Ch 15 of 20: Reading and Imagination

Our education quality level is rooted not only in the educations system itself, but also in other grounds, like the era in which we live; what students bring with them to the classroom.

A phenomenon that, unfortunately, is disappearing from our everyday, especially from the young generation’s life, is reading. Reading used to be a fun pass time not only for the educated elite, but for every person who could read. It was not unusual to find a poor boy sitting on abandoned stair case in the middle of the city, reading a book that he got from the library, or even stole from another boy.

Reading, regrettably, is not considered fun pass time for youth anymore. Yes, there are still some adolescents who read but they belong, mostly, to elite group of AP students, made to read by their English teacher or their parents…

The price for the decline in reading is the weakening of our ability to use our imagination. When we read a book our brain creates a picture of places, events and people, and we thus develop the ability to see in our mind situations that are not part of our everyday reality, and objects that are not tangible.

You may ask what does imagination have to do with academics, especially with mathematics, and I will claim – everything!

Abstract ideas are part of every curriculum, unquestionably math and science. Students have to apply their imagination to create a mental picture in order to be able to understand and analyze a process, and use their brain to complete the picture and draw conclusions.

  

This same process is happening when one reads a book. You imagine the character, imagine the surrounding, the events, and in your mind predict and complete the situation before you know the entire story.

With TV and computer screens, being the main source of information and entertainment nowadays, images and audio are constantly feeding our senses, leaving no room for the brain function of imagination. We are losing the important independent thinking and processing because we don’t have to complete any mental picture. Every bit of data is being chewed up for us before being fad to us.

There are other reasons for the decline in the use of imagination in young people. We live in a culture that unstructured time and uncontrolled activity for kids is a waste of time. As soon as a toddler can sit and respond to interaction, he/she is signed up for a class, tutored by a relative to identify the alphabet, and strictly monitored in the playground or the assigned play group… What happened to free time? Free play? Kids’ games of their own innovation and rules without parents’ constant interruption? How about just sitting outside in a rainy day, looking at the sky and giving names for the imaginative shapes that the clouds form…?

An article that I read (link is attached) talks about the word “play”, how the meaning of the word had changed over the years. Play used to be an unstructured free activity that did not involve any toy… nowadays “play” means an organized game or a ready-made play tool, created especially for a specific kind of activity…

That brings me to another source for creativity despair in our children; the nature of the games and toys. When, and where, I grew up, before Toys R Us had hijacked our imagination by providing every possible toy to place in our game space, we played with wooden blocks and simple Lego-like pieces. With them we created our own imaginary toys. We could build a house and a bench, trees, furniture, and even good guys and bad guys with their weapon. We had to use our imagination to build objects, that are now can be found in any toy’s store. It is hard to envision anymore, what could be missing from those over loaded shelves. I even have a nightmare of a toy company that employs innocent children, pay them with piles of candies, and pry on any spark of imagination that they might have… (Sitting them in a one-sided mirror room, with microphones, and record any flash of imagination as soon as it is born, and immediately sends it to its developers…)  

Another favorite plaything that resulted from what might be called “deprived childhood”, was a simple compass, the one that has one sharp edge, and a pencil is inserted to the other side. I used to make wonderful creations of circles intersecting circles, and with crayons colored the different sections. When I started geometry I was already proficient in handling the compass, I knew what a radius was, and I also knew that if I drew a circle and placed the sharp edge on the circumference without changing the radius, I could mark six points that can be connected to make different shapes. I also noticed that as hard as I tried, the last point was never quite aligned with the starting point. It took me years to realize why, but never the less I had that experience; I could already visualize circles, rectangles and triangles...

How can you explain congruence and similarity concepts to youngsters who cannot create a mental picture of a triangle in their mind? They are not incapable, but they lack a skill that used to be widely accessible, imagination! Its absence prevents them from developing a higher level of thinking and creativity.

When reading is replaced with ready images and tangible objects, imagination development suffers… When a student cannot create a mental picture of a field with fence around it, he/she will graduate from high school not comprehending the difference between area and perimeter… And when a young person lacks the ability to process an abstract concept in general, he/she will be limited in intelligence and vision…

Links:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/con/summary/v017/17.1.saiber.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/is-technology-producing-a-decline-79127

Ch 14 of 20: Parents' Rights

Back in the days, the worst-case scenario following bad behavior was parents’ conference. If a parent was contacted and asked to meet with the teacher, it was a complete misfortune for the family, the student, and his/her social life.

My parents, unlike most parents at the time, were at least willing to give me a fair hearing of what had happened. Most parents would not even listen, and automatically side with the teacher. It would be considered a disgrace for the family if their student so misbehaved.

This type of parents’ reaction does not exist anymore, especially not in second-generation American families. It may still be true for families who recently emigrated from different countries, especially developing countries, where education and teachers’ authority is still taken quite seriously…

One of the reasons for this phenomenon results from parents losing authority with their children. They may be too busy working multiple jobs and thus being away from home, or they may start losing respect from the younger generation due to language deficiency or cultural background.

I have met so many wonderful, willing to help and supportive, Hispanic parents, who valued education and wish their students to succeed, and yet are completely powerless in their attempt to influence their child.

Situation changes for the worse, unfortunately, after families have been here for a while, and are swayed by a sense of entitlement; feeling that the system owes them. They neglect their responsibilities and lay it all on teachers, and school in general. From this group of people I often hear a blaming tone. They, often, refuse to take responsibility for their student’s behavior and blame teachers and administrators. Some even flatly declare that they are not going to do anything about their misbehaving student…

And then there is a third group of parents, parents of students who are fairly motivated, disciplined, and quite well mannered. Usually they live in affluent areas, and go to respectable schools. These are the schools where teachers have fewer problems with students but many more problems with parents…

Teachers who work in those schools tell me horror stories about parents screaming at them for not complying with their demands regarding procedures, homework assignments, and most commonly – grades. These teachers deal with parents who treat them like kids and try to control their teaching and decision making…

Imagine a corporate environment where a boss has to answer for employee’s parents’ demands regarding special treatment for their son or daughter…

Consider a situation where a worker is directly responsible before the law, not only for things he/she has done, but for things done by somebody else. A case where not reporting, or not even noticing, misconduct done by others, may carry a severe punishment that could cost him/her job, and even imprison...

Compare the education profession to other careers, considering the layers of “bosses”, so to speak, to whom teachers have to report. There is the department head, the administrator in charge, the principal, the school district officials, as well as other special supervisors and advisers, to name few.

…Add to that 200 students, and double this number of parents and guardians… all bossing the same teacher…

Ch 13 of 20: Students' rights (no obligations...)

Somewhere along the way of making education mandatory for all youngsters, it stopped being a privilege and became an entitlement. Everyone under a certain age must go to school whether student and parents want it or not. It became the law.

I am not against enforcing education on children and young adult, and for sure, I am for a system that prepares adolescents to become functioning citizens, with education, skills and social values. What I am against, though, is forcing every young person to go through the same mandatory system. There should be different systems for different needs and wants of youngsters and their families.

Even if every child was capable of becoming a rocket scientists or a brain surgeon not everyone would want to become one. The most talented girl at my school, whose father was a medicine doctor, and her mother highly educated as well, wanted just to learn manual crafts, and fortunately her parents supported her.

What I see at schools every day are classrooms full of students who are not only completely disinterested in education, but also determined to spoil the experience for everyone else. They are using every tool in their arsenal to resist any positive progress; refuse to cooperate or participate, disrupt teacher and students and tease the ones who show interest. They destroy educational materials that are handed to them with no cost, and leave graffiti on books and trash on school property.

I can’t describe the frustration of trying to teach, aide, or even just observe such a  class; watching the phenomena of students wasting, on purpose, the one most valuable asset, given to them for free – education, paid by each of us. It aggravates to see the time and resources wasted; tax money paid by all of us, including their parents, earned with hard work; Spoiled opportunities – theirs and others!

My frustration and anger often boil to a point that aggravates administrators. I understand that kids will be kids… They don’t see the whole picture and lack the maturity to recognize what is good for them, but - how do we allow that? How do we let few irresponsible youngsters to spoil education for eighty percent of school population? How do we let them control us, educators, kind and giving individuals, whose only fault is trying to help them? Why are we so helpless against them?

I heard it so many times – “…but you are the teacher! It is your job to control the class!” And my reply is “How? Using what tools? “ What do you say, or do, to a  student who is completely candid about his disinterest in school?

This is not a new problem, what new is our inability to deal with it. We, school staff, cannot force students to learn, their parents have very little influence, the system has neither authority nor alternatives, and law suits are looming over everyone who dares say “fine, this is your choice…” Politicians are making decisions for school administrators; officials who had never been to a classroom…

Before I started teaching I worked as a teacher aide. Helping in different classrooms I was amazed to learn what teachers are facing every day at their job. I must admit that in most cases I blamed, in my heart, the teachers. I thought the chaos was a result of a poor classroom management and bad teaching methods.

I vividly remember one specific class where the teacher was standing in front of the room, lecturing to only two students; a brother and sister who just emigrated from Iran. They were the only ones who showed interest, or maybe just had good manners… The rest of the students were throwing paper balls, talking, and listening to loud music. I would walk around the room, trying to get students to focus their attention on the teacher and work with them individually. I even had some successes with a sharp African American boy who showed interest and ability (but unfortunately got involved in a fight, and was expelled from school, despite my pleas…). I would come home and tell my family about that one bad teacher, that though I liked him personally, was, in my opinion, a poor educator…

Over the years, I often thought of that teacher, and the longer I stayed in education, the better I understood him. It was not long before I was ready, in my frustration, to do just that – teach the only two interested students and ignore the rest. I was so discouraged by the inability of the system to deal with what he used to call “those low performing students”, who disrupt learning and teaching, that I justified him.

… I saw him again years later. It was by a pure coincidence. I lost a job due to low enrollment and was offered a temporary assignment at a different school, replacing a teacher on a sick leave, for an unspecified length of time…

The name of the teacher sounded familiar, and something about the way he worded the instruction made me suspect that this is the same person. Few days later when we spoke over the phone he did not remember me, yet I could swear it was him… It took few more weeks before we met, but when we finally did, sure enough, it was the very same teacher, dealing with the same frustrating situation. Trying to teach unmotivated, low performing students, in a low performing school…

I could tell him now how much I sympathize with what he was going through back then, and now. Apparently he was hoping I would stay and replace him for the rest of the semester but when he asked me my reply was “Thanks! But no, thanks!”. Unfortunately he was forced to come back, despite of his health condition … but as bad as I felt for him I did not want to stay beyond the two weeks I committed for. There was nothing I could do to improve the learning environment, and I knew that eventually I will be the one to be blamed for that… It was a losing game…

You see – since education became an entitlement, it carries only rights! Students have the right for an appropriate education; best teachers, best programs, best materials. If not - they are entitled to sue; every sixth grader can, and will, tell you that! However, they don’t have to come to school ready; bring supplies, protect the ones they are given, respect property, teachers and staff. Their only requirement is to show up at school! And yes! Schools are very particular about that; it means money! But what about other obligations like carrying a pencil and a piece of paper? Displaying positive attitude, attempting to learn something, or at least – give just respect to the people who try to teach, and to the ones who try to learn?

Every time I hear complaints from parents, backed by a smart advocate, I want to scream. I want to ask – have you been to a classroom? Have you seen those students sitting with a big, empty, backpack, with absolutely no school supplies? Have you noticed those students who completely ignore instruction, deliberately disrupting the lesson? They don’t learn because they don’t want to learn! They should be held accountable for that! Teachers are not responsible for the failure of the education system! It is the system itself that fails those reluctant students by not making them answerable for what they do, or don’t, know!

Why do schools have to provide students with every piece of supply is beyond me, but at least students should protect and respect what is given to them! Instead – they complain! Give them papers they ask why they are not lined, and make paper balls! Give them pencils – they break them, but not before complaining that they don’t have erasers… Give them erasers – they through them at each other! Providing something for free, without attached liability, is not only expensive and wasteful, but also against every value and principle that we are trying to instill in our youngsters. It is education without educating!

So, next time when you ask your student what did he/she learn at school today, ask yourself what did they NOT learn at school! What basic human and citizenship values, like respect, responsibility, care for property, appreciation to resources, among others, did they not learn!

Ch 12 of 20: Bell Schedule

Frustrated teachers and administrators are trying to figure out what is wrong with their school’s performance. Low performing schools, like many of the ones I see, are banging their heads against the wall trying to break the standardized test score barrier to get their school off the hook. They research methods other schools are using, calling staff from different areas in a desperate attempt to find out what is the secret magic that brings their scores higher.

I was sitting in those meeting many times, listening to my colleagues arguing for one method or another. One person is claiming that a certain technique worked so well somewhere, resulting in a higher score, and someone else presenting just the opposite, arguing that another school, using that same technique, sees no progress.

This is the time when I am waiting for that innocent child, who sees the facts as they are and speaks out the truth… to cry “The Emperor is naked!” pointing to reality that everyone pretends not to notice… The fact that, for example, this wonderful, high performing school, is in a privileged area, with well educated and well to do population, and long waiting list that efforts losing few trouble makers, and thus pressuring students and parents – to meet their standards or hit the road…

When I am assigned to a new school and I want to get a feeling for its academic rank and culture, I always check its bell schedule…

My good colleagues at the west area schools enjoy a relaxed bell schedule. They start at 8:00, have about 50 minutes-long classes, enjoy nutrition recess, unwind for 35 minutes at lunch break, have a nice 7 minutes passing time between periods - the same schedule that they have had for 20 years…

The stressed out schools start before 8:00, have no nutrition recess, shorter lunch, mean 4 minutes passing period, and the greatest “fix-it-all” - block scheduling…

If you have taught math at a low-performing school with block scheduling you know what I mean… I am not saying it is a bad idea all together – it might work for art, music, PE, even social studies, but not math, for more than one reason. To start - there is no way you can keep students’ attention for more than 40 minutes, in the best case; 20 minutes to teach the lesson and 20 minutes for practice, collectively and individually. After that they lose they concentration and become restless and impatient. So – how do you fill 90 minutes, or worse, 110 minutes?

Yes, you can show them a movie, talk to them about current events, teach them about the world (my favorite passing time activity…) but the fact is still the same – there is that much material that you have to cover each week, month, semester.  Since you now meet your class only 2 or 3 times a week you have to give double dose of the material in each meeting. It means that after the first 40 minutes, with maybe a short break, you have to do another round of 40 minutes teaching the next section. Learning math is challenging enough as it is, and to have it absorbed and ready to be applied – it needs to be administered in a bite size… Dealing with two mouthful quantities to be swallowed, digested, and processed is quite impossible!

School age youngsters need to move around, spend energy, play and refresh their minds before being ready to absorb more learning. Long periods in the same seat is almost impossible for most students, especially for middle schoolers. The notion that more is better, resulting in maximizing the in-class minutes, especially in low-performing schools, is ineffective, and even counter-effective! More and more researches are showing that recess is not only what students want, but also what students need in order to perform well. Studies had proved that outside, playground, time, helps students refresh their minds, exhaust their energy and prepares them for refocusing their mind on learning. Furthermore – researchers found a direct positive correlation between exercise and academic performance! Countries that excel in education level, like Finland and some Asian countries, have shorter periods and longer, and more often, recesses!

Unfortunately, education leaders believe that fixing our failing schools depends on how many classroom minutes we provide our learners, and the tighter the schedule is, the better education we deliver. Not surprisingly, then, that low performing schools squeeze seven periods a day, some in block schedule, have short or no breaks, and very brief passing periods. They administer remedy without a sound proof that it cures the ailment, and ignore the fact that while no real evidence supports that more is better, volume of data claims that actually less is better!

In analyzing the consequence of bell and block scheduling, we weigh mainly students’ achievements, of course. We do forget, however, to consider its effect on teachers. Teachers’ comfort and well being has a direct impact on their job effectiveness, not to mention those basic human rights of a working individual…

Let’s talk about lunch break, for example. Lunch breaks are never long enough to enable teachers to recharge before the next section of the day. When the bell-ring announces lunch break, the students charge out instantly, but the teacher has some closing to do - erase the board, turn off electronic devices, pick up few papers from the floor, maybe replace the materials - getting ready for the next period, and very often exchange few words with some students for one reason or another; precious minutes that are taken away from his/her recess time…

At one school we had block scheduling with 110 minutes long blocks, a nightmare for every math teacher in a low performing school… The morning session included two consecutive blocks with only 7 minutes between them… If you were not one of the lucky teachers with a conference before lunch, or the bathrooms were not next door, you were doomed to work four hours without a bathroom break…

At another school we had a 30-minutes lunch break. Because of school size, and the fact that bathrooms were not available at the bungalows where I taught, I could never get to the cafeteria until almost the end of the break. By then the cafeteria workers had already remove most of the food items, closed the cashiers and most infuriating - emptied the coffee pots. If there is something I desperately needed at that time, is a good cup of coffee, but as I, at last, reached the promised cafeteria, I would watch with dismay how my precious coffee is being poured down the drain…

Other schools don’t even have faculty cafeteria so teachers have to waste precious lunch minutes standing in line with the students (yeah… they do get priority) and then waste more time marching to the teachers’ lounge… not much fun…

It almost feels like the whole school time machine is aimed at limiting teachers’ comfort and causing them a constant race against time. If you have a conference period with important business to take care of, you are asked to cover another class. If you get to school early because you need to do some prep work, someone needs your help. If you plan on leaving early – forget it! And if you get to the cafeteria, desperately needing few minutes to eat and relax, they reject your $20 bill that you carefully remembered to bring (cash only! no checks or credit card!)

So, stepping to a school, not knowing much about its academic level, culture and intensity of teachers’ pressure – check out the bell schedule… This is a good indicator for school’s stress level…

Links:
The Secret Behind Finland's Super Smart School Kids? Recess
The Effect of Recess on Academics
The Rebirth of Recess

Ch 11 of 20: Middle School

Muppet: Nobody Cares About Me

The Middle School phenomenon has caused, in my opinion, more damage to the education system than any other “progressive” reform. It had emerged several decades ago, here, and later in other countries, from a previous system dividing the elementary / high school system into three stages, adding a Junior High School. The Junior High concept was created to escalate students’ academic preparedness for the higher grades by breaking away from the traditional elementary school, and provide thus more rigorous studies, as a better readiness for higher education.

It was in the early seventies when academia people started to wonder if it is right to enforce strict academic measures on early teens, and therefore limit their time and ability for creativity and socializing. Combined with new psychological theories a new trend surfaced that resulted in easing academic demands on young adolescents, trying to create a warmer transition from elementary to high school. 

Some countries around the world, and few districts here in the States, however, stayed with the Junior-Senior concept, and even smaller number of organizations kept the eight –four, elementary high-school, system long after it was pronounced “old fashion”. Those few “survivors” can smile now and say “See - we told you…”

Luckily, I grew up in a country that, at the time, kept the 1-8 elementary and 9-12 high school system. Back then my young country was one of the world’s leaders on the education rank list, and it produced a genius generation of engineers and inventors in every field. Its place on the list dropped miserably after adapting some “progressive methods”, one of them is the middle school system… It is not my place to debate what caused the education level drop, and what part of it is due to adapting the middle school system. All I can do is describe my own experience…

I can testify to having the best time of my schooling life during those last three years of my elementary school, especially those critical 7th and 8th grades. We all grew up together, started to mature together, and made room for the emerging stars among us. We didn't have to re-invent a social structure and fight our place in it. We were comfortable in our world of being the seniors in our little kingdom, and thus our minds were free to absorb and progress. Now, years later, I realize that my best childhood and adolescence friends are those who were part of my world during those precious years of 12 to 14…

Raising my kids here, and sending them to the local, well acclaimed, schools, I watched with dismay their experience going through the middle school horrid system. My daughter, an ‘A’ student, shy and delicate, spent most of her lunch breaks by herself, and was trying to get involved in any school activity that could save her from a social isolation. My son, who could have been an ‘A’ students had he not been caught in the middle-school madness, was desperately trying to prove the cool guy in the new, chaotic, social structure in order to socially survive…

Being the foreign, new comer, that I was, I did not grasp the harm in the middle-school insanity until years later, too late, by then, to mend the scars that were left.

Yet, still not fully comprehending the whole picture, I decided to become a middle school math teacher, believing that my skills will be best used teaching arithmetic and those ill-understood concepts of fractions, decimals and percentages… It was only when I actually started teaching that I realized how impossible it is to teach anything in middle school, let alone mathematics...

What’s amiss in middle schools?

It is absolutely the wrong structure, at the wrong age…

The first time I was faced with a system that required me to choose classes and move from one classroom to another I was at my freshman year of the university. We were all so confused that we thought we will never be able to graduate… and most of us were over twenty by then… Of course it is not quite the same, yet I can’t imagine facing a similar system at the age of eleven, after being under the clear, strict care of the elementary school organization for five or six years…

Pre and young teens are at an age when they need structure and direction more than ever. Unfortunately, right at that fragile age we open the gates for them and let them free to go to an uncharted territory. All of a sudden the cushioning and protection given to them at elementary school is let go, and the rules abruptly change on them; Moving from one classroom to another, with anonymous new teacher in every class, and hundreds of new faces almost every period of the day.

The social structure that was carefully balanced for that many years is undone exactly at that sensitive time when early teen boys are becoming young men and girls are turning to women. The old social arrangement does not apply anymore and every young soul has to fight for a new place in the pyramid. No wonder that this is when alcohol and drugs are creeping their way into the young people’s life.   

To counter-act the breaking of the social structure, and to support peer cooperation rather than competition, group work became the common practice in most middle schools classrooms. Students sitting in groups of 3-6, ideally learning together and helping each other… Sounds great? The idea is good. Does it work? For social interaction – maybe, for academic progress – not quite…  The middle school concept that was trying to ease students’ academic stress and leave more room for socializing and creativity, affords them complete leisure and laziness.

Over the past several years, the middle-school system is desperately trying to re-invent itself, as more and more researches are proving its failure. Schools are trying to have one teacher teaching several subjects to strengthen teacher-students connection. A typical combination is one teacher for math and science, and one for social sciences and language arts. However, due to budget and logistics limitations, other, strange, combinations exist like English and math or English and Science …

For that purpose, block scheduling is often prescribed, where students spend two hours, without a break, in the classroom; a nightmare for teachers and students…

Then there is the “Home Room” or “Advisory” period. In most high schools it means 5-10 minutes added to first or second period, dedicated to messages over the laud-speakers and some administrative errands. In a middle school, however, this special period is dedicated to teacher-students quality time, sort of bonding together, time for general education, on top of administrative errands. This period lasts between 30 to 60 minutes every day, but unfortunately is an absolute waste of time. When asked what they usually do during this time, students’ answer is always the same – "Nothing!" In the best case a teacher would assign a word-search or a game… Really? Nothing better to do with 40 precious minutes? No real learning? No discussions? Nothing to broaden those limited horizons? And if nothing better, why not add 5-10 minutes to each of the other academic periods?

Then, just recently, another “academic” activity was added… Breakfast In Class… another mind blowing invention… Why not have students come 10 minutes earlier and be served at the cafeteria, where it belongs? Why waste class time! Not to mention the trash, the disrupted learning atmosphere, the questionable added duty for teachers, the waste of food that big part of it finds its way to the trash can!

I don’t want to further expand on the middle school system. Educators understand the problems and try to provide small changes within the limitations of the system. Teachers are well aware of the situation; some deal with it somehow, but many leave to seek a job in a high school, or just quit the education field all together.  

Why don’t we go back to the old system? Politics… and money of course… someone has to admit failure and someone has to pay for it…

Ch 10 of 20: No proficiency criteria

Dr. Seuss: The Cat in the Hat

If there was a magic cure that could have treated all, or at least most, of the education system’s ailments, would we be able to apply it? The truth is that there is a way to solve most of the weaknesses of our schools. It is a simple remedy but it will declare a war between educators and politicians…

The solution is mandating one, objective, nation-wide (or at least state-wide) proficiency standard of knowledge, measured by a uniform, objective tool (test), for each graduation mandated subject.

The list of the benefits that will result is long but mainly it will give credibility to the high school diploma, will strengthen the higher education level, and overall will elevate our education quality to a competitive place among world’s nations.

Another, at least as important, benefit, will be challenging students to reach a real, clear and established goal in order to graduate from high school with a diploma.  

If you have been to a classroom, you know that not all students are created equal… It is a nice ideal but very far away from reality… If you are a math teacher, you meet this reality when you face forty students with forty different levels.

Back in the days, before a law-suit was looming over every decision made, common sense prevailed. Higher-level students were in a higher-level classes, lower performing students were in a class that matched their skills, and those in the middle were able to progress at their pace. Not surprisingly, lower students tried to hide that fact, and students in the middle tried their best to climb to the ‘A’ group.

We don’t label students any more… they are all equal before the mass education system… and it makes teachers’ mission impossible; the low performing students dominate the class environment. They muck the teacher and the students who happened to want to learn. They hold hostage the learning process, knowing that there is nothing the teacher can do to force them to cooperate. Parents have little or no influence, and deans are overwhelmed with the magnitude of the problem. In their frustration, they send the students right back to the classroom…

In the end, the ultimate guilty party is always the teachers… No matter what they do or how hard they try, they are helpless against the troops of unmotivated students who don’t have a real clear goal to achieve, and who know the system is behind them (and against their teacher…)

The issue is not the miserable frustration of a teacher trying to do his/her job… the issue is the inability of the majority of the students to learn. How much progress can be achieved when eighty percent of the time is spent on fighting disruption? How distressing it is that motivated students are teased by the lower students. How sad it is that we lose eighty percent of the potential learners to very few...

Whose idea was it that all students must graduate from high school anyway? Of course it is a desirable goal but is it realistic? Aren't we fooling ourselves believing that occupying a seat for twelve years means graduation competence?

Back to the good old days, students who were not capable or just not motivated to be in the academic ‘lane’, had other options. They could learn a craft and get a suitable certificate. Later, they could complete their education and receive a high school diploma or meet the requirements to be accepted to the universities.

Imagine a situation where a school decides that all students are required to be part of the ‘Track and Field’ team. Would it be possible to set a qualifying time? Of course not – unless it is set to be the time of the slowest member of the team. How well would this team perform? How competitive it will be against other teams?

The academic field is not different… When a decision was made that every student should be a part of the academic path, regardless of ability or motivation, there was only one way to reach this objective – lowering the bar so that all students can meet it… And what happens to our education level as result, compared to other countries, for example? Exactly what would have happened to that sports team! We, the richest country, with the brightest minds, fall to the bottom of the list … 

When no objective standard level for success is set, and every team member is a “mandated participant” the bar is automatically being lowered, it must be – how else can everyone pass? Most countries set their “passing” standard bar based on educational goal. They measure their students’ success by national matriculation tests, and the high school diploma depends on this unbiased measure. This method has two benefits. It graduates only deserving students, thus giving credibility to the high school diploma, and it gives students a real, measurable, goal to reach, and thus directs and motivates them. When no bar is set to discriminate between achieving and “sitting” students, the education standard is very questionable!

As a math teacher I see everyday 12^th grade students who will graduate with math skills of 5^th graders, and I am sure my English teachers colleagues have a similar experience, yet I can’t tell you how many times I was asked by an administrator to increase the percentage of students passing my class… What does it mean? To teach better? No! I can assure you that this is not what it meant – I was asked to let more students slide through, and if it meant lowering the bar – so it be… and why not? Who is going to notice that some algebra student know absolutely nothing about algebra, or for that matter, about basic arithmetic? If there is no objective qualifying test why not push through the passing gates more students. And yes, every year thousands of students graduate from high school not mastering basic skills, yet their report card will testify successfully passage of require subjects…

I was once present at a meeting between our high school math teachers and teachers of a middle school. We were discussing the math level of the students who came to us, and I asked the middle school teachers why they let students into algebra before they master basic arithmetic skills. I told them that, unfortunately, at high school we don’t have a choice, but they still have the option to work on basic skills… My comment was met with complete silence. They all, including my administrator, looked at me questioning my intelligence … They, too, don’t have a choice! They are told to place students in algebra, regardless of readiness level…

You may say - but there are standardized testing that are religiously administered to all schools every year, so here is a good objective measure… and I would say… yes!… what a brilliant idea! There are those standardized tests, and enormous sum of resources are invested in them… so why not use them for that end? Why not test performance of an individual student, conclude his/her level and decide what is needed for him/her? Why not have students’ score directly affected their path?

Here is another decision made by people who understand nothing about education and waste a good tool that could have made all the difference…

Instead, they mandate higher-level subjects without qualifying the level of success. Recently - Algebra II, a new requirement that is based on the mistaken notion that every graduating student is qualified and possesses the basic skills needed for it. How many students honestly earned their passing grade in Algebra I, and Geometry? But is it important? If no objective criterion proves students’ competence, why not mandate even calculus? As one colleague said - we will teach half of the Algebra I book in Algebra I, and the other half in Algebra II, Why not?

One size fits all! We are dropping the bar instead of raising students to the task, and students know it. Why should they put any effort to reach a bar if they know that it will be lowered for them, to match their very least common denominator…?

Ch 9 of 20: Technology

I don’t want to sound old fashion, even though I might be just that, but technology, sometimes, is just in the way of learning, at least in math, and especially in the lower grades where students are learning basic skills of calculation. If it was up to me, I would not propose calculators’ use until after algebra II. When students are presented with technology aids before they build a brain capacity to understand and figure out a way to solve a problem, their ability to think is cut short too early and their thinking process is being incapacitated.

Since the time I learned arithmetic, many “progressive” methods were introduced to the education system with, in my opinion, regretful results. Even before technology became so available and popular, a “new” method taught students to do the four basic arithmetic calculations using a digital, counting, method. Instead of developing a mental process of adding and subtracting, creating thus a brain picture for the meaning of these operations, they practice counting. While for my generation solving six plus seven was a mental process that we each developed in our mind (for me it was completing to ten and adding the leftover…), most students nowadays do all four arithmetic operations using their fingers; memorizing the multiplication table has become a big no-no, for some reason …

This digital (counting) method, by the way, is very successful with special needs students, and even children with severe disabilities are able to use it. The question is why teaching a method meant for less capable minds to perfectly capable brains. Why restrict students’ thinking process and thus limit their future ability to grasp more advanced concepts?

This incapacity manifests itself as soon as they start algebra, where abstract thinking skill is required. The list of subjects with which students struggle in algebra, as a result, is very long, starting with simple factoring. When they reach geometry, they are completely lost… They just don’t get it. Math and science teachers are continuously frustrated with their students’ inability to think beyond the very concrete, structured instructions.

My first full time teaching job was at a reputable high school, teaching math to students with special needs – mild to moderate. Being a brand new teacher, with very little experience, and not quite buying into the special education system, I didn't give in to the “can’t do” attitude of my SDC (Special Day Class) students. I demanded from them what I later demanded from all my general education classes.

At that class, one of my SDC students completely mastered multiplication and division. He was not one of the brighter students otherwise, so I was amazed and thankful for this ability. When I met his father, he explained to me that he insisted that his son memorizes the multiplication table. He told him that if he is capable of something as complicated as figuring out how to put together the sound system, plugging all the wires into the correct connections, he must be capable of learning something as simple as the multiplication table, and he made him learn it…

As a teacher, my misgiving of technology has to do with watching with dismay how students of middle and high school are incapable of doing essential math operation. When students as young as elementary learners are reaching for a calculator to solve simple addition and subtraction problems, and middle-schoolers depend on technology to solve easy multiplication and division problems, mastering a basic skill like long division becomes a rarity and uncomplicated fractions and decimals questions become mission impossible…

As an observer of the education organization I am half-amused half-angry (being a taxpayer) at the tremendous waste that goes into the technology craze.

Almost any type of technology is expensive, and has to fit into some budget strategy. Teachers who plan on using calculators, for example, should find a way to stock their classroom or have an access to the prized storage. At one school, I had to get rid of the entire math related supplies at the end of the school year because of an English teacher who requested that specific classroom. All the items that were accumulated there for many years of math teaching had to be removed. Going through the supplies, I could not believe my eyes, seeing all the riches hidden there. On top of endless piles of basic items, there were tens, if not hundreds, of scientific calculators, and almost as many graphing calculators, a treasure that would make any math teacher the happiest person on campus…

I stood there, dumbfounded, not knowing what to do with all this wealth. The administrators who could have stored and saved it had already left the campus and I ended up distributing priceless items to whoever was present and expressed slight interest. Since I was not sure I would be there next year, I didn’t save any for myself… The following years, still on the same campus, facing a shortage of supplies, especially calculators, I would remember with dismay the lost treasure... 

(By the way, this English teacher decided that she didn't like my room, after all, and caused another teacher, young, good and well organized, to go through the same classroom dismantling process… Three month into the school year, this English teacher left on maternity leave and never came back to the school…) 

Public schools receive technology budget and in most cases, the rule is “use it or lose it”. It was not an unusual situation, then, that in one school, while being on a tight budget for the very basic supplies (papers, pencils, markers and so on) a decision was made to install a smart board in each classroom…

I was in the middle of teaching a lesson, trying my best to convey an algebraic concept, using every square inch of the white board and encouraging students to copy, when a knock on the door disrupted my class. I opened the door to two guys, holding a huge smart board, informing me that they came to install it. “Now?” I asked with disbelief? “I am right in the middle of the lesson!” This information didn't seem to impress them much, and they marched directly toward my white board, with serious intentions to remove it right there and then and replace it with the smart board. Stepping forward, I was ready to physically block their way. Adding extra pleading mixed with threatening, I, somehow, convinced them to agree to come back at another time. The compromise was that for now they will just mark the location… So they drew a big black ‘X’ right in the middle of my algebra jargon, and happy with this achievement they did exit my classroom, leaving me still perplexed about the event that almost took place…

By the end of the semester almost every single classroom was equipped with a smart board, but, sadly, only very few were used… Five years later, working in many public and private schools since, I have never seen so many smart boards at any single school. The sad part is not only that most boards were not utilized, and that they replaced a necessary white board space, but that they used up an enormous amount of money that was desperately needed for basic supplies…

I have recently seen classrooms with rows of unused, dusty computers. A teacher told me she was assigned to a classroom full of computers that she needed for her course, but none of them was connected… Schools are stocked with hundreds of computers, only part of them are in a usable condition… but – there is a new idea now, fresh from the education politicians with the help of savvy business men – an iPad for every student! Another untested idea that until proven helpful or unhelpful to students, will cause a chaos in the classroom, add extreme stress on teachers and will cost millions of taxpayers’ dollars… 

Link:

http://tekbot.unl.edu/SPIRIT2/Articles/TPCKinMathArticle.pdf