Before beginning the long process of
creating a master work, Michelangelo (the sculptor, not the turtle) would have
the block of stone in question placed in such a way that light from the dawning
sun would strike it. He would then
examine the stone carefully, trying to discern any cracks, flaws or shadows
within the stone that would indicate that it wouldn’t be up to the quality
required to stand up to years of chiseling and polishing. After all, it would be beyond frustrating if
he committed to working the block only to realize too late that the arm that he
intended to carve was destined to crack off.
"In
every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me,
shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough
walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as
mine see it."—Michelangelo
Sources
suggest that he spent two years carving his Pieta and three years carving his
David, which wouldn’t include the additional time required to buff and polish
the stone. Michelangelo later fielded
questions about David’s unusual stance by stating that the huge block of stone,
some eighteen feet tall, had been considered worthless because a fellow by the
name of Simone da Fiesole had previously carved a big hole through the bottom
of it, but Michelangelo had found a way to overcome the defect.
This
is how masterpieces are made, by starting with quality materials, through
careful preparation, and occasionally, with some defect removal.
In
many respects, being a teacher is similar.
Before
I get too far into summing up my lifetime of teaching observations, I should
probably share some of my background. I
have been teaching high school students, in several different ways, for about
39 years. The first day that I faced a
class from the front of the room was as a senior in high school. Our choir director was out with major
surgery, and for some reason he felt that I was up to the daily task of
replacing him for five weeks. And so,
with several different substitute teachers standing patiently in the back of
the room over the five week period, I was an unofficial and unique member of
the professional teaching community.
All
teachers love teaching, which might seem like an observation so simple as to be
irrelevant, but true moments of teaching, of being able to speak seriously and
be heard seriously, are few and far between.
We want to make a positive difference in our students’ lives. The average day is somewhat of a cacophony of
sound and action, lecture and reaction about whatever the curriculum declares
is important for that year, but there are moments when the machinery of
education stops and the process of learning is allowed to take place. From my probably unique perspective,
education is summed up by the grade at the end of the semester, whereas
learning is what happens when a thought, an idea, a perspective or a fact
becomes part of the conscious database of the student. Learning is about acquiring units that link,
relate, and build. Education today is
too often about flood, flush and refill, as in “Re-teach me what’s on the
upcoming test and you’ll have my attention.”
A colleague of mine in the high school English department nearly lost
her mind last year when she had a classroom full of 9th graders who
couldn’t identify a noun.
Education
has gone from, “Feed me, Seymour!” (a reference sure to be lost upon all of the
younger readers. It’s from Little Shop of Horrors) to “Why can’t we
just watch the movie?!” (an intense desire by many current students to avoid
the process of genuine reading altogether).
Way
back when, when I was a student and we rode dinosaurs to school, traveling
uphill both ways, we were expected to learn. There was no such thing as a Scantron, and the
old-school teachers gave out tests with fill-in-the-blank questions with no
word bank. If you were lucky, you might
get a science test that was multiple guess, but that was just a gesture to keep
the terms from being overwhelming. Now
that’s not to say that there weren’t some terrible teachers. I recall one fellow who taught Mythology who
passed out the books on the first day along with a list of assignments that
covered the entire semester. He then
read his paper every day in class while we decided whether we were interested
in being self-taught or not, but he was the anomaly, not the norm.
The
modern student seems to have grown up with an uncanny ability to process small
bites of information quickly, which can be impressive, but in far too many
cases this ability is tied to a sort of auto-flush of the CPU, turning their
minds into PU if asked for information after the test has been passed and the
information mentally discarded. As a
teacher joke in order to make a point that they should try to use their
long-term memories, I occasionally tell them that I’m passing out a previous
vocabulary test that they’ve already had, instead of the one they just finished
studying for. The almost universal looks
of panic tell me everything that I need to know about whether they learn for
mastery or just process for the test in question.
Back
in the early 70s our minds might’ve been eight-track technology, but my head is
FULL of eight track tapes, arranged like a library. It’s true that as time progresses it’s harder
and harder to get to the back of the library and find information I’ve almost
never needed, but my students seem to have a single DVD in their heads, which
they keep re-recording over, time after time and test after test. Although they receive good grades, without
re-teaching, their recall is often horrendous and seemingly getting worse with
each passing year. And as for their collective
powers of observation, I find myself saying, “I’ve hidden that information in
this room where no one will ever find it – in three inch letters!” far too
often.
The
attention span of a goldfish is allegedly three seconds, and their memory span
about three months. Normally, these
statistics would seem to have nothing to do with teaching, but with each
passing year, my students and goldfish seem to have more and more in common.
A few years ago, I came up against a
situation that I had never experienced before.
I’ve been teaching mostly 10th graders ever since joining the
high school staff way back in 1994. One
of the terms that I always cover at the beginning of the school year in 10th
grade Literature and Composition 1 is the word “vicarious.” For about fifteen years I was able to make
the point that none of my students had ever seen a 6’ paramecium, and that
viewing a slide or a video of one was an example of a vicarious
experience. I didn’t have to explain
that a paramecium was a single-celled organism that propelled itself through
water by the use of a single hair known as a flagella. My classes knew what I was talking about and
they focused upon the lesson, which was concerning the vicarious
experience.
That eye-opening year, NO ONE knew what a
paramecium was! It was only in my third
section of 10th graders at the end of the day that I found anyone
who knew what I was talking about. A
further discussion revealed that single-celled organisms including the
paramecium were covered in the 9th grade science curriculum, at
least that’s what one student thought.
I was giving a lesson that contained
information that I had learned as a science student over thirty-five years ago,
and I had reached a point in my teaching career where my students couldn’t
collectively remember what they had learned from a mere three months prior!
Hello Goldfish!
It was then that I started to notice
that my students were quite adept at test-taking, and they could temporarily
master pretty much anything that they were given time to study, but when asked
to share what they knew without re-teaching or re-learning, their knowledge was
pathetically lacking. Just the other
day, I had a number of students who thought it a bit unfair that as part of a
test on vocabulary and grammar that they had lost points for not capitalizing
the words of a business title because that information hadn’t been recently
re-taught!
While sitting quietly attentive in
one education seminar after another, I can’t help but roll my metaphoric eyes
each and every time I hear the word “mastery” thrown out into the air. The truth is, our students aren’t achieving
long-term mastery, and so using the word to imply that since the student passed
a quiz that they have mastered the material is just a sick joke of cosmic
proportion, as evidenced by the momentary outrage at not remembering one of the
basic rules of capitalization from the last example, which they were probably
taught in third grade.
An additional problem that has made
achieving mastery unlikely is the fact that more than half of my students will
now openly admit that they avoid reading whenever possible. They don’t read for pleasure, and because of
this, their vocabularies are limited, their sentence structures are infantile,
and their spelling is unbelievably atrocious.
Even basic terms that one would pick up from reading the most elementary
fairy tale are misunderstood. While
answering a question for a recent Ben Hur
quiz in my Film and Literature class, far too many students couldn’t identify
what a spear was. They thought it was a
sword, a stick, or a pointy pole. During
a quiz on the movie Maverick, one
student asked what a stagecoach was.
In an effort to make clear to my 10th
graders just where their reading capabilities register, I have them read an
eighth grade level version of The Three
Musketeers, complete with bigger type, illustrations, large margins, and a
text reduced to 300 pages from the original 700+ pages.
Before we begin, I pass out the
following handout.
We will be reading the
abridged edition of The Three Musketeers in class. The original
story is around 700 pages long and we will be reading a version that is only
302 pages long, is written on a 8th
grade level, and has large type and illustrations. You will be
reading in class each day and having a brief (ten questions - 100 point) quiz
over the previous day’s reading
at the beginning of each class period.
We will be doing this
for several reasons.
In my many years of
teaching, I have learned that there is a vast difference between mastering school and
mastering specific abilities, like reading. For a person who
doesn’t like to read, mastering school would include: watching the movie about
the book (no movie actually
covers the original story accurately), reading Spark Notes or Cliff’s Notes (which would be confusing because it would have MORE
information than what is in
our text) only listening to a teacher’s recap of the reading and not doing the initial reading required (there will be no
recap before the simple one to two word answer fill-in-the-blank
quizzes each day) and getting information from friends or the Internet (which won’t work because my classes are
the only classes reading this particular book and
the Internet will provide too much information).
Although I hope that
everyone will find the reading simple and have no challenges, if this class turns out to be like previous classes,
approximately 20-30% of you will
find that you read much like a scanner – remembering a few pages that you have just read but quickly forgetting what
had happened in the chapters that had come before. I
feel that it is important for you to realize if you have this tendency so that
you can work to overcome it,
since extended comprehension will be absolutely required on important tests in high school, on college work, and
in your future work environment.
In addition, if you find
it difficult to finish 30 pages of an 8th grade book during a fifty+ minute class period, then you should
realize that you need to do more independent
reading to increase your proficiency, because in the future, major reading tests seem to be moving towards setting a
specific time limit for both reading and comprehending
material.
As for answering
questions on the quiz, you must learn to discern the difference between important information and general
information, since testing trends are moving towards
having multiple, technically correct answers to pick from. Here is a brief story to illustrate the point. If
a fellow got into a motorcycle accident and twisted his ankle, broke his kneecap, and was decapitated,
what would be the proper answer to the question, “What happened to the motorcyclist?” Obviously his dying would be the only
relevant answer, the other two choices
being essentially meaningless by comparison, although they would technically be true.
I hope that this clears
up any confusion as to why I feel that this process is important and helpful to you as a student.
Sincerely,
Mr. P.
It is not uncommon for half of my
students to be unable to identify the king and the cardinal as the main
political rivals in France
after reading the first thirty pages of the story. More and more of my students remember the
last page or so of information, but are seemingly incapable of recalling a
story of any real length. I try to bring
these problems to their attention, short of having their inabilities cripple
their grade in my class, all the while hoping that they’ll get the idea and try
to be more capable students before they run the risk of being kicked out of
college during their freshman year for being educationally incompetent.
They shake their heads when I make
my little speeches, but since their overall grade doesn’t really suffer, I have
to wonder if their bobble-heading is really sincere.
My Film and Literature class was
watching Gone With the Wind on DVD
with subtitles. Doctor Meade had just
completed explaining what Rhett Butler was doing for the South during the
war.
I stopped the film and said, “Pop
quiz. How does Rhett Butler become rich
during the war?”
Cricket, cricket.
Not a single student could answer
the question. Rather than spoon feed yet
another crop of mental goldfish what they needed to know on the upcoming quiz,
I closed by saying, “Well, good luck.
Doctor Meade just explained how Rhett made his money and that question
is definitely on the quiz.”
I feel like I’m handing a crutch to
a person with two good legs when I have to stop everything and put information
into brains that simply aren’t listening, or caring. I know how newspapers and the like enjoy
pet-naming generations. I would be
tempted to name the current generation of scholars “Generation tXt?” Their big, sad eyes when they receive a
failing grade are easily as cute as any that I’ve ever seen over the last four
decades of my teaching career, but they spend far too much time perfecting
their excuses and their puppy-dog expressions, and far too little time
mastering their lessons for a lifetime of use.
When society is selling selfishness
and personal gain over all other considerations in nearly every movie, cable
show, tabloid headline, and newspaper article, then where is one to turn to
find genuine character? Once upon a
time, the assumption would be the church pulpit, but that is no longer true. The pulpit has far too often become a place
of selfishness, judgment, and disgrace, every bit as sad as the headlines at
the checkout stand at the supermarket.
As for our leaders in education,
they are preoccupied in the political business of education, and not in making
sure that students genuinely learn. It
is enough to make it appear that they
are learning.
Back in the 70s, there were two
kinds of students, those who cared about learning, and those who didn’t. Those who cared succeeded, and those who
didn’t care were pressured until they at least complied, even if they didn’t
buy into the idea that it was all for their own good.
Today’s students are aware that if
they aren’t successful, there will be consequences on several levels. The superintendent wants to declare the glory
of the district, and so there are pressures on the teachers. The teachers want to declare the success of
their students, and so they are forced, one way or another, to teach to the
test. The students want to pass the
tests and get the scholarship money, and so they cram, filling their temporary memory with everything that
they need at that moment to succeed.
With all of these gears turning and
meshing in synchronicity, few seem to notice that what had been assumed
mastered last week has somehow become forgotten knowledge this week.
The test was passed, so the student
was pleased.
The class was passed, so the parent
was pleased.
The standardized test was passed, so
the teacher is pleased.
The district scored above the norm,
so the administration is pleased, and yet this system is mostly illusion and
built upon feet of clay. No wonder
colleges are complaining that their freshmen arrive woefully unprepared. It’s not accurate to say that they weren’t
given the skills required to succeed when they entered college. It’s more accurate to say that the goldfish
didn’t make the mental space to retain all that they’d been exposed to, so they
are more like a single DVD that has been overwritten hundreds of time, as
opposed to a library of DVDs containing impressive stores of knowledge.
The problem is how to make this
point to people emotionally invested into a system that APPEARS to be working?
I went to my principal once to get
his feedback on something I was thinking about trying. I was considering putting extra credit questions
on my English tests relating to things that my 10th graders had
supposedly already learned in math, social studies, and science in 9th
grade. Instead of seeing this as a way
of promoting long-term learning and holistic education, he informed me that it
would be inappropriate for me to do this because I wasn’t teaching my students
in those subjects.
Yesterday, I “corrected” several
dozen worksheets relating to answering questions pertaining to the DC graphic
novel Kingdom Come. I use this novel with my 10th
graders for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because the story is
set in the future of the DC universe where all of the “old” heroes have given
up on society and its fickleness and the heroes have essentially disappeared. The story shows a new generation of
super-powered “children” who are slowly tearing up the world. They are oblivious to the fact that they lack
direction, common sense, and personal integrity. They have no idea how to be a hero, which is
why the old heroes have to come back out of retirement and teach them.
As I checked the short answer
responses a thought occurred to me.
What if I were to mark an answer
wrong because it wasn’t a complete sentence, or because it had misspelled
words, or because it had parts that were undecipherable due to atrocious
handwriting?
The majority of my students would
then score quite poorly.
I would be making my point about the
quality of their skills and the knowledge that they haven’t acquired along the way, and I would also be establishing a
precedent where almost no one in my required class would get an “A.” If I graded this way, I would soon find
myself on the computer or on the phone with complaining parents telling me that
I was being too harsh, and then the principal would no doubt call me down to
his office in order to give me a pep talk about how I could improve MY
teaching.
This whole house of cards is going
to come crashing down someday, and everyone is going to be standing around with
their fingers scratching their heads, saying, “How did we get here?” and “Why
did this happen?” The other civilized
countries of the world are just going to shrug and chuckle behind their hands
while the American “scholars” of tomorrow scream that it isn’t fair that the
world is so hard, and that they can’t find a decent, high-paying job.
Today, it is likely that the
students will attempt to do what they are told, but like goldfish, many have no
feet, no solid skill base, so learning for mastery is really out of the
question, and so we adjust our curriculum accordingly and process them
through.
They may be impressive at blowing
bubbles in unison, though, especially if all of their Ipods are playing the
same song.
And
like the faults in Michelangelo’s block of stone, how are things like
under-motivation, disinterest, exhaustion from staying up all night with video
games and cable TV, mental deficiencies like those found in drug babies,
selfishness, and a general lack of personal integrity removed or overcome to
produce a masterwork in the classroom?
Michelangelo
had it easy. He’d just say, “I’m not
working with that block! It’s got too
many faults!”
Although I love a challenge, for as
a senior in high school I convinced the principal to allow me to design,
manufacture and paint a set of scenic drops for our production of The Sound of Music that worked out to
3/4s the square footage of the Sistine Chapel, there have been far too many
instances in the last couple of years when I’ve stared at my students and
quietly asked myself –
“God,
how do I carve a masterpiece out of this?”
