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Subject: ANGRY at you -- Boring teachers?? (august 1st show) Teachers are forced to be boring . . . 2 examples

[check out this segment]

I love your show, but never have I been as angry as you as when you made the off-hand remark in a general question, asking what to do about 'boring teachers.'

Not only did that remark misinterpret the caller (a believe a student who dropped out) but it misrepresented the problem. Yes, there are boring teachers in the world, but the present, top down, autocratic style of administration, along with a national standards movement that just squeezes the life out of any new idea, are responsible.

Teachers are forced to be boring.

As a working public high school teacher, let me tell you about my last observation. The lesson, for a Global History 2 class, which covers roughly the period from 1000 AD to 1700, I set up a comparison of religious intolerance. Snippets from 2 films were shown -- Elizabeth, in which Protestants are burned at the stake during the short-lived English Counter Reformation, and Osama, the story of an Afghan family left without a man under the Taliban. The idea was to get the kids to think about how religion can be put to different purposes.

The reaction of my Asst. Principal. 'The Taliban is not in the core Global 2 curriculum.' It was considered a minimally satisfactory lesson, something I guess I should be happy about since Asst Principals at my school were directed to give a certain % of unsatisfactory ('u') ratings. My AP, to his unending credit, refused. They ended up giving him the 'u.'

Teachers are forced to be boring. They are given lock-step curriculum designed with the demands of college professors first in mind. Any new approach is killed and routinized.

Take H. Gardener's 7 intelligences. The process by which it is institutionalized destroys the germ of idea. People now want to come up with different measurements for all 7 intelligences. The very thing that made it worthwhile
is removed.

As my friend Tim puts it, the professional pedagogical industry, plus the government led standards movement, is almost like a horde of bacteria attacking until they turn it into something they recognize. It becomes a clump of jargon, a new set of rubrics and a pile of workbooks or a bunch of CD Roms.

This is the gargantuan unseen beast that kills off originality and builds a barrier to literacy and the love of learning. Kids are taught to HATE to read. They are instructed not to read for pleasure, but to 'bear things in mind' -- the organizational structure, the main ideas, things to compare and contrast. All things that, once you have a love of reading, you can develop. But the love of reading comes first. It is like teaching a kid to love running around by working on their mechanics. It makes a joyful task a burdensome one.

Thanks a lot. By the way, I write on education as well as teach. I'll send you on an article about charters. Read the part about Jack Welsh.
-BF

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