Educators across the state of Texas are working feverishly on implementing a progressive learning style called Project Based Learning. Sound great doesn’t it? As a student I loved doing projects and getting my hands messy, buidling and making dioramas, etc. Unfortunately this is not what it is all about to the liberal progressive educator of our day.
They want to trash your students textbooks and build a learning practice built on Marxist Lev Vygotsky’s learning theory of “Social Constructivism”. Social Constructivism is based on students creating their own knowledge of things. There is no absolute value, right or wrong. You will hear educators today mention 21st Century Learning Skills and Critical Thinking. These are buzz words for everything is up for debate.
The following is a snap shot of a newsletter from written by, Texas Education Service Center 6’s Coordinator of School Improvement, Ingrid Lee. In the article Ms. Lee’s promotes the idea of shedding textbooks and worksheets and grow relationships with peers and teachers. Are educators now promoting schools as just some sort of social club? I would hope we would send out children to school to be taught and educated by qualified teachers. Unfortunately, Teachers are being converted into being just some class room facilitator. Students are to work in groups for the majority of the time in “DISCOVERING THEIR KNOWLEDGE” as well as critically thinking material through and discover if it is truth for them or not. SERIOUSLY?
Eli Crow from Tyler ISD wrote this attachement on Project Based Learning and stated the following “Many of the CSCOPE curriculum performance indicators can serve as potential PBL project ideas.” CSCOPE has appeared to be the foundation for a bigger progressive agenda of implementing Project Based Learning. CSCOPE is not officially gone and thankfully parents and taxpayers are waking up to what is going on in our school districts. The fact that the lessons are supposedly going to be removed doesn’t remove the control aspect of CSCOPE for teachers and the agenda of Project Based Learning.
