Something’s wrong/nothing’s wrong, Dept.

Again, an op-ed  showing that people know something’s wrong while being told by school administrators and departments of education that how it was done in the past (when it worked) was wrong, and now we have a better way (which doesn’t work).  The current term for such subterfuge is called “gaslighting”. Another term is “willful ignorance”.

It is prevalent in education and the reason why many people advocating for change, sooner or later, give up trying to change the trend of ineffective faddish practices.

I heard a fellow teacher say recently that she uses “stations” in her class (i.e., a project-based activity in which students rotate among various tables doing various tasks, in groups) because middle schoolers’ attention span does not exceed 13 minutes. While short attention spans cannot be denied, there are other ways of breaking up a lesson, such as asking questions, having students solve problems, or a…