 |
| Thomas Gradgrind (looking well-squared) |
Consider this a sort of open letter to the American education system. It's been twenty years since the passing of the "No Child Left Behind" law, and in my college classes, I now have students who've experienced its effects for much, if not all, of their primary and secondary educations. The neo-utilitarians have had their day, and here are the results: a generation of students who have absorbed the real lesson of the new regime: hunker down, follow instructions, and learn whatever is going to be on the test. Fiction is out; nonfiction is in; reading for pleasure is out; reading for content is in. After all, the only skills that matter are the ones that can be measured.
This approach forces students to discard their interests and passions, and instead think strategically about how to focus their efforts on measurable things. They inevitably develop a habit of scanning syllabi and readings to see what will be tested, but this makes for poor readers; when they encounter an ambiguity, or a difficult reading, they tense up in anticipation of being taken to task for some vague failure. My endeavor has always been to share my love of literature, to (I hope) instill in students an excitement, an interest, a sense of something personally significant for themselves, in everything they read -- but it's getting trickier each semester. Their curiosity has been hammered; their personal experience belittled, their idiosyncrasies ironed out. As a result, it sometimes seems that the pleasure of discovery of something new has gradually given way to an anxiety about the unfamiliar.Are they better prepared for the wonderful world of employment? Perhaps, so long as the employment they find demands repetitive goal-oriented work, with little room for innovation and frequent employee evaluations. They may, so long as they've had the prerequisites, do well in science, technology, engineering, and math -- though only at a rudimentary level. Curiosity seems to have been largely amputated, and in its place our brave new Benthamites have instilled a simple wish for nothing more than a clear set of instructions and evaluative rules. Learn, do, demonstrate. Wash, rinse repeat.
And this regime clearly has its roots in the Victorian era. Dickens parodied it in multiple ways, from Wackford Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby to Bradley Headstone in Our Mutual Friend. Indeed, it seems he had no more bitter foe than the soul-killing utilitarian "education" of his day. How sad, indeed, that his greatest fight has been almost forgotten -- and that we today are blindly marching into these same self-dug trenches. And, interestingly, we are here now considering these histories at an institution which began its existence in the very same year Hard Times was published -- 1854 --with a course of instruction for teachers quite similar to the one that the freshly-minted Mr. M'Choakumchild had completed (you can read the whole history of the Normal School, now RIC, here).
After reading Fiction vs. Nonfiction Smackdown by Jay Mathews, has reminded me of my schoolwork in high school. While I didn’t necessarily enjoy high school, I admit I had a good amount of fictional works I was assigned to read, I also was able to take a mythology class for English in my senior year. Yet I’m surprised to learn that the reading skills of a 17-year-old student hasn’t improved much since 1980 and that to try to fix that was to introduce The Common Core Standards. I did know about Common Core but that was more of a concern in mathematics in my high school, I wasn’t aware about its goals in English. How the amount of nonfiction works to read increased with each grade, “Eighth-grade reading should be about 55 percent nonfiction, going to a recommended 70 percent by 12th grade” (Mathews). Along with that, a sense of irony as Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas and Mark Bauerlein of Emory University state that this can hurt college readiness. “English teachers responsible for informational reading instruction, something they have not been trained for, and will not be trained for unless the entire undergraduate English major as well as preparatory programs in English education in education schools are changed” (Mathews). The transition from high school to college can academically affect a student as they are taught something in high school that English professors in college are not familiar with. That is not to say they are capable, rather the system that is Common Core is not fully well thought out it seems based on the article. Mathews also mentions Robert Pondiscio, a former fifth grade teacher and his views on Common Core Standards. “Pondiscio says he admires Bauerlein and Stotsky and doesn’t see why English classes have to carry the nonfiction weight. Social studies and science courses can do that” (Mathews). I agree, and that's how my classes were like in high school. English isn’t just about learning the language, it's about the stories and their messages it conveys for readers to interpret for their own. While nonfiction works to display facts that may be used in our life as a tool, fiction is entertaining and allows the reader to feel certain emotions about a moment or character in the story. It’s an art form a reminder that we are human and that we have emotions and we choose to convey them be it in writing, music, or art which is a skill that I believe is equally as important.
ReplyDeleteAbove is written by Agustin Custer. Apologies for forgetting to put my name once again.
DeleteI took this week’s content as a child who grew up as a “gifted reader” and has lost quite a bit of that through the years. As work loads piled up in schools, I found myself losing time to dive into the fantasy worlds that raised me. It is not as if I “outgrew” worlds of fiction as I grew older, more so that the American education system became so focused on content that it forgot to allow students to enjoy the actual act of learning.
ReplyDeleteAs a student in the educational field, it has been my personal finding that when most students exclaim “I hate school,” they are referencing the institution and not their natural curiosity. When schooling became about getting all students on the same page (no pun intended) instead of about nurturing the talents and abilities of our youth, there became a drop in the inclination to nurture organic study. If something was not useful to academia, for instance The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, it became a hobby instead of serious literature. We live in a society that is so motivated by gain that we forget to have hobbies that are purely for our personal enrichment rather than some sort of leg up in life’s competition.
For the record, I feel I learned just as much about dystopia from The Hunger Games as I did from reading The Giver or Brave New World. In a sense, it made the concepts easier to grasp as it was written for the new age to understand. Besides, let’s face it, the media pushing the Katniss/Peeta/Gale love triangle is exactly how the real world is with celebrity drama taking precedence over matters of importance.
I felt very similar to Rachel after going through this week's content.
ReplyDeleteEverything that does not have a specific focus on improving a resume or setting students up for the "real world" is seen as something to be thrown aside, not something to be celebrated and encouraged. I am someone who reads constantly, whether it be for school work (I am an English Ed major after all) or for pleasure-- but who has time for that nowadays? I know that I have struggled to read anything that was not directly related to my schoolwork lately because I simply do not have the time. Or, when I do, my brain does not want to focus on reading and understanding because I have been reading boring, monotone, uber-specific texts for hours and responding to them. I do not always seem to have the energy for these tasks, and I think that many others feel the same way.
It is interesting to see how the rigidness of education has been a problem for such a long period of time. Even in Dickens' work, he spoofs on what the public education system is like and what it actually gets (or does not get) our students. When Louisa and Thomas are caught looking at the circus, everyone around them is worried that they found an "idle" book or have seen someone with an idle mind (26). This fear of doing something without it having a true academic purpose, though a bit more relaxed, is still around today. Even on the first page of the novel, fiction and joy are condemned. The novel starts with "No, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life" (9). Even just the capitalization of the word "Facts" signifies the stress and importance that have been placed upon them, instead of "Usable Skills" or "Interests."
We were failing our students then, and they are still being failed now.
As I was reading this, I can only think about how education has developed to be nowadays, that is similar to how Dickens describes education then. Nowadays what is "important" in whoever's eyes who create the school curriculums, is what schools enforce in everyone's head. There is no sense of creativity, or freedom in what a student may want to study growing up. For example, when I was younger I loved drawing and making ceramic pots. But growing up, art became less and less prevalent in my life, due to other subjects being pushed upon me more. Art can even go as far to be considered "useless" in our society, as we can see some schools are trying to get rid of it and there are rarely jobs in the Art industry. We can see these in other areas such as music as well, and honestly anything on the creative side if you really think about it.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, thinking about how there are such limitations in present day society to the creative part of students, it really makes me want to include more creative work in my future students curriculum. Dickens piece really made me think about what may have been and is still missing in schools, and attempt to include that myself into my own teaching.
As someone that was previously a secondary education major, I’m familiar with the hot mess that is the public education system. The aggressive push for standardized testing in order to get funding for schools. Then when schools that desperately need funding do not do well, they don’t get the funding. The entirety of entering the teaching profession was a headache and a half, so I switched to purely English. While the No Child Left Behind Act had good intentions, putting it into practice did not have the intended outcome. For the students that need it don’t receive the benefits and the students that can use it abuse it. There was a student that I went to high school with that went to school a total of forty days throughout the four years of his high school career. Missing more than ninety days in a year usually means that a student would be held back. My classmate still graduated with us through the No Child Left Behind Act. At least, that’s what I was told.
ReplyDelete- Spock Nardone
This particular writing was very relatable as we can all agree that we don't connect with the educational systems in the US. Creativity within the children is overlooked and sometimes even minimized in order to fit everyone under the same agenda. I'm a science major so of course I enjoy reading non-fiction and anything that feeds my knowledge really. But I remember being in middle school super excited because it was book fair week at school and I could hand pick a book that I knew would feed my curious mind. Not every student is given the education they need because some need more attention than others but they're all standardized between the same testing techniques which I believe is what often discourages students from continuing an education because they don't see themselves as worthy.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I was younger being a book worm and reading fascinating books that intrigued my mind and made me more creative. I was spontaneous and fantasy was something that could be a reality to me. As I got older the load in school started becoming way too much of boring books that were assigned to me, that I didn’t have time to read books that interested me. Now, I have no love for reading and just do it cause I have to.
ReplyDeleteThe correlation Dickens' Hard Times between Fiction vs. Nonfiction Smackdown by Jay Mathews is uncanny as even though Hard Time is a work of fiction, there are so many elements of truth. There seems to be a loss of creativity in writing and a more rigid expectation of what a student may pursue as a career in our modern culture, and Hard Times shows how in the nineteenth-century England had a large display of industrialization that seemed to turn human beings into machines by suppressing the development of their minds. You cannot work in a capitalist society and be imaginative! And nothing has changed. Secondary school requires pupils to sit for 7 or 8 hours a day and obey and perform. Even in the “Rhode Island Normal School” you can see that everything is very stringent and the subjects are devoid of imagination, discussion, and passion.
ReplyDelete- Jessica Panichas