Fallacies of Education Businesses
Takayuki Yamauchi, Ph.D
Dept. of Math, VCSU
When I was a junior at UC Berkeley, I attended a speed reading workshop that
claims to be superior to Evelyn Wood's Speed Reading Method. The participants at the
workshop were given articles and were told to read them as fast as possible under a time
limit. There were about 10 sessions in total. After the time limit for an article is over at
each session, a multiple-choice test on the content of the article was given. The
workshop claimed that the degree of reading comprehension improves with speed
showing a straight line graph with positive slope (without any proof, of course). The
score of the test was divided by the amount of time needed to finish reading the article.
The resultant point was called "the adjusted score", and was used as the only measure of
progress. The number of participants was about 50. My score was by far the highest in
every session. After the workshop, I read books on real analysis and differential
geometry to find out how much my reading comprehension had improved. The result
was, ZERO progress in my reading comprehension. The only thing that improved was
my scanning speed. Contents of real analysis and differential geometry are very dense
and heavy. Even reading 1 line in such books requires drawing diagrams of my own. To
verify that a claim in a paragraph is true, I had to go through lengthy calculations. In
math, when one gets stuck in any part, one cannot move onto any other paragraph that
uses the stuck part no matter how fast one can read up to the point of deadlock. The
fallacy of the speed reading workshop lies exactly in the claim that the degree of
reading comprehension improves with speed. This workshop was built on a false
claim.
When the workshop Teaching Generation NeXt was announced in May 2013, I
used Google to collect all of his papers, and carefully read them all. I visited all the
websites that introduce Mark Taylor. I also tried to find evidence of any efficacy of his
method, but could not find any website that evaluates Teaching Generation NeXt.
Without any evidence of validity, Mark Taylor's method is only a collection of unproven
claims.
He claims that his method is universally applicable to all fields even though he
has no knowledge of the fields outside of his own. He has no degree or background in
math, and has no knowledge of how advanced math is taught.
Let us observe the following 2 facts.
(1) VCSU offers degrees in over 80 programs. Becoming an expert in even 2 fields is
very difficult. It is physically impossible for any individual to become an expert in
over 80 distinct fields.
(2) Each field has its own unique framework of teaching methods that cannot be
transferred to another field.
These 2 facts indicate that it is impossible to develop a method that improves
teaching methods in every subject. Therefore, any advocator of a method that
claims to improve teaching methods in every field must be carefully examined for its
validity.
I extracted a set of claims from one of his papers, and wrote my response to each
of the claims. My responses are shown in blue font.
All of his papers has the following first sentence.
L1: Faculty struggle to effectively teach our traditionally aged students from
Generation NeXt.
He showed this sentence at the beginning of the presentation. I find that teaching
students becomes increasingly easier every year. My experience is exactly the
opposite of what he claims. I have never heard of any math professor who struggled to
effectively teach his/her students at all since I started my university teaching career in
2001. When I did a Google search, I found that the word "Generation NeXt" appears
only in those websites related to Dr. Mark Taylor. This proves that the first statement in
his paper is false. His entire work is built on this false assumption. At the
presentation, nobody seemed to notice this false statement.
Using Technology to Move Content Learning Out of Class
(1) "Increasing activity during class time presumes improved student preparation
for class, which obviates spending class time with the traditional delivery of content
(lecture). "
My teaching method assumes that increasing activity during class time presumes
Absolutely Zero student preparation for class.
(2) "Class time is too valuable to spend delivering content, most of which is readily
available and accessible by students out of class. (Barr and Tagg 1995; Gardiner 1998;
O’Banion 1999; Pascarella and Terenzini 1991, 2005)."
The content I deliver in class is my original, and is never available anywhere
by students out of class.
(3) "Preparation should be a necessary precondition for class success on a daily
basis, with points awarded both for preparing for class and for the activity in class
using that brought content."
In my classes, Absolutely Zero Preparation (by students) is a necessary
precondition for class success on a daily basis, because preparation with inferior
materials my students find on the internet or a text book only confuse and frustrate them
(it has a negative influence on them). Since I always come up with better methods than
the ones in my note during class, the best method is available to students only during
class time.
(4) "The primary reason class content is moved out of class is to free class time for
active learning. Activity necessarily improves engagement, since the active student
is an engaged student. "
In my classes, the class content is delivered to students through interactive
activities (I call this "Dialog-Type Guided Discovery Method"). The class content
delivery method is modified to optimize the learning efficiency of students depending on
what response I get from students at each step. So, students are kept busy throughout the
class hour with ZERO dull moment. This method is possible precisely because I have
been creating new knowledge of mathematics at the frontier of modern mathematics
research. Creating new knowledge of mathematics requires me to investigate the
applicability and limitations of currently available methods. Through this process, I
always discover new characterizations of currently available methods. I then apply the
new characterizations to my teaching methods, and create class materials. When I teach
a topic, I develop or invent a unique method that exposes the essence of the topic.
Whenever I develop a new method, the new method makes the traditional method
completely obsolete and unnecessary, just like semiconductors made vacuum tubes
completely obsolete and unnecessary. So far, my original new methods have been 2
to 16 times more efficient than the prior methods. Moreover, I upgrade these new
methods every semester, just like semiconductor engineers continually upgrade their
semiconductors. The concept of innovation is completely absent in Mark Taylor's
method.
Instructor-Created Resources
"Some faculty may believe that their own explanations are superior or more
appropriate for their students these instructors, many resources exist to record,
package, and post content to make it available to students in preparation for class.
It should be stressed that capturing lectures during class for later viewing is not
advocated. The goal is to make lecture content available before class, so that
students can access it in preparation, to free class time for learning activities."
This method has 3 problems.
(1) It forces students to spend 50 minutes before class, 50 minutes in class, and 120 or
more minutes after class for homework (220 minutes in total). My students spend 0
minute before class, 50 minutes in class, and 30 or less minutes after class for homework
(80 minutes or less in total) (the same amount of work that is normally assumed to
take 2 hours, precisely because my methods enable students to completely
understand the subject covered in class). My method requires 80/220 time of the
traditional method (220/80 = 2. 75 times faster), and covers at least 2 times more content.
So, my teaching method is at least 5.5 times more efficient for students than Mark
Taylor's method. My students say, "When I read a section in the text before class, I
can't understand anything even if I spend 3 hours. But when I come to class, I can
understand 100% of the material during class time.".
(2) Making lecture content available before class requires an instructor to record a
lecture before class (especially in teaching a new course), which doubles his or her
teaching load in terms of contact hours. Who wants to double his or her teaching load
without any compensation?
MIT, Harvard, and several other universities have lectures available on YouTube.
These lectures cover at least 2 times more content than the lectures given at
standard public universities, and are intended for those super elite students who
were in the top 1% in their high schools. Most students at standard public universities
cannot handle the rigor and speed of these YouTube lectures. Most likely, they will end
up spending 3 or more hours trying to understand the lecture video, and still cannot
understand the content of the video.
(3) When a student fails to or cannot watch the video before class, he or she cannot
understand the content of the learning activities, and ends up wasting the class time.