The TOTIL method of education will help your child learn twice as much from kindergarten through high school. It's easy to understand and even easier to implement. TOT stands for "time on task" and IL stands for "independent learning" By focusing on these two key areas, your child can be home-schooled to become better at math, English, and advanced subjects. He or she will be able to write, research, and think better when it's time to enter college. Dr. Doris Leclerc Ball, a retired teacher and psychologist, spent more than forty years perfecting the TOTIL method. In this guidebook, you'll discover the critical importance of learner-centered education; the obsolete nature of most teachers and how to replace them; the simple curriculum and materials your child needs to succeed; many other insights on how to help your child learn. Your child can master the knowledge and skills necessary to compete at the highest levels for grades, jobs, and more. It begins with a roadmap for Revolutionizing Education in America.

Revolutionizing Education In America

The TOTIL MethodBy DORIS LECLERC BALL

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Doris Leclerc Ball, PhD
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-3224-2

Contents

Acknowledgments...................................................................................................................ixIntroduction......................................................................................................................xiChapter 1 Time on Task............................................................................................................1Chapter 2 Factors That Contribute to Time on Task.................................................................................13Chapter 3 Objectives of Education.................................................................................................23Chapter 4 The United States Educational System....................................................................................27Chapter 5 PISA Rankings of Countries on Education in 2009.........................................................................37Chapter 6 The TOTIL Method of Education (Time on Task Independent Learning).......................................................57Chapter 7 Materials for the TOTIL Method of Education.............................................................................69Chapter 8 Comparison of the Learner-Centered Method of Education and the Teacher-Centered Method of Education.....................77Chapter 9 Eight Steps to Follow to Implement the TOTIL Method of Education........................................................87Endnotes..........................................................................................................................91Bibliography......................................................................................................................97Index.............................................................................................................................99

Chapter One

Time on Task

Education in America is in crisis. Now. We must act. Now. No more procrastination. No more first aid. We cannot continue to put band-aids on a seriously infected, deep wound. The patient will soon die. In many cases, he or she already has. We cannot improve our children's education until we change our entire philosophy of education, including our basic assumptions about educational objectives and educational methodology. We must begin by rejecting the myths that are being perpetuated about effective teaching and learning. To start, we must discover the most important variables for a superior education. This knowledge will provide the solution to the problem.

Many research studies have been conducted to discover which variables are most important and to what degree. The most common variables thought to correlate with student performance include: expenditure per student, teacher education, classroom discipline, teacher enthusiasm, parental involvement, number of students per class, socioeconomic class of the students, IQ of students, type and/or quality of the school, public, private, parochial, etc.

Most educational researchers, parents and government officials have believed for many years that the most important variable in educational success is the amount of expenditure per child. This assumption has been discredited. Quality of education in the United States is at an all-time low compared to numerous other countries even though expenditures for education by the United States are at an all-time high compared to other countries. According to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests for 2009, the United States ranked thirtieth in math, twenty-fourth in sciences and seventeenth in reading out of sixty-five countries tested. However, the United States ranked second highest in the amount of expenditure per child out of twenty-eight OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Apparently, expenditure per child is not the most important variable for a superior education as has usually been assumed. Then what is?

In the 1970's, Jacob Kounin, Ph.D., an educational researcher and professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, decided to conduct a research study to discover the most important variables for effective classroom learning. To accomplish this, he sent graduate students with television cameras into numerous classrooms. These graduate students had been carefully trained in Dr. Kounin's method to ensure consistency in data collection. They spent over one thousand hours televising students and teachers. Since the study was conducted in the Detroit area, it was quite easy to control for socio-economic factors because the researchers could easily get to either the inner-city schools or the more affluent northern suburbs.

From his research, Dr. Kounin concluded that, while many of the variables mentioned in previous educational studies contributed to improved learning, classroom discipline by the teacher was, by far, the single most important variable of all. Dr. Kounin wrote a book entitled Discipline and Group Management in Classrooms in which he discussed his research study and his conclusions.

During my graduate studies, I attended a class in educational psychology at Wayne State University. Dr. Kounin was the professor for this class. On the last day of the course, Dr. Kounin discussed his well-known research study and stated that he still believed that classroom discipline was essential for superior learning. However, he now realized that this was because classroom discipline, and all other variables that had been found by other researchers to be important, had one element in common: increased Time on Task (TOT). I have observed, tested and confirmed the primacy of Time on Task for mastery of new information many times. Dr. Kounin had, indeed, found the essential variable for a superior education. I am indebted to Dr. Kounin for coalescing my thinking on this critical issue.

How does classroom discipline relate to Time on Task? Whenever a student is disruptive, it distracts other students and the teacher for some period of time and decreases Time on Task. My husband's grandfather, George, was a farmer who hired young teenage boys to work for him. He used to say, "If you have one boy, you have a boy. If you have two boys, you have half a boy. If you have three boys, you have no boy at all." Therefore, Grandpa George gave all his hired help chores on different parts of the farm so that they would not interact and be distracted from their chores. This indicates that, in a classroom setting, for the best performance, the teacher must keep all student interaction to an absolute minimum. However, minimizing student interaction is extremely difficult, and as I will discuss later, totally contrary to the present progressive/social philosophy of education.

Teachers with good classroom discipline can often predict which stimuli are likely to elicit disruptive behavior and avoid them, or, once such behavior begins, can stop it quickly. Preventing disruption in the classroom means that teachers have to be totally involved, energetic and vigilant every minute. After a few hours, they are usually quite exhausted and the later classes do not get the same quality of teaching as do the earlier classes. How soon teachers become exhausted, mentally and physically, depends to a large extent, not only on how energetic they are, but also on how many disruptive...