What DO they need? Part II
Clay Burrell has a very popular post that has generated a huge number of comments at Muhammad Ali: A D- Student? Or an F- School? | Beyond School
And teachers – English teachers, especially, but any teacher using writing to assess understanding and merit in your classrooms – ask yourself, in this age of user-created video and audio, if it makes any sense to keep giving the Muhammed Ali’s of our classrooms a D- because they can’t write well, when they can speak well enough to be honored, like Ali was, at Harvard and Oxford. The English teacher in me is uncomfortable with this question, but the history teacher in me thinks it’s justified: Writing is no longer supreme since the Digital Revolution. It’s now on equal footing with Speaking and Graphic Communication. Isn’t it?
I hate to say it, but a really important point was missed, which is that if Muhammad Ali was a D- student, his school was likely an F- place not because it didn’t value his excellent non-writing skills (he unique gift for using verbal language), but because they likely did not even bother trying to educate him. Maybe he had a learning disability, but the odds are at that time, in that place, and given his race, he received not just a second rate education but something even worse.
That quibble aside, Clay is making a good point about how we treat people who are great students and don’t do “school” well.
This point is also made here at SpeEdChange: Not getting to Universal Design
If these differing learners had real equal opportunity to succeed, life would get, at least in some ways, more difficult for those who do succeed via the traditional routes.
At first, I was thinking that universities are probably so selective for some good reasons, which you can watch about here:
Megan McArdle and Daniel Drezner describe the ugly nature of academia and job hunting there because of oversupply of graduate level students.
There are other places for a graduate to go besides the university for employment (although, this discussion hits on the point that so many seem to think that academia should be where they end up).
But, then I heard this which made the case for universal design in universities better than anything so far…
Weekend America: A Man Among Bears which describes how Ben Kilham’s work on black bears does not get the respect it deserves because even though he has a genius level IQ (probably based on a WISC non-verbal test), dyslexia keeps him from reading beyond the third grade level, and out of graduate programs.
But, Clay’s post did get me thinking about the subject of class and race, and other things that inform how we educate kids where I teach, so I’m going to explore that in some upcoming posts, looking at some ideas like…
- Since Rev. Wright brought it up, do black students learn differently?
- What counts more when parents decide on what an acceptable education is for their child, race or class? Is the best “black” education something that college educated parents would want for their kids regardless of race?
- It’s not just a digital divide sometimes; what do we have kids do in class and on computers in poor neighborhoods.
There are cultural differences in cognition, no doubt, but individual needs trump all of that, as they do in almost every realm of human experience. That said, even the “liberals” in the US really are opposed to most children succeeding – remember that both Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy were huge supporters of No Child Left Behind which insists on a “single path for success,” and that the kinds of people who believe that minority kids need uncertified teachers (Teach for America) and boot camp schools (KIPP) would never send their children or grandchildren to any school “like that.”
The US policy is “good enough schools” for kids who are not already of the elite, combined with an inequality re-inforcing belief in “equality” and instructional “standards” rather than an equitable belief in individualization.
I hear what you are saying about NCLB, but I don’t think that all NCLB’s supporters want kids to fail. I think there are some nutso types who would love to see public schools “fail” so they can point fingers, and probably some racists who would love to see minority kids fail to prove their point. I think the well intentioned thought/think making kids pass a test will prove that those students succeed. What was going on before was not working (although whether it can all be laid at the door of education is certainly open for debate). There were too many students dropping out, and in my experience, too many not getting the education they either deserved or needed. I like how you frame the idea that NCLB prevents success and leads to failure, because not all students can meet that mark. I will defiantly file that one away. My favorite underutilized phrase in education (both in discussions and in practice) is developmentally appropriate. I think we are on the same page all the way on that one.–Alice
These are critical questions, Alice.
I don’t have any answers but these questions need to be discussed, and then discussed some more, and then brought into action because the inequity that you talk about is real and worrisome (not strong enough word).
I’ll have to come back when I have time to think.
(sorry for the lame getaway but family calls)
Kevin
Ira, thank you for your comments here. Your post really had me of two minds. My first thought was, do we really need more PhDs running around? But your point about who is included and excluded from this pool bugs me a LOT (not your point, the facts of it). As you can see, I’ve been making a lot of connection to other stuff based on it.
Okay, based on Kevin’s query, with the end of year looming, would folks prefer that I s-t-r-e-t-c-h this out (I have 2 more installments) so that it runs into June?
Educators and the politicians who lead them have defined educational success so narrowly, that I thought it was fair to ask why so few students succeed by the declared standards. That doesn’t really mean I want lots more PhDs – I’d like different PhDs – a wider range of people with a lot more inventive minds – rather than the “hoop jumpers” who make up an unfortunately large percentage of university faculties. Because hoop-jumping education professors train hoop-jumping teachers who want hoop-jumping students. The problem is, that for most of us, those hoops are the wrong shape, and they are in the wrong place, and we’d do much better if we could just wander around them. But that doesn’t do what schools want – I wrote on another post, “How gratifying it must be to the self-perception of the faculty that those who are the most superior students are those most like themselves.”
So the NCLB problem is not that all those who supported the law wanted most kids to fail. Many wanted to prove public schools a failure, certainly, but they are not all intentionally that evil. The NCLB problem is that those in power believe the myths of their own superiority, and so they assume that what worked for them will work for everyone who just “tries hard enough.” Senator Clinton and Senator Kennedy don’t hate minority kids or different kids because they don’t understand what’s wrong with NCLB, but it is obvious that they cannot really imagine that every child doesn’t really want to grow up just like they did. – rich, white, “normal,” in the suburbs, with dedicated moms and majority cultures. You could not have voted for a law which presumes that all children learn at the same rate, that all children need the same curriculum, and that the only way to measure educational success is on biased tests and statistical models, if you believed any differently.
Ira, AMEN! How many times in my teacher credentialing program did they say, “We tend to teach the way we were taught, because we think that’s normal and how it should be down.” And the classic, “Education is tough because anyone who has been to third grade has an opinion on what you do.” That bear guy is really the clincher. THAT is the argument for someone who should have a PhD, but doesn’t.
This comment, by Ira, cuts to the heart of the matter (for me): “they assume that what worked for them will work for everyone who just “tries hard enough.”
So many policies are based solely on personal experience, and not the concept of understanding that learning is different for different people and is impacted by socio-economic factors, family values, cultural values, etc.
There is no One Size Fits All.
And yet …. there clearly was a need for national education reform in the days before NCLB. Too many kids were being left behind and too many of those kids were non-white, and from school districts where there was not enough support for professional development, resources, experiences, etc.
I don’t know that NCLB has solved this but it put the spotlight on a failing school system.
I wonder if the answer is to shift power from the states to the federal government and create a National Education System (holy cow, am I turning into a Federalist?).
Of course, then it depends on who is in charge.
🙂
Kevin
…something to be said, Kevin, for the European model. A powerful national ministry of education which sets curriculum, divides up resources, etc, and nothing much else below that until you get to trusted, powerful teachers in the classroom. Of course that requires teachers who are trained as, perceived as, and paid as, professionals serving the needs of individual learners. This is the part of that “medical model” no one in the US government really wants to adopt. Imagine if your doctor (a) lined up all patients each day and treated them with the same medications, or for that matter, (b) had all the best medical technology of 1985 in their office and argued that “technology makes no difference, tools make no difference, funding makes no difference.”
The doctor analogy .. nice.
A problem with the National Model is that layers and layers of red tape and administration often come along with it, and that is rarely helpful.
I guess it remains important to keep our focus on … the kids.
🙂
Kevin