My Teaching Goal For The Next Four Years: A Minor Musing On The Moral Question Facing Teachers

A while back, PNR posted this quotation:

For the conservative, people are an asset — in the coldest economic terms, a potentially productive unit of labor. For the progressive, people are a liability — a mouth to be fed, a problem in need of a solution. Understanding that difference of perspective renders understandable the sometimes wildly different views that conservatives and progressives have about things like employment policy. For the conservative, the value of a job is what the worker produces; for the progressive, the value of a job is what the worker is paid.

At the time it struck me that conservatives and liberals are my cats at different times of the day. To them, I'm a unit of labor necessary to provide food, clean the litter box, and scratch behind their ears. I'm also a problem that needs to be solved when they try to wake me up to get kitty treats every morning.

I also wondered whether how self-proclaimed Christian conservatives squared the analysis in the quotation with the belief that humans are created in God's image. I shrugged off that question, mused that I believe that Kant's idea that humans should be treated as ends unto themselves rather than means to an end is superior to utilitarianism, and went on with my day.

That quotation came back to me yesterday as I was sitting in an in-service-- professional development a really boring training session over the Charolette Danielson model for teacher evaluation. Danielson and the Common Core, for that matter, view teachers as a unit of labor whose sole purpose is to produce other units of labor. As one of my colleagues said, there's no idea of what it means to become an educated person in any of this model.

As I sat there, I came to the distinct conclusion that the real moral question that education has created for teachers is rather simple: How does one teach within these models or under the Core without producing students who chant mindless aphorisms such as "Four legs good, two legs bad" or "I must work harder."

Quotation Of The Day: Capitalism And Education Edition

Gary Gutting explains capitalism and education::

From our infancy the market itself has worked to make us consumers, primed to buy whatever it is selling regardless of its relevance to human flourishing. True freedom requires that we take part in the market as fully formed agents, with life goals determined not by advertising campaigns but by our own experience of and reflection on the various possibilities of human fulfillment. Such freedom in turn requires a liberating education, one centered not on indoctrination, social conditioning or technical training but on developing persons capable of informed and intelligent commitments to the values that guide their lives.

This is why, especially in our capitalist society, education must not be primarily for training workers or consumers (both tools of capitalism, as Marxists might say). Rather, schools should aim to produce self-determining agents who can see through the blandishments of the market and insist that the market provide what they themselves have decided they need to lead fulfilling lives. Capitalism, with its devotion to profit, is not in itself evil. But it becomes evil when it controls our choices for the sake of profit.

The whole article is a must read. I also loved his analysis of the role of work in creating human flourishing.

A Minor Musing: Philosophy Friday Edition

On an NPR blog Adam Frank highlights a couple of important questions.  The title contains an intriguing one:  Why are scientists hating on philosophy and philosophers?
The first line asks a deeper question and one that is personally more relevant:  "What is learning for if it doesn't lead to wisdom?"  I will digress for a moment to ask Governor Daugaard how a bubble test determines either learning or wisdom.

The core of the Frank's piece, however, serves as a reminder that few disciplines are mutually exclusive.

Make no mistake, philosophy (and the philosophy of science) are not about doing science. Instead, these fields ask entirely different kinds of questions. They explore the relation between the possible and the actual, the correct links between an argument and it's conclusions or the tension between theoretical models and claims of evidence for those models.

Carbon-nanotube physicists are so deep within the traditional modes of empirical (i.e., data-driven) scientific investigation that they can happily ignore what goes on in the halls of philosophy. But . . . cosmologists can push so hard and so far at the boundaries of fundamental concepts they cross over and fall prey to their own unspoken philosophical biases and misconceptions

.Recognizing bias and respecting empirical evidence along with the classic admission that one knows far less than one thinks seem to be the most important tools to help acquire learning and gain a bit of wisdom.  I fear schools are doing everything humanly possible to dull those tools.

HT: I09.com

Quotation Of The Day: Education Accountability Edition

From Robert Pondiscio at The Core Knowledge Blog

I remain equally skeptical of the storyline that says schools are dysfunctional purely as a result of adult indifference or self-interest.

I see no reason to believe that failing schools are filled with tenured layabouts refusing to teach and not getting fired. In my experience, such schools are mainly filled with decent people trying their best and failing. And with depressing regularity, they are failing despite doing exactly what they were trained to do–even because they are doing exactly what they were trained to do.

The entire edifice of accountability assumes that American education is essentially a sound product, but it’s delivered poorly. I see no evidence to suggest this is true. I see much evidence to suggest it’s not.

Quotation Of The Day: South Dakota Blog Post About Education Edition

From this Kevin Woster post at Mount Blogmore

I understand the money crunch. I’ve been writing about it for years. It stings me, too, when I pay my property taxes. And what reasonable person could argue that every school year should include an astute search for efficiencies and savings?

But it should also include a search for new ways to expand students’ horizons, enlarge their minds, multiply their options and inspire them to achieve more and believe more fully in their own education, as well as in their own future and in the future of their society.

Saturday Morning Cartoons Get Philosophical About Blowing Stuff Up

As I was channel surfing for background noise this morning, I heard the name von Clausewitz delivered in a bad Russian accent.  Carl von Clausewitz was a famous Prussian philosopher of war, especially the morality of war.  The bad Russian accent came from an actor voicing a minor character on G.I. Joe Renegades, a Saturday morning take on the A-Team.

I'm sure dozens of reasons exist to dislike G.I. Joe Renegades, but I certainly appreciate name-dropping a philosopher and an allusion to a principle that if one hates too much, one becomes what one hates.  I hope some of the young'uns will check out the Wikipedia entry.  For this morning anyway, Go Joe!

Changing Education: A Minor Musing

Yesterday, Travis at Dahle Communication ended a long blogging hiatus and posted a few ideas for education reform along with a request for others to do the same.  Travis advocates a longer school year, taking steps to treat teachers like professionals not hourly employees, and paying teachers more.  I have no argument with any of those proposals, but since he asked, I'll add a few of my own.

First, the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) need to start acting like the American Bar Association (ABA) and the American Medical Association (AMA).  Right now both groups act more like labor unions.  If teachers want to be treated like professionals, our professional organizations need to model themselves after other successful professional organizations.

Second, education needs to develop diagnostic tests that give teachers more information about student needs.  On the first day of school, 25 to 30 students will walk into the classroom.  Three weeks later classroom teachers will start to get an idea of what each student needs.  It might take another three or four weeks to determine what works for each student.  If schools gave teachers better information at the start of a semester, teachers would be more effective and students would learn more. If people are worried about adding administrative personnel, I would eliminate curriculum directors and replace them with diagnostic test experts.

Third, the diagnostic testing should allow students to test out of certain subjects.  Sitting in classes and relearning or reviewing things is a waste of time.

Fourth, the class size argument needs to be framed differently.  A class with people who have trouble in the subject should have 12-15 students.  Classes with students who have no problem mastering the material can be much larger. 

Fifth, students who have tested out subjects need to be allowed a "personal interest period."  Students can use this period to take a literature or science class even if they have tested out of literature or science.  If they want, they can take a carpentry class, an art class, a music class, a computer class.  Taking things that interest them in school setting may help students understand that learning is a life-long enterprise

Sixth, high schools should have a junior college option for students who are testing out of most of the basic classes.  I'm fairly certain that most of South Dakota's AA schools have enough teachers with advanced degrees who are competent to teach 100 or 200 level intro classes.  With the price of college tuition shooting through the roof, this option should help a lot of lower income families send their students to college and allow the student to leave college with hill of debt rather than mountains of debt.

Finally, work to change the culture's view of education.  Right now, teachers seem to be viewed as sales people.  Let me work with the students; someone else can take care of the PR.  Right now, it seems as if everything has to do with marketing the school or a particular department or a certain class.

I realize that most of my proposals need the longer school year and increased pay that Travis proposed, but I think the results will be worth the investment.

Order of the Teaching Phoenix?

This John Spencer post using Harry Potter metaphors reminds me of one of my own Potter musings.

Spencer begins by comparing Diane Ravitch to Severus Snape.

In education reform, [Diane Ravitch] plays the role of Snape.  We need her.  We need the perspective of someone who converted from a Death Eater to the Order of Phoenix and we need to believe in the concept of Phoenix.  Out of the ashes of a broken system new life can grow.  Perhaps even Arne can get out of the dark arts of testing-based reform. Yes, I know about her past.  Yes, I realize that power is a corrupting force, but she is a reminder that even powerful people can find redemption.  [Spencer, Snape: A Perspective . . , 8/1/2010]

Spencer concludes,

Despite my penchant for using Harry Potter metaphors, the truth is that we don't need more magical wizards to tell us how to fix our system.  We need humble muggles who realize that the real magic is often seen on a very local level, within the mind of a student.  Everything else is an illusion. [Spencer, Snape: A Perspective . . , 8/1/2010]

I agree totally, but I think that one of the reasons teachers are turning to Ravitch as some sort of superstar leader is the fact that few elementary and secondary teachers seem to be respected for their intellect.  From that earlier post,

There is one stereotype that I wish Harry Potter would foster: the secondary school teacher as public intellectual. In Potterworld, Dumbledore is a leading public intellectual. He's taken seriously by a government ministry and has been asked to head a key department. I can't think of any teacher who would be treated like Dumbledore.

One problem may be that many fictional teachers are romanticized versions of real teachers:  no one can live up to Matilda's Miss Honey or The Dead Poet's Society Mr. Keating.  That romanticism probably doesn't play well in the so-called real world.  I have a hunch that those who make policy would listen to House before they listen to Saved by the Bell's Mr. Belding.

I'm not going to blame Hollywood, however; the fault is ours.  Spencer has it right; "real magic is at the local level."  As Larry Cuban points out, most people accept as absolute fact the assertion that all K-12 schools fail.

Beginning in the late 1970s, followed by the Nation at Risk report and culminating in the No Child Left Behind law, the message that all U.S. schools are failing has become accepted truth among smart, well-intentioned policy elites including foundation officials. Even though it is clear that there are many schools in the U.S. that parents clamor to have their children attend, even though foreign students come in droves to U.S. universities often considered to be the best in the world where they attend undergraduate and graduate courses with U.S. students from supposedly failing high schools, the dominant belief remains that the entire K-12 system of schooling is broken. That belief is as commonplace as “smart” phones, television, and public utilities. It is a “truth” that goes largely unquestioned. [Cuban, Billionaires' Love Affair with School Refom, 7/28/2010]

Cuban goes on to illustrate that the truth is far more complicated.

Ignored is the fact that there is a three-tiered system of schooling in the U.S. (see June 20, 2010 post). The top two tiers (which over half of U.S. students attend) are considered by most parents to be either good or good enough for their children. In the third tier, however, big city and rural schools enrolling mostly poor and minority students have largely failed to educate children and youth. Surely, the three tiered system is obvious for anyone with 20/20 vision living in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and other metropolitan areas, particularly to parents who shop around for schools to send their children.

What is also plain to see but is seldom mentioned by policy elites and 24/7 media is the constant conflating of urban and rural failing schools with all U.S. schools. Such a mindless mistake propagates misinformation and sustains a “crisis” mentality that continually bashes teachers and undermines trust in public schools. [Cuban, Billionaires' Love Affair with School Refom, 7/28/2010]

Had all teachers, and I am chief among the sinners in this regard, worked more magic at the local level, NCLB might not have been possible.  To take Spencer a step further, teachers need to start local Orders of the Phoenix that don't rely on Ravitch or others to lead.  To do that, we will need to lead with our reason as well as the magic of romanticism.

Education: An American Tragedy

The New York Review of Books posts this E.D Hirsch review of Diane Ravitch's  The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.  As a teacher, I began to channel Cassius from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar when I read the following paragraphs.

Yet I do not agree with Ravitch that we should chiefly rely on experienced educators. We certainly should consult them and win them over, but we have been relying on them, and they have failed us—not least in their response to the No Child Left Behind law. Ravitch strongly criticizes NCLB for its narrow emphasis on reading and math and its reduction of schooling to preparation for tests. Her analysis is factually accurate. But to understand why the law failed we need to imagine what might have happened had our experienced educators responded differently to it.
The law would have had a much more beneficial effect if educators had reacted with more insight to its provisions. NCLB was quite right to place a dominant emphasis on the development of language ability and reading skill. Verbal skill is known to be a chief constituent of adult success and effectiveness. But verbal ability is not, as the schools wrongly assumed, simply a how-to skill. It is largely a knowledge-based skill. NCLB did not, after all, mandate that the schools must practice reading strategies at the expense of a strong curriculum in literature, history, science, and the arts—the very kind of schooling that, according to the findings of cognitive science, would raise reading abilities by systematically building background knowledge. The decision to teach strategies instead was made by experienced educators who had been indoctrinated by education schools into an anticurricular point of view, emphasizing “how to” read, and giving quite inadequate attention to what should be learned to build up needed knowledge (Hirsch, How to Save the Schools, 13/5/2010). [Bold Mine]

Some of the blame goes to those who love what Emerson in "Self-Reliance"calls the "foolish consistency [that] is the hobgoblin of little minds.  This consistency is "adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines"  I'm pretty sure that and school principals, district superintendents, and secretaries of education at all levels also have a love affair, metaphorically, of course, with that same foolish consistency.

As comforting as passing the blame is, however, it strikes me that Cassius in Shakespeare Julius Caesar has it right, "The fault . . .is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, . . ."  I just hope we get a chance to fix the mess we created.

Some Education Philosophy

I wanted to answer a commenter who responded to my post about procrastination, so I was link jumping my way from the post that prompted my query to a post that the article linked to when I hit a link to a Mortimer J. Adler article entitled "Invitation to the Pain of Learning."  The article was written in 1941, but it says what I believe about 2010 better than I can.  Of course, I might be old fashioned, but then again, there's "nothing new under the sun." Adler begins,

ONE of the reasons why the education given by our schools is so frothy and vapid is that the American people generally-the parent even more than the teacher-wish childhood to be unspoiled by pain. Childhood must be a period of delight, of gay indulgence in impulses. It must be given every avenue for unimpeded expression, which of course is pleasant; and it must not be made to suffer the impositions of discipline or the exactions of duty, which of course are painful. Childhood must be filled with as much play and as little work as possible. What cannot be accomplished educationally through elaborate schemes devised to make learning an exciting game must, of necessity, be forgone. Heaven forbid that learning should ever take on the character of a serious occupation-just as serious as earning money, and perhaps, much more laborious and painful.

 He concludes,

. . . let us not fool ourselves about what we are doing. "Education" all wrapped up in attractive tissue is the gold brick that is being sold in America today on every street corner. Everyone is selling it, everyone is buying it, but no one is giving or getting the real thing because the real thing is always hard to give or get. Yet the real thing can be made generally available if the obstacles to its distribution are honestly recognized. Unless we acknowledge that every invitation to learning can promise pleasure only as the result of pain, can offer achievement only at the expense of work, all of our invitations to learning, in school and out, whether by books, lectures, or radio and television programs will be as much buncombe as the worst patent medicine advertising, or the campaign pledge to put two chickens in every pot.

Here endth the sermon.  Go forth and do good.  Amen.

Iron Man, James Madison, Prometheus, and Us

I recently picked up a copy of Iron Man and Philosophy.  One of the articles "Did Iron Man Kill Captain America" by Mark D. White recounts Iron Man's efforts to implement the Superhuman Registration Act, build a prison in the Negative Zone to house superheroes who refuse to register, and institute a Fifty State Initiative to give each state its own team of superheroes.  (I have no idea which heroes would be assigned to South Dakota.) In short, Iron Man was expanding the role of government, but he was doing it to provide for public safety.  Given that he built a prison in some alternate dimension, Iron Man's actions can be seen to be similar to building a supermax prison or instituting a national ID card.

Tony Stark, Iron Man's alter ego, may be a scientific genius, but he apparently forgot James Madison's injunction from The Federalist 51: 

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

 Perhaps some members of the superhero community need to be controlled; they have caused damage and civilian deaths.  Stark did set up a government to control the governed; he did not, however, oblige his creation to control itself.  Stark eventually lost his position to Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, a member of Spider-Man's rogues gallery.  It's difficult to see how the Americans of Stark's world are better off than they were before his foray into prison building and registration.

Stark claims to be a futurist.  He seemingly is like Prometheus, the Titan who gave humans fire.  Prometheus could see the future and warn Zeus that Thetis, a minor goddess Zeus wanted to bed, was destined to bear a son greater than his father.  The Titan, however, could not that giving humanity fire would result in his being chained to a mountain and having an eagle devour his liver.

In my mind, the superhero, mythological deity, and American founder are all making me wonder about many of the loud voices who fear the new health care but who support enhanced surveillance to protect citizens from terrorism or who want to build a fence to keep out illegal aliens. 

The national health care bill may turn out to be a disaster because it will mushroom out of control like the opponents fear.  If, as these prognosticators fear, this mushrooming is a natural result of government, what's to keep the government from turning the surveillance against innocent citizens or using the fence to keep citizens in instead of keeping illegal immigrants out? 

The fear about government seems to be selective and incoherently applied.  The same people who say bank reform will destroy the country often claim building more prisons and increasing the number of crimes that can be called terrorist acts will make citizens safer.  Six banks now have assets equal to 63% of GDP.  Shouldn't that fact scare one as much as a threat posed by a car bomb in Times Square?

Mythological deities and superheroes are imperfect futurists, and we mere mortals are not angels.  Everyone, therefore, should listen to Madison.  Iron Man and Prometheus show what can happen if we don't.

SHAZAM: Some Comic Geek Stuff

Bloggers or assorted lifehack experts frequently publish lists of things they wants school to teach.  The lists frequently include bromides like Polonius's "to thine own self be true."  Quite frankly, I wish we could teach some comic books because comic books sum up most of the "how to succeed" points that many of the lifehack blogs enunciate.

For example, this post on Hilife2B tells readers to "become really good at one thing."  Nearly every superhero has one skill:  The Thing and She-Hulk are strong; Green Arrow has mastered using a bow; The Flash is fast;The Human Torch controls his flames, and The Invisible Woman controls her force field.  Each strives to master the particular strength.

The other things comics teach is SHAZAM.  For any youngsters that might stumble upon this blog, Shazam is the acronym that Billy Batson utters to turn into Captain Marvel.  SHAZAM stands for the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury.  If you don't believe me, ask Wikipedia.

Outside of the fact that SHAZAM is fun to type and say, the work provides two important reminders.  First, the qualities it supposedly stands for are important to succeed in nearly every endeavor.  Second, it's a reminder that one needs people to look up to and learn from.  This post about creating a personal High Jedi Council elaborates on the point (I apologize for mixing geek genres to try to prove a point; I promise not to make any Star Trek reverences in this post.  Also, please note that I blanch at the idea of including Oprah on any list of mentors, but its his high council, not mine.)

The most important thing that comics teach is that one has to accept contradiction.  Mastering a skill and learning to rely on oneself seems to contradict the idea that one frequently needs help.   Many of the superheroes are technical geniuses, but many others rely on ancient weapons like swords, bows, or whips.  More importantly, the heroes who master the old weapons frequently defeat villains who have technologically superior tools.

In the NCLB era, no one's going to let me teach a high school comic book class.  It's tough to create a standardized test with bubbles that spell SHAZAM,

Some Basic Thoughts about Education

This is the third or fourth or fifth effort to try to blog regularly. Let's see how it goes.

Thought #1: I agree with Charles Murray (mostly), at least this time.

Last spring, I read a Charles Murray article about the philosphy that he described as educational romaniticism. A version is here. Murray makes at least three trenchant points and one mistake.

Trenchent point #1

"Many laws are too optimistic, but the No Child Left Behind Act transcended optimism. It set a goal that was devoid of any contact with reality."

To quote the great philosopher Stan Lee, "Nuff said."

Trenchent point #2

"To sum up, a massive body of evidence says . . .that we do not know how to change intellectual ability after children reach school. . . ."

Once again, "Nuff said."

Trenchent point #3

"In public discourse, the leading symptom of educational romanticism is silence on the role of intellectual limits even when the topic screams for their discussion. Try to think of the last time you encountered a news story that mentioned low intellectual ability as the reason why some students do not perform at grade level. I doubt if you can. Whether analyzed by the news media, school superintendents, or politicians, the problems facing low-performing students are always that they have come from disadvantaged backgrounds, or have gone to bad schools, or grown up in peer cultures that do not value educational achievement. The problem is never that they just aren't smart enough." (Italics mine)

This is tricky ground. No one wants to claim that disadvantaged students are inherently less intelligent than middle-class or upper-class students. I am certain that a smart student who comes from a disadvantaged background has more hurdles to overcome than a smart student with wealthy student. Even with that caveat, a smart student from any background will usually be more successful in school than a less intelligent student, and Murray is correct to assert that schools ignore that fact. (I'll put off the success in school does not equal later success discussion for another day.)

The mistake (and I think it's a whopper)

"The good news is that educational romanticism is surely teetering on the edge of collapse."

I wish and I pray, but unfortunately, Lake Woebegone is here to stay. I don't think there's a teacher in the system that I work in that could keep her job is she uttered the phrase, "I don't think your child has the intellectual capacity to earn an A in my class." Further, I doubt that there are more than a handful of teachers who believe its OK to utter that phrase, even though they may think it quietly. Finally, I haven't seen any young teachers who have been taught that they should even think it.

Thought #2: On-line grading programs suck.

Change the brand names, but the problems this post outlines reflect my experience.

Thought #3: I wish I had the answer to this problem

Dennis O'Neil correctly observes,

"Over the past few years, I’ve come to believe that not everyone gets the same education, even if schools and transcripts are identical. Some folk mentally compartmentalize: church goes here, family here, school stuff here, life in general there. So when they pass tests on what they’ve heard in classrooms, and at the end of a span of time, usually16 years and some august personage hands them a rectangle full of fancy lettering, they’re done with it. No more schooling, and no learning above what’s needed to live comfortably. Schooling in its compartment yonder, not touching this compartment, which is where we live."

And

"The problem, I think, is this: There might be information over in the school compartment that is relevant to the contents of the living compartment. It might supply answers, or at least stimulate thinking.

"Left in the ghetto of the school compartment, denied access to other compartments, and it is useless, and it will die. Worse, its lack might cause you to blunder."

I see the compartmentalization every day. School is in a box that gets shelved the second students walk out the door to their real lives. In fact, all school seems to be is an interruption to the lives they want to lead.