Motormanmark.com

Jump to Comments

It used to be that the Language Arts programs of the typical urban high schools taught traditional classics like Animal Farm, Sounder, Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye….  In those days, schools that could get kids to read them did so, and schools whose kids would rather throw paper balls around the room and chat did that.   Thanks to No Child Left Behind, (see my recent post,) that second type of school—the crummy, failing school—is currently being set upon by forces of change.  The idea is that the old ways of overlooking failure are at an end and that something must be done this generation to change poorly-performing schools.

The new answer to the request by the failing school to continue as is, despite its demonstrated inability to function successfully, is: No.

Anyone with a bit of familiarity with the US education system knows that it tirelessly goes through fads—catchy new modes of teaching that last for about ten years—ideas that are supposed to be the final solution to the failure that clings stubbornly to US education like a second skin.  The teaching community, like an endless row of baby ducks, gloms onto these ideas and institutionalizes them to the point that no one can raise an objection.

When I was a boy, I was given a reader that had an “e” glued to the back of an “a” every few words, as that was supposed to help me sound out words phonically.  In high school, they had us “diagram” sentences, which had us all drawing lines and circles around various parts of speech and recording them like they were mathematical equations or something.  When I was teaching school back in the 1980’s, there was a resurgence of this “phonics” fad, but also a push for what was called “multicultural literature,” an addition of material  by and about US minority groups.  More recently, they are talking about “holistic literacy,” whole word reading, eschewing sounding things out for, rather, getting kids to identify the “sight words” as little pictures.

And multicultural literature has been found to be a false god.  Someone has realized that “multi-ethnic” literature is rather the true and ultimate salvation.

In the 1980’s we realized how neglected inner-city youth were of “PRIDE.”  This abstraction (one of the seven deadly sins,) provided through additive lessons focusing on human rights activists (in addition to the popular practice of printing the word across T-shirts and painting the word in huge colorful letters across the front wall of city schools during this era,) was sure to make minority students start studying.

Despite these passing fancies of educators, all the while, student performance rolls along in a straight or declining line, oblivious.

The most recent fad in the Language Arts classroom is the Reading Workshop model of teaching.  It begins with a “mini-lesson,” focusing on some technical aspect–maybe the use of the comma, or verb-sentence agreement—and then students are paired into small groups to read books they choose to read from a large selection.

To address student disinterest with reading, teachers have replaced what they call canonical literature—“the classics,”—with anything kids might like.  Rather than discussing the role of Lenny in Of Mice and Men they are discussing the role of Massie in P.S.: I Loathe You (trust me: there ain’t much to discuss there.)  The plots are usually about some US teenager, going through something mysterious, humorous, fantastical, or romantic; and, most often, they follow the tired, snarky interior narrative.

They are “reading” graphic novels, too, which are big, thick, glossy comic books, wherein all literate description has been mulched and replaced by felt-tipped marker sketches, and round-eyed anime standardized gestures, their teachers never competent enough to take the deliberation necessary to realize that a real book teaches kids how the language can flow to describe the entire world experience.  And it sets patterns of speech in their heads—patterns that will return throughout their lives every time their mind searches for a way to express itself.  Graphic novels are not evil, but, as they are capable of being digested through a mere cursory read, they are not a way to grow a reader or a better reader, a good writer, or a literate thinker.

Also among these classroom choices can be found absolute garbage by authors of pathos like Junot Diaz (who, according to my grad school Education Methods teacher, recently spoke before a convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, and, to my teacher’s awe and delight, “…used the f-word sixteen times!”)

Even the branch libraries are in on the act.  Over the past ten years, they have dumped their traditional literature off the shelves for splashy modern choices that are simpler and much less challenging.

This letting the kids decide what to read is a teaching cop-out, because it is so easy to get a child to sit with something comic-bookish or something full of violence, sex, or teenaged angst, compared to the difficulty of motivating a student to learn to appreciate Canterbury Tales or A Passage to India, Dante or Shakespeare.

This Reading Workshop model, the way it is practiced, is a true transformation of Language Arts taking place in the name of reform.  And it is based on theory, too.  Small groups have been demonstrated an effective learning tool.  The relevance of the material (much of the subject matter takes place in neighborhoods like their own to kids like them,) is a proven effective way to pique learning.  Reading skills can be assumed to improve with eyes on text, which is certainly easier to achieve with such reading choices.

The Reading Workshop model sets a framework that is assumed to be greater than the teacher.  The idea is that an inept teacher following the Reading Workshop model almost as a job description can be made capable.  I’ve watched inept but enthusiastic teachers sticking to this model and I would say it is poor.  It only seems successful because it is heads and tails over what used to go on in these same classrooms 20 years ago (nu-thing!)

Other teachers believe they should not lead.  The students should be encouraged just to be whatever they are, and it is wrong for somebody to tell a kid they need to do something to become better than they are.  These lazily use the Reading Workshop model, thinking it gets them the best performance possible.  It is the greater society that is at fault (which is true) so I shouldn’t worry about finding a way to improve, (which is not true.)  They are eager for the entire NCLB initiative to fail, so they can return to the security of the old days when nobody cared what they were doing

Teachers who merely elicit student preferences in choosing appropriate literature so as to serve students something along the lines of what they like, are serving up of empty calories that may not even bring enjoyment sufficient to justify the notion that getting a student to like reading will lead them to seek out something richer next time.   Though these teachers often see themselves as nonconformists, their approach is quite tediously conventional, learned from our society, in which culture responds to what will most effortlessly engage us, which is why we waste our time watching “Maury Povitch” and “Survivor” between commercials for products assembled by children toiling in sweatshops across the sea.  We end up engaging ourselves in what is most riveting, not what would help us grow into better people.

Our responsibility to our students is to scaffold upward—to draw them towards something better they have yet to imagine, not to cater to their interests, Madison-Avenue style.

This takes an effort not laid out in the Reading Workshop model.  It takes an appreciation of great literature and a well-thought-out path of relevance from the bookshelf to the housing project.

(Watch for my next post: A New Definition of Multicultural Literature.”)