Neil Bush, brother of the president, has come up with an innovative new teaching tool for us: Curriculum on Wheels, or COW. Mr. Bush has taken the standardized content tested in most states in a variety of content areas and made it into entertainment. A rotund disc jockey might give the day's lesson in rap form. Or the message might be delivered in a catchy tune.The advantages of this approach, says Mr. Bush, are obvious. Middle schoolers unable to meet the demands of middle school reading, for example, can learn anyway from the COW system. The system also addresses the problem of 21st Century students' reduced attention span. As Cheryle Hodges, a veteran teacher of 27 years, observed, "We have to entertain them, or we lose them."
Overall, teacher response has been mixed. Some teachers love the way the system grabs students' attention and the fact that learning seems almost automatic. Others point out that the learning, like anything that comes out of a TV-like little box, is passive, making it inimical to the spirit of participation and true inquiry.
Mr. Bush says he created the system after a childhood filled with dyslexia and the entire set of academic problems brought on by that condition. Middle and high school students who can't read generally cannot complete their work in any subject. Says Mr. Bush, "Textbooks honestly have failed middle school children. They rely on children's ability to read, and they're boring."
He has a point. A Fry analysis of several of the textbooks used by my school system reveals a reading level several grades above that in which they are being used. This is true for all but one of the textbooks I sampled. Many of our students come to us as struggling readers, and it is our job to help them improve their reading skills as much as possible during the time they are with us. Their failure to complete their work stems more from an inability to read than from any other source. After all, you can't learn from textbooks you can't read.
So, those of you who have used this product as well as those who have only heard about it, what do you think? Do systems such as these help or hurt learning? Post a comment!
