An earlier version of this essay appeared in educational Horizons 81,2 (Winter 2003) pp. 64 - 66

What Works: yet some misgivings

by Wade A. Carpenter, Ph. D.
Berry College

See also, "What Works? ,,,Who really cares?"
this issue (educational HORIZONS 81,2)

RETURN
edited 2/13/18

Oh, my . . .What can I criticize? The ideas and practices in work. A serious problem, since my assignment for educational HORIZONS is to contradict—charitably—whatever is currently popular in education, to bash—gently—the theme of the issue, or to suggest — goodnaturedly — alternatives to what the good people who write in education journals recommend. But I saw very little in this issue to disagree with.

So let’s ask a second question: If there’s nothing in here that I object to, is there anything in this issue that scares me? Oh heck, yes, there is. . ..In fact, the scariest stuff I’ve ever read in the pages of this journal: teaching that works. Effective teaching has far more potential for serious harm than does ineffective teaching, if any of three dangers are not controlled. What if the material taught well is unworthy? What if we are teaching good stuff well to unwell kids? What if the teacher is a miseducator rather than an educator? Since the first two dangers are largely out of the control of the teachers, I’ll address them briefly, but devote most of my 1,600 words to the third.

The Material

Here we could go into a left-wing rant against the hidden curriculum imposed by the dirty rotten capitalists, and there is some truth in such charges, but that has already been done ad nauseum in social foundations-oriented journals. Or we could work up a good right-wing howl against fluffy, feelgood sentimentalism disguising itself as progressivism disguising itself as child-centered whole-child education, which we all know darned well it isn’t because no sane child in the world would voluntarily submit himself to any of it to begin with. Both diatribes could be worthwhile, but would be of little use if the teachers remained silent.

Whether politically based or not, teachers ought to say something when we see unworthy content, and ought to catch ourselves when we might be falling into it.

I see three areas in which teacher complaints can be effective:

1) Are we focusing on the trivial facts and giving short shrift to the major wisdoms? It is good to see increasing attention paid to wisdom in education literature, such as a recent article by esteemed psychologist Robert Sternberg in Education Week, but I also understand that sometimes kids have to know basic facts for the wisdom stuff to be coherent.1I think we can have both, if we don’t overemphasize the trivial.

2 & 3) Is the material true? Is the presentation harmful? Every now and then we’ll read articles by people like James Loewen about how inaccurate textbooks are,and heaven knows, I have seen enough tripe in them myself to last a lifetime.2

School boards and civil liberties lawyers often address texts that are alleged to undermine the faith and morals of the kiddie-winks, and happily, these problems can also be addressed by conscientious teacher committees. If untruths or seriously biased semitruths escape all these groups, there are also legitimate outlets to whom individual teachers may appeal: principals. Those individuals have enough headaches without having to deal with parent complaints about misleading or insulting material. Decent principals will thank teachers who inform them and request their advice about such matters. If your principal isn’t decent . . . well, that’s another problem, for another column.

Unwell Kids

I am concerned by recent surveys in which parents confess, at the rate of about 60 percent, to being poor raisers of children.3 I am willing to believe them;there are a lot of kids out there who are victims of diseased parenting,and we may justifiably worry about well-schooled Raskolnikovs. But it’s time teachers stopped trying to heal all the patients by ourselves. However, we can take on one kid,or a very few kids,at a time. For years, I’ve pointedly responded to sweet, idealistic freshmen whose essays talk about “If I can make a difference with just one kid ...” with “That’s great, but what about the other 149?” But maybe my freshmen’s naive assumptions are closer to right than my jaded experience. Teachers can’t raise the mass of our kids and when they try, they lose those kids they could successfully “adopt.”

The Teacher

We’ve known for millennia what works: one-on-one works. As so lyrically described by Leah Dean in her lovely article in this issue about the “stray-cat syndrome,” highly personalized,“adopta-kid” teaching works . . . if the teacher is an educator. The old discipleship model of teaching can reap wonderful dividends.4(As I type,I’m looking at yearbook pictures on my wall of some of the kids I’ve adopted over the years, and it is difficult not to get a lump in the throat — yes, dadgummit, I have reached that age!) Highly personalized teaching — “the sage on the stage” our progressive friends so love to bash — is not such a bad practice, and we should fear any “guide on the side” version of progressivism that would reduce the involvement of good teachers. But adopt-a-kid has its dangers, too. In the long run, I’m worried less about bad teaching by good people than I am about good teaching by bad people. Plato wrote damningly about those sins in Republic and Gorgias, and Jesus spoke even more damningly of those sinners in Mark 9:42. These dangers arise when the teacher is unwise, wrongly motivated, or too professional.

The Unwise

The “guide on the side” ideal has many merits, not the least of which is that it can protect children from highly involved idiots. Wisdom is difficult to build into young teachers. First, knowing when to give advice and when to remain silent are difficult enough. It’s true that the worst vice in the world can be advice. But remaining silent when a simple, verbal caution can prevent unnecessary and unhelpful foulups is, well, dumb. Intelligent, well-informed choices have to be made about just when to be a guide and when to be a sage. We all make mistakes, but teachers well prepared by professors with balance can achieve a good percentage of wise decisions. On the other hand, enthusiasts of either teacher-centered or child-centered education are unlikely to have a very good batting average. And it is increasingly unlikely that young teachers have had enough preparation in the wisdom of the ages or in the insights of the present. There are three current practices that can virtually guarantee a steady stream of unwise new teachers:

(1) Professional teacher preparation of the sort endorsed by NCATE and by most state departments of education.

Don’t get me wrong: there are some marvellous improvements by these organizations over earlier teacher preparation practices, but let’s face it—they are mostly superficial or bureaucratic. “Portfolios” filled with “artifacts” testifying to the “effectiveness” of the young teacher on particular activities with particular kids chosen to make their particular institutions look good, and credentialism-based certification practices that somehow allow “alternatively certified” uncredentialled people to bypass the whole damn process . . . this is not stuff of which wisdom is made.

(2) Considering as “highly qualified” people with abbreviated (if any) pedagogical preparation on the basis of an undergraduate degree in the field in which they are to teach. While we should be delighted that this may end the dreadful practice of out-of-field teaching, if there’s anything in this world likely to be an unreliable indicator of a future teacher’s success, it is a college degree, even with an appropriate major. Teachers need both good academic content and good pedagogy.

(3) Hiring people who haven’t had either the pedagogical or the academic preparation, but whose “life experience” in the business world somehow makes up for it. I cannot imagine any practice less likely to recruit the wise than opening the doors to those who have failed in the business world.

The wrongly motivated

The prima donna of whatever age who is teaching out of a need to fill some deficit in his own life — the need for attention, the need for praise, the need for love. I think here of the brilliant idiocy of Robin Williams in the film Dead Poets’ Society — the worst sort of prima donna-ism. I’ve seen it happen, with inevitably terrible results. This may be where teacher education is of the most use: keeping those who shouldn’t be teachers out of teaching. If there is one thing any student can and should learn in Intro, it is that you just don’t go into teaching to get your needs met. Have them met, or at least addressed, outside the classroom. Once the future teacher understands that, the rest of teacher ed can make sure that those who should go in are habituated into conscientious self-examination.

The excessively professional

Most of history’s greatest teachers — Socrates, St. Paul, and the sages of the Talmud, for instance — have known that teaching for a living is a very bad idea. It’s astonishing how we’ve gotten things messed up: we expect teachers to teach well for extrinsic rewards, and then we believe that somehow a hormone-happy sixteen-year-old ought to be intrinsically motivated to read the poetry of John Milton? It would be smarter for teachers to have a real job (one that pays real money) and teach a couple of hours per day because they have a calling. (I’m serious: just think of all the ways you could really educate if you weren’t dependent on the paycheck and therefore had to play along with the bureaucracy.) And it would be smarter to pay the kids for learning. “Okay, kid, this is your job: learn the stuff that the state and/or the professional associations and/or the textbook publishers think you should know, and we’ll pay you decently. Don’t, and you get fired.” Simple. Motivation problem solved. But we’ve got it all completely reversed, and it’s probably too late to go back now. And truly, in a knowledge-based capitalist society in which professionalism is considered the highest virtue, there are advantages to having professional teachers — unless they get too detached from the kids. No matter why he or she went into teaching, and no matter how skilled the teacher may be, someone who has settled into a rut because “it’s my job” will not adopt kids well. Wise teachers teaching good material to a few healthy kids will have good results,no matter how troubled the surrounding environment. With anything less, effective teaching can be a mighty fearsome thing.

Notes

1. Robert J. Sternberg. 2002, November 13. “Teaching for Wisdom in Our Schools.” Education Week 22 (11):56,42.

2. For example, James W. Loewen. 2001. “The Content Crisis in K–12 Social Studies and History Courses.” Educational Horizons 80 (1): 20–23.

3. Farkas, Steve. 2002. “A Lot Easier Said Than Done: Parents Talk about Raising Children in Today’s America.” <www.publicagenda.org>.

4. See Arthur G. Powell. 1996. Lessons from Privilege:The American Prep School Tradition.Cambridge: Harvard University Press; David V. Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1999.

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