A couple of years ago when I was teaching sixth graders, I took the kids on a science field trip to gather samples of water from a local stream so that we could gauge the water quality. We chartered a bus to take us from the mouth of our local river, the one the kids see flowing through the city center, back up toward the source.

The Chena River empties into the Tanana near the airport. So we rode over toward the airport and found a spot to park and get water samples. The kids kept notebooks for the data they gathered. We got back on the bus and traveled up the river to another location, did the same thing again, and so on, all the way out of town and up to the recreation area east of town where the river is narrow and fast. We don’t have many rivers around here with roads next to them, so this was a convenient chance to give my town-kid students an overview of a local watershed. ‘Watershed’ was a concept we discussed before-hand, along with a lot of other information about ecology and geography.

In the afternoon, around 2:00, we came to a place where the river narrowed and was tumbling over rocks and riffles. Large gravel bars were exposed on the inside bends. Out on one of these open areas, the kids poked sticks at smelly dead salmon carcasses which typically wash up on the rocks after the fall run. Someone found a bear track in the mud. Another kid picked up a stick that had been chewed by a beaver. There were all sorts of things to do and see besides the river water they sampled. Most of them had never been this far upriver (40 miles).

On the bus headed back to school, one young lady remarked, “I never knew that the river gets smaller later in the day.” I looked at her carefully. She wasn’t joking. She was making a generalization based on her limited experience. She’d formed a naive misconception. I was amazed, but glad for the chance to wonder about how important guidance and talk is in making sense of experience, which brings me to the point of this little reflection.

Students aren’t the only ones in school who suffer from limited knowledge and naive misconceptions. I’m only now beginning to appreciate my own woeful lack of understanding of the rhetoric that surrounds discussions about achievement gaps and accountability. I’ve never been a supporter of standardized testing, and when NCLB began to grow teeth I told my principal that it would result in a lot of spilled blood and finger-pointing. And so it has. But all along I thought that this was somehow a “mistake,” a bad decision that would have unintended negative consequences. The rhetoric of equality and equal opportunity for underprivileged populations sounded sincere and well-meaning, even if the law didn’t deliver those results. Now, however, I’ve begun to question the intention behind the rhetoric, and examine my own naive misconceptions.

The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. I need to follow some of these ideas - new to me - back to their source, and so will probably share this little journey here as I map the territory for myself.

Neal Postman:

Of all the disciplines that might be included in the curriculum, semantics is certainly among the most “basic.” Because it deals with the processes by which we make and interpret meaning, it has great potential to affect the deepest levels of student intelligence. And yet semantics is rarely mentioned when “back to the basics” is proposed. Why? My guess is that it cuts too deep. To adapt George Orwell, many subjects are basic but some are more basic than others. Such subjects have the capability of generating critical thought and of giving students access to questions that get to the heart of the matter. This is not what “back to the basics” advocates usually have in mind. They want language technicians, people who can follow instructions, write reports clearly, spell correctly. There is certainly ample evidence that the study of semantics will improve the writing and reading of students. But it invariably does more. It helps students to reflect on the sense and truth of what they are writing and of what they are told. It emphasizes the manifold ways in which language can distort reality. It assists students in becoming what Charles Weingartner and I once called “crap detectors.”
-from Technopoly, (p. 195)

Substitute the word, teachers, for students, and it still sounds right. Many of the themes that Postman raised in this dystopian view of technology’s influence on our language and culture are echoed in a post from Susan Ohanian yesterday, in which David Hursh outlines the effects of neoliberalism, which is at the root of the education reform discourse that has dominated the conversation about schools for the last few decades.

I’ve needed a frame to make sense of news articles, such as the one that appeared in our local paper today, in which readers are told

The students spend time reading in small groups or individually and are given research-based instruction by specially-trained tutors. Students are tracked and assessed throughout the year so that individual needs can be met.

What the hell does that mean? I know what it is. And I know what it sounds like, and they aren’t the same. Those “specially trained tutors” aren’t teachers. I’m curious about the “training” they got. Meeting the “individual needs” is code for deciding which level to “put the kids” in the program.

Both Postman and Hursh have plenty to say about how language and technology has shaped our thinking about “scientific management,” and efficiency as the success criteria for institutional functioning in the modern world. Hursh has a manifesto, Carry It On: Fighting for progressive education in neoliberal times.

For me, right now, the internet is helping me to make sense of my experience. I’m reading about neoliberalism and globalization, thinking about what kind of society we’re creating. More to come.