Blue Man Group School Scrutinized As Parents Say Kids Can't Read

[katliamom]

Look, the Blue Man school may be deficient in some ways and outstanding in others. Frankly, if my second grader and most of her classmates were poor readers I'd be concerned. So there may be issues at this school with paying attention to/addressing kids' academic performance. But this is a school pre K- fourth grade right? And fourth grade was just recently added? If so, we're talking about the early elementary grades where it's very common not to have textbooks and a relaxed curriculum, especially if the curriculum was Montessori-inspired. It could be that what we're seeing here is the (frequent) conflict between the ideals of 'experimental' schooling and the reactions of highly ambitious parents. Maybe they simply decided that Blue Man isn't focused enough, at his early stage, on getting their kiddos into Harvard in another decade.

[coureur]

Why is anyone surprised that a school founded by The Blue Man Group is turning out poor readers? I'd be much more surprised if they somehow produced good readers.

If you want your kid to grow up to become an eccentric performance "artist," then this sort of school is probably a very good idea. But if you want your kid to turn out to be a literate, well-educated, and well-rounded individual then not so much.

[katliamom]

I don't believe that a funky education through third grade will have ANY bearing on a child being, or NOT being, a literate, well-educated and well-rounded individual.

[absweetmarie]

But do we really know that they're turning out poor readers, coureur? I'm going to give the original Post article a teensy benefit of the doubt and assume that the writer got one detail right and correctly reported that some families pulled their kids. What that tells me is that the school didn't work for those kids. But given that the original Post article (and the HuffPo repurposing of said article) clearly misrepresented the school's approach, I'm reserving judgment. No books? No lesson plans? Well, not exactly. The lack of concern with fact checking on the part of the Post and (shame on them) the HuffPo is a red flag for me, indicating the strong possibility that there is more to the story.

[coureur]

>>I don't believe that a funky education through third grade will have ANY bearing on a child being, or NOT being, a literate, well-educated and well-rounded individual.<<

I believe it. A literate, well-educated individual, like any undertaking that requires a lot of step-by-step building, needs a strong foundation to support the stuff that comes later. If education in grades K through 3 is so inconsequential why even have it? Just start everyone off in the 4th grade at age 9, because kindergarten and the first three grades don't matter, right?

Any kid going into the fourth grade with poor reading skills is already behind. That kid, with extra attention from parents and teachers and a good dose of self-motivation, may be able to overcome this deficit. But poor reading ability is certainly a ball and chain that is to no one's advantage.

If an alum of the of the Blue Man School turns out in the end to be literate and well-educated, it will be much more in spite of his/her early education rather than because of it.

[absweetmarie]

I believe that growing up to be a literate individual depends on a firm foundation starting in infancy, frankly. But I don't agree that we know enough about the Blue School, at least not based on the Post story, to determine that the school is failing kids in this respect. We can presume the school didn't work for the kids whose parents pulled them out. Do we know more than that? I happen to be pretty conservative when it comes to education, but I know that alternative approaches work well for some kids and families. The website for the Blue School suggests that the school does have turning out well-rounded, literate kids as a goal. Whether they are doing it or not is an open question. But I certainly wouldn't conclude anything about the fitness of the approach based on an article in the New York Post!

[coureur]

>>But do we really know that they're turning out poor readers, coureur?<<

Well, you're right. I am accepting the story at face value. If it turns out that the Blue Man School is actually turning out excellent readers then what I said doesn't apply and those kids will likely do fine. What I am disagreeing with is the notion that education through the 3rd grade has no bearing on later educational success.

I stand by my statement that going in to the 4th grade with poor reading skills is a significant problem. And if parents send their kids to a K-3 school that commonly produces poor-reading students, they are making a mistake.

[absweetmarie]

I agree fully that going into 4th grade as a poor reader is consequential, coureur. But, respectfully, I would caution against taking the story at face value. Consider the "no books" claim as a start. This is simply not true. In other words, it's a big, fat, unconscionable lie. I looked at the school's website. Not my cup of tea ... But the school clearly is not the big joke the Post would like us to think it is.

[katliamom]

"What I am disagreeing with is the notion that education through the 3rd grade has no bearing on later educational success."

Of course it has a bearing - but even in the case that the result is academic delays, they can be managed, at that age.

For example, at that age, most girls are academically ahead of most boys - yet boys do eventually catch up.

My own daughter went to an expeditionary charter where lots of 5th graders still struggled with the times tables. Fast forward a decade, and those kids are in good, or VERY good, colleges. They did catch up in the traditional subjects in which the expeditionary approach wasn't effective.

My daughter loved the school, but by 7th grade wanted out: she wanted school sports, and the expeditionary school didn't offer it. It offered week-long backpacking trips, and hut-to-hut skiing races, and sailing in the summer. But no track or football. Not their thing.

My daughter starts grad school at Georgetown this fall. Her closest school friend is in second year of med school. Other kids in her class went to schools that included Stanford, NYU and Vassar along with the main flagship. The unconventional elementary (and for some middle and even high school) education did not stop them from being considered conventionally academically successful.

[paying3tuitions]

NYPost, which was the source of the HuffPo article, is basically a tabloid with sensationalist techniques to pitch articles. My guess is the students don't have Workbooks, with tear-out pages, very typical in other schools, for various subject matter homework and drill work. There are certainly ways to teach reading today without textbooks -- use of Guided Reading Level sets of smaller hand-held books at different ability levels is now standard in elementary grades, for example.

If we want to discuss this school, without knowing much from an insider's perspective, at least give it the courtesy of a more serious article that attempts to express its goals:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/ny...neurology.html

I have 3 kids in the performing arts (two professionally, one as a hobby), but all had solid academic foundations in the early grades. That's because I admire highly educated artists whose performance has foundation in literature, history, science and all the rest. ETA: So, while I appreciate why students spent weeks planning their route to the aquarium as learning process, my own kids (and myself) would become impatient. Get to the aquarium already! More time to see more fish, thank you.

As an early grade-school teacher myself, I don't think I'd gravitate to this school -- even if I could afford it, which I can.t' I was not impressed reading so much pedagogic theory as the sole reason for the creation of the school. I do agree with more awareness of the child's emotional world, but at least from the NYTimes article, it sounded like a preoccupation there. For me, just a bit too cloying.

If this school wants to represent itself, it has been around long enough to present what its current students are able to do. The proof is in the pudding (the children), not the cooks (the administrators/curriculum designers/teachers, etc).

There is indication in the NYTimes article that some parents (I still don't know how many) worried more about the bump into the world of schooling after this school, where the culture shock of tests and grades might be a rough transition.

If a child isn't thriving as a reader in a $31K school, I would think the yank-out time should be around January, not June. Why did it take so long for these parents to notice the deficiency?

Also the NYTimes article indicated that in its first several years, they moved around a lot. Now with a stable building, there was more time for parent meetings, governance discussions and all the things that shine a light on a school.

[mini]

"A literate, well-educated individual, like any undertaking that requires a lot of step-by-step building, needs a strong foundation to support the stuff that comes later. If education in grades K through 3 is so inconsequential why even have it?"

good question. I don't think one does. Most of it is school mythology. I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of parents and children who don't think so. I've got two kids, one who completed graduated school (with her B.A. and M.S.) in four years, the other in her 5th year of her Ph.D. program, who had absolutely none of that. They have six languages between them.

And there are very, very successful schools that have been going for more than 40 years, that have sent students on to the nation's best colleges and universities, "structured" that way - and yes, the children decide the curriculum, and, in fact, even hire the teachers (without the parents involved in that whatsoever.) Check out Sudbury Valley Schools.

[katliamom]

In the early years in Japan's elementary schools, kids spend far more time on art, music, playing and even cleaning their own school (yes, that's a tradition there) than in reading and doing math problems.

Clearly, the Japanese discovered that you CAN have a mellow first few years in school and still turn out highly accomplished students by the end of high school.

[mini]

In Norway (supposedly home of the most successful schools) they don't teach reading, or "reading readiness", or "phonics" or "alphabet" before age 7.

[katliamom]

Same in many other northern/central European countries - all of which produce more accomplished students than the US.

[Hunt]

I don't understand why the New York Post would criticize poor readers--that's its future market segment.