A Visit From The Superintendent
Dr. Bounds, State Superintendent of Education for Mississippi, made a presentation for our last class of the semester with Dr. Mullins. I would have been seriously upset had I not been so incredibly excited to be finished with weekend trips to Oxford for the school year.
Dr. Bounds, apparently, is an expert an classroom management, and by his own admission needs only to spend a day with any teacher to imbue that wisdom. To put it frankly if vaguely, all one has to do is train our students like robots or monkeys, and then they'll learn. Just reprogram their brains as if they are computers, that's the way to produce education citizens. Well, the secret's out everyone! All of our problems with education are solved! We need only treat children as subhumans and eventually they'll becomes human!
The obvious rhetorical question at this point is, "Or will they?"
(Although, for those of us who are there, I have to admit, playing that 'tanks' game and hitting Anderson rocked pretty hard...)
I am the first one to admit that my biggest problem now is classroom management, and it probably always will be. That having been said, I'd rather teach a bunch of unruly and unwilling immature human beings than walk into a perfunctory classroom in which students do what they need to do to pass and not get written up and be on their merry ways without having thought critically about one damned thing.
If classroom management is as easy as Dr. Bounds believes with his 'minimal training' (or at least is forced to believe because of the nature of his job), I wonder why the gospel hasn't spread. Here's a hunch.
I forget exactly in what context I heard Ben Guest say this, but it's hit me in a profound sort of way - profound, that is, specifically because it's one of those universal existential statements that doesn't hit you at the core until you realize precisely that it should. A system works or doesn't work depending on whether its participants buy into the system or not. It's kind of like when people say communism works in theory - of course it does, for those states willing to buy into its consequences! The first Puritan utopias worked. Systems of slavery work. So did Greek democracy and Roman republicanism and European monarchism. And if we want our schoolchildren to sit around sedated all day, that would work too, if we buy into all the inevitable consequences of that as well.
But, Dr. Bounds, for as little thought as I've put into this, and for as little as I specifically recall about your presentation, I'm in the business of educating, not training. Sure, your system works, and perhaps many people feel it's a shame that more teachers don't buy into it - but I will not buy into it.
I'm not a Bob.
I don't want any of my students to become Bobs.
And while I know I'm being pretty unfair to the position I'm arguing against and am being pretty juvenile and romantic and vague about the issues of which I'm speaking, you can't convince me that everything's going to work out in my classroom if I mark students tardy for not being in their seats when the bell rings. Even if that's the way the best classrooms are run by the best teachers in town in the most affluent and rigorous high schools in the nation (which, based on my own experience in high school, is not the case), I will still remain unconvinced that that is what teaching is and that that kind of management is ultimately beneficial for the students.
I do not teach docility, I teach content.
And for anybody else that says his method works so it should be adopted universally, I will leave with this statement: teaching is an art, not a science.
Dr. Bounds, apparently, is an expert an classroom management, and by his own admission needs only to spend a day with any teacher to imbue that wisdom. To put it frankly if vaguely, all one has to do is train our students like robots or monkeys, and then they'll learn. Just reprogram their brains as if they are computers, that's the way to produce education citizens. Well, the secret's out everyone! All of our problems with education are solved! We need only treat children as subhumans and eventually they'll becomes human!
The obvious rhetorical question at this point is, "Or will they?"
(Although, for those of us who are there, I have to admit, playing that 'tanks' game and hitting Anderson rocked pretty hard...)
I am the first one to admit that my biggest problem now is classroom management, and it probably always will be. That having been said, I'd rather teach a bunch of unruly and unwilling immature human beings than walk into a perfunctory classroom in which students do what they need to do to pass and not get written up and be on their merry ways without having thought critically about one damned thing.
If classroom management is as easy as Dr. Bounds believes with his 'minimal training' (or at least is forced to believe because of the nature of his job), I wonder why the gospel hasn't spread. Here's a hunch.
I forget exactly in what context I heard Ben Guest say this, but it's hit me in a profound sort of way - profound, that is, specifically because it's one of those universal existential statements that doesn't hit you at the core until you realize precisely that it should. A system works or doesn't work depending on whether its participants buy into the system or not. It's kind of like when people say communism works in theory - of course it does, for those states willing to buy into its consequences! The first Puritan utopias worked. Systems of slavery work. So did Greek democracy and Roman republicanism and European monarchism. And if we want our schoolchildren to sit around sedated all day, that would work too, if we buy into all the inevitable consequences of that as well.
But, Dr. Bounds, for as little thought as I've put into this, and for as little as I specifically recall about your presentation, I'm in the business of educating, not training. Sure, your system works, and perhaps many people feel it's a shame that more teachers don't buy into it - but I will not buy into it.
I'm not a Bob.
I don't want any of my students to become Bobs.
And while I know I'm being pretty unfair to the position I'm arguing against and am being pretty juvenile and romantic and vague about the issues of which I'm speaking, you can't convince me that everything's going to work out in my classroom if I mark students tardy for not being in their seats when the bell rings. Even if that's the way the best classrooms are run by the best teachers in town in the most affluent and rigorous high schools in the nation (which, based on my own experience in high school, is not the case), I will still remain unconvinced that that is what teaching is and that that kind of management is ultimately beneficial for the students.
I do not teach docility, I teach content.
And for anybody else that says his method works so it should be adopted universally, I will leave with this statement: teaching is an art, not a science.
posted by David Jones | 15:53
1 Comments:
I think that teaching is both an art and a science. Why does it have to be one or the other? There are certain techniques and skills that must be in place (for those of us who are not natural teachers), just as in any art form. Once the basics are in place the artist can improvise. That is where the art of teaching comes in. Acting, for example. You have Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro. Both were trained at the same time (early seventies) in the same acting group (Stella Adler Conservatory), in the same style (Method Acting). They both have the same skills and fundamentals. They project their voice, have good posture, hit their marks, etc. One is an okay actor and the other is the best of his generation. But the fundamentals remain. They are the foundation upon which all else is built. Classroom management is one of those fundamentals for teaching.
I think the point Dr. Bounds is trying to get across is that you must have an orderly environment with routines and procedures before you can build anything else. With a group of 30 kids, with different backgrounds, levels of ability, and other variables, the best way to do that is to have an organized classroom with rules and consequences and rewards that are given out in a fair and consistent manner. If you disagree with that then you will always struggle with classroom management. Put another way, classroom management is about two things: Rewarding the behaviors you want. Punishing the behaviors you don't. This is true when managing any group, whether it is chimps or your own children, kids in Jackson or MBA's at Wells Fargo. The only variation is in the types of rewards and punishments.
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