This has been the first week that I’ve managed to keep to a form my dedication, made some weeks back, and worked on my Weekly Review several nights rather than just one. I am still overwhelmed by the streams of information that I am trying to swim in. I am learning to manage, though, and I think the quality of the Weekly Reviews is only going to increase in 2010.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Food and Thought
• Of Great Interest
• Whose Great Books?
• Sticks and Stones
• “Innovative” Education
• What is that beautiful building

Food and Thought

• Food and mood by Bina Venkataraman, Boston Globe
• NH panel emphasizes better food choices in schools by Kathy McCormack, Associated Press, as seen on boston.com
• Dairy Groups Fight To Keep Chocolate Milk On Menu by Jeff Brady, All Things Considered, NPR

We have all heard the adage, “You are what you eat.” But it turns out that is true not only in terms of body composition, but of mental and emotional composition as well.

What you eat impacts your mood. And while those cupcakes I had a lunch yesterday may have made me feel better then, if I continue to eat fatty foods, new research suggests that I’ll be much less happy than if I eat a healthier diet. And my brain will function better if I cut the fat.

In order to learn, our children need to eat. In order to learn well, our children need to eat well. I know that some mornings at work I am so hungry that I cannot do much other than think about food. And I remember that I really enjoyed the opportunity to get breakfast before class. Rather than banning children from eating at the beginning of a class, we should encourage them.

As if I needed another social justice cause, I think healthy school breakfasts and lunches just got added to the list.

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Of Great Interest

• “The [Three] Great Interest of Man” by Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

I had never encountered the poem “Evening Without Angels” by Wallace Stevens before reading the post above in The Happiness Project. Gretchen looked for the poem because she remembered the lines of the epigraph by Mario Rossi, that she had attributed to Stevens and his poem. While the poem is intriguing, I am more interested in the quote by Mario Rossi:

“…the great interests of man: air and light, the joy of having a body, the voluptuousness of looking.”

Great literature reminds us of “the joy of having a body”; great art reminds us of “the voluptuousness of looking”; and great music reminds us of “air and light.”

Great literature reminds us of “the joy of having a body” because poetry is a sensual experience for me. Poetry and great novels look to take experiences and ideals and make them tactile, make them real. Great literature gives us access to the interiority of another person, real or imagined, and lets us see the world from their eyes, if only for a minute. You could tell someone that having great riches will not, of itself, make him or her happy, or you could hand him or her a copy of “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson.

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Whose Great Books?

• Creating the Canon by Cynthia Crossen, “Dear Book Lover”, The Wall Street Journal

Once I picked up Harold Bloom’s book, The Western Canon, from the library. I didn’t read more than the first few pages of it and thumb through the list of great works in the appendix. At some point, I am sure that I will read his essays and consider in greater depth his lists.

That seems like a smart thing for a high school English teacher to do, right?

What I liked about Cynthia Crossen’s article was that she was humble. Whereas Harold Bloom wants to create the definitive list for all time, a very quaint and antiquated ideal, one that inspired the first encyclopedias but seems silly now, Cynthia Crossen wants us to read both good and bad books. She quotes Jane Smiley and I think it bears repeating here, as well:

…in order to understand the nature of the novel [as an artform], sometimes the reader has to read novels that don’t work for her and think about why they don’t work.

I do not think the writers that Harold Bloom canonizes are the exclusive holders of culture and excellence in the history of the world. I think about Chimamanda Adiche’s lecture, “The Danger of a Single Story” — which, if you haven’t watched, I encourage you to watch immediately — and how her first stories were about British and American characters because that is all she knew.

We need to include writers from many, if not all, cultures in our school curricula. We cannot use literature to learn about others if we do not read about others.

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Sticks and Stones

• Greg Mortenson on War and Peace interview by Tom Ashbrook, On Point, NPR
• Personal Take on Public Projects in Two Devastated Lands by Janet Maslin, New York Times
• Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Greg Mortenson

Greg Mortenson is not a man paying lipservice to the power of education. He is on the ground in dangerous parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan building schools. Tom Ashbrook interviews him and discusses his new book, Stones into Schools.

I have only just learned of Greg Mortenson and I am very interested in reading both of his books, Three Cups of Tea and his new one Stones into Schools. I like the summary of his work that I found in the New York Times review:

His great conviction, expressed to irresistibly inspiring effect in both books, is that the right kind of educational effort can bridge enormous gaps. Although he reiterates this point without describing exactly what the children in Central Asia Institute schools are taught, he is convinced that encouraging literacy is a way to promote trust and understanding.
–Janet Maslin

Right now, until I get into classrooms, I know that I believe in the power of education in an abstract way. I like to think that reading Mike Rose’s book Why School? and Jonathan Kozol’s books such as Letters to a Young Teacher bring me closer to that reality. Now, I’d like to see Greg Mortenson’s reality.

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“Innovative” Education

• In Search of Education Leaders by Bob Herbert, The New York Times

The title of Bob Herbert’s article, “In Search of Education Leaders” intrigued me. But the actual content of the article disappointed me.

Because Americans are falling behind in global standardized test scores, Harvard has decided to innovate in the field of education. For the first time in 75 years, Harvard University is going to offer a new degree: the Education Leadership Doctorate, or Ed.L.D. The stated hope is that students come out of this program ready to reform and reinvigorate the school systems.

Perhaps I am thoroughly jaded, but this sounds like a program that will churn out education consultants. The economic crisis happened because a large number of consultants were designing new financial instruments for the sake of being innovative. I am afraid that we are looking at a crisis in education.

The reform that we need is simple. We need to have small classrooms staffed by competent professionals. We need stable homes for students so that they have a place to study and work.

Simple is never easy.

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What is that beautiful building?

• Refined times by Alex Beam, The Boston Globe
• Boston Athenaeum: Bullish on the bookish, Editorials, Boston Globe
• Old Boston, new ways by Sarah Schweitzer, The Boston Globe

Since the middle of November, I’ve seen several stories about the Boston Athenaeum. I had not previously known that Boston had a somewhat secretive, private library in the heart of Beacon Hill. I imagine that I walked past it, not knowing what it was, when walking around Beacon Hill this summer at Community Boating.

The place sounds amazing. Yet another cultural institution that I want to join. Though, I think if I joined the Athenaeum, I might never be seen again. Heard from, yes, because they have WiFi, but only because of that.

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The Weekly Reviews are a lot of fun to write. I enjoy scouring the web for interesting articles and blog posts. But, all the same, the project had begun to become a unmanageable. There are so many websites and blogs to check out everyday. I had been afraid that I was going to miss something.

What I repeatedly missed was my own deadline. You may have noticed that the past two weeks I had postponed my Weekly Review until Saturday.

I have been working hard but I haven’t been working very smart. Then I remembered a quote from one of my favorite writers:

Novels are written in the same way that farms are made productive, or houses are kept clean, or baseball penant races are won: with steady work each day.
–Andre Dubus

Substitute “Weekly Reviews” for “Novels” and you get the same concept. Rather than gathering up work throughout the week and then trying to throw something together slapdash on Thursday night, starting this week I will be working on the Weekly Review throughout the week.

Thursday afternoon I spent some time setting up a feed reader through Google. Though I’m not quite sure how I feel about it yet — unlike Gmail, the posts disappear after you’ve read them unless you ask them to stay — but I am glad to consolidate many of my different websites into one place.

In addition to that, I’ve also setup Literature&Literacy on Feedburner.com. You can now subscribe to Literature&Literacy through an RSS Reader or through email.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Fixing Education
• Fighting What You Believe
• Failings
• The Humbling of Philip Roth

Fixing Education

• Teach Your Teachers Well by Susan Engel, Op-Ed, The New York Times via nytimes.com
• Grade the Teachers by Michael Jonas, The Sunday Boston Globe via boston.com
• Teacher Training Termed Mediocre by Jennifer Medina, The New York Times via nytimes.com
• How to Improve American Education by Charles Wheelan, Ph.D., The Naked Economist, Yahoo! Finance
• Subversive Elevator Music by John Spencer, Musing of a Not-So-Master Teacher
• Former NBA Coach Switches Gears At Charter School by Mike Pesca, All Things Considered, NPR via npr.org

There has been a lot about this since Arne Duncan came out and said that he wants to improve teacher training programs. Newly minted teachers come out of these programs and feel overwhelmed by having to manage a classroom.

Most actual training for particular jobs happens on the job. I have read that it takes a year to just begin to feel comfortable at your job. When I first began my job at the bank, I remember feeling overwhelmed. I know that many of my other friends felt the same.

It is quite easy to take potshots at educators:

• They work in a rarefied realm where they are not held accountable for their results.
• They don’t work very hard because they cannot be fired.
• They work only half a year! Every time you turn around they have another vacation! They get summers off!

People pay lip service to the idea that educators play a vital role in our nation. But I do not believe they actually believe that. Teachers are paid very poorly for the work that they do, especially as class sizes grow and resources are reduced. If people truly believed that teachers and educators were vital to our economy, they would pay teachers more.

There is no end to commentators and news writers who are willing to offer advice on how to improve our education system. Everyone has an opinion on this matter.

One idea that is being passed around is the idea of merit pay for teachers. I believe in what Alfie Kohn writes in Punished By Rewards that you can get diminishing results when you attempt to tie rewards to performance. And there are economists and business theorists who believe that as well. I remember seeing articles arguing that Golden Parachutes are necessary because CEOs who are not allowed to pursue ideas that may fail will not innovate and will not advance the economy.

I also fear that you will get unethical behavior. I have met salesmen and saleswomen who will do whatever they can to get a sale, tell customers whatever they want to hear. Do we want teachers and principals who are fighting to get rewards rather than educate our children?

We need to go back to basics. We need to have a national conversation about the why of school, its purpose.

If we decide public education is vital to the lives of our children and our success as a nation, we need to align our teachers paychecks with that belief. People choose careers in college based in part on what they expect to get paid after leaving school. There are some people who want to be teachers and would be excellent educators, but instead become engineers or computer scientists for fear that they will be unable to support their future families on a teacher’s salary.

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Fighting What You Believe

• Knocking Out the Beliefs That Hold You Back by April Dykman, Get Rich Slowly

Get Rich Slowly was one of the very first blogs that I started reading. Practical, down to earth financial advice for people who understand that there is more to life than earning money.

Much like Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Get Rich Slowly has a broad definition of rich. Rather than limiting richness to wealth, these blogs talk about living a rich life.

Granted they take it as a starting point that you cannot live richly if you are living in debt with no financial plans.

April Dykman is a new staff writer at Get Rich Slowly. And she never thought she would be able to make a living as a freelance writer. She had had this belief before she entered college. One of her professors reinforced that belief.

And for years she clung to that belief.

That belief became part of her personal narrative. Each of us keeps this personal narrative of who we are and what we can and cannot do. Many of these beliefs are locked away in our minds, invisible chains that restrict our realities.

Read through April’s article and ask yourself, what narratives are you carrying with you that are holding you back?

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Failings

• Analysis: College students need lessons in failure by Justin Pope, Associated Press via boston.com
• What If We’re Afraid of the Wrong Things? by John Spencer, Musings of a Not-So-Master Teacher

I found a fortune cookie fortune in the pocket of a pair of trousers the other day as I was cleaning:

The two hardest things to handle in life are failure and success.

And then I saw this article through boston.com. I think that it is timely, especially with all the talk of fixing education swirling around. But I also thought this so important that it deserved its own discussion.

I fear that my generation has been too mollycoddled. We grew up during the age of self-esteem and the idea that hurt feelings were too much to bear. Self-esteem means nothing. Self-respect means everything and the only way to gain self-respect is to earn it.

Throughout my life I have been told that I am a gifted mind, that I can do whatever I set my mind to, and a lot of other things that I believe are platitudes. These were fed to me to encourage me. I don’t know whether they served their purpose.

When I was in college, I shared some of my poems with a professor I admired. He thought my works were utter drivel and told me so. Afterward I discussed the conversation with my adviser, thinking he would keep the conversation to himself, and let vent to my feelings.

I had been hurt and because I was not used to being told that I couldn’t do something. I gave up. My adviser tried to encourage me to think of this time as an apprenticeship.

But I had never been given the tools to handle failure.

So rather than think of this failure as a temporary setback, as an assessment of where I was on that day, I became a failed poet. There is a world of difference between being a beginner with a handful of failed poems and being a failed poet.

And perhaps if I had had experiences with failing prior to that, I would have been able to see the difference. Perhaps I could have picked myself up and begun to work again.

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The Humbling of Philip Roth

• Darkness visible by Richard Eder, The Boston Globe via boston.com
• Roth on Roth by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, The Wall Street Journal via online.wsj.com

As with John Irving, I am not familiar with the work of Philip Roth. And, again as with John Irving, after reading these two book reviews though I want to read Philip Roth as well.

The Humbling follows a down and out actor. The theme is the end of inspiration and the end of creativity. I don’t know Richard Eder’s taste in books but I can tell that The Humbling is not his cup of tea.

A great actor is suddenly unable to act; the misery and the humiliations to which this leads bring him to the verge of suicide. It is not the business of a review to be telling what happens. It is telling, though, that the reader rather wants him to go ahead with it.
–Richard Eder on The Humbling

Yet even that dismissive review entices me on. Philip Roth is considered one of our times’ greatest writers. I want to read the book for myself and see if I can detect Roth trying to convey the struggles of creativity after a life time.

Running a blog is a job in and of itself. Since starting this blog, my respect for journalists has grown because I have learned how much time it takes to craft a single post.

My essays are pure opinion pieces. I read a book, a poem, an essay, or a news article. Then I think about what I’ve read and then look at my world and see if its relevant, judge if I think others might enjoy reading about my interaction with that work.

And it takes me between two and four hours to write these essays.

Yet I’m hooked. I love writing here because I feel more alive because I am again engaging the world in ways that I haven’t since college. Each essays calls upon me to look at my world and analyze it and reflect upon it.

This is another great gift of literature.

And, yes, I call even bad newspaper essays literature.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Finger, Painting
• Do You Want Factory-Farmed Children?
• When the High Jump Becomes a Pole Vault
• Mommy, Am I Responsible Yet?
• Judging Motives to Evaluate Blame

Finger, Painting

• Art experts find possible new Leonardo drawing, Rob Gillies, boston.com
• Painting Could Be Previously Unknown da Vinci Work, All Things Considered, NPR.
• Fingerprint May Reveal the Handiwork of Leonardo Da Vinci by Dave Itzkoff, Arts Beat, The New York Times.

Known by many names this portrait of a woman in profile may be a Leonardo da Vinci. (Photocredit: Wikimedia Commons)

A painting previously thought to be a 19th-century German work may be an unknown Leonardo da Vinci work.

Da Vinci was said to use his hands and fingers to spread paint on his works. The experts who have examined the work found what seems to be a fingerprint and palm print on the work. Using sophisticated imaging techniques, they have isolated the supposed fingerprint.

It matches known fingerprints of Leonardo da Vinci in 8 points, a respectable match. According to art collector Peter Silverman, the man who first bought the painting for $19,000, a match of 11 points is enough to convict someone.

I have my doubts about this painting. Although I’ve not made an exhaustive study of Leonardo’s catalogue, the supposed work is not in the style that made him famous. A quick Google search turned up only one drawing of a woman in profile. His other portraits of women tend to be show the women in three-dimensions instead of two. Consider Lady with an Ermine and Mona Lisa.

Fun fact about this style of painting. In the Italian nobility, this style of painting was passed from household to household as a sort of primitive dating service. Eligible males would be shown the painting and, if they were interested, would arrange to meet the woman pictured.

Do You Want Factory-Farmed Children?

• Teaching, Farming, and the American Way by Michael Doyle, Science Teacher

It would be, I think, a good deal more accurate to call it an art, for it grows not only out of factual knowledge, but out of cultural tradition; it is learned not only by precept but by example, by apprenticeship; and it requires not merely a competent knowledge of its facts and processes, but also a complex set of attitudes, a certain culturally evolved stance, in the face of the unexpected and the unknown. That is to say, it requires style in the highest and richest sense of that term.
–From “Discipline and Hope” by Wendell Berry

Where do you think the above quote came from? A book about education? This is an blog about education, after all, isn’t it? The quote comes from a book on essays about agriculture and culture.

From the beginning of that quotation, I deleted an important sentence: “The fact is that farming is not a laboratory science, but a science of practice.” What Berry writes is applicable to a wide range of fields. Teaching, counseling, and selling all first come to mind.

I found this quote at a blog I’ve discovered in the past week Science Teacher by Michael Doyle. He uses that quote in arguing that just as we have lost something by handing over our farms to large corporations — so-called “factory farms” — we risk losing something in handing our education over to what may become “factory schools.”

His philosophy of teaching messes well with my own as well as the philosophies of Jonathan Kozol and Mike Rose. He reminds us of the purpose of education, writing “Historically, public education’s priority has been to create a functioning citizenry; the current trend is to produce careerists. The two have critical, but subtle, distinctions. A citizenry that cannot grasp subtle but critical distinctions will ultimately fail as a republic.”

I look forward to exploring more of what he has to say.

When the High Jump Becomes a Pole Vault

• Raising the Bar for Public Education by Signe Wilkinson

I appreciate the editorial cartoons that I’ve seen from Signe Wilkinson. After some investigation, I learned that reprinting her comics here may be an infringement of copyright and will post links to her comics from now on.

Mommy, am I Responsible Yet?

• When Does Responsibility Begin? by Neal Conan, Talk of the Nation, NPR
• What is the Age of Responsibility? by Aaron Greenblatt, Governing Magazine

A lot of our rules on when people are responsible enough to assume tasks are arbitrary: 16 for most to get a driver’s license; 18 to vote, enter into contracts and join the military; 21 to drink alcohol; and 25 to rent a car from most car rental places. Many of these rules came about in a hodgepodge manner.

I know in Massachusetts in general and Boston in particular, with our large student populations, there have been some concerns about the drinking age. The drinking age is 21 because the Federal Government mandates that the drinking age in order for states to receive federal monies for highways. Some groups such as the Amethyst Initiative argue that the high drinking age just promotes binge drinking. Others quote statistics that show once the drinking age was increased incidence of fatal car accidents fell.

Can we judge responsibility for these tasks in an age-based manner? I don’t know that we can, but I don’t know how we could do it any differently. License people to drink alcohol? That would have people up in arms and would not solve any problems. We can get into circular arguments about American versus European attitudes towards responsibility and drinking.

According to neuroscience and cognitive science, the prefrontal cortex — that part of the brain that regulates decision making and self-control — continues to develop until around the age of 30. Should we prohibit the entering into contracts prior 30? Should we prohibit marriage until 30 so that executive function can fully grow and mature? Abuse of drugs including alcohol can inhibit the full maturation of the brain, how do we consider that?

Judging Motives to Evaluate Blame

• How we read each other’s minds by Rebecca Saxe, TED

I love TED Lectures.

I have watched a handful of them and most of them have been fascinating and engaging. The title of this one, however, is inaccurate. The webpage file name is more accurate (”rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments.html”).

There seems to be a specialized area in the human brain dedicated to the interpretation of people’s motives and assessment of moral responsibility. When we listen to stories of actions, we consider if what the person was thinking and intending when assigning blame.

Rebecca Saxe designed an experiment. She told a story of a woman called Grace who was making coffee for her friend and sweetened it with a white powder. There were three versions of the story:

• In one version of the story, the box was labeled poison, Grace believed it was poison but put it in her friend’s coffee anyway;
• in the second version, the box was labeled poison, Grace believed it was sugar but it turned out to be poison;
• and the final version the box was labeled sugar but turned out to be poison.

Rebecca and her team measured brain activity in this region and saw that the amount of activity corresponded with how much blame the test subjects though Grace deserved in each case.

But what if they used magnetic interference to affect the functioning of that part of the brain? They did that. Watch the presentation to find out if it made a difference.

In This Essay

Why School? : Reclaiming Education for All of Us by Mike Rose

Letters to a Young Teacher by Jonathan Kozol

I first learned about Why School? : Reclaiming Education for All of Us while listening to Marketplace on NPR back in August. I ordered it from Amazon.

I tore into it immediately. I have been thinking about it since then. I had been a bit afraid to review it too quickly.

Mike Rose covers a lot of topics in his slim 169 pages. But his essays are broad, each like an introduction to the topic rather than like tightly argued persuasion piece. And therein lies the value of these essays.

Let’s Think Together

I think that many of the great teachers lead us to knowledge, not so that we can necessarily share their opinions, but rather so that we can develop our own.

This is clearly Mr. Rose’s philosophy, one he shares also with Jonathan Kozol. In Letters to a Young Teacher, Mr. Kozol writes that the best sessions he had involved arguing with students who disagreed with him, “I revel in their oppositional mentalities. I know for sure that they’re not bored, or acquiescent, and that they are actually thinking.”

You can tell from the essays in Why School? that Mike Rose also revels in opposition. He believes in democracy and in the advancement of knowledge through conversation and compromise. He tries to find value in the project and ideals underpinning No Child Left Behind, for example, even though he disagrees with the execution.

The essays in Why School? are conversation starters, jumping off points. Mr. Rose has presented us with a number of questions and he gives us the freedom to think our way to our own answers.

So, for the rest of this essay, I will pick up a two of those conversational threads — the two that I think about the most when I think about my future as a teacher — and add my thoughts.

A Conversation on the Value of No Child Left Behind

In his essay, “No Child Left Behind and the Spirit of Democratic Education”, he points to an aspect of No Child Left Behind that is often overlooked.

A further bold move is that the states have to report at the school level test results along a number of student criteria, including race/ethnicity, income level, English language proficiency, and disability. Continual improvement by these targeted subgroups must occur, or schools will be put on notice and, eventually, sanctioned. …

One undeniable value of [No Child Left Behind] is that it casts a bright light on those underserved populations of students who get lost in averaged measures of performance.
–Mike Rose in Why School?, page 44.

Whether you agree with its implementation or not, used properly No Child Left Behind could provide us with great, raw data, a great assessments of the states of different schools and a record of the attempts of the districts to improve education for their students. My fear is that the data will be used — just as the book The Bell Curve was used — to support future racist arguments.

Though I have not read The Bell Curve, I am familiar with its controversy. The book posited that IQ is a predictor of future financial success, criminal activity, unwed pregnancy, and other behavior. The book pointed out that there are lingering racial differences in IQ and, according to Wikipedia, the authors write, “It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences.”

That last sentence is dangerous, as it can lead to scientific racism.

At least they note that environment is one factor that has an impact on learning. I fear people generalizing from the data collected by the tests, especially if they compare the students of different class years as opposed to measuring the progress of each student against the student him- or herself. The former assumes a homogeneous nature of students in classes from one year to the next that is not realistic.

A Conversation on Standards and Learning

In his essay “Standards, Teaching, Learning” talks about the meaninglessness of standards that apply to a district but may not be agreed upon outside of that district. He tells the story of Vince, “who received a PhD from a prestigious psychology department,” (page 99) who went through a standards-based English language curriculum that was designed to help students score well on the SAT. His classes were called “college-preparatory” but when he took the English placement exam at his college, he was placed in remedial English.

How do we agree upon national standards? This is a huge task and one I cannot even fathom how to begin. If we create a tiered system — a graded system, if you prefer — we run the risk of sorting people and rather than assessing where they are at a particular point and designing systems that help them advance, we may fall victim to stating that is their level of achievement.

Something I have found strange is that Americans hold up this ideal of social mobility, of the infinite potential of humans to achieve given the opportunity and yet we are obsessed with grading, sorting, and ranking and using those grades or ranks as obstacles to future achievement. What is the source of this mentality? When I was first reading Vince’s story, I remember thinking, briefly, “A student in remedial English, remedial anything, is doomed.” Why should that be so?

I am not against standards. They are useful heuristics for measuring things. But they have their limitations and their dangers, as Mike Rose points out:

As people on many sides of current educational debates are saying… standardized measures can limit the development of competence by driving curricula toward the narrow demands of test preparation instead of allowing teachers to immerse students in complex problem solving and rich use of language.
–Mike Rose in Why School?, page 103.

Vince’s college-preparatory English consisted predominantly in doing grammar exercises, with a little reading and writing of book reports (page 99). What value is that in a vacuum? Would doing grammar exercises in contextual vacuum in a Spanish class teach you to speak Spanish? Would writing a book report or a book review of a work of literature help you develop critical thinking skills? Perhaps if you were asked to cite sources and read literary criticism as part of the book report; perhaps if you were asked to read two similar books and compare and contrast them.

“Instead of these static measures of attainment,” writes Mr. Rose, “our focus should shift to the dynamics of development.” I think of the colored belts of martial arts or the models of apprenticeship I have from art history: a boy — and in the days of the Italian Renaissance, they were almost exclusively boys — would begin learning to how make paint and brushes and then advance through tasks of painting sections of a larger work until he attained mastery and could design his own works.

His rank referred what he had learned and how capable he was of executing a work of art on his own. While, perhaps, some unfortunate individuals were stuck as journeymen forever and were never given the title of “Master”, their idea was more fluid than ours seem to be.

Summary

This is a book I will revisit many times. Since first reading the book, I have had a lot to think about. I am reading through it a second time, taking notes on the essays, but also jotting down my own reactions to passages.

Mike Rose writes in a very optimistic tone. This is refreshing: there is a lot of frustration and defeat, and a lot of cynicism in writings about education and education policy. He also tries to see the best in the opposition. Although I wonder if he is being overly rosy, there is something uplifting in his refusal to be jaded.

Anyone who is considering becoming an educator, read this book as an entry into current debates raging in education. Anyone in education and burned out on the arguments and screaming, read this book to be reminded that even No Child Left Behind, though flawed, was underpinned with ideals. Anyone in public policy, read this book to see what is going on in schools and to remember to think broadly about public education’s role in citizenship and the public good.

With all the controversy swirling around President Obama’s Address to Students, I was curious to see what he would say yesterday.

I wanted to form my own opinion of the address. I had avoided reading all of the advance press that I could. I knew there was talk of school boards voting to prevent its presentation in school; I knew conservative talking heads and shouting mouths had condemned the very idea without any advanced copy, had dismissed a political tradition; I knew there were parents who were thinking of keeping their children home as a boycott.

As much as I had anticipated the speech, I was disappointed by his speech. More than disappointed, in fact: the President’s speech made me angry.

To Boycotting Parents

Before I discuss my own reaction to the address, I would like to address any dissenting parents who may be reading this. The act of boycotting this speech I find particularly baffling.

What an opportunity you missed! Let your children watch the speech in school, watch the speech for yourselves after work, and then over dinner sit down — or make the time, as Obama’s mother made for him — and discuss with your children what they heard, what they took away, and how you disagree. Show your kids that you respect and value them.

If you disagree with what the President said, explain to your children why and make an argument for an alternative. If you found that the President’s address was full of propaganda, find instances of it in the speech and point them out to your children. Your children are going to need to think critically in the future and this was an excellent opportunity to help them exercise that skill.

Why School? and the President’s Address

“When was the last time you were moved by a high-level speech about education? I don’t mean by the personal testimonials we hear at graduations or award ceremonies, but by a policy or political speech.”
– Mike Rose from “In Search of a Fresh Language of Schooling” in Why School?, page 25.

As I mentioned in The Marketplace and Ideas, I have been thinking of the purpose of school lately.

Inspired by an interview on Marketplace, I read Mike Rose’s book Why School?, which I intend to review soon. The book questions of the way we think about and discuss schools and the purpose of public education. I have begun rereading it and I continue to think about the purpose of public education.

I agree with Mr. Rose that a robust, healthy public education system is vital to our nation. In fact, I think public education is a civil right. At its best, our school system is our strongest public institution, one with the greatest chance of actually furthering an informed and civil democracy.

My Hope for the Speech

“We need public talk that links education to a more decent, thoughtful, open society. Talk that raises in us as a people the appreciation for deliberation and reflection, or for taking intellectual risks and thinking widely–for the sheer power and pleasure of using our minds, alone or in concert with others. We need a discourse that inspires young people to think gracefully and moves young adults to become teachers and foster such development.”
– Mike Rose, from “In Search of a Fresh Language of Schooling” in Why School?, page 29.

While some elements of that were there in the speech, I found the overall speech weak. The President’s words seemed so divorced from reality; it was simply a high-level policy speech.

A Weak Presence

His words did not light a fire under the students. The only cheer from the crowd that I remember was when Obama asked the crowd to give a round of applause to the Senior Class President who had introduced him.

He did not work the narratives of any student into the body of the speech. Although he dropped the names of three students who struggled against difficult conditions to succeed, that’s all they were, name-dropping in an effort to create the appearance of inspiration. The three students were listed, one after another, in a formulaic way: “I am thinking of {student’s name here} from {town here} who rose above, who overcame {insert challenge here} and who is now going onto college!” He gave more time to J.K. Rowling and Michael Jordan.

Talking about Jordan was effective for me and I imagine for the parents of the students. Michael Jordan does offer an inspiring quote — Jordan said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s why I succeed.” — but his career with the Chicago Bulls spanned 1984 through 1998. Most high school seniors were only 6 or 7 when Jordan retired from the Bulls.

Is it OK to Fail? Or Not?

“These people succeeded because they understood that you can’t let your failures define you — you have to let your failures teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently the next time. So if you get into trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to act right. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.”
– President Barack Obama, Address to Students, September 8, 2009

What angered me most about Obama’s speech was rhetoric about learning from failures. In this age of high-stakes testing, this age of “objective” metrics, this age of No Child Left Behind, where that schools fail to meet certain metrics are punished by having their resources reduced, there is not space enough to let a child fail. In this age of 25 to 30 kids to a classroom, there is not time enough for a teacher to give a struggling student individual attention.

It is grand to tell a child to take responsibility for his or her education. But how do you expect a child to do that? What skills do the children have to take responsibility for their own education if they have never learned study skills?

Mike Rose points out:

“No one, no one, develops free of local and broader-scale institutions (from sports clinic to the military), social networks, government projects and programs (from transportation infrastructure to school loans), and so on. …it does not diminish the important of individual commitment and effort also to acknowledge the tremendous role played in achievement by the kind, distribution, and accessibility of institutions, programs, and other resources. And these resources, as everybody knows, are not equally available.”
– Mike Rose from “Introduction” in Why School?, page 10.

When I was in high school, my grade was a test grade for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS. Our results did not matter and even if we failed all of the subjects, we would receive our diplomas.

Now students who repeatedly fail the MCAS are granted not a diploma but a certificate of attendance. What if the MCAS were actually an assessment system, a test administered to judge what needed to be reinforced, what areas students had not achieve competence or mastery but that just offered an assessment of the schools? I think that kids would be able to take more intellectual risks, the type the President thinks we should be taking.

When I went to college, I wanted to double major in the Humanities and the Fine Arts. Although I had no technical training in high school, I could have enrolled in the Bachelor of Fine Arts specialty degree. I received a lot of Bs and Cs in my studio art classes and often heard, “You’ve got good, solid ideas that are worth pursuing but your technical skills in drawing or sculpting are weak.”

Because I was afraid of losing my scholarship, I gave up my art classes. I was afraid to take the risk to become the artist I wanted to become. Despite options that I had, I decided to make an economic decision and change course to be less of a drag on my family. And, I’ll admit, seeing those Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs in art bruised my ego.

And I am sure students in middle school and high school hesitate and refuse to take risks for a host of reasons, gentle egos and many others. I think of one of the first essays I wrote here, Testing, Assessment, and Feedback. Students failing should not result in stigma and sorting them to the bottom of the pile. If a failure is accompanied by strong feedback and guidance, a person can roar back.

Life Circumstances Don’t Matter

“But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school.”
– President Barack Obama, Address to Students, September 8, 2009

Poverty and illness, violence in the home and in the neighborhood, working parents or neglect, and even homelessness. These are realities for many people in our nation. These are real challenges. President Obama pays lip service to these challenges being “no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school.”

Each person’s life has its own hardships. And challenges do need to be overcome but some challenges are much greater than others. But simply stating, “Stay in school because you’re letting yourself and your country down,” is not enough. Obama knows the power of story and narrative, but this speech was lacking in it.

As I said above, he mentioned three students who were college-bound despite their hardship in a formulaic, abstract way. Why didn’t he pull together a grand narrative or interweave a small number of narratives?

Parental and Adult Involvement

I want to get into teaching to help kids learn, to help them learn to think independently, and to turn them on to power of literature to allow them to enter the thoughts and experiences of others and to offer them a vocabulary to talk about their own thoughts and experiences. But I am daunted by the idea that I will have five or six sets of 25, 30, or even 35 kids sitting in my classroom, all with different levels of achievement in reading and writing that I will have to help guide. It is a challenge that I will not shy away from and that I look forward to.

This evening, on my ride home from a long day at work, I was listening to NPR, as I often do and as my first essays Limiting Literature and Sinking a “Lifeboat”… prove.

Although, right now, I work at a bank and get little bits of economic news all day, I occasionally enjoy listening to Marketplace and decided to tune in. Their presentation of economic and financial news is more even handed and thoughtful than other media who often seem like frustrated ad men rather than journalist.

Today, though, they had an interview that startled me.

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The Next Generation of Worker

And now education has become a part of that narrative.

We hear our politicians talk about schools preparing students for twenty-first century jobs and the knowledge economy. We hear the statistics from the news about the insufficient number of Americans becoming computer programmers and engineers, about how Americans are losing our collective footing in the race to advance science. We hear the conversation about how all the high paying jobs are in technology and applied science.

So now we need to push our children into the science and technical fields if we hope for them to advance. We need to reorient our education system to give our children the skills they will need when they become workers.

Now the Obama administration, not taking any lessons from the failure that was No Child Left Behind, is discussing plans to test to make sure our school districts are focusing on science and math.

Why School?

Professor Rose questions if we are too narrowly focused on the economy and what the very purpose of education is.

True North

What is the purpose of education? Do we want to create workers or citizens? We talk about “workers” and “taxpayers” but we don’t talk about “citizens” anymore.

I am tired of being a “taxpayer” most of the year and a “voter” during an election cycle. The distinction is important because a “taxpayer” is passive but a “citizen” is active. A citizen has thoughts and opinions.

If you think I am busy making nice distinctions, remember that the many people in marketing and advertising have degrees in psychology. Remember, too, that marketing firms spend large parts of their budgets on focus groups to find what phrasing is most effective.

Reflective citizens will certainly work and will work many of the jobs we have now. I like to think that they will perhaps work more thoughtfully and will take a wider view of work and long term projects, rather than on restrict their focus to the quarter to quarter myopia that has been at fault in these booms and busts.

A knowledge of history allows people to analyze the causes of past events and think about how people solved problems and look for analogies to their current situation. Perhaps if we had had a better knowledge of history, we could have seen the most recent crash approaching or perhaps not. But without any recourse to history, we need to relearn every lesson for ourselves.

Outside the Box

Now here’s an irony, Tess, that has struck me. The business community, time after time in position papers and opinion pieces, tells us that it needs people who can make frontline decisions, who communicate well, who are creative, who think outside the box. And again, if you have a curriculum that doesn’t generate and encourage that kind of thinking and learning, then you’re not going to produce those kinds of folks.

If we limit literacy skills to reading technical documents and economic reports, we are doing a disservice to our future citizen business leaders.

If we cut music education and arts education, both of which have been shown to improve intelligence and creative thinking, we are doing a disservice to our future citizen business leaders.

If we focus on testing because it is easy to tool with which to measure, we are doing our future citizen business leaders a grave disservice. A written, multiple-choice high stakes test does not allow students to demonstrate their decision-making skills nor their creativity.

All standardize tests demonstrate is how well the student takes standardized tests.

I am looking forward to reading Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us and seeing what additional arguments Professor Rose outlines.