forward through the rearview mirror

On Grades: The Philosophy of Numbers

2012-02-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

One book that has had a tremendous influence on how I think about teaching is Neil Postman's Technopoly. The book is sub-titled "The Surrender of Culture to Technology", which sums up the book's thesis, technology has become an end rather than a means; it has become the focus of culture rather than a tool used by culture.

Consider what Postman says about grades:

The seemingly harmless practice of assigning marks or grades to the answers students give on examinations seems so natural to most of us that we are hardly aware of its significance. We may even find it difficult to imagine that the number or letter is a tool or, if you will, a technology; still less that, when we use such a technology to judge someone's behavior, we have done something peculiar. If a number can be given to the quality of a thought, then a number can be given to the qualities of mercy, love, hate, beauty, creativity, intelligence, or even sanity itself. To say that someone should be doing better work because he has an IQ of 134, or that someone is is a 7.2 on a sensitivity scale, or that this man's essay on the rise of capitalism is an A- and that man's is a C+ would have sounded like gibberish to Galileo or Shakespeare or Thomas Jefferson. If it makes sense to us, that is because our minds have been conditioned by the technology of numbers so that we see the world differently than they did. Our understanding of what is real is different. Which is another way of saying that embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another. . . . To a man with a pencil, everything looks like a list. To a man with a camera, everything looks like an image. To a man with a computer, everything looks like data. And to a man with a grade sheet, everything looks like a number.

Neil Postman, Technopoly

The Rigor Myth

2012-02-04T19:47:00.000-08:00

The following Alfie Kohn's The Homework Myth raises profound questions about the notion of academic rigor:

[T]here's another belief that's rarely made explicit, even though it's shared by many parents and educators as well as public officials. In brief, it holds that harder is tantamount to better. What's mostly wrong with our schools, on this view, is that they've been "dumbed down"; salvation therefore lies in "raising the bar" and demanding "higher expectations" and more "rigor." Almost by definition, the best lessons (or exams or classes) are those that are really difficult for children. As far as I can tell, the phrase "raising the bar" originated in the world of show horses, which may say quite a bit about how people who talk this way look at children. . . . Almost a century ago, John Dewey reminded us that the value of what students do "resides in its connection with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness, not in the greater strain it imposes."

This passage (and for that matter the entire book) from The Homework Myth confirms something that I have suspected for many years now, that despite what many schools, teachers, students, and parents traditionally think, academic rigor is not necessarily of educational value. Harder is not necessarily better. Yet many teachers, I think, pride themselves on being "hard" markers, and hate to have students think their class is "easy."

But when I look back on my own high school and university experience, I don't see a significant connection between "harder" and "better". I had one professor at Simon Fraser University whose class will always be memorable as one of the great learning experiences of my life, even though I never found it to be particularly difficult. Valuable, yes. Difficult, no.

Conversely, I had many classes in which I had to work extremely hard preparing for "rigorous" exams and learned absolutely nothing, other than how to achieve a high number on the exams in question.

Nobody Appreciates You (But Confucius Says That's Okay)

2012-02-04T19:42:00.000-08:00

I have been teaching for 15 years now and rarely does anyone show any appreciation. That may sound like self-pity, but I certainly don't mean it that way; it is simply to be expected that most people (including myself, of course) tend to be far too focused on their own lives and situations to express appreciation to others. I imagine people in most professions can relate to this dilemma. Do most nurses receive regular appreciation and affirmation from the hospital administrators and doctors and patients? Do most police officers? Do most accountants? Do most Members of Parliament? You get the idea. I think it is reasonable to say that I am not alone in finding that I seldom receive any appreciation from anyone for what I do. I suspect most of us would say the same thing, regardless of our specific vocation.

But according to Confucius in Book 4 of the Analects, this shouldn't bother us. Speaking to his students about career aspirations and recognition he advises them:

"Do not worry because you have no official position. Worry about your qualifications. Do not worry because no one appreciates your abilities. Seek to be worthy of appreciation."

I would suggest that every teacher can do more to improve his or her qualifications. This, to me, is the very essence of professional development. In the midst of feeling unappreciated (as most people probably are) it is worth remembering the advice of one of history's master teachers and focusing on continuous improvement that we may be worthy of appreciation--whether or not we receive it.

It does not seem unreasonable to extend this principle to our students as well. In a society that is so driven by image and success it is easy for students to feel overwhelmed by the importance of impressing others. They can become so focused on achieving a certain grade point average (ugh) or excelling in a particular sport or winning the approval of a certain group of peers that they forget to look inward for their true worth. Distilled down to its essence, there is an almost paradoxical quality to this precious advice: Don't worry about what other people think of you. Instead, strive to become the kind of person whom others cannot help but admire.

Acoustic Minds (Digital Means; Useless Ends)

2012-02-04T19:29:00.000-08:00

As a teacher of the humanities I want to help students develop what I have come to think of as an "acoustic" mind, a mind that functions without constant electronic stimulation, a mind free of cellular phones, text messaging, internet surfing, video games, television programs, and digital music. The irony of this reflection appearing in an online blog is obvious, yet no one is suggesting the Luddites were right. The issue is one of balance; students are oversaturated with electronic media to the point that it reduces their ability to experience and live in the midst of authentic life.

I sometimes encourage students to try "unplugged" days, a period of time (usually between one and three days, but sometimes more) free of all electronic media. The look of horror on their faces is both amusing and frightening. "But what will we DO?" is the common refrain. My answer? Read a book, go for a walk, play a boardgame, read a newspaper, shoot some hoops, lift some weights, even play with your little brother's Star Wars toys if you feel the urge. But live life unplugged from the network of artificial stimulation that surrounds us and defines us.

We should remember that McLuhan not only warned that the medium is the message, but it is also the MASSAGE:

"Electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing: you, your family, your education, your neighborhood, your job, your government, your relation to "the others. And they're changing dramatically."

What troubles me is not so much whether or not we are changing for the better, but rather how seldom the question is even asked.

Neil Postman once lamented that computer technology often becomes an improved means to an unimproved end. I have noticed that every time I hear the words "innovation" or "technology" in education circles lately it is always, without exception, a reference to computers. When did computers become synonymous with innovation and technology, to the point that they have virtually redefined the very terms themselves?

Ironically, many teachers today pride themselves on how innovative and tech-savvy they are when they are simply using computers to do the same meaningless rote assignments that they used to do with pen and paper. On PBS Frontline's 2010 film Digital Nation we are treated to a sequence showcasing a high school where the English class features every student using a notebook computer to create a blog, each of which is displayed on a smartboard. And what do these blogs contain? Character sketches of the characters from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

In other words, these students are doing the exact same thing I did in high school in the 1980s--same tired book, same tedious, mind-numbing assignment--but merely using a different medium. And this is described as "innovation."

As Postman said, improved means to an unimproved end.

Philosophy in a Concentration Camp

2012-02-04T19:18:00.000-08:00

In 1978, Hungarian poet George Faludy (pictured here) gave the convocation address at the University of Toronto. He described his experiences in a communist concentration camp (after the Soviet invasion of 1956) and made several profound and intriguing observations about the significance of a liberal arts education. As part of his attempts to survive the horrors of the camp, Faludy (a university professor) gave mini-lectures in the barracks at night on a variety of subjects. Some of the fellow prisoners eagerly joined in; others declined. Faludy notes, "Those who died . . . were always the men who had been most determined to survive, those who had concentrated on nothing but food, sleep and warmth . . . I was reluctant to admit the obvious: that delighting in a good poem or discussing Plato's Socratic dialogue could somehow arm the spirit to the point that it could prevent the body's collapse."

He concludes his address with this realization: "Our whole fragile tradition of art and thought is neither an amusement nor a yoke. For those who steep themselves in it, it provides both a guide and a goal for surpassing all the half-baked ideologies that have blown up at our feet in this century like landmines . . . All we have to guide us in this present is the accumulated thought and experience of those who have lived before us."

This convocation address has had a significant impact on my view of education. Most people agree that there is potentially something noble about teaching, yet Faludy proves it. I am reminded of film critic Roger Ebert's assessment of the film Life is Beautiful in which Ebert argues that since Jewish prisoner Guido is a clown, comedy becomes his weapon. Faludy was an educator. Education was his weapon. As it is for us all.

Out With Textbooks, In With Learning

2012-02-01T05:58:00.000-08:00

In Neil Postman's The End of Education we find the following observation:

We can improve the quality of teaching and learning overnight by getting rid of all textbooks. Most textbooks are badly written and, therefore, give the impression that the subject is boring. Most textbooks are also impersonally written. They have no "voice," reveal no human personality. Their relationship to the reader is not unlike the telephone message that says, "If you want further assistance, press two now." I have found the recipes on the backs of cereal boxes to be written with more style and conviction than most textbook descriptions of the causes of the Civil War. . . .[W]orse than this, textbooks are concerned with presenting the facts of the case (whatever the case may be) as if there can be no disputing them, as if they are fixed and immutable. . . . Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be acquired, never as a human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward the truth.

The End of Education 115-116

Is Postman using hyperbole here? It seems that he isn't. Aside from the fact that he generalizes more than I would like (he seems to assume that all textbooks are of equal quality, instead of the more reasonable proposition that some textbooks are better than others) I think he is on to something quite profound here. Textbooks, at best, are a means to an end. Yet for many teachers they become the end in themselves. The goal becomes not "educate students using this text as one of many tools" but "get students through this textbook."

On a practical note, it is important to remember that textbooks are written by publishing companies who are driven by the profit motive. Their goal is to sell as many textbooks as possible to as many schools as possible. It is certainly likely that, given this underlying motivation, many textbooks are crafted to ensure that they will sell, rather than they will educate.

I Know Why Lonely People Watch Television

2012-02-01T05:52:00.000-08:00

What is very little understood about the electronic age is that it angelizes man, disembodies him. Turns him into software.

Marshall McLuhan, 1971.

Last summer my wife and daughter went on a week-long trip to visit relatives while I stayed home. For the most part it was a nice break, but one night in the middle of it I was watching television when I suddenly found myself overwhelmed with loneliness, a sensation that was almost physical. As I stared at the TV I remembered a fragment I had read in Marshall McLuhan, about how the electronic age, driven by television, "turns us into software." I wasn't even sure how this idea related, but I knew it had great significance. Intrigued, I looked up the exact quotation (reproduced above in yellow). Then it became clear.

In that moment I realized the tremendous power of television. Reading is a solitary activity; as one reads a book one is conscious that he is doing so alone, that no one else (that he knows of) is reading the same book at the same time. Watching television, however, is a strangely corporate experience; or at least it gives us the illusion of a corporate experience. I saw a television program recently that promoted itself as "the show everyone is talking about." This is, obviously, marketing hyperbole, but it struck a chord with me nonetheless. Sitting down in front of a television show that (you have been told) "everyone" is watching (all at the same time), makes you feel part of something greater than yourself. It is not genuine community, but it gives the illusion of being so.

McLuhan gives us three images: television "angelizes" man (turns him into a spirit), and "disembodies" him (he loses his physical form). Finally, it turns him into "software" (something insubstantial designed to become a part of something greater). All three images are, of course, metaphor. Each metaphor here is, essentially, saying the same thing; television takes us out of our dreary, lonely physical existence by promising us an experience of belonging. To be disembodied is, here, a metaphor of freedom, of escape. It is reinforced by the idea of becoming "angelized"--something greater than mere humanity. We also become "software", plugged into the master machine along with thousands, even millions of other programs. Our loneliness is at an end.

But McLuhan's aphorism contains a sinister undertone: we do so at the cost of our own humanity. A man without a body, a man who becomes an angel, a man who becomes software, is, obviously, no longer a man. Here we see another example of McLuhan's brilliance; giving with empowering metaphors while taking away with their ultimate implication.

This presents a profound problem for any teacher serious about educating students (and not all teachers are). We must encourage them to embrace activites such as reading and writing that are, by their very nature, solitary and reflective, while cautioning them about the inherent dangers of electronic media in spite of the immense and profound emotional payoff they get from television and the internet and their illusion of belonging to something greater.

Which raises the point that has been troubling me all along: McLuhan, writing in the 1970s, tells us of the dangers of losing our humanity in television. What would he have thought of the internet?

Teaching in the Global Village

2012-01-31T18:41:00.000-08:00

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) media analyst, social philospher

Marshall McLuhan is one of the great influences on my thinking about education. The very title of this blog is taken from McLuhan; he was a master of metaphor and analogy.

His foundational distinction of medium and message shapes my entire approach to teaching language and literature. Along with literal/figurative language and reality/appearance, the medium/message dichotomy is one of three formative paradigms I incorporate in English classes. Like all profound thinkers, his ideas become even more relevant as time passes, not less. McLuhancoined the ubiqitous phrase "global village" to describe the mass media transformation he witnessed in the 1960s :

Today, the instantaneous world of electric information media involves all of us, all at once. Ours is a brand-new world of all-at-onceness. Time, in a sense, has ceased and space has vanished. Like primitives, we now live in a global village of our own making, a simultaneous happening. The global village is not created by the motor car or even by the airplane. It is created by instantaneous electronic information movement . . .

Marshall McLuhan, "McLuhan on McLuhanism", 1966.

The most striking thing about these words spoken in 1966 is that McLuhan is essentially describing the world wide web, decades before its existence. Although the term "global village" has been so widely used that it borders on verge of cliche, the concept it embodies, combined with the centrality of instantaneous electronic information, lies at the heart of my outlook on teaching Social Studies. I want students to understand the significance of our "interconnectedness" as a global community, and the role of new media in making this happen; in some cases for better, in some cases for worse.

Considering the extent of his genius and the scope of his influence on the modern world, how ironic that in 1930 in a journal entry he wrote: "I have always, as I read a great man's life . . . experienced odd and inexplicably involved sensations of jealousy. Generally it leaves me with a hopeless feeling of incompetence. These men have always been precocious or gifted, yet I wish that I may one day attain their heights."

Beachhead

2012-01-29T19:32:00.000-08:00

I'm typing these words on a Sunday night at an incredibly busy Starbucks while my sweet nine-year-old daughter sits in the chair beside me, completely absorbed in a novel. I've been wanting to start a blog for a very long time after having given up the practice about five years ago due to a combination of fatigue and ennui with the whole process (was that pretentious enough for you?). Yet now that I'm here I'm not sure what direction I want to take this, so let's establish a few ground rules.

1. This blog will link to my website, http://sites.google.com/site/rauserbegins.

2. This blog will be a record of my thoughts and reflections on education, particularly the field of humanities at the secondary school level.

3. This blog will be fully permitted to follow all kinds of digressions, save one thing: I absolutely do not want it to become an exercise in introspection, self-indulgence, or, not to put too fine a point on it, navel-gazing. I recently read Bertrand Russell's excellent book The Conquest of Happiness and he warns against this kind of activity: "The man, therefore, whose attention is turned within finds nothing worthy of his notice, whereas the man whose attention is turned outward can find within, in those rare moments when he examines his soul, the most varied and interesting assortment of ingredients being dissected and recombined into beautiful or instructive patterns." This is crucial, in my opinion--my attention must always remain outward, not inward.

In short, this blog is not about me; it is about education. It is, naturally, about my views on education, and to the extent that a man's ideas represent him it is by necessity somewhat about me. But this is not a diary or a personal journal. The secret to a happy life, as Russell taught us, is not to gaze within, but engage with the world around us.