The teacher/union bashing from Steve Jobs is just one of many recent examples of critical statements about teachers as a class of people. I’ve long – since the beginning of my teaching career – been acutely aware of my inadequacy in meeting the needs of all my students. That some kids get left behind is nothing new to me. Conventional explanations, however, are uniformly unhelpful. James Herndon noted our institutional limitations in his pithy Explanatory Note #4, The The Dumb Class.
I don’t know if my dismissive remarks about certain kinds of criticism gave the appearance of smug self-satisfaction. I didn’t mean to leave that impression, but my last post was a little rushed. I’m self-critical and circumspect by nature, and so I’m often reminded of the Jackson Browne lyric…Don’t confront me with my failures / I had not forgotten them.
I told my wife this morning that it feels like I’m buried in a media feeding frenzy around public schooling. She said that I internalize too much of it, and I should remember all the kids and the parents, and the other teachers, who appreciate what I’ve done…..This is a pep talk that I hear more and more from her.
I’ve been reading the blog of a teacher who posts at Daily Kos. He blogs as teacherken, and writes from a political/ethical perspective. He’s a Quaker, and I find his point of view refreshing in a media landscape that is rife with propaganda and prejudice, marketed as news. He wrote a diary there today called I don’t belong here, that resonated with me. Especially this:
To me teaching was less a transmission of facts than it was an empowering of capability – of thought, of writing, of perceiving, of belief in oneself, an internal valuation not dependent upon the opinions of others. Call it intrinsic worth. And because I knew I really didn’t belong, I became less concerned with how others might perceive how i approached my teaching and how my students reacted – was what i was doing something that was reaching them? If not, then it was up to me to change, and because I didn’t belong even to the teaching profession I did not feel any compulsion about turning on a dime to find a connection with a student that made a difference for her.
His post is about the need to listen, and the difficulty of doing so when we have passionately held beliefs. He asks:
The meta challenge is this – how does each of us act to ensure that when the one who is different, who perhaps is irritating or annoying, who does not belong, speaks the words that would benefit us, that we will hear? How can we ensure that we are capable of listening, even if it be an uncomfortable truth?
This is a problem now, and it’s one that affects me as much as anyone. Like teacherken, I feel out of place – and always have. I’ve had teachers who made a difference for me, and it was not because of what they taught me – but who I became as a result of knowing them.
I do find value in the views of others, often unexpectedly. I’m influenced by little things that are said or done unconsciously, without a calculated intention. Character speaks to me. I respect nobility, and generosity. I’m suspicious of certainty. Commitment to particular methods is an obstacle to growth. The power of personal connections, trust, and genuine interest are powerful beyond the measure of any set of technical procedures or scientific principles.
Christopher Sessums reflected recently about a book that I’ve had on my shelf for a long time. The Courage to Teach, by Parker Palmer, was tucked away and forgotten. But I dug it back out today and found a section called Ground Rules for Dialog (p. 150). Palmer talked about how, in academic settings, competition and opposition are the rhetorical forms that are customarily used to challenge the assertions of others. He said, “The conventional [social] norm of “making nice” with each other, folded into the professional norm of competition, creates an ethos in which it feels dangerous to speak or listen.”
Palmer observed that when someone does manage to name a real problem, they are met with a “fix-it response” which almost always leaves the inquirer feeling unheard. He developed a set of ground rules for dialogue that come from his experience with Quaker community. “It’s a time-honored process that invites people to help each otehr with personal problems while practicing a discipline that protects the sanctity of the soul.” Essentially, the method that Palmer developed is to build dialogue around open and honest questions, encouraging the inquirer to discover wisdom within.
Bertrand Russell: “Throughout the long period of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject.”
Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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Media feeding frenzy Well, then you get into why media feeding frenzies might happen. I have a very selfish view of media including blogs: can I get something out of reading or hearing this? Do I feel like responding, i.e. will responding force me to clarify my thinking on this subject?
There’s a lot out there, in case you hadn’t noticed. There’s more interesting stuff out there than I will ever have time to read, let alone respond to. I’m discovering I don’t have to respond to every intriguing post I come across, or perhaps just realizing the world isn’t clamouring to read what I think about something.
Debate: it has a long and illustrious career as a tool for revealing truth, especially in the courts in the form of the adversarial system. However, it’s worth being reminded of the rules for intellectually honest vs dishonest debating tactics.
A vital skill is to be able to tell when someone is in genuine search for an answer or response (and brassy appearances can be deceptive), and when they are in pure “scorched-earth” attack mode, where truth soon gets trampled in the rush to “win”. The “scorched-earthers” are usually easy to identify; more difficult to spot are the sophists, those who argue for the sake of arguing, of being controversial.
Although it appears to be a waste of time to engage either of these in debate, a case can be made for attempting to do so with the scorched-earthers, because they, in their ignorance and pride, attack the very principle of debate, and consequently of a truth that can (perhaps can only) be revealed through debate.
An adversarial approach, for example, might fruitfully take issue with some of some of what teacherken writes: To me teaching was less a transmission of facts than it was an empowering of capability.
One might ask, a la JD Hirsch, exactly how one proposes to empower capability without teaching facts? Perhaps teacherken isn’t suggesting teachers not teach facts, but hopefully this would be clarified in the ensuing dialogue, and it needs to be clarified, coz there’re lots of people ranting about “teachers who refuse to teach facts” and demanding their removal from schools.
Also, the approach teacherken describes may also work better for teaching some subjects than others – English Lit, for instance, rather than maths. Again, until he makes that clear (and it may not be clear to teacherken), he would be liable to justifiable criticism and opposition, in the spirit of dialogue, out of which (hopefully) insight and wisdom would be gained by all concerned.
The conventional social norm of being nice to each other, as Palmer puts it, can also impede personal and intellectual growth. In the collectivist culture I live and work in, for instance, direct confrontation (and disagreement is considered confrontational in this system!) is avoided, because of the high value placed on “face”. Growth becomes difficult when honest feedback is hard to come by. The term “echo-chamber” is not just one of abuse, it points to a very real weakness.
Herndon wrote How to Survive in Your Native Land about 40 years ago. Things have change since then, and this kind of nonsensical bureaucratic idiocy could never happen today, thank goodness.
At the risk of being accused of being just another vibration in the echo chamber, let me say I’m with you on this, Doug. You say “Character speaks to me. I respect nobility, and generosity. I’m suspicious of certainty. Commitment to particular methods is an obstacle to growth. The power of personal connections, trust, and genuine interest are powerful beyond the measure of any set of technical procedures or scientific principles.” And I say, Amen, brother.
That’s the battle that I fight with myself every day. I’ve been at this job long enough that I have plenty of hardened ideas, even when I try not to, and I sometimes find it difficult to hear what other people are saying, especially when it flies in the face of what seems to me like common sense. And, like you, I don’t particularly relish controversy. If we can have an exploratory conversation, fine. But if someone’s going to be on the sideline keeping score, I’m packing up and going home.
You may be in fact be self-critical by nature, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But all in good measure. If there’s one person in blogworld whose opinion and good judgment I respect, it’s yours.
Of course, even reasonable debate can turn into a kind of silly Kung-fu movie.
Marco, thanks for the provocative comments, as usual. I especially appreciate your analysis of the dynamics of debate. It’s a new thing for me, and I’m learning to filter it.
Bruce: It’s good to hear an echo now and then.
The Parker Palmer is one of the most profound books about education I have ever encountered. I remember giving it to a young lady I had taught as a high school freshman when she graduated from high school. She had decided she wanted to be a teacher, and I could think of no better present to offer her. She is now a senior at a nearby university, a student teacher in our school, and her copy is well worn.
Thanks for reading what I wrote.
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