Most teachers are functionally illiterate, which is what you call it when you don't ever read, except maybe comic books on the toilet or poetry. Because of this, they need lots of diagrams and pictures to make sense of anything, so this guy Benjamin Bloom decided to draw this pyramid way back in 1956 that's supposed to explain how people learn or something and now schools all over the country have to use it. Whatever, Poindexter, all you need to worry about is that "evaluation" is at the top of the pile, which proves R3 is way smarter than you and your mom.
RATING: Bloom's Taxonomy: Psychobabble%
R3: 1000%
(Image from www.officeport.com. All joking aside, the tendency of elementary and high school teachers to read Bloom's taxonomy as a kind of "pecking order" of learning rather than a nested, concentric hierarchy is one of a dozen or so reasons why North American schools are among the worst in the civilized world.)
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15 comments:
whose harold bloom
FIRTs
I have never heard of this so I just googled it. The websites that came up looked wordy and boring so I didn't read them. But it did look like a bunch of crapola so I'll take your word for it, John.
The taxonomy itself is pretty solid. I just think that a lot of educational professionals forget that people had been learning for thousands of years before Bloom, who only recast in modern psychological terms what successful teachers already knew anyway.
i disagree i dont think people had been lerning for years what about cavemen CASE CLOSED!
There's an open question as to whether or not Evaluation belongs at the top of that pyramid, or whether Synthesis does - or for that matter whether the taxonomy is really hierarchical.
From my background, I think Bloom's taxonomy is nice to look at when getting started with instructional system analysis (keeps you focused on what you want for your objectives a little), but is ultimately inferior and a great deal less involved than a regimented instructional design model.
holy fuck i think my heart just stopped this is SO BORING
i think this might be the last time i read the coments ont his review im sure yall understand health issues
MACAIN PALIN 08!
Brian: I think it comes down to what one means by "hierarchy." A simple hierarchy (x is most important, then y, then a, and b is least important) doesn't really work--you get teachers trying to focus all their lessons on higher order questions while ignoring content. But a "tangled hierarchy" (what Douglas Hoffstadter called a "heterarchy") in which any given level forms the microstructure of the next level up and the higher levels make retroactive sense of the lower ones seems to me to be what Bloom was getting at.
Tom: If you think I'm boring online, you should meet me in person.
I just made a long post and blogger lost it. Basically, I agree that it fits better as a heterarchy, but still can imagine that there are viable instances of evaluation without synthesis, and analysis without synthesis.
Er, synthesis without analysis. D'oh.
My "gifted and talented" class was constantly being shown this pyramid thing on various projectors, the idea being (I guess?) that we would then know which kind of larnin' we were shooting for, but all I ever remember was going to a mental "happy place" until the boredom was over and we could get back to playing with puzzles. Which is mostly what we seemed to do in "gifted and talented" class. It probably should have been called "send the most annoying kids to go play with puzzles class."
Re-encountering this thing now, I sort of like it that "evaluation" is at the top, because "evaluation" does strike me as the hardest thing to do well (which doesn't stop a lot of people from "evaluating" things without having understanding, analysis, etc., taken care of, including me).
Do teachers really try to just teach the top level? Because that seems to ignore the whole point of the pyramid.
It does, unless you see a pyramid and think, "Slaves at the bottom, Pharaoh at the top" or something like that.
"Gifted and talented"! I think you have a name for your next manuscript.
Oooh. I remember G&T in elementary school. They made us drop eggs off a building, learn German, and read Macbeth. All in all, much better than regular school.
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