I Agree

In keeping with the theme of this blog, which is looking for love around me, today I dedicate my post to the people who sound off. Tell it like it is. Say what they gotta say. I love when gutsy people put it out there. Today my friend shared this article on Facebook. Truth be told, she's pretty gutsy. So are several of the women I surround myself with personally and professionally. But the article is about the things not acknowledged in the discussion about education and reform (elephants in the classroom). When my friend shared the article, it struck a cord with her and she asked of her friends not to just "like" but to offer their thoughts. So here I am and here are my thoughts about each of the elephants.

1. Most students will forget the content they "learn" in school. TRUTH. 
Ever seen the show Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? It has nothing to do with "smarts" and everything to do with the fact the kids are currently in 5th grade and learning the stuff, and the adults are not. According to Piaget, our brains organize information in units and then is stored in schema. When we experience or learn things that are related, we draw from and build on schema. Memorizing facts, and learning chunks of knowledge with which we have nothing to connect to previously or in the near future is pretty much a waste of time. Case in point. I took Algebra 2 in high school. Hated just about every minute of it, right down to the cuckoo teacher I had. Never once used any of the skills after taking that class. Last year, the thought of helping my son do his Algebra 2 homework, scared the living daylights out of me. And I have a doctorate! Similarly, in 8th grade (long before personal computers became common place) I was required to take typing class. I memorized home row, mastered the key strokes, and I was able to type about 55 words a minute.  Then I finished typing class, write everything in pencil, and didn't need any keyboarding skills until college. By then, I would have been lucky to clock half that wpm.  Now, you'd be hardpressed to find a kid enrolled in a keyboarding class. They're just expected to know it because they're on computers all the time. So are our kids learning relevant things in school?

2. Kids are bored and disengaged in school. TRUTH
I really don't need to say anything to defend this position, because I'm in schools all day every day. I have been for the past 17 years. That's proof enough for me. We've given them more and faster, and they have no recess and few choices. Even some of the "electives" are required. Misnomer if I have heard one. We jam pack their days with so much "curriculum" and they know the primary purpose is for testing and grading. And I agree with the sentiment in the article; the overcompensation with technology is a waste of money and time. Technology is useful, but it is not an answer to everything- especially not teaching. You want to make technology relevant? Teach students how to browse the internet efficiently and responsible. Teach them how to build computers and fix them. Teach them how to use computers to solve problems and create things. Stop using them to do more of what is happening in classrooms anyway.

3. True and lasting learning requires conditions that classroom don't have. TRUTH
Lots of the best teaching projects and celebrated teachers are doing things that break down the walls of the "traditional classroom." We recognize them with awards and by writing articles about them. Grant providers fund them. But no one wants to make their great ideas common practice in schools. Check out some information on place-based education and read a little John Dewey.  Our current classroom environments are not the most conducive to deep learning. And don't anyone dare blame it on the teachers.

4. We're not assessing many of the things that matter for success in future. TRUTH
Interpersonal skills? Nope. Problem-solving? Nope. Creativity? Flexibility? Disposition? Nope. Nope. Nope. We've got a lot of kids who can take a pretty mean standardized test. And man, our kids can really bubble in the lines.

5. Grades are the outcomes people are more interested in, not learning. TRUTH.
This is a major soap box of mine. Here's another blog post I wrote about it some time ago. But I need to say little more than this. My son has specialized computer courses. He's in the Academy of Technology Excellence at his school. Mostly he loves his classes. he's earning industry certifications and will probably cruise through his first year specialization courses in college because of it. But, he struggles to keep his grade up in one of the classes because of the meaningless homework assignments.  Twice a week he has to do article summaries on issues in the field of technology. I'm not going to make excuses for him- he can be a lazy student. But usually it's a result of an assignment that is pretty pointless (see #2). He is an avid online reader. He follows trade websites, watches endless informational videos online, and builds computers and installs stereo equipment as a hobby. He reads. Regularly. In fact, he's scored in the high 90's percentile n state reading assessments just about every year he's taken them. Trust me. His D in his tech class, is not because he's not learning anything.

6. We know that curriculum is just a guess. TRUTH
And who gets to decide our standards anyway? Why should the 10 old white guys (see the article) decide what standard of education the entire country needs?  When I was in my doc program (my concentration was curriculum & instruction), we spent an entire class period one night talking about whether or not we really need standards. Are we foolish enough to think learning wouldn't happen in schools if we didn't have a list of stuff the kids would be tested on? Kids are naturally learning beings. Create an environment where they can experience things and make relevant connections, I'm pretty sure they'd learn.

7. Separating learning into subjects and time blocks isn't the best way to learn. TRUTH
Thank you U.S. Steel for turning our schools into factories by suggesting we install clocks for efficiency. Thank you to the Carnegie unit for implying all learning on this subject should happen in this number of hours over a certain period of time. Block scheduling? Oy. Whatever happened to thematic teaching and cross-currcular integration. Elementary schools, where it should be a given, don't even do this anymore. Mandatory 90 minute reading blocks, 60 minute devoted math time. It's ridiculous. Learning time should be organic. It should take as long as it takes and integrate whatever subjects, content, skills are relevant. Maybe we can start by reminding science teachers that professional scientists write all the time.

8. Education is not preparing kids for when they graduate. TRUTH
I'm an adjunct, I see it.  Talk to any college professor they'll tell you the same thing. Same with employers. Kids can't write. They don't know how to use technology to be producers rather than consumers. They have no interpersonal skills. You know why? There's no time to teach those things because they're not measured on the standardized tests (see #4). Or in the case of writing, it's not tested and therefore not taught, authentically.

9. Learning that sticks is usually learned informally. TRUTH
This is true in so many ways. I can think of one specifically. First, the best way to learn new words and to increase vocabulary (and this is supported in research) is to read! The more people read independently, the more they increase their word knowledge. I know it's hard to believe that studying and memorizing a list of words and definitions looked up in the dictionary is relatively useless. But trust me, it is. We all can recall a time when we learned something that really stuck with us. Sometimes it's an unexpected experience, sometimes it's a skill we learned in a job. Once again, the ability to learn from other people and new situations is the learning that sticks.

I know I essentially rewrote the existing article. But you get my two cents and I get to say how much I LOVE when people tell it like it is.