Theme 2: Final Reflections

We are living in a rapidly changing world, and our students are the same.  The momentum in which things have been changing appears only to be getting faster as new technology and the internet continue to gain influence in our society.  You have to think, when you were younger the web wasn’t around, and yet today, the children that come into our classrooms were born into a world where the web was as natural to their lives as water is to drink.

It sparks some very important questions:

What should we be teaching our students?

And how can we change the curriculum of the past to better fit the students of the future?

Technology is a large part of the curriculum question, but the even larger concern is how to still keep the integrity of the past lessons and methods of education.  It has been one of the most important questions I ask myself on a day to day basis because of the “great English works” I am suppose to teach.  The best answer I can come up with is this: I believe that my curriculum should be changing and evolving every year.  While I still believe in “great works,” I believe more in the literacy lessons that will best serve my students.  It is not all about the technology, but the rapid evolution of technology is a great parallel to the rapidly changing word of humanity, and yet the evolution of our public school curriculum is still not keeping up. 

It is something that needs, actually, has to change…and soon.

Theme 2: The History of Curriculum in the United States

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” 

When I first read this line from the great classic Frankenstein, I couldn't describe how beautiful the words were.  I was in awe. It was one of those moments when I realized how much I loved English and appreciated my ability to read.   Two years later I was reading the same line out loud to my own students and…nothing. Nothing at first, then groans, and thus began one of the most painful moments of my teaching career.

I have come to realize—and this may offend some English teachers out there—that the great works that we have been smashing down our students’ throats as a part of the traditional English curriculum is not doing our students any favors.  William H. Schubert discussed the “intellectual traditional” curriculum and how it can be “found in great works” (p. 170).  However, I have to disagree.  Trust me, I am an avid supporter of the classics like Shelley, Shakespeare, etc. (in certain context and classes) but I have seen a curriculum of great works that have destroyed the love of reading for our newest generations of readers.  We know there are other reasons why students don’t read (like new technology), but when I taught the English III curriculum (which is heavily influenced on the need to teach complex texts to prepare for the ACT),  it was devastating to see student after student say, “I hate reading.” 

I find myself thinking more like a “social behaviorist” when it comes to the curriculum.  Specifically, I agree that teachers need to “re-make curriculum in every generation by asking what successful people do, and more importantly what they need to know in order to do it” (p. 3-4).  For instance, I have been using more mentor texts by great writers—old, but also new—and having my students look at how those writers successfully write and what creative methods (grammar, sentence structure) they use.  I have also been talking more about reading strategies and how  students can find choice books students they will enjoy, with the belief that someday they will find the confidence and stamina to tackle some of those more difficult,  but great works (like Shakespeare).

I have learned that the “early decades of the 19^th century school curriculum” was “linked to the names of books read” like “Caesar or Virgil” (p.185-186) is something we still do today. But why?  Our students have changed, as has the economy and culture.  Some kids should, and will, want to read these great works, but most students just need to be taught strategies that will help them with literacy rather than trying to rush through 5-6 full length "classic" novels that have been part of the curriculum for decades. Maybe it is time to make a change.

Additional Resource:

I have discovered that this book by Kelly Gallagher called Readicide is a great fit into all this issues about what we teach and why.  While it may feel like this book is just for ELA people, it still hits on topics related to using textbooks and what we want our students to read--in all disciplines.



Readicide on Amazon.com

Quotes from the book Readicide

Theme 1: Final Reflections

I have come to really realize that the world of education is a very complex, multi-layered mammoth that has good, bad, and everything in between. At first, one can’t help but wonder—it has taken decades to create today’s public education system, so will it take just as many decades to revise and change it?

If there is any place to start, it is with citizenship. The lessons that come with citizenship could help offset some of the biggest issues many of us teachers face in the classroom—like attendance, turning in homework/assignments, and respect. But, the problem is the lessons of citizenship have been pushed under the rug as schools are trying to incorporate other conflicting goals and aims. By moving citizenship out of the shadows, and expanding beyond the social studies classrooms, perhaps we can change education for the better. I know at my school students do get a “citizenship grade” which is ranked 1-4, but when it appears on the report card, it has no impact or importance—in fact, it is located, in tiny font, on the bottom of the page where students and parents can easily overlook it.

Along with citizenship, we might need to look at the way we have create a “one curriculum fits all.” Students need to see that there are other options for learning that can fit what they want to do in life beyond high school. But, are they really seeing this now with our current education system?

Theme 1: Conflicting Notions of the Purposes of Schooling

I would argue there is one phrase and one phrase along that can instantly makes part of teacher die inside (sorry for the dramatics, but I know this happens to me a lot) and that phrase is: Standardized Testing.   The phrase itself can cut your soul, raise your blood pressure, and yet it is one of the most common phrases in the educational world.  

I was pleasantly surprised to see that both Labaree and Noddings argue the damage that standardized testing has created, as well as explain the history from which this ugly education giant emerged.   I always wondered why standardized testing became the common practice and although I knew it stemmed from the idea of economy, I didn’t realize that it is pushing a fatal form of equity for our students.  Personally, my students are testing for the at least ACT 3x in school before they take the real deal in March.  The results—the kids don’t care.  They don’t try.  They are exhausted and apathetic.  And who can blame them.

This also goes along with Noddings’ claim of how schools “value only academic achievement” (p. 443) and how this related to the bigger issue of economy and well as equity.  I don’t want to argue that one job is more academic than another, because I think that there is a set of “academics” that is uniquely different for every job field out there.  For instance, I may have a well versed English academic background, but my knowledge of car repair or computer designing is zilch.  Noddings made me realize that our definition of “academic” has been skewed and too many people think that job fields such as car repair or beauty school are not academic.  But the fact is they are. Especially because the definition of academic is related to education, or getting an education within _______.  As long as a student is learning, and being educated on how to become a mechanic, or a beautician, they are being academic—but in a different way.

The problem really is our school wants to give every student the same education (thus, the same standardize test).  We want all of our students to be the same type of academic; therefore, we have created a set standard of what academic is with core classes like English, Math, Science, and Social Studies.  My school has electives, but they are not consider “academic. ”  Even the term “elective” tends to diminish their integrity. The kid taking choir, parenting, or culinary arts is not consider as “bright” as the student taking AP Literature or Biology.

It all comes back to this statement: “Everyone needs to equal.”  But the truth is that is not possible.  While tracking is another dirty word in education, I think the idea of offering different career tracks, with different academic classes within those tracks is a better idea, and could help this huge economy crisis schools get blamed for.  I know there are valid dangers with tracking, but students are different.  Students also will pick different careers, and they need an education that matches that.  Maybe then we will see more happy students at school.  Maybe then, we will see less students drop out because they don’t see the value in “learning this algebra that they will never use again.” 

Resources:

If you have never seen this video by Sir Ken Robinson, it touches on so many of the issues that we have read about in the two articles this week.  I love his discussion of the economy and how education reform is constantly revolving around the economy issues.  It also touches on the idea of teaching cultural identity to students, much like Labaree's article talked about schools teaching citizenship to our students.  I also think this helps add onto another consequence of keeping the old educational systems, and the issues of tracking, and who is "smart, academics" vs. who is not. 

 Another discussion brought up is the idea that kids have lost their creative vibe, and I think that connects back to the concerns about if are students are happy from Noddings, as well as students who think that "what matters most is not the knowledge they learn in school but the credentials they acquire there" (p. 56).  Too many of our students have learned how to "play" school, or play the educational system. Also, too many students are unhappy because they don't have the chance to be creative, or explore other creative fields of learning.  There is so much great stuff in this video, I could keep going, but you need to watch it for yourself.

Harrison Bergeron Full Text

This is the English teacher in me, but I had to add this fictional story about "making everyone equal."  The consequences remind me of what has happened in our school systems and the fact is the way we view and incorporate equality into the school systems is actually doing more harm and good, just like what we see in this story.