I have decided to write a screed. I think that in every man’s life there comes a time when a screed is called for. I also admit that I thought I once wrote a screed before, that about music sharing and the internet, but I realize that that was more of a rant-slash-harangue and not a screed proper. This will be my screed. But don’t call this a diatribe. I have my pride.
I have been noticing that the state of education today is plagued with problems; I’ll confine myself to the systemic problems which I have observed through my own experiences but I have no doubt that these same issues, or ones related to them pop up in other schools all over this fair country of ours. It isn’t that we don’t know what we want from students (we don’t, but that’s a separate issue), but that the path that society demands doesn’t fit into the set of expectations and lofty educational ideals which drive our school systems.
When we look at an active high school graduate we hope that we see someone who has acquired three sets of information:
1. The specific content knowledge which will allow him to study advanced subjects with a groundwork of information
2. The specific skills which will allow him to apply knowledge, generalize information, or perform the tasks necessary for survival
3. The cultural literacy which will place him within a socio-cultural system as a fluent contributor who has an appreciative and yet critical eye focused on himself, his world and others
As educators coming out of graduate schools and teaching programs we are taught about how important it is to teach students how to “think.” Critical thinking, whatever that is, must be what we infuse into our students and, once we assume that we know what constitutes critical thinking, we move towards problem based learning, higher order thinking skills, portfolio and alternative assessments, deeper understandings and all those buzzwords which get written about in the kinds of trade magazines that teachers would throw out had they the time for such luxuries as throwing out mail.
What we need are students not who have internalized some combination of whatever that generation of teachers has adopted as the panacea-du-jour, but students who have been exposed to the necessary core of information, who have been shown, and given a chance to practice, the application of the skills (with and/or without that core knowledge) and who have developed a respect for a process of education and (if we could ever…) a love for that process, regardless of what discipline the student finds himself leaning toward.
This leads into one of the first flaws in our educational plan – how do we assess students to see whether they have “learned.” Even that question is problematic: is it whether a teacher has taught (exposed them to what they need to see? Engaged them? Somehow gotten them to care?) or whether a student has performed on a standardized assessment, and when measured against an external scale, placed in an acceptable range? Maybe it is whether the student earns a grade in the class, or demonstrates through alternative assessments a traditionally accepted (or completely unique) understanding of the content. Is it whether the student is accepted to the college of his choice or, ten years later has a good job, or maybe, whether a student, at some point in the future, uses a skill or piece of information in a real-world situation? Every student is being trained either to create content in our world (be it as a fry cook, a writer or a construction worker) or judge, manipulate and/or fix content made by someone else. Do we decide that our educational system is a roaring success if more or fewer people move in to one filed or another? Too often we look at where our students are going for college and decide that whatever system they use for admissions which allowed our students’ admission validates us and our educational methods. But since a college degree (and, more and more so, a degree from the “right” college) is a stepping stone towards a job, financial security and the ability to repay the generation which footed the educational bill, the pressure to get in to college replaces the pressure to learn and earn a spot in the appropriate college. Test tutors, essay writers and guidance counselors (plus the occasional grade manipulation so that the acceptance numbers reflect well on the school, which can then tout its success and attract more students and donations) help guide a student and family towards “academic success” as long as we decide that a student’s goal has nothing to do with educating the student during high school.
Now I’m not saying that grades don’t matter, college is useless, or everyone should have the chance to pitch in the major leagues, but education as a system seems to be built as a conveyer belt designed to get students to a particular end point and the stages up to that point are therefore determined by their efficacy in delivery. If grade numbers get a student into college, then the student learns to whine and complain over a point or two. If class placements matter, then students will jockey for position in the “right classes.” If the colleges care most about standardized tests, then the student is tempted to abandon school and focus on test prep 24/7 and if what matters is the extra-curricular involvement then we have soccer moms killing the competition so Janey can become a cheerleader. The ends have consistently justified the means and yet then we look at the means and wonder why our children value results measured by anything other than true understanding and complex thinking skills.
I digress for a concrete example (too often these mad ramblings speak in generalities and “about” education but don’t show what they mean with real-world situations and facts, and I say that with nary a footnote to support my allegation; education types know what I mean).
In a 9th grade World History class, students are often taught that the Olympics in ancient Greece were dedicated to various gods. Let’s look at that fact and ask certain basic questions:
A.
Why do I have to know that
in ancient Greece, the Olympics were dedicated to various gods?
1. Because the fact will appear on a local assessment
2. Because the fact will appear on an external assessment
3. Because knowing this establishes a groundwork for a later piece of information about Greece or ties to a previously stated fact about Greece
4. Because knowing this will allow for comparison to a later fact about Greece
5. Because knowing this allows for distinction between Greece then and now, or Greece then and another country then
6. Because it provides a bridge to a later fact about more relevant history
7. Because knowing this is part of a cultural canon of “things one should know”
8. Because the fact allows an insight into the way of thinking of a certain culture, time and or place
9. Because the stress on such a details exhibits an attention to historical detail which is or will be important in the acquisition of information, assessment of the validity of fact, the building of ideas or the selection of information
10. Because the act of collecting this information teaches and/or models important skills of fact collection
11. Because knowing this will be important if the student pursues a field related to this knowledge
12. Because I said so as the authority on the subject or in the class and my telling you reinforces the power structure here
And these are only 12 off the cuff possible reasons. Note, though, that some of these possibilities value the fact in and of itself, some see it as valuable in its connection to other facts, and some see the fact as inherently meaningless but useful as a tool for the teaching of skills considered valuable in the discipline of history.
B. How do I show that I “learned” anything?
1. Am I trying to prove that I have mastered this fact as a singular piece of information?
2. Is knowing “it” what I have to prove or might this fact not be “tested” or even “testable”?
3. Must I show that I can connect it to something else local or universal?
4. Do I have to retell it, apply it, integrate it with other facts, compare it to prior knowledge, extrapolate from it or do something else with it to prove that I know it? And for how long must I retain it?
These options often depend on why we are teaching it and why it is a valid thing to teach. Can we limit learning a fact to only one of these levels of thinking about the fact or must we touch on more than one level for the teaching to be valid? Can we make a rule that applies to all facts and how do we know before we cover anything which of the value systems and demonstrable “learning” proofs will be applicable?
C. What is my responsibility to the awareness of the student?
1. Must I ask immediately for a proof of hearing, memory, understanding?
2. What level of clarification must I provide?
3. Must I explain WHY I am teaching this?
4. Must I be clear what I expect the student to gain or get out of being exposed to this?
5. Must I make this fact relevant to the student’s experience in order to make it seem worth knowing?
6. Is a student ever allowed to forget a fact?
7. Is knowing where to find a fact as important as knowing the fact, itself?
Does a student have to know why he is hearing information in order to effectuate learning any more than I have to know why I am reciting in order to crystallize teaching? I can go back and represent this entire set of questions with the primary fact of “Two triangles are congruent if…” or “The preterit tense of the word ______ in Spanish is” or even “Moving the belt sander this way will…” Because different types of knowledge and facts present themselves and their worth in different ways (even the same fact is differently important or useful depending on the context, student and moment) it becomes incredibly difficult to know the overall philosophy of education and assessment for any student, class, lesson or school. Students intuitively know that they want answers to these questions and that we don’t have any. They know that the grade and the class placement are primary and that is dangerous enough, but when they ask “why do I have to know this” and we don’t have much of an answer, then we run into problems of motivation. A student who asks “will this be on the test” is confronting us on one level. A student who says “I’m not going into a field that requires science so why should I be beating myself up to remember this physics work?” is forcing us to come to terms on another level. Are we serving students by exposing them to a broad range of subjects so that they have a basis from which to choose when they begin to refine their interests? Do we have a responsibility to them to give them a solid footing in a cross section of fields? Do we believe that every student has the potential to succeed in any area so by exposing them to all areas, we can move them forward uniformly and universally? If we don’t know exactly why we think it is important to teach something then how can we communicate to a student why it is valuable to learn it?
We have simple answers that we think clarify. “You have to learn this” we hear ourselves say, “because…(and then we cite one or all of the 11 items listed above).” We justify to ourselves that we have to teach to help encourage certain thinking skills, but then we get mired in the specific content because of external measures, or that we have to teach to prepare students for external measures and then we get lost in trying to encourage some other method of analysis. And this only serves to confuse everyone. The fact is, we don’t know why we do what we do, what it takes to do what we do, or how we know we have done what we set out to do (if that was even the right thing to do in the first place). When we try to walk that fabled fine line between content and concept, between data and practice we do so without being sure that that balance is, in and of itself, of value.
I was reading through another of those books about education which purport to quantify and commodify what teaching is and it said that sometimes it is proper to have a student earn a C+ on a test instead of being unduly rewarded because the student needs to learn a lesson about preparation and the natural consequences of his actions. Assuming, of course, that the assessment is fair, valid and reasonable and that it addresses the varying needs and abilities of the students, there is still the outside pressure of how that grade will affect the student emotionally and in terms of his overall grade point average. Do I gain anything in the long run by giving the student a poor grade? Is my job to teach him A lesson or to make sure that I have successfully taught him THE lesson. If he does poorly is that a reflection on him or on me? Is there a single answer which can develop into a fixed policy? Of course not. Sometimes the C+ has to stand and sometimes it is an indicator that there is a deeper problem with the way the student studies, the way the test was designed, the way the material was covered or the student’s demeanor on any given day.
What we are resisting and yet embracing is the concept of mediocrity. I am not, though, railing about the state of the world in which we accept and even celebrate something other than perfection or excellence (which is a separate concern as we both excuse lower performance and yet redefine the “center” so that everyone is above average), but a world which looks at the root of mediocrity, that is “being in the middle.” We have to assume that a student who receives a poor grade is capable of better and that our attempt to find a center between teaching and assessing has failed so the student should not be punished. Why should the student be fated to going to a school which is less not than “great” but than “what the student wants” because I was unclear about exactly how I wanted him to behave and perform? When we are not sure about our own role and purpose we allow the students to be “in the middle” and not rise above the challenge of confusion and we reward them out of a sense of our own fiscal need and educational guilt.
A moment on thinking while I’m not thinking. As instructors, we are constantly harangued and told to address those phantom higher order thinking skills. To refresh the memory of all of you who stopped reading Bloom’s taxonomy in 4th grade, the scale of “thinking” ranges from simple knowledge all the way “up” to evaluation which becomes sort of a meta-awareness of the first 5 steps. While I certainly can see a difference in a basic memorization and a judgment about whether that facts memorized have any accuracy or usefulness, I think the levels and the assumption that their relationship reflects an increasing complexity, subtlety or depth is seriously flawed. Thinking is context based and sometimes, the highest order (whatever that means) is simply understanding – critical evaluation may be irrelevant at best or detrimental at worst. And while we like to think that application is somehow important (mixed in at the #3 spot, before both the reflexive analysis and the often unnecessary synthesis) we lose ourselves in this fallacy that I don’t “know it” unless I can use it. Not all levels of Bloom are appropriate for every interaction between man and his world and by creating the false god of HOTS we establish an unreachable, even undesirable standard against which we judge what could otherwise be perfectly great instructive moments.
While I’m on the topic and not feeling bound by any line of thinking, let’s talk “grades.” As you might expect, the issues which surround effective teaching (or, possibly learning) imbue our notion of grading with the usual imprecision. There are three general notions of assessment – comparing the student to a given norm, like a set of “right” answers, comparing a student to others and making his grade be based on his relationship to the performance of others, and not comparing the student to anything and simply reflecting on what that student has or has not done. Each is pretty much useless, especially if no one makes any attempt to decide exactly why we are testing and what we are testing for. In the same vein, there are conventionally 3 modes of testing – pretests to get a sense of what a student knows, process tests to ensure that the learning procedure is having a desired effect, or if it has to be adjusted, and post-tests to see if after the process, students can recall a fact or apply a skill. Of course, what most tests test is the ability to do well on a test, and most assessments must isolate a way of presenting which can pale or over-state the cognitive skills of the student in question. The numbers, letters and even anecdotes which develop are often more the result of the inequity of the assessment, the subjective opinion of the teacher or the struggle of the student to perform in a particular way and are therefore not measures of anything truly useful. Is there a way to scale and grade a student once we know what we want the goal to be and how we know if he has gotten there? Maybe – it might not be a number, a rank or a story and may therefore not be “explainable”, generalizable or comparable to anything else in any other context. Let’s say we come to terms with the exact point and goal of instruction and we devise a test which tests that, does that really let us know anything about the student? If he can drop an egg successfully from a building without its breaking, do we assume problem solving skills, a mastery of physics or adroitness with straws and scotch-tape? The real test of any student’s unique and necessary mixture of factual recall, synthesis and application is life itself and the unpredictable life path which will call forth a personal combination of knowledge and abilities. All we are doing by labeling anything before hand is playing odds and hoping that by writing down that a student gets all the math problems “right” so that both the student and school will know where he might want to channel his successes.
Another part of this equation that adds up to a sound education is the notion of “good teaching.” We struggle mightily with this because somehow we think that putting the right adult in the right place, doing the right thing will help some or any of the students know stuff. When I put it that way, it seems rather silly, but that’s our hope. The easiest way to effect this model is to have a content-area specialist standing in front presenting information and holding the students accountable for the retention of that information for which we hired this expert. In an effort to address varied learning styles and sensory needs of students, we encourage teachers to try a variety of modes of teaching, using varied presentations, group work, problem based learning and on and on. We throw in accommodations when we assess to make sure that students are able demonstrate mastery over whatever it is we think we have taught them. But that’s just the problem – we still aren’t sure what they need to know and why. That tension between content and skill, between external measurement and local demonstrable understanding, between cultural knowledge and applicable skill paralyzes the teacher. Even given someone who is a master at what it is to be a teacher (mainly, to be everything to everybody all the time even before the person knows what he needs the teacher to be), the opposing forces often put the teacher in the unenviable position of having to serve two mutually exclusive masters. The teacher who is less than masterful, or who is a slave to the newest buzz word and pedagogical panacea will have an even harder time improving his craft because it can never be clear what his goal is and any singular methodology flies in the face of what good teaching is, constant shifting and changing.
As a supervisor, I then get saddled with the task of “making a teacher better” as if I could tell a teacher what will work tomorrow and I can convey the precise way of presenting information so as to maximize “teaching.” There seems to be this notion that skills can be taught. Well, I guess, some can. A book can list the steps necessary for solving a Rubik’s Cube. A website can show me what to do to assemble a house out of Lincoln Logs. But the second the directions require human perception, or even worse, interaction with another “thing” this simple solution fails. A mortician can put together a list of how to arrange a body, but the second a body appears that it outside of the norm which is covered in the text, the new mortician, slavishly following the steps gets lost. I can’t tell you what will work in a classroom, only what HAS worked for me. If parenting could really be codified in a single book, there wouldn’t be thousands of different books out there. Some people just know what to do. No amount of training will ever make me a natural ball player. I could get better by learning fixed motions and tricks, but I can’t make the leap into the instinctual, allowing me to adapt fluidly to an unpredicted situation. After repetition, I can learn which skill is most applicable and I might even have the flexibility to adapt what I have learned to deal, but when another new situation arises, I have to repeat the process while the “natural” somehow ‘just knows.’ Maybe this is an unpopular sentiment. Maybe I’m a bad person for suggesting that teachers can be made better but great teachers are born, but there, I said it. It is as difficult to quantify “good teacher” and “good teachers” as it is to know why we teach anything else. Am I measured by the success of my students? And if so, on what sort of assessment, and is it fair to judge me based on something external like that?
The method for deciding if a teacher is being successful is often to perform an observation. There are two general types – the formal and the informal. In the informal one, a supervisor walks in (sometimes with forewarning, sometimes not) and watches, sometimes for an entire period, or periods over a range of time, and sometimes for a part of a single class period. In the formal observation, there is a pre-observation meeting where the teacher might get an idea of what is being watched or simply that an observation will occur, then the supervisor comes in, and afterwards, the two meet again to review what happened and have the teacher sign off on the report presenting to others the results of the observation. I’m going to take a break here to give you a chance to read up on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Done? That’s part of the problem. Any (at least apparent) observation of a system affects the outcome. If I sit in on a class, the teacher and students act and react differently and it is impossible to derive generalizable truths. If a student does NOT act differently (according to the teacher) then the fact that a student can continue to (mis)behave in the presence of someone in authority is as telling as anything else – and therefore cannot be used to judge the teacher and the class. What one can get from an observation is usually very little in a classic pedagogical way. I was told by someone (after I went to observe a class in a field I know little about) that though I couldn’t understand the content, I should be able to spot good teaching. I was also told that the real test was whether, even not knowing the content, I could still understand what was going on. These statements are both flawed. “Good” teaching might have some common factors but it is impossible to say what they are and if they are called for in any particular room on any specific day. So a kid in the back was talking and the teacher didn’t respond – maybe the teacher has tried responding and has learned that giving attention only exacerbates the problem, but throwing the student out leads to no consequence and that the student actually can learn while talking. Using the board, walking around the room, giving handouts, modulating tone of voice and such are all hallmarks of an attempt to connect with students and be aware of surroundings but at any moment, many of these techniques will be rendered irrelevant by the specific dynamic need of the room.
At a certain point, anyone reading this will become fed up with my incessant whining and ask “So, what do you propose to fix all of this?” as if I could innovate some solution which would radically (and quickly, no doubt; we are an instant gratification kind of world) change the structure of education and make everything all hunky dory. Part of the problem is that we don’t want to fix this as a society, and yet we do. We don’t want the elitist approach that has students succeed or fail and leaves higher level learning to the chosen few, and yet we want a discrimination between ability levels that makes “our” students better than “their” students so that everyone sends us more students and pays our bills. We are torn again between an egalitarian “All students can learn” ethos and an Orwellian “Some can learn more/better than others.” Should we allow students to choose certain classes and avoid others to play to their strengths or should we encourage students to experience a broad range of subjects so that they can choose between options instead of foreclosing possibilities through lack of exposure? Can we expect students to earn “good” grades in all areas when the demands of excellence should create a distinction between students and the potential for brilliance is rarely across the board – most students have an area or two in which they truly excel. Do we need to change grading rubrics and standards to allow students to have a different scale employed in classes which will be harder for the student to excel in, or do we believe that all students who are admitted to a class should be able to learn material and perform to the same standard if we even know how to gauge that performance fairly and accurately. Again, the problem is that we have to figure out why we are teaching and what we consider necessary to have been learnt/demonstrated/internalized and part of this gets back to that far-reaching college question. Is a student moving towards a pre-professional track so he needs to learn either the content or the approach (my father has told me that organic chemistry was a requirement for becoming a doctor but was not so useful in his everyday practice of being a doctor – it serves almost as a gatekeeper keeping people like my brother out of the field) or is the student in some liberal arts track, codeword for ‘aimless’ I suspect, in which a student is encouraged to sample the world and what it has to offer, and is often primed for a career as a thinker. This second student needs to know about a lot, but doesn’t necessarily need to know how to do anything in particular other than demonstrate that he knows about a lot. Then we hope and pray that the student finds his path and either graduates into the kind of job that gives on the job training, or that he puts off his future by sticking with graduate school (either to hone his thinking skills or to develop practical skills).
The bottom line is that we have created (and had created for and around us) a problematic system. We value the wrong things in teaching and learning and feel the need to reward and punish based on the thumbnail sketches we develop, often because we know that the more we investigate, the muddier things become. We search for clarity, but that search is the primary cause of a lack of clarity. Education is about becoming more, not less confused, and the analysis of education should start by saying that the more we ask questions, the less we will eventually know. Is there a solution? If we started a school from scratch and were clear about our goals and what we allowed our students NOT to be, and were willing to allow students to channel themselves and be channeled into directions which, otherwise, the student might not follow, then maybe. If we embrace the potential for a lack of potential, and see elitism and selection as simple processes, not stamps of approval and disapproval, then maybe. If we allowed ourselves, our children and our society to fail if each doesn’t deserve to succeed, then, maybe.
But I doubt it.