25 Years Later: What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?

Diane Ravitch/Picture from Stanford.edu

Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn assessed high school seniors' grasp of American history and literature in their classic book, What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know, released in 1987. The conclusions of What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know may be more relevant today than they were 25 years ago. Ravitch and Finn write about the amount of information available to the average teenager. Today's students are even more bombarded with information--from computers and cell phones--nonexistent in 1987.

But can they make sense of what they see and hear? Do they have the perspective to separate what is important from what is trivial? What is durable from what is ephemeral? Can they interpret the significance of the day's news? Are they able to discern patterns of trends and events? Are they capable of introspection? Can they relate their experiences to universal themes that have been explored by great writers through the ages? These are only a few of the potential benefits of the study of history and literature (P.202).

Ravitch and Finn found that students scored poorly in their understanding of history and literature. Things are worse now. Students, especially boys, read less today than they did in the 1980s, and their corresponding amount of knowledge has shrunk further. (See my blog, How Boys Can Do Better in School.)

Thus the answer to all of Ravitch and Finn's questions above would be an emphatic "no!" Only the elite, perhaps the top 20 percent of graduating California high school seniors can separate the wheat from the chafe and put their experience in a larger context and make sense of the world around them. I find these kids in our Advanced Placement (college-level) program.

What to Do

Since students today come to class with less background knowledge and a smaller vocabulary than their cohort of 25 years ago, teachers must assume that they are less capable. Below are words used for one of my lessons on industrialization. These words and phrases are difficult for my average high school sophomores. They have trouble understanding what the words mean. When these words are mastered we can better place the terms into historical context.

• wages docked
• consent
• figuring out the number of hours on the job--6AM to 7PM
• the sick fund
• dismissal
• deference
• untrue allegations
• wage advances

Once we have mastered literacy concerns the history itself may be understood. So literacy becomes a part of most lessons. I ask the students to define vocabulary. "What does this mean?" and I put vocabulary words on tests. Secondly, most students need assistance understanding most high school World and U.S. History textbooks. They cannot decipher textbooks on their own, so teacher summaries and read-alouds, pair-share, and teacher-monitored jigsaws of reading materials are essential.

Third, Ravitch and Finn write about the need to include chronology in history lessons, giving the curriculum more meaning by putting it into context with other historical facts they may (we hope) know. This is even more important today. I enjoy creating parallel timelines that show world and American history in sequence. Most male students are interested in transportation, Stephenson's Rocket to the Model T, weaponry, the musket to the M-16, and technology, the typewriter to the PC, so add those categories on your timelines.

Adults Acting Like Adults

Ravitch and Finn are squarely against "romantic" practices such as letting adolescents learn what they want to learn--the view that naturalness is good and schools should provide freedom where children can develop naturally. (See my blog Educational Ideologies and Applications here.) Instead, Ravitch and Finn concede that children do not

...naturally gravitate to academic subjects or spontaneously immerse themselves in the lore of their civilization. Children are often not the best judges of what they need to do and know. In general, we believe that children learn pretty much what the important adults in their lives make a point in seeing that they learn: in school, at home, and through a myriad of other means (P. 203).

A lot is at stake. "Failure to make this cultural knowledge part of every child's inheritance serves to reinforce invidious social class distinctions (P. 235)." In other words, those who favor social justice and equality should demand that all children learn America's historical canon.

Are Personalized Online Courses Our Future?

Will computers eventually take the place of high school teachers?

I am somewhat familiar with Apex Learning, a creator of educational computer programs that increases "access to high quality educational alternatives for all students through online learning."

Over the last few years many of my high school kept students from self-destructing, AKA, not graduating, by using APEX software (link here) and giving these kids a last chance chance to make up the missing credits. Two teachers oversaw twenty or so students that failed mandatory classes and needed credits to graduate. The units were made up on a pass/fail basis, and just about every student that needed this remedial work successfully completed it. None of these students were accepted to four-year colleges in the fall, but all of them received a high school diploma.

The APEX license is expensive, so my school can afford a limited amount of students that need remedial work.

APEX also provides learning programs for honors and AP classes, though my school has not used them. APEX describes its courses as a "digital curriculum — that comprises standards-based instructional content specifically developed for online delivery, with assessment opportunities integrated throughout, scaffolding to support learning for all students, and resources to support effective teaching." In other words, APEX provides "personalized learning."

Teachers make sure that students show up and are engaged in their work at the computers, but other than those exhortative and administrative functions, are teachers needed in the classroom? Right now the answer is yes, because the APEX and other online learning firms are too expensive to use for our entire school body.  In addition to incurring the fee for the license, the school would still incur the costs for hiring prison guards with whips (oops) teachers to keep the students on track, interact with parents, and do grading.

If costs were not a factor, does APEX and programs like it, educate children better than traditional methods? Are teachers going the way of the dodo bird and evolving into classroom policemen?

Esther Quintero writes (in The Real “Trouble” With Technology, Online Education And Learning),

personalized learning uses technology to adapt the presentation of content to students’ strength and weaknesses, as indicated by their prior responses to the material. The basic premise is that, when software is able to gauge a student’s level and adjust subsequent material to his/her pace and style of learning, the result is a more effective and higher quality learning experience.

However, personalized learning may not challenge students in unexpected ways. Quintero continues:

More fundamentally, learning occurs, at least in part, when unexpected things push us out of our comfort zone. Somewhere I read that the purpose of education is to give people the opportunity to learn something they ordinarily wouldn’t. There is a missing ingredient in most models of personalized learning: basically, the natural entropy that characterizes human experience. After all, let’s not forget that adaptive learning is based on the same technology that is used to generate automatic movie and music recommendations – and most of us would agree that that these have their limitations.

I have convinced many students to examine new ideas when they didn't have enough intellectual curiosity or confidence to  tackle them on their own. This may turn out to be my best and most human function in the classroom. Teachers are still necessary.

Update: October 6, 2012:  The New York Times takes a look at advances in computer tutoring, especially for math here. Annie Murphy Paul writes about the creator of ASSISTments, a computerized math tutor.

Computers excel in following a precise plan of instruction. A computer never gets impatient or annoyed. But it never gets excited or enthusiastic either. Nor can a computer guide a student through an open-ended exploration of literature or history....While a computer can emulate, and in some ways exceed, the abilities of a human teacher, it will not replace her. Rather, it’s the emerging hybrid of human and computer instruction — not either one alone — that may well transform education.

How I Will Change My Teaching of a Low-Level History Class

Bloom's Taxonomy

Sophomore World History is a challenging class to teach at my high school. The best students are diverted into our AP program, leaving me three or four classes filled with many uninterested and unmotivated kids that have a history of behavioral problems. I taught four sections of these kids last year. Here are the harsh realities I observed working with this struggling population:

• Half the students will do homework some of the time.
• About one third will not complete ANY homework on time for the entire year.
• Half the students hate reading and do not understand what they read
• Half will take notes only if forced. Next to none will use notes to prepare for a test. (They prefer using the textbook, amazingly.)
• The students are unwilling to do true group work. One student in the group would do the work and the rest would watch or be off task.
• Activities such as skits and reenactments are only partially effective, because so many of the kids have too little background knowledge to understand the relevance of the activity.

I do convince a few students that history is interesting. I do help some students to enjoy reading, and I do get some students to take notes more effectively. However, too many students in these classes were not fully engaged by my methods last year. So I plan to do a few things differently.

• I will assign fewer readings as homework. We will do almost all reading in the classroom.
• Most lectures will be read-alouds of the textbook. Only after that will students be assigned an in-class reading of the same material.
• I used a variation of Cornell notes last year. Few students benefited. This year we will learn by presenting the material and going over it with frequent informal formative assessments such as fast-paced in-class questions ("peppering").
• I plan more summative assessments that include writing--short essay questions that ask for items high on Bloom's Taxonomy such as evaluating why one leader was better than another. These questions will be complex, so no two answers should be alike.

I hope these changes result in greater student engagement and achievement.

Postscript: January 7, 2012:  These changes have produced better though not radically improved grades. Additionally, I will examine the results of standardized testing, available in August.2013.

Poverty Increasing--Education is the Answer

News from the Census Bureau is a must read. Half the people of this country are in poverty or are approaching poverty. Really? In America, the land of opportunity? Something must be done, but what? The Census Bureau states:

About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure....The new measure of poverty takes into account medical, commuting and other living costs. Doing that helped push the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from 104 million, or 1 in 3 Americans, that was officially reported in September.

So the Bureau has made it easier to be considered poor or near-poor. If you own a home, a car or two, and have heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer you still qualify. If you make $45,000 a year and have four kids you qualify. That's a far cry from the third world. When one realizes what the poor look like in Manilla, Cairo, Nairobi, or Port-au-Prince, all the developing world, really, this report makes you want to laugh (or cry). Those unfortunates would love to be an American poor person. See what a typical American poor person owns here.

Still, the long-term news is not good.

Paychecks for low-income families are shrinking. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000. 

 It has become harder over time to make a good living with just a high school education. The trades (carpentry, plumbing, electrical), energy and, of course, starting your own business, are what still works well for those without a college degree--69 percent of the workforce. The surefire way to expand your earnings potential is to increase your education. (See http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/) Pollster Gallup writes:

Apart from their bank accounts, Gallup finds education to be the greatest difference between the wealthiest 1% of Americans and everyone else. The Gallup analysis reveals that 72% of the wealthiest Americans have a college degree, compared with 31% of those in the lower 99 percentiles. Furthermore, nearly half of those in the wealthiest group have postgraduate education, versus 16% of all others.

For further proof, see the chart below.

 

Tiger Mother in the Classroom

 

“My pappy taught me to work hard, but he never taught me to like it.” Abraham Lincoln

Books on tape (or CD) are my favorite technological invention. I listened to Amy Chua’s bestseller, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, on my commute. (See a summary and balanced review here. See a negative, snarling review of the book here)

I think both of the above reviewers miss the essence of the book. Children don’t want to work hard if left to their own devices. Parents and teachers must give children a stomach for hard work and assist them in developing persistence and an ability to weather setbacks. Only then can success and enjoyment begin.

Teaching differs little from parenting. Outside of AP classes, not many high school sophomores want to work hard. Even fewer want to work hard reading history. Fewer still want to study the World History standards mandated by California professors. These standards include Plato and Aristotle, the English Bill of Rights, the French Revolution, and British Industrialization. That’s only part of the curriculum for the first semester.

Good innovative high school history teachers employ partnering, group activities, simulations, debates, and technology. We work hard to keep students engaged in material that isn’t engaging on its own. We’ll do whatever it takes. If they don’t do the work offending students are punished with lectures about what it takes to succeed, remediation sessions, and, of course, poor grades. We will train you to work hard. Like Abe Lincoln’s pappy, we don’t care if you like it or not.

When these kids have matriculated they have a sharper focus on what they want to pursue in life, and some decide to get a college degree. The first two years as an undergraduate are, again, filled with university and major requirements, many not to the student’s liking. The minority that get through those first two years and attempt upper division college work finally explore courses of interest. That’s a lot of years in school satisfying others' requirements, about 15 years, before a student gets to follow his or her bliss. Let’s hope that someone has taught these kids the art of persistence somewhere along the way.

 

Rahm is Right—A Longer School Day Will Increase Student Achievement

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has offered bonus pay to teachers that waive union contract rules and keep children in school longer each day. See the New York Times article here. A teachers’ union rep calls the mayor a “Republican” and opposes his education policy. The union is misguided, and Chicago students, on the low end of instructional time compared to other urban schools, can only benefit from increased instructional time. How do I know? Just compare a wealthy school district (my kids’ district) and a middle-class district (where I teach), located  about 20 miles from each other.

My children attend a wealthy high school district that tests very high compared to other California schools. I teach at a district that is not as generously supported by taxpayers and private donors, and my district’s API (state test) scores are not as high. This situation is no surprise to anyone who has examined the strong correlation between average family income and standardized test scores. The richer the school district, the higher the test scores.

Do rich parents genetically produce smarter children? Do they buy more books for their kids along with the sports cars? Or do smart people become rich and procreate, cloning kids just like them?

Perhaps the causal link between wealth and API scores may lie elsewhere—in instructional time.

Wealthier families support their local public schools through property taxes and donations to school foundations. That money, in turn, supports additional instructional time for the students, especially the lower level students, and those students increase their achievement. In turn, API scores dramatically increase. Middle- and lower-middle class families raise much less money through property taxes and direct donations. These districts can’t afford increased instructional time. The state of California does not even out the funding discrepancies by contributing more money to the poorer districts.

My kids’ high school exemplifies the disparity between richer and poorer districts. My own children must attend after-school tutoring if they fail an exam. They must attend a homework club if they didn’t prepare well the night before or didn’t turn in an important assignment. These kids would encounter no consequences (besides a poor grade) in a poorer high school (i.e., the high school where I teach) and no chance to relearn the material. Additionally, my children's teachers are contracted to work a lot more than I am: ten hours more per week. That adds up to 400 more hours of lesson planning and evaluating the efficacy of instruction. When my children need extra time with a teacher they get it, and teachers accomplish more in preparing and evaluating their practice. API scores skyrocket as a result. Rahm is right.

How Teaching has Changed in America

The profession of teaching has been altered much more over the past 20 years than that of most other public sector professions. Stakeholders in public education—teachers and administrators, students, parents, and school boards—have been forced to adjust to change at a faster and faster pace. Let’s look at a few examples since I graduated high school in a California suburb in the late 1970s.

NCLB

Unlike a unitary government, such as France, our country was set up as a federalist system, giving state and local governments power to pick what to teach and how to teach it. The passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation has, for the first time, given our central government in Washington, D.C. real power over the teaching stakeholders. NCLB demands that schools perform, as measured over time by a non-stop increase in state test scores. Non-performing schools lose their autonomy and are then managed by someone else. None of the traditional (local) stakeholders have a say when this loss of autonomy happens.

High stakes testing, the only assessment that evaluates whether a school passes muster, has assumed much more importance for administrators and board members. (As an aside, I found the state accreditation process to be much fairer then NCLB in judging the effectiveness and accountability of schools, since accreditation does not assume that we all live in the same neighborhoods.) Therefore, high stakes testing drives the curriculum mapping of my department. We ensure that students have learned about the Cold War, for example, before the April testing. Some teachers would prefer to teach about the Cold War in May, allowing them to spend more time earlier on WWI or the Great Depression. I won’t allow it. I demand, not always successfully, that my department follows an agreed-upon curriculum map, so all students will learn the state-mandated curriculum by the April deadline. Teachers, rugged individualists on the high school level, did not consistently follow a curriculum map when I was in high school. One history teacher might get caught up in the election of 1948 and never quite emerge from the 1950s while another teacher would save her fire for the 1968 political conventions.

Now that the Federal Government is up to its waist in the teaching business, school boards and administrators may be replaced if kids don’t learn the state standards. They will be held accountable to higher levels of student proficiency than was previously demanded. Boards and administrators find themselves lost in a logical dilemma: if they support the tough standards of NCLB, they must continuously improve instruction and risk failing. They take the side of the public, against the side of the entrenched interests--usually veteran teachers and their supporters--risking strife in the internal district organization such as an administration versus teachers internecine struggle. On the other hand, if boards and administrators take the side of the entrenched interests against NCLB, they risk alienating the voters that elected them and incurring the vicious wrath of Uncle Sam.

Traditional Teaching Methods Don’t Work Like Before

At the same time that the Feds demand increased accountability, the students no longer respond the same way to traditional methods of teaching. My generation of suburban high school kids differed little from my parents’ bobby socks generation before it. We used the same educational tools and much of the same technology. Today’s high school students grew up with personal computers and computer games, email, instant messenger, cell phones, and video. I had a pen pal from France and mailed her letters, which took a couple of weeks each way. I played chess and monopoly with people I could see, smell (unfortunately) and touch, and I tried to avoid fist fights after the game. I couldn’t play tournament chess after the Berkeley chess club closed its doors at midnight. I can play tournament chess all day and all night on Yahoo games now. I don’t even need to be near a computer and can play on a cell phone. High school technology academies base instruction on technological platforms.

Television has also changed. Kids play violent video games with interactive controls on the TV. After they get tired of that they may then choose programming from hundreds of cable stations. As a high school senior, I could choose from nine television stations. (Outside of the San Francisco Bay Area consumers had even less choice.) Every ten-year-old in my community watched Mr. Ed or Hogan’s Heroes—no other programming but network and local television was available.

The media of my youth, network television, movies, books, newspapers, and magazines, has taken a back seat to mostly free video and internet. Outside of school, kids read less and engage in little formal writing. Email and texting have taken over these communicating tasks. Both the skills of academic writing and the levels of cultural literacy have declined. Indeed, the overly casual and rushed manic messages in the typical teen’s email, the phoneticism of texting, and the glorification of ignorant thugs as pop culture heroes have shaped many students into semi-literates.

Change in parent-teacher relationships--from teacher’s helper to partisan advocate

Parent-teacher relationships have changed too, though not as radically as the new technology has transformed students. I believe the role of middle class parents has changed in response to increased competitiveness in college entry. When all must contend for increasingly difficult college entrance, the competition changes normal reticent middle class parents into sharks at a feeding frenzy.

Despite the global decline in student academic performance, the elite still perform very well, and there are more of them as our population has expanded. I was accepted into the University of California, Berkeley, but my A minus high school GPA and skills in music and chess were unexceptional by today’s standards. Today that high school record would, at best, gain entry into a second tier school in the University of California system. My alma mater, Berkeley, currently accepts high school seniors with an average GPA of 4.3!

Parents have responded to the challenge by advocating for their children. No longer is school the domain of the experts, the teachers and administrators, and if the parents would just get their kids to shut up and behave, all would be well. No, today many parents serve as their children’s assistants and paralegals, doing their homework for them, serving as counsel when they get in trouble or receive a poor grade, and taking their side in disputes with teachers and administrators. As a high school student, when I decided on a beautiful spring day to go to the beach instead of the classroom my parents refused to give me an excuse note even though it was “senior cut day.” My high school assistant principal told me to sign in with one of the secretaries the next day, and I ended up picking up litter on school grounds for a couple of hours. Let’s fast forward to today. This year, more than 90 percent of my students out for senior cut day were “out sick.” Almost every absent student received an excuse note from their parents. The parents’ new attitude has changed: “If we parents take an occasional day off, why not let the kids do the same?”

Changes in Student Health

Similarly, teachers fight on the front lines against disease and poor hygiene. When schools asked that children get their kids vaccinated, my parents lined me up with every other kid outside the grammar school to get a jab from a vaccine gun. Today a small number of parents are persuaded by non-scientific internet claims that vaccinations cause autism and other problems to children with healthy immune systems. These parents think they know more about the causes of autism and immunology than epidemiologists and the medical establishment and put everyone at risk.

Recently the New York Times caught the story about a Whooping Cough epidemic in my Marin County California (New York Times, July 11, 2010, Vaccination Rate Lags as anEpidemic Spreads, pp. 25-26.). See also an article on an outbreak of tuberculosis at Logan High School in the San Francisco Bay Area .The problem isn’t limited to a few anti-immunization fanatics that give an unwanted boost to pertussis bacterium. School boards and state and federal officials allow children of illegal immigrants in the classroom, children that have grown up in the third world and have not had the benefit of American preventive medicine. Not surprisingly, the American classroom has become a breeding ground for nasty varieties of influenza. In 2009 between a quarter and half of my students missed school because of the Swine Flu. I anxiously await the next needless epidemic. This is not a productive change. Teachers must do everything they can to keep themselves healthy—wash hands, get vaccinated, maintain a social support system, and eat right, sleep, and exercise.

Changes in Respect for Teachers’ Authority and Competence

My parents never challenged a teacher’s grading policy, curriculum, or discipline. Other parents would occasionally challenge disproportionate discipline, nebulous grading procedures, or unjustifiable teacher behavior in the classroom. Today my fellow teachers, sometimes rightly but usually not, suffer constant challenges to grading, curriculum, competency, and classroom management. Parents have berated me for disciplining too hard and for not disciplining enough, for not talking about certain historians, or for talking about other ones. After all, they have read a few books too and are not going to let their little Johnny get kept out of Harvard by this uninformed teacher who doesn’t know what to teach. This teacher couldn’t handle a career in the real world and is supported by the taxpayers, so why listen to him? I may have exaggerated the point, but many in the profession have suffered this type of humiliation. Don’t take it personally!

Only one thing may be worse than the over involvement of parents in middle class schools—the under involvement of parents in the inner city schools. I did my student teaching in a high school that served poor and working class families. If I was able to talk to a busy, stressed parent instead of a message machine, I was told that it was my job to fix the kid. That’s what I was paid for.

Changes in Students’ Respect for Teachers

Parental respect for teachers still exists but has declined, correlating with the decline or respect that students have for teachers. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously coined the term, “defining deviancy down.” The school that I teach is comparable to the high school that housed me for four years. Keeping socio-economic status constant, I have found adolescents over the years less supervised at home and exposed to a more violent and sexually explicit media that glorifies criminal behavior and immediate gratification. Some parents choose not to allow the toxic messages of television in their house and belong to religious and communal organizations that instill proper values, even respect for teachers. Good for them. When that doesn’t happen, teachers must socialize as well as instruct. No one ever said our job was easy. We work against strong cultural forces, but the rewards are worth the effort. Most veteran teachers can recall a surly 15-year-old that, through a teacher’s or coach’s mentoring and inspiration was turned into a respectable citizen three years later.

What to do right now: Mentoring is part of teaching. Create a relationship with a few of your at-risk kids, especially students that are young, freshmen or sophomores. Simply talking to these kids one-on-one for a few minutes each week may be the most positive and effective communication they receive at this time in their lives. I find these conversations most effective right before winter and summer vacations—I have developed trust, and they will have some time to reflect about our conversation. Bring up their academic goals and your academic goals for them; their extra curricular goals such as joining athletic teams and school clubs and your ideas; their summer plans and your plans for them; their goals for getting a job and your opinion on whether they should be working and where to look. I tend to self-disclose only if it will humanize me or give me more credibility in the discussion. For example, I talk about college life, what it’s like to work and go to school at the same time; and how hard graduates will have to work at their first serious job. I tend to leave the more entertaining self-disclosures, the name of my cat and how many children I have, to the general classroom, and I use these self-disclosures when I want to warm up the classroom atmosphere. Assume that all self-disclosures become public knowledge, so don’t tell the kids information that would scandalize their parents.

The Classicists Versus The Relativists

The Classicists Versus The Relativists: Robert M. Hutchins Versus Antonio Darder

John Dewey

Since the ancient Greeks, men and women of the West have looked at the world through critical eyes. No longer content to rely on Aristotle and the Church for knowledge, since the Renaissance empiricism has held sway. For example, American scientists of the 21st century are not satisfied with a Newtonian view of the physical world. Instead, science has evolved and theories have changed over time. According to Kuhn (1973), science progresses because scientists scrutinize and change their belief systems. A new paradigm replaces an existing paradigm. Einstein has replaced Newton’s paradigm in physics. Likewise, those involved in Western social sciences, working in disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, history, economics, literature, political science, and art, demand fearless scrutiny of reality, both inner and outer. It has been so for thousands of years in the West. To illustrate, let us pick a few great thinkers from the Western tradition. The historian Plutarch, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and religious philosopher Maimonides dispassionately investigated their personal feelings, their culture, other cultures, and the concept of truth. Plutarch gave us an unbiased, detailed, anatomized, and synthesized history of Rome. He wrote history so his people, in search of truth, would not repeat mistakes. Epictetus showed how one could choose to react to life’s traumas. One was not a slave to her emotions. Maimonides aligned faith with reason. All these thinkers asked and answered the great questions of life. William Bennett (1992) writes:

The classics of Western philosophy and literature amount to a great debate on the perennial questions. In the end, the study of the seminal works of Western civilization is … a case for philosophy and for thoughtfulness….The West is the most self-critical of cultures. Reason is exalted and reason leads to a look, a second look, and, where necessary, readjustment, redefinition, and change. It is one of the distinguishing features of Western civilization, in fact, that it has engaged in this dialogue, self-examination, and correction over the centuries (pp.173-174).

Robert Hutchins (1953) defends these “seminal works of Western civilization” not simply because these works promote reason and powers of judgement over irrationality and one-sidedness but because studying them makes people morally better. Hutchins states that the “aim of an educational system…is to improve man as man” (P. 11) through the teaching of moral virtues. He does not reveal a Western canon but would probably include The Bible, writings of Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the later Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics. The great Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophers would also be on the list. He would also include Western economists, psychologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists, writers and artists, too many to catalog here. All of these great thinkers thought logically and critically, basing their ideas on values, on absolute values.

Cultural relativists challenge Hutchins’ aim of an educational system. If values are relative or not important, a good person yesterday may not be a good person today. The relativist does not think that goodness is an absolute but is dependent on culture and the historical situation. Even more extreme, some cultural relativists would ask, “Who cares if someone is good. All that matters is that she is useful to the State.” John Dewey (1938) is more interested in effective classroom technique than debating whether values are absolute. Therefore he would not necessarily be opposed to Hutchins’ views, especially if students were interested in learning about good values. The “static aims and materials” (P.5) that Dewey rails about could apply to the pedantic memorization of Latin grammar or some other ineffective and boring pedagogy. Dewey is not necessarily against the learning of useful classic works simply because the authors died a long time ago. He is against outmoded, traditional pedagogy. Learning must be presented in a palatable fashion, connected to the lives of the students. A student can benefit from improved pedagogy while studying Greek philosophy. Dewey and Hutchins are not opposed to each other’s views.

Antonio Darder (1991), not John Dewey, is a real cultural relativist and true critic of Hutchins and teaching the Western canon. Drawing from the writings of Pablo Freire, Darder states that

since knowledge is socially constructed, culturally mediated, and historically situated, dominant discourses function to determine what is relegated to the arenas of truth and relevancy at any given moment in time. Thus…[critical educators] hold a view of truth as relational, in that statements considered true are seen as arising within a particular context, based on the relations of power operative in a society, discipline, or institution (P.92).

Simply stated, Darder states that there is no absolute truth, and the ruling class defines knowledge in such a way to continue its oppression of the poor, women and minorities. Darder’s arguments in favor of relative truth appear correct at first glance. However, neither the premises of his argument nor the conclusion of his thesis make sense.

Knowledge is not dependent on place, culture, or historical situation. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, whether one is testing the water of the San Francisco Bay or the Red Sea. The laws of chemistry or physics are not dependent on culture. Additionally, knowledge, even of the social sciences, is not “historically situated.” Does anyone believe that the Ten Commandments are no longer valid since they were written 3,000 years ago? Does the Iliad still speak to us, even though we live in a postmodern, urban culture? These books tell us that murder is evil and friendship is virtuous. Heroism is a virtue. The ideas in these books resonate in us because the moral teachings are valuable in our day as well. The ancient Greek virtues are absolute and not dependent on time or place. Darder’s Marxist conclusion, that education merely another type of oppression is also invalid. The educated know how to control their emotions. Only the educated know how to be a good, virtuous, moral person. The educated know the value of freedom. Those who have had a Western education have control over their inner and outer lives.

Another Look at Bridging Cultures and Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching

The writers of, Bridging Cultures in Our Schools (Trumbull et al.) and A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching (Wlodkowski and Ginsberg), both assume that teachers holding traditional Western values should replace or modify them. The authors of Bridging Cultures believe that one should interact with some students and their families using a collectivist orientation. The writers of A Framework argue that one must adopt a constructivist philosophy of learning to successfully engage all students.

The writers of both articles assume that teachers should motivate and educate ethnic minority students. I agree. The authors also assume that teachers should embrace cultural relativism--that all cultures, American, Mexican, Korean, Vietnamese, etc., are of equal value in the classroom and should be respected as they are. There is no reason to change students’ value systems to “traditional American” values. Here I disagree.

The tone of Bridging Cultures is much less strident and less far-reaching in scope than that of A Framework. I found little to object to in Bridging Cultures. As a counseling intern I used in clinical practice a collectivist framework with some ethnic clients, and the contrasts of individualism versus collectivism are well known when counseling the culturally different. I have seen this dichotomy between individualism and collectivism explained differently in other texts. For example, a future-based (Western) world view may be compared to a present-based (Native American). In counseling, the therapist must enter the world of the client, and the client must feel that the therapist has entered her world. The therapist assists the client in changing his problems, thinking more logically, or assisting the client in attaining a cathartic release, but the therapist does not attempt to change the client’s primary world view, collectivism in our case. Here, in my opinion, is the difference between the purposes of psychotherapy and education. A professional educator should teach more than mathematics, history, or music. She must teach Western values and attempt to change the world view of her ethnic students. All students should be taught the benefits of individualism, and therefore, train students to succeed. How can I be so sure of myself, or be as some might say, chauvinistic (or, as others may label, racist)?

My ancestors immigrated to this country from roughly 1880 to 1910. They left to escape “interdependence and success of the group” (Trumbull et al., P.10), the stifling socialism of Bismarck and rigid social roles of the Czar. They came here for a better life--for private property, flexibility in roles, self expression, and university education--as well as to escape forced conscription and political oppression. They thrived under America’s individualist framework. Individualism works! Immigrants continue to come here, not to collectivist countries like Cuba or Venezuela. What worked for my ancestors will work for anyone with an open mind.

Despite my disagreements with the underlying philosophy, I agreed heartily with the cross-cultural techniques explained in Bridging Cultures. I certainly can “allow students some flexibility when their cultural background has not prepared them to voice opinions or publicly ask and respond to questions” (P.50) through using journals or small discussion groups. Similarly, taking a “partnership approach” (P.54) when conferring with parents makes sense whether the child is from Seoul or Boise.

A Framework, on the other hand, is a theoretical article, with concrete examples (P.19) of a teacher using the constructivist perspective but less practical suggestions. I find A Framework to be more controversial on many levels.

Wlodkowski and Ginsberg examine only one perspective when they state that motivation is inseparable from culture. People are motivated by many different factors, including biological (for example, whether the student had breakfast), psychological (for example, whether the student hates all authority figures), talent (for example, whether the student has artistic ability) and historical factors (for example, whether an Irish Catholic student was persecuted by Irish Protestants or English soldiers). My brother and I grew up in exactly the same culture, and I greatly disliked art classes and was poorly motivated no matter who was teaching. My brother loved art classes no matter who was teaching. I would argue against Wlodkowski and Ginsberg’s overemphasis on the importance of culture. Culture is only one of many factors that influence motivation, and motivationally effective teaching comes from knowing students well as individuals rather than as members of a cultural group.

In addition to ignoring many factors of motivation besides the cultural, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg complain that education is still overly influenced by “deterministic, mechanistic, and behavioristic” orientations towards human motivation (P.18) but fail to define “deterministic, mechanistic, and behavioristic” models. Perhaps they are referring to psychoanalytic and operant conditioning (Skinnerian “carrot and stick”) models for human motivation. Even though these models are no longer fashionable in the education establishment, and to my knowledge, rarely taught to prospective teachers, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg find behaviorism rampant in the educational structure. Simply using external rewards and punishments is evidence of rampant behaviorism. In other words, if teachers and students are held accountable to State standards, they are behaviorists. Furthermore, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg say that culturally different students will not be at all motivated by such “behavioristic” means. I see little evidence that they are correct.

After setting up the behavioristic straw man, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg destroy it with their pet constructivist theory, based on intrinsic motivation, which, supposedly, is more effective than extrinsic motivation. They argue that you can’t have both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and that extrinsic rewards dampen intrinsic motivation. (pp. 18-19). My own personal experience does not bear this out. I was motivated through school primarily from intrinsic factors despite the presence of extrinsic rewards. In fact, I hypothesize that the majority of working teachers were motivated intrinsically as students despite the prevalence external motivators.

Lastly, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg set up an intrinsic motivational framework (P.19), four steps or motivational conditions, that can be used in the classroom. Step three of this framework assumes that students have “perspectives and values,” which, of course, they do. However, these perspectives and values have not been solidified in a fifteen-year-old. It is the educator’s job to gently challenge the student’s belief system and confidently teach American values and individualism. Putting Wlodkowski and Ginsberg upside down, I believe that relating lesson content to the student’s background is only a first step. One should aim for eventually changing the student’s background, the belief system, itself.

Motivating Students: Rogers V. Skinner

BF Skinner

Carl Rogers

This is a scholarly piece but worth the effort. Please read on...

The book, Taking Sides (Noll, 2002) states, “Should Behaviorism Shape Educational Practices?” The chapter compares the theories of B.F. Skinner with those of Carl Rogers. These two psychologists see behavior quite differently. Skinner, a determinist, believes that all behavior can be traced to a causal relationship with the environment, or, more technically, to contingency cycles of positive or negative reinforcement or punishment. Rogers, an existentialist, believes that behavior is dependent on human choice and free will. Skinner, a logical positivist, is only interested in overt behaviors that can be measured. Rogers is comfortable talking about internal motivation. Despite opposite approaches and very different terminology, both psychologists have influenced educational theory and, surprisingly, often agree on the best types of learning. An eclectic teacher may want to use techniques derived from both theories.

Skinner (1974) rails against “mentalistic theories.” These involve mental states such as motivation and various idea and emotional conditions. Rather, education, in behavioral terms, is when “a teacher arranges contingencies under which the student acquires behavior which will be useful to him under other contingencies later on” (pp. 202-203). Desirable taught behaviors must be constructed in advance. Skinner‘s imagination runs freely in his utopian novel Walden Two (1948), and he writes how a small society, run by behavioristic principles, would educate children. The novel’s protagonist explains how, using contingency schedules, he would teach self-control.

"We set up a system of gradually increasing annoyances and frustrations against a background of complete serenity. An easy environment is made more and more difficult as the children acquire the capacity to adjust…. But…these potentially unhappy situations are never very annoying. Our schedules make sure of that…. [and] what they get is escape from the petty emotions which eat the heart out of the unprepared. They get the satisfaction of pleasant and profitable social relations…"(pp. 101-102)

The managers of Walden Two control adversity to build strength rather than allow, as in the natural world, adversity to destroy many and select only the strong. Self-control and other aspects of ethical training are completed in Walden Two by the age of six! These children, now fortified with longer attention spans, are rarely taught anything. They prefer to learn by themselves.

"Since our children remain happy, energetic, and curious, we don’t need to teach “subjects” at all. We teach only the techniques of learning and thinking. As for geography, literature, the sciences--we give our children opportunity and guidance, and they learn them for themselves [italics mine]. In that way we dispense with half the teachers required under the old system, and the education is incomparably better. Our children aren’t neglected, but they’re seldom, if ever, taught anything…. And a good share of our education goes on in workshops, laboratories, and fields" (P.110).

Skinner’s techniques of learning and thinking, mentioned above, include logic, statistics, scientific method, psychology, and mathematics. The students, without much supervision, obtain any other college-level information from Walden Two’s library (P.111) or in the field. Notice that Skinner’s students, naturally curious about the world, learn for themselves. Behavioristic learning is not delivered by lecture, but is, to use today’s terminology, child centered. Much learning is project based: “We teach anatomy in the slaughterhouse, botany in the field, genetics in the dairy and poultry house, chemistry in the medical building and in the kitchen and dairy laboratory” (P.112). Skinner is rarely called a progressive educator, but John Dewey himself would probably approve of Skinner’s methods that “emphasized the idea of children being part of a community and of learning by doing” (Provenzo, 2002).

Now compare the typical classroom with Skinner’s Walden Two. Students in California schools, at least until the age of 16, are forced, under threat of punishment, to go to school. They are forced to do the same work everyone else does under threat of punishment. If they act in a disorderly or unruly way they will be punished. Can the constant threat of punishment be a good thing? Skinner (1971) writes “Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment” (P.56). Since punishment induces people not to behave in certain ways, to suppress behavior, but not how to behave, punished “behavior is likely to reappear after the punitive contingencies are withdrawn” (P.58). A boy that is punished for yelling out of turn will very likely resume this behavior once a substitute teacher is in the room. A child that refuses to do school work receives a poor grade and a call home (so the parents can inflict additional punishments). The child resumes doing his schoolwork only to raise his grade. Skinner suggests minimizing punishable behavior “by creating circumstances in which it is not likely to occur” (P.60) or by breaking up the contingencies under which punished behavior is reinforced (P.61). For example, by removing gum from the school, it is less likely to be found in the classroom. Then the teacher no longer has to punish students for chewing it and leaving it under desks. If a teacher ignores a student having a temper tantrum, the behavior is no longer reinforced and often goes away on its own without the use of punishment. “It should be possible to design a world [or a classroom] in which behavior likely to be punished seldom or never occurs” (P.62).

One should not become too enamored with Skinner’s thought without examining the writings of his critics. Perhaps the most forceful, Ayn Rand (1972) shakes the foundations of behaviorism by attacking the circular reasoning of “reinforcement,” the illogic in Skinner’s determinism, Skinner’s semantic dodge in accounting for the phenomenon of language, and his hostility toward the power of the human mind and virtue. Rogers (1983) attacks Skinner’s extremist exogenous view. In contrast, Rogers believes that internal motivators exist.

However, Rogers (1983), like Skinner, wishes to change punitive learning environments. He describes one in an impoverished ghetto area. “It was impossible to tell which student he [the teacher] had just paddled because all the students, black and white, looked equally sullen and angry…. Their whole sullen stance was saying, ‘Just try to make me learn anything’” (P.16). When will students learn, and what is the best learning environment? According to Rogers, children will learn when the curriculum has personal meaning and the learning is significant and experiential (P.19). More precisely, Rogers defines the elements involved in experiential learning. It has a quality of personal involvement. It is self-initiated. It is pervasive. The learner herself evaluates it. Lastly, its essence is meaning (P.20). This type of whole-person learning combines both the intuitive and the logical and uses what he calls both masculine and feminine capacities.

Rogers compares experiential, whole-person learning against an atomized type of learning. Some have distorted behaviorism by writing that Skinner cares only for pigeons pressing levels. Indeed, Skinner often looks at man as a machine as a contrast to Rogers (1965) who prefers to examine the complete human being. However, Skinner also feels that learning should be significant, useful, and self-initiated. Skinner as well as Rogers (1983) could have written the following paragraph:

"When we put together in one scheme such elements as a prescribed curriculum, similar assignments for all students, lecturing as almost the only mode of instruction, standard tests by which all students are externally evaluated, and instructor-chosen grades as the measure of learning, than we can almost guarantee that meaningful learning will be at an absolute minimum" (P.21).

Both Skinner and Rogers wish to arrive at child-centered learning. The road they take, however, is different. Skinner, a pragmatist, values what works. He discards traditional pedagogy because it’s inefficient. A teacher must set up external contingencies to allow learning, which is naturally reinforcing, to take place. Child-centered learning leads to better learning, not because the child is free, but because it is efficient and reinforcing. Freedom does not really exist. Rogers, an existentialist, values meaning. He believes that people are free to chose and if the learning is meaningful, the learned outcomes will, by themselves improve. Rogers (1983) admits that humans can be examined as both (unfree) machines and subjectively free individuals.

"A part of modern living is to face the paradox that, viewed from one perspective, man is a complex machine…. On the other hand, in another significant dimension of his existence, man is subjectively free; his personal choice and responsibility account for the shape of his life…. If in response to this you say, 'These views cannot both be true,' my answer is, 'This is a deep paradox with which we must learn to live'” (pp. 280-281).

Do Rogers’ methods work? Will a classroom where students make most or all the choices of what books to read and how they should be graded be a classroom in which learning takes place? John Steadman Rice, in his article The Therapeutic School (2002), criticizes Rogers and other founders of humanistic psychologists for promoting a therapeutic ethic instead of content learning in the schools. Rice states that, according to the humanists such as Rogers, if society is to work well, people must be set free from cultural and societal repression” (P. 21). Education must become involved in the child’s feelings. Thus, students are taught to think well of themselves, to have high self-esteem. Quoted in Rice’s article, Rita Kramer argues that self-esteem has replaced understanding as the goal of education. Unfortunately, these same students that think their math scores are outstanding rank internationally at the bottom for math.

Under the influence of Rogers, Maslow, Glasser, and their adherents, education has ceased to be about instruction, or the passing on of an accumulated body of knowledge; in essence, it has become group therapy. It is not the case, then, that students did not receive an education; rather, they received an education, but in the vocabulary of emotion and in the practice of self-absorption. Tests designed to tap into those competencies would likely tell a different story than data from, say, the Scholastic Aptitude Test-which continues to measure academic, rather than therapeutic, ability (P. 28).

Despite these criticisms, both Skinner’s behavioristic approach to education and Rogers’ person-centered model of instruction are still popular. I examined my children’s learning software, especially Reader Rabbit’s Kindergarten, Davka’s Ready for Reading (Hebrew), and The Learning Company’s Gizmos and Gadgets (engineering). All three of these software programs use common behavioral techniques such as immediate rewards for the correct answer, sustain infinite patience in eliciting the desired behavior, and avoid punishment. Rogers’ theories have also entered educational technology. Miller and Mazur (2000) developed a person-centered model of instruction for designing Web-based environments.

By emphasizing students’ interests and abilities, courses taught in virtual environments such as certain applications delivered via the internet, can create an atmosphere of mutual participation and allow for accommodations of various skill and ability levels. Students can exercise the freedom to choose, which is encouraged by the user-controlled hypermedia web environment. However, the elements promoting the success of such as approach — user responsibility, ability to be self-assessing and proactive in learning — are the very elements, when lacking, which will result in an instructional experience that is non-productive at best and frustrating at worst (p. 298).

In conclusion, the eclectic educator will find much to use from both theories, the behavioral and the person-centered. Choosing between behavioral and person-centered models, the educator may wish to assess the amount of choice available to the student and the rigidity of the learner outcomes.

Bibliography

Miller, Christopher T. and Mazur, Joan M. (2000). Towards a Person-Centered Model of Instruction: Can an Emphasis on the Personal Enhance Instruction in Cyberspace? Annual Proceedings of Selected Research and Development Papers Presented at the National Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 1-2, 293-299.

Noll, William James (2002). Taking Sides. Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues (12th ed.). Guilford, Connecticut: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin.

Provenzo, Eugene F. (2002). Teaching, Learning, and Schooling. A 21st Century Perspective. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Rand, Ayn (1972). Philosophy: Who Needs It. New York: Penguin.

Rice, John Steadman (2002). The Therapeutic School. Society, 39 (2), 19-29.

Rogers, Carl. (1965). Some Thoughts Regarding the Current Philosophy of the Behavioral Sciences, The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, V (2), 182-194.

Rogers, Carl. (1983). Freedom to Learn for the 80’s. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company.

Skinner, B.F. (1948). Walden Two. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, Inc.

Skinner, B.F. (1971). Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Skinner, B.F. (1974). About Behaviorism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.