Last Sunday I finally tried “Substack Live” with a group of paid subscribers, to explore the first episode of the podcast Sold a Story season 2, about Direct Instruction. The recording’s above; I’m sharing it with everyone.
It went quite well — the folk who showed up were top-notch — so we’re going to do another one this Sunday to discuss the second episode:
Sunday, November 1
2pm Eastern / 11am Pacific
See exactly what time that is where you live1
This one will be free for all subscribers — you don’t need to pay or register or anything like that. To join (I’m told, I’m new at this) open this substack at the start time above, and click on the live video. (Make sure you’re signed into your Substack account.)
Imaginary Interlocutor: Brandon, what’s this all about, now?
A spicy confession: I loved, loved, loved the first season of the Sold a Story podcast. It took the phonics/whole language fight — the closest thing the education world has to WWI-style trench warfare! — and won it.2 It brought the science of reading to a huge audience, and helped change the way reading is taught in schools.
Now Sold a Story is back for a second season, and they’re championing Direct Instruction.
Direct Instruction (“DI” to its friends and lovers) is a highly structured teaching method that uses carefully scripted, systematically sequenced lessons, built around lots of student responses and immediate corrections. To call it “controversial” would be… underselling the controversy a bit. I’ve heard it called things like “soulless” and “authoritarian”.
I’ve had a complicated relationship with it myself.
When I first heard about DI, I thought it was straight-up evil. I was working in a progressivist school at the time. In graduate school, when I came across evidence that goshdarnit it works — specifically, that it was effective for kids in situations where better forms of education routinely failed — I thought that, maybe, maybe, it could be a method of last resort, but goodness knows that I wouldn’t want to teach it.
Then, a few months ago, Alessandro pointed out that Science is WEIRD, ah, is direct instruction, just reimagined through the tools of Egan education:
clear learning objectives → compelling riddles
examples and non-examples → surprising contrasts
(and perhaps much more?)
So now I don’t know what I think about DI. Is it evil? Is it amazing? Is my teaching — and the teaching that we’re helping other people around the world do — a type of it? (Would its practitioners think so? Would its opponents?)
And are there ways that Egan education can make DI (1) more attractive to teachers and parents, or (2) measurably better?
To explore these, I’m listening to this new season of Sold a Story and responding to each episode. And to make this more fun, I’m doing these responses live on video on Substack Live.
Like I said, the recording above is my response to the first episode of season 2, “It’s Not Just Reading”. I strongly recommend listening to the episode before watching the recording. It’s only about 20 minutes long, and you can listen to it on the web, or in whatever podcast player you use. And whatever you think about the topic, the episode is well-produced (see how many of Egan’s tools you can spot!) and a treat to listen to.
Enjoy! And if you’d like, come to the next one. You can listen, argue back, or ask questions. (There’s a chat feature for this.) Or just watch me puzzle through this!
Hope to see you (or at least your chats) there!
Note that, in most of the U.S., Sunday is “Daylight Savings Day”, an annual celebration where we wake up surly and miss appointments throughout the day.
Well, we’ll see. The empire strikes back.
