I feel compelled to allow myself to fall into a bit of a trap. I teach 100 6th graders, 100 7th graders, around 60 8th graders, and top that off with about 90 - 100 high school students. I see each of them for one contact period a week. Naturally, I quickly simplify things for myself, out of both necessity and a realization that all of the students, regardless of age, are in about the same place with their technology skills. Few have experienced using technology creatively. As much as in "core" subjects - or possibly more - they learn passively.
I resist spoon feeding them information. I use multiple teaching strategies, including previewing material, providing step by step examples, whole class demonstration, and individual and small group work. I tell the students that I understand they won't all like every lesson, but also know that the next project will be different.
Still, I feel as though I am prevented from applying the lesson I learned and took to heart teaching for three years in a therapeutic school: Allow student interests and abilities to not only influence my teaching but also shape what and how they learn. Compound teaching over 300 students with the fact that our students lack experience in decision making, and I feel that I am trapped into teaching a consistent curriculum to all students and modifying my instruction to support the diverse needs of a large student population.
As an education system, we need to break away from this model - that all students need to learn the same things. Perhaps that is the way it need be in elementary school. But shouldn't secondary school be more like college or university? Don't students begin to demonstrate aptitude and interest by the time they enter their teen years? Doesn't the material begin to become complex and resistant to broad mastery? Shouldn't students and parents be given the option to enroll in small academies that teach to student interests while ensuring that society benefits from a constant stream of people who are passionate and excited about their field of study?
At the same time, wouldn't this draw thinkers and dreamers to the profession of teaching?
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Crazy Idea #1: Student and Teacher, Partners in Education
Why is it that students, parents, and politicians expect teachers to be nearly mystical and certainly mythical forces? Today, I felt ambushed by a parent who showed up at the end of the day without a confirmed appointment, and then suggesting that I had somehow not communicated expectations clearly.
With all the forms of communication we teachers use today, whether it's verbal communication, photo copies, e-mail, or classroom web pages, how is it possible for students or parents to be in the dark when a report card arrives reporting a grade suggesting that the student accomplished little or nothing for weeks on end? I'm not talking about a difference between 90 and 80 or even 80 and 70. We give students agenda books and they refuse to write assignments down. Within a few weeks, a large percentage of those assignment books have been discarded, left aside.
Sometimes, however, students learn from these experiences and grow. I have a 10th grade student who failed my class in the fall. He took it upon himself to redo the class, to check in with me on his own, to accept feedback, to be responsible for his learning.
Did he have set backs during this project? Did he require frequent prompts to make consistent progress? Did it take him longer than expected to complete the project? The answer to all of these questions is yes. Still, here is his response to the project:
"This project forced me out of my comfort zone several times...It was very uncomfortable learning about something I had never experimented with or even used before...I have to say, this project was a lot to put together and involved a lot of research and subjective thought. I enjoyed it thoroughly and while it was tough and somewhat tedious in parts, overall I liked the experience."
When students and teachers work together and communicate, a different kind of learning is possible: Roots of Rock
With all the forms of communication we teachers use today, whether it's verbal communication, photo copies, e-mail, or classroom web pages, how is it possible for students or parents to be in the dark when a report card arrives reporting a grade suggesting that the student accomplished little or nothing for weeks on end? I'm not talking about a difference between 90 and 80 or even 80 and 70. We give students agenda books and they refuse to write assignments down. Within a few weeks, a large percentage of those assignment books have been discarded, left aside.
Sometimes, however, students learn from these experiences and grow. I have a 10th grade student who failed my class in the fall. He took it upon himself to redo the class, to check in with me on his own, to accept feedback, to be responsible for his learning.
Did he have set backs during this project? Did he require frequent prompts to make consistent progress? Did it take him longer than expected to complete the project? The answer to all of these questions is yes. Still, here is his response to the project:
"This project forced me out of my comfort zone several times...It was very uncomfortable learning about something I had never experimented with or even used before...I have to say, this project was a lot to put together and involved a lot of research and subjective thought. I enjoyed it thoroughly and while it was tough and somewhat tedious in parts, overall I liked the experience."
When students and teachers work together and communicate, a different kind of learning is possible: Roots of Rock
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Mandated Mediocrity
Recently, I have settled on a term that I feel describes what schools are expected to produce. Insisting that all children, if only provided with all the right supports, all the right tests, and all the patience we can manage will make it to college, will become doctors, diplomats, or astronauts.
However, I can't help thinking that there is an inherent bias and judgmentality in this line of thinking. What's wrong with becoming a trade person? What if a young person would excel at learning a craft that requires great skill? Some of these very trades pay far more than being a teacher, artist, or therapist. There will always be a place in our economy for master masons, plumbers, electricians, and carpenters.
Some of these students, indeed, can succeed as students. Yet, are they, or will the ever be, happy pegged into the demands of academia?
In the end, what does our education system do well? Who does it serve? How many students achieve less than they might because we demand that all students prepare for college, even if they have no intention to do so? I speak not only of the students who will pursue higher education, but also those who would prefer to spend the time learning a craft.
No Child Left Behind is an insidious failure. Not only does it fail to achieve its stated goals, it mandates mediocrity. Everyone is not the same. Why should we educate all of our students as if they are the same? Why should our goals for our students fit into a single package?
However, I can't help thinking that there is an inherent bias and judgmentality in this line of thinking. What's wrong with becoming a trade person? What if a young person would excel at learning a craft that requires great skill? Some of these very trades pay far more than being a teacher, artist, or therapist. There will always be a place in our economy for master masons, plumbers, electricians, and carpenters.
Some of these students, indeed, can succeed as students. Yet, are they, or will the ever be, happy pegged into the demands of academia?
In the end, what does our education system do well? Who does it serve? How many students achieve less than they might because we demand that all students prepare for college, even if they have no intention to do so? I speak not only of the students who will pursue higher education, but also those who would prefer to spend the time learning a craft.
No Child Left Behind is an insidious failure. Not only does it fail to achieve its stated goals, it mandates mediocrity. Everyone is not the same. Why should we educate all of our students as if they are the same? Why should our goals for our students fit into a single package?
Sunday, March 23, 2008
What can we learn from unschooling?
I've been reading The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn. Why, you might ask, has a member of the public school establishment who has no children of his own, been reading a book advising teenagers to abandon the baggage, orthodoxy, and purported oppression of the US school system for a life of self-directed exploration?
First, I certainly agree with some of the arguments and premises of Llewellyn's sometimes eloquently written book. Much of what happens in many classrooms is busy-work. An unfortunate amount of my day is spent on classroom management. And yes, students are generally expected to follow a proscribed course of study. All of these certainly contribute to a sub-optimal institutional education experience.
Secondly, as a professional committed to teaching students to learn, I am interested in strategies from many schools of thought that might allow my students to: develop effective learning skills; enjoy a richer experience in my class; and have access to instruction that serves a variety of learners. Unlike many of TPTB (these are generally people who exist in the rarified air of state and federal bureaucracies), I recognize that I can't force individual students to learn whether he or she is in the top or bottom 20% or the ubiquitously unstimulated educational middle class. No amount of standardized testing or repetitive practice can result in true academic achievement. In this way, I agree with Llewellyn that a disturbing amount of time is allocated to memorizing facts that are either easily retrieved from countless databases or will be of little consequence one way or another.
Before I come across as advocating a damn the torpedoes, demolish the schools - they are beyond salvation and usefullness - philosophy, let me say that I believe Llewellyn largely comes across sounding like an angry, at best libertarian, at worst anarchist, who would leave young people to their own designs. Lets be realistic: For at least 150 years, the US public education system served to provide a populace that drove the most dynamic civilization on earth.
However, there is no doubt that an education system designed for an agrarian society that managed to adapt itself to the needs of an industrial age, is woefully equipped for the demands of an information age in which ideas and vision are the products that will enrich and employ American masses.
I want my classroom to be a place where students are encouraged to investigate ideas and encounter a wide variety of opportunities. I know that I will please few students all of the time, most some of the time, and, hopefully, only a small minority none of the time. My vision is that of an unschooled classroom in which teams of students explore divergent technology interests, and I can point them in the right direction. Nonetheless, the majority of my experience has shown me that teenagers collapse under the weight, burden, and opportunity of independence.
What, then, is the right balance of latitude, structure, and requirement to place upon students? What are the strategies of an unschooling philosophy that can work to energize and educate that preponderance of teenagers who would drown in unchecked freedom? What do we have to provide to students that they may become young adults who cherish spontaneous moments of learning?
Llewellyn's book is at its best when it presents ideas like the following:
"All the people we call geniuses are men and women who escaped having to put that curious, wondering child in themselves to sleep. Instead, they devoted their lives to equipping that child with the tools and equipment it needed to doing its playing on an adult level." - Barbara Sher.
It is entirely regrettable that teachers have been accomplices to removing wonder, excitement, and playfulness to learning. But it is clear to me that students are complicit in their own disenfranchisement in learning. None of this, however, precludes contemporary publicly funded education from becoming a vehicle to self discovery.
However, at the same time, the author mana
First, I certainly agree with some of the arguments and premises of Llewellyn's sometimes eloquently written book. Much of what happens in many classrooms is busy-work. An unfortunate amount of my day is spent on classroom management. And yes, students are generally expected to follow a proscribed course of study. All of these certainly contribute to a sub-optimal institutional education experience.
Secondly, as a professional committed to teaching students to learn, I am interested in strategies from many schools of thought that might allow my students to: develop effective learning skills; enjoy a richer experience in my class; and have access to instruction that serves a variety of learners. Unlike many of TPTB (these are generally people who exist in the rarified air of state and federal bureaucracies), I recognize that I can't force individual students to learn whether he or she is in the top or bottom 20% or the ubiquitously unstimulated educational middle class. No amount of standardized testing or repetitive practice can result in true academic achievement. In this way, I agree with Llewellyn that a disturbing amount of time is allocated to memorizing facts that are either easily retrieved from countless databases or will be of little consequence one way or another.
Before I come across as advocating a damn the torpedoes, demolish the schools - they are beyond salvation and usefullness - philosophy, let me say that I believe Llewellyn largely comes across sounding like an angry, at best libertarian, at worst anarchist, who would leave young people to their own designs. Lets be realistic: For at least 150 years, the US public education system served to provide a populace that drove the most dynamic civilization on earth.
However, there is no doubt that an education system designed for an agrarian society that managed to adapt itself to the needs of an industrial age, is woefully equipped for the demands of an information age in which ideas and vision are the products that will enrich and employ American masses.
I want my classroom to be a place where students are encouraged to investigate ideas and encounter a wide variety of opportunities. I know that I will please few students all of the time, most some of the time, and, hopefully, only a small minority none of the time. My vision is that of an unschooled classroom in which teams of students explore divergent technology interests, and I can point them in the right direction. Nonetheless, the majority of my experience has shown me that teenagers collapse under the weight, burden, and opportunity of independence.
What, then, is the right balance of latitude, structure, and requirement to place upon students? What are the strategies of an unschooling philosophy that can work to energize and educate that preponderance of teenagers who would drown in unchecked freedom? What do we have to provide to students that they may become young adults who cherish spontaneous moments of learning?
Llewellyn's book is at its best when it presents ideas like the following:
"All the people we call geniuses are men and women who escaped having to put that curious, wondering child in themselves to sleep. Instead, they devoted their lives to equipping that child with the tools and equipment it needed to doing its playing on an adult level." - Barbara Sher.
It is entirely regrettable that teachers have been accomplices to removing wonder, excitement, and playfulness to learning. But it is clear to me that students are complicit in their own disenfranchisement in learning. None of this, however, precludes contemporary publicly funded education from becoming a vehicle to self discovery.
However, at the same time, the author mana
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Up a 21st Century Creek Without a Paddle
What is a computer lab full of 25 students and free internet access from Comcast? A disaster. The science teacher and I have a fun, collaborative project and enthusiastic students. Yet, they can barely perform research and are completely unable to use online web page creation tools. It's cliche, but you get what you pay for. Comcast, thanks for nothing. Your generosity might actually turn students off to creative uses for technology.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Re-learning Learning
Through little fault of their own, students have come to believe that knowledge is something that they receive from teachers. Consider the following 7th grade student reflection on a recent animation project:
"I didn't like scratch all that much. If you messed up something and needed to go back and fix it, it would mess up the whole Scratch project. ... Also, if you had a question for Mr. Lavigne, he would be helping someone out so then you couldn't finish either." Somehow, this student has come to believe that: firstly, messing up is wrong and apparently disastrous. Secondly, the teacher is the person that fixes problems.
At first glance, this seems problematic and concerning to me as a teacher. However, continuing to read this reflection relieved some of my concerns: "At first, I thought Scratch was SO hard. I didn't think I was going to be able to do this Term 2 project. But, once I started on it, and learned new things about it, it got MUCH easier. It took less time to do things so I could get things done quicker."
This student, along with more than 200 others, used Scratch to animate and illustrate topics related to cyber-safety and digital citizenship. Initial reactions were often similar to that of the previous student:
"I think that Scratch is a cool program. I think that at first it was difficult, but the more we used it, it got easier. If I were to learn more about scratch [sic] I think that I would find someone who knew all about scratch and ask them to show me an example." - 6th grade student
"When I started this Scratch project [sic] I liked it even though I was having a little difficulty ... I think Scratch is very easy to learn, even if you don't know how to use computers. There are two things that I would do to learn more about Scratch. First, visit MIT. How cool would it be to meet the people who created this program." - 6th grade student
"I could learn more about scratch by ... going online at www.scratch.mit.edu. I could learn from this website because I could watch someone's and see how they did something that I didn't know. I have to admit that I got an idea how to use scratch from people's projects." - 6th grade student
Children understand how to learn; More importantly, they also understand their own individual learning preferences. Somehow, the U.S. education system has gotten in the way. Yes, some children will always be risk-averse. But our culture of everyone [succeeding] not failing has caused fear of failure to suppress natural learning instincts.
As teachers, one of our primary goals must be to get out of the way and allow learning to emerge even when the fear of failure arises.
"I didn't like scratch all that much. If you messed up something and needed to go back and fix it, it would mess up the whole Scratch project. ... Also, if you had a question for Mr. Lavigne, he would be helping someone out so then you couldn't finish either." Somehow, this student has come to believe that: firstly, messing up is wrong and apparently disastrous. Secondly, the teacher is the person that fixes problems.
At first glance, this seems problematic and concerning to me as a teacher. However, continuing to read this reflection relieved some of my concerns: "At first, I thought Scratch was SO hard. I didn't think I was going to be able to do this Term 2 project. But, once I started on it, and learned new things about it, it got MUCH easier. It took less time to do things so I could get things done quicker."
This student, along with more than 200 others, used Scratch to animate and illustrate topics related to cyber-safety and digital citizenship. Initial reactions were often similar to that of the previous student:
"I think that Scratch is a cool program. I think that at first it was difficult, but the more we used it, it got easier. If I were to learn more about scratch [sic] I think that I would find someone who knew all about scratch and ask them to show me an example." - 6th grade student
"When I started this Scratch project [sic] I liked it even though I was having a little difficulty ... I think Scratch is very easy to learn, even if you don't know how to use computers. There are two things that I would do to learn more about Scratch. First, visit MIT. How cool would it be to meet the people who created this program." - 6th grade student
"I could learn more about scratch by ... going online at www.scratch.mit.edu. I could learn from this website because I could watch someone's and see how they did something that I didn't know. I have to admit that I got an idea how to use scratch from people's projects." - 6th grade student
Children understand how to learn; More importantly, they also understand their own individual learning preferences. Somehow, the U.S. education system has gotten in the way. Yes, some children will always be risk-averse. But our culture of everyone [succeeding] not failing has caused fear of failure to suppress natural learning instincts.
As teachers, one of our primary goals must be to get out of the way and allow learning to emerge even when the fear of failure arises.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The Thinking Teacher and FISA
As I listen to the President's ongoing protestations about Democratic attempts to "weaken" National Security, I realized we have a responsibility to ensure that our students don't succumb to Bush ideology which has disturbing parallels to propaganda that saw Hitler installed as Chancellor of Germany and the fall of it its democracy for nearly a half century. Am I ranting against conservative agenda in terms of National Security? If so, that is not my intent. I agree completely that government should be able to request wiretaps for suspected terrorists and their agents; What is so wrong with a secret court that is mandated to respond within 48 hours and empowered to grant retroactive wiretapping authority? The neocon aversion to any form of reasonable oversight is a transparent ploy to be able to act against unnamed enemies with impunity.
While carpooling this morning, a colleague raised an observation: What happens when, in five to ten years, new teachers were themselves educated under the auspices of NCLB? In our fanatic quest for universal mediocrity, will we create a generation of teachers who, themselves, lack the critical thinking skills to question important issues? If teachers become accomplices to enacting political-education objectives, who will be left to teach young people to question the motivations of those who are defining objectives? Students need to be taught more than facts; they need to be able to do more than perform skills in isolation: They need to be taught to question not only distant forms of authority (including the federal government), but also local forms present in the classroom including the text, the teacher, each other, and the omnipresent test.
If you teach critical thinking as part of your curriculum, what and how do you teach? How do students respond? Do you have any longitudinal data that shows how your students perform on standardized tests?
While carpooling this morning, a colleague raised an observation: What happens when, in five to ten years, new teachers were themselves educated under the auspices of NCLB? In our fanatic quest for universal mediocrity, will we create a generation of teachers who, themselves, lack the critical thinking skills to question important issues? If teachers become accomplices to enacting political-education objectives, who will be left to teach young people to question the motivations of those who are defining objectives? Students need to be taught more than facts; they need to be able to do more than perform skills in isolation: They need to be taught to question not only distant forms of authority (including the federal government), but also local forms present in the classroom including the text, the teacher, each other, and the omnipresent test.
If you teach critical thinking as part of your curriculum, what and how do you teach? How do students respond? Do you have any longitudinal data that shows how your students perform on standardized tests?
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
In Search of Reasoning
Today, I was forced to suffer through one of those new teacher induction seminars that are all the rage (and required) in Massachusetts. These seminars are theoretically designed to give all new hires at an individual school both a common background and set of skills to help them survive their first few years of teaching. New hires are required to attend, regardless of whether it is their first year teaching or 10th year teaching. In my case, I fall between the pea-green deer-in-headlights stage that comprises the first two to three years of teaching and the true veteran stage at which teaching becomes a legitimate profession. As I am in my fourth year of teaching, I have already discovered numerous strategies and techniques I like to use and have developed an awareness of what I need to master to become a highly skilled practitioner of the academic arts. Generally, I try to appreciate mandatory yet less than intellectually rigorous professional development courses. In this example, the course content were those skills that I would expect any reasonable teacher preparation program to offer its students during their first year of study. Activators, Sequencing, Mastery Objectives ... that sort of mundane thing.
In trying to (buzzword alert) differentiate the course material for myself, I stumbled upon an observation during a discussion of Mastery Objectives that, for me, shed some insight into my ongoing search for reasoning and critical thought in U.S. secondary education. In this era of high stakes testing, mandatory standards, and curriculum frameworks, it appears that our students have widely lost the ability to think critically. Teachers, worrying about their own professional assessments and maintaining status as a "highly qualified professional," have become focused on placing knowledge and skills* at the hands of students. Numerous software packages have been developed to give students ample opportunity for practicing fundamentals required for passing any of the plethora of standardized tests with which our elected officials are currently infatuated.
It seems self-evident that teaching of critical thinking and Socratic method have been neutered in the name of standards. However, I've been searching for what that means to me and what I can do about it in my classroom. While discussing Mastery Objectives, it occurred to me that one specific area in which teaching critical thinking has been left behind is in the teaching of deductive and inductive reasoning.
I contend that in always laying out mastery objectives for students, we are deliberately denying them opportunities to practice and develop deductive reasoning skills. By telling them what they will know, we rob them of some of those "aha!" moments that appear when the child discovers they understand why what we are teaching them is important. Yet, we don't stop there. I might be able to accept focusing on one half of the reasoning dichotomy, but we continue down this path of denying reasoning when we specifically identify the steps, skills, and techniques that will lead students to their goal.
Recently, a 10th grade student asked me why I couldn't spell out for them, step-by-step, what was required of classmates and him to produce an independent study guide web page. He presented to me copies of an assignment I give to students in grade 6-8 that requires younger students to create an animation using Scratch to exact specifications. Although each high school student is given a course syllabus identifying each of the individual steps** that make up their long term project, he was unable to recognize that this level of structure is appropriate for students of his age.
Despite being given both the top-down view (mastery objective) in the form of a syllabus, and the incremental tasks required to complete an independent research / study project, this and many other students are neither able to induce how the individual pieces combine to solve the long-term goal nor deduce from the incremental objectives what they may combine to produce.
How often do students ask you questions that revolve around quantity? "How many words?" "How many pages?" "What did I miss?" I find it odd that these are the most common questions asked by theoretically more developed students (high school students), while younger students (middle school, grade 6-8), frequently please and thrill me with their realizations regarding the many possibilities presented by software like Scratch or MicroWorlds. I am thrilled when students ask me how they can solve a problem that I have yet to introduce to them because their innate curiosity and natural reasoning skills have not been suppressed.
There must be something institutional*** that is endemic to American educational systems that leads to older students being either unable or unwilling to abstract ideas we teach them. I propose that the indoctrination of mandatory standardized tests is a significant, if not primary, cause of this phenomenon.
What bothers me about this is that it is naturally in the best political and economic interest of America to teach students to think, rather than test whether they know. Certainly, knowledge is a foundation for thinking. But do we want our 15-18 year olds proving only that they know information that is likely to be quickly forgotten and almost certainly not going to lead to an America that produces the breakthroughs and inventions through which 20th century dominance was established? The age when great numbers of American workers are going to mass produce products that are sold world-wide has ended. Without revisiting why we teach students, American contributions of know-how and ingenuity may follow. What has constantly been dubbed education reform is, in reality, nothing more than an attempt to re-brand and repackage a form of education that was inspired by the industrial revolution.
It is essential that America recognize that the Information Revolution must inspire entirely original breeds of education.
*In this context, I argue that skills are little different than the knowledge we teach.
** For this project, students are asked to select a subject area and research topic of personal interest, expertise, or difficulty and create an in-depth, interactive study guide. Therefore, the incremental steps are those such as outline potential topics, perform research and properly cite sources, write a thesis statement, and create a web page. Students seem to want us, as teachers, to present them with the information so that they may repackage it for a "project."
***Along with hormones, propensity towards rebellion, sense of immortality, and a complete fascination with another person's body parts (Hey, I get it. I'm sure we all do)
****I thought there was a fourth foot-note. I guess I was wrong.
In trying to (buzzword alert) differentiate the course material for myself, I stumbled upon an observation during a discussion of Mastery Objectives that, for me, shed some insight into my ongoing search for reasoning and critical thought in U.S. secondary education. In this era of high stakes testing, mandatory standards, and curriculum frameworks, it appears that our students have widely lost the ability to think critically. Teachers, worrying about their own professional assessments and maintaining status as a "highly qualified professional," have become focused on placing knowledge and skills* at the hands of students. Numerous software packages have been developed to give students ample opportunity for practicing fundamentals required for passing any of the plethora of standardized tests with which our elected officials are currently infatuated.
It seems self-evident that teaching of critical thinking and Socratic method have been neutered in the name of standards. However, I've been searching for what that means to me and what I can do about it in my classroom. While discussing Mastery Objectives, it occurred to me that one specific area in which teaching critical thinking has been left behind is in the teaching of deductive and inductive reasoning.
I contend that in always laying out mastery objectives for students, we are deliberately denying them opportunities to practice and develop deductive reasoning skills. By telling them what they will know, we rob them of some of those "aha!" moments that appear when the child discovers they understand why what we are teaching them is important. Yet, we don't stop there. I might be able to accept focusing on one half of the reasoning dichotomy, but we continue down this path of denying reasoning when we specifically identify the steps, skills, and techniques that will lead students to their goal.
Recently, a 10th grade student asked me why I couldn't spell out for them, step-by-step, what was required of classmates and him to produce an independent study guide web page. He presented to me copies of an assignment I give to students in grade 6-8 that requires younger students to create an animation using Scratch to exact specifications. Although each high school student is given a course syllabus identifying each of the individual steps** that make up their long term project, he was unable to recognize that this level of structure is appropriate for students of his age.
Despite being given both the top-down view (mastery objective) in the form of a syllabus, and the incremental tasks required to complete an independent research / study project, this and many other students are neither able to induce how the individual pieces combine to solve the long-term goal nor deduce from the incremental objectives what they may combine to produce.
How often do students ask you questions that revolve around quantity? "How many words?" "How many pages?" "What did I miss?" I find it odd that these are the most common questions asked by theoretically more developed students (high school students), while younger students (middle school, grade 6-8), frequently please and thrill me with their realizations regarding the many possibilities presented by software like Scratch or MicroWorlds. I am thrilled when students ask me how they can solve a problem that I have yet to introduce to them because their innate curiosity and natural reasoning skills have not been suppressed.
There must be something institutional*** that is endemic to American educational systems that leads to older students being either unable or unwilling to abstract ideas we teach them. I propose that the indoctrination of mandatory standardized tests is a significant, if not primary, cause of this phenomenon.
What bothers me about this is that it is naturally in the best political and economic interest of America to teach students to think, rather than test whether they know. Certainly, knowledge is a foundation for thinking. But do we want our 15-18 year olds proving only that they know information that is likely to be quickly forgotten and almost certainly not going to lead to an America that produces the breakthroughs and inventions through which 20th century dominance was established? The age when great numbers of American workers are going to mass produce products that are sold world-wide has ended. Without revisiting why we teach students, American contributions of know-how and ingenuity may follow. What has constantly been dubbed education reform is, in reality, nothing more than an attempt to re-brand and repackage a form of education that was inspired by the industrial revolution.
It is essential that America recognize that the Information Revolution must inspire entirely original breeds of education.
*In this context, I argue that skills are little different than the knowledge we teach.
** For this project, students are asked to select a subject area and research topic of personal interest, expertise, or difficulty and create an in-depth, interactive study guide. Therefore, the incremental steps are those such as outline potential topics, perform research and properly cite sources, write a thesis statement, and create a web page. Students seem to want us, as teachers, to present them with the information so that they may repackage it for a "project."
***Along with hormones, propensity towards rebellion, sense of immortality, and a complete fascination with another person's body parts (Hey, I get it. I'm sure we all do)
****I thought there was a fourth foot-note. I guess I was wrong.
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