This is the last post in the “Making Connections” series. After this, I will turn to other topics: P21 and advertising, the worship of change in education reform, and more.
In my second and third year of teaching, I started reading Diane Ravitch and E. D. Hirsch, Jr. I don’t know how I would have fared without their books. They made sense of the confusion I saw around me and showed me the way to other kindred thinkers. Thanks to Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform by Diane Ravitch–my favorite book on American education—I learned about the brilliant and delightful work of Michael John Demiashkevich (1891-1938) and found my way to his books. Demiashkevich was by no means opposed to progressive ideas, but he railed against excesses such as the obsession with “integrated learning,” an attempt to make all subjects revolve around a given theme. He relates the story of the “daffodil project” (An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, pp. 282-283):
A teacher relates that she organized the entire instruction in one of the grades around the daffodil project. She devoted her time, first, to the anatomy and physiology of the daffodil; next to the poetry about it; and finally, to dancing around the flower bed. The daffodil project was still on at the time we heard about it last. We do not know how much or how little the students have learned through it in terms of information and mental habits; this depends very largely on the ability and culture of the teacher, whom we do not have the pleasure of knowing personally. But we are wondering if the majority of the daffodil project students did not finish by hating the daffodil and waiting as for deliverance for “the clang of the school bell,” which some new educationists would do away with as the sinister symbol of the conventional school which “shatters valuable attitudes.”
Continue reading ‘Making Connections, Part 3: The Daffodil Project’
Nancy Flanagan, a long-time music teacher, hates American Idol.
What bothers me is that children watch American Idol, and children are now developing this idea that singing is something that should be attempted only by the “talented.†Some children now believe that judging singers is an amusing spectator activity, and making fun of imperfect singers is perfectly OK. Hilarious and justified, in fact: anyone who dares to sing in front of a camera deserves our scrutiny and scorn. None of this encourages children — or their families — to participate joyfully in group or individual singing. In the American Idol paradigm, singing is now reserved for those who have a “good†voice.
I am an imperfect singer who enjoys singing — in a group. For years I was the least talented member of a just-for-fun acappella group. I worked a bit harder than the others to keep up and even took a university extension class called “Singing in Tune for People Who Can’t Sing.” I do not sing solo.
“American Idol” reveals “a veritable hunger for realistic evaluation,” writes Christopher Ames on Chronicle of Higher Education.
Time and time again, contestants in the early episodes of this year’s season whine obviously off key and then insist they are highly talented — in spite of the judges’ protestations. Most of those kids have not learned how to sing, but they have mastered the self-esteem and “attitude” so valued in our culture. The persistent dynamic of these episodes is expertise putting down untalented braggadocio.
In a world full of people rating themselves highly, audiences seem to long for the enforcement of standards of taste and judgment.
“Idol” reflects a shared belief in genuine standards, writes Ames, a college provost and dean. There is such a thine as “in tune.” Expertise is respected. In addition, “the auditions reveal that individuals are often not good judges of their own ability.”
“American Idol” is motivating music students to polish singing skills, reports the Christian Science Monitor, writing about a class in Charlotte, N.C.
When Jane Waldrop’s fifth- and sixth-graders report for her mandatory music classes, they are rarely eager to volunteer for performances of any kind. Or, rather, they weren’t eager to perform before Ms. Waldrop turned her kids into believers by adding a dash of “American Idol” reality to the curriculum.
It seems the students at Clearview Elementary in Herndon, Va., just needed a bit of prodding, reality TV-style.
“We actually call it ‘American Idol’ and have kids come up and serve as judges and have others volunteer to sing,” Waldrop says. “They get up there and really ham it up. It makes them interested in music in a whole new way.”
Judging isn’t quite so caustic in the classroom, but the format does encourage students to perform, take criticism and practice to get better.
Lower the self-esteem of American teenagers, writes Kimberly Swygert on Number 2 Pencil. She saw the American Idol try-outs.
There were stadiums full of teenagers who waited in line for days for their chance to get on TV and in front of a group of tough judges, and the majority of them could. Not. SING. Many of them had no talent whatsoever, but they were not shy about barging into a room and warbling horribly in front of cameras. There were oodles of fascinating mental problems on display in those rooms last night, but low self-esteem wasn’t one of them. One young fellow sang like your maiden aunt crossed with a parrot; when he got booted, his granny stormed inside to confront Simon. Another young lassie cursed during her song – seriously, they had to bleep out a lot of the lyrics – and when she was dismissed, she told them they could kiss her white ass. The interviews with those who were rejected involved more bleeping of nasty words than your average episode of COPS.
She suggests that “Simon Cowell should be teaching at schools of education.”
Lisa Snell compares cutting ineffective education programs to bouncing contestants on American Idol.
Unfortunately, while Bush tries to play the role of brutally honest Simon Cowell – sending programs packing and sticking to his cuts – it is likely that Congress will be much more like Paula Abdul, saying kind words and keeping ineffective programs alive. True to form, the Senate recently added $5.4 billion in education spending to its budget.
Congress has a long history of continually funding questionable education programs. The 2005 appropriations bill contained over 1,200 education pork projects, according to the Heritage Foundation: $450,000 of taxpayer money for a Baseball Hall of Fame outreach program using baseball to teach students distance learning; $25,000 for the study of mariachi music; and $725,000 for the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, to name a few.
. . . A cable news channel recently ran an emotional story on plans to cut Even Start, a 15-year-old, $225 million federal literacy program for low-income families. Three separate evaluations have shown the program is not succeeding.
Federal funding is addictive for schools.
In a very funny New York Observer piece, Alexandra Wolfe argues that upper-middle-class American kids suffer from Too Much Positive Reinforcement. Mommy and Daddy lavish children with unearned praise, leaving young people out of touch with reality. You’re not special, after all.
After decades of upper-middle-class parenting designed to shield Junior from all possible failure, and from any honest judgement of his talents, it’s no wonder we need television shows like American Idol and its fellow showcase for TMPR victims, The Apprentice. These shows are delivering the spanking — sorry, the time-out — that our culture of bloated self-evaluation is subconsciously craving. Their success signals that we may be reaching the end of a long national delusion. There is simply not room enough at the top these days for everyone raised to believe they belong there — and, deep down, we all know it.
. . . We’ve become so inured to the idea that a person’s self-assessment need not be changed by a little thing like repeated and utter failure that no one was the least surprised when Joe Lieberman took so long to throw in the towel. Before New Hampshire, he said, “The people of New Hampshire put me in the ring, and that’s where we’re going to stay.” Jon Stewart on The Daily Show put it best: “When did our elections become the Special Olympics? You’re not all winners. Not everybody gets a hug. You guys got crushed.”
Wolfe focuses on wealthy Manhattanites — the parents who spend $5,000 to get their kid into a $26,000-a-year private school — but the problem of overly entitled children is much broader. Look at all the students who complain they have to pass a test of ninth grade reading and math skills to fulfill their college dreams.
Some day I’ll write a book titled Everything I Know About Parenting I Learned from Mick Jagger. You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.
Update: Students learn more from teachers who are tough graders than from easy graders, says an Education Next article on “The Gentleman’s A.”
Recent Comments