The Education Reform Fiasco: A Recipe for Disaster

The cognitivist tradition, which is backed by rigorous empirical evidence, has long surpassed constructivists. Cognitive load theory says the working memory is limited, so lessons or activities should make the students cognitively active, removing extraneous cognitive load by scaffolding them. 

The The systemic failure in the NIE’s quality control process. Instead of selling false Finland dreams to the public, the government should revisit the entire design of the reform before implementing it again 

If you must introduce social media to children directly or indirectly, then you should identify a social media platform specially designed for children with proper access control and content moderation tools. 

The cognitivist tradition, which is backed by rigorous empirical evidence, has long surpassed constructivists. Cognitive load theory says the working memory is limited, so lessons or activities should make the students cognitively active, removing extraneous cognitive load by scaffolding them. 

This requires explicit teaching. Discovery learning, problem solving, or group activities increase the extraneous load hindering the learning process. Learning is about building mental structures (schemas) and organizing knowledge.

The postponement of grade six education reforms has sparked a national firestorm, centered on a scandalous digital link that many fear signals a hidden social agenda. Beneath the headlines of vulgarization, lies a far more dangerous pedagogical failure. By swapping rigorous instruction for technohyped social media integration and “learning by doing,” the NIE is ignoring the fundamental laws of cognitive science. It is a recipe for a national disaster.   

The education reforms for grade six have been postponed after causing a political turmoil in the country over a link in the English module directing to a gay dating site, sparking debates about the government’s hidden LGBTQI promotion agenda.   

The government interprets the incident as just one mistake, while the opposition raises concerns over the ‘vulgarization’ of education. Both sides seem to be in a silent agreement that the proposed reform and its direction are progressive and paramount.   

“No issue other than that link,” government representatives frequently affirm so in the media, and in a series of seminars they conduct around the country. Our amiable minister, Dr. Sunil Senevi, is the only one in that camp, amidst his long speeches filled with sympathetic excerpts from poems and prose that exaggerate the crisis of existing education, who says something like the government should have a process to consider constructive criticisms, although at that point, one cannot help but think Senevi hints he has not yet seen any such criticisms as he addresses nothing of the sort.  

The Peratugamis (FSP party members), especially Mr. Pubudu Jayagoda, are the only prominent characters in the mainstream political spectrum who have spoken out strongly against the reforms.   

Unfortunately, FSP being on the radical left, it is easy to dismiss their statements as one of the many criticisms of everything, from capitalism to technology. The teachers’ trade unionists criticise the reform, mostly targeting the practical issues and lack of training, which are also easy to dismiss as the usual resistant nagging, although they made serious points. The multilayered discussion on social media about the reforms has not grabbed the limelight. The word on the street is that education in Sri Lanka is all broken: rote, impractical, useless, and unemployable.   

Hence, almost everyone agrees there is a dire need for an immediate educational reform. Their pretense is not entirely baseless. However, popular shallow resentment against ‘pasting lentils’ and ‘learning what Balangoda man ate’ in favour of teaching coding or graphic design only ends up justifying any rash change in the name of urgent reform.   

Addressing these growing sentiments, the government glorifies the reform for exposing students to modern technology and orienting them for the job market.  

Contrary to the ultra-modern, futuristic, technocratic education marvel that the government preaches, the outcome is a reckless, retrograde reform, of which the contentious web link was merely a symptom.   

Regardless of the defects in the proofreading and quality control of the learning material preparation, only a nincompoop can design a lesson for children around finding friends (or rather buddies) through social media, which are generally adult platforms. Writing to pen pals was a children’s activity that featured in English textbooks for decades  

I can imagine how the ‘anti-lentils’ mindset kicked in and how the module writers rashly substituted pen pals, whom they felt were archaic, with modern technohyped social media profiles.   

If you must introduce social media to children directly or indirectly, then you should identify a social media platform specially designed for children with proper access control and content moderation tools.  

The relevant government agencies should screen the platform to ensure safety. Promoting general social media and the internet to children without guidance on internet safety and misinformation, is a terrible idea.  

There are many web links and QR codes in the module books that direct to privately owned, sometimes copyright-violated content, and the reform actively encourages students to learn from the internet as a step towards discovery learning.   

If the reformers had consulted proper cybersecurity experts, they would have been warned about which standards to follow when preparing material for children. Naive technophilia without discipline is a disaster waiting to happen.  

 The National Institute of Education (NIE) and the educationists behind the reform often recite the mantra “learning by doing” as a proven, sophisticated new trend in education. Nothing could be further from the truth.   

This reform stems from early constructivist education theories, proposed by Jerome Bruner, which were based on the ideas of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Constructivism advocates that learning in the classroom should be a simulation of the way humankind constructs knowledge as a community.   

If you have listened to proponents of the new reforms, this would ring a bell for you. The proponents bash what they call teacher-centric learning in favour of student-centric learning. Discovery learning, inquiry-based learning, problem-based learning, group activities, and the teacher as a facilitator rather than an instructor are key elements of this tradition.   

These ideas were widely adopted in the US New Math reform in the 1950s, the Whole Language program in the 1960s, Man: A Course of Study in the 1960s, and many other similar reforms, and all of them miserably failed and were reversed. Even the pretentious Finnish education marvel is a failure. They sold the 2004 constructivist reforms, demonstrating their Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) performance from 2000 to 2006 due to the previous education model. Since 2006, Finland’s PISA scores have been going downhill.  

The romantic suggestion of children teaching themselves is a compelling hypothesis. But that does not guarantee its success. We should look into empirical results and historical cases to evaluate these methods. There is an extensive body of research showing that this indeed did not work. The largest and most expensive experimental study ever conducted was the ‘Project Follow Through’ funded by the US federal government. To the disappointment of the constructivists, the most successful method of education was a teacher-led approach, Direct Instruction by Siegfried Engelmann, who advocated a   scripted, explicit, and guided education method, while constructivist methods underperformed. New Zealand educationist John Hattie’s meta-analysis indicated very low effect sizes for student-centric approaches, such as discovery learning, inquiry-based, and problem-based learning, whereas teacher-led approaches showed higher effect sizes. I should also mention that Hattie marked lower effect sizes for television and computer-based learning methods.  

Why are so-called educationists in Sri Lanka hyping such outdated, flawed education philosophy? Pedagogy has become a dumping ground of flawed ideas and delusions for quite some time. Refuted neuroscience theories (neuromyths) like Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, Visual-Audio-Kinaesthetic learning styles, left-right brain targeted teaching, and the learning pyramid (which says you will remember 5% by listening, 10% by reading, and 90% by doing) have found their safe haven in education.   

Education is a distant niche to core psychology or neuroscience, so misconceptions can persist there for a while. On the other hand, education is an emotionally and politically loaded topic. Romantic ideas of students teaching themselves or children being inherently diverse are celebrated for their politically correct appeal, despite the hard evidence.  

 Imagining children as little scientists, engineers, or historians is a horrible way to picture either those children or those subjects. You need to have a solid basis before conducting research or solving problems, not the other way around.   

Early constructivists in the 1960s might envisioned that people teaching themselves without much authority would be a wonderful idea. In this era of social media and the internet, we have already experienced how far this could go.   

The last thing you need in classrooms is students teaching other students about the moon landing hoax, that birds are not real, and all other conspiracy theories. Combining discovery learning with overexposure to the internet is pure madness. In this case, the teachers would neither be instructors nor facilitators, but they would become mere ‘enablers’.  

 The cognitivist tradition, which is backed by rigorous empirical evidence, has long surpassed constructivists. Cognitive load theory says the working memory is limited, so lessons or activities should make the students cognitively active, removing extraneous cognitive load by scaffolding them.   

This requires explicit teaching. Discovery learning, problem solving, or group activities increase the extraneous load hindering the learning process. Learning is about building mental structures (schemas) and organizing knowledge.   

The mathematics module of the new reform distracts students from building the real schema by asking them to watch videos about ginger cultivation, to collect facts, to prepare poster presentations, and to be involved in other group activities. There is nothing wrong with students learning about ginger cultivation, but a maths lesson is not the place to do it. The module requires giving marks to these extraneous cognitive loads, and that is a substantial portion. An ‘anti-lentils’ spokesperson may say poster presentation is a more important skill for the job market than ‘useless’ mathematics, as there are calculators now. Yet, I have unfortunate news for that spokesperson.   

The marking rubrics are against the basic visual design theory and promote less empty space with colourfulness; students will not even learn how to create a proper poster.  

 The contents of the modules also have serious issues. The global studies module contains a lesson stereotyping Africa in a way that even I was ashamed to read, and the history module teaches classical racism.   

The distinction between the past and history is a fundamental point. The history module conflates history with the past, and the activity provided was far worse. It gives the impression that simple anecdotes and recollections are history. The science module depicted several facts incorrectly.   

These are just a few out of many. Some of these errors are mistakes, but others are poorly designed lessons. Evidently, the reforms are rushed, and the quality control processes are inadequate.  

The reform deemphasizes summative assignments such as term tests to put more weight on formative assignments, and marks from them are considered for a grade point average score (GPA). Strong empirical evidence supports the spacing and interleaving theories and the theory of desirable difficulties, which demonstrate that students retain information more effectively when summative assessments are delayed and require effortful retrieval.   

While not being the most effective form of measuring students, formative assignments are a magnificent tool to provide feedback to them, and the retrieval theory says that frequent retrieval would increase retention. In other words, we are learning from tests themselves, even from the failed ones. The grade point average on formative assessments penalises students for making mistakes even before they have digested the subject, shifting the focus from providing feedback to measuring students.  

 The silver lining of the contentious link in the English module is that it delayed a reckless reform. Otherwise, the government would have turned a blind eye to constructive criticisms, as that would not rattle their cage.   

The systemic failure in the NIE’s quality control process. is a problem to be dealt with immediately. Instead of selling false Finland dreams to the public, the government should revisit the entire design of the reform before implementing it again, this time with the consultation of proper experts, not the certificated snake oil sellers. 

Education reforms must not be made into a recipe for disaster.  

The writer is a Senior Data Engineer at hSenid Mobile Solutions and the author of The Failure of Marxian Economic Discourse: A Critique of Das Kapital