Zig history

I admire Siegfried Engelmann for his sustained commitment to teaching students effectively. Zig published a book that amounts to a memoir about his career in promoting evidence-based teaching for kids who—regardless of gender, ethnic background, disability, or other factors—need effective instruction. It’s available here.

Zig’s a master at analyzing the requirements for students to learn concepts and operations, and his systematic application of his analyses to the teaching of pretty much everything from reading to logical evaluation of advertising and core concepts in sciences shows that there is a path to a logical science of instruction. As he admits in one of his books, technologies of teaching will come along that will make his programs “look like a Model T,” but he has shown us how to build the basic vehicle.

The book is Teaching Needy Kids in our Backward System: 42 Years of Trying, and I recommend this book to people who want to acquire an understanding of how US education rejects features of effective instruction while touting philosophical approaches to education.