Higher Standards or Appropriate Methods?

Recently Overheard:

History is Boring

Regardless of what one thinks of the Common Core standards and their implementation, the truth of the matter is that standards tend to measure (if/when they boiled down to a standardized test) the end, not the means of education.

It's the Methodology, Silly 

This semester of substitute teaching has given me the opportunity to informally poll and interview students about their experience of school: the books they read, the way teachers teach, the interaction with their peers, and a host of other topics that are of interest to me professionally (both for a better theoretical understanding of education, but more concretely, of "sizing-up" schools to understand their strengths and weaknesses). 

Recently I asked an obviously bright student about history: 

Me: What do you think of history?
Her: It's boring.  Me: How so?  Her: [Shrug] Just a lot of random facts.  Me: Really? I find history totally interesting. Do you discuss things?  Her: Well, the teacher lectures and we take notes from the book. We do "DBQs" (document-based questions that bring primary documents into focus in order to highlight some part of the historical era under investigation). Sometimes we have a debate, but that's usually 5 students against the rest of the class.  Me: Conversations about history or historical questions?  Her: No.

I didn't say so, but I thought: If I were in her shoes, I too would be bored out of my skull. Not every class takes a laundry list approach to history, but Common Core or the next placebo that rolls off the assembly line is not going to do much of anything by itself. What is needed is a spirit of Wonder, which is simply a Socratic way of saying "inquiry."

When/if I get the chance to teach history again, Socratic seminars will have pride of place. History is a conversation about reality and what is worth living and dying and fighting for. It's not boring. Only adults who have forgotten their love for reality can make it so.

Shared Inquiry: setting the stage

Just over a year ago I was entering my second year teaching middle school Religion at a Catholic school. The previous academic year I had sporadic success with Shared Inquiry and decided Socratic seminars were something I needed for my own sake -- if not "for the children."

Now I'm firmly convinced that Socratic seminars are not worth doing if they are done poorly. How then to introduce all of the students to this method?

Enter Big Hair Days

Thank God for the Internet. The Great Books Foundation put out this as part of their introductory materials some years ago but it is still relevant. It gives an overview of a text under discussion ("The Melian Dialogue"), the rationale for Shared Inquiry, the discussion itself, and comments from students after the discussion.

This video helped everyone get on the same page and have a few laughs at the same time. I sometimes give a copy of the selection; other times, I simply summarize the dialogue itself. To help them follow along, I give them some questions to answer and an opportunity to ask questions.

For each section of 6th, 7th and 8th grade I concluded the activity with a question: Do you think you could have conversations like this? If so, do you want to?

Overwhelmingly, kids wanted to. It was a great success. It made AY 2014-2015 more than bearable.

Horace's Compromise

Like Shirer's Rise and Fall, Theodore Sizer's Horace's Compromise was on my "to read" list for some time. I admit that I approached it expecting progressive claptrap about the problem of education being "the man" and how if we can all just learn to get along, education will (some day!) save us from ourselves or other hooey.

On the contrary

This is an amazing book on at least two counts. First, Sizer is able to take his experience of visiting hundreds of schools and distill what are undoubtedly dozens of teachers and students and create composite characters that ring true. Second, Sizer is profoundly realistic about the prospects of meaningful education reform and what that would really mean (versus the babble ABOUT reform coming from all sides).

The prologue alone is worth the price of the book (but it can be found for free at the above link) and I couldn't put it down after reading the prologue. What struck me is how Sizer is able to point out the obvious without condescension or undue criticism: he sees peoples' humanity throughout.

Sizer may not be my new BFF (well, he died two years ago, so that would make it impossible!) but he has given me a lot to chew on. I disagree with him on some things (such as his apparent willingness to equate a secular education with a complete education) but agree whole-heartedly with him on others: teachers must be treated as professionals and as human beings; students must be held accountable and told to figure out more on their own; primacy must be given to the school as a place of intellectual "work" not other things - no matter how noble.

Thoughts - stolen and derived - for a new school

Here's a rough list:

• Promise to do less but really do it
• Articulate clearly what is primary and what is secondary, and let the secondary stuff fall away if necessary
  
• Avoid at all costs of the never-ending compromise of adding "just one more thing" to teachers' to do lists
• Writing should be the center of schooling (Hmm, see page 104)
• Coaching as a task of teachers (and tutors)
• Teacher to student contact time - keep it somewhere between college professors and what it currently is (gravy, if my counting is right, it was about 32 on paper at MEC - patently absurd, Charlotte & Co.!)
• Teachers draw out what is inherently interesting in their subjects (versus facile "relevance" or drill and kill)

Much to mull over and explore. Sizer has done something profoundly interesting. May he rest in peace.