EDFN 7313 Learning Theories and Instructional Applications (Crazy Summer Web-Based Version)

Important Notice: Most of these assignments contain links to resources on the Web. The links were all active and valid when I revised these assignments in June 2002. If you find a dead link, please let me know ASAP and I'll quickly figure a way around it or perhaps substitute a link to a different site. (If the links are not clickable on this page--they probably are not with some browsers--then be sure to copy and paste the URL into your browser window instead of rekeying the link which, we know, is exceedingly hard to do with making an error. See One final reminder below for more details.) Also, you'll find some readings on the assignment pages themselves, as in true with this assignment. The margins, spacing, etc. looked perfect when I published it to the Web using Netscape on an iMac. I suspect the margins might not look the same for all of your, given the variation in platforms, settings, machines, software, browsers, etc. Try not to be bothered by this--the worst case scenario (I think) is that your margins are jagged with some weird spacing. But rest assured, all the information is contained on the page despite the annoyance of formatting peculiarities.

Web Learning Assignment #1  Three Parts: A, B, & C. Part A involves reading and analyzing reports from the prestigious National Academies concerning how people learn; Part B involves studying major "camps" in learning theory and how one provocative thinker might fit in; and Part C involves analyzing a popular article on boy vs. girl differences in learning with implications for teaching.

Note: Recall the cycle between assignments is only a few days in this summer session, meaning that this is due Friday July 12 (of course, all assignments can be submitted earlier). I print your responses, then quick-read them to see if you have questions, etc. But I do wait until the due date to read them all carefully before writing my comments or sharing sections with the whole class in the form of a Postscript. Otherwise, I’m reading assignments in a haphazard way with little chance of an overall synthesis. To send your responses, simply prepare an email and send it to two addresses as described
in the Course Description:

profsuter@comcast.net (my primary "processing" center)
wnsuter@ualr.edu (an unprocessed depository, or backup, just in case...)

Recall that I will gladly read your responses within the text body of a regular email (usually missing all the underlines, italics, bold, etc.). This is just fine, and in many ways, actually preferable. Try to avoid attachments given the problems associated with them as described earlier (opening requires wrestling and sometime freezing, the potential for viruses, the difficulty searching through one, many are left nameless, etc. etc.). You can  always prepare your response using a word processing program, then save it, then copy and paste it onto the body of an e mail.

In fact, I think most people use their text editor, such as Word, to prepare a response since it can be easily edited, spell-checked, and saved. Then they copy and paste it onto the body of an email. Also, I think many people print Web pages so that they have the advantages of printed copy (you can easily write on them or read while waiting at Supercuts, merging in traffic, etc.). Please be sure to title your responses (Web Learning, Assignment #1, etc.) and label your sections, like #A1, #B1, etc. so that I know what I am reading. And don't forget your name, especially since many of you have cryptic email names!

Also note that I often go back and forth between my text editor and email program; consequently, some of my writings, apart from the assignments themselves, may look “jagged” or unevenly spaced with varying words per line with some oddly indented lines. This applied to Questions of the Day as well as Threaded Discussions, or even simple email. Again, don’t let this bother you; nothing is lost, you have it all. I believe most people will want to print a copy of each assignment since the narrative is rather long. Hard copy is so much easier to refer to, it seems. There will be enough screen (monitor) eye strain when you use the Web to access documents and sites related to these assignments.

Recall that my telephone numbers are (501) 221-2575 home office and (501) 569-3557 UALR office. Please, please call if you have questions or problems.

One final reminder:  To repeat for emphasis, some of these assignments contain URL's, or website addresses, unless I was able to copy the text  information on the site and paste it on this page for your convenience. Otherwise, you may have to use your browser to access it. Depending on your software, you may be able to simply click a given URL (the website address) if it is a hot link (usually appearing in color). Or maybe you can just copy it, then paste it onto the address window of your Web browser (probably either Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer). The problem with copying it down with a pencil and then re-entering it as a URL address is that you’ll make a mistake, unless you are very, very careful. Even then, mistakes are likely since zeros and the letter O appear indistinguishable, same with the number 1 and letter l. Not to forget other strange symbols and underlines that look like blanks, etc.]
 

Part A: National Academies

Let’s examine portions of an online book from the National Academy Press (NAP), created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council (among others). It operates under a charter granted by Congress. It tries to capture the most authoritative views on important issues in science. Its purpose states that “the institutions represented by NAP are unique in that they attract the nation's leading experts in every field to serve on their blue ribbon panels and committees. For definitive information ... you have come to the right place.”  This book is written by top experts in the field of learning, the lead editor being John Bransford. There is no other source more authoritative, in terms of content from leading experts.

Point your browser to:

http://books.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/

then click and read carefully “Executive Summary” (about 12 pages); same with Chapter 1 “Learning: From Speculation to Science” (about 9 pages, a good context); and same with Chapter 10 “Conclusions and Recommendations for Research” (about 15 pages, great conclusions and summary).  There’s great information all over here.  Share your reactions by answering the following questions:

#A1. What important content did you learn that you may not  have been aware of before reading this article? In other words, what ideas struck you as being both very important and generally unfamiliar?

#A2. Draft a very short paragraph (like 4-6 well crafted sentences) highlighting the most important content that you feel must be passed on to all educators (that is, the most essential ideas that all educators would benefit from knowing).
 
 

Part B: Major Camps and John Seely Brown

There are many methods for organizing different views of learning as they apply to education. I've seen up to 50 or so different theories or as few as three different perspectives. For now, let's stay with the three most general perspectives:

Behavioral
Cognitive
Humanist

These most general theories are distinctly different. Point your browser to these three links to gain an appreciation of their differences (each link is related to one model) thanks to Bill Huitt of Valdosta State University :

http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/behsys/behsys.html
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/cogsys.html
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/affsys/humed.html

and a good summary here:

http://www.valdosta.edu/~whuitt/psy702/summary/lrndev.html

Spend some time understanding the major ideas behind these three major camps. Limiting the field to three (for now) makes this study more manageable. Try to get a good sense for major theoretical differences by clicking the related links as well, those some link may be broken. (The cognitive site, in particular, has some fine links.)

Then, point your browser to:

http://www2.parc.com/ops/members/brown/jsb.html

and read about John Seely Brown. He visited UALR last year, undoubtedly one of the most well known scholars to visit UALR. (He was mostly interested in our EAST Lab, first floor of DKSN.) Be sure to click “The Social Life of Information” (and some of those links) and “Some recent papers...”  Also, scan this following paper titled “Cognitive Apprenticeships: Making Things Visible,” another highly influential writing:

http://www.21learn.org/arch/articles/brown_seely.html

Note: His most influential paper by far in education (excepting his recent “The Social Life...” whose real influence is not yet known) is “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning” available at: http://www.slofi.com/situated.htm  My Cognition and Instruction students read this article (some of you may take that course online in the spring), and for that reason, I am not assigning it here. But feel free to scan it if you want; it’s really quite interesting. Many students were influenced by its content and I believe it changed their thinking about how learning should take  place.

Try to figure out his most fundamental premises and key ideas, at least those related to learning.

He’s a big shot, you know, and I wonder how he might fit into an existing framework of learning theory. Or maybe his views are so different that they represent a bundle of ideas that might be a completely new theory. Really, I don’t know (yet).

Question #B1: Which of the three major camps might John Seely Brown fit into? Explain your rationale in a few short sentences by linking his major ideas to any of these theoretical camps. If they do not fit, describe why they might be subsumed under, perhaps, a new perspective in learning theory. Or might he fit into something like "miscellaneous"?
 
 

Part C: The Reptilian Male: Harder to Teach, Harder to Learn (?)

The July 30, 2001 U.S. News and World Report ran an interesting cover story on boys vs. girls and why (possibly) girls do better in the real world.  The author claimed research-based conclusions such as these:

"Boys' brains don't learn as quickly as girls." Boys earn most of the D's and F's;  most "learning disabled" kids are boys. They are less efficient classroom learners.  Girls are ahead of boys in almost every measures of well-being.  The average 11th-grade boy writes with the proficiency of the average eighth grade girl.  At birth, boys lag six weeks behind girls developmentally.  Anatomical differences in boy vs. girl brains make it harder for boys to process information. Girls' brains are 11% smaller than boys', yet they have more gray  matter (where information processing is done) than boys. The left-right brain connection is bigger in girls than boys. "The female brain is an easier brain to teach." "It is harder for a male brain to  learn." "The female brain is architecturally finer--a later arrival in evolution." The male brain is more primitive--even reptilian--than the female brain.

Whoa! Wild stuff, as Johnny Carson used to say. Here is the article in full:

-------------------------begin-------------------------

Are Boys the Weaker Sex?
Science says yes. But society is trying to deal with male handicaps

By Anna Mulrine

Sandy Descourouez worries about her sons. The eldest, 18-year-old Greg, was never the
chatty type, but he became positively withdrawn following his parents' nasty divorce a
decade ago. Last year, Greg's problems erupted into the open: He was arrested for
stealing a golf cart and caught smoking marijuana. David, 13--loving, messy, and
disorganized--struggles with borderline grades and attention deficit disorder. Sandy's
baby, 21/2-year-old Luke, is a one-boy demolition derby. But his reckless energy isn't her
main cause of concern. While the toddler strings together sound effects with reasonably
good results, he rarely utters a word.

Sandy initially took Greg's silence for male reserve--that is, until she happened on his
journal. The teenager's diary roiled with frustration and pain. Perhaps to positive effect:
Greg wrote a letter to his absent father and reached out for help. "I don't know how to talk
about these things," he wrote, "and I know you don't either, so maybe we can help each
other."

Sandy's "boys will be boys" sighs gave way to bewilderment--and fear. The Aurora, Ill.,
real-estate broker realized that all three sons had problems very distinct from those she
had encountered in her daughter, a champion speller; problems that needed attention.

The travails of the Descourouez family mirror America's struggle with its sons. "We are
experiencing a crisis of the boy next door," says William Pollack, a clinical psychologist at
Harvard University and author of Real Boys. Across the country, boys have never been in
more trouble: They earn 70 percent of the D's and F's that teachers dole out. They make
up two thirds of students labeled "learning disabled." They are the culprits in a whopping 9
of 10 alcohol and drug violations and the suspected perpetrators in 4 out of 5 crimes that
end up in juvenile court. They account for 80 percent of high school dropouts and
attention deficit disorder diagnoses. And they are less likely to go to college than ever
before. By 2007, universities are projected to enroll 9.2 million women to 6.9 million men.

Truth to power. That's not what America expects from its boys. "Maybe because men
enjoy so much power and prestige in society, there is a tendency to see boys as shoo-ins
for success," says child psychologist Michael Thompson, coauthor of Raising Cain. "So
people see in boys signs of strength where there are none, and they ignore all of the
evidence that they are in trouble."

But that evidence is getting tougher than ever to overlook. Today, scientists are
discovering very real biological differences that can make boys more impulsive, more
vulnerable to benign neglect, less efficient classroom learners--in sum, the weaker sex.
"The notion of male vulnerability is so novel, but the biological facts support it," says
Sebastian Kraemer, a child psychiatrist in London and author of a recent British Medical
Journal article on male fragility. "We're only just now beginning to understand the
underlying weakness of men, for so many centuries almost universally projected onto
women."

What's more, social pressure often compounds biological vulnerability. "Boys today are
growing up with tremendous expectations but without adequate emotional fuel or the tools
they need to succeed in school or sustain deep relationships," says Eli Newberger, a
pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital and author of The Men They Will Become. Girls
now outnumber boys in student government, honor societies, school newspapers, and
debating clubs. A recent study found girls ahead of boys in almost every measure of
well-being: Girls feel closer to their families, have higher aspirations, and even boast better
assertiveness skills. "I regularly see girls who are both valedictorian and captain of the
soccer team, but I almost never see that in boys," says Leonard Sax, a family physician
and psychologist in Poolesville, Md.

Schools are taking note, too--and they are beginning to act. Early childhood specialists,
concerned with ever accelerating curriculum demands, are advocating delayed entrance of
boys into kindergarten, to give them time to catch up with girls developmentally. Other
districts are experimenting with single-sex classrooms within coed schools, in the hopes
that all-boy classes will allow boys to improve standardized test scores in reading and
writing, much the way girls have narrowed the gap in math and science. (Currently, the
average 11th-grade boy writes with the proficiency of the average eighth-grade girl.) In
response to charges of the "feminization" of the classroom--including, critics argue, female
teachers with too little tolerance for the physicality of boys--schools are beginning to
re-examine their attitudes toward male activity levels and even revamp disciplinary
techniques.

The measures aren't without skeptics. "Isn't it ironic that it's only been in the last two
decades that we've really considered making schools equitable for girls," says David
Sadker, an American University professor and pioneer in research on girls' treatment in the
classroom. "And now people are already saying, 'Whoa, too much time on girls. Let's get
back to boys.' "

Pole position. Yet the latest research not only documents boys' unexpected
vulnerabilities but indicates that they can be traced back to the womb. While more boys
than girls are conceived (the speculation is that sperm carrying the male's Y chromosomes
swim faster than those carrying the larger X), this biological pole position doesn't last long,
says Kraemer. Perhaps to offset the speed advantage, when mothers experience stress,
male embryos are more likely to perish. The male fetus is at greater risk of peril from almost
all obstetric complications, including brain damage, cerebral palsy, and premature birth. By
the time a baby boy enters the world, he is trailing the average girl, developmentally, by six
weeks.

Male newborns are also more emotionally demonstrative than females--a fact that has
been shown experimentally despite the cultural stereotype to the contrary. When asked to
rate photos for expressiveness, adults who had not been told the children's sex were far
more likely to dub boys "more intensely expressive" than girls. And when researchers
intentionally misidentified the boys as girls, adults gave the boys presumed to be girls the
highest expressiveness marks. In other words, their actual perceptions trumped the
stereotypes.

What's particularly interesting, says Thompson, is that while there is evidence that boys
may feel more stress in emotional situations, they routinely show less. When placed within
earshot of a crying baby, boys have higher increases in heart rate and sweatier palms
than girls. But their behavior belies their biological reaction: Their typical response is to
turn off the speaker broadcasting the crying.

Judy Chu, a researcher at Harvard University, has also noted how boys' behavior often
masks emotional inclinations. "Boys are a lot more attuned and a lot more sensitive than
people give them credit for," she says. Chu spent two years having conversations with a
group of boys in a preschool classroom outside Boston. At age 4, the boys candidly
discussed their feelings about subjects that ranged from sharing toys to hurt feelings.
"They were insightful in ways I hadn't expected--so articulate and attentive," says Chu.
Over time, however, as the expectations of parents, teachers, and peers compounded,
the boys' behavior changed. "They became inattentive, indirect, and inarticulate," says
Chu, "and self-conscious about what other boys thought." Chu recalls one child who was
friends with a preschool group of kids who had dubbed themselves "the mean team." "I'm
friends with all of the girls," he told Chu. "But if Bill [the unofficial leader of the team] finds
that out, he'll fire me from the team." As the result of these observations, Chu firmly
believes that boys lose their voice, much as girls do in adolescence, and begin to
camouflage feelings and behaviors that might put them in conflict with other boys.

Their friendships also begin to change. "We associate girls with the sharing of secrets, the
emotional intimacy, and boys with the sports and activity-oriented friendships," says Niobe
Way, a professor of psychology at New York University. "But what's interesting is that
these very tough boys talk about wanting friends to share their secrets with, to confide in."

She recalls Malcolm, great in sports, admired by the other boys. One day, Malcolm learned
that one of his closest friends had been talking about him and began to cry. "The
conventional wisdom is that gossip and arguments with friends don't affect boys or that
they'll just 'fight it out,' then let it roll off their backs," says Way. But that's often a
misconception. In Malcolm's case, he announced that he was giving up on his friends
("They won't keep your secrets, and they'll stab you in the back")--an attitude he
maintained throughout high school.

When boys get emotional, parents and other adults often encourage them to tone it
down. "People come to me time and time again saying, 'My son, he's so sensitive,' " says
Thompson. "What they don't realize is that it's not the exception. It's the norm." And so,
parents react differently to upset daughters and sons. "The actions can be as subtle as
asking a girl what's wrong when she's crying but patting a boy on the head and saying,
'You're OK; now get back out there.' " The result can be emotional isolation that starts in
boyhood and plagues men in middle age, often with emotional, and even physical,
consequences. "Every now and then I catch myself saying things to my sons that I
wouldn't say to my daughter--like 'Be tough, don't cry,' " worries Descourouez. "Now I'm
trying not to say anything to them that I wouldn't say to my daughter. They can decide
what they want to cry about."

Action figures. But despite the evidence of boys' sensitivity, not all of the old stereotypes
are unfounded. As much as day care provider Marcy Shrage encourages sensitivity in her
boys, she has noticed how they crave action. At her home in Lawrenceville, N.J., she
cares for five boys under the age of 4. She piles them all into her minivan and takes them
on drives. She'll stop for senior citizens in crosswalks to model good behavior and take
them on long walks through the woods. But, the karate black belt admits, the boys do get
most excited when she teaches them martial-arts moves. And though she doesn't allow
toy weapons in the house, "There are plenty of days when they'll bite their sandwiches
into the shape of guns and start firing away at each other."

It is the unexpected combination of physical aggressiveness and emotional vulnerability
that now fascinates scientists at the University of Pennsylvania's Brain Behavior
Laboratory, who are looking for explanations in the neurons. According to center director
Ruben Gur, they have found some intriguing differences in brain structure--anatomical
disparities that make it harder for boys to process information and even read faces but
easier for them to excel at gross motor skills and visualize objects in three dimensions.

Women's brains are, on average, 11 percent smaller than men's, says Gur. And while
there appears to be a subtle correlation between brain volume and IQ, he adds, there is
no difference in the IQs of males and females. "So we have to ask how women manage to
have the same IQ in a proportionally smaller brain." The answer is that female brains are
not simply a smaller version of male brains. From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, the
female brain is a bit more finely developed, says Gur. Brains are composed of gray matter
(where information processing is done), white matter (long fibers covered in fat that, much
like rubber-coated wire, transmit electrical impulses from brain to body), and spinal fluid
(which acts as a buffer from the skull). The most recent research shows that males have
less gray matter and more white matter than do females. And the right and left
hemispheres of the brain are linked by a bundle of nerves that helps the two sides of the
brain communicate. In women, this bundle--the corpus callosum--is thicker. It's the
difference, researchers explain, between a narrow path in the woods and a two-lane
highway.

As a result, says Gur, female brains tend to be more facile when it comes to verbal skills.
This may explain why girls utter their first words earlier, string together complete sentences
first, and generally surpass boys in tests that involve verbal fluency. "The female brain is
an easier brain to teach," says Michael Gurian, a family therapist and author of Boys and
Girls Learn Differently. "It's harder for the male brain to learn." It may also explain why,
when Sandy Descourouez subscribed to a "developmental milestones" E-mail update from
a babyfood site, she learned her son Luke was, like many boys, a "late talker."

Males do have more white matter, however--with longer, more complex nerve networks
from their brains to the tips of their toes--allowing boys like Luke to excel at gross motor
skills. And their greater volume of spinal fluid, says Gur, also means that male brains are
built to sustain blows. "Thank goodness for that," says Descourouez, recalling Luke's
penchant for spinning in circles near the fireplace.

Reptilian feelings? There appear to be brain-related differences in male and female
emotions as well. The latest research suggests that the emotional brain is "more primitive"
in men. Women make use of an emotional processing center adjacent to the speech
areas of the brain, which makes it easier for them to link emotions to speech. The female
brain is also "architecturally finer--a later arrival in evolution," says Gur. Men make use of
an older limbic system "present in more primitive creatures," often known as the reptilian
brain. Which means that male emotion is often more closely linked with action.

These are just the sort of details that the "Raising Sons" seminar participants at the
Parenting Center in Fort Worth are gathering to learn. Moms and dads circle their chairs
and share their fears, trying to come to some sort of agreement on what constitutes
"normal" boy behavior: Why is their son struggling in school? Why won't he listen? Is he
too sensitive? Too taken with guns and violent video games?

Pam Young debates with fellow "Raising Sons" classmate Brian Rice about her sons'
penchant for wrestling. "They seem to know what drives me crazy," she says, conceding
that it's also their way of bonding with dad. Rice, by contrast, worries that his son doesn't
wrestle enough.

Another parent wonders aloud where his son's high spiritedness ends and brattiness
begins. "I'm curious about the back talk," he inquires. "I want my son to be an
independent thinker, but I also want him to have respect." Young leans in, nodding in
agreement. "Yes," she says. "My son is very independent, then very dependent for
approval."

In class, parents learn about the selective "pruning" of brain cells that scientists believe
can lead to impulsivity--and that is thought to occur more rigorously in adolescent boys
than girls. "It would explain why my son acts like a windshield wiper sometimes," says
Young. "He's on, then he's off. He gets it, then he doesn't."

Later, a facilitator asks, "What's the only emotion that it's OK for boys to have?" The class
pauses for a moment, then answers virtually in unison: "anger." Maybe that's why we have
so many angry boys, the facilitator suggests. And so the parents learn how to teach their
sons to match words with feelings, to build a vocabulary for the emotions that they often
have trouble expressing.

Let's get physical. The teachers at Thomas Edison Elementary School in St. Joseph,
Mo., have begun to put some of the brain science to the test. Three years ago, when
third-grade teacher Denise Young asked the boys in her class a question, she would get
frustrated if they didn't respond, and simply move on. Today, she gives them at least 60
seconds to "process" the question. "They need more time to stop, switch gears, and
respond," says Young. "But they didn't have it, and I think that's why a lot of boys have
gotten into trouble in the past." She also gives them "stress balls" to squeeze while they're
reading or working out a problem. "It seems to help them engage when they're also doing
something physical," she says.

On a typical day, her children stand by their desks as they complete work sheets and work
on projects. That's because there is now a greater understanding, says principal Debbie
Murphy, of the activity level and physicality of their school's boys. "There was a child who
just couldn't sit still in music class, and we decided, well, if it's not going to bother anyone,
it's fine if he stands at the back of the room."

Murphy also tried something new during her disciplinary chats with the boys. "I will not
make the children talk when they're angry, for starters. Boys, in particular, just have trouble
verbalizing when they're upset." Once they've cooled down, Murphy takes them for a stroll.
"I find boys have an easier time talking if they're walking, too--it seems to tap into
something in their brains," she says. In three years, Edison Elementary has watched its
test scores skyrocket from what Murphy calls "ghetto statistics" to among the top 10
percent in the state. Incidents of in-school suspension have decreased from 300 to 22 this
year.

The controversial drugging of boys also appears related to fundamental temperamental
prescribe Ritalin to otherwise healthy boys who simply couldn't sit still through long
lessons. But the fact that boys are prescribed medicines and still fail at twice the rate of
girls has given him pause. One of his patients, Andrew Yost, was a bright 8-year-old but
uninspired by school and constantly getting into spats with his teachers. Sax suspected
ADD and suggested Andrew's family consult with a child psychiatrist from the National
Institutes of Health. The specialist confirmed the diagnosis and prescribed Ritalin.

When Sax encountered Andrew again several years later, he had indeed shown dramatic
improvement. But it was not the result of the drugs. The difference, according to Andrew's
parents, was that they had enrolled him in an all-boys school. "The teachers just seem to
understand boy behaviors," says his father, David. "We tried so much before that, but
now, I think he's where he should be." Andrew no longer takes any medications and, he
adds, "I don't worry as much about what girls think."

Other school districts are experimenting with voluntary single-sex classrooms within coed
schools. "Parents are showing up in droves to sign up for the classes," says Anthony
Basanese, middle school principal in Pellston, Mich. This fall, fully half of the sixth-grade
class will be enrolled in single-sex classes, meeting throughout the day for coed lunch
periods and extracurricular activities. "Parents like it because they see their kids doing
better in school."

While American University's Sadker worries about the declining presence of male
teachers--"down from 20 percent when I was a boy to 15 percent of all elementary school
teachers now"--he is also wary of single-sex education. "Why aren't we fixing coed classes
instead of running away from them? If we want a democracy that lives and works together,
don't we also want one that learns together?"

Too much too soon. But many boys may need a substantial boost in schooling, say Sax
and other specialists advocating a later start in kindergarten for boys. "The early curriculum
is more accelerated than ever before," says Sax. "Boys are expected to do too much too
soon--their brains aren't ready for it." The result, he adds, is too often a lifelong struggle
with school. "They begin their school careers in 'the dumb group.' They're frustrated with
their lack of ability, they start disliking school, and they begin to avoid it. We're seeing that
more than ever now."

The extra year before kindergarten would allow boys to catch up. "Not all girls are
precocious, and not all boys are delayed," says Sax. "But I've come to the conclusion that
later enrollment would solve 80 percent of the problems we see with boys and school
today."

Descourouez is considering holding Luke back from kindergarten. "His speech isn't up to
speed," she worries, "and I don't want school to be a miserable experience for him."
School is no pleasure for her son David, but she's determined to nurture the tenderness
she sees in him. "He designs computer screens that say, 'I love you.' I can't remember the
last time Greg said that to me." And she vows not to disregard the silence of her sons.
"When they can't find the words for their emotions, I try to help them," she says. As they
find the words, she hopes they will break the old patterns--and become husbands and
fathers who talk.

-------------------------end-------------------------

In light of these ideas, I wonder about the three major camps referred to in Part B above. Sounds like the future might benefit from the addition of "biological evolution" as another major camp.

Question #C1:  In a short paragraph, what do you think about an evolutionary perspective and its implication for classroom teaching? What's been your experience? Should "evolution" fit alongside behavioral, cognitive, and humanist?

Question #C2: Can you offer any specific suggestions for better instruction in our schools given some of the ideas in the article?