REMARKS AT PIONEER INSTITUTE EVENT, FEATURING PROF. E.D. HIRSCH, MARCH 31, 2010
I’d like to first thank the Pioneer Institute for inviting me to participate on this panel. It’s highly unusual for a teacher (or, in my case, a former teacher) to actually be invited to discuss education policy in such a forum. So Pioneer, if you have a Facebook page, I just might have to become a fan!
Dr. Hirsch, thank you for that erudite and provocative talk. I’m sure that all of my students would have learned a great deal from the content of your presentation. I know I did. I would also hope that, as they listened to it, they would be silently evaluating the logic of your argument, considering the historical evidence you used, and wondering whether other historians interpreted the past in the same bifurcated way. Teachers must always have the time to model and encourage such habits of mind. After all, higher-order thinking skills began long before the 21st Century.
Speaking personally, my 35-years in the classroom didn’t demonstrate that teaching critical thinking skills impeded the teaching of content. They were always intertwined. I taught skills in the context of content, so students would understand that history isn’t about uncontested memory, but rather about fiercely debated arguments, often with an urgent contemporary relevance. In fact, I’d like to make a public confession here-I should have to wear a sign around my neck attesting to this-I taught too much content. After all, besides being an unending argument, history is also a great story. That’s what drew my students in. They hungered for content to chew on and to share with their families as fully empowered citizens of the dinner-table.
My Lincoln-Sudbury colleagues shared my sense of the importance of teaching critical thinking skills. No doubt this is one of the factors that made our program so popular, and this largely because we took students beyond memorization. At L-S, the overwhelming number of students choose to take 4 years of history, though our school requirement only calls for three.
Nor did our attention to skill-building discourage civic engagement. To the contrary! In a school whose official motto is, “Think for Yourself, but Think of Others,” L-S students are deeply involved in activities that reflect enduring American values. Through our Martin Luther King Action Project, hundreds of our students every year volunteer in area food banks, shelters, and soup kitchens. During vacations, they journey to New Orleans and West Philadelphia to work with Habit for Humanity. In a few weeks, I’ll be traveling to genocide-torn Battambang province in Cambodia with an LS student and an LS alum. There we’ll help dedicate a school that the Lincoln-Sudbury community built for the youth of Cambodia.
Still, I very much share Dr. Hirsch’s sense of the importance of history instruction. It’s for this reason I’d be happy if our state government legislated an ambitious requirement. But, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, I wouldn’t want to see the state tell teachers all they must cover and teach. If liberals and conservatives can agree on anything, it should be that the past does not belong to the state. Besides, I’ve been down that road before as a New York City public school student. The NY State Regents felt it was crucial for us to remember the Hay-Paunciforte Treaty, but not very important at all for us to learn about the life of a plantation slave or the experience of an interned Japanese-American. My sense of civic engagement was most definitely not enhanced by this view. Let’s remember, history prescribed is almost always history proscribed.
In fact, I have had a chance to examine this classic: “The Massachusetts History and Social Studies Curriculum Framework.” I learned to my amusement that my personal hero, Henry David Thoreau, is consigned to the 3rd grade where eager students, incapable of reading any of his writings, will learn that once upon a time there was a man who lived in a little teensy-weensy cabin. And this in Massachusetts! [I was later corrected: Thoreau, it turns out, is mentioned in the American History I strand, and I do think “mentioned” is probably the right word]. I also learned without amusement that the 1960s section of the Framework seems to suggest that the Student Anti-War Movement and the Counter-Culture never occurred, despite the millions of citizens who participated in these dramatic expressions of civic engagement. These topics were simply excised Soviet-style. I couldn’t help but note that several allegedly memorable speeches by Ronald Reagan were mandated.
So, yes, let’s celebrate content. But let’s not celebrate it to death by chaining teachers to frameworks that are excessively detailed, arbitrary, and/or biased. The State of Texas serves as a bight red warning light in this respect. Above all, let’s not win the Pyrrhic victory that’ll surely be ours if we ask students only to memorize and, for lack of time, not to think, discuss, analyze, or make connections to current events. Most of our kids, after all, will not become history majors. They won’t retain all that we try to shoehorn in. Let’s think less about MCAS and more about how we might encourage them to become life-long students of history, whatever their college majors or vocations. We need citizens who are both civically-engaged and thoughtful, who can draw on historical perspective and also bring higher order thinking skills to bear when, for example, media outlets tell them that President Obama wants pull the plug on their grandma.
As teachers, our primary challenge is to engage students by making history interesting to them. Since you all look like post-12th graders here, let me end with these grade-appropriate words of Henry David Thoreau. He wrote them in his journal on February 23, 1860: “A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to be of interest to us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread.”
Ladies and gentlemen, cultural and historical literacy have to mean more than a list.
If so, you’re one of those dangerous people, and good for you.
Yes, they are the remarks I delivered. I declare your comment to be positive, so thanks.
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p>Bill
I have a hard time understanding what is wrong with a basic set of standards in our secondary schools. Teachers should be free to use any method – but there has to be a set of standards.
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p>I’m very impressed with how far our schools have improved in Massachusetts in the last 20 years, we should not go back the 1970’s – teach whatever you want days.
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I taught mathematics in a completely unexceptional middle-of-the-road school district throughout the 1970’s. I don’t recall anyone ever suggesting that we should “teach whatever you want”.
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p>There have always been standards. And teachers always knew what they were. Sometimes these standards were reasonable. Sometimes they were (and still are) well-founded. Many times they were driven by not-so-benign political or commercial considerations. And that’s still true.
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p>When I hear people talk about “standards” as if they were somehow new today, it often appears to me that what they are really talking about is drill-and-kill high-stakes test prep.
I assume you are talking about the MCAS – how are they some “High Stakes” tests – I see the majority of the students in our school system pass them with flying colors. I see nothing wrong with acquiring a standard body of knowledge in secondary school. A high school diploma should mean something and not be a certificate of attendance.
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Hello roarkarchitect,
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p>First of all, my school and my department had very high standards, far higher than MCAS, which has only promoted a fill-in-the bubble, test-prep, memorization paradigm. Standards did not begin with all the talk about standards. I would also go so far as to say that my old school would be a far better model for school reform than the MCAS model. There has been a stunning lack of curiosity about public schools that work well. This is because it was necessary that public education be considers a total failure so that the edupreneurs could be brought in. Too bad. There are many public schools that could serve as models for great, vibrant teaching and learning, with decades of experience behind them.
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p>Second, it is not the case that how people teach can be separated from what they are mandated to teach, particularly in history. This is specious. When the curriculum is defined by state-mandated frameworks and get loaded up in terms of breadth there is no time to teach in a way that encourages real engagement with the material (moral, analytical, or conceptual). It all becomes “five facts and a cloud of dust.” That’s why so many kids hate history. At my school it was the most popular program and the kids went on to the most challenging college programs. They were well-prepared.
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p>Third, do you really want the government telling kids what the history of their country is, which topics are relevant and which are not, beyond a few basic requirements like the Declaration and the Constitution. This get very political very quickly. George Orwell warned against just such government control. And do you want great teachers? The best of our college students? You are not going to attract them if you insist on putting a script in their hands. They need to be able to create interesting, intellectually engaging courses. They need to have some autonomy-I would add they also need rigorous evaluation by trained administrators.
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p>Lastly, once you create a standardized test, People will teach to it and many important things will fall always. The “standards” (so-called) become a down escalator. Remember: if you insist on measuring all that you value, you will end up valuing only that which can be measured.
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p>Let’s aspire to standards differently conceived and far higher than the bubble tests.
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p>Bill Schechter
Can be overused, and I somewhat agree with you on history. My children went to a high school like Lincoln-Sudbury and even with the MCAS managed to take college level literature and mathematics courses in their junior and senior years.
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p>What was more discouraging in history than MCAS was a teacher who put videos on and surfed the web in the back of the class.
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p> But math science and reading/writing can be tested and the tests are measuring basic skills. I took “high stakes” tests throughout college to get into my department and graduate. Your students took the same on the SAT when they applied to college.
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1) The teacher surfing the wen was a problem. The administrator who permitted this was the larger problem. Sadly, many administrators do not know how to evaluate teachers, because they never never trained nor were they master teachers themselves. And some don;t care. And yet we cheer because the new ed reform bill gave supervisors more power. I’d rather cheer their competence. Alas, I can’t simply assume it.
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p>2) Two issues with MCAS
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p>- For many kids the test is a waste of time. It disrupted things at LS big. The kids were kind of happy about this…as it provided a nice break from classes…and then 99% of kids passed, after spending 1.2 in the exam room and wandering around the school for an hour and a half. A shocking waste of time to catch the %1 who failed, most of whom were severely disabled. We knew he they were before the test. And please don’t the test is a one day thing!
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the kids in the cities deserve as food and as deep an education as the kids at LS. But their education is marked by shallow test prep. I want to see them get more, not less. Believe me me, this exam is not make suburban and urban kids equally well educated. The exam can’t do it. A plan drawn from we know works can. But schools also need help. We need social/economic policies that make schools and communities a little more equal. Presently, kids live in different worlds in Massachusetts.I agree with you at the top high schools, there really isn’t a need, but it helps to set a standard to contrast with other schools.
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p>When my kids hit college – they found they could handle the work with ease. Some of the kids who graduated in the top 5% of large (and not inner cities schools) struggled – they realized the high school they went to was not as good as they thought. The MCAS has set an objective standard for schools. My kids knew they went to a rigorous high school from their MCAS results.
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p>One place where I think MCAS is somewhat broken is the vocational schools. Vocational schools used to be where someone not academically inclined could get an education. This isn’t true anymore – they seem to becoming more academically oriented.
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Thanks for the exchange.
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p>I think our students knew they went to a rigorous high school for many reasons, and MCAS wasn’t one of them.
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p>I am not sure why you have such faith in this exam as an objective easure of anything. *(That goes for the SATs too, which can no longer make the claim of being an aptitude test. And we all know the more tutoring you can pay for, the higher the grade.) Certainly no one exam is good enough to serve as a single assessment.
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p>Final point: the rather low standard established by MCAS can serve as a platform or roof. I would argue that it has served as a roof.
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p>Creative, thoughtful teaching and learning have no “pay off”. They can’t be measured by a simple number. They aren’t part of the system of narrow accountability.
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p>A standard is been set it is a fairly ow one. Many teachers now teach down to it to protect themselves. What they really need is a challenging vision of all that education can and might be. But to have it, the people in charge need to have such a vision themselves.