"Jaywalking"-teacher version

One of my favorite things on television, besides the History channel and Forensic Files is the "Jaywalking" segment on the Tonight show. Although I laugh as hard as anyone at the inane answers Jay Leno gets from the average American it's also a bit sobering for a teacher. I mean, isn't it sad just how uninformed the average American citizen is? My son's friend, Courtney, was railing against this in his blog, Alotta Usless Jargon, and I have to agree with him.
I grew up in a home where politics and world events were discussed regularly. I thought it was de riguer to at least be conversant with the major global events. I've come to the realization in recent years that my family must be somewhat out of the norm. I came to this realization on Parent night at school. There I was blithely describing the Social Studies curriculum for the parents of my 8th grade students and to keep it interesting I'd throw in a little witticism about some recent news report. Nothing...blank stares on many faces, confused looks on others. O.K., maybe this house is a little dead, I'll try with the next group. Same response. Occassionally I'd get a little embarassed chuckle like they felt bad for me because I had made some obscure reference and obviously wanted someone to laugh because I was pausing expectantly.
Today, however, I had a real doozy. One for my scrapbook. One of the essay questions on my recent Civil War test was to describe the causes of the war. I had spent a great deal of time telling students that although many Americans beleive the war was about freeing slaves, it really wasn't. I gave them all the reasons that most historians point to such as economic factors, sectionalism and westward expansion. One student however had not studied the two page handout I had given them on the causes of the war and consequently lost 18 of the 20 points for that particular essay. He had written that the war was because the North did not want slaves and the South did. I wrote "No, that is not what the war was about" on his test. His father wrote a note back to me wanting an explanation of my comment since he believes the war WAS about slavery and he attached a highlighted printout from Encarta that started out "The Civil War was fought because of slavery". Of course, he had neglected to highlight the subsequent sentences that explained the friction resulted from the efforts of both northern and southern states to establish a majority in Congress. They wanted the majority to be either non slave-holding states (north) or slave-holding states (south). Throughout the article Dad had highlighted any sentence with the word slave in it while ignoring the explanation that followed that clarified the issue as economic or political or idealogical. I typed a page and a half trying to teach Dad about the causes of the war.
Well, in all fairness, if Jay wants to stop me on the street and ask about the Atlanta Braves record I'll probably give a stupid answer too. Sigh.

Rant on the other side...

And now for something completely different, I feel in all fairness I need to focus for a minute on the teachers part in the breakdown of the educational process. Yes, kids, you heard me right. In spite of the fact that you said I would always side with the teacher when you were growing up, I'm here to tell you that there is definitely some criticism due to some teachers out there. So here's a Bronx cheer for those teachers out there who....

• Give students huge stapled packets of busywork so the teacher doesn't have to actually, you know, TEACH!
• Take off work to go to _______ (college reunions, Disney World, Panama City, what have you) and leave huge stapled packets of busywork for their students OR the same tired movie the kids have seen three times this year already when the teacher was off again on some "emergency" leave to Sao Paulo
• Give students firm directions to put all their answers on their own notebook paper rather than write on the old yellowed spirit master ditto they have been handing out since 1969.
• Tell kids that although the textbook IS outdated and there is no longer a USSR, they must answer as if the Soviet Union was still operational on the test because the teacher doesn't want to take the time to make a new test, she'd rather just copy the textbook test. (Yes, this is a true story!)
• Don't actually grade the massive busywork they hand out because that might take them away from hunting up scrapbooking websites while the kids are completing the massive busywork.
• Give students "A's" because they: 1) were good for the sub 2) brought back their signed report card 3) Helped put up the bulletin board or any other mindless, non-academic task
• Flip out if a kid chews gum in class or doesn't walk on the blue side area of the hall. This is the teacher who spends every moment looking to catch kids breaking a rule so she can wale on them.
• Gives mindless homework every night because she thinks that what teachers are supposed to do.
• Take off work for vague reasons even though they know no sub is available so that their colleagues have to take in 4-6 extra kids per class.
• Tell students embarassing or compromising or even erroneous information about another teacher in order to become a confidant of the students

And for the administrative types who...

• Question teachers with above average failing students but not the teachers with above average number of A's. Isn't grade inflation as bad a problem as a teacher with rigorous demands?

Well, there are certainly plenty of teachers out there with high goals and who teach from the heart. It's the ones that I've described above who are doing nothing to improve the public view of teachers, not to mention the ones who succumb to doing lascivious acts with their students.

O.K., I'm done

Mommyjolle Quiz

O.K., since the quiz game is all the rage...here's mine

QuizYourFriends.com!

If I ruled the world...

Just for a minute let's assume that we have landed on a new undiscovered country ( and we haven't kicked out or killed off any indigenous people!) and we have to create from scratch a system to educate our children. We have complete free dom to decide what they need to know to be successful in this new world. The first important rule is to forget eveything we have known about how education has been done before. You see, I think we've been doing the same thing for so long that we haven't been able to let go of long held beliefs about what a complete education should include. Isn't education supposed to prepare children to function successfully in the world as adults? So what do they REALLY need to know?
First and most importantly I think we put too much emphasis on fact learning and too little emphasis on skill learning. I once worked for someone who was fond of saying that he didn't need to know everything, he just needed to know how to find out everything. That has really stuck with me. If you know how to seek out the right person or resource you can pretty much find out anything you want to know. The internet has absolutely brought that reality within everyone's grasp. I remember being absolutely astounded when I first ventured onto the internet highway and was able to view the Louvre in Paris and take a virtual tour. I was even more wowed that I could click onto live action cameras just about anywhere in the world. Not that I think the Grand Canyon wouldn't be more impressive in person than on a 12" monitor but at least I can surf the net for which places I want to see, get other's opinions and recommendations, make reservations for planes, cars and hotels and plan an entire itinerary from my living room. So the first rule for my new education system is ...
make every subject a search and discover mission
followed by...
teach students how to search intelligently and evaluate the crap from the cream on the internet.

I think the current accepted curriculum spends too much student time on learning knowledge they will never use in any practical way. Let's go back to the indigenous tribes for just a minute. If you were to observe the Bushmen of the Kalahari, for instance, you will find that they teach their youngsters hunting and shelter skills. Basically survival knowledge that will help them as adults. We need to do the same things. Certainly the requirements of knowledge for a 21st century adult in North America or any industrialized nation are going to be somewhat more complex but they still boil down to survival. In some instances we actually DO teach some of these skills in the classroom in spite of the fact that parents of our students do not see it as survival skills. We give students group work that requires organization, teamwork, accountability, negotiation, problem-solving and results oriented products. A really good teacher will help teach these skills rather than just throw a project at the kids and then step back to watch the fur fly. Unfortunately, parents get all up in arms over these projects because their child...
A) Did all the work
B) Had a lower grade because someone else did not do their fair share
C) Everybody on the group was mean to them
D) Nobody in the group would listen to their ideas

...and on and on. So in my perfect world the next law of education would be..
Each learning experience will involve a group effort that has results that mimic real life.

Along the same lines, there is not a child I know who hasn't hated Algebra and wanted to know why he/she had to know it. I agree. I mean, I know there are scientists out there who couldn't do their work without it. There are also scientists who cannot sit through an art or music class without wanting to run screaming from the room. At the risk of sounding a bit like a Montessori disciple I think my next rule should be...
Let students follow the path that their interests lead them.
Students who are scientifically oriented will pursue math concepts because they need them to complete their scientific pursuits. Art students will want to know more about form, texture and expression because their interests take them there. Think about the indigenous people again. The indian who was really gifted and creative with basket weaving would simple barter his fantastic baskets for a piece of venison from the adept hunter. And to refer back to the group effort, wouldn't students doing a group project that needed some math skills go and seek out the student who could provide those skills?
There are a whole list of other things that youngsters need to learn in order to be successful. Things like how to understand a contract, how to drive, banking skills, how to complete a tax return (although I keep pushing for an elimination of the IRS!) and so on. I think we could come up with a list of really necessary skills, but they would all start with "Here's how you find the information you need". And if nothing else maybe we could raise kids who had a can-do attitude. They would all enter adult-hood knowing that anything they wanted to know about was at their fingertips..if they just go looking for it.