Bird Droppings June 14, 2011
Listening to John Lennon and reading John Dewey

I ran my errands today including a trip to Barnes and Nobles. I got up and started my day driving and doing errands from yesterday and in the process a lot of thinking and pondering as I say.

“As soon as you’re born they make you feel small, by giving you no time instead of it all. Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all. A working class hero is something to be. A working class hero is something to be. They hurt you at home and they hit you at school, they hate you if you are clever and they despise a fool. Till you are so crazy you can’t follow the rules. When they tortured and scared you for twenty odd years, they expect you to pick a career, when you can’t really function you are so full of fear.” John Lennon, Working Class Hero

I was looking at Barnes and Nobles for a specific book and accidentally found an acoustic CD of John Lennon’s that caught my attention. Working class hero was the first song and as I listened to the words it was to me about education and family rearing in America literally and lyrically in many cases. I also found the book Qualities of an effective teacher by James Stronge.
I had the opportunity to visit the Foxfire property last week for a bit of research that is actually fun for my dissertation. As always it was well wroth the drive to Mountain City Georgia right on the line with North Carolina. The Foxfire property sits on the side of Black Rock Mountain and is composed of eleven vintage cabins and buildings taken apart by hand and rebuilt on the property. Many were donated and some acquired with grant money, but all were hand labored by high school students as part of their class. Each shingle and log were taken apart at there point of origin and painstakingly rebuilt on the Foxfire property.
As I listened to the participants in the session I attended as a quest teacher and attendee it was interesting to see in several new teachers a spark of enthusiasm and creativity so often missing as teachers fall into that mold so many systems want their teachers to adhere too. Foxfire is not a curriculum but an approach to teaching, it is one of student involvement in the learning process that has its roots in the thinking and writing of John Dewey from 1930 in his book Experience and Education.

“The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.” John Dewey

John Dewey believed and wrote about; in education experience is the teacher. Each moment was an active learning moment and each previous prior to walking into the class was a learning moment. So past experiences were crucial in his approach to teaching and understanding children.

“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.” John Dewey

Dewey also taught and wrote about doing and in that doing learning would occur. In today’s world of memorizing for tests often little is learned as relevance becomes a mote point. For Dewey relevance was what education was about and should be.

“We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos” John Dewey

Many teachers have a difficult time with Dewey’s idea of a democratic class room where students have direct input into the learning process. As I read over John Lennon’s words “they hate you if you are clever and they despise a fool”, I think of teachers who do not want someone in their class who knows more or might have a better idea and they surely in today’s world of accountability want anyone who cannot pass the State End of Course test.
Earlier today I went to my Credit Union to get a few dollars, a very few, and got into a discussion with the two tellers. One of the tellers is in nursing school and the other a parent of a fourth grader and sixth grader. We got talking and the discussion was about the State testing and most recently how could a good teacher administer a test knowing over half would fail the test. Georgia’s department of education recently authorized grade level tests knowing many children would fail. The results were first aimed at teachers for not teaching the right material, secondly the state finally said we knew there was a problem and rejected the tests. Sadly many children failed and in some instances school failure rates on specific tests were as high as eighty percent. Would a good teacher have made a difference?
I went from the bank to get a hair cut and again a conversation with my barber about education; she is an elementary school teacher. She went back to college part time after raising her kids and is a second year teacher. We talked about vocational rehab and adults with special needs and we talked about how a good teacher would never give a test knowing fifty percent would fail.
After wandering about I realized maybe we need some changes in out educational system but how and where and what do you change? We need good teachers and a means to find and keep good teachers. We need curriculum that is meaningful and relevant to the children and to their future as citizens of this country. In many educational articles and the trend of a hidden agenda where schools are simply supplying workers and consumers to keep the military industrial complex in business is written about often. Listening to John Lennon I was seeing all of those teachers I have heard say they hate kids and all of those dictatorial teachers who say sit in this chair with your hands folded and do not talk and I think back to a passage by Mary Aswell Doll.

“It is the purpose of curric¬ulum, I argue, to engage the imagination, such that it is possible to think more metaphorically, less literalistically, about one’s world and one’s presuppositions about that world. When stories are told, one sees ideas differently; when images are heard, one hears differently, more introspectively. But, to engage the imagi¬nation, different teaching strategies need to be employed.” Mary Aswell Doll, Like Letters in running Water

In another passage Doll discusses the classroom alive and fluid and ever changing. Many teachers would be beside themselves seeing a room like that. Then I think to discussion yesterday in the Foxfire Class and how this is what education should be about experiences each moment and each second an experience and a teachable moment to borrow that phrase. A dear friend has graduate degree in Experiential Education, which focuses on outdoor teaching methods through wilderness experiences and natural activities. I get nauseated when I think to some scripted programs used in schools where ever word said is from a script and how will any child become creative in that environment. How will any imagination be promoted and maintained. In a recent class the question was asked how we can measure creativity from a performance standpoint. Today as I was discussing what makes a good teacher with people as I went through the day I asked can we measure empathy or intuition or caring for that matter?
So we have a system that needs “fixin” as the mountain man would say. How can we fix it? Number one is finding and training and keeping good teachers. Develop teachers through performance evaluation and professional training. Provide the potential for success rather than a diagram for failure. As I sit pondering and ranting I actually got thinking more about teaching teachers and how would I weed out people who hated children and those who would never make a good teacher. I got thinking to a recent episode of House a doctor show on TV. He had to find three good doctors to work with him and often arbitrarily would simply tell someone to leave or you’re fired. That may not work in a college class room. But I did get a laugh out of it. Please keep all in harms way on your mind and in your hearts.
namaste
bird