Diana Senechal, a middle-school drama and English as a Second Language teacher, wonders whether schools are going overboard on child-centered and brain-based learning, “glorifying the strategy at the expense of knowledge, and accommodating the individual student beyond reason.”
Some might argue that we are not ignoring curriculum, but rather tuning it to the individual. Why demand that an entire class read Antigone, when the individuals have different interests, levels, and needs? To these child-tuners I reply: How can we ignore two of the deepest human needs of all: to understand the world around us and to communicate with others? When I teach literature, music, or theatre to my students, I am often struck by the meanings they find and the bonds they form. Without common knowledge and common vocabulary, we are stranded and can only send out help signals.
The teacher, then, becomes the rescuer. Instead of conveying subject matter, she circulates from student to student, providing “strategies” for vague purposes. The “strategy” may be a tape recorder, checklist, behavior chart, mnemonic device, highlighting technique, stuffed animal, or soothing music. The teacher is now psychologist, maid, surrogate parent, and “guide on the side.” Students quickly figure out that teachers are supposed to serve them, and treat them accordingly. A teacher who actually teaches a specific book may be taken to task for not “differentiating” the instruction enough, or for making students read something they might not want to read. The teacher is supposed to turn her eyes away from the book and toward the child.
Teachers, what do you think?
I think she’s right. If you want to be waited on, go to a nice restaurant.
If you don’t read Antigone, you don’t get to understand things like this:
Tyrant Creon’s stern advice is:
“Do not bury Polynices!”
But Antigone, the brave,
Dared to dig her brother’s grave.
Alas, the gods who drive the hearse,
seldom shove it in reverse. . .
God forbid we should make students learn something they don’t want to learn. What most students want to learn (at least in high school) is how to succeed at the latest online role-playing game, and how to get busy with the opposite sex. Obviously we should be teaching that in class.
I guess I better unearth my copy of “Summerhill” and pretend I enjoy it.
I have developed some thoughts on child centered versus subject centered instruction at some length in another context. Here’s a link http://www.brianrude.com/indict-ed.htm. Search for “child centered” with ctr F.
wahoofive,
I bet if we taught “how to get busy with the opposite sex” in school, the way we teach everything else, all interest in the opposite sex would end. Remember the movie, The Meaning of Life?
I agree. And I think this is a problem that’s getting worse at all levels of education.
I also want to add that the problem with these beliefs about education extend beyond attitudes about teachers serving students.
These practices more importantly mean that there are no general competencies that can be assumed about a student who gets credit for a course and that we lose any benefit of cultural literacy and cohesion which might be the product of having studied and mastered the same content.
I also find it really strange that this rhetoric and mindset in flourishing in an era that is theoretically dominated by “standards” and “high stakes tests.” I had optimistically and naively expected less focus on individualization and more focus on proficiency and uniform measures of competency.
But no, the expectations for good teaching within the profession are all about “differentiation” and perhaps ironically, the training on the new(ish) curriculum in Georgia, the Georgia Performance Standards, which one might expect to address what the standard level of proficiency is and how to get students to meet it, instead taught teachers how to differentiate. So we get the rhetoric for the public about standards without actually having any standards. Nice one, colleges of education.
If that’s true, gbl3rd, maybe it’s worth a try.
I have to take exception that differentiation is providing strategies at the expense of knowledge. In learning one size does not fit all. In working with highly capable students, the biggest complaint my students have is the repetitive nature of school. It is clear that the predominant idea here is that differentiation is “cuting up” the curriculum. True differentiation is not. If a child has mastered a concept why must he or she have to endlessly prove and reprove mastery. Think of that kindergarten child who comes to school knowing how to read and may even be reading at a fourth or fifth grade level. That child being expected to “learn” his letters because that is what all kindergarteners do when he is clearly reading at an advance level is just ludicrous. However, this is not unusual. Why can’t the curriculum be differentiated for him. Most bright children are forced every day to sit through knowledge they have already mastered.
This let’s-all-be-on-the-same-page-at-the-same-time mentality is what is currently turning off large numbers of our students at both ends of the learning spectrum. I don’t believe that some educators have a clear understanding of what differentiation is. Too many have read Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and think that by throwing a kinesthetic-motor and a musical activity, that’s differentiation. That isn’t what differentiation is. It is accurately assessing a student’s skills and abilities and designing meaningful and appropriately leveled content to allow each student’s skills to deepen and broaden using a variety of strategies.
To dismiss differentiation as a waste of time shows a misunderstanding of what this viable way of delivering meaningful content is. I am no fan of fluff in education. Content must be rigorous and meaningful and to do that educators need to have at their disposal a wide variety of strategies,including REAL differentiation.
The problem with differentiation is that the word is teacher code for ignoring the bright kids. The idea that one teacher can effectively teach a classroom of 20 kids with a six or seven year spread in ability/achievement levels is ridiculous. Not to mention what happens when a few emotionally disturbed kids join the mix as well.
Schools use heterogenous classrooms as a way to minimize the amount of teaching that needs to be done. If they isolate the bright kids so that there are only one or two per classroom, the teacher can ignore them and has fewer children to deal with. If the bright kids are clustered in one classroom the teacher has to deal with them and deal with their pacing and instructional requirements. Either that or find a way to manage a bunch of bored, bright kids with time on their hands and co-conspirators.
The idea of “glorifying strategy at the expense knowledge” falls along this same line. If may be possible to demonstrate that a child has failed to increase their knowledge during the course of year. However, the educators can fall back on the line that they taught strategies to acquire knowledge.
NDC said “I also find it really strange that this rhetoric and mindset in flourishing in an era that is theoretically dominated by “standards” and “high stakes tests.” I had optimistically and naively expected less focus on individualization and more focus on proficiency and uniform measures of competency. ”
Perhaps this then is a knee-jerk reaction to standardized “no child left behind” testing. When seeing the flaws in NCLB, it is easy to swing in the opposite direction.
In response to Questor - the problem is that what you consider to be “real differentiation” is different than a hundred other people who try to say what “real differentiation” is. The other problem is that what you describe could maybe work in an elementary reading program but is not practical in a high school setting. As a science teacher with freshman, I can’t even answer one person’s private question or pass out some papers without several students starting up a conversation. If we do group work, more time is spent talking to friends than doing actual work. Can you imagine if I put everyone on a different pace with different set of criteria and goals? How could I manage their behavior and still accomplish the goals? Even more, how could I properly determine the level and needs of 120 students on a daily basis without many abusing the system and doing less than what they are capable of? Even worse, where I am working at, differentiation is the Band-Aid for having heterogeneous classes. To me, if I am going to properly differentiate at a high school level, the classes need to be closely homogeneous. Otherwise you have so many variables in student’s that it is impossible to have them all working on what they need to be working on without wasting time with poor behavior.
As Jane said, the ends of the spectrum get lost in this differentiation/heterogeneous attitude.
How true! “How can we ignore two of the deepest human needs of all: to understand the world around us and to communicate with others?”!!!!
Communication, itself, is such an important strategy for acquiring information. Now I question, “What’s wrong with strategies?” I agree the type of strategies that you have addressed thus far are the kind of “fluff” we want to avoid in preparing students for the world! But what about strategies for (life-long)learning like active listening, making connections and investigation. By investigation I mean inquiry that leads to furthering one’s own knowledge base.
Why do our children rely on us as information centers? At least this is the experience I have with elementary aged students. They ask, “How do you spell…?” - as if they had never been taught to use a dictionary. Or they ask “Is this the right answer?” - as if they have never been taught to revise their procedure and check it through another operation (primarily in math). Yes our children do need strategies for becoming independent from a teacher who is not always going to be there to tell them “it’s right” or “it’s wrong”!
At the same time our children need to learn more effective communication skills than, “I don’t get it,” or, “What do I have to do?” Communication starts with active listening which, as teachers we hardly do very well ourselves (I hope I’m wrong here!). Active listening is listening psychologically and responsively. It requires making connections, as does so much more in our global world. When I say connections I am talking about stimulus to self type connections, like we do in reading. Communication, along with trust, is the key to a functional team. As teachers we are not only part of a team, we lead a team, too!
Teams require a sense of shared purpose. Here is where we need “cultural cohesion” (well said NDC!). Cultrual possibly being learning, right?! Really, what is the purpose of the school? We know that a toddler shouldn’t miss out on that social opportunity! As adults, if we were to isolate ourselves, we’d become completely irrational. Afterall, it is communication with others that make our interpretations of knowledge, rational, right!!! So team work is an important aspect of learning (ie. discussion, investigation). As teachers, how can we be expected to teach more than simply the content knowledge that the grade level expects? Integrated with that we can teach strategies for furthering individual learning. Differentiation, like much of the learning process, cannot be achieved until we know ourselves and recognize what learning actually is.