In a brilliant article, posted on Valerie Strauss's The Answer Sheet, San Francisco State professor emeritus Mark Phillips shares the following anecdote:
"Edwin Abbott’s classic book, Flatland, tells the story of a square that falls into a world of three dimensions. Returning to his two-dimensional world, he tries to explain his incredible experience. But how do you explain a cube to someone who can only conceptualize two dimensions? Ultimately he’s branded a heretic and jailed."
This got me thinking about my own attempts at education reform. As I share with colleagues the results-only strategies I use, I'm often greeted with skepticism. Fortunately, I've yet to be branded a heretic, but some of the dissenters have recently become vocal. Still, it seems that many of today's teachers struggle with change.
As Phillips writes, "Most teachers and administrators, dealing with the daily challenges of teaching, don’t have the luxury of thinking beyond the present paradigm."
Some, however, simply don't know when it's time to put a square peg into a round hole.
It seems that I inadvertently upset a colleague. In fact, angered is a more appropriate word.
While the teacher was making students copy nightly homework into an agenda book (yawn), a frustrated student who also has me for a teacher, announced that "Mr. Barnes says homework has no value." Uh-oh.
Now, just to be clear, I do tell students when they ask why I don't assign homework that I don't see the value in it and that they'd be better off reading for pleasure. I always add that other teachers do what they believe is best, and the students should honor that.
My colleague responded with a rather pointed e-mail, suggesting that my philosophy was hurting the entire building.
My initial reaction was to reply with a cyber dart of my own, but I refrained. After further consideration, I decided that the word is finally getting out. Before today, I thought my colleagues weren't listening to my pleas for reason on homework and grades. This was the first signal that they are taking notice.
Hmm, I wonder what I can do next to anger the traditionalists.
An education blogger I read often, Joanne Jacobs, recently posted a link to a traditional teaching program, called DI (Direct Instruction), created by someone from the private sector.
Although I had heard of this, I only knew that it embraces everything I'm against in education: scripted lessons, rules, worksheets and tests, so I had previously dismissed it without further research. The eBook Jacobs linked to on her blog about DI confirmed my suspicions -- that DI is one more in a long line of traditional systems that provide crutches for bad teachers and turn students into mindless automatons.
I decided to share my opinion about DI in the comment section on the post; I was the first. A few days later, I returned to Jacobs' blog to find dozens of comments. I was not surprised by the opinions, most of which were directly opposite of mine. Some outraged fans of Direct Instruction thought I was crazy and defended DI and other oft-used weak practices, like lions fighting for their young.
I was not angered by the comments; after all, these people were only defending what they believe in.
Rather, I began considering how difficult it is going to be to overcome these outdated teaching methods, so we can reform American education. If programs like DI and other scripted, basal-type systems can so easily influence parents and educators, how will modern, more progressive teaching methods, like results-only learning, compete?
I wonder, are we losing the fight with traditional teaching?
