Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
(William Butler Yeats)
Young children arrive to their first day of kindergarten with a healthy wick from which a fire can be lit. Before they leave elementary school however, many children are bored, unmotivated, dislike school, feel inadequate in at least one subject area and, most disappointing, have lost a love of learning. School has become a thing to get through, a place to see friends, and on good days, fill their pails with a thing or two. Children are not going to school to develop their minds. But, that’s exactly what a school should be doing. Educating students means helping them to develop their minds, inspire the love and learning, and teaching them how to learn.
Schools: The First Spirit Killer
Reading Creative Schools has been a game changer for me. The intentions of the Tough Times report as well as the Common Core Content Standards born of that report are both valid and compelling. But the line continued past theories of learning, pedagogy, child development, and went straight into some common sense business, industry, factory model leaving out the human variable component of schools: our children. The CCCS moved in the completely wrong direction and away from the light, surely away from any fire lighting. Robinson writes, “Although all the rhetoric of the standards movement is about employability, the emphasis has not been on courses that prepare people directly for the work but on raising standards in academic programs.” He also notes, “Few if any of the abilities that entrepreneurs need are facilitated by the strategies that reformers value so much. On the contrary, standardized education can crush creativity and innovation, the very qualities on which today’s economies depend.” In addition and most importantly, the standards movement ironically is making worse the exact thing it is trying to fix. “The standards movement is not achieving the objectives it has set for itself. Meanwhile, it is having catastrophic consequences on student engagement and teacher morale.”
What school must feel like for so many of our children?
Imagine administration sharing this with staff.
“Ok teachers- new goal. We have decided that it is very important that every one of you will run a marathon. You have a year to train. The school will provide you with a coach and running shoes!” Now, Ms. Jones over there is pretty excited, and so is Ms. Smith. They are runners. They will excel. They think this is a great idea. Mrs. Connor. is not at all enthused. She’s 65 and her knees are not in good shape. She thinks perhaps this is the time to retire. Several other teachers start a different kind of panic. They cannot retire yet as they need their jobs.
A few rebels in the back raise their hands. “Ummmm I don’t really want to run a marathon. What is the point?” they ask.
“Oh the point is to help your health.” “Running is good for you. The world is a very unhealthy place and running this marathon will get your heart in shape, improve your joints, the high impact will help with osteoporosis and you’ll even walk away with a lifelong hobby that you can take with you into your personal life.”
Another teacher asks, “Why 26.2 miles? Can’t we just do 3 miles?”
“That’s called having low standards. We need to have high standards. The highest.”
After the training starts, it becomes immediately clear who is going to need extra special help. Several basic skills groups are formed. There’s even a very special group for marathon-disabled runners. Motivation is low and morale is even worse.
One of the so called “runners’ in the low group asks a question. “Can we walk? I enjoy walking and I think I can walk a far distance,” she says, “I know it’s not the same as running a marathon, but it is still good exercise.”
Another teacher asks about yoga. She said she’s actually good at that and believes there are benefits to that activity as well. There are a few other folks who have decided to drop out of the whole process but will make music and signs for those who are still excited about running…but they are viewed as failures.
According to Robinson, “By conformity, I mean the institutional tendency in education to judge students by a single standard of ability and to treat those who don’t meet is as “less abled” or “disabled” –as deviations from the norm.
Finally, someone from the lower groups asks a very good question, “Is running a marathon the only way for us the achieve our goal?”
Standards-
The standards movement is destroying the very thing it set out to improve
Teachers and administrators and education policy makers have bought into this notion that students who are not achieving the levels of our even now higher standards in the areas of language arts and/or math are failing students. Because that is what the system is telling them. Because Armageddon is coming if student’s strengths aren’t in the area that is being tested. Talents and skills come in many forms. But not in schools. Children in the elementary school do learn one thing quickly; who has what it takes to succeed in school and who doesn’t. No wonder so many children lose their natural curiosity, their desire and openness to learn. No wonder the flame is extinguished.
How Does Society Work?
Marathon running is another good metaphor as we consider how society works. It’s an individual activity: one a person can choose to do and succeed at on her/his own terms. It’s competitive too perhaps with others but always with oneself. Society is much more similar to a softball team. Everyone on the team has different talents. It’s true that it will be good if everyone can hit the ball, catch, and throw: the fundamentals. But our shortstop must have quick reflexes and a strong throwing arm. Our weaker hitters can always bunt. Our fast runners can play in the outfield and are great base runners. Some teammates will act as a pinch hitter, and every team needs a relief pitcher. All skills and strengths have value. And while, it would be wonderful if every player were greatly skilled at every aspect of the game, that’s just not how it works. We have lost that idea in schools as well.
Robinson notes, “First, all students have great natural abilities. Second, the key to developing them is to move beyond the narrow confines of academicism and conformity to systems that are personalized to the real abilities of every student.” “…. our school systems are now a matrix of organizational rituals and intellectual habits that do not adequately reflect the great variety of talents of the students who attend them”
Robinson also points out, “Our communities depend on the enormous diversity of talents, roles, and occupations. The work of electricians, plumbers, chefs, paramedics, carpenters, mechanics, engineers, security staff and the rest (who may or may not have college degrees) is absolutely vital to the quality of our lives. Very many people in these occupations enjoy them enormously and gain great fulfillment from them. One effect of the emphasis on academic work in schools is that the education system is not focused on these roles and typically considers them second-rate options for people who don’t make the academic cut.”
Places of Learning vs. Schools
What Dewey theorized and observed in his lab-schools have been proven with modern science. Learning is a natural process through experiences when the mind makes meaning of the event. Children, especially young ones, can easily be observed learning through play and other activities. Curiosity leads to exploration, and exploration leads to new information and skills to pre-existing schema and so on. Learning is most motivating when it is meaningful, relevant, and personal. Most schools function on some outdated notion that information can be pushed into the mind of a child. Robinson uses a garden metaphor to demonstrate better a teacher’s role in student learning.
“Gardeners know that they don’t make plants grow. They don’t attach the roots, glue the leaves, and paint the petals. Plants grow themselves. The job of the gardener is to create the best condition for that to happen. Good gardeners create the conditions for learning, and poor ones don’t.”
Schools and teachers in particular can effectively use this model with the right supports from administrators, a willingness to create learning experiences, and permission to let go of old ways of doing things. Of course assessment is assessment and it’s not going away anytime soon. One conclusion we can draw is that despite enormous resources, both financial and human, most standardized scores are not rising. Even though teachers have been told to raise them and their own evaluations are tied to their students’ performances, the needle hasn’t moved far. So how to move away from the old and into a new place where students can explore and learn and contribute their talents and strengths and still be accountable for learning what will be “on the test”?
Assessments: Tests-Inauthentic Methods Measuring Learning.
Elliot Eisner said, “Not everything important is measurable and not everything measurable is important.”
When my children were in middle school. I read a piece that stated standardized test scores are flat or depressed for many middle school students. What strikes me most about this is that I have witnessed perhaps the greatest level of intellectual growth during these “flat” middle school years. I’ve noticed middle-schoolers have strong feelings about more abstract concepts such as social justice; they recognize the nuances of relationships, they can verbally express desires and fears, and they argue their position with reasoning although sometimes faulty. I see metaphoric thinking and hear more questions about how the world works. If anything, learning has been exploding during these years; learning is hardly dormant as scores might suggest. My sense is that standardized tests cannot tap into that kind of learning. It certainly cannot measure it.
It’s hard not to think of my own learning as an adult; the kind of learning that takes place everyday as part of being alive and a member of the human race. We are all constantly learning and we can choose to do this formally and intentionally. Sometimes learning happens accidentally. (Examples: navigating the subway system in New York City, learning to body surf, making a new recipe, etc) Robinson enlightens, “The lives of most people have not followed a standard course. People commonly move in unexpected directions, discover new interests, or take unplanned opportunities.”
Just a few days ago, my daughter learned the Beatles’ song “Here Comes The Sun” on her guitar. She taught herself. As she was working through it, I suggested she might want to try using a You-tube video. She assured me that it was just easier to just play it on the guitar and try different notes until she got it right. Either way, she didn’t need school or a teacher to help her learn (although perhaps she would have gotten it sooner but I believe the fun for her was figuring it out herself) and she certainly didn’t need an assessment to prove she learned it.
“If true learning is enduring and meaningful, I can say this about tests- I have learned many things in my life and never needed a test score to prove it. Conversely, I have passed many tests and never learned a damn thing.” (Roseann Cetta, 2017)
Robinson discusses the need for more comprehensive, authentic ways to measure learning. He talks about students reflecting on their own learning and self-assessing. If we value self-learning, we should value self-assessment and, even more so, self-reflection.
As a teacher, I always included a blank lined page at the end of a test. It was the place for students to write what they learned that wasn’t already on the test. As you can imagine, reading what students wrote in this section was enlightening. It also provided an opportunity to give some extra credit and boost the grade especially if it moved a student into a passing grade.
“In national and global surveys, employers don’t complain about applicants lacking specific knowledge or technical skills, which are easy to test and express in a letter grade; they want employees who can analyze critically, collaboratively, communicate, solve problems, and think creatively.
Changing schools and lighting the fire for children’s learning is not impossible. It will require a massive paradigm shift but until the movers get moving to make that happen, teachers can make small changes within their classrooms to begin focusing on their students’ strengths and natural abilities even if they are not annually tested.
Robinson notes, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness—curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight—simply by being more flexible about time, tests, and texts, by introducing kids to truly competent adults and by giving each student autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.” “It’s about making sure that we don’t let kids go through school not knowing what their strengths are.”
No more filling buckets! Time to light up those wicks.
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