1. "They [students] are being forced to take high-stakes exams that not only fail to deliver on promises to improve student learning, but also take a high toll in terms of anxiety and failure, especially for the most disadvantaged students. Simultaneously, students are subjected to classroom experiences focused on rote test preparation skills rather than genuine understanding" (Hinchey 99).
Throughout Chapter 5, Hinchey discusses the consequences, which happen to be mainly negative, of the government's idea of an educational reform. This quote is pulled from the section on how educational reform impacts the students and deals with standardized testing, an issue that continues to pop up in our education courses and an issue that as teachers we will have to battle year after year. Standardized testing's purpose is to measure the standards (as its title denotes) of our students, yet government and educational leaders do not see eye to eye in its measurement. Hinchey points out what most teachers already know: if standardized testing isn't harming our students, then it is definitely harming our curriculum. Based on the traditional pedagogy that we have been studying, standardized testing actually fits in with the curriculum because it relies on "rote test preparation skills," or in other words basic memorization. But if we want students to actually learn the material and develop understanding, these methods that the government requires of schools across the nation will do little to provide that understanding.
2. "Too often...basic skills are taught in isolation from interesting content, leaving students wondering what use phonics or set theory could possibly have in their lives" (Kohl 25).
Herbert Kohl's short and simple piece on the many questions people have before going into teaching provides numerous insights into the teaching profession in general. Though the article is meant for us to ask ourselves if we are ready to go into teaching, Kohl lays out many things that should or shouldn't be done in the classroom, such as teaching content apart from relevance. This seems to be the definition of traditional pedagogy: giving the facts without the reasons. In the traditional sense, school has always been seen as a formal institution, but Kohl asks us to lose a little bit of the formality and be informal (to a certain extent) with students. This informality will reveal students' interests and provide the teacher with intriguing ways to present the necessary curriculum--something all of us should strive for as teachers.
3. "Education is suffering from narration sickness" (Friere 1).
Friere coins the phrase "narration sickness" as the lack of learning that occurs when a teacher constantly lectures and the students sit back and listen. This is passive education at its worst. In his article, Friere argues against the traditional method of learning and believes it to do more harm to students than good. Learning should be looked at as a sharing between the teacher and the student, but when a class is lecture based, the teacher is subconsciously saying that he is the one with all of the knowledge and the students must be filled with his knowledge. This reminds me of a quote from W.B. Yeats: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." If a classroom does follow the lecture format, students may be filled with the information, but what are they doing with it? When students suffer from "narration sickness," they are not being taught how to use the information that they have received, and therefore they are not actually learning.
4. "With so much depending on testing results, educators feel forced to do 'whatever it takes' to protect school scores" (Hinchey 106).
Education used to be about the students. We as teachers are there to provide the students with as much of a well-rounded education as possible. Hinchey is right: educators do feel forced to do what is necessary to get their schools good scores on standardized tests, and she expands on this idea throughout her article, claiming that if schools do not maintain high enough scores, teachers can lose their jobs. When a teacher's job is on the line, the essential question no longer is "what can my students learn so that they will have an education that will stay with them?" but "what do my students need to know so that they can get through this one test?" A teacher should always have an interest in his students, but it would be difficult to maintain that interest when he must look out for himself. Besides, how can he teach his students once he is gone?
5. "In addition to losing ground in terms of ethical behavior, teachers have also lost controls of the curriculum, so that they can no longer teacher what they believe in or what they believe their students most need" (Hinchey 106).
This quote builds off of the previous quote. Not only do teachers have to do what it takes, they may have to teach many things that they believe may not be beneficial to their students in the long run. This is occurring in schools today, and in my own experience, this is happening in a K-8 school in Hartford. The teacher who I am doing my field observations with, a 6th grade teacher, is currently putting her lessons on hold in order to teach the material for the CMTs. If standardized tests were designed properly, she wouldn't have to be doing this. She actually feels stressed that she has to push back a big unit just so she can squeeze in time for "CMT training" as she referred to it. This example reiterates a point that Hinchey makes throughout the chapter: standardized testing affects more than we think, and there definitely needs to be a reform to education different from what the government is suggesting.
6. "Direct instruction as an instructional method works for only a small percentage of students, not for a great variety. The students who have other than verbal "intelligence," or who come from different cultural world views will fail" (Direct Instruction Link in Folder 2).
Direct instruction is a method that falls under the traditional realm of teaching. Sometimes, a bit of direct instruction has its appropriate uses, but most of the time students will fail to gain information if they cannot apply the given information. This quote touches on the differentiations in learning and that not all students learn verbally. From past courses, I have learned that in fact most students are visual learners. In that case, direct instruction would work best (if used at all) when paired with another instructional aide so that students can take conceptual information and visualize it. Different types of learning only prove that a teacher cannot rely on just one teaching method, but instead needs to vary multiple methods to ensure that students are not only gaining information, but recognizing and applying that information.
" A teacher should always have an interest in his students, but it would be difficult to maintain that interest when he must look out for himself."
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is difficult to try and balance out the needs of the student with the needs of the teacher: but I think this battle has been going on for a long time, and to attribute it to standardized testing is sort of a micro-view on the struggles of the self that the teacher must endure. I mean what about all of the sexual scandals that pervade the school systems? I'm not defending teachers taking advantage of students, but what of the teachers that were proved innocent but were still blacklisted from teaching ever again? What about teachers loosing their jobs to teaching or not teaching evolution in school systems? Teachers have constantly been under fire from virtually everyone, and standardized testing is just one more thing that teachers need to worry about. Sadly, I think it is just a simple fact that teachers will always need to look after themselves as well as the students. There just needs to be a certain balance that is maintained.
I definitely agree. Standardized testing is just on facet of the struggles teachers must face. Now that we've agreed that teachers undergo a certain amount of blame, now the question seems to be "what can we do to assure that a certain balance between student and teacher interest be maintained?" We hear stories about novice teachers who get placed in urban schools and work so hard to get through to every student, but they come home burnt out and on the brink of a nervous breakdown. And then there are those teachers who refuse to adapt any sort of curriculum for their students because it would be too much of a hassle, or they just don't see the point. Balancing between these two extremes sounds easy enough to do, but is it? I know personally that I would come home racked with guilt everyday if I wasn't more like the first teacher I described. It's tough to say, but I honestly think that the best teachers are ones who don't put their own interests as a priority, and I think this is a point Hinchey tries to make without coming out and saying it. Putting up with everyone's blame and scorn is just an occupational hazard these days.
ReplyDeleteWell Hinchey never comes out and say it, but I certainly think it would be beneficial if he (she?) did. It seems to me that a teacher must have a soft side to the students, and yet have a certain hardness, or callousness, when dealing with guilt, frustration, etc etc. I would have loved to see what Hinchey has to say about this balance, as s/he certainly has alot to say about everything else in education in general. As for what we can do to maintain a balance between student and teacher, that is an impossible question. It seems to me that whenever people talk about it, they say that "its personal". I guess that is true enough, as I think that experience in the field is the only way to hash out the teachers who will make it, and those who won't.
ReplyDeleteI guess that is what our field observations and student teaching is designed for: figuring out that balance because it is personal, and so far hasn't been taught in any of the education classes or education text books. (And Hinchey is a she!) I have the feeling that Hinchey, not to hate on her, isn't going to bring up much of the personal side to teaching. She's seems pretty hardcore in just the first reading. She takes a distant approach to providing the information, which is useful because I think that it takes a certain amount of bias out of her arguments. On a related note, the Christenbury reading (not for this class, but for Eng 420) takes a great personal approach and may provide some insight into the balance of classroom management.
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