Comment: Please read it. Here are some of my favorite excerpts ...
... as every teacher knows, it is easier to move a graveyard than to change a district's existing curriculum. For people who plan the school curriculum, God is in charge of the SAT, and Santa Claus presides over Title I. Now, with the chancellor of the New York City Public Schools joining the crowd that declares every third-grader will read on grade level and every 12th-grader will take calculus, schools need a direct line to the fairy godmother, too.
... we must learn to create environments that do not expect the worst of children and teachers. Allowing children to choose the books they read will not create anarchy and illiteracy. Kids who use calculators do learn math facts. Teachers who are given free access to phones do not call their psychics in Las Vegas. Kids whom the bus drops off at 7:55 a.m. in 10° weather will not trash the school if the doors are opened before the official bell at 8:30. I don't have the statistics here, but I really wonder if depriving middle- and high-schoolers of lockers (and thus forcing them to carry around all their books, musical instruments, coats, and lunches all day long) reduces drug use. What I do know is that taking away the lockers shows kids that you expect the worst from them, and kids have a way of living down to our expectations.
I learned something important from that course. I learned about the power of the book. Those kids couldn't believe we were giving them all those books. Every day they'd carry in every book. You could see that they enjoyed the tactile qualities of the books. They'd run their hands over the smooth, shiny covers. They'd brag about the weight of all their books. "Not another one!" they'd cry, groaning as they clutched each new book possessively. And while, say, On the Waterfront was playing on the screen, the students would crouch over The Red Pony or To Kill a Mockingbird, trying to read by the light of the projector. Every day we saw the professors proved wrong once again. The books definitely had much more power than the movies. But no one ever said a word about this. Not one word. The professors just kept handing out the books and showing the movies. And we teachers who were being retrained just sat there watching the kids struggle to read in the dark.
A professor friend of mine had one of these telling moments. After major surgery, he awoke from the anesthetic to see someone in hospital garb fiddling with his tubing. The caregiver mentioned that he'd been a student in the professor's course. The professor made the mistake of asking, "How'd you do?"
"I failed."
Finding that your life is in the hands of a person who failed your course offers a clarifying moment that few academics are fortunate enough to experience.
A woman driving in midtown Manhattan made an illegal right turn and was pulled over by a stern-looking cop. He took her license and registration and explained the error of her ways. Then he let her go with a warning. As she started to drive off, the officer queried, "Aren't you going to ask why I didn't give you a ticket?" When she nodded, he grinned and replied, "You were my first-grade teacher."
Surely no teacher can read that story without both jubilation and terror. I spent three days making lists of students I thought would have let me off and students who would have gleefully thrown the book at me. If we could go into our classrooms every day with the thought that these kids are tomorrow's traffic cops, the world would be a better place.
I invite you to go to Susan's website and read all of her essay.
28 August 2005
