With reference to my previous posts on Beaconhouse, I think they may be following a system of education that this author has analyzed in her blog. Read on. It may scare you a little:
“In 1882, fifth graders read these authors in their Appleton School Reader: William Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others like them. In 1995, a student teacher of fifth graders in Minneapolis wrote to the local newspaper, “I was told children are not to be expected to spell the following words correctly: back, big, call, came, can, day, did, dog, down, get, good, have, he, home, if, in, is, it, like, little, man, morning, mother, my, night, off, out, over, people, play, ran, said, saw, she, some, soon, their, them, there, time, two, too, up, us, very, water, we, went, where, when, will, would, etc. Is this nuts?” “
This isn’t too far off from the education imparted at Beaconhouse. In a recent review of their celebrated curriculum, teachers at Beaconhouse have been asked to forgo the methods of teaching English outlined in their documents, and to go back to the old ways. From a stance that insisted that spelling was unnecessary and would not help children in the long run, they have taken a 360 degree turn back to what they tried to erase from their own education system. What gives?
2 Comments
you have obviously not read or even seen the english curriclum documents… it is pure ignorance to say what you do… and in this case i’m sure bliss. .. for the ignorant are blessed as well. read first, understand, reflect and then a comment … please!
Dear Ms. Hameed,
I have read the document. More importantly, I’ve seen the fruits of your implementation. The entire curriculum for Class 5 is choc-a-bloc full of activities - disjointed, uncoordinated elements, lacking basic tools like Comprehension, Reading and Essay-Writing. As a result, students graduating out of grade 5 to 6 cannot construct simple sentences, are hopeless with spellings (incidentally, do YOU think spellings are important? Why?), have completely done away with punctuation, and are unable to utilise their skills to help them in any other subject - something you should be mindful of, since language provides their comprehension capability in all areas of life. In class 5, I was reading Lewis Carroll, Daniel Defoe and Tolkien. What are your kids reading?
This has less to do with teacher capability and more to do with the poor quality of your curriculum and a pathetic attempt to implement it. I ask a question on my blog. Answer it. Why are your teachers reverting to pre-curriculum methods of teaching English if your curriculum is soooo good? As a parent, under these conditions, Beaconhouse would be the last school on earth to which I would send my children.