Forget Learner Focused

I’ve gotten some blank stares from colleagues recently when I’ve alluded to a thought that’s been pickling in my head over the last several months. Maybe the thought’s too anarchist in a public school situation for them to get it.

It’s not that my school district isn’t doing a good job at educating the public. In fact, I think it’s a stellar educational system. And it’s not that I don’t like state standards or testing or even AYP. Believe me, I see their merits.

Rather, it’s that the mantra of being “learner focused”–click here for typical clanging ding-dong–rings for me as hollow as a clapperless Kid Caller. Just call me the paradox of critic-from-within.

The problem with “learner focused” is that its lasers of precision drilling bore specific facts and skills into little children’s mental kidneys to forge test-ready humanobots at the expense of the greater freedom that resides in human potential. Instead of students reaching their own potential through creative self-instigation, “learner focused” education studies the student to find how the student can best study for the upcoming standardized student success model. Forget that little individual there on the class roster–we need good test scores, dammit. And, students, we’re going to use punishments and report card carrots to make sure you’re with us on that.

Even the latest nationwide kick, to streamline states’ various standards of learning into one academic code, keeps beating the same withered donkey. As NPR reports, “The guidelines are part of a push to iron out the jumble of state standards and raise expectations for American schools…. If proponents have their way, third-graders across the country will understand the function of adjectives and adverbs, while eighth-graders will be introduced to the Pythagorean theorem. More broadly, the standards are meant to prepare kids for the possibility of college.”

Now, gaining skills and learning facts and for some of us even going to college is probably in some way important, but there’s a lot of discussion out there about alternatives to public education’s fundamental premise of “gotta get those kiddos ready.” I haven’t really researched any of them, but my sense is that at least one or two of the alternatives share the belief that external motivators–grades, punishments, praise–are more detrimental than fruitful, as writes Alfie Kohn in Unconditional Parenting.

My own school’s discipline program and grading system–certainly effective, efficient models–exemplify such external motivators. As a teacher can I motivate my students with my discipline and grade book prowess? You bet. Is it satisfying to know that the majority of my students buckle down on assigned agreeable tasks primarily because there’s an “Or Else” lurking in the corner? Not really.

What would happen if schools disbanded into small, intimate learning communities without curriculum but with a cultivating, literate thirst for relevant, interesting knowledge? At least kids would still learn to read, according to one Psychology Today scholarly blogger. And one unschooling mom says they would turn out human.

A student essay I graded recently suggested that kids know they’re not getting what they need from school. In the essay, about a person from the past whom he’d bring back for a day if he could, B.S. (no joke) wrote that he would like to know why Thomas Jefferson’s “unique style of architecture” was so French influenced.

“Why were there so many pillars?” he wrote. “While we were in Monticello I would ask about some of his unique collections. Like wine, why did he collect it? What was his favorite? Maybe Merlot or how about a nice white Zinfandel. Those would be interesting facts to know. What textbook would that be in? Also he had a lot of books, What were his favorite books? Did he read every book in his library? Also who was his favorite author? Again things you don’t learn in school.”

He continued, “Would he be a democrat or a republican? What would his vote be for health care? What were some influences for the declaration? Was he scared when he wrote it? Things that aren’t in a text book.”

Does it sound like this kid needs a looming report card to motivate him to explore and gain knowledge?

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Epilogue

His wasn’t the only interesting one among the batch of essays:

K.S. wrote that Michael Jackson “was atacked by the media constintly.” In the next paragraph she described her visit with the brought-back-for-a-day Michael: “Finally, I would ask who the true Michael Jackson was. It would be a visit made for telavision broadcasting!”

A.H. also wrote about Thomas Jefferson, although in her story he pops out from behind a bush and asks, “Hello there would you like to spend a day with your good old pal Thomas Jefferson? And I be like heck yeah!”

They go to the mall to get him some modern clothing, and “by the end of the day Thomas has on a jacket that says Hollister and his jeans are American Eagle. When we were done shopping, Thomas say, ‘Where in this great big world of wonders can I get a cup of tea? … So we go over to the Bugar Place and order our food.”

A.H. does go on to discuss history with Thomas, and they end up on the “starirs of the Jefferson Memorial with the sun seting. The sky was a perfect pink and purple. Thomas let out a big sigh….”

And finally, N.C. believed that bringing back George Washington would allow George to learn about today’s weapons and “change how things played out” by making weapons more sophisticated and even advancing the development of flying cars. When George first “fell out of a time portle,” he asked where he was, and what N.C. was doing.

“This is my house and that thing is a television.”

“What’s a television?”

“Something that plays tv shows.”

“What a tv show?”

“Something on TV.”

After a tour of modern local life–“He was probably 90% sure he was in the future when he saw [the town]”–they ended their day on an army base, where George was sucked back into the portal. Along with him went the whole army base, and “then stuff began to change and the world was different. There were now flying cars and other neat stuff.”

And since I’m all for unfocusing, let me pull in yet another snippet, this one by a student of a colleague “S.A.” (again, no joke) in an essay titled “Let’s Bring Back Jesus!”: “So I can understand what all pasture Berney means in church.”