Proverbs and Quotations:
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Derek Bok
My Comment:
I received a book as part of my subscription to ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) that immediately grabbed my attention. The book, authored by Persida and William Himmele, is titled Why are We Still Doing That? The subtitle is: Positive Alternatives to Problematic Teaching Practices (2021, 129 pages). The back cover under the heading “Old Habits Die Hard” lists “16 common educational practices that can undermine student earning.”
Here are three malpractices from the list which concern me most:
Round robin reading
My comment: I rarely if ever used this practice. Yet this practice, as I experienced it in Sunday school, had a profound impact on my life. I was almost never prepared to answer Bible questions when I was part of the high school Sunday school class taught by Mr. Dean Sawdon and Mr. John Boyko at Highland Park Baptist Church in Highland Park, Michigan. As a result of continued embarrassment in front of all the other class members, I was motivated to start reading the New Testament in earnest in August of 1953. By November 7, 1953, I experienced the change that takes place as a result of doing such reading on a regular basis. I have written about what happened in detail each November 7 on this site (See the November archives for each year displayed on the right-hand side of each page on this site).
When I became a Sunday school teacher myself, I learned not to scare pupils away from attending my Sunday school class by employing “round robin” reading or teaching tactics. Instead, I opened the class to answer any questions my students had. When I did not immediately know the answer to a student question, I promised to bring an answer the next Sunday, and I studied the subject of the question so I could do that. I built quite a library as I bought books which provided answers to my student questions.
I vividly remember inviting a potential student to my Sunday school class. She frankly said she was scared to attend any Sunday school class because she might be asked to read aloud from the Bible and she was ashamed of her poor reading skill. I assured her I would never call on her or any other student to read aloud that did not want to. If I recall correctly, I bought her a hard cover New Testament in easy English so she could read it without difficulty for herself. The edition I shared with her is titled The New Life Testament, translated by Gleason H. Ledyard, Word Books, Publisher, Waco, Texas, 1970 (627 pages). This translation uses 850 English words, short sentences, short paragraphs, good size readable print and helpful headings to make reading and reading comprehension easier when reading the New Testament.
Content breadth over depth
When I was teaching English 6, an eleventh grade course titled Early American Literature, I was told not to spend too much time on colonial literature. I determined to do otherwise and cover it as extensively and intensively as I could. This was a long time ago, in the mid 1960s. I am still in touch with two of my students from that time, both of whom later let me know the impact in their lives of studying Early American Literature.
When I taught American history in the 1980s I was told not to spend much time covering the Colonial Period. Once again, I deviated from the suggested procedures and spent more time teaching about the founding of this country and stressed that the United States of America is NOT a democracy, but a Federal Republic, and that the founders of this nation were absolutely against a democracy. I taught the importance of the Electoral College, and how it must be kept in place in order to permit less populated states to have a voice in laws and policies that affect them. Otherwise, two or three most populous states would have full control of the legislative process and the laws Congress might pass. I stressed that truth cannot be determined by a majority vote.
Adhering to rigid pacing guides
Near the end of my teaching career the administration in the field of Language Arts (what used to be called, and more sensibly, the English Department) told us we were being issued what they called our “new Bible.”
Our “new Bible” was a mandatory pacing guide for every course that specified exactly what page of the course textbook we were to teach from over the course of the semester. Our lesson plans must exactly reflect what was specified for each day as given in the pacing chart for the course. Our Department Head and our district supervisors were to visit our classes unannounced to be sure we were teaching on any given day what our lesson plans and the pacing chart specified. The reason given for adopting such a procedure was to enable students who moved from one region of the large district (Detroit Public Schools) to another Detroit region to continue each class at the same point where they left off in their previous school.
That may sound good to school administrators who might not know any better. To those who went to college and actually learned something about how to teach, such a practice of mandating what page of classroom text must be studied each day of the school year is a very horrible and backward idea.
Any parent who has been blessed with two or more children knows that no two children, even in the same family, are alike in terms of when each child is ready to learn a skill like reading.
Any teacher who has paid attention to the progress of two different classes of students taking the same course at different hours of the school day the same semester knows that no two classes are ever the same in their rate of progress.
Every teacher ought to be aware that no two students learn and progress at exactly the same rate or speed or depth. To be most effective as a teacher, a teacher must be prepared to meet the learning needs of each student starting with where the student is in academic achievement and building from there. When teachers are enabled to teach effectively, and the students learn effectively, the end result is that by the end of the semester or course, students are less alike in their achievement than when the class instruction started, for some students, when they are allowed to do so, will learn far more than other students in the same class. That is a good thing, not bad. As teachers we ought to encourage individual differences by encouraging each student to progress as far as possible. This is the opposite of trying to ensure all students end up the same.
Pacing charts take away the opportunity for teachers to meet individual differences in ability and interest that every class always presents and therefore fails to take the learning needs and interests of each student into account. This limits student growth, and leaves every student behind from what they could have achieved if teachers were allowed to use their expertise and discretion effectively.