I've been trying to find some way to address Rep. Merrifield's opinion piece:
STATE SCHOOL REFORM MUST LOOK TO FUTURE
By MICHAEL MERRIFIELD
October 22, 2007 - 1:03PM
Published in The Gazette opinion page
The difficulty has been that something so stupid is genuinely hard to address seriously. You remember, I'm sure, Rep. Merrifield bemoaning Sen. Josh Penry’s and Rep. Robert Witwer’s bill proposing graduation standards mandating four years of math and English, three years of science, and two years of foreign language as old fashioned, outdated, 20th-century thinking. Rep. Merrifield argued that the inevitable result of such rigor is to take the pleasure and the joy out of learning and teaching.
Well, now comes this Associated Press report in today's edition of The Gazette documenting that, surprise, surprise, U.S. students are not learning science and math.
U.S. STUDENTS TRAIL GLOBAL PEERS IN SCIENCE AND MATH, TEST SHOWS
By The Associated Press
December 5, 2007
Published in The Gazette on page A14
Worried about student and teacher joy? Rep. Merrifield, what about pride in learning and teaching?
Here's how American students rate. Of the 30 countries, including the U.S., comprising the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development:
- In math, U.S. students scored lower than students in 23 of these 30 countries, and
- In science, U.S. students scored lower than students in 16 of these 30 countries
How can this be? Well, quite simply, teachers like Rep. Merrifield don't know fact from fiction, data from delusion. Rep. Merrifield, in his opinion piece, cited as the prime element of support for his wacko theories Daniel Pink's book, “A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.” Reading up on Mr. Pink, and wasting a considerable amount of time on his web site www.danpink.com, one quickly finds that the one thing Mr. Pink is really good at is drawing fantastic conclusions from cherry-picked scientific findings. It's nothing more than intensely marketed junk opinion, one in a never ending parade of latest and greatest quack notions allegedly grounded in scientific findings.
Here it is in Mr. Pink's own words. In the following, note how, in characterizing his use of scientific findings as a metaphore, Mr. Pink responsibly avoids claiming scientific validation of his assertions. Rep. Merrifield shows no similar sense of responsibility with his assertions, however.
Interview: Daniel Pink
Alistair Schofield speaks to Daniel Pink, journalist, commentator and best-selling author of “A Whole New Mind”.
Foreword
In his book “A Whole New Mind”, Dan Pink makes the assertion that western economies have moved out of the Information Age and into what Dan describes as the Conceptual Age, an age that requires different thinking and an approach to business that is more creative, conceptual and “right-brained”.
When a review of A Whole New Mind was posted on the Extensor web site in August 2006 it generated a lot of interest and quickly became one of the pages on the web site to receive the most hits. I was therefore delighted that I managed to meet up with Dan during a visit to the UK towards the end of 2006.
*********************
Schofield: Your book makes frequent references to right- and left-brain thinking, can you briefly explain what this means?
Pink: “Neuroscientists have known for a long time that different parts of the brain are responsible for processing different types of information and for directing different types of thinking. In broad terms, the left half of the brain is responsible for more logical, structured and sequential types of thinking and the right half for more holistic, conceptual and simultaneous types of thinking.” ...
“The reason I refer to right- and left-brain thinking throughout the book is that it serves as a useful metaphor for more structured and linear thinking versus more sequential and creative thinking.”
Dear reader, check out the contradiction in those two quotes from Mr. Pink. Sequential thinking is associated with left half thinking, in his first quote, and with creative right half thinking in the other. That's OK for a journalist trying to sell books, but would you make his book the basis for educational reform? No, certainly not without much more factual and testable findings!
Enough! Rep. Merrifield is an embarassment for every reasonable citizen of El Paso county. Get rid of this guy, please!
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