Here’s a presentation on study that I made last weekend at the Association for Moral Education national conference in Pasadena, CA.  It had a rather long title:  “An Architecture of Study, The Central Virtue of Formal Schooling, Placed in Dialogic Relation with Works of Conceptual Art And Quotations from Conceptual Artists: Then There Is the Idea, Which Is Always Unstated.”

I’ve reduced the title to its central question.

For those interested in this type of  thing, here is the abstract.  (The visual learner crowd can just watch the video.)

“Did you learn anything from this sentence?” Through engagement with this question, the film demonstrates that learning requires attention, dialogue (or dialogic reflection), and interpretation. Each of these is further examined. Works of conceptual art and quotations from artists and philosophers are interspersed without comment. We conclude that we learned from the original question because we took it seriously, reflected on it, and forged a personal understanding based on our appreciation and reflective practice. The components of attention, dialogue and interpretation are found to be ethical, not technical, so the legitimate aim of schooling is to inculcate intellectual virtue.

1. Being told how important today’s lesson will be in high school and beyond. (Instead, help kids live this one week of their lives powerfully.)

When dealing with younger children, it is critically important to remember the percentage of their life that one year represents. If you are ten years old, you will go to high school in four years. That’s about half your lifetime from now. It’s like telling a young teacher, say twenty-seven years old, to wait until she is forty, or a fifty year old administrator to do something because she will see the benefit at seventy-five.

2.  Teachers who talk the whole class period or who speak in long paragraphs when disciplining.

Teachers like to hear themselves talk. So do students. For many middle schoolers, Fran Leibowitz’s words ring true: “The opposite of talking is not listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.”

As for speaking in long paragraphs when disciplining – I would avoid it in the classroom not because it is demotivating but because it takes up precious instructional time. On the other hand, I think it is important to speak at length about how and why disciplinary action is taken with middle schoolers – not during class time but afterwards, one-on-one, when the child will not feel singled out in front of her peers. Giving your rationale, even if the student does not agree, shows respect for her as a human being. Of course, this means that you will listen with empathy to the child’s point of view.

3.  Complex assignments that you don’t have the skills to complete and that have no clear evaluative criteria.

Any assignment, complex or not, that the student really does not have the skills to complete is a mark of failure on the teacher’s part. I say really, in italics, because it is wonderfully motivating to discover that you do know how to do something when you thought you didn’t. There’s a fine line between a ball you can catch if you jump and a ball you can’t catch at all.

As for the point about clear evaluative criteria, it’s too large even for this long blog post. I’ll come back to it later,

4. Being told what you’re probably feeling and thinking, even if it’s accurate.

If only “told” were changed to “asked”, you would have a motivator instead of a de-motivator.

5.  Teachers who see teaching middle school as just something to do until a high school position opens up. (Students can tell when they’re not a teacher’s preferred age group.)

If you are not motivated, you will not motivate others. If you are bored, you will be boring.

6.  Fs, zeroes, and other indicators of failure.

It is almost a shame that this is true. Failure, after all, is the royal road to success. We should celebrate calculated risk, productive mistakes, and wrong turnings that lead to new roads.

Instead of putting an F on the paper, conference with the student: “We didn’t get where we wanted to go with this, did we? What do you think I did wrong? What do you think you did wrong? Let me tell you what I learned. What did you learn? Is it worth another try?”

7.   Spending the day working on weaknesses, without identifying and using strengths.

Absolutely key. There needs to be mutuality of knowledge regarding student strengths throughout the school. Imagine a faculty meeting at which the sole topic was the hidden strengths of various students in the school, followed up by calls to parents from the teachers to report the complimentary things that were said. The motivating power of those phone calls, not to mention the boost to parent-teacher relations, would be extraordinary.

8.  Being treated like elementary school students. (No more requiring students to march to the cafeteria with their fingers pressed to their lips or clapping hands at the front of the room in a cute rhythm that students must repeat.)

Nobody likes to be babied.

9.   Anyone belittling your strong emotional response to something minor in your life.

As with number 1. It is important to have some kind of handle on the social and cultural existence of your students. No valid emotional response should be trivialized.

10.  Classes that claim to be relevant to your life but that deny you access to personal technology during lessons.

Here I think it’s important that teachers and schools be consistent. The divorce from technology does not have to be demotivating, if the teacher does not use technology herself and has earned the respect of the students. If Mr. X does not allow laptop computers and cell phones in his classroom, does not use them himself, and can successfully communicate his passion for books, pencils, reading aloud and the like, he may find himself a bit out of place in student world, but perhaps respected nonetheless as a charming eccentric. One can imagine a group of eighth graders: “Oh yeah, Mr. X’s room. Tech-free zone. But you know, we have these great discussions…”

11.  Unwavering adherence to pacing guides or program fidelity, regardless of individual needs and talents.

That is, the individual needs and talents of students and of the teacher.

12.  Sarcasm.

Here it pays to be very clear. Middle school students are masters of sarcasm, and they love it. What I assume the author is talking about is sarcasm versus the child, versus the curriculum, or versus something valued by the students. Sarcasm has to be played carefully, but is not necessarily demotivating when directed at the popular adult culture, the marketing juggernaut aimed squarely at middle school kids, the anti-intellectualism of the general population, etc.

Thanks to Rick Wormeli for a great article. Perhaps next week I will comment on the six motivators he describes.

Topics included transforming a K-12 math department, innovative mathematics curricula, emotion and the affective dimension in math, supporting and developing math teachers, inspiring mathematics teachers and students, and solving a math problem.

80% of the attendees found the conversation helpful or very helpful for their own professional development. Seminar leaders were unanimously rated excellent or very good, both as conversational facilitators and as experts in their own right.

Our thanks to our workshop leaders and seminar partners: Hal Melnick and Linda Metnetsky from the Bankstreet graduate school program in leadership in math education and Lucy West from Metamorphosis TLC.

Our thanks also for the invaluable assistance provided by Josh Greenspan, Richard Dinardo, Craig Paulson, and the office staff at 1745 Broadway.

More information can be found on our website, www.houseofstudy.com/previous-seminars. We look forward to sharing the entire proceedings on the web, free of charge, once video and audio editing has been completed.

…if he hasn’t seen something in a while, he thinks it’s brand new.

…he loves kids, but sometimes he bites them. Then they cry, and he comes and kisses them.

…cleaning up his mess is our problem.

…if something smells good he swallows it immediately. If it’s nasty and he throws it up, he tries to eat it again.

…he wants to please everyone.

…he will stick his nose anywhere.

…he thinks the best place to do his business is right where everyone else has done theirs.

…he devours books and newspapers. They don’t agree with him, but he doesn’t notice.

…he chases his own tail. When he catches it he has no idea what it is or what to do with it.

…his understanding of long term consequences is non-existent.

…if he thinks something is worth investigating, it’s probably a pile of poop…

…but still…

…he’s full of energy, and he’s honestly doing the best he can. We love him for that, and we have faith that someday he will grow up and become a very good dog.

Many words to be seen, so please, FULL SCREEN.

(Vimeo Link)

The first radical thesis: schooling fails. It fails to do what it ought to do.

Every child in America is compelled by law to attend school for more than a decade. The result should be a nation of people whose actions, words, feelings, and habits of thought demonstrate that they spent most of their childhood learning things, in the company of teachers and fellow-students.

This is obviously not the case.

Our nation is not seen this way. We do not see one another this way. When you pass an adult on the street, you can be reasonably certain he or she has been to school for, at the very least, twelve years. But you do not think: “Ah, there goes another well-educated American.” Our leaders in business and politics do not speak to us with the respect that twelve years of schooling should command. They talk down to us. We talk down to one another.

We all spend long years at school, but we do not become a well-schooled population. Thus, schooling fails.

Wait a second….. 

Schooling fails?  The entire process of schooling? Do you really expect anyone to buy that?

No. We expect a vigorous argument, which we will call the DICHOTOMOUS DISSENT. It will be the subject of our first video segment coming soon. So, keep following!

If you want to know why your child is failing, look at your child, your family and your school. Observe them with patience and imagination and you might learn something worth knowing. Even so, your insights will apply only to your own children. School failure, like most social failure, is personal.

But not to worry. Your child probably isn’t failing. Children rarely fail. Mostly they succeed, sometimes miraculously, against insanely long odds. They do fail tests, or perhaps tests fail them. Their schools fail society, or society fails the schools. Of these four— the child, the test, the school, and society— the child is the smallest and most defenseless. The child is the easiest to blame. But we are well ahead of our argument. The point is, if you want to know why certain children cannot seem to pass certain tests, do not read this blog. You will find no answers here.

Also, this blog does not explain why individual schools fail. Sometimes a school will collapse spectacularly, generating bonfires of ill will and ferocious press, while a nearby school gently rots away. The result is the same. But again, these are individual stories, and they are uncommon. Most schools accomplish what they set out to do. It is the position of this blog, however, that what they set out to do is for the most part deeply misguided. Even if they meet the municipal, state and federal standards, even if they achieve all their goals, they cannot educate because their goals are non-educational and occasionally even anti-educational. Quietly, without much ado, a tragedy is afoot.