A Teacher Speaks Out – Read­ing With­out Meaning

Take a look at this blog by a Read­ing teacher who has to watch her own high schooler slog through the very kind of assign­ments we all know are worthless.

Posted in category Teachers Speak Out on June 15, 2009 at 7:19 am
| 59 Comments »

59 Comments on “A Teacher Speaks Out – Read­ing With­out Meaning”

  1. HomeworkBlues says:

    As a per­son who reads for escape, for sheer plea­sure, who would rather read than do any­thing else, who instilled this pas­sion in my child, I found the boy’s com­ments too sad for words. What on earth are we doing to our chil­dren and their love of learn­ing and reading?

    If your child brings home assign­ments like that, don’t have him do it. The dam­age is too great​.Is it worth it?

    June 15th, 2009 at 7:55 am
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  2. PsychMom says:

    This is my great­est fear. It hap­pened this win­ter to my 7 year old. Before Christ­mas she was nuts about read­ing. Then in Jan­u­ary, the assigned read­ing started and the goofy ques­tions and the end of book projects. We both hated it, so much so that she stopped read­ing com­pletely. I put an end to the assigned read­ing and within a few weeks she was read­ing her books again. Now that the end of year has come and the school note­books have all been sent home, I see that the teacher actu­ally got her to do the same work just using the books my daugh­ter wanted to read. And it all hap­pened at school because I knew noth­ing about it. So I guess it got sorted out and these days, it’s very unusual to see my daugh­ter with­out a book in her hand.

    But I’m hold­ing my breath in September.…and just pray­ing that she doesn’t get shut down again.

    June 15th, 2009 at 8:20 am
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  3. HomeworkBlues says:

    Psy­ch­Mom, don’t do the goofy assign­ments. That is, don’t have your child do them. The risk is too great.

    I like Sara Bennett’s approach. In read­ing one of the inter­views done with her, I remem­ber that she respect­fully pre­sented her home­work phi­los­o­phy with a teacher. In one case, as I recall (Sara, cor­rect me if I’m off), she told the teacher, then we will have to agree to disagree.

    As I look back over the year on this blog and recount the let­ters par­ents have writ­ten to the teacher and prin­ci­pal, one aspect jumps out at me. In most cases the par­ent is build­ing a case. So far so good. Present your case, state your claim, cite your research.

    But as I read the let­ters fur­ther, one com­mon thread runs through them. You are essen­tially ask­ing for per­mis­sion. You are mak­ing a case and hop­ing your reader will buy it. But what if they don’t? What about the mother who wrote an ele­gantly crafted let­ter she later says took her three days to write? She got a terse para­graph back, it was obvi­ous the teacher hadn’t read most of it, spout­ing the lit­tle boy’s poor time man­age­ment as the rea­son the six year old was tak­ing hours to com­plete his homework!

    What if you don’t get the response you want? Kick it up a notch. Don’t ask, inform. You aren’t ask­ing per­mis­sion to keep your child from being turned off to read­ing. You are telling.

    I wish I’d done that, to that degree. But all this evi­dence wasn’t around five years ago, just anec­do­tal. You have Har­ris Cooper on your side, USE HIM! Of course, as I sur­vey the long land­scape of my daughter’s school “career,” I wish I’d home­schooled, at least ele­men­tary, even all the way through mid­dle (we home­schooled 8th grade). But if you are a par­ent who is not in a posi­tion to home­school, take back your school, take back your life.

    As Nike says, just do it. Or in this case, just don’t. Your child, your home, your rules.

    June 15th, 2009 at 9:45 am
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  4. PsychMom says:

    You know HWB, it’s inter­est­ing how par­ents pay such def­er­ence towards schools and teach­ers. But I’m begin­ning to under­stand that it’s because of the way we were schooled. It’s the same as with the cri­sis in the Catholic church and the abuses that went on…everyone bowed down to the priest. They held such sway and power and weren’t account­able to any­one. And many peo­ple were schooled by church bod­ies too. Such authorities!!!

    You know, I was googling the home­work issue last week and one page that came up was the one page syl­labus of a Grade 9 teacher’s Eng­lish course. I won­der if teach­ers ever take a step back and look at what they write and HOW they sound . “You shall do this”, You shall NOT do that”. “IF I CAN’T READ IT, I WILL NOT MARK IT” No exceptions…etc etc…you get the idea. I would not want to spend 5 min­utes with the woman on any basis hav­ing received a doc­u­ment like that. She writes, “It is per­mis­si­ble to call me for help between this and this time, on such and such a date. How­ever, this is not an oppor­tu­nity to have the class retaught. Any abuse of this tele­phone option will result in it’s can­cel­la­tion.” It’s all so threat­en­ing. And I remem­ber get­ting sheets like that as a stu­dent and not hav­ing the reac­tion to it that I have now, which to me only demon­strates how abused stu­dents are. They don’t even rec­og­nize the abuse. I had the thought I writ­ing to this woman and offer­ing her an alter­na­tive to what she wrote, just to see if she could see the difference.

    On the first men­tion of home­work this fall, I plan to be clear. I do not believe in home­work (and here’s why) in the ele­men­tary grades (cer­tainly not before Grade 7) and my child will not be doing it. We’ll see how far behind she falls! I don’t even know why we have to sup­ply the “here’s why” part any­more either. They should know why.

    June 15th, 2009 at 11:31 am
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  5. Sara Bennett says:

    HWB: You are right that I often told ele­men­tary and mid­dle school teach­ers that we’d have to agree to dis­agree. On the high school level, though, I try to work more with the admin­is­tra­tion than with indi­vid­ual teach­ers (and I leave it up to my daugh­ter to speak up on her own behalf with her teach­ers). That doesn’t mean I never say any­thing. If I don’t like a par­tic­u­lar pol­icy, I’ll do some­thing about it. For instance, when one of my daughter’s teach­ers sent home a “con­tract” with terms I couldn’t accept, I crossed out those terms and wrote an expla­na­tion. And, at parent/teacher con­fer­ences, I do talk about my thoughts on home­work and I tell the teach­ers I’m not inter­ested in all the grades in their grade book, but rather in whether my daugh­ter is enjoy­ing and under­stand­ing the sub­ject. But I no longer do any­thing about indi­vid­ual assign­ments. My daugh­ter either does or doesn’t do her home­work, depend­ing on what she decides. Thank­fully, she goes to a school where home­work is worth about 10 – 15 per­cent of a grade, so home­work incom­ple­tion will not, by itself, result in stu­dent fail­ure. She also steers clear of the heavy home­work classes. I only wish more par­ents would help their chil­dren decide that heavy home­work classes (APs,for exam­ple), aren’t worth it. If more stu­dents boy­cotted those classes, the schools would stop plac­ing so much empha­sis on them and could get back to teach­ing sub­jects in more meanig­ful ways.

    June 15th, 2009 at 11:40 am
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  6. PeggyinMA says:

    We have tried to say no, but our schools will not change the assign­ments that con­cern us, or allow us to opt out. Our chil­dren then face the threat of a zero, and the sub­se­quent cumu­la­tive effect on their grades.

    It’s become a cliche, but more peo­ple need to recon­sider how they think about edu­ca­tion: We need to change the cul­ture. The bot­tom line is not allow­ing arbi­trary assign­ments with no basis in sound prac­tice to hurt children’s curios­ity and love of learn­ing and read­ing. Like doc­tors, edu­ca­tors need to think seri­ously about their role and, first, do no harm.

    How can edu­ca­tors do a bet­ter job of nur­tur­ing curios­ity, cre­ativ­ity and learn­ing? More par­ents and teach­ers need to speak up on this.

    June 15th, 2009 at 11:58 am
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  7. HomeworkBlues says:

    Sara, I agree with you and as the mother of a high school daugh­ter, I don’t take it up with the teach­ers on indi­vid­ual assign­ments. With rare exceptions.

    But for ele­men­tary and mid­dle school par­ents, I advise chang­ing the tac­tic. Stop giv­ing the schools so much power. Try not to be so def­er­en­tial. Don’t bow down to the high priests of pub­lic school.

    There’s some­thing in between blind accep­tance and a mutiny I wrote last week that I would have loved noth­ing more than to be respected, my opin­ions val­ued, to work together in a spirit of coop­er­a­tion and intel­li­gent rea­soned dialogue.

    By accept­ing with­out debate, refus­ing to ques­tion, assum­ing schools know every­thing and you know noth­ing, you are ced­ing all con­trol. And it does open the win­dow for abuse. PsychMom’s let­ter demon­strates it. Our kids get hand outs like that all the time. Par­ents, stop and pay atten­tion. The con­de­scend­ing lit­tle notes, “please see to it that your daugh­ter com­pletes this at home,” the let­ters that lay out the pun­ish­ment if you don’t do the work, the missed recesses, the pub­lic sham­ing. “Please make sure your child has a quiet place to do home­work.” Stop and con­sider how patron­iz­ing that is. Are we such idiots we couldn’t have fig­ured that out for ourselves?

    Susan Ohan­ian copies a mis­sive from a New Jer­sey school sys­tem about home­work tips for par­ents. She advises, stop and read it. Is it respect­ful? Is it a part­ner­ship? Does it value who you are, what you do, what you con­tribute? Does it treat you as a reli­able respon­si­ble adult entrusted with the sacred care of your children?

    I know some will counter here that since so many par­ents are dead­beats, drunk, absent, abu­sive, that it’s jus­ti­fied. But must it be the default line? Since the ones who aren’t drunk and abu­sive are the ones vol­un­teer­ing and chap­er­on­ing, why tick off your most sup­port­ive base?

    Yes, I know many chil­dren don’t have sup­plies. Does that mean I need a memo telling me my daugh­ter should have pen­cils and paper at home? And while I’m at it, please smile at us when we stop by the office. To quote that mar­velous piece in the Wash­ing­ton Post, school reform should begin with, “Good morn­ing, how may I help you?”

    June 15th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
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  8. PsychMom says:

    On that note, I have to say our school is very wel­com­ing, which is one of the rea­sons we go there. And being a pri­vate school, I think it’s OK to assume that all stu­dents have sup­plies and our notes home haven’t made men­tion of those basics.

    June 15th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
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  9. HomeworkBlus says:

    Yes, Psy­ch­Mom, it’s because you are a pri­vate school par­ent. My daugh­ter started in pri­vate as well and the dif­fer­ence between that and pub­lic school was pal­pa­ble. The writer was talk­ing about pub­lic school. It’s a very dif­fer­ent ani­mal, in that regard.

    June 15th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
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  10. HomeworkBlues says:

    And on that note, Psy­ch­Mom, I’ll give credit where credit is due! The two women who peo­ple the front office at my daughter’s cur­rent school are WONDERFUL. And I always let them know it.

    Not the case when we switched to pub­lic school in 5th. Boy, did I see a dif­fer­ence in how we were treated, com­ing from a small rel­a­tively nur­tur­ing (with some notable excep­tions) pri­vate school.

    My daugh­ter grad­u­ated and we moved to escape that entire pyra­mid. The new mid­dle school was slightly bet­ter, at least the office staff didn’t scowl. A smile, it turned out, was still too much to ask.

    June 15th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
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  11. High School Soph--oh wait I'm a junior says:

    After fol­low­ing this blog for a lit­tle while, what seems to pop out at me is the way the argu­ment about read­ing logs and the goofy assign­ments gen­er­ally goes:

    “enlight­ened blog­ger – ‘read­ing logs/goofy assign­ments have to stop so that kids will keep enjoy­ing read­ing instead of com­ing to hate it’

    blog­ger who doesn’t agree – ‘no, we need them because fill­ing out forms and ques­tions teaches responsibility’”

    Me: We need to sac­ri­fice enjoy­ment of read­ing to learn respon­si­bil­ity? The only way to teach respon­si­bil­ity is to have kids com­plete assign­ments that have no intrin­sic value beyond their exis­tence and imper­a­tive com­ple­tion, which will even­tu­ally make them reli­able, depend­able peo­ple who fol­low through on their word? WTF­reak?
    Come on, don’t tell me no bet­ter way to teach respon­si­bil­ity exists.

    I do think that kids should learn how to do things they don’t want to do – we’ll have to fill out taxes when we’re adults or what­ever. But how about we not sac­ri­fice the love of read­ing.
    (There is also the other skill I think is taught pri­mar­ily by long projects, more of the ‘fol­low through on their word’ skill, which does involve get­ting around to work sooner than kids might on their own. It’s some­thing I think peo­ple work on for a lot of their lives, and NOT some­thing I think is taught by doing ‘goofy’ assign­ments that don’t even help kids learn about what they’re read­ing since they don’t go deep into the char­ac­ters and plot of the indi­vid­ual book – or by check­ing off how many pages a night you’ve read. I can hardly put a book down to cross the street, and I could never remem­ber to fill out read­ing logs because I had no idea where I’d started or how many pages I’d read by the time my par­ents had pried the book out of my hands and shooed me upstairs to brush my teeth. If you want us to do some­thing we don’t want to do to teach us to get it done, have us wash the dishes or mow the lawn or clean the class­room or something.)

    Okay, sorry, that was a lit­tle vitu­per­a­tive, but really, I’m some­thing of a booka­holic and the sug­ges­tion that a kid’s engage­ment with and enjoy­ment of read­ing is less impor­tant than goofy assign­ments makes me a lit­tle mad.

    June 15th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
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  12. HomeworkBlues says:

    High School soph, now junior, I’ll do you one bet­ter. Even if all that use­less work taught respon­si­bil­ity, it STILL wouldn’t be worth the dam­age. OF COURSE you don’t mess with love of read­ing! We know that. The larger ques­tion is, why doesn’t everyone?

    But, to add, it doesn’t even teach respon­si­bil­ity! So now we’re 0 for 2. Less home­work (or none in ele­men­tary) gives a child time to clean her room, be a Girl Scout, vol­un­teer, take care of a pet, spend time with fam­ily, do house­hold chores. We don’t need bor­ing home­work to teach our kids respon­si­bil­ity. That’s what yard work is for!

    June 15th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
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  13. PsychMom says:

    No way should we ever extin­guish that love of reading…what’s the point of edu­ca­tion if we don’t encour­age that gate­way at every and all opportunity!

    I agree with High­school Sopho-no Junior and HBW com­pletely. Read­ing logs do not equal responisibility.

    But darn, now I have to go look up “vitu­per­a­tive” to keep up with you two
    ..heehee.

    June 15th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
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  14. HomeworkBlues says:

    Psy­ch­Mom, as surely as chil­dren learn from us, we learn from them. There was this great quote I sent Sara Ben­nett about how when we let chil­dren be chil­dren, we all ben­e­fit. How destruc­tive it is to con­stantly groom them for future adult­hood because then we lose all their won­der, grace, cre­ativ­ity and ide­al­ism. Some­thing like, we need their youth and they need our expe­ri­ence and together we make a for­mi­da­ble team.

    By jove, I just might have said it bet­ter than the orig­i­nal! Vitu­per­a­tive and all.

    vi?tu?per?a?tion??[vahy-too-puh-rey-shuhn, –tyoo-, vi-]
    –noun
    ver­bal abuse or cas­ti­ga­tion; vio­lent denun­ci­a­tion or condemnation.

    Syn­onyms:
    cen­sure, vil­i­fi­ca­tion, spite, scold­ing, defama­tion, aspersion.

    Antonyms:
    praise.

    June 15th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
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  15. stressed_out_student says:

    ooh

    July 30th, 2009 at 6:54 am
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  16. math teacher says:

    As a teacher, I under­stand both sides of this debate. (I teach math, not Eng­lish or read­ing, but math is often an unloved sub­ject too.)

    But I must say two things that are both­er­ing me as I read your com­ments. There have been too many com­ments that say “bor­ing home­work” and “goofy assign­ments.” I believe that most home­work is thor­oughly thought through by teach­ers. I, myself, spend hours plan­ning not only my lessons, but what EXACTLY I should have my stu­dents prac­tice at home. I would be doing my stu­dents a dis­ser­vice if I just assumed they under­stood every­thing that was taught. With only a small per­cent of stu­dents as an excep­tion, stu­dents need to prac­tice math to under­stand the process, solve prob­lems that are sim­i­lar and most impor­tantly to make con­nec­tions between top­ics and between math and the world. I think this is true for read­ing as well.

    I also think some of the peo­ple post­ing mes­sages on here should be aware that (in my case) with 5 classes of 30 – 35 stu­dents (that’s over 150 stu­dents that I see every day for only about 48 min­utes), I have some poli­cies put in place in my class­room that are com­pletely necessary…although at least 2 peo­ple want to rip teach­ers apart for say­ing “if I can’t read it, I won’t mark it.” With 150+ papers or tests or quizzes or activ­i­ties to grade, I think this pol­icy if totally acceptable.

    It seems that some of the peo­ple post­ing here are for­get­ting to look at things both ways. Yes, you want what’s best for YOUR student…but maybe you’re fail­ing to con­sider the fact that that’s exactly what the teach­ers are try­ing to do…for ALL their students.

    July 30th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
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  17. PsychMom says:

    to math teacher
    I’m glad you try to be thought­ful about home­work. But do you think about the fact that if you’re giv­ing half an hour’s worth, your fel­low teach­ers are doing the same? It adds up to hours every night.

    And just to be clear, I wasn’t “rip­ping” teach­ers apart for say­ing “if I can’t read it, I won’t mark it”. It was writ­ten as “IF I CAN’T READ IT, I WON’T MARK IT” by the teacher, by the way. I was try­ing to make state­ments about the over­all tone of instruc­tions that are given to stu­dents. This bark­ing, drill sar­gent atti­tude, is not respect­ful and if we want to try to teach chil­dren to behave in civil ways, per­haps we should model that behav­iour. How about some­thing like this: “Stu­dents: I have over a hun­dred papers to read and very lit­tle time to do so. I will not spend much time grad­ing a paper that is illeg­i­ble. It is to your advan­tage to write neatly.”

    The point of my post­ing back a few months ago was just to empha­size that being the teacher does not make you the author­ity on every­thing. And chil­dren are not mind­less drones unless we treat them as such.

    July 31st, 2009 at 9:14 am
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  18. Mark Pennington says:

    I have an idea to share re: home­work. On back-to-school night last year, I made a deal with their par­ents: I said, “I won’t assign gram­mar or essay home­work, if you will super­vise your child’s reading-discussion home­work.” Every par­ent made pos­i­tive com­ments about this approach to home­work. Few par­ents at the inter­me­di­ate, mid­dle, or high school lev­els want to or know how to super­vise writ­ten work. Super­vis­ing their child’s read­ing is some­thing that par­ents sup­port and per­ceive as valuable.

    Here, in a nut­shell is the home­work plan: Stu­dents read for thirty min­utes, four times per week. Par­ents grade a three-minute dis­cus­sion of each read­ing ses­sion. Stu­dents lead this dis­cus­sion with read­ing com­pre­hen­sion strat­egy dis­cus­sion prompts. I got a high degree of buy-in from par­ents and stu­dents. I flesh out this home­work pro­gram much more on my blog at Home­work That Makes Sense

    August 1st, 2009 at 4:56 pm
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  19. FedUpMom says:

    Mark Pen­ning­ton — “Par­ents grade a three-minute dis­cus­sion of each read­ing ses­sion?” I hardly know where to start. A few points:

    1.) This sends the mes­sage that the child is always “at school”, always being graded, always being judged. Even her own par­ents grade her per­for­mance four times a week! When does the child get to develop a sense of her­self as an autonomous being?

    2.) What about a child who is stuck in an unhealthy rela­tion­ship with her parents?

    3.) You’re send­ing a mes­sage that read­ing is a “super­vised” activ­ity. (“Kids! Don’t try this at home!”) This tells kids that read­ing is nat­u­rally unpleas­ant, not some­thing they would ever do of their own volition.

    4.) Some of us par­ents are get­ting increas­ingly fed up with being treated as unpaid employ­ees of the school dis­trict. Maybe we don’t want to grade our child’s dis­cus­sion performance.

    5.) This whole sce­nario is so highly scripted, there’s no room for actual human beings with actual inter­ests and per­son­al­i­ties. You don’t even trust the stu­dent and par­ent to have a dis­cus­sion with­out pro­vid­ing a script!

    6.) Your par­ents’ approv­ing com­ments may have been because what you’re doing now is an improve­ment on what they expected, but that doesn’t mean it’s opti­mal. Par­ents feel extremely con­strained in what they say to their kids’ teach­ers. Even I used to feel this way, before I crossed the fed-up threshhold.

    August 2nd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
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  20. HomeworkBlues says:

    Mr. Pen­ning­ton, I have lit­tle to add to FedUP’s remarks above, she made her case elo­quently and convincingly.

    Mr. Pen­ning­ton, while your idea seems earnest and sin­cere, I do hope you take the time to study FedUp’s feed­back care­fully. She makes cogent points that you should consider.

    Sit­ting down with your child and grad­ing them four times a week? Per­haps I can offer a much much bet­ter alter­na­tive. In our case, just let my child read to aban­don, volu­mi­nously all after­noon and week­end long because it’s what she loves to do. And it’s so good for her! The last thing I’d want to do is sit there and grade her, con­tin­u­ing to serve as that unpaid invol­un­tary teacher’s aide. I’m not sure which is worse. Being home­work cop and nag­ging or sit­ting there and grad­ing her. Why the grade? Just think — how can sit­ting and for­mally eval­u­at­ing your child con­tribute to a pos­i­tive child/parent environment?

    I love the raw ingre­di­ents, the dis­cus­sions and read­ing. The forced approach, the grad­ing? Not at all. Here’s what I did instead. I pulled my daugh­ter out of school for 8th grade and my hus­band and I chose to home­school her instead. I rea­soned that 8th grade was a big state stan­dard­ized test­ing review year, in other words, a great deal of time wasted on review that she already knew and didn’t need to keep rehash­ing over and over. Bet­ter to spend a year indulging her favorite pas­sion, read­ing, work­ing on her novel, and going on about two field trips a week. And that was just a smidgeon of learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties we covered.

    You men­tion grad­ing dis­cus­sions. Did we have any of those? Dis­cus­sions, yes, grad­ing no. In fact, lit­er­ary and intel­lec­tual dis­cus­sions were key rea­sons to home­school. My daugh­ter also enjoys an incred­i­bly close rela­tion­ship with her dad and while we all par­tic­i­pate in these lively debates and dis­cus­sions, I some­times loved stand­ing back and just watch­ing my child and her father go at it for hours enthu­si­as­ti­cally prob­ing a sub­ject in depth. I would watch and lis­ten, drink it in and mar­vel and then my heart would sink as I’d have to cut it off so daugh­ter could go back to her perch and con­tinue with bor­ing home­work all through her childhood.

    So that bliss­ful home­school year, devoid of the pound­ing relent­less home­work pres­sures, we had dis­cus­sions that went unabated for hours. Did I grade her? Good heav­ens, no! Why on earth would I do that? You might argue that if you were her teacher, I’d have to grade to show you she read. But that year I just elim­i­nated the mid­dle­man. I know she’s read­ing, I see her read­ing, we all spend hours read­ing, so we didn’t need to have forced dis­cus­sions where I sat there, clip­board in hand, “grad­ing” her on what she regur­gi­tated back to me. I didn’t have to grade and report back, we were already doing it.

    We took long walks in the frozen woods together behind the house to dis­sect the finer points of Shake­speare. In those two hour walks, we did lit­er­a­ture, vocab­u­lary, sci­ece, PE and mother daugh­ter bond­ing. Our empha­sis was on learn­ing, not on the grade.

    I agree with FedUp that your par­ents were delighted, not because “par­ents as grad­ing aides” is a good idea, but rather that it’s a slight improve­ment over some­thing that was far more onerous.

    You sound like an earnest sin­cere teacher, Mr. Pen­ning­ton and I’m sure you do well by your stu­dents. Or cer­tainly try to. I hope you stop to read our com­ments and spend some time eval­u­at­ing how you assign home­work. I found myself shud­der­ing over this “grad­ing at home” approach.

    August 25th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
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  21. HomeworkBlues says:

    Remem­ber this arti­cle from last year? Time to trot it out again.

    SUMMER HOMEWORK

    And so, teach­ing our kids per­haps the worst aca­d­e­mic les­son of all, we pull a first night all-nighter. On the other hand, it’s amaz­ing how much of “A Tale of Two Cities” you can absorb when the clock is tick­ing, the DVD is blar­ing, dad’s glu­ing and mom’s typ­ing. It’s also very easy to give an exam­ple of, say, “The worst of times.”

    http://​www​.nysun​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​t​h​a​t​-​p​a​n​i​c​-​l​a​s​t​-​n​i​g​h​t​/​8​4​9​9​4​/​?​v​e​r​i​f​y​=​n​y​d​g​y​spg

    August 25th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
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  22. FedUpMom says:

    It is really depress­ing to see how teach­ers approach read­ing these days. The con­stant grad­ing, test­ing, “read­ing com­pre­hen­sion strat­egy” non­sense is a mil­lion miles away from read­ing as the plea­sur­able, basic human activ­ity it’s been for the last few cen­turies. I imag­ine thou­sands of great nov­el­ists turn­ing in their graves as kids are pre­vented from actu­ally expe­ri­enc­ing a book by con­stant inter­fer­ence and inter­rup­tion from teachers.

    How could this pos­si­bly have any effect other than to pro­duce a gen­er­a­tion of kids who never read unless they’re forced to?

    When I was a kid, I read books all the time. Did I “com­pre­hend” every­thing I read? Cer­tainly not. But you know, that’s how lan­guage learn­ing takes place. In the same way that going to a for­eign coun­try and being mys­ti­fied is the best way to learn the lan­guage, read­ing books that go right over your head is an excel­lent way to learn about the writ­ten lan­guage. It’s like lis­ten­ing to your par­ents’ con­ver­sa­tions, which used to be part of the nat­ural edu­ca­tion of child­hood. The idea that kids have to imme­di­ately com­pre­hend, and be able to “account” for, every­thing they read, is ridiculous.

    August 26th, 2009 at 12:17 am
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  23. PsychMom says:

    I took a look at Mr. Pennington’s blog and the only think that keeps com­ing up to me after read­ing it and his com­ments above is Pink Floyd’s line from “The Wall”

    …“Hey!… Teacher!…leave those kids alone”

    August 26th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
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  24. PsychMom says:

    I meant “thing”, not think.…“the only thing”

    August 26th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
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  25. HomeworkBlues says:

    You’re funny,PsychMom. I posted that entire Pink Floyd song here some months ago. We needed it for some clar­ity and levity.

    I think it’s time to fish out that blog writ­ten, in fact, by a com­mit­ted teacher. The one who describes her son’s labo­ri­ous weekly read­ing home­work. You know the drill. Mon­day it’s look­ing up words, and then the week pro­gresses from there to hack­ing up the novel, answer­ing end­less tedious ques­tions, dis­sect­ing the novel, strip­ping it of all color and imagination.

    She describes how excru­ci­at­ing it is for her teenage son to get through the weekly tasks, how he begs mom to sit there and help him, any­thing to be done. And one day he blurts out, “Mom, I didn’t want to tell you this because you are a teacher but I have to break it to you. I hate read­ing. All my friends hate reading.”

    The mom, a teacher, who is that (very sadly) increas­ingly rare breed who believes kids should be inspired, that chil­dren start off lov­ing read­ing, watch preschool­ers at Bor­ders, but who have that pas­sion drummed out of them by well mean­ing but clue­less adults, lis­tened to her son as her heart broke.

    My heart broke too. in a thou­sand pieces for all the chil­dren who will never know the sheer plea­sure of los­ing your­self in a book for hours. With­out that con­stant intru­sion and inter­rup­tion. As Sara Ben­nett wrote in her book, being made to stop stop­ping end­lessly to look up words or answer ques­tions is like hav­ing some­one tap you on the shoul­der dur­ing a movie every ten min­utes, ask­ing you to comment.

    I’ve spent my daughter’s child­hood doing dam­age con­trol. She remains a rav­en­ous vora­cious reader, not because of those ele­men­tary sad vocab­u­lary and “com­pre­hen­sion” assign­ments but in spite of them.

    I must say, teach­ers, I do not under­stand so many of you, Mark Pen­ning­ton in par­tic­u­lar. If your goal is to kill read­ing, destroy the pas­sion, make sure your stu­dents never ever pick up a book for plea­sure again, then please, keep doing what you are doing. Because noth­ing, NOTHING, works better.

    This is not a dia­tribe. It is real­ity. It is what is hap­pen­ing. Don’t let it hap­pen to your students.

    August 26th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
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  26. HomeworkBlues says:

    Mark, I started read­ing your blog. You begin by mak­ing a con­vinc­ing case for inde­pen­dent read­ing. Then why on earth was my daugh­ter so chas­tised for doing just that in ele­men­tary? To this day teach­ers tell her, you may not read a book until you are fin­ished with ALL your home­work. Well, guess what? She’s never fin­ished! There’s no such thing, there’s too much. Why can’t a child who has been in school for seven and a half hours and has already put in three hours of yet more work, read a book? How can we deny that? And if the home­work load is so intense and face paced through­out the week, why not week­ends off? What­ever hap­pened to, Work Hard Play Hard?

    If inde­pen­dent read­ing is so good for you, and it’s what my daugh­ter always wanted to do when she came home, why was that not nur­tured and encour­aged? Many teach­ers here tell us they have to assign home­work because if they didn’t, many kids would never read or write a darned thing.

    But my child was! And I doubt she’s the only one. We told the teach­ers and got nowhere. They said, but she still has to do her home­work. Didn’t mat­ter that much of it was use­less, a waste of time, and that she would have learned far more by read­ing all after­noon. And no, I didn’t say “use­less” to the teacher, I was respect­ful, and yes, def­er­en­tial, more than I should have been.

    I got nowhere. It must be that “redemp­tion through suf­fer­ing” model Alfie Kohn writes about. If it feels good, it can­not pos­si­bly be good for you. Doing what is unpleas­ant brings us closer to god. Who says reli­gion has been banned from the classroom?

    The more we exam­ine the roots, the uncon­scious mes­sages, the more we can chip away and start to make some progress.

    August 26th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
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  27. HomeworkBlues says:

    fast paced, meant to say. Arrrgh, hate typos :(.

    August 26th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
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  28. HomeworkBlues says:

    I’d like to start a dis­cus­sion on this “redemp­tion through suf­fer­ing” model. If FedUpMom’s daugh­ter won’t do her read­ing logs, she’ll wind up in jail!

    All humor aside, the dire mes­sage is that doing some­thing oner­ous is what builds char­ac­ter. Not doing your read­ing logs means you are inso­lent, dis­obe­di­ent, and you’ll pay it for it later. Plea­sure comes at a price!

    As Psy­ch­Mom wrote, we are con­fus­ing struc­ture with blind com­pli­ance. A class­room needs order. A social order sur­vives and thrives by indi­vid­u­als coop­er­at­ing, lis­ten­ing and work­ing together. But coop­er­a­tion is not blind com­pli­ance. As we’ve said here, chil­dren shut down when they are afraid. So do adults. Are you prepar­ing yoru lit­tle charges for the assem­bly line or to be cre­ative, pas­sion­ate eth­i­cal cit­i­zens of a democracy?

    Run­ning a democ­racy is hard. Which is why so many nations do not prac­tice it. Weigh­ing things, ana­lyz­ing on a case by case basis is much harder. As par­ents, author­i­tar­i­an­ism is eas­ier than respect­ful par­ent­ing. Respect, lis­ten­ing to peo­ple much smaller than you, does not engen­der chaos and anar­chy. You can raise respect­ful respon­si­ble chil­dren with­out the stick. And the car­rot. It takes patience and will­ing to shift gears. And a lot of reading.

    We under­stand the class­rooms are large. We know teach­ers are busy and have a lot to do. We aren’t ask­ing you to revamp your entire ethos. Start small, start with home­work. Don’t assign any in ele­men­tary! If your stu­dent wants to come home and read and write all after­noon, let her! Encour­age her. Don’t be so threat­ened. You don’t have to man­age her every wak­ing moment. She will not stage a mutiny if you show some flex­i­bil­ity. If a par­ent hollers for home­work, give it to HER!

    Please con­sider tak­ing these small steps. Learn­ing should be a joy, not a burden.

    August 26th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
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  29. HomeworkBlues says:

    For lack of a place to put this. I have been in love with TED for quit some time. No, Not Ted Kennedy although him too, very sad over his death, his NCLB back­ing notwith­stand­ing. TED is Tech­nol­ogy Enter­tain­ment Design and it’s the hot new thing, inno­v­a­tive, fresh, cut­ting edge think­ing. A reprieve from tired old school. Here is Dan Pink talk­ing about the cor­ro­sive effects of extrin­sic moti­va­tion with an intro­duc­tion by my favorite NCLB detrac­tor, Susan Ohanian.

    http://​susanohan​ian​.org/​s​h​o​w​_​r​e​s​e​a​r​c​h​.​h​t​m​l​?​i​d​=​300

    August 27th, 2009 at 12:11 am
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  30. PsychMom says:

    I used to work for a psy­chol­o­gist who made me aware that I was liv­ing by the suf­fer first rule. I wish I could remem­ber how he worded it, but the idea is the same.….Is any­thing good for us, only good if we suf­fer first? I think it was: If it comes too easy, it’s prob­a­bly not good for us.

    It’s a very puri­tan­i­cal stance isn’t it? Per­haps we should all dress in dull colours too. And no singing…forget I men­tioned Pink Floyd.

    I think North Amer­i­cans have to open their eyes to the real­ity that we don’t love and value our chil­dren in our soci­ety. Every indi­ca­tion is that we loathe them, we don’t want to spend much time with them and we are not will­ing to bend one inch to accom­mo­date them, let alone spend the money it take to raise them prop­erly and keep them healthy. We likely spend more dol­lars nur­tur­ing canola and corn plant seeds (for bio­fuel) than ensur­ing solid pre-natal care and child­care for work­ing par­ents. And I’m not fool­ing myself that Canada is any bet­ter than the States.

    My goal in choos­ing the school I did was because I felt it was impor­tant to not crush my child’s enthu­si­asm for learn­ing. So far I’ve not been disappointed…“only 6 more sleeps to go, Mama. I can’t wait.” I wish I had that same exu­ber­ance for my work! Is it naive for me to expect that her love of school should continue..sadly, it prob­a­bly is. But that’s what I want to change. Chil­dren should be free from the bur­den of being taught and be reunited with that curios­ity and zeal for fun.

    I can feel the glower of the teach­ers read­ing this drivel..they’re prob­a­bly think­ing I’m so far gone, they can ignore par­ents like me com­pletely. I’m not liv­ing in the real world, they say. But that’s the point. I have a young child and the REAL world is far too harsh a place for her…it’s my job to pro­tect her from it and every time I say, “Tough honey, you have to learn how to do this because some­day when you’re an adult .…blah, blah, blah” I’m rob­bing her of her pre­cious childhood.

    I think we have to work very hard to keep the kids young.…that doesn’t mean we abdi­cate teach­ing them man­ners, right from wrong and age appro­pri­ate respon­si­bil­ity. We just need to step up to OUR respon­si­bil­i­ties as parents.

    August 27th, 2009 at 8:16 am
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  31. FedUpMom says:

    Alfie Kohn said it all in his essay, “The Cult of Feel-Bad Education”:

    http://​www​.alfiekohn​.org/​t​e​a​c​h​i​n​g​/​e​d​w​e​e​k​/​f​e​e​l​b​a​d​.​htm

    August 27th, 2009 at 9:19 am
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  32. HomeworkBlues says:

    Psy­ch­Mom, excel­lent points. I’ve got sev­eral con­found­ing dead­lines on my desk but I want to pick up on your views later and con­tinue the discussion.

    FedUp, yes, I thought of that mar­velous Alfie Kohn piece too but I wasn’t able to pro­vide the link off Google Chrome, an oth­er­wise fab­u­lous browser.I’ve posted it here and it bears repeating.

    I recently posted it on a Teacher, Revised com­ment and Jesse Scac­cia picked it up and cre­ated an entire post on it. I of course don’t agree with his take, that Kohn is exag­ger­at­ing. I know from expe­ri­ence that Alfie Kohn hits the bulls­eye with this. See for yourself:

    http://​teacher​re​vised​.org/​2​0​0​9​/​0​7​/​0​4​/​f​e​e​l​-​b​a​d​-​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​-​f​e​e​l​-​g​o​o​d​-​c​l​a​s​s​r​o​o​ms/

    August 27th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
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  33. PsychMom says:

    It’s so inter­est­ing how some teach­ers say, “When I shut the door, it’s my class­room and I do what I like. We have fun” and some teach­ers cower and say, “I would do things dif­fer­ently but I’m not allowed…my hands are tied”…“it’s the law”.

    How can we par­ents take the school sys­tem seriously?

    August 27th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
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  34. HomeworkBlues says:

    That’s just it, Psych Mom. Jesse right­fully says, look, the prin­ci­pal really can only con­trol so much. The rest is up to you. Then we had a teacher post­ing here how her hands are tied, she has to do EXACTLY as she’s told. I agree. You get to the point where you throw up your hands as if your dish just com­pletely flopped, you want to throw the whole thing out, and start from scratch.

    Fig­ur­ing out the school sys­tem is like work­ing on the Tower of Babel. No one is talk­ing the same language.

    August 27th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
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  35. Matthew says:

    Home­work­Blues said: “That’s just it, Psych Mom. Jesse right­fully says, look, the prin­ci­pal really can only con­trol so much. The rest is up to you. Then we had a teacher post­ing here how her hands are tied, she has to do EXACTLY as she’s told.”

    That pretty much sums up my expe­ri­ence with my school sys­tem. The teacher says she can’t do any­thing because the prin­ci­pal and the admin­is­tra­tion tie her hand. The prin­ci­pal cow­ers behind the teacher and the admin­is­tra­tion. The admin­is­tra­tion says con­trol is in the hands of the teach­ers and prin­ci­pals. The school board will only han­dle things not owned by the teach­ers, prin­ci­pals or admin­is­tra­tion (i.e., nothing).

    And they won­der why I get angry…

    August 28th, 2009 at 8:10 am
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  36. PsychMom says:

    And it’s so unpro­fes­sional. They claim to be pro­fes­sion­als but if I con­ducted my pro­fes­sional life like that, my clients, not to men­tion my employer would have an absolute right to call me onto the car­pet for it.

    And the other response the teach­ers give, is that it’s the par­ents who dic­tate to them. So how does this go?
    Teach­ers have to do what the par­ents say? It’s almost under­stand­able now why some teach­ers down­load their stress onto the kids and try to con­trol their every wak­ing moment. They feel pow­er­less against every adult in their pro­fes­sional sphere.

    Sud­denly I’m see­ing a need for school psy­chol­o­gists in a whole new way.

    August 28th, 2009 at 8:39 am
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  37. HomeworkBlues says:

    Matthew, your expe­ri­ence calls to mind Shakespeare’s famous line, “full of sound and fury, sig­ni­fy­ing nothing.”

    So many lay­ers. So much bureau­cracy. So many meet­ings. So lit­tle accomplished.

    August 28th, 2009 at 9:24 am
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  38. FedUpMom says:

    Matthew — a few words from “Bad Teach­ers”, by Guy Strick­land (no, I’m not related to him!):

    “An orga­ni­za­tion that val­ues its own inter­nal rules more than it val­ues its clients — that’s the def­i­n­i­tion of a bureau­cracy. And a school sys­tem, with its rigid, self-serving inter­nal poli­cies, is a clas­sic bureau­cracy, blindly com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing dis­trict poli­cies with­out regard to the needs of an indi­vid­ual child. There is no point in being angry with the teacher or the prin­ci­pal for being what they are; just don’t expect very much from them. They think that because it is school dis­trict pol­icy to treat all par­ents like dirt, you must be dirt, too.”

    I don’t quite agree that there’s no point in not being angry — I think it’s impos­si­ble not to be angry. Anger is step 1. What’s the next step? For us, it was tak­ing our daugh­ter out of the pub­lic schools, but I real­ize this option isn’t avail­able to everyone.

    August 29th, 2009 at 9:41 am
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  39. FedUpMom says:

    A very inter­est­ing arti­cle in the NYTimes:

    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​3​0​/​b​o​o​k​s​/​3​0​r​e​a​d​i​n​g​.​h​t​m​l​?hp

    or Google “NY TImes Books You LIke”.

    August 29th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
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  40. HomeworkBlues says:

    “The authors of the Kaiser report attribute the decline in elec­tive read­ing to greater amounts of home­work; read­ing is viewed as work, so leisure becomes an escape from work. It’s worth ask­ing, then, what hap­pens in these late ele­men­tary and mid­dle school years to turn read­ing into labor — and one answer must surely be the promi­nence of text­books. In most schools, edu­ca­tion becomes divided along sub­ject lines, and these sub­jects are taught through com­pre­hen­sive (and extremely expen­sive) textbooks.”

    When Read­ing Becomes Work
    How Text­books Ruin Read­ing
    Thomas Newkirk
    Win­ter 2008

    http://​www​.nais​.org/​i​s​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​P​r​i​n​t​.​c​f​m​?​p​r​i​n​t​=​Y​&​a​m​p​;​I​t​e​m​N​u​m​b​e​r​=​1​5​0​490

    August 30th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
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  41. HomeworkBlues says:

    From the arti­cle I just posted, above.

    “The noted mid­dle school edu­ca­tor Nan­cie Atwell, author of The Read­ing Zone, argues that we need to become com­fort­able with the “P” word — com­fort­able with “plea­sure” as a moti­vat­ing force in read­ing. This lan­guage of desire and grat­i­fi­ca­tion is vir­tu­ally nonex­is­tent in the rhetoric of reform. Yet, when it comes to read­ing, there are prag­matic rea­sons for ask­ing what is in it for the stu­dent. Not some­where down the line, in the future, but in the moment.”

    Con­trast this Plea­sure prin­ci­pal with the “redemp­tion thruogh suf­fer­ing model” I speak of ear­lier. If not here, then on the Read­ing Log discussion.

    Regard­less of whether one views edu­ca­tion hon­or­able when over­com­ing oneros­ity, you can­not dis­pute that with­out plea­sure, volu­mi­nous engross­ing read­ing just can­not happen.

    Take the piano. You can make a kid prac­tice, you can even reward them to do so delud­ing your­self for a time that it works, but great piano play­ers must find some mea­sure of pas­sion, com­mit­ment and yes, plea­sure, in order to sus­tain it.

    August 30th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
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  42. HomeworkBlues says:

    Read­ing by the Num­bers. With an intro­duc­tion by Susan Ohanian:

    http://​susanohan​ian​.org/​o​u​t​r​a​g​e​_​f​e​t​c​h​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​590

    August 30th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
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  43. FedUpMom says:

    I can’t help myself, here’s another inter­est­ing arti­cle in the NYTimes:

    http://​room​forde​bate​.blogs​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​8​/​3​0​/​t​h​e​-​c​r​u​s​h​-​o​f​-​s​u​m​m​e​r​-​h​o​m​e​w​o​r​k​/​?hp

    August 31st, 2009 at 1:03 am
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  44. PsychMom says:

    Re the points sys­tem for reading…I don’t know if we have that read­ing sys­tem in Canada.
    Any­way, the idea of col­lect­ing points for read­ing seems to dove­tail nicely with Daniel Pink and his recent talk that some­one posted here about moti­va­tion meth­ods. His talk was related to busi­ness but can apply to other things like edu­ca­tion too. Reward sys­tems only seem to work nicely for prob­lems that are pro­duc­tion oriented.….a sim­ple task that is rather mind­less and can be done quickly. If you give a points and extra credit for the more work pro­duced, this works very well. But .….I don’t think read­ing falls under that category.

    If you want cre­ativ­ity, if you want some brain energy expended, a token sys­tem is not moti­vat­ing. The research shows that one is even less pro­duc­tive. For this type of activ­ity you must give free rein time, goof­ing off time.…get lost in day­dream­ing time. Read­ing and get­ting into books is a cre­ative process…it’s not quan­tity that’s going to make you a life­long reader.

    Read­ing by the num­bers is not a good idea. Though don’t tell my “I’ve-read-8-books-this-weekend-and-some-of-them-twice” daugh­ter who can’t seem to get enough of her fairy books. I think the books would earn her minus points in the AR sys­tem but what does it mat­ter as long as she’s reading.

    September 2nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
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  45. FedUpMom says:

    Here’s a way to donate money to classrooms –

    http://​www​.donorschoose​.org

    Does any­one know any­thing about this orga­ni­za­tion? Are they on the up-and-up? It looks like a good idea.

    September 2nd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
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  46. HomeworkBlues says:

    Sara, I wish there was a sep­a­rate cat­e­gory where we could post arti­cles. Here’s a good one.

    “Why Don’t Stu­dents Like School?” Well, Duh­hhh…
    Chil­dren don’t like school because they love freedom.

    Psy­chol­ogy Today

    “Every­one who has ever been to school knows that school is prison, but almost nobody says it. It’s not polite to say it. We all tip­toe around this truth, that school is prison, because telling the truth makes us all seem so mean. How could all these nice peo­ple be send­ing their chil­dren to prison for a good share of the first 18 years of their lives?”

    http://​www​.psy​chol​o​gy​to​day​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​f​r​e​e​d​o​m​-​l​e​a​r​n​/​2​0​0​9​0​9​/​w​h​y​-​d​o​n​-​t​-​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​s​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​w​e​l​l​-​d​u​h​hhh

    September 3rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
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  47. PsychMom says:

    What a great article.

    September 3rd, 2009 at 11:49 am
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  48. FedUpMom says:

    Here’s an unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous arti­cle in the NYTimes, “As or Bs Given to Most CIty Schools”:

    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​9​/​0​3​/​n​y​r​e​g​i​o​n​/​0​3​s​c​h​o​o​l​s​.​h​t​m​l​?​hpw

    Gee, do you think prin­ci­pals found a way to inflate their school’s grade so they could get a bonus?

    September 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 am
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  49. FedUpMom says:

    I liked the arti­cle in Psy­chol­ogy Today, but I’ll take the devil’s advo­cate posi­tion for a moment. There’s a part of me that totally believes in student-directed learn­ing, but another part of me that believes that stu­dents need cer­tain fun­da­men­tals that they won’t nec­es­sar­ily acquire on their own, for instance, math, for­eign lan­guages and play­ing a musi­cal instru­ment. It takes tremen­dous moti­va­tion to learn these things on your own.

    And for many sub­jects, the joy comes after a cer­tain level of mas­tery has been achieved, and it takes some dis­ci­pline to get through those begin­ning stages.

    Some­where there’s a bal­ance between giv­ing stu­dents real own­er­ship of their edu­ca­tion and mak­ing sure that cer­tain sub­jects are covered.

    Of course, what I often see in schools is that no edu­ca­tion phi­los­o­phy is fol­lowed in any use­ful way, so we get a hodge-podge which doesn’t accom­plish anyone’s goals. The kids are reg­i­mented out of their nat­ural love of learn­ing, but they aren’t acquir­ing the basics either.

    September 3rd, 2009 at 11:59 am
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  50. PsychMom says:

    Mmmm, FedUp­Mom, you’re sound­ing a lit­tle like school needs to be a lit­tle bor­ing to be good for them. While it’s true that not every child is going to like and be enthu­si­as­tic about every topic, I’m still not sure what the “basics” are anymore.

    Ok, but let me pose this. What if all chil­dren were allowed to explore and dive into sub­jects that really inter­ested them so that they learned to get that sense of sat­is­fac­tion out learn­ing. Sup­pose they didn’t have to learn the “basics”, except as to how they applied to those spe­cial top­ics they chose. Wouldn’t they cover the same ground and then have a inner sense that they could mas­ter any­thing, through­out their whole lives, if they wanted to. With cre­ative teach­ers who could expose chil­dren to new experiences.….“Ok, today I’m only going to speak my native tongue to you” or “We’re going to write a song today” or whatever.….and incor­po­rate the basic skills into it.

    The “school is prison” idea goes right along with the idea that we really don’t like chil­dren and we (adults) just want some­thing “done” to/with them so we don’t have to deal with them. And guess what? The gov­ern­ment doesn’t like them.….they’re expen­sive. The Boards leg­is­late and con­trol schools, and that con­trol is just passed on down the line…effectively cre­at­ing day pris­ons for chil­dren. They even use terms like “lock downs” for heaven’s sake.

    I like this Peter Gray (who wrote the arti­cle). I won­der if he knows about stophome​work​.com.

    September 3rd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
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  51. FedUpMom says:

    Psy­ch­Mom, I’d like to be 100 per cent with Peter Gray. Yes, kids should be allowed to use their own moti­va­tion and their own interests.

    Some of my hes­i­ta­tion comes from know­ing peo­ple who had those child­hoods full of more or less forced edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ences, who then wind up with a huge advan­tage because of the knowl­edge they acquired. I have very mixed feel­ings about this.

    Maybe the prob­lem is that I’ve never seen Peter Gray’s ideas applied well. If I could see it in action I might be more convinced.

    September 3rd, 2009 at 1:54 pm
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  52. PsychMom says:

    I just spent the last few min­utes down­load­ing about 10 of Peter Gray’s Psy­chol­ogy Today arti­cles. I want to read them tonight.

    From the flavour that has jumped out at me in the last few minutes.…my daughter’s school comes close. Mul­ti­age group­ings, child dri­ven explo­ration (theme stud­ies they call it), very few of the con­ven­tional school things (we have home­work hence my vis­its here), but no indi­vid­ual desks, no blackboards..no report cards…no testing.

    It works…and so far she adores school…would rather be in school than not. Cried the last day of school in June.

    September 3rd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
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  53. FedUpMom says:

    I’ve been think­ing some more about this … here’s another formulation:

    In the ideal school, a child would be happy and also learn­ing. I would set­tle for the occa­sional not-thrilled-but-doing-necessary-groundwork in some subjects.

    What I won’t set­tle for is a school where the child is mis­er­able and not learn­ing. And I really won’t set­tle for a school where mis­ery is believed to be the sub­ject mat­ter. (“We have to put lots of pres­sure on them this year because there will be even more pres­sure next year!”)

    Your daughter’s school sounds ter­rific. What kind of school is it? (In other words, how could I find one like it?)

    September 3rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
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  54. PsychMom says:

    I’m up in Hal­i­fax Nova Sco­tia and it’s an inde­pen­dent school…about 150 kids. Pre-K to 9.

    September 3rd, 2009 at 3:17 pm
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  55. FedUpMom says:

    Darn! Too much of a com­mute for me. It sounds won­der­ful, though. And it’s great that you can keep your daugh­ter there through 9th grade. This is my older daughter’s last year at the Quaker school so we have to ask all these ques­tions all over again.

    September 3rd, 2009 at 11:49 pm
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  56. PsychMom says:

    I read those Peter Gray arti­cles last night, and he is really quite pro the Sud­bury Val­ley model of schools.…which is prob­a­bly not a bad con­cept. He fore­sees the demise of our cur­rent school sys­tem which I can only pray he’s cor­rect about.…it is bar­baric and extremely old fashioned.

    Our school is quite sim­i­lar in it’s stated phi­los­o­phy to the Sud­bury model but they are closer to a con­ven­tional model in terms of how they oper­ate. I con­sider us lucky to be there but I’m still dis­il­lu­sioned about edu­ca­tion as a whole right now and con­cerned that our chil­dren are being led down the same gar­den path we were.

    September 4th, 2009 at 7:59 am
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  57. FedUpMom says:

    Psy­ch­Mom — I too am increas­ingly dis­il­lu­sioned about edu­ca­tion. I am espe­cially dis­cour­aged by the gulf between learn­ing and school.

    There is so much I would like my kids to learn. Is school really helping?

    September 4th, 2009 at 11:46 am
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  58. PsychMom says:

    To FedUp­Mom..

    I feel betrayed by my own edu­ca­tion as well. This may be a func­tion of where I am in my life, but I know that what I was from age 4 to age 26 was a good student.…but I’m not so sure now that I got a good edu­ca­tion. Lots of points for slog­ging at the home­work and pleas­ing teach­ers but I’m still left wondering.…..what was it all for, if I’ve spent most of my adult life unin­spired by my work but ulti­mately being sta­ble and grounded and “reli­able”. A suc­cess by most mea­sures I guess and exactly the kind of per­son employ­ers love, the gov­ern­ment loves (always pays taxes, no civil dis­obe­di­ence), soci­ety loves (no moral­ity codes bro­ken). Loved by small chil­dren and animals.

    There were some excel­lent teach­ers along the way, though and I can name them on one hand and rec­og­nize that I inter­nal­ized a lot of what they taught me. None of them were con­ven­tional teach­ers. Only one sticks out from my uni­ver­sity days and I still quote him from time to time.

    I want some­thing dif­fer­ent for my daugh­ter. She has a mind of her own and I want her to keep it. Right now I don’t care if she goes to uni­ver­sity. I’m los­ing my focus on high school (she’s only in 3rd grade) and what it’s really for except for get­ting marks that get you into university..so it’s a quandry for me. As Ken Robin­son says, our edu­ca­tional sys­tem is geared to pro­duc­ing uni­ver­sity professors.….I’m not sure my daugh­ter wants to do that.

    It was all so sim­ple when I believed in the old con­ven­tional school­ing sys­tem. But I’ve read too much now.

    September 4th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
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  59. FedUpMom says:

    I’m not sure where to put this, but here’s a great lit­tle arti­cle, from some­one I don’t always agree with –

    http://​kitchentablemath​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​7​/​1​0​/​p​a​r​e​n​t​-​t​r​i​a​n​g​u​l​a​t​i​o​n​.​h​t​m​l​?​s​h​o​w​C​o​m​m​e​n​t​=​1​2​5​2​3​0​3​1​3​3​713

    “Par­ent tri­an­gu­la­tion” is some­thing we have all expe­ri­enced. That’s the one where you go in to the prin­ci­pal and say “My child needs X”, and the prin­ci­pal replies “I can’t pos­si­bly give you X! All the other par­ents say they want not-X!”

    September 7th, 2009 at 9:14 am
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