Stupidity Inoculation
There’s a method in behavior therapy called “stress inoculation.” It has something to do with inoculating persons against stress. The idea, if I recall correctly, is to strengthen calming and effective problem solving behaviors in the face of stress.
But surely stress is not the only thing from which one might profit from inoculation. What about stupidity?
Following is a bit of scribbling I sent to my students as our course was about to end, to prepare them for the wave of flapdoodle that will be coming their way in future ed courses. Courses such as “Children’s literature.” Does that actually require more than a 3 X 5 card?
Dear Y’all,
Virtually all schools of education are constructivist. Many ed professors’ glands become overly-excited and start secreting when they hear the word constructivism. It makes them feel hip, cool, and intelligent.
Constructivism was promoted by Jean “Jacko”
Piaget---who was a mathematical biologist and whose “research” involved his own
children. Wow! I bet that was real hard. And by Lev Vygotsky,
who was a solid member of the Communist party in
The basic idea in constructivism is that you cannot KNOW reality.
Because you never experience reality directly.
You only experience “reality” through the senses and through the ideas you already have.
These ideas are constructed (ideas like time and space).
Therefore, reality itself is a construction---an idea.
[This deduction elicits substantial glandular secretions in constructivists. They cannot believe the good fortune that has made them real philosophers.]
This means that you cannot prove that any statement is true or false.
[Including statements made by constructivists, but somehow they haven’t noticed this slight catch.]
This leads to the notion that all “truth” is relative.
“It depends on how you see things.”
“It’s MY reality.”
This constructopiffle is pure nonsense. And I can’t believe that anyone—even a mentally negligible constructivist—would believe it. If a doctor tells a constructivist, “Your child has a brain tumor. We have to operate right now”, is the constructivist going to say, “Oh, yeah? That’s just your opinion”? Of course not. But it’s fine to concoct goofy “pedagogies” that will be used on other persons’ children in one or another education “initiative.”
In other words, constructivist “philosophy” is nothing more than adolescent word play—like when you were a teenager and got really plowed driving around in Eddie’s ‘47 Mercury and, between cheeseburgers, opined, “Gee, is anything REALLY real?”
Jump out of a speeding car onto the highway and find out if the road is real.
Constructivists in education will tell you NOT to teach kids directly. They will tell you to let students LEAD their own learning. [Oh, that works real well.] Or they will tell you only to teach “in the context of authentic tasks.” [Do you want to learn how to swim when you are in a rip current? Do you want to learn math WHILE you are building an airplane?]
Sure some skills are learned in context. For example, you learn to brush your teeth WHILE you brush your teeth. Unless you have a hard time grasping objects, you don’t need special sessions on “holding the toothbrush.”
But that’s not how it works with complex skills. You can’t learn letter-sound correspondence WHILE you read a book. Because you can’t READ a book unless you know letter-sound correspondence.
So, when an ed professor tells you that you should only be a “guide on the side,” or that you should NOT teach directly, or that you should let students inquire and discover knowledge---just conjure up an image of Bozo the Clown. Or maybe an image of some guy with one tooth and a big stupid grin.
DON'T LET ANYONE TURN YOU INTO AN IMBECILE.
Here’s a link to an article that shows how stupid constructivism is…
http://www.teqjournal.org/backvols/2003/30_3matthews.pdf\
Here’s another…
http://www.educationation.org/constructivism.htm