The Demise of Language and Experience in Education Today

Noted Time Magazine journalist Amanda Ripley has joined the discussion about America’s weak international educational standing (17 out of 77 in reading literacy, 21 out of 74 in math, and 23 out of 25 in science) with The Smartest Kids in The World, her journalistic  account of three foreign exchange students in Poland, South Korea, and Finland.   The data driving the conversation about America’s poor international standing is almost always the PISA score.   While the test may be a valid measurement of critical thinking skills, it is disturbing to note that Andreas Schleicher, one of PISA’s primary developers, closes his Power-Point presentation on the test’s merits with the following scrolling ticker… “Without data, you are just another person with an opinion.”  The notion that data somehow transforms one from being “just another person with an opinion” to a truth teller and conveyor of “objective” information is antithetical to the spirit of English instruction and the art of teaching.

To be fair, the PISA requires that students distinguish credible and relevant data from data that obscures or is invalid.  Learning how to take this kind of analytic view of what one reads and evaluates is at the heart of good English instruction.  But when just having data, regardless of its relevance or interpretation,  validates an opinion, we are delaying and sometimes completely bypassing the need for a rigorous analysis.   Education today is so immersed in this data-frenzy that many people, particularly those administrators interpreting the data, lack the clarity to understand the quality and purpose of the data they are collecting.

Often, tables and graphs short circuit critical thought.  Many administrators around the country are now busy working out the kinks on their new IPAD software that will allow them to evaluate teachers with a slight touch to the screen and check of a box.  And, of course, teachers all around the country are busy with “professional development” that explains over and over again, without any meaningful purpose, collaboration or authentic reflection, how their evaluation will be determined by numbered statements in quadrants.   Of course, there are many reasons for this misguided emphasis on simplified numerical data.  The promise of computer-generated “right answers” to complex problems about students’ learning, the pervasiveness of software designed only to collect and warehouse data, the intrusion of private money and private interests in the classroom, and our politicians’ fondness for simple and quick solutions are all partly to blame.  But it’s the English teachers who don’t depend on computers and the English teachers who know that the classroom is not a boardroom and the English teachers who understand the complexity of experience and the importance of standing alone.

While part of the English teacher’s job is connecting themes, language, and style to a particular historical period, we are always acutely aware that each literary work is the embodiment of one person’s experience of the world.  We teach our students how to analyze literary techniques, language, and structure so they can understand how language impacts, manipulates, and, at its zenith, transforms the reader and his or her entire generation.  On principle, we assume that “just another person with an opinion” is worth listening to.  We go farther and often argue that it’s only the person with just an opinion that is worth listening to.  After all, regardless of the author’s race, place, or period in time, great literature almost always confronts the reader with the discontent of the one against the many.  We all hope our students will learn to value the tremendous power of the one voice!  Whether that one voice is the voice of the author, the student’s own voice, or the voice of the kid he or she used to always bully, words have power and should be wielded with care.  It’s the English teacher who fully appreciates that all meaningful instruction is necessarily differentiated.  Each student encounters and engages with the text differently and we never expect all our students to react the same way to the same text.  We discourage “the same” approach and we always ask our students to find their own voice.

Unfortunately, our profession is at odds with our calling as English teachers.  As English teachers we hope our students will learn to be more nuanced perceivers and articulators of the world and themselves.  However, increasingly, as the years go by, our success and salaries will be determined by the kind of hazy quantification of student growth that is better expressed by charts and graphs than a thorough and rigorous written analysis.   The recent emphasis on rubrics splattered with an assortment of “best practices” goes hand in hand with our current fetish with pie-charts and graphs and the appearance of objectivity.  The net result of all of this haphazard and poorly defined quantification is the silencing of the teacher’s own experience.  After all, when faced with the graph and abstracted “best practices” how is the teacher, particularly the new teacher, going to defend his or her opinion?  While of course “best practices” are potentially meaningful and instructional, there is a significant problem when these practices are abstracted from the experiences that gave rise to them.

In today’s current climate where the presence of data is enough, the “best practice” takes on a life of its own.  The teacher’s own individual experience and consequent practice is completely overlooked.  Only someone who knows his or her students knows: 1) why Johnny is talking, 2) if Johnny’s seat should be moved, and 3) where to move Johnny.  An administrator who peers in the room will only be able to guess at the answer to number 1 and this guess, if it’s any good, will be informed by his or her own experience as a former teacher.  In the current climate, it’s more likely that this guess will be informed by a checklist, rubric, expediency, and the illusion of objectivity.   The checklist and rubric are composed of generic reasons for student behavior that do not take into account the particular student, classroom, or teaching style.  The overworked and overburdened administrator, who has to implement a pointlessly laborious and complex evaluation tool, often does not know the teacher or the teacher’s students well enough to understand the many variables that contributed to the teacher’s decision.  Lucky for the administrator, he or she does not have to understand the minutia of the teacher’s experience.   All the administrator has to do is appeal to a rubric which clearly designates the “best practice.”  New teachers will quickly learn that they have to acquire these practices (or at least appear to acquire them) regardless of whether they make sense in his or her own classroom.

The best teachers are creative.  Teachers are not necessarily poets, authors, and musicians but they are tinkerers.  Good teachers take something, an idea, a situation, a physical location, etc. and they tinker with it over and over again until it connects and works and transforms.   Effective tinkering requires a certain amount of autonomy.  Autonomy allows the teacher’s own experience to inform the decisions he or she makes.   After all, tinkering is a subtle process that requires a nuanced appreciation of many intricate variables that produce a teachable moment.   One best practice would be to let teachers have some creative space so their instruction can be informed by personal experience and not despite personal experience!   Unfortunately, when faced with misapplied best practices, pie-charts, graphs, and the impending need to reduce student performance to a few easy to articulate data points easily tabulated for a graph, there is neither room nor the apparent need for creative space.

We must understand that sometimes “just one person” is the only person who knows.  We must allow the teacher – and not  policymakers, the affluent, or politicians who have never set foot in the classroom –  to have the confidence to be “the one person” we listen to.   If this happens, words will again become important and we will learn to listen to common sense and our own experience.   Teachers will feel like professionals, morale for both students and teachers will improve, and students will perform better on tests like the PISA.

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