In the last installment I waxed rhapsodic about system, how putting excellent teachers into a public school (because most of what we're talking about here is the public system) won't change your results, and might make them worse. I'd like to prove that, if I may.
The biggest problem we're going to have here is defining what "better" and "worse" means when it comes to schools. Do you want better test scores? You don't get that from excellent teaching (at least, not in the way we usually think). Why not? Because by almost everyone's definition, an excellent teacher's job is to impart knowledge in a way that compels (or at least invites) a student to learn. Teachers that have students regurgitate facts are not, by the west's definition, good teachers. A robot could do that (note, in the east, that's precisely what a good teacher does, as creative thinking and "inspiration" is a lot less important, if not looked down on as being a waste of time).
If I fire my students up about learning, what they're going to learn is anyone's guess. Even they don't know. Think about when you're excited to learn something. Do you know where that's going to lead? Example: I was in a presentation the other day where the instructor mentioned the wonderful quote from Teddy Roosevelt about The Man in the Arena:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
I know this quote, of course, heard it a hundred times. I know a good deal about Teddy Roosevelt, too, being a history teacher. But I realized that this must be part of a longer work, and that I did not know what that longer work was. Google summoned, I asked for the whole thing. Turns out it's part of a speech on citizenship that TR gave in France a year or so after he stepped down as President (something he almost instantly regretted, and which he did not, in fact, have to do). I read the speech, and it's a good one, though I wonder what the French made of it. Anyway, toward the end of the speech Roosevelt quotes Lincoln, to this effect:
“I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all
men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not
mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or
social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider
all men created equal-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which
are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant.
They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were actually enjoying
that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them.
They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar
to all - constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never
perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading
and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to
all people, everywhere.”
In my second-half-of-US-history class, the overarching theme is the Gettysburg Address, specifically answering Lincoln's question about whether a nation built on the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure. This quote is the perfect end to that class discussion, and I was thrilled to read it, because I had never seen it before (the presenter is droning on still, while I'm reading this stuff--precisely what happens in my classroom, with me as the drone). Obviously that is also part of a longer speech, which I followed up, and found that it comes from Lincoln's speech on the Dred Scott decision in 1857. So I read that speech, too. I learned a ton.
The presentation, by the way, was on karate.
See what I mean? I don't care about karate. I was in the presentation because I was on the program later, speaking about history. But I learned something because the presentation was a good one, though what I learned had very little to do with what the presenter was talking about. That's how learning works, real learning, the kind that sticks around and changes the student. That's how it should work. But if we teach like that in school, we are not going to get improved test scores, are we? How do you test that? The material covered was on karate, but I learned about an obscure speech given 160 years before. Test that, I dare you.
I daresay my students are better-educated now than they were before they took my class this year. I also wonder how on earth you could measure that, other than by talking to them and watching them and listening to them discuss things. All stuff that's super cool and never going to be measurable, at least not immediately.
But then...what is it we want, ultimately? Is it automatons that know how to fill in blanks on a sheet of paper? Or is it engaged learners that follow their interests into those topics they care about? Ultimately, what is a school for?
That's what we'll talk about next time.