lifeisnotsobad:

1. The point that there is nothing new about the claims of MYP ideologues is a serious one.

2. The claim about the incoherence of the thinking behind MYP is a serious one too.

3. The claim that the pretentiousness of MYP language reveals the shallowness of MYP is a serious one. (The language problem is shared by DP too, but I gather both programs are at least getting rid of Latin tags such as Homo Faber and ab initio). This is a claim that I didn't pursue in the last post.

All of these are truth claims. They are either true or false. They have nothing to do with the "good old days of discipline" or any other cliches you happen to have opinions about. Nor do they have anything to do with idiots and geniuses.

I have noticed that when you challenge the assumptions that MYP people make about education you rarely get an answer. If you don't accept all this MYP nonsense as the gospel truth you are not a team player and you don't believe in collaboration! But of course such objections have nothing to do with truth and falsity.

And I actually agree that life is not so bad. That is why I would prefer to be doing something with my time other than making up task sheets and unit planners.

Here are a few thoughts about MYP: First of all, I was teaching before MYP was invented, and the idea that students didn't know how they were being evaluated is complete nonsense. Second, of course much that is incorporated in an MYP program is artificial and phony. MYP assumes that both teachers and students are too stupid to know what to do in class. This is why we have to have collaborative planning! We have to spend at least as many hours in planning as we do in actually teaching. The trouble with this approach is that a committee of idiots will produce idiocy and a committee of 9 idiots and 1 bright person will produce idiocy as well, because the bright person has to give up in the face of the MYP rabble. Third, the educational "thinking" behind MYP is incoherent. Anyone who thinks that criterion referenced evaluation (I refuse to use the cant term "assessment") is objective or somehow more enlightened than good old fashioned evaluation of the sort that was normal when I was in high school, needs to take or retake Philosophy 101.