Great post. Your students are fortunate to have a teacher who thinks in these terms, esp as it relates to learning and preparing oneself to use AI. If students lean too much into the “A”, the output won’t be “I” enough to matter.
I’d written about this in a note and didn’t want to be overly negative about the flip side of what I saw in some really sharp, well-spoken kids that day. What struck me as interesting (and also kind of sad) was the students who struggled to speak about their projects didn’t hesitate or verbally fumble to find the right words. They just yammered away in borderline nonsensical ways, sounding more like AI outputs than 18 year olds, with filler words and SAT words sometimes used incorrectly. I thought of this as I was reading about Bloom’s pyramid. Try to apply before you understand or have the right knowledge and the whole thing falls apart, real quick-like.
Yes! I'm afraid the 'verbal filler' is everywhere in our society today from the politicians to the business leaders to even our teachers, and we're infecting students with a belief that so long as you ARE talking, it doesn't really matter what you're saying... because we've created a world where bluster and confidence--and not facts or true knowledge--are what matter.
Friend of mine at work and I joke that if you’re not talking, you’re not selling. It’s mostly a jab at corporate gasbags but there’s plenty of that on the airwaves and irl too now.
Higher Ed curriculum design for years. I appreciate the time you spent elaborating on the levels - especially those foundational ones.
Your points about authenticity are particularly interesting and I want to make sure I understand - I think what you’re saying is: students are lacking connection with their knowing abilities, their understandings, and their ability to apply learning in meaningful ways.
I feel I need to clarify the position in education I’m coming from, which is eleventh and twelfth grade high school English, both ‘Advanced Placement’ and regular track, in the United States. From my perspective, it seems like at the end of the students’ twelve years of public education today many of them don’t lack ‘knowing abilities,’ but lack simple knowledge, and that in the course of their learning many of them have been exposed to so much vacuous ‘skills’ work that isn’t grounded in attained knowledge—and isn’t connected to clear knowledge they can tell they will be able to apply to get ahead in life—that they a) lack foundational knowledge bases to build from in their lives, b) haven’t authentically built skills, but have instead gone through the motions of rotely ‘practicing’ and pretending they have skills, and c) lost faith with the institution of education altogether.
So, while very conscious of the importance of building skills and ‘higher order thinking skills,’ the implicit argument of my piece is that we’ve gone about doing it wrong. We shouldn’t be building ‘knowledge skills,’ we should be building actual banks of knowledge and then moving up the pyramid slowly, purposefully, and for clear purposes that students can understand beyond ‘getting good scores on standardized tests.’
Thank you for elaborating here. I think I had over-simplified the issue in my question. And I very much agree with you. I work in Higher Education in Canada and notice the same of College students. They often lack confidence with the foundational knowledge of their studies. They've often relied so heavily on disconnected memorization strategies that the retention and understanding of the knowledge quickly dissipates. I was speaking with a Nursing instructor the other day who gave an excellent example - examples of times when students can recall learning about a topic but can't recall the knowledge needed to then talk about it and use it in a clinical simulation. It made me think back to your post and comment here. Thanks again for helping me think it through.
Oof. I’m sorry to hear this! I can definitely say that my students who want to be nurses are often among my best and most dedicated students. I do think we’ve done a disservice in disconnecting so much learning in recent decades—it’s often argued that breaking down learning to it’s smallest parts is ‘just good teaching,’ but we’ve deprived students of opportunities to connect learning with other learning and practice making the synaptic leaps required to apply and synthesize—or even, at the lower level, even simply understand!
I’m often asked about the “practical application” of the humanities (ah the joys of corporate life), and I usually don’t know how to answer... I really like your formulation of how historical contexts and philosophical frameworks are important to understanding our own lives.
Unimpeachably tight logic throughout. I love how you don't devalue the foundation, as most do, and how explicit you are in delineating cause-and-effect between the levels.
Cameron! Thank you! I feel like if I wasn't there at the very beginning of 'devaluing the foundation,' then I was there during its upswing during the twenty-aughts and even then it was clear that we were heading astray. There's too much emphasis on trend-chasing and thinking 'newer is always better' in education--and we act like 'traditional' education is a relic from the industrial era--but traditional education was designed with clear purposes in mind and we've lose our way chasing the lights of the 'new.'
100% agree! Good, old principles are old because they stuck around; something worked about them. Innovation for innovation's sake in education is how we end up with poor priorities, subpar results, an overpaid consultant industry - and ultimately, students who grow cynical towards the idea of education as a process for personal growth.
Kids deserve more thoughtful, tried-and-true methods at the base of their skill-set if they are to create and change-make in a modern context: a point your recent work has made crystal-clear, in a number of ways 🙌 Thanks for always upstanding the hard, beautiful work of the classroom, and being generous with your insights and expertise 🫡
Great post. Your students are fortunate to have a teacher who thinks in these terms, esp as it relates to learning and preparing oneself to use AI. If students lean too much into the “A”, the output won’t be “I” enough to matter.
I’d written about this in a note and didn’t want to be overly negative about the flip side of what I saw in some really sharp, well-spoken kids that day. What struck me as interesting (and also kind of sad) was the students who struggled to speak about their projects didn’t hesitate or verbally fumble to find the right words. They just yammered away in borderline nonsensical ways, sounding more like AI outputs than 18 year olds, with filler words and SAT words sometimes used incorrectly. I thought of this as I was reading about Bloom’s pyramid. Try to apply before you understand or have the right knowledge and the whole thing falls apart, real quick-like.
Yes! I'm afraid the 'verbal filler' is everywhere in our society today from the politicians to the business leaders to even our teachers, and we're infecting students with a belief that so long as you ARE talking, it doesn't really matter what you're saying... because we've created a world where bluster and confidence--and not facts or true knowledge--are what matter.
Thanks for the read and response, Matt!
Friend of mine at work and I joke that if you’re not talking, you’re not selling. It’s mostly a jab at corporate gasbags but there’s plenty of that on the airwaves and irl too now.
This is such a remarkable labour of love. I can't imagine the sincerity and effort you must have put into writing and formulating this one. Thank you!
Anam--
I'm glad you appreciated it! I don't know about true 'love,' but it's become a real passion for me!
Thanks for the read!
Peter
I’ve been using Bloom’s Taxonomy in
Higher Ed curriculum design for years. I appreciate the time you spent elaborating on the levels - especially those foundational ones.
Your points about authenticity are particularly interesting and I want to make sure I understand - I think what you’re saying is: students are lacking connection with their knowing abilities, their understandings, and their ability to apply learning in meaningful ways.
Hi Wren, thanks for engaging!
I feel I need to clarify the position in education I’m coming from, which is eleventh and twelfth grade high school English, both ‘Advanced Placement’ and regular track, in the United States. From my perspective, it seems like at the end of the students’ twelve years of public education today many of them don’t lack ‘knowing abilities,’ but lack simple knowledge, and that in the course of their learning many of them have been exposed to so much vacuous ‘skills’ work that isn’t grounded in attained knowledge—and isn’t connected to clear knowledge they can tell they will be able to apply to get ahead in life—that they a) lack foundational knowledge bases to build from in their lives, b) haven’t authentically built skills, but have instead gone through the motions of rotely ‘practicing’ and pretending they have skills, and c) lost faith with the institution of education altogether.
So, while very conscious of the importance of building skills and ‘higher order thinking skills,’ the implicit argument of my piece is that we’ve gone about doing it wrong. We shouldn’t be building ‘knowledge skills,’ we should be building actual banks of knowledge and then moving up the pyramid slowly, purposefully, and for clear purposes that students can understand beyond ‘getting good scores on standardized tests.’
Hope this clarifies!
Peter
Thank you for elaborating here. I think I had over-simplified the issue in my question. And I very much agree with you. I work in Higher Education in Canada and notice the same of College students. They often lack confidence with the foundational knowledge of their studies. They've often relied so heavily on disconnected memorization strategies that the retention and understanding of the knowledge quickly dissipates. I was speaking with a Nursing instructor the other day who gave an excellent example - examples of times when students can recall learning about a topic but can't recall the knowledge needed to then talk about it and use it in a clinical simulation. It made me think back to your post and comment here. Thanks again for helping me think it through.
Oof. I’m sorry to hear this! I can definitely say that my students who want to be nurses are often among my best and most dedicated students. I do think we’ve done a disservice in disconnecting so much learning in recent decades—it’s often argued that breaking down learning to it’s smallest parts is ‘just good teaching,’ but we’ve deprived students of opportunities to connect learning with other learning and practice making the synaptic leaps required to apply and synthesize—or even, at the lower level, even simply understand!
“Reading a book slowly is a counterculture act”. Teaching bite sized bits suggests to students that attention deficit is OK
I’m often asked about the “practical application” of the humanities (ah the joys of corporate life), and I usually don’t know how to answer... I really like your formulation of how historical contexts and philosophical frameworks are important to understanding our own lives.
Unimpeachably tight logic throughout. I love how you don't devalue the foundation, as most do, and how explicit you are in delineating cause-and-effect between the levels.
Cameron! Thank you! I feel like if I wasn't there at the very beginning of 'devaluing the foundation,' then I was there during its upswing during the twenty-aughts and even then it was clear that we were heading astray. There's too much emphasis on trend-chasing and thinking 'newer is always better' in education--and we act like 'traditional' education is a relic from the industrial era--but traditional education was designed with clear purposes in mind and we've lose our way chasing the lights of the 'new.'
100% agree! Good, old principles are old because they stuck around; something worked about them. Innovation for innovation's sake in education is how we end up with poor priorities, subpar results, an overpaid consultant industry - and ultimately, students who grow cynical towards the idea of education as a process for personal growth.
Kids deserve more thoughtful, tried-and-true methods at the base of their skill-set if they are to create and change-make in a modern context: a point your recent work has made crystal-clear, in a number of ways 🙌 Thanks for always upstanding the hard, beautiful work of the classroom, and being generous with your insights and expertise 🫡