Building Better Schools

Commentaries by Abraham S. Fischler

Quotations to Guide
Teachers, Principals,
Parents and Students

IUniverse Press
Contents

Introduction

Quotations and Commentaries

Excerpts from TheStudentIstheClass.com

What’s Next

Endnote
Abraham Fischler 3

Introduction
 4 Building Better Schools

Quotations and
Commentaries
Abraham Fischler 5

Education is not the filling of a pail, but

rather the lighting of a fire. W. B. Yeats

Commentary: The way that classrooms are organized,

because of the pressures that teachers and students are under
since No Child Left Behind, more and more time is now being
spent helping students learn at a comprehensive level. Little
time is left for the skills of analysis, synthesis and self-
judgment.

We put information in but we don't give them time to massage

the information and go through Piaget's process of assimilation
and accommodation at the concept level.

How do teachers instill this “fire” quote in a school that

focuses on computer-based instruction?

The computer is a tool to be used in many different ways. It is

a learning tool, it is a research tool. It is a communication tool.
So it depends on the environment and how it's orchestrated.

Bloom's taxonomy talks about levels of learning.

Comprehension is the lower level. But the student also needs
time to utilize information for analysis and synthesis. So the
computer is being used for those two purposes.
 6 Building Better Schools

So in the CAI approach you can reorganize in projects. At

problem solving small group communication working in
cooperative teams sharing research responsibilities. And using
it as a powerpoint. To a total class for communicating what you
found.

We have to provide an environment s that students can use

what they have learned through technology.

Rarely should you see a teacher standing in front of a group of

students lecturing. That would make the assumption that all 30
youngsters are ready to receive what you are presenting and to
process the information.

Fifty years from now, what will education look like?

The Student will be the Class. We will have had years of

developing the technology and skills and the communication
Abraham Fischler 7

banks that exist. Ways of communicating throughout the world.

Science experiments could be done remotely if we feed
information to a central point. We can be doing a great number
of things. Because of the network and because of our ability to
communicate. Thomas Friedman is not wrong. The world is
flat. In economics it's already happening. The assembly plant is
in one location and the component parts come from all over,
fed into a central assembly line. So cars are manufactured using
components made wherever people can get them made to meet
the quality. Education is the same thing.

[ fill in? For example, a computer based school can have a

remote laboratory where the experiments described in the
online curriculum can be performed for students to observe.]

In the books I wrote for teachers, I never answered the question

“What color did you get?” -- I never gave the answers to the
teacher. If you put too much acid in contrast to the base, you
are not wrong. Most books assume that you will do everything
 8 Building Better Schools

according to the directions, so they assume that you'll get a

specific color. But if you are not so accurate, you'll get another
color. You're not wrong – whatever color you get, that's the
color you'll get.

So, if you put the color in the teacher's manual, the teacher
would tell the students “You're wrong. It says that the color is
intense pink and you have pale pink.” So I tried where I could
not to give the teacher the answer, especially with younger
kids. Teachers didn't like the books.

Now imagine if the teacher says, “Come over and see what
color I got. Why are our colors different?”

That's where the learning takes place. It's not in the answer.

It takes time. It takes time away from pressure.

While you are working in the reflective environment, they are

not getting comprehension about what is being tested. So the
more we go toward the testing model, the more rigid the
classes have to become.

That's why the school needs the second class area for small-
group projects. Teachers have to be ready to move students into
that area when it's time for analysis.
Abraham Fischler 9

The teacher of the future is an “Edu-

Tainer”: education that is entertaining

Commentary: Teachers ought to be entertainers? I want to

change it. Learning should be fun to the learner.

Classrooms should be exciting. Students should be the

performers. Teachers should be facilitators and motivators
problem solving helpers, rewarding success, using language
that make learners feel good about themselves. You can do it.

As the saying goes: The teacher is a guide on the side, not a

sage on the stage.
 10 Building Better Schools

Children are working as if I did not exist.

-- Maria Montessori

Self-motivated, interested in the problem that they are working

on, helping one another sharing responsibilities. This will
happen when students work together in small groups on
projects.

You need a certain level of comprehension which the CAI

delivers. Piaget says that we redefine a concept every time we
meet a discrepant event: An event for the learner that doesn't fit
the concept that he already has. So the learner has to go
through questions: did that really exist? How do I modify the
concept to accommodate the new information?

Students go through this when they learn that electrons might

not be particles. Electrons act more like clouds in certain
circumstances.
Abraham Fischler 11

The principle good of education is to create

people who are capable of doing new things, not
simply of repeating what other generations have
done. Jean Piaget

Commentary: In order to do new things, they have a concept

of what ought to be. But now they are confronted with a
surprise, something that doesn't fit. That's the discrepant event.
Then the individual has to go through assimilation, asking,
“Does that really happen? Is that real? What is true?” What I'm
seeing or what I've been told ? What I expected to happen and
then it didn't happen. Then I have to go through the process of
accommodation. I have to modify my concept to take into
account something that occurred that I didn't expect. Then I'm
at equilibrium, I'm happy again, until you introduce the next
discrepant event. When you talk to kids, you have to know
approximately what they have so you know what you can do to
get them more sophisticated and more knowledgeable. That's
what the individual learner has to go through themselves. The
teacher introduces the discrepant event and the learners go
through the assimilation and accommodation.
 12 Building Better Schools

If the student doesn't have the basic comprehension, you will

miss the mark – the information that you think is a discrepant
event will go over his head. For example, you can tell a six-
year-old that the earth is turning and that creates day and night
at 25,000 miles in a day. It's rotating on an axis. Why don't you
feel it? If you were in an automobile and you put your hand out
of the window you will feel it.

With a six-year-old, you're going to fast. You better start with

“day is when the sun is out” and “Night is when the sun is
hidden.” Why is the night dark? What gives light to the moon?
So you can give a six-year-old a bit of this, but he doesn't really
understand.
Abraham Fischler 13

After introducing a discrepant event, we need to give the

student time to process the information.

We tend to start with what the child can observe. Science for
grades 1-to-3, the focus is over “what can you see?”

To try to explain that the earth is turning is not going to lead to

understanding in younger students. Wait until they begin to
ask you about rotating. And they weren't all going to be able to
ask you at the same time.
 14 Building Better Schools

The test was given in early June. The blue book contind the old
blue book eams

(Fischler tells a story)

I had a physics teacher who would tell students, “There will be

times when you will turn in your lab books where you will
write what you observe. Sometimes I will mark an exercise
wrong and I expect you to come up and argue with me. The
students generally hated him because he

I loved him.

He forced the kids not to

cheat. He made sure that
one or two kids would
get something marked
wrong even though it was right. This bothered kids. And they
would come to me to complain. “He's forcing you to think and
If you don't argue with him, you will get the they

People who think outside the box get pushed aside.

Abraham Fischler 15

Given the widening array of possibilities, there’s no

reason that every child must master the sciences, algebra,
geometry, biology, or any of the rest of the standard high
school curriculum that has barely changed in half a
century.
Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor (Clinton
Commentary: There is a core of basic knowledge that one
expects from a person at a certain point in time. I don't expect
people to be experts, but biology is a science. You ought to
have some knowledge of the animal kingdom, relationships,
the human body. There are certain understandings that you can
expect from a person at a certain level. Science is not a cultural
imperative. Our language and mathematics are cultural
imperatives. I expect every child to have a certain level.
Knowledge and ability and with a basic core of mathematics;
able to handle fractions. But I don't expect everyone to know
everything about trigonometry. Robert Reich is right, as long
as we don't say master. We need a core in all areas and you
have to have the tools for self-learning: we can read English
and we can do some math... we know when to doubt and we
don't jump to conclusions.

You can teach yourself most of science if you have English and
math.
 16 Building Better Schools

Excerpts from
TheStudentIstheClass.com

(excerpts go here)
Abraham Fischler 17

What’s Next

We invite you to subscribe to the blog, The Student is the

Class, at TheStudentIsTheClass.com. I continue to blog
about these issues and I invite you to send me questions to
comment about.

-- Abraham S. Fischler Fischler@nova.edu

 18 Building Better Schools

Endnote

Dr. Fischler began blogging in 2006 about the advantages of a

well-rounded, well-designed CAI system. His first entry at
TheStudentIsTheClass.com lays out the features of a three-
tiered system that could be introduced in a zone of a public
school. Careful implementation of computer-assisted
instruction (CAI) could invigorate a K-12 environment. As a
pioneer who introduced technology to higher education and
distance learning, Dr. Fischler aims to bring new learning
methods and experiences to children and teenagers currently
stuck in school systems that have changed little since 1950.

As a taxpayer, I'm
always looking for
better ways for my
tax dollars to be
spent. As a teacher, I
want to work in a
school where students
have a role in
deciding what they
will study each day.
As a trainer of
teachers, I know my limitations: I can show teachers what has
worked in my classes, but I don't have the academic
background to explain why the techniques that I pulled from
Piaget, Friedman, Littky, Gardner and Pink work.
Abraham Fischler 19

In 2009, I saw the need for a small book that the stakeholders
in schools could carry with them and refer to often for
guidance. In the classroom, under pressure to deliver results, I
often slip back into comfortable behaviors, copying my
mentors and imposing on my students the same disciplines that
I suffered through when I was a teenager. Some of the
techniques work; others should be improved. Dr. Fischler's
perspective has guided me in selecting more effective methods.
Imposing digital devices on students who are not ready for the
potential distractions of a multi-faceted computer.

Dennis Littky, an educational pioneer in Providence, R.I.,

writes that “Education is everybody's business.” This “quote
and commentary” project began with you in mind. Teacher,
student, parent, principal, taxpayer: you all will find something
new in these pages.

In the 1930s a little red book spawned a political and cultural

revolution in China. Eighty years later, why can't a small book
of commentaries by the president emeritus of a pioneering
university make a similar change in education?

If you have a favorite quotation about education that you would

like Dr. Fischler to consider commenting on in his blog, please
send your request to Fischler@nova.edu.

Steve McCrea

Taxpayer, teacher, advocate of CAI

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.