A Philosophy of Education IV (The Roles of Students and Teachers in the Classroom)

What is the place of students? What is the role of teachers? The questions are reciprocal in the sense that you must have students in order to be a teacher.

Students should be active participants in the learning process. I believe in cooperative learning, in a process where students learn together. And I believe in participatory learning. Education, especially in the early grades, is not about knowledge - facts and figures, dates and names. It is about skills. Students learn the three R's mostly through exercising, practicing particular skills. You don't tell someone how to read. You introduce them to the process and allow them to practice it in ways that build strength in it.

Teachers should be expert guides, not bosses or masters. The rigidity of the relationship and the formality of the two roles, student and teacher, will vary from subject area to subject area and from grade to grade. The idea that we can make generalizations about kindergarten classroom relationships that will still hold true in the tenth grade is probably a naive desire to oversimplify theory and philosophy.

If I must generalize about teaching situations in a subjunctive mode, I'd prefer a student-centered classroom where the teacher aids in the discovery process (not in construction of "reality," since reality is already here and is pretty real without the help of my students) and where the teacher acts as a coach in the development of skills. I'd prefer a classroom where the students felt as few restrictions as possible within the requirements of the learning process. And I'd prefer a classroom where learning, not teaching, was the central focus.

The higher the student-teacher ratio, the less like this a classroom becomes. And in my mind the single biggest factor in the quality of education and the success of the educational process is the most expensive factor - personnel. We can tinker with curriculum. We can alter pedagogy. We can think of new ways to measure success (and accountability). We can require that the one teacher we have (in a room where two are needed) be better trained. But the solution that is most likely to work is the solution that no one wants to pay for: more teachers per school.

A Philosophy of Education III (What and How Should We Teach?)

Three basic educational approaches competed in the second half of the 20th century to shape our views on WHAT we should teach and HOW we should teach it...

Those approaches were:

• Perennialism - a teacher-centered philosophy that focuses on "great books" with the hope of impart the culture's enduring themes to students through literature. The goal is to develop the ability for rational thought in students.
  

• Essentialism - a teacher-centered, back-to-basics approach to education that stresses the three R's and emphasizes the remembering of facts.
  

• Progressivism - a student-centered philosophy that attempts to interact with the real-world concerns and experiences of students. Classrooms are more democratic and learning is more participatory and experimental than in either Essentialism or Perennialism.

Most teachers tend to be eclectic - they draw from more than one of these approaches. And I fall into that same category; I'm an eclectic, I suppose.

Adjectives serve as better answers than do nouns in describing what the curriculum of education should be like. The content of the curriculum should be flexible, responsive to the changes of society. The content of the curriculum should be sympathetic to the values and limitations of the students and their families. My own experience leads me to believe that every life is richer if the individual has read Kafka and Steinbeck, Aeschylus and Blake, Camus and Hemmingway. But I view the Great Books approach to education today as more of a misguided effort to preserve a cultural timeframe than anything else - to halt (or at least slow) cultural change.

I believe that reading (and literacy) is essential; it is the medium of later instruction. To the extent that an emphasis on basic skills has become exclusive, to the extent that a concern with math and language skills has crowded out music and the arts, the emphasis on basic skills and standards based curriculums has become a destructive force. But kids who show up at school should learn to read. As much as I hate to agree with George W. Bush about anything, they should learn to read early. They should learn to do math and be exposed to all its various and joyful forms. They should be introduced to the various formal genres of language - to poetry and letter writing, the short story and the novel. When Piaget allows, they should be introduced to epistemology and taught to ask "but how do I know that." Of course, they should be given an understanding in social studies classes of how our society works (civics) and why (history). And there is science. But none of these core classes should be allowed to displace completely the arts. And an understanding of the importance of the role of creativity in fields like math and grammar needs to be maintained...

A Philosophy of Education (Why do we have schools, anyway...?)

Summer is a good time to think about WHY we do what we do. Whether you're a teacher of a parent, time off gives us all time to reflect...

A philosophy of education should include discussion of several basic components. Central issues should include the purpose of education, the nature of the curriculum, the place of students, and the role of teachers.

Education in America has no purpose - at least no one, singular, canonical purpose. The purposes of education are multiple and interwoven. Those purposes change with age, environment, and the peculiarities of individual students so that even within a specific classroom the primary purpose of schooling for this child may be one thing and the primary purpose for that child may be yet another. In the case of any given child, the parents' purposes for sending the child to school may differ significantly from the purposes of the educational agency requiring the child's presence. And in as much as the provision of educational services is a joint venture that usually involves at least three different government agencies (a local city or county, a state, and the federal government) the purposes of the various agencies taking part in this partnership may vary significantly, or even be at odds.

For all parties involved, the purposes of education change significantly with time. Kindergarten has a unique set of priorities for everyone engaged in the educational process. The nature of those priorities change significantly by middle school, are additionally altered in high school, and are further renovated in the college setting.

I am not avoiding the question. I am simply acknowledging its complexity - and the ambiguity of the semantics involved. "What is the purpose of education?" The answer depends on who you are, and on whether you're providing it or receiving it. And that is what the answer should depend upon. Because somewhere high on the list of the many and various purposes education serves in our society, the preservation of pluralism, the equipping of those who are somehow different in our society to maintain their membership in it nonetheless, holds a now prominent (and hopefully permanent) spot.

My view of the purpose of education (now, at the age of 47, with three degrees and 100 some odd graduate hours already under my belt) is mercenary: I continue to participate in education as a student for economic reasons. I'm paying through the nose for out-of-state tuition because doing so keeps me my job. That's not very philosophical; nor is it a complete picture. I have three degrees and 100+ graduate hours because I like going to school. And if I came into some large and unexpected inheritance this week (or won the lottery), my new financial security would probably only result in a change of major, not in a change in my status as a student. In the meantime, I am compelled to pursue professional development goals; I would prefer to have the time and resources to use education as tool in the hunt for self-actualization.

If the question were put, though, to me with the idea of determining why I want my children (ages both now adults) to continue as students in some educational setting my answer would be somewhat different. I see college (preferably at a liberal arts-oriented institution) as the logical place in our society for them to obtain skills (some cognitive, some technical) that will improve significantly their vocational prospects and the general quality of their lives (by which I mean their ability to understand the news and appreciate Steinbeck).

In both of these cases my answer to the question differs significantly from my answer when the question is rephrased more abstractly, more globally. If the question is phrased in such a way as to ask why I think that educational services (schooling) should be provided universally in my society at my expense (through tax dollars), I'd say that I am not particularly concerned with my next door neighbor's self-actualization. And while I think in terms of maximizing benefits from education for my own children, I understand that not everyone shares my values in this regard. Instead, I would say that school should be a universally available service in our society and that participation in it should be mandatory because it provides a huge number of safeguards (for lack of a better term) within our society.

Student Writing: How Do You Make A Sandwich?

Originally published at Suite101

How do you make a sandwich? It seems like a simple question - unless you have to write about it and you have a learning disability. Writing can become a daunting task if you have a disability.

I like writing. (I know you'd never have guessed that.) And I don't think of writing as hard. But for many of my students -- this year and in the past, special education or college juniors -- writing is a monster task. Why? "I can't THINK of anything, Mr. Cruey!"

Thinking: it seems to intimidate half the world. No one wants to do it.

I'm not talking about the profound and philosophical. I'm talking about the "why do you like your dog" or the "describe your favorite food" sorts of thinking. Writer's block sweeps the room like cholera....

My kids think I'm, well, different. Sometimes I lose my sense of decorum in the teaching process. Sometimes I stand on a chair when I read. Or yell "YES!" at the top of my voice when someone gets an answer right. The other teachers have reading blocks. My room is the "Church of Reading" and we have services. I think it was the Irish poet W.B. Yeats that said, "Education is not the filling of a pail, it is the lighting of a fire." But, I digress.

We've talked a lot about a writing prompt in the past few weeks and I've given it once. But I will probably give it to my students again in the near future and see if we can't come up with better ideas. The prompt is simple and concrete. It asks students to write an essay on the question, "HOW DO YOU MAKE A SANDWICH?"

When I gave it the first time everyone stared at me. One of the brave ones said something like, "You know, Mr. Cruey, You (like) MAKE IT." I explained how I wanted more than that....

We discussed the importance of bread. I introduced my students to vocabulary some of them had never heard before. Words like, "Sourdough" and "Pumpernickel." We talked about the difficult choices that had to be made in regards to cheese on a good sandwich - Swiss, cheddar, provolone or sliced munster. (Several said they liked the cheese "with the holes in it.") We examined the pros and cons of vegetable matter (tomatoes, lettuce, onion, etc.) and the value of various condiments (spicy brown mustard, wasabi mayonnaise). We came up with a list of the 42 or so most likely meats to put on a sandwich (bologna, ham, turkey, chicken, salami, left over meatloaf, corn beef, etc.) And we discussed preparation - whether to grill or to toast or to serve cold.

We discussed it with enthusiasm. And, like I said, my kids think I'm, well, different.

The West Virginia Fourth Grade Writing Rubric is fairly demanding. But IDEAS are three-fourths of the challenge. And my kids have ideas (although sometimes they don't know it). The task is getting them to find those ideas and articulate them...

I Love Phonemes...

It’s the place where linguistics most clearly intersects with education: the phoneme. Yet most people aren’t even aware of it, can’t tell you what it is. That’s understandable; professionals argue over the precise definition…

More than anything else, a phoneme is an idea. It is a psychological unit inside your head. If you speak English you probably have about 50 of them. Maybe 48, maybe 53 or 54. It depends on where you grew up, on whether you speak the English of Billy Graham (the rural, lowland dialect of the southeast United States), or the New England English of Ted Kennedy, or the English of Paul Hogan (“Crocodile Dundee”).

A phoneme is an idea that people have in their head about how to organize different sounds together into meaningful groups of sounds that we can give a name to. Probably when I say “sounds” you think of names for groups of sounds you already have in your head and you ask yourself something like, “you mean like M and N, or like L and R?” The answer is no, that’s not what I mean.

What I mean is that a phoneme is an idea about how to group all the sounds together that you call “L” – different sounds that together make up “L” in your mind. Most people look at you when you say that and their response is something like, “What do you mean? L is L.” And I have to say, “Not really.”

Think about it for a moment. When you say “like” you take the tip of your tongue and press it fairly hard against the back of your two top front teeth and you spread your tongue out like it was a hammock inside your mouth. When you say “full” your tongue may not touch your front teeth at all; instead of spreading it out, you bunch it up in a ball in the back of your mouth and maybe the tip of it rests gently on the bony ridge you have behind your top teeth. You make a different sound at the beginning of “like” than at the end of “pull,” but you call both of them “L” if you speak English, because English speakers group them together as one phoneme.

Doesn’t everybody do that? No. In Russian those two sounds each get their own letters. You can put the “L” in “pull” at the beginning of Russian words and the “L” in “like” at the end of Russian words.

The phoneme is why when you say “wanna” other people hear “want to” and why when you say “fry-n chicken” other people hear “frying chicken.”

And if your kindergarten teacher doesn’t manage to make you aware of the phonemes in your head, you’re mostly just confused when you look at letters. And reading becomes a difficult task indeed!

I’m sure we’ll talk more about the phoneme…

The Future of Cursive

(Note: I am a member of the International Reading Association - the IRA. Throughout this blog you will find the ideas of professionals from the IRA's listserv interspersed in maroon in the text. Please also take a moment to take my poll on this topic.)

I am a sick man. Well, maybe not as sick as the Underground Man in Dostoevsky's book. But my handwriting is pretty sick. Bad things happen when I write in cursive...



There are reasons for it, I suppose.

My problem with "demanding cursive"
from children is precisely that it
is a demand. We put enough hurdles along the
course already. Several are unnecessary, although
rather high. - Hugo Kerr, From
the International Reading Association's Listserv

I like to give out the excuse that all of my fingers have been broken, many of them twice (which is true). But I was 14 or so when I broke them all the first time at a roller rink (my hands got run over by someone much bigger than me), and I think my penmanship was pretty awful already then. Probably it's my mother's fault; she should have beaten me for bringing home "D's" in penmanship in elementary school and, probably, I would have done better...

To be honest
I think cursive doesn't really
serve a purpose except for signing
things.... Everything we read that is
published is in regular print
so why do we demand students
write in cursive? - Kate Rose, From
the International Reading Association's Listserv

---

Cursive has an interesting history in English. The Brits, I believe, call it "joined up writing." The word "cursive" is used for a flowing script style in a number of languages - not all of which use Roman letters.

When William Bradford penned the Mayflower Compact in 1620, most of his letters were disconnected. But they did look much like our current lettering.



Some one hundred and fifty years later, Thomas Jefferson's hand written rough draft of the Declaration of Independence showed most words as connected in a single flowing line. The signature of John Hancock still had a few breaks between letters within it.

President Lincoln's handwriting looked little different than cursive script does today.

In the 1960's a handful of academic publishers (like Zaner-Bloser and D'Nealian) made efforts to codify and simplify cursive. The effect was probably the opposite of what was intended; competing handwriting curriculums resulted in greater variation in handwriting in America.

That, so far, is a summary of Wikipedia's page on cursive. And if this were an academic article (instead of my personal blog) I'd feel compelled to cite them as a source.

It is much easier for me to
write in cursive. I work with dyslexic children. Some
do much better with cursive; others need
to print. Thankfully, my tool
is now a computer and find that with this
population computers work best. - Diann LaRosa, From
the International Reading Association's Listserv

The thing I found most interesting was the changing nature of cursive, the very fact that our style and manner of writing has progressed and changed over time. The question, of course, is one of whether the time has come for more profound change.

---

If handwriting were intended as an art form that our culture really valued for its aesthetics, I'd be more supportive of it. Writing is an art form; but the art is literary, not visual. The art resides in the smithing of phrases and the choice of verbs and adjectives from a metaphorical palate that includes a rage of colors allowing for phrases ranging from pastel understatements like "his physical appearance lacked a certain degree of appeal" to full color hyperboles like "Bob owned hound dogs that were more handsome than he was." Certainly the lines must be legible to be meaningful; but as long as they are legible, it matters little whether they are written laboriously in fountain penned calligraphy or typed in MS Word in Edwardian Script ITC font. Both can be perfumed if inked on the right paper...

How much do we use cursive in the real
world. I for one combine printing and cursive
with a pattern long established but one I'm not
sure others could pick up on. - Cathy P. Miller, From
the International Reading Association's Listserv

In March of 2004 the American Federal of Teachers published an article entitled Is teaching cursive writing a waste of time?. Two teachers face off on the issue. The first argues that cursive no longer serves a purpose and should go the way of eight track tapes. The second says we will always need handwriting (but fails to explain why we can't just print) and that children need to learn to write cursive because they need to be able to read cursive. Her argument deteriorates into the aesthetic value of cursive (I don't think society places that much value on the aesthetics of actual writing anymore, though it places great value on layout and graphic design). And her concluding punch is that kids who can write well in cursive make her job easier because she can read their papers. I thought, "have the type or print them..."


I haven't used cursive since
high school, and I have been out for over 20
years now. I went back to print writing in
my junior year of high
school... Cursive should become like calligraphy,
a nice extra. - Karyn Zmuda, From
the International Reading Association's Listserv

CBS News has a rather dour story archived online from 2003. Penmanship: A Dying Art? almost bemoans the demise of penmanship and at times seems to belittle communication by email. That's as good a sign as any I'd say that penmanship really is a dying art.

I would agree that we, as adults, rarely
use cursive anymore. Most of us tend
to print. It does need to be taught however. There
are many things that are
written in cursive, past and present. With
the many fonts to choose from on the computer
as well, it is important for everyone to be able to
read and write in
cursive. - Heidi Strander, From
the International Reading Association's Listserv

I suppose the thing that bothers me the most in all of this is that the discussion seems to be confined to the way we write - that is to say, to the way we move our hands when we put pen to paper. I don't think that is the real issue. While I agree that a handwritten note is more sentimental, I think that computers have made it easier to preserve our thought (and the words that go with them). In the information age, the percentage of our writing that has some personal sentiment attached to it (the kind that requires lavender colored stationary with little flowers on the edge) has declined considerably.

I guess I'm in a minority. I learned
to write both ways, but prefer to
write in cursive. I can write faster that way, and it
seems like I make fewer mistakes. Logically, it seems
like cursive would be faster since the
letters flow together. - Priscilla Boersma, From
the International Reading Association's Listserv

The keyboard has changed the way I think. It has made my ideas more malleable. It has made writing a greater part of the process of developing my thoughts. With a pen in my hand and paper before me I write the beginning first, the middle second, and the end last. I begin with an outline of my thoughts and resist the urge to rearrange my ideas because that means starting over, with a fresh leaf of paper. But after years of working on a keyboard I often write the middle first and the beginning last, rearranging my thoughts repeatedly as I go. Paragraph four may actually end up as paragraph two; and when I'm done I can change then beginning or the end without starting over.

I'm old enough to remember
THE DAYS BEFORE COMPUTERS. We had to write
our papers in script, because that was the
professional, adult thing to do. A few
of us took typing lessons, but it wasn't required
in high school. That changed in college,
of course. So: maybe the schools need to keep up
with the times. Computers are
here to stay! - Beth Forrester, From
the International Reading Association's Listserv

If the truth becomes clearer as I dwell on it, I can change what I'm saying before I publish it. That may not be impossible with a Bic, but it can be taxing. The keyboard has taken me from being a deductive writer (who starts with an unwavering conclusion to express) to being an inductive writer who uses the process of writing to manipulate his ideas and find his conclusions.

Does the keyboard change the way my students think? Definitely. Incredibly. Is that good? I suppose that depends on the user. Students have to decide whether the keyboard helps them do more or helps them be lazy. Teachers have to identify cognitive skills that handwriting promoted (like thinking ahead) and find ways to promote those skills without the need to have a pencil in the student's hand.

Whether it's good or bad, the keyboard is here and it is not going away...