Ask Teachers How To Fix Schools
Teaching is a tough enough gig without a bunch of folks who have never trod a mile in a teacher’s moccasins telling us how to do it. But it happens.
A lot.
State boards of education, seldom revered as daring classroom innovators, are frequently suspected of being little more than practitioners of bureaucratic empire building. As in: If it’s Tuesday, it’s time to revise somebody’s course of study. Or: They’ve had six months to catch on to our last directive … time to change the wording.
If my mail is any indicator of the general consensus, teachers everywhere are disgruntled with the system that orders change for the sake of change, and generates mandates without funding. Like the high school Spanish teacher who writes: “Teachers of foreign languages are once again being asked to make sense of yet another version of the state-decreed competency model and incorporate it into our courses of study.
“Problem is, nowhere in this mound of verbiage (100-plus pages) does there appear mention of the words: grammar, memorize, learn, verb, conjugate, or study. Instead we have ‘awareness of culture’ and ‘insight into the nature of language’.
“And why is yet another version of currently popular politically correct double-think jargon being foisted upon us? Why a whole new set of education terms every five years? Is the state trying to impress someone?
“Why are we no longer allowed to use words like ‘teach’ and ‘learn’? Strangest of all, why have ‘students’ become ‘learners’ and ‘tests’ become ‘progress indicators’? And why has ‘socio-linguistic competency’ replaced ‘Hey, look, Ma! The kid can speak the language!’?
“I think we are doing American students a disservice if we dumb down the content of our teaching by competency testing ‘culture.’ Culture is a soft science, nebulous, warm, and fuzzy, and userfriendly. Nice to know, but it’s not going to get a student through conversation and composition 302 at the university.
“It certainly won’t help him one iota when Candide’s, Pangloss’s, or Pedro Crespo’s wonderful lines are plunked down in front of him to be read, understood, and discussed using all thirteen (Spanish) tenses correctly.
“And finally, I just know I’m not ever going to open up my 9th-grade Spanish class by having my students ‘interact in a variety of cultural events that reflect both peer-group and adult activities of the target culture using appropriate verbal and nonverbal language’ as directed by the state.
“Unless, maybe one day I’ll just saunter in, slouch down on my desk top and say, ‘Oye, hombre, no quiero ensenar hoy. Por que no practiquemos la siesta un poco?’ (Hey man, I don’t want to teach today. How about we practice the siesta a little?) Loud cheering.
“We need to put the horse back up in front of the cart again and pound, pound, and re-pound grammar and verbs so that then, and only then, students can do all of the warm and fuzzy performance objectives mandated by the state. Otherwise, after four years of teaching fluff, to the neglect of grammar, reading, conversing, and writing, we will more than ever be guaranteeing poor performance on grammar-dependent college placement tests.
“Or, is there somebody up there in the Capitol intent upon keeping Americans monolingual?
“My big question is, what do we do now? I suspect the really good teachers will do what they’ve always done; pay lip service to the state and go right on teaching what the kids really need to know in order to be able to read and speak the language.”
Senora, I’m with you.
When are the education gurus going to catch on? If it’s innovation they’re looking for, why not begin their search in the classrooms? Sit in for a few weeks and watch competent teachers strive to improve their product in spite of money shortages and an overabundance of windy directives from the state. Study them as they analyze and adjust their methods to generate the most “bang for the buck.”
And for pity sakes, as my dear old granny never said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
xxxx