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Sunday, October 29, 2006
Awe and Wonder -- Part 1 Awe - n. - A mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might: We felt awe when contemplating the works of Bach. The observers were in awe of the destructive power of the new weapon. won_der [wuhn-der] – n. – The emotion excited by what is strange and surprising; a feeling of surprised or puzzled interest, sometimes tinged with admiration: He felt wonder at seeing the Grand Canyon. -- Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Something is sorely lacking in American culture today, and has all but vanished in the church. It is a sense of awe. As a high school teacher, I see it every day in the glazed-over look in the eyes of teenagers. They glisten like the hair of a politician or televangelist. They sit lifeless in their chairs, living out Thoreau’s quote about quiet desperation. Quiet because they either don’t want to be noticed, or they don’t have much to say because they don’t think much of anything anymore, or because talking isn’t part of the routine. Desperate because, with the utterance of a word, their teacher can ruin their afternoon, their weekend, their month by causing them to forfeit their plans of soaking in all the distractions an information-age culture has to offer them. This is why teachers are the enemy. They might have students channel that ability to ride the waves of the oft-cited superhighway for ends other than entertainment, which is the only thing that carries their interest anymore. These are the children that grow up never having satisfied a primal urge all humans have: to be a part of something that is bigger than their own selves. How can they? They don’t even know who they are. There is nothing anymore that seems to inspire in us a sense of this mixed emotion we call awe. Some have wondered if we’re capable of any true emotion at all anymore. I believe all of this to be one of the greatest tragedies of our time. In this we are not only losing something that is distinctly human, and, thus, a key element to our identity, but we are also losing a part of our make-up that provides a direct path to God. Consider what one biographer of Martin Luther says. Roland Bainton, author of Here I Stand, characterizes Martin Luther’s ideas on the subject this way: “The deficiency of faith is made evident by a lack of wonder, for nature is a revelation only to those to whom God has already been revealed.” He quotes Luther as saying, “If thou couldst understand a single grain of wheat, thou wouldst die for wonder.” We, on the other hand, have taken to behold the truly wondrous “like a cow staring at a new door.” I fear something terrible has happened. Sunday, October 22, 2006
The End of Education As I've said before, I believe institutional education to be in serious jeopardy in America. Part of this I believe is process... HOW we approach education is destroying it, because our approach is so antithetical to what the goals of education should be. But herein lies the other problem. What is the goal, or end, of education? The Greeks believed that education had a moral element to it. Part of this stemmed from the Ancient Greek preoccupation with reason. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle propounds the idea that a virtue, in essence, is a characteristic that allows a certain object or entity to better perform its function or purpose. Aristotle also believed that reason was a characteristic unique to humans, and, in fact, was the primary distinguishing characteristic between humans and animals. It makes sense, then, that education would be of utmost importance. Education helps us be more reasonable, and, thus, to be better people, at the same time enhancing whatever other virtuous traits we have. Whatever you believe about the Greek fetish with reason, I find their purpose for education to be far more noble than what our current society sees as being the goal for education. I've had this conversation in my classes before. I know Jimmy has, as well. They go something like this: Me: "So, if you guys hate this so much, then why are you here?" At this point, there is usually a long, engaged discussion about personal choices. They see themselves as being FORCED to be in school. I try to point out to them that no one FORCES them to be in school. They simply see it as being more desireable than the alternatives. If they left, and were under a certain age, they could get in trouble with the authorities. Those that are old enough to avoid this would get in trouble with their folks. But this doesn't take away from the fact that, every day, students DO choose to drop out and do something else, and that, for whatever reason, the students I'm talking with have chosen NOT to do this. Those that understand this eventually move on to the following portion of the discussion. Student: "We're here because we need to get an education." Me: "But why?" Student: "Because we need to get good grades so we can get into a good college." Me: "Why does it matter that you get into a good college." Student: "Because I want to eventually have a good job." (Mind you that, every response that is given is made with the tone of "Duh, you idiot... everyone knows this. Why are you asking me such obvious questions?") Me: "Why do you need a good job?" Student: "So we can make enough money to be comfortable." I have this conversation about once a year. Frankly, I'm being nice by putting the word "comfortable" there at the end, because, in actuality, few students use that word. Most of them say what many think but are mature enough to not allow to escape their lips. They say they need that money to be happy. A few understand what they've just said as the words leave their mouths. This is what we've trained students to believe is the goal of education: The Almighty Dollar. Parents reinforce this idea a lot. I remember my own telling me how many more thousands of dollars a year every "A" translates into once you're finally in the job market (And, given what I'm making now, you'd never know that I had higher than an A+ average in high school, a 3.98 gpa in my undergrad work, and graduated with a 4.0 when I got my master's degree. I COULD have sailed through with a "C" average). But, as with most things, it isn't just parents. It's our whole system. It's no secret that schools hold up as a sign of prestige how much scholarship money has been offered to students who are graduating from their institution. So not only can studying hard translate to bigger bucks when you get out of college, SAVING money is the best known reason for maintaining grades in high school. But it runs even deeper than this. Remember how I said in my previous post how many school districts are cutting funds to their social studies programs, or relying on the most disinterested of faculty members to teach those classes? At the same time, math and science programs enjoy across the board increases in their funding, along with a greater emphasis paid to it by everyone from high school counselors to producers of "educational television"? It's because conventional wisdom is telling us (through all the talking heads and pundits that the job market is screaming for more engineers and computer programmers and the like, and we'd better provide them, or gloomy things await us in the future. So what do we do? Like lemmings, we give this "job market" exactly what its experts say it is demanding. Aristotle would be spinning. As a Christian, I believe that education must be tied to a desire to pursue a knowledge of our creator, a knowledge of ourselves, and an understanding of how those two things are related to each other. You don't educate kids to prepare them for the "job market". You educate kids because it is the perfect time to instill in them a sense of identity, guide them toward wisdom, and teach them that life should be embraced experientially and intellectually (to be honest, I'd settle for having them do the former, and I know plenty of people who, while they don't bury themselves in books, revel in taking life in. Unfortunately, most of the kids I work with do neither). I know it sounds like I've become a disciple of Neil Postman. I swear it isn't so (yet). I've only read one of his books. But another book of his I plan on reading is called The End of Education. In it, he claims that the mythological stories, the ones that most societies have used to pass down a sense of identity and a moral foundation to its kids, is sorely lacking in our educational system. We misrepresent what we give them as being "pure, unadulterated facts" and encourage them NOT to think about it in the methods we use (if you'd like a horror story or two about this very thing, just ask. Remember, I teach at what is considered an "upper crust" school). I couldn't agree more. The only thing that we have given them to chase is a life of comfort. In my mind, it's no wonder that our kids don't see any purpose behind our educational system, and that only those who are truly internally motivated or those who have developed a healthy respect for "following the rules" really seem to be driven in our nation's schools. It's also no wonder that schools in just about every other developed country in the world kick our tail. Maybe I'm too much of an idealist, but I firmly believe that if you give a kid a good understanding of how the world works, and how he or she fits into it, as well as the skills to be able to find, process, and use information, that by the time they're eighteen, they will be capable of mastering anything that a college or employer will throw at them, and have a healthier self-image and sense of proportion to boot. Sunday, October 08, 2006
Education Rant I apologize for the length of this rant in advance. I'd also like to offer the caveat that I occasionally speak in generalizations. Understand that, when I speak about "the way schools/teachers/students are" that I understand that there are exceptions to these rules, but I believe that what I describe is still the rule. I attended my ten year class reunion at my alma mater this weekend. It was fun, and I got to see some people that I haven't seen since I graduated. So many of us have kids now. I'm an educator. Inevitably, the conversation in the group of us turned to the subject. I am of the opinion that our educational system is horribly, horribly broken. It ceased to educate our children many years ago and began "schooling" them. For those that haven't read Ivan Illich's incredibly prophetic and eye-opening book Deschooling Society, I highly recommend it. There are major issues when you institutionalize something as value-oriented as education. Process becomes confused with product ("I have been through twelve years of schooling, therefore, I am educated. You have not, so you aren't."). By creating a "cookie cutter" approach to education, systematizing it, streamlining it, etc., you end up treating kids like cows with a "one-size-fits-all" mentality toward learning (then gripe because your kid's teacher doesn't accomodate the fifty different learning styles in their classroom during their fifty-minute period). Most damaging of all is the process of gradually making education completely irrelevant to real life. Ask any 50 kids of high school age why they are in school. Without even having to do the science, I guarantee you that somewhere between 60 and 80 percent will tell you the only reason why high school is necessary is to get into college. Other than that, it's a waste. Eventually the conversation turned to "No Child Left Behind." I find it a terrible idea, mainly because it does nothing to reform the truly damaging aspects of our educational system. Rather, it makes them even more dangerous. This plan, which will systematize a "base standard" for all students and schools, will do nothing for a system that is already despairingly focused on grades as the end or goal of education. Here are my problems with this. 1) Our kids already get the message loud and clear that it really isn't important what they learn in a class... it's what grade they get. Most high school kids will be candid enough to admit that they've made A's in classes from which they gained absolutely nothing else but that letter on a piece of paper. Likewise, this is also why I have students who, one day, tell me that history is their favorite class and that they've never been challenged to think this way before, then the next be in tears because they made a B on a review. Grades were meant to be an assessment of how close to a goal a student was, not the goal in itself. Making them the end has put the cart before the horse in our educational system and done tremendous damage to our children's concept of what it means to be a learner. 2) What happens when you make grades the end of education? Kids will do whatever they can to make that grade, including cheat. This shouldn't be surprising. What is surprising is the rationalizing of the action that occurs, even with "good" kids. I taught a philosophy class at the Christian high school that currently employs me. During our unit on ethics, I asked the class how many of them cheat on their tests. I would imagine that about 60% of them raised their hands. I then asked how many thought that what they were doing was wrong. Of those that had raised their hands, probably less than 10% put their hands up again (mind you, this was a "Christian" school). The explanation I got from the others? High school doesn't matter, so it's okay to cheat. The goal of high school is to get good grades to get you into college. Since you aren't really doing anything else of value anyhow, go ahead and cheat to get the grade (though some were willing to qualify that by saying that you should only do it if you HAVE to... and, boy, was I relieved to hear that). Now, once you get to college, it's WRONG to cheat there, because you're learning things that you will eventually use for your career. THAT'S what really matters. Now, apply that to school in general. Tell teachers that their pay level and, indeed, their very jobs depend on how well the kids they teach perform on this test. I'll give you three guesses what ends up happening, and your first two guesses don't count. It should come as no surprise that it's already happening. Now tell the entire school that their funding, and even their very existence, depends on a certain number of their students getting a certain score on these tests. We should not be surprised when all other academic pursuits go flying out the window in favor of making sure that every child capable of passing that test does so. Set your goals at the lowest common denominator, and teachers will teach to the lowest common denominator. We'll get to true understanding and wisdom if there is time left over (and your teacher is motivated enough to even care about such things themselves). 3) I'm against any plan that continues to prop up a system that is so obviously broken. Could there be a less natural way of teaching human beings than taking life, dividing it into several separate subjects, completely disassociating them from each other, containting instruction in each into a once-a-day 50-minute block, then telling them that the only way that they will have contact with the world they are supposedly learning about within the walls of these institutions is from books and videos? We wonder why kids see education as consisting of material that is largely irrelevant to their lives. History, which is key to understanding almost every other subject (for how can you truly know a subject if it's been removed from the context in which it was originally derived, theorized, discovered, etc.?) has been reduced to trivia in our schools. If school systems aren't out-and-out cutting their social studies programs in favor of shoving more money into science and athletics, they show it an equal level of disrespect by asking athletics staff to "supplement their income" by teaching history (you KNOW I'm right about this one. I AM NOT SAYING that everyone who coaches athletics is a terrible teacher, but there is a reason the stereotype exists! Want proof? Ask any adult what they thought of their history class. If they say they hated it, ask them if it was taught by a football coach. Of the perhaps 30 people I've engaged in this exercise with, I've had only TWO tell me that it wasn't. For one, it was the baseball coach). The message received: Any idiot can teach a history class. Second example: The way I was taught math was that it almost existed in a vacuum. Since this time, I've come to realize a valuable, albeit obvious, truth: math is used to solve REAL LIVE problems! I have met one math teacher that acknowledges this. He once told me, "It's pointless to learn math for math's sake. If you're not learning about the problems it was meant to solve (we're back to history again), you may as well not be learning it, because it's been disconnected from its purpose for existing." Is this really as profound as our system makes it seem? So what's the end result? Students are taught to chase a meaningless symbol (be it "A", "B", or "C"), while, at the same time, implicitly encouraged to take the path of least resistance getting there, because that is what you do when you find yourself spending a lot of time doing something that you see as being of no ultimate consequence. This started with a conversation. My friend said something that really clarified some things to me. He said that he always thought that the rampant cheating and apathy was a moral failing, not necessarily something that was encouraged by the system. Then it clicked with me. That's the reason why the system never seemed so bad until about 30 years ago. It was girded by the expectations of a society that, at least, had the perfume of a belief that education, true education, and not schooling, is what was important. That day is gone, and with it, any hope of avoiding the eminent bursting of the dam that is holding back the flood of nihilism from our schools. If we think that kids today live like (even if they don't say that) education is worthless, imagine what will happen to their kids if nothing is done. For a long time, I poo-pooed the relativism boogey-man. And while I still believe that people like Josh McDowell and James Dobson exploit it in order to push their narrow view of absolutes as cosmic truth, I have come to realize that the narcissism brought on by a media dominated society and a consumer culture, as well as the relativism that results from a knee-jerk response to the desire for peace in a pluralistic society are poison to the spirits of our children. Left without a reason for acting (or even existing), and without the incentive to question who they are and why they do what they do (much less measure it to some standard that exists outside of themselves), they do one of two things: They fill that gap with whatever they can get their hands on that they consider to be "real", or they float along, doing what they think they are supposed to be doing, and usually fall prey to the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this world. I don't think that reforming a dilapidated educational system is the single answer to these problems. But I do believe that, if there is truly "message in your media," our current system is promoting a downward slide into hopelessness. I fear for our children because of this.
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Jimmy Doyle is a dad, husband,
teacher, friend, and other things. Currently he's just trying to figure out what it means to follow Christ and be in community with others. He enjoys having conversations with fellow pilgrims on the journey.
Stephen Zedler has a wife and three kids who he loves very much. He has been called by God to study and teach history, particularly U.S.
history. He also believes that God has called him to reform the way children are educated in America.