LeftoverPi

At some point I realized that it was counterproductive to try to force a person who wants to do direct instruction to do constructivist approaches. ...they aren't going to do it well...the kids would learn better from them if the teacher taught the way the teacher was comfortable/experienced.

That's what I meant when I said I saw the plight of the other side--what about those teachers being forced into teaching with a constructivist approach, when they might actually know in their hearts that they (personallly) would be able to do a better job via direct instruction?

I saw the [constructivist] curricula and said "yeah, I would love this, and the kids [who I was teaching] would love it. And most [or perhaps "many"] teachers would be lost with it."

So [eventually I came to the position] that they were fighting about an utterly ridiculous question, which is "how should all teachers teach all students?"

I just think there are teachers that do well with direct instruction, or relatively well, and they do not have the disposition to coax understanding from students. If you try to force them into that by mandating a constructivist curriculum, you're likely to have both aptitude and attitude problems that will more than erase what gains you were going to get from the curriculum. Not only that, it will look like it's the curriculum that failed, even if that's not really the problem.

I should note that this was not the biggest problem I had with the framing of the debate, by the way--all I am doing with this post is expanding on the comment from earlier. But more on that in part 2 :).