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Building Better Schools
Commentaries by Abraham S. Fischler
Quotations to Guide
Teachers, Principals,
Parents and Students
IUniverse Press
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Contents
Introduction
Quotations and Commentaries
Excerpts from TheStudentIstheClass.com
Whats Next
Endnote
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Abraham Fischler 3
Introduction
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4 Building Better Schools
Quotations andCommentaries
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Abraham Fischler 5
Commentary: The way that classrooms are organized,
because of the pressures that teachers and students are under
since No Child Left Behind, more and more time is now being
spent helping students learn at a comprehensive level. Little
time is left for the skills of analysis, synthesis and self-judgment.
We put information in but we don't give them time to massage
the information and go through Piaget's process of assimilation
and accommodation at the concept level.
How do teachers instill this fire quote in a school that
focuses on computer-based instruction?
The computer is a tool to be used in many different ways. It is
a learning tool, it is a research tool. It is a communication tool.
So it depends on the environment and how it's orchestrated.
Bloom's taxonomy talks about levels of learning.
Comprehension is the lower level. But the student also needs
time to utilize information for analysis and synthesis. So the
computer is being used for those two purposes.
Education is not the filling of a pail, but
rather the lighting of a fire. W. B. Yeats
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6 Building Better Schools
So in the CAI approach you can reorganize in projects. At
problem solving small group communication working in
cooperative teams sharing research responsibilities. And using
it as a powerpoint. To a total class for communicating what you
found.
We have to provide an environment s that students can usewhat they have learned through technology.
Rarely should you see a teacher standing in front of a group of
students lecturing. That would make the assumption that all 30
youngsters are ready to receive what you are presenting and to
process the information.
Fifty years from now, what will education look like?
The Student will be the Class. We will have had years of
developing the technology and skills and the communication
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Abraham Fischler 7
banks that exist. Ways of communicating throughout the world.
Science experiments could be done remotely if we feed
information to a central point. We can be doing a great number
of things. Because of the network and because of our ability to
communicate. Thomas Friedman is not wrong. The world isflat. In economics it's already happening. The assembly plant is
in one location and the component parts come from all over,fed into a central assembly line. So cars are manufactured using
components made wherever people can get them made to meet
the quality. Education is the same thing.
[ fill in? For example, a computer based school can have a
remote laboratory where the experiments described in the
online curriculum can be performed for students to observe.]
In the books I wrote for teachers, I never answered the question
What color did you get? -- I never gave the answers to the
teacher. If you put too much acid in contrast to the base, you
are not wrong. Most books assume that you will do everything
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8 Building Better Schools
according to the directions, so they assume that you'll get a
specific color. But if you are not so accurate, you'll get another
color. You're not wrong whatever color you get, that's the
color you'll get.
So, if you put the color in the teacher's manual, the teacher
would tell the students You're wrong. It says that the color isintense pink and you have pale pink. So I tried where I could
not to give the teacher the answer, especially with younger
kids. Teachers didn't like the books.
Now imagine if the teacher says, Come over and see what
color I got. Why are our colors different?
That's where the learning takes place. It's not in the answer.
It takes time. It takes time away from pressure.
While you are working in the reflective environment, they are
not getting comprehension about what is being tested. So the
more we go toward the testing model, the more rigid the
classes have to become.
That's why the school needs the second class area for small-
group projects. Teachers have to be ready to move students into
that area when it's time for analysis.
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Abraham Fischler 9
Commentary: Teachers ought to be entertainers? I want to
change it.Learning should be fun to the learner.
Classrooms should be exciting. Students should be the
performers. Teachers should be facilitators and motivators
problem solving helpers, rewarding success, using language
that make learners feel good about themselves. You can do it.
As the saying goes: The teacher is a guide on the side, not asage on the stage.
The teacher of the future is an Edu-
Tainer: education that is entertaining
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10 Building Better Schools
Self-motivated, interested in the problem that they are working
on, helping one another sharing responsibilities. This will
happen when students work together in small groups on
projects.
You need a certain level of comprehension which the CAI
delivers. Piaget says that we redefine a concept every time we
meet a discrepant event: An event for the learner that doesn't fit
the concept that he already has. So the learner has to go
through questions: did that really exist? How do I modify theconcept to accommodate the new information?
Students go through this when they learn that electrons might
not be particles. Electrons act more like clouds in certain
circumstances.
Children are working as if I did not exist.
-- Maria Montessori
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12 Building Better Schools
If the student doesn't have the basic comprehension, you will
miss the mark the information that you think is a discrepant
event will go over his head. For example, you can tell a six-year-old that the earth is turning and that creates day and night
at 25,000 miles in a day. It's rotating on an axis. Why don't you
feel it? If you were in an automobile and you put your hand out
of the window you will feel it.
With a six-year-old, you're going to fast. You better start with
day is when the sun is out and Night is when the sun is
hidden. Why is the night dark? What gives light to the moon?
So you can give a six-year-old a bit of this, but he doesn't really
understand.
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Abraham Fischler 13
After introducing a discrepant event, we need to give thestudent time to process the information.
We tend to start with what the child can observe. Science for
grades 1-to-3, the focus is over what can you see?
To try to explain that the earth is turning is not going to lead to
understanding in younger students. Wait until they begin to
ask you about rotating. And they weren't all going to be able toask you at the same time.
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14 Building Better Schools
The test was given in early June. The blue book contind the old
blue book eams
(Fischler tells a story)
I had a physics teacher who would tell students, There will be
times when you will turn in your lab books where you will
write what you observe. Sometimes I will mark an exercisewrong and I expect you to come up and argue with me. The
students generally hated him because he
I loved him.
He forced the kids not to
cheat. He made sure that
one or two kids would
get something markedwrong even though it was right. This bothered kids. And they
would come to me to complain. He's forcing you to think and
If you don't argue with him, you will get the they
People who think outside the box get pushed aside.
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Abraham Fischler 15
Commentary: There is a core of basic knowledge that one
expects from a person at a certain point in time. I don't expect
people to be experts, but biology is a science. You ought to
have some knowledge of the animal kingdom, relationships,
the human body. There are certain understandings that you canexpect from a person at a certain level. Science is not a cultural
imperative. Our language and mathematics are cultural
imperatives. I expect every child to have a certain level.
Knowledge and ability and with a basic core of mathematics;able to handle fractions. But I don't expect everyone to know
everything about trigonometry. Robert Reich is right, as long
as we don't say master. We need a core in all areas and you
have to have the tools for self-learning: we can read English
and we can do some math... we know when to doubt and we
don't jump to conclusions.
You can teach yourself most of science if you have English and
math.
Given the widening array of possibilities, theres no
reason that every child must master the sciences, algebra,
geometry, biology, or any of the rest of the standard highschool curriculum that has barely changed in half a
century.Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor (Clinton
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Excerpts from
TheStudentIstheClass.com
(excerpts go here)
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Abraham Fischler 17
Whats Next
We invite you to subscribe to the blog, The Student is the
Class, at TheStudentIsTheClass.com. I continue to blogabout these issues and I invite you to send me questions to
comment about.
-- Abraham S. Fischler [email protected]
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18 Building Better Schools
Endnote
Dr. Fischler began blogging in 2006 about the advantages of a
well-rounded, well-designed CAI system. His first entry at
TheStudentIsTheClass.comlays out the features of a three-tiered system that could be introduced in a zone of a public
school. Careful implementation of computer-assisted
instruction (CAI) could invigorate a K-12 environment. As a
pioneer who introduced technology to higher education and
distance learning, Dr. Fischler aims to bring new learning
methods and experiences to children and teenagers currently
stuck in school systems that have changed little since 1950.
As a taxpayer, I'm
always looking for
better ways for my
tax dollars to be
spent. As a teacher, I
want to work in a
school where students
have a role indeciding what they
will study each day.
As a trainer ofteachers, I know my limitations: I can show teachers what hasworked in my classes, but I don't have the academic
background to explain why the techniques that I pulled from
Piaget, Friedman, Littky, Gardner and Pink work.
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Abraham Fischler 19
In 2009, I saw the need for a small book that the stakeholders
in schools could carry with them and refer to often for
guidance. In the classroom, under pressure to deliver results, I
often slip back into comfortable behaviors, copying my
mentors and imposing on my students the same disciplines thatI suffered through when I was a teenager. Some of the
techniques work; others should be improved. Dr. Fischler'sperspective has guided me in selecting more effective methods.
Imposing digital devices on students who are not ready for the
potential distractions of a multi-faceted computer.
Dennis Littky, an educational pioneer in Providence, R.I.,
writes that Education is everybody's business. This quote
and commentary project began with you in mind. Teacher,student, parent, principal, taxpayer: you all will find something
new in these pages.
In the 1930s a little red book spawned a political and cultural
revolution in China. Eighty years later, why can't a small bookof commentaries by the president emeritus of a pioneering
university make a similar change in education?
If you have a favorite quotation about education that you would
like Dr. Fischler to consider commenting on in his blog, please
send your request to [email protected].
Steve McCrea
Taxpayer, teacher, advocate of CAI
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]