Schools Matter: We need to remember that the impediments to self-directed learning are by design

First published on Schools Matter on June 14, 2014

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"When teachers are told exactly what and how to teach, when they feel pressured to produce results, they in turn tend to pressure their students. That is exactly what another study found: teachers who felt controlled became more controlling, removing virtually any opportunities for students to direct their own learning." — Alfie Kohn

As always the wonderful Alfie Kohn is right on target. What's left out of his important analysis is that these conditions are exactly what our ruling class—namely, but not limited to the Gates, Broad, and Walton Family Foundations—wants. From their self-serving perspective, self-directed learning is for the scion of the 1%, not for us working class rabble. Completely control both educators and their pupils through fear (Vergara), and deployment the banking model of pedagogy (Common Core State Standards CCSS), and you control access to the one thing that could allow us to overthrow our oppressors.

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Works Cited

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2000. Print.

Kohn, Alfie. The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "tougher Standards". Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1999. Print.

Schools Matter: We need to remember that the impediments to self-directed learning are by design

@ THE CHALK FACE: Humanities and LSAT reflect Critical Thinking versus Core Knowledge debate

First published April 28, 2014 on @ THE CHALK FACE

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"In short, the real literacy crisis occurs whenever we deploy a pedagogy that asks our students only to consume texts and not to produce them as well." — Richard E. Miller

The ABA Journal recently posted a piece entitled "Students with these college majors had the highest LSAT scores" that discusses the findings of Pepperdine University School of Law professor Derek Muller. Humanities majors held three of the top six spots; with Classics [1], Art History, and Philosophy taking the one, four, and six spots respectively. Moreover, preparatory curricula like pre-law were at the bottom, as were most forms of business majors — stealing from workers doesn't require much critical thinking. Professor Muller's own post is entitled The Best Prospective Law Students Read Homer. Unlike David Coleman and Bill Gates, I think everyone should read Homer. Some of us are fortunate enough to have read it in the original Greek. Here are my slightly edited comments on the UCLA posting where the ABA Journal was linked.

It's telling that these findings parallel the debates over pedagogy between critical thinking camp of those including Stephen Krashen and Peter McLaren versus the "core knowledge" camp including E. D. Hirsch and David Coleman. The latter, who are responsible for both Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and much of the current thinking behind the Administration's education policy, espouse narrow preparatory pedagogies like pre-law. Moreover, the President himself recently mocked Art History as a major during a speech [2]. The fact that Classics and Art History are 1 and 4 respectively on this listing goes to show that broad curricula that require abstract and critical thinking are preferable to canned curricula. Unfortunately, the dominant narrative in society tends to drown these important facts out.

While I don't have the time to explore this fully—and it deserves to be explored fully—I was in a conversation with Dr. Cynthia Liu recently and she was discussing how damaging Hirsch's wrongheaded ideas are. Rightfully so, her biggest complaint is how Hirsch's "core readings" are essentially devoid of people of color, women, and other marginalized groups like LGBT. The more I started researching the connections between Hirsch, Coleman, and the whole deemphasis on literature in CCSS derived from Hirsch's so-called "functional literacy", the more I realized that our greatest fears about CCSS are firmly grounded in fact. With CCSS we've established "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" as our official national curriculum.

I'm posting this to start the discussion. These LSAT findings confirm that narrow, preparatory type curricula are inferior to broad, abstract ones. As we watch the neoliberal corporate reformers eliminate every part of the education experience that humanizes children in favor of chimerical "college and career" readiness, and hear of a President that disparages the study of humanities [2], there must be increased struggle to resist CCSS and all its attendent reforms. Additionally, we need to make the case for returning free voluntary reading, play, arts, drama, music, literature, and the humanities to our classrooms, as well as making ethnic studies and other critical studies available to students.

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[1] Disclaimer, I just received my B.A. in Classical Civilization from UCLA. Our department's facebook page exposed me to the ABA article. For many years I've heard that Classics majors cited as top prospects for law school, so the Pepperdine findings appeal to my admitted confirmation bias. The matriculation findings are of interest as well.
[2] I haven't saved all of them, but I did consolidate many of my comments on the infamous Obama attacking Art History majors incident mentioned above.
* The opening Miller quote is from a paper available on the ERIC archives. I reviewed the paper on WorldCat.

@ THE CHALK FACE: Humanities and LSAT reflect Critical Thinking versus Core Knowledge debate

Schools Matter: Obscuring history and human agency through NCLB, RTTT and CCSS

"Prior research, then, strongly suggests that charter programs have not lived up to their initial promise of transcending the segregating effects of traditional district boundary lines. In fact, these studies indicate charters exacerbate already rampant school segregation, particularly for Black students." — Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Jia Wang

The Smith and Carlos Statue
at San José State University

I was reading Dave Zirin's latest piece, Fists of Freedom: An Olympic Story Not Taught in School, this morning and several things stood out and had me thinking in terms of how Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and its related high-stakes testing regimes not only distort curriculum, but how they are intended to distort students' consciousness of their reality.

See my Schools Matter post, Obscuring history and human agency through NCLB, RTTT and CCSS, for the rest of this essay.

Published 2012-07-25 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: Obscuring history and human agency through NCLB, RTTT and CCSS

Schools Matter: Evaluate This! Shows the way forward for authentic education reform

"I am heading for a four-year college. The classes that most helped me prepare for this were NOT test prep classes. They were the ones where I got to explore stuff and do projects." — Tiffany Tuggle (CEJ Member and Senior at UCLA Community School)

I finally got around to my write up on an important PEAC/CEJ/UTLA's event in a Schools Matter piece entitled: Evaluate This! Shows the way forward for authentic education reform

Evaluate This!, was an education fair showcasing projects at various schools sites throughout LAUSD. With an emphasis on project based learning, the fair featured some absolutely amazing forms of pedagogy. Even though I arrived to catch the very end of the event, it exceeded expectations in every possible way. Even the virulently anti-public education Los Angeles Times ran a blog piece on it.

Published 2012-06-11 on Schools Matter, please read it there and share widely.

Schools Matter: Evaluate This! Shows the way forward for authentic education reform