering is a condition that involves repetitions of speech sounds, hesitations before and during speaking, and the prolonged emphasis of speech sounds. More than 15 million individuals around the world have this problem, most of whom began stuttering at a very early age.

Children with specific speech sound disorders (also called articulation disorder or phonological disorder) have trouble producing the speech sounds of their language that would be expected for their age. The extent of these errors will affect how easy it is to understand their speech, in some cases making it impossible for others to understand what the child is doing.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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