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Just came across this Google presentation doc—via Twitter, of course: “Twenty-Three Interesting Ways* to use Twitter in the Classroom”.

Food for thought.

Bud Hunt (@budtheteacher) and I had a Twitter conversation the other day. He was reading Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s book, Schooling by Design, their follow-on to Understanding by Design, and he twittered the question that is the title of Chapter 4:

Bud: “How Should Teaching Be Appropriately Depersonalized?”
Me: “The same way love should be depersonalized. It shouldn’t be. Schooling is depersonalized. Teaching is personal. It’s like saying learning should be depersonalized.”
Bud: “I think it’s a question of what’s a good system – and a good system is larger than a person.”

Wiggins and McTighe want to make schools better. They see that much bad and ineffective teaching hides behind the defense of being ‘personal’, and they want to replace such practices with better teaching—”depersonalized teaching”—based on rational, proven procedures that result in effective ‘transfer of knowledge and skills’.

If Wiggins and McTighe succeed, schools will be better, but they will not be any different. That is, they will be doing the same thing they are trying to do now, but more successfully.

My problem is, I am fundamentally uninterested in what schools are doing, or trying to do. Since I’m a teacher, this is perhaps a surprising position to take, so let me explain.

Schools are the servants of the State and the Economy. The State wants good citizens; the Economy wants productive workers. Parents by and large share these goals—they don’t want their children to be criminals or bums. So they send the children to school, where it is hoped that the children will learn to be Obedient and Productive.

If I emerge from my schooling a good citizen and wage-earner, the State is happy, the Economy is happy, and my parents are, well, at least happier than they would be if I were a criminal and a bum. But am I happy? I don’t know.

I don’t know because while good citizenship and productivity are necessary prerequisites for a good life, they are not sufficient to create a good life. Real education pursues a good life by asking important questions. Nancie Atwell, a great teacher, identifies the big questions as these: Who am I? Where am I? and What am I doing? The pronouns can change—Who are we? Where are we? What are we doing?—and the last question can become “What should we be doing?—but the basic three questions remain. And they were asked first, of course, by the ancient Greeks.

And the answers are, 1. We don’t know. 2. We don’t know. and 3. We don’t know.

People interested in maintaining the State, building the Economy, and improving schools will at this point say, OK, let’s move on: questions without answers are not useful to us.

You see, the State, the Economy, and the schools that support them have absolutely no interest in me insofar as I am an individual human being trying to understand my existence. If I never ask such questions, the State and the Economy will be perfectly happy. (Schools and parents usually regard such questions as an adolescent phase similar to acne.)

Mind, this does not make me an anarchist. I appreciate living in a well-ordered state, and enjoy having a certain amount of freedom. I am happy to pay taxes to the state so that roads, schools, hospitals, etc., can make my life and everyone else’s better. A certain amount of obedience is a good thing; being able to support oneself is a good thing. They are good, however, in the way that engine oil and gasoline are good in a car: necessary, but not very interesting. I want to know where the car is going.

It is those three questions—Who are we? Where are we? What are we doing?—that interest me, that seem important to me. And while as a teacher I do traffic in knowledge and skills, and do try to ‘transfer’ them efficiently and effectively, that’s not what’s really important. Because ‘transferring knowledge and skills’ is not real teaching. Or to put it another way, as Socrates said, there is no such thing as teaching—there is only learning. The teacher, as Socrates put it, is a kind of midwife, helping to bring ideas to life by asking questions. Not questions like, “What were the major causes of World War I?” but questions like Who are we? and Where are we? and What are we doing? Once a student begins seriously considering such questions, there is only one path to follow: learning.

So for me good teaching boils down to two tasks: 1. Inspiring students to want to learn, and 2. Helping them when they need help. And most of Wiggins and McTighe’s excellent advice about structuring learning boils down to this: Don’t waste students’ time. If the activity’s purpose is unclear and/or trivial, then it is a waste of time. Such an activity should either be re-designed or scrapped. If the curriculum has no coherent rationale behind it, it will waste the students’ time. Here we totally agree.

But Wiggins and McTighe don’t talk about inspiration because inspiration is personal. It can’t be systemized. It can’t be measured or counted, nor can its effects always be perceived, even. As I wrote to Bud, Wiggins and McTighe are working for baseline competence—which would, yes, be a big step forward in many cases. But when I think about great teaching, I think of those gifted individuals who inspire their students. Socrates, of course, is the archetype. But Ron Jones, Diane Mensch, and Bobbie Booth, three of my high school teachers; Page Smith; Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy; Jim Manuel, who supervised my student teaching; Tom Ferté, a “personal” and unsystematic teacher if there ever was one; Charles G. Bell, eccentric genius of St. John’s College, Santa Fe; Henry David Thoreau—these are some of the teachers who have made a difference in my life. If you asked me what knowledge and skills Charles G. Bell transferred to me, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. But he certainly inspired me to learn. The work of these teachers was intensely personal, not because they got to know their students personally, but because they themselves were persons who recognized their students as persons and understood the mysterious power of a person seeking to understand his identity, his world, and his life: Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?

Of course, as school administrators see it, the view is rather different. They are trying to manage a system, and the system is inefficient because teachers are not like machines. Some of them are mediocre, some are pretty good, some are excellent, some are terrible. The mediocre and terrible teachers are, of course, a big problem. But even the good and excellent ones don’t work in the same way, so that inequity is built in to a school. Johnny, in Mrs. A’s class, will not have the same experience as Lucy, who is in Mrs. B’s class. The ‘system’ is not systematic. Wiggins and McTighe are trying to improve things by introducing rational methods that will ensure greater consistency and more effective teaching, i.e., ‘transfer of knowledge and skills’. They and the teachers and administrators working with them or along the same lines are doing noble work, in their own way—quixotic, perhaps, but admirable nonetheless. Few tasks in life are as discouraging and soul-destroying as trying to improve schools, because this is essentially a political problem, and it is a rare soul that is not destroyed by politics.

So I wish them all well, but having dipped my toes in that pool a time or two, I will be off elsewhere, thanks, doing what I see as the real work of teaching, as best I can: trying to inspire my students, and helping them when they need help. It’s very personal work.

A recent Twitter conversation got me thinking about great teachers who have inspired me, and one of the names that came to mind was Charles G. Bell. I met him in his ‘preceptorial’ about American literature in the summer Graduate Institute of 1984 at St. John’s College, Santa Fe (New Mexico). He would have been 68 or so at the time, but he still climbed trees for exercise and was infamous for, among other things, skinny-dipping when invited to parties by pool-owners.

Mr. Bell had, apparently, read every book ever written on every subject under the sun, and could read, write, and speak several languages. He was a polymath who started out studying physics but then switched to English. The St. John’s ‘tutors’ teach all the subjects, but he was one of the few who could rightfully claim expertise in almost all of them. He was also mentor and friend to the poet Galway Kinnell and, most importantly to me, a wonderfully kind, sympathetic, and inspiring teacher.

I keep writing in the past tense because I haven’t seen him in many years, but he apparently is still alive, well into his 90s, in Maine with one of his daughters. If anyone knows for sure, please drop a comment! UPDATE: Mr. Bell passed away on Christmas morning, 2010. His obituary in the Santa Fe New Mexican is worth reading.

Mr. Bell wrote both poetry and novels, but his great opus is Symbolic History, a comprehensive slide-and-sound history of everything. His autobiographical sketch, also on the Symbolic History site, is well worth reading.

Years ago I took a job as Head of a small private school with about 200 students, K-12. It was my first job as an administrator and I wanted the teachers to regard me as their colleague. I soon found out, however, that they wanted a boss, not a colleague. I met with each of them individually and asked what they needed from me. “Support”, they said.

Here’s what I wish I had said in response:

When you put students first, I will support you. When you model integrity, honesty, hard work, and lifelong learning, I will support you. When you do everything in your power to inspire your students, I will support you. When you are a reflective practitioner, a teacher who reads and talks and searches constantly to find better ways to help students learn, I will support you. If you need time off because of illness or family problems, I will support you.

However, if you fail to treat students with compassion, courtesy, and respect; if you are dishonest or lazy; if you make no effort to inspire students, and show no interest in developing your knowledge and skills as a teacher; if you go through the motions, make minimal effort, and repeat the same uninspired lessons year after year; then you will get no support from me—quite the contrary.

It would not have made a great difference, perhaps, but it would have been the right thing to say.

I’ve just discovered a great resource for teaching narrative technique: H. Porter Abbott’s Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge Introductions to Literature), 2nd Edition (2008). The paperback edition is under $20 on Amazon.com (U.S. dollars).

Abbott writes clearly and uses examples that high school students will be able to understand. More arcane points are covered in sidebars, where they may be ignored if you wish. He defines terms carefully but avoids jargon. He is aware of all the various schools of narratology that have sprung up in the last generation or so, refers to them from time to time, but is not enthralled by any particular theory. His view is broad and tolerant, but he is not afraid, either, to take his own positions and defend them. 

This is a great book to help students begin thinking about how stories work, instead of reading naively. Highly recommended to anyone teaching literature in Grades 10-12, and beyond.

High-school teachers who think their job is to prepare students to succeed in their university studies will be sobered by this column by Stanley Fish in the New York Times. In it he reviews and comments on “The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the University,” by Frank Donoghue.

According to Fish and Donoghue, liberal-arts education is fast disappearing and being replaced by “a model that begins and ends with the imperative to deliver the information and skills necessary to gain employment”. This new model has no place for “an individual professor who delivers insight and inspiration”. 

In this latter model , the mode of delivery – a disc, a computer screen, a video hook-up – doesn’t matter so long as delivery occurs. Insofar as there are real-life faculty in the picture, their credentials and publications (if they have any) are beside the point, for they are just “delivery people.”

Is that sobering enough for you? 

Of course there will always be a place, even if it is off in the corners here and there, for real teaching and learning, because the human spirit will demand it. But the capitulation of the university to the marketplace makes it even more important for elementary and secondary schools to focus on real learning. It may have once been possible to think, ‘My job is to get these kids into college—then their real education can begin’. If Fish and Donoghue are right, however, we who teach children and adolescents now bear the burden.

I have known for a long time, as an English teacher, that if students don’t read Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Dante, and Chaucer in my class, the chances are very good they will never read these authors at all, because the fashions of literary criticism have dictated for a generation or more that such Dead White European Males are unworthy of attention. 

Now it appears that if we want to turn our children into educated persons—literate readers and thinkers—we will have to do it before they graduate from high school, because after that they will simply be buying job skills.

The math teacher has lots of problems.

The PE teacher gets exercised about the smallest thing.

The history teacher can’t get over his past.

The English teacher has choice words for everyone.

The geography teacher knows her place.

The biology teacher loves life but hates frogs.

The chemistry teacher reacts to the slightest change.

The physics teacher is full of energy.

The art teacher claims he was framed.

Put the Home Ec teacher together with the Crisis Management Counselor and you have a recipe for disaster.

Want to make schools better? Start with kindness and respect.

Imagine a school in which teachers always speak courteously to students, especially when pointing out a problem with their behaviour. A school in which students are never bullied into participating, but are invited without coercion. A school in which every teacher knows that before the obligations to teach students well and use their time productively comes the obligation to be kind.

Imagine how many students, with just that one change, would like school so much more. And begin learning more.

Teachers need a professional motto. Physicians have “Do no harm”, which would be a good beginning but doesn’t go quite far enough. How about a Golden Rule for teachers? Stated and restated by the Greeks, by Jesus, Muhammed, Confucius, and many others, it carries the dual force of universality and simplicity.

“Treat students as you would like to be treated.”

Is that so hard?

Apparently it is. But on the other hand it costs nothing, requires no negotiations with boards or unions, or even permission from the principal. Every teacher can begin implementing this revolutionary educational reform, right now.

I say, let’s start.

in which The List, it turns out, is not where the real work lies

My list is short:

1. Purpose. The purposes of schooling are too numerous, are often unclear, and frequently conflict with one another.
2. One Size Fits All. Educational Psychology 101 tells us that each individual grows and learns at his or her own pace, and in his or her own ways. We then put kids in classrooms according to age and teach them the same stuff at the same time and usually in the same way.

Kind teachers, enthusiastic teachers, inspired teachers can make a bad situation better.

But so long as the school is trying to do a long list of contradictory things instead of focusing on a short list of well-conceived goals, and so long as we group students by age with little regard for individual needs, nothing fundamental will change. Amelioration is the best we can hope for.

Underlying Assumptions

As I look at that short list, I realize that it will be helpful to dig a bit deeper. What’s my beef, exactly, with the purposes of schools? And learning theory aside, what’s so bad about kids going to school with their peers?

Schools are not charitable organizations—they are instruments of the state, and are designed to benefit the state. Much as I understand this, however, I don’t much care. The interests of the state interest me very little. It’s important to the state that our children be raised up to vote for one of the major political parties, and that they be prepared to hold jobs so they can pay taxes and contribute to the GNP. Fine. Wake me up when you’re done.

I do prefer to live in a society where people behave well, and where people are well-read, thoughtful, knowledgeable, healthy, and curious. These would be the aims of my ideal school.

As for the factory model of schooling—students grouped by age and taught on a conveyor belt—well, it’s all about the money, isn’t it? An 18th-century aristocrat, say, would never have sent his child to a school; he hired teachers to come to the house and, in the best of all possible worlds, a gifted and inspired teacher sensitively guided the child to explore his interests and discover new ones in a way and at a pace suited to that particular child. Of course children benefit, too, from interaction with their peers, but they don’t really learn much (academically) from each other, not at least until they are young adults. And they can interact very well with each other by playing together, doing sports together, going to camp together, etc. The success of the home-schooling movement shows how unimportant the school is. Let’s face it: if we could only afford it, we would all hire gifted, inspired teachers to teach our children one-on-one.

However, of course, we can’t afford one-on-one teaching. So we send the kids to schools that are funded by taxpayers who want their money spent well, i.e., as little as possible and never on activities whose value is controversial. And once the kids are in school Mom can go back to work, which is pretty much required these days, and that brings us to one of the most important purposes of schools as they exist today: babysitting. (If you think babysitting is only an accidental side-effect of schooling, ask any school administrator about sending students home for a day or two so that teachers can participate in professional development workshops.)

And therefore . . .

This line of reasoning brings us back to my list of the two most important problems in the field of education and tells us that neither of these problems is actually important, because they are part of the fundamental nature of schools. Or rather, they are not problems so much as they are essential characteristics of schooling. It is possible to pursue education without schools—home-schooling being the one viable example I know of, cyber-schooling being perhaps a derivative of home-schooling or perhaps, someday, something more. But so long as we are talking about schools, the two problems on my list will never go away. For the vast majority of students, therefore, we should focus instead on the pragmatic, unglamorous work of amelioration: what can we do within schools as they exist to make them less bad?

Browsing Paul Graham’s excellent collection of essays, I came across this passage—

In his famous essay You and Your Research (which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter what they’re working on), Richard Hamming suggests that you ask yourself three questions:

1. What are the most important problems in your field?
2. Are you working on one of them?
3. Why not?

—and it occurred to me that in the field of education we have lots of problems, but little consensus about what our most important problems might be.

So I put the question to you:

What are the most important problems in the field of education?

A survey of American middle school students finds that

Being caring, attentive and friendly, and taking time out for explanations are the types of attitudes and behaviors that students value in their teachers.

I am stunned. For years I’ve believed that students want their teachers to be uncaring, inattentive, unfriendly, and to refuse to answer questions or explain things.

(And yes, for those of you lacking web cams, my tongue is firmly in my cheek.)

There’s a link to the entire survey here.

Werner Paetzold is leaving Suzhou Singapore International School to become MYP Coordinator at Bali International School.

Werner is one of those teachers that no school could ever adequately thank, compensate, or honour. As English & TOK teacher, drama impresario, and MYP Coordinator he has given time to his students and colleagues with exorbitant generosity, but beyond that he has given SSIS his heart and soul. He and I did not always agree, and thank god for that: when I begin wishing for colleagues who agree with me all the time, please show me the door. When he disagreed, he did so the same way he did everything else—with passion, with intelligence, and with impeccable good manners.

Above all, he has the taste and superiour good sense to prefer Apple computers.

Werner, you are a gentlemen and a great teacher. It has been an honour and a privilege to be your colleague. Warmest best wishes as you begin your Indonesian sojourn. We will miss you.