The Con in Constructivism

Improve-Education.org is an interesting website filled with provocative essays on education by Bruce Price.  Most of them are about reading (phonics versus “whole word”) but there is one essay about math and one called “The Con in Constructivism” that struck a chord with me:

Here is where this sophistry goes: constructivists argue that for children to truly learn that 2+3 equals 5 or that Paris is the capital of France, it’s necessary for children to construct this “new” knowledge for themselves. If you just, for example, explain something to them, that’s not authentic. If they simply memorize that 9 times 9 is 81, that doesn’t count. No, they must reinvent numbers, multiplication, and this or that example, otherwise their education is an empty fraud. In summary, educators bring in constructivism so they can describe learning as happening in one particular way, and then insist that nothing else is learning. Naturally, they have to change the schools all around to make sure that only the correct kind of learning occurs.

This is the essence of the problem with the rigidly constructivist approach favored by TERC and found in programs like “Investigations”.  The idea that we construct our own knowledge in the sense that we realize things for ourselves when we learn is something I doubt anyone would argue with.  The idea that one’s learning is hampered or not “authentic” when information is read from a book or explained by a teacher or a parent, however, is lunacy.