Politics: Education Spending

While Joan Jacobs was off getting married and honeymooning, folks over there were questioning education spending on high tech teaching aids. Are they worth it?

As usually I'm walking a middle road with this one. It is hard to teach without basic tools like a black or white board. For more specialized classes you obviously need more than this. Science classes need labs with the essentials: weights and simple electrical gear for physics classes; glassware, chemicals, balances, and Bunsen burners for chemistry; microscopes for biology labs; an audio system and probably a piano for music. But frankly I'm not fond of teaching by PowerPoint or even using prepared overheads. Most classrooms don't need TVs either. I like being taught from a board/overhead. It works very well for a couple of reasons, like pacing and involvement.

If the teacher is writing on the board, they will naturally proceed at a pace that the students can keep up with in their own notes. The teacher has to write, the students have to write. Everything is in balance. With PowerPoint, all the information is on the slides so the teacher often proceeds at the speed they can talk, not at the speed students can take notes and absorb information. The speed you can absorb information is slower than the speed you can talk, this is why listening takes effort. I have seen this time and time again, the PowerPoint professor quickly outpaces their students and then the students give up and goof off.

The teachers often counters this pace by giving students copies of the notes so that they can "follow along" in their seats. Bad idea. This destroys the incentive for involvement (since the kids already have the notes), continues to enable the teacher to teach faster than students can the absorb information, and undermines the advantage of note-taking which provides additional forms of sensory input to enhance lesson memory and recollection.

There are a few advantages to PowerPoint of course. It allows you to create more complex visual aids to illustrate advanced concepts. But in general, most of this stuff can be illustrated already. For instance the physics teacher on Joanne's blog used PowerPoint to illustrate some points about friction. I can think of a simple way to do that with a couple of wooden blocks, some string, a ten cent pulley, and some duct tape. Chances are the physics lab will already have this information.

Finally tools are great, but teachers need to be trained to use them. If you buy the teachers new toys, you need to budget for training them how to use them. Since schools never have enough money, then the teachers often get the toys but not the training. Which is almost worthless.

I would much rather give every school the essentials rather than spend a lot of money so a few schools can have a lot of toys while other schools have nothing.