A quote from "The Schools our Children Deserve," and reflections thereon

[velvetpage]

Also, thanks to anidada who suggested I get this book. :)

"Notice that this argument for the abolition of traditional grades isn't based on the observation that some kids won't get A's and, as a result, will have their feelings hurt. Rather, it is based on the observation that almost all kids will come to accept that the point of going to school is to get A's and, as a result, their learning will be hurt."

So, what happens to a "good kid" like me, who internalizes that second message?

First, one of the things that made me a good kid was that I almost never experienced a lack of understanding; I could do pretty much anything I needed to do with minimal effort. So I was mostly spared the anxiety of a fear of failure. Even so, it reared its ugly head a few times in my school career. There was my father's jocular habit of looking at a grade of 95% and remarking, "Not bad - but it leaves room for improvement." There was the internal, quickly-suppressed panic when I didn't understand something instantly. I suppressed it because it was imperative that NOBODY KNOW I didn't understand. I knew I was capable of pulling the wool over everyone's eyes and making them think I understood just fine, until I figured it out. There were my siblings' efforts to be different from me, often by underachieving so as not to compete.

Even so, when it came to school work, I put in minimal effort to get the grades I wanted. Grades were everything in school, from - as best I can remember - about grade three. That was partly because my grades at the end of grade two were among the lowest I ever experienced in my school career. My parents' and teachers' disappointment in the grades - not in the learning they represented, because I actually knew everything they were teaching, notably in phonics in which I got a C - was like a slap in the face. I knew even then that I'd been shafted. The teacher hadn't marked how well I understood the phonics - I was reading "chapter books" fluently by then. She'd marked the answers in the workbook, which, because I was bored and slightly depressed from a recent move to a different province, were incomplete. Not wrong - INCOMPLETE. What did I learn? I learned that what you knew in school didn't matter, unless you answered the questions correctly, no matter how boring you found them.

So I coloured my title pages, underlined my titles in red pen with a ruler, whipped through spelling exercises without ever paying much attention to them - I was a natural speller with a good grasp of phonics, so this didn't matter - and spent my daydreaming time with a pencil in hand, writing stories. My teachers loved that, and the rote learning was so boring that I had plenty of time for cooking up stories, often while my pencil was busy with the "real work." The stories always got A's.

Time passed, and I began to read more outside of school than in it. This is where the really interesting part comes in, in terms of pedagogy. I was a reader by nature and nurture. While I didn't read earlier than kindergarten, I did read better, faster, than most of my peers. When I learned, it was with a sudden light bulb rather than a slow progression. The important part is that I didn't see reading as a school activity. I saw it as something people do for fun, because that's how my parents saw it and how they encouraged me to see it. The things I saw as school activities were still done well, mostly because I was too much of a pleaser ever to risk the displeasure of the adults around me by doing a half-assed job. But most of my learning didn't come from those activities. I can't remember more than a handful of activities I was actually assigned in school, nor more than a few things I was told to read. The books I remember, the books I learned from, the books that informed my worldview and gave me the historical background colour on which to pin real historical understanding - ALL of that came from reading that I did for the love of reading.

Which makes me wonder: what happens to the kids who don't grow up with the knowledge that reading is something people do for fun, and who don't have the benefit of reading early and well? I can answer this, this time from looking at my students: they see reading as an in-school activity, and they see it as something on which they will be graded. The "good kids," that is, the pleasers, will do fairly well at it in the context of school work - but they'll stick to reading material with no meat to it, whenever I let them get away with it. They'll refuse to challenge themselves, and they won't think about what they're reading unless I can get them to forget about the grade. The not-so-good kids, that is, the ones who don't read early or well, will start to give up by the end of grade one, sometimes sooner. They'll have their failure to read on the school's timetable reinforced as a failure of their ability, and each time they fail at a reading task (in their own estimation) a failure becomes more likely the next time.

I continued in much the same pattern through high school and even into university. Coursework was a slog that I had to get through - often even if the topic was fascinating. I managed not to read half the books I was supposed to read, because I knew I could pass the tests by regurgitating what the professor had told me, especially since my own ideas were unwelcome and got lower marks on those tests. If the prof only wanted his own ideas given back to him, why would I read the book and risk getting some of my own? That way lay frustration - so I avoided the frustration by eliminating the learning in favour of getting the grade.

The courses where my own ideas were welcome got far more of my effort and taught me far more lasting lessons. Still, much of what I've learned about subjects that interested me came because I read about them on my own. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my success in school is more an indictment of the system than an advertisement for it. I succeeded at school while learning as little as possible in it.

If the goal of school is to educate, then we need to consider: are our methods of assessing students undermining that goal? Are kids learning what we want them to learn, or are they learning to please teachers and parents while avoiding practically all valuable thinking? Are we setting them up for failure by grading their successes?

And if so, how do we fix it, in such a way that ALL students come out educated?

Comments

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

maybe my difference in education was that my 11th grade english teacher (who I had in 9th grade, but 11th was AP and I had significantly more motivated classmates) and some other high school teachers, as well as most of my college professors, and my US history teacher did NOT just want stuff repeated back to them...they wanted us to analyze, discuss, etc. There was a 12th grade AP english teacher who was seen as a nut because she didn't want any opinions different from her own. There were a couple of professors in college who were the same way, but they were also very rare.

perhaps if you'd had that experience you would have felt differently about your work for those courses and it would have changed the way you thought about education in general. The difference was not the fact that things were required and graded---some of my professors even counted how often you participated in class and took points off participation if you were too quiet--and they were amazing professors who were leading such intense and exciting discussions that some people didn't talk for fear of feeling stupid, but once they were forced to, it was honestly wonderful.

but I was also a reader and started reading when I was 3. so I guess it could be different for some kids. My students, even some of the ones who struggle with reading, LOVE books. So I'm not sure.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oh, I had the experiences with teachers who knew what they were doing. They changed my focus - somewhat. It was a course correction, certainly, but what was needed was an about-face.

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

I always thought the goal of school was to keep children out of the workforce. Education is a side benefit for those intelligent enough to take it somewhere, not for everyone.

I learned almost nothing from teachers. I studied for tests by reading the night before. Sometimes the grades were good, sometimes not. I just wanted to read and do my time. Everyone knew I was smart when I opened my mouth, and the grades got glossed over.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Education is a side benefit for those intelligent enough to take it somewhere, not for everyone.

This assumes that intelligence is a fixed thing, rather than the sum force of a developing brain over a long period of time. Of course, there is a level of fixedness about it; but it's not as much as previously thought. A person's innate intelligence is developed or not throughout childhood, with the biggest and strongest patterns being set before age five.

Still, good teaching can overcome many handicaps, including lower innate intelligence - but not if people truly believe that there are some kids who will never be able to learn up to the bar we set for them.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I think it's a little over-optimistic to think that every kid will be able to learn everything if they're taught well enough. There are always some things that some people simply can't do. I could probably learn to hit and catch a baseball with slow, painstaking teaching and training, but I'll never be able to do those things well without way more effort than they're worth.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Re-read my comment - I didn't say that every kid would be able to learn everything, I said that we set the bar too low based on low perceived intelligence, instead of working to improve that child's thinking skills.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I think my education involved a lot less rote learning than yours. There were a few years and classes where I had quite a bit of that, but I didn't have to deal with an excess of rote learning spoiling my fun to the extent that you did (probably because I was in gifted classes all the way through).

I think the biggest difference between my education and yours, though, was that I never had any experience that communicated to me that grades did not necessarily reflect learning. I worked as hard as I could for my grades, on the assumption that how well I learned the material would determine what grade I got. Generally that assumption proved correct, though I had the occasional teacher with unfair expectations.

[pwned-kisa.livejournal.com]

I think that the problem is in this sentence: If the goal of school is to educate, then we need to consider: are our methods of assessing students undermining that goal?

The problem is that the goal is not simply "to educate." Or, on second thought, it is to educate. to develop the faculties and powers of (a person) by teaching, instruction, or schooling.
2. to qualify by instruction or training for a particular calling, practice, etc.; train:

The problem is that our schools are meant to teach skills, and to provide a basis for children to have a platform for going into the workforce. Sounds reasonable, right? Until one starts to realize that the workforce is primarily made up of jobs that don't require one to actually think. Thus, the schools don't provide as much attention to honing children's thinking/rationalizing abilities, because, simply, those skills aren't as required. (And, for those of you in the paranoid audience, those "In Charge" don't actually want their citizens to think.)

So, then, we have a program that instructs, teaches skills, gives a basis for work... but doesn't actually teach that which we of the thinking minority assess to be important: the ability to think.

How does this relate? Those who are going to enjoy books, the imagination, and so on, are going to be, at least on some level, freethinkers. The imagination encourages thinking. This is why controversial books are banned. Not because of the messages within, or, not only because of this, but because those books encourage one to form opinions that are outside the box. Not something that is required for workforce platform building.

The problem is, actually, that schools are there to educate.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

One of the main reasons I want to change the way school works is that I like the idea of undermining the concept of class which fuels the school system. You're absolutely right - school is designed in large part to teach people to follow directions as given, without thinking about them. But more jobs than ever require the ability to think. We need to buck the trend that has us turning out worker drones, and join the one that creates thinking citizens.

[pwned-kisa.livejournal.com]

Which is all very good, noble and all, but for a slight problem...

You're trying to buck the system, which is idealistic at best. When someone tries to do that, they're assuming that other people want this to succeed. Now, many people will say that they'd like a change in the school system, but, in reality, they don't. Or, not enough to actually attempt to do anything but mouth pretty words at you.

Most parents? don't really care. They're too busy to. The kids? They see their parent's lives, and they think "I'm not going to be able to rise above this," and let themselves be concerned only with the things that their parents are concerned with. (And, I'm talking pre-college kids, because I see the problem stemming from that age-group, not the college-group. It's like a glass ceiling for education and how one thinks.)

And, in reality, that might just be for the best. Those who are predisposed to think will think. They will seek out alternatives, they will have an interest in bucking the status-quo. You'll be able to recognize these kids by their choices. Choices in friends, choices in actions, mode of speech, and in literature. The others? You might interest them in a book or two, but in the end, they're going to want the sheep-mind that rote learning gives them.

Which, again, I think might be for the best. They won't take the time to learn to think, they most likely won't rise above the social strata that their parents are in, and that's okay. There are far more jobs that don't require a sense of thinking for oneself than there are those that do. And, in all honesty, those who don't have this interest most likely don't even miss it.

It's almost like taking our sense of "what's right," regarding freedoms and liberty and going to another country where women aren't given these freedoms, and being upset. We're upset for their sake. And, really, we have no reason to be.

While we would be beside ourselves if those freedoms and liberties were taken away, they aren't. This is their life. It's how they were raised and what they were raised to accept and want.

You can only show the door, but, in the end, most won't walk through it. Trying to buck the system? Isn't going to work, except in very small cases. Because, ultimately, we don't live in a society that allows it to work.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The thing is, Ontario (or at least, certain boards of education - the protocol is in effect for all of them, but several aren't being as thorough about it as my board) has a curriculum in place that challenges a lot of this thinking. Many of the trends I'd like to buck are already being bucked here - I learned about them first at Board-sponsored in-services. While the highest level of the grading system is still in place, my kids and I together come up with many of the criteria for judging work. The language expectations are all about the strategies that good readers use to understand, connect to, discuss, and write about what they read, in a reflective manner. My assessment is supposed to be cyclical instead of linear - that is, instead of teaching a few lessons and then quizzing the kids to see what they've learned, I'm assessing what they're getting and what they're not, every single day, and I don't give them a final assessment until I know most of them have learned it. It's been two years since I stopped putting grades at the top of everything - if I don't plan to record a mark, I don't give one, just feedback in words based on criteria we established as a class. Higher-order questions about literature are the norm in my class, and in my school, and they're becoming the norm in my board and province.

If anywhere in North America can succeed at bucking the Traditional Schools model, it's right here, because we're more than halfway there already.

BTW, I don't believe it's a good idea to believe smart kids will learn on their own and everyone else never will. First, it assigns my job to total irrelevance, and I've got too strong a sense of self-preservation for that. :) Second, it's not backed up by research - good teaching for five years in a row does overcome 90% of socio-economic factors. Every kid CAN succeed. Third, the kids who will learn to think in spite of bad teaching are going to grow up to be lawyers, politicians, concerned citizens - and they're going to believe that the education system is ineffectual and rotten at the core (and if we allow that to happen still, they're absolutely right, because we know better.) Ontario has seen what happens when a politician comes to power who has a grudge against the education system, and uses it to mobilize a groundswell of support for himself and against those greedy teachers who always have their hands out for more money but never deliver the goods. The education system is still recovering from those years, and that guy was voted out of office in 2003.

The time is right, the setting is right, our current premier is on the side of educators and supporting a sea change in education - we need to do it NOW.