Ouch!

"If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you’d think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?"

John Taylor Gatto @ http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm

Other Blogs I've Read

I've been checking out other education blogs lately. One of them is called Eduwonk. One of its recent guest bloggers was none other than the current Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings. I was not surprised by her article. I heard her speak in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives last year, and came away with one thing very clear: She believes very much in the current "assembly line" system of education, and that No Child Left Behind will eventually live up to its name.

Yet, I couldn't help thinking that we've taken something that, at its core, is really very simple (though not, by any means, easy), and made it very complicated. So complicated that, now, we are turning to state of the art technology to save us or, as other bloggers are starting to suggest (like here and here), that we simply give in and simply pay cash directly to children to sit down and listen to us.

Every child is born wanting to know. And every child is born with a sense of amazement at the world around them. The real question that we have to ask ourselves is, "Why are sixteen year olds not more amazed by the world around them than six year olds, and is it something we're doing to them that is killing that wild-eyed-wonder?"

Tools of Teaching, Part 1

Method must follow philosophy, otherwise what you are trying to do resembles an unskilled game of darts... taking some aim, but still throwing somewhat wildly at the board.

When we start with the idea that children are persons, born with all the potentiality of adults, due the dignity of adults, and who must be afforded certain freedoms, this gives us only certain tools to work with when we teach, and excludes others that would infringe upon the child's dignity and potentiality.

Mason hits on those tools that are proper to use, which I'll discuss in a later post. It is interesting, though, how she saw such similar problems almost a century ago that we still see in the 21st century classroom. Why? Because we still haven't learned the lesson of what results from using the improper tools to teach.

Perhaps in no part of our educational service do we make more serious blunders than in our use of those desires which act as do the appetites for the body's service. Every child wants to be approved, even baby in his new red shoes; to be first in what is going on; to get what is going; to be admired; to lead and manage the rest; to have the companionship of children and grown people; and last, but not least, every child wants to know. There they are, those desires, ready to act on occasion and our business is to make due use of this natural provision for the work of education. We do make use of the desires, not wisely, but too well. We run our schools upon emulation, the desire of every child to be first; and not the ablest, but the most pushing, comes to the front. We quicken emulation by the common desire to get and to have, that is, by the impulse of avarice. So we offer prizes, exhibitions, scholarships, every incentive that can be proposed. We cause him to work for our approbation, we play upon his vanity, and the boy does more than he can.

So what's the harm in this? The children respond positively enough, right? To paraphrase, we know what happens when an athlete works one set of muscles to the exclusion of others. What happens when a child has their ambition played upon in an undue manner? But she goes on:

But there is a worse evil. We all want knowledge just as much as we want bread. We know it is possible to cure the latter appetite by giving more stimulating food; and the worst of using other spurs to learning is that a natural love of knowledge which should carry us through eager school-days, and give a spice of adventure to the duller days of mature life, is effectually choked; and boys and girls "Cram to pass but not to know; they do pass but they do not know." The divine curiosity which should have been an equipment for life hardly survives early schooldays.

Why is it that we wonder that students want grades instead of understanding? Or have we accepted this as so commonplace that we have stopped even asking this question? What percentage of students does the above excerpt describe? "They cram to pass, but not to know. They do pass but they do not know." 90%? 95%? They do not work for knowledge in school because they have been taught that the simple desire for knowledge will not yield anything without getting the grade, pushing ahead, grabbing status.

So if we do not reward good performance, put high achievers on pedestals, and encourage competitive achievement, what are we left with? Will students really learn without dangling carrots or threatening sticks?

To be continued...

Traditions, Ceremony, Symbols, yadda yadda yadda

There's a good post on the Edspresso Blog about how it seems that we simply don't pay attention to propriety and decorum anymore, and the sacredness of some of our principles are paying the price. The implication is one that I agree with. It's not that people just don't care, period. They don't care because they don't know. Our educational system is partly to blame for this. We've done a lousy job of educating our students in the facts because we fail to give them something to care about.

I love this quote by Charlotte Mason.

"The question is not—how much does the youth know when he has finished his education—but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?" (School Education, pp. 170-171)

Meanwhile, the Tulsa World is slapping TPS on the back for a rather hollow victory: their schools have had a dramatic upturn in their test scores. It's disheartening, but not surprising. We all too often confuse process with product. We think that, simply because a student is able to jump through the hoops set before them by the educational system, that they must be educated. Unfortunately, we don't have the tools to be able to give us a much more accurate picture of where we stand with regard to educational success. Until we have standardized tests that can measure general student apathy on the one hand or, on the other, enthusiasm for truly understanding content, we will continue to graduate students who have no need for knowledge save what it adds to their paycheck.