There’s all this talk of ‘’best practices’’ in education but nobody talks about worst practices.  Here’s something that I think qualifies as a ‘’worst practice’’ – it involves educators’ propensity to teach mostly explicit knowledge as opposed to tacit knowledge.  Scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi bases his understanding of ‘’tacit knowing’’ on the principle ‘’that...Read More

A lot of recent research supports the systematic teaching of phonemic awareness in beginning reading programs.  The problem is that phonics lessons can get awfully dull, with teachers pointing to the letter and having kids say the sound, or students poring over phonics worksheets that ask them to match the right letter to the word,...Read More

One of the reasons that I’ve been enthusiastically teaching and writing about Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences for the past thirty-four years, is that it is so easy to understand and apply to one’s own personal life.  In this post, I’d like to demonstrate this to you by outlining how you can learn just...Read More

I’ve been hearing a lot about ”the science of reading” recently. This seems to be the new ne plus ultra ingredient in the ”best” reading programs.  It’s part of this ”evidence-based” nonsense that I’ve written about elsewhere in my blog.  As if some of us are going to sit back and let researchers in white coats...Read More

Once upon a time a king asked several blind educators in his village to examine a new beast that had come into his possession and to tell him all about it.  The first educator went up to touch the Literacy Lion, and then ran back to the king shouting ”This beast is made up of...Read More