The Needy Ones
In their tandem discussion posts on February 27, 2008, Madie and Mary Lauren address the fear of doing something wrong that paralyzes today's students and prevents them from thinking for themselves. I'm not sure what the quality is called (or if it even has an official name), but I have noticed it often this year. As I write this, I just returned from one of my son's basketball games in which I screamed myself hoarse from the sidelines, telling him what to do at every turn: "Get the rebound! Pick it up! Go after it! Box out! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" I forgive some of his timidity because this is the first year he has ever been on a basketball court, and I haven't done much from the father's side to help him gain any confidence in that particular sport, but I'm still surprised by how uncertain so many of my ninth graders seem this year about so many academic tasks. You'd think, after nine years of this routine, they'd have it figured out, but so many students this year seem so needy, constantly in search of reassurance that each thing they do is correct, acceptable, okay. This is scary.
In December, I made my classes write a "Free Choice" journal for the first time. It just means that I don't supply the topic; they can write about anything they want. There was a time, fifteen years ago, when most students prefered this. They didn't want to respond to my silly questions. Writing their own ideas, choosing their own focus, was easier than having to contemplate the arbitary topics I made up each day. I knew this, and it was clearly understood that, unless I specifically said I wanted them to write about a certain topic, they always had the option to do a free choice journal. Many students did so every day, keeping a log of their year, complaining about the daily frustrations of junior high, recording their most successful moments, and revisiting those they would have liked to do over. It wasn't something most of us gave much thought to, but over the years, I began to hear a particular complaint more frequently when it came to "Free Choice" topics: "I don't know what to write about! I don't have anything to say! What am I supposed to write?" Finally, some students even resorted to just asking, "Can't you just give us a topic?" Because the fact that they were writing was more important to me than what they were writing, I gave in and started supplying a topic every day. And now it has come to this.
Gallant Goode is, to all appearances, a gifted student in every capacity: straight-A report card, busy extra-curricular schedule, highly motivated and involved. Any teacher would be happy to have Gallant in a class. He participates reqularly and earnestly, always has his homework done, and genuinely cares about learning. But he drives me mental. On the day of that first "Free Choice" journal, I thought Gallant's head was going to explode. "So, we can write about anything?" he asked, a look of vague consternation creasing his brow. I nodded magnanimously and watched his response. First, he looked at me as if he thought I was joking, as if he expected me to suddenly laugh and say, "Just kidding!" as I raised the screen to reveal the real topic for the day. When he realized I was, in fact, completely serious, he stared momentarily at the blank journal page before him, took up his pencil, and.... Nothing. He looked up again, looked around at his classmates -- most of whom were, by this time, finding a thread to follow -- and then grimaced as he started to write. This guy, who is usually the first to have that journal finished and back in the box where they are stored, was laboring to find something of his own to say. It was then that I realized something about Gallant that I hadn't recognized before: Part of the reason he was always so willing to ask questions in class was not because he was unclear about the conepts; it was because he wanted to make sure he was "doing it right." He was checking continually to see that he was doing what I wanted him to do. Even the the simplest fill-in-the-blank worksheet would bring him to my desk three or four times: "Will you check number 1?" "Is this right?" "Is that what you mean?" While I appreciate the fact that Gallant wants to please the teacher in order to get a good grade, I sometimes fear that he is not learning some of the most important lessons of all.
Then there's Billy Bluebeard, the polar opposite of Gallant in almost every conceivable way, not least of which is his bizarre obsession with pirates. All of his clothing and school notebooks are plastered with the ominous Jolly Roger, as is his collection of necklaces and often most of the exposed flesh on his arms. Far from a straight-A student, Billy never raises his hand before he asks a question, and more than half of what issues from his mouth is uncomfortably close to obscene. He's not too bothered by holding conversations with someone on the other side of the room, and he doesn't care how many people in between can hear him. Teachers secretly rejoice when Billy is absent, but he shares one scary quality with Gallant Goode: When it comes to academic tasks, they both want constant reassurance that what they are doing is acceptable. In the computer lab recently, my classes were working on an early draft of a term writing assignment. I had warned Billy that he could not afford to ignore this assignment because if he didn't do it he would fail the class (and therefore have to take a make-up class in order to graduate from high school), so, whereas he usually would have been playing Line Rider, he was actually trying to write an essay following our long-established pattern. "Can you come and look at this?" came Billy's insistent call from the back of the lab. When I would arrive at his station, he would point at his most recent sentence and inquire, "Is this good?" Every new sentence an act of complete uncertainty! Each word an exercise in insecurity! Every syllable a torturous process of self-doubt! "Can you come look at this? Tell me if it's good. Am I doing it right?" Reassure me!
Students in a big system are so accustomed to being told what, when, and exactly how to do everything that they lose the ability to think and act for themselves. As my classes become more populated by Gallants and Billys, I am troubled by a number of things. First, I think we (as a society and a community) have lost sight of what schools are supposed to do. Second, I don't know if it can be fixed from within the system because obedient students serve the system well. Like the massive meat grinder to which it is often compared, public education churns out lots of identical little hamburger patties that look and behave alike, but few of them are actually able to think critically and solve the problems life throws at them. From my classroom, I can see the field behind the elementary school next door. Every morining the students line up patiently just to get in when the first bell rings. (They aren't allowed in before that.) At the appointed time, the school seems to swallow up eight long lines of kids like a massive spider folding its legs under itself. At recess, the kids are so rigidly supervised by the "ground duty" that most of them just sort of huddle in small groups and talk. They line up like dutiful soldiers in front of the appropriate entrance when a whistle is blown or a sign with a big letter on it is held in the air. There doesn't seem to be much recess left in recess, which now happens before lunch instead of after because it is more convenient for the functioning of the school schedule.
When I was in elementary school, we would shovel down our lunch and get outside as fast as possible to maximize our playtime. Once in the yard, we often played a game we called "Smear the Queer," in which whoever had the ball (the Queer) would run for his life until a pack of classmates tackled him and dogpiled on him until he coughed it up, at which time the next person brave enough to be the Queer would snatch it and run as the group attempted once again to smear him. "Ground duty would never let us play that game," my son informed me when I described it to him. Of course I understand why, but in a way, it's sad.
This is why the business and political communities continually criticize public education even though the vast majority of students today are academically smarter than ever before. Kids like Gallant can go all the way through the system of public education with perfect GPAs and no tardies, but they can't be trusted to cook a grilled cheese sandwich without burning the house down. They are so accustomed to being told exactly what, when, and how to act that they have no capacity for making common sense decisions on their own. My daughter, six months into her driving permit, still asks me, every time a light at which she is stopped turns green, "Should I go?" There will come a day when I'm not in the car with her. What will she do then? Who will she look to? Of course, she'll have to depend on her own natural intelligence, but the fact that she is so uncomfortable doing that makes me nervous.
Students today are more concerned with doing exactly what they are told rather than learning how to do anything independently. I see it in the writing of standard academic essays. What a horrible and hypocritical thing! A formula for how to express oneself! But they want a formula. It helps them to know they are doing it right! The problem is that most of them never develop any discretion, no sense of when the "rules" may not apply (or when a writer may not need them) or awareness of the fact that sometimes a topic may require more than five paragraphs. Or less.
In our effort to maintain order, standardize everything, ensure that all students get an equal education, we have created a generation of good rule followers who can't solve many of the basic problems of existence or exhibit any evidence of common sense. While I think the school system does help propogate such a problem, I don't blame just the schools. Many parents send their children to school to learn the discipline they are not taught at home. Politicians seem to believe that schools should be treated just like businesses, and they believe that enough testing will ensure "basic competencies" for every student; they fail to see that all this does is create a generation of test-takers, not thinkers!
You didn't tell us to do it that way! You never said it was due today! You didn't remind us about the quiz! You didn't tell me to rebound that ball! You didn't say I should go through the green light! You didn't tell me to continue writing another sentence after the last one! You didn't make me stop drawing on the desk! You never said that wasn't right! You never told me armed robbery was illegal! You didn't say I couldn't kill him! You didn't.... See? It's not a kid's responsibility; it's mine! It's my job to oversee everything in every student's life, right? If I don't specifically tell you not to do something, it must be okay. Or, if it serves your comfort better, if I don't specifically tell you to do something, then you shouldn't worry about it. As always, it is an issue of responsibility. You can't be responsible for something if you depend on others to tell you what to do all the time. Except you can. And you are. Blame whoever you want -- sometimes they (schools, parents, teachers) might even accept the blame so you'll feel like you're off the hook -- but your life is in your hands! The work you turn in, the choices you make, the actions you engage in are yours, and you will ultimately experience the consequences (good or bad) for what you do. So why not accept responsibility for yourself now, while there's still time to make a difference?
There is no single correct formula for life. Part of critical thinking is the ability to adapt to whatever the circumstances are, and that is a lesson many students need to learn in schools but don't. That's why I don't always tell you exactly how and when something should be done. Sometimes I like to see what you'll come up with on your own.
Most of the time, I'm quite impressed!
In December, I made my classes write a "Free Choice" journal for the first time. It just means that I don't supply the topic; they can write about anything they want. There was a time, fifteen years ago, when most students prefered this. They didn't want to respond to my silly questions. Writing their own ideas, choosing their own focus, was easier than having to contemplate the arbitary topics I made up each day. I knew this, and it was clearly understood that, unless I specifically said I wanted them to write about a certain topic, they always had the option to do a free choice journal. Many students did so every day, keeping a log of their year, complaining about the daily frustrations of junior high, recording their most successful moments, and revisiting those they would have liked to do over. It wasn't something most of us gave much thought to, but over the years, I began to hear a particular complaint more frequently when it came to "Free Choice" topics: "I don't know what to write about! I don't have anything to say! What am I supposed to write?" Finally, some students even resorted to just asking, "Can't you just give us a topic?" Because the fact that they were writing was more important to me than what they were writing, I gave in and started supplying a topic every day. And now it has come to this.
Gallant Goode is, to all appearances, a gifted student in every capacity: straight-A report card, busy extra-curricular schedule, highly motivated and involved. Any teacher would be happy to have Gallant in a class. He participates reqularly and earnestly, always has his homework done, and genuinely cares about learning. But he drives me mental. On the day of that first "Free Choice" journal, I thought Gallant's head was going to explode. "So, we can write about anything?" he asked, a look of vague consternation creasing his brow. I nodded magnanimously and watched his response. First, he looked at me as if he thought I was joking, as if he expected me to suddenly laugh and say, "Just kidding!" as I raised the screen to reveal the real topic for the day. When he realized I was, in fact, completely serious, he stared momentarily at the blank journal page before him, took up his pencil, and.... Nothing. He looked up again, looked around at his classmates -- most of whom were, by this time, finding a thread to follow -- and then grimaced as he started to write. This guy, who is usually the first to have that journal finished and back in the box where they are stored, was laboring to find something of his own to say. It was then that I realized something about Gallant that I hadn't recognized before: Part of the reason he was always so willing to ask questions in class was not because he was unclear about the conepts; it was because he wanted to make sure he was "doing it right." He was checking continually to see that he was doing what I wanted him to do. Even the the simplest fill-in-the-blank worksheet would bring him to my desk three or four times: "Will you check number 1?" "Is this right?" "Is that what you mean?" While I appreciate the fact that Gallant wants to please the teacher in order to get a good grade, I sometimes fear that he is not learning some of the most important lessons of all.
Then there's Billy Bluebeard, the polar opposite of Gallant in almost every conceivable way, not least of which is his bizarre obsession with pirates. All of his clothing and school notebooks are plastered with the ominous Jolly Roger, as is his collection of necklaces and often most of the exposed flesh on his arms. Far from a straight-A student, Billy never raises his hand before he asks a question, and more than half of what issues from his mouth is uncomfortably close to obscene. He's not too bothered by holding conversations with someone on the other side of the room, and he doesn't care how many people in between can hear him. Teachers secretly rejoice when Billy is absent, but he shares one scary quality with Gallant Goode: When it comes to academic tasks, they both want constant reassurance that what they are doing is acceptable. In the computer lab recently, my classes were working on an early draft of a term writing assignment. I had warned Billy that he could not afford to ignore this assignment because if he didn't do it he would fail the class (and therefore have to take a make-up class in order to graduate from high school), so, whereas he usually would have been playing Line Rider, he was actually trying to write an essay following our long-established pattern. "Can you come and look at this?" came Billy's insistent call from the back of the lab. When I would arrive at his station, he would point at his most recent sentence and inquire, "Is this good?" Every new sentence an act of complete uncertainty! Each word an exercise in insecurity! Every syllable a torturous process of self-doubt! "Can you come look at this? Tell me if it's good. Am I doing it right?" Reassure me!
Students in a big system are so accustomed to being told what, when, and exactly how to do everything that they lose the ability to think and act for themselves. As my classes become more populated by Gallants and Billys, I am troubled by a number of things. First, I think we (as a society and a community) have lost sight of what schools are supposed to do. Second, I don't know if it can be fixed from within the system because obedient students serve the system well. Like the massive meat grinder to which it is often compared, public education churns out lots of identical little hamburger patties that look and behave alike, but few of them are actually able to think critically and solve the problems life throws at them. From my classroom, I can see the field behind the elementary school next door. Every morining the students line up patiently just to get in when the first bell rings. (They aren't allowed in before that.) At the appointed time, the school seems to swallow up eight long lines of kids like a massive spider folding its legs under itself. At recess, the kids are so rigidly supervised by the "ground duty" that most of them just sort of huddle in small groups and talk. They line up like dutiful soldiers in front of the appropriate entrance when a whistle is blown or a sign with a big letter on it is held in the air. There doesn't seem to be much recess left in recess, which now happens before lunch instead of after because it is more convenient for the functioning of the school schedule.
When I was in elementary school, we would shovel down our lunch and get outside as fast as possible to maximize our playtime. Once in the yard, we often played a game we called "Smear the Queer," in which whoever had the ball (the Queer) would run for his life until a pack of classmates tackled him and dogpiled on him until he coughed it up, at which time the next person brave enough to be the Queer would snatch it and run as the group attempted once again to smear him. "Ground duty would never let us play that game," my son informed me when I described it to him. Of course I understand why, but in a way, it's sad.
This is why the business and political communities continually criticize public education even though the vast majority of students today are academically smarter than ever before. Kids like Gallant can go all the way through the system of public education with perfect GPAs and no tardies, but they can't be trusted to cook a grilled cheese sandwich without burning the house down. They are so accustomed to being told exactly what, when, and how to act that they have no capacity for making common sense decisions on their own. My daughter, six months into her driving permit, still asks me, every time a light at which she is stopped turns green, "Should I go?" There will come a day when I'm not in the car with her. What will she do then? Who will she look to? Of course, she'll have to depend on her own natural intelligence, but the fact that she is so uncomfortable doing that makes me nervous.
Students today are more concerned with doing exactly what they are told rather than learning how to do anything independently. I see it in the writing of standard academic essays. What a horrible and hypocritical thing! A formula for how to express oneself! But they want a formula. It helps them to know they are doing it right! The problem is that most of them never develop any discretion, no sense of when the "rules" may not apply (or when a writer may not need them) or awareness of the fact that sometimes a topic may require more than five paragraphs. Or less.
In our effort to maintain order, standardize everything, ensure that all students get an equal education, we have created a generation of good rule followers who can't solve many of the basic problems of existence or exhibit any evidence of common sense. While I think the school system does help propogate such a problem, I don't blame just the schools. Many parents send their children to school to learn the discipline they are not taught at home. Politicians seem to believe that schools should be treated just like businesses, and they believe that enough testing will ensure "basic competencies" for every student; they fail to see that all this does is create a generation of test-takers, not thinkers!
You didn't tell us to do it that way! You never said it was due today! You didn't remind us about the quiz! You didn't tell me to rebound that ball! You didn't say I should go through the green light! You didn't tell me to continue writing another sentence after the last one! You didn't make me stop drawing on the desk! You never said that wasn't right! You never told me armed robbery was illegal! You didn't say I couldn't kill him! You didn't.... See? It's not a kid's responsibility; it's mine! It's my job to oversee everything in every student's life, right? If I don't specifically tell you not to do something, it must be okay. Or, if it serves your comfort better, if I don't specifically tell you to do something, then you shouldn't worry about it. As always, it is an issue of responsibility. You can't be responsible for something if you depend on others to tell you what to do all the time. Except you can. And you are. Blame whoever you want -- sometimes they (schools, parents, teachers) might even accept the blame so you'll feel like you're off the hook -- but your life is in your hands! The work you turn in, the choices you make, the actions you engage in are yours, and you will ultimately experience the consequences (good or bad) for what you do. So why not accept responsibility for yourself now, while there's still time to make a difference?
There is no single correct formula for life. Part of critical thinking is the ability to adapt to whatever the circumstances are, and that is a lesson many students need to learn in schools but don't. That's why I don't always tell you exactly how and when something should be done. Sometimes I like to see what you'll come up with on your own.
Most of the time, I'm quite impressed!
posted by MRT at 2:26 PM
4 Comments:
.... Ok, I had a lot to say about this blog a minute ago.... Where'd it all go?
I've been working on this myself since the discussion board question about it. Whenever I see myself going to ask a question about something I already think I know the right answer to I have thought about it more. I noticed that a lot of the time when I ask a question I don't need to. I know what's going on in my classes, and I know what I need to get done.
But then again, I did come and ask you if it was ok for me to be so far behind didn't I? I already knew that it would be okay if I got it all done by the end of the term, but I needed to be absolutely positive that it would be ok.
Finally, a blog!! Rather interesting blog that I agreed with, good work.
We ARE needy ones. Especially myself. I know its not necessarily a good thing, but all anyone really cares about is your grades. Not what you learn. I am one who loves to think, but isn't allowed much time to do so. I'm not complaining and saying that my life is THAT busy, but its still busy to where I finally have time to think things of my own, I don't want to record them in my blog or journal or personal writing like I used to. Instead I just.... Well, think myself to sleep. Personally, I love it when you gave us the free choice journal because mine usually drag into a whole different subject from the one you gave us and I have to force it back. I realize though, in my Creative Writing class I am so frustrated because Mrs. B won't tell me exactly what to do with my short story but to just WRITE it. Good for her, yet I still struggle and have asked her so many reassurance questions, without even writing the first word after having this assignment for a week. How do we fix it though? How do we become more independent and less needy, when all that matters is grades?
I totally agree with everything you said, especially about the lunch recess change.. Sometimes it seems like adults don't trust kids as much anymore. There are more bad things out there different from when my parents were younger. It seems for some reason that adults expect teenagers to do those bad things if they don't have "positive reinforcement." Well I think having a “Hall Nazi” and ten “Ground Duties” to watch a few kindergarteners is a bit over the top. Even day one of Kindergarten, we are taught “the rules.” I can’t think of a year in school where the whole first day of school wasn’t just about “the rules.”
In fourth grade I had a very strict teacher who was very into “the rules.” She kept those reigns tight on her little ten year olds. I was always confused about math so I would ask her lots of questions for “positive reinforcement.” A few weeks later at parent teacher conference she scolded me for, “asking too many questions.” I remember that it really hurt my feelings when she said that! Despite her hurting my feelings temporarily, I’ll be grateful to that teacher for the rest of my life. She taught me to think on my own using just one simple sentence. Many kids haven’t been given the simple advice, “Don’t ask me! Think it out; I know that the answer can be found in that little brain of yours!”
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