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October 20, 2022

Herewith a quick review of what it arguably one of the most destructive excesses of the past fifty years.

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Constructivism, a monster fad from the 1980s until quite recently, states that learners must be active in constructing their own meanings.

Their own meanings?  What could that possibly mean?  Anything, apparently.  Depends on which meanings a student constructs.  Two plus three might equal 6 or 8 or 10.

If people appreciate how outrageous and desperate Constructivism is, they are better prepared to see through the many other hoaxes in our schools.  The common traits are elaborate claims disconnected from real life.

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In the 1980s many schools proudly announced they were constructivist. Teachers who refused to play by the new rules were often fired. Main rule is that teachers should no longer teach, given that students must teach themselves. Constructivism became a sort of religion. It was a worldview with prescriptions for every aspect of school life.

Kids who know nothing are officially permitted to wallow in their ignorance.

While students should be learning basic information, they are instead encouraged to go freelance.  They are instructed to reinvent the wheel for themselves.  So students are told to be imprecise and self-indulgent, to create their own truths, to think any thought, to advance in any direction, but quite possibly never actually go around the block.

I think the fundamental flaw is a tendency to develop confused or schizoid thinking.  Students probably feel they are expected to go in several directions simultaneously.  This is not helpful.  Children 10 or 12 years old do not need a whole lot of other stuff.  They need the right stuff, the real stuff, the true stuff.

The hard part, in a short article, is to communicate the total smugness, absolutism, and merciless aggression contained in Constructivism as found in American schools circa 1990.  Experts seemed to be talking about a new Ten Commandments, just brought down from the mountaintop, a great gift to the students of America.

Far-fetched claims, expressed in sophistry and jargon, were a giveaway that a phony had come to town.  Typical purple prose, written by professors, tell us how very lucky we are to have Constructivism.  Here are three examples worth lingering over: