The Academy of American Poets - 30 Ways to Celebrate

The Academy of American Poets - 30 Ways to Celebrate Poetry during National Poetry Month in April. There are some wonderful ideas on this site that can be tweaked to fit into a 6-12 classroom. Have a closer look.

Measured Progress in High School

Perhaps the most important finding presented in this report (Measured_Progress.pdf (application/pdf Object)) is that high schools can be reformed in meaningful ways. Among the most important of the reforms is to create smaller high schools that provide a more intimate approach to education allowing rigor to be added to the curriculum without causing lowered grades or increased dropout rates. Smaller schools enable mentoring of students in meaningful ways, a broader approach to curriculum and college preparation, and personally tailored teaching and learning.

Young Writers Become Published Authors: Winning Entries in Youth Writing Contest Published in Anthology E-Book

Here is a story that deals with the issue of audience and authenticity. Young Writers Become Published Authors: Winning Entries in Youth Writing Contest Published in Anthology E-Book points to the importance of having students do meaningful things that are rigorous and have an audience beyond the teacher in the classroom. The contest that produced the publications was open to students in public, private or home schools and was designed to encourage reading and writing among middle and high school students. It also promoted e-book publishing and e-literacy in public and private schools.

"Why NCLB Will Fail Our Children

This position paper from Fair Test, Federally Mandated Testing Page, is a concise statement of the problems with NCLB. Mentioning shortcomings such as lack of adequate funding and the potential for schools choosing to concentrate curriculum on only those subjects that are tested, thus depriving students of a well rounded education (something reported recently by the Center on Education Policy and found on this weblog), make for important discussion points when speaking with friends or writing to Congress.

No Child Left Behind

So what's the flap about the Center on Educational Policy's NCLB report? CEP-NCLB-Intro.pdf (application/pdf Object). It seems that among the findings is that schools are spending less time on subjects other than reading and math as a direct result of NCLB testing mandates. Neil Postman has it right (see the quote on the left side of this blog) when he speaks about Jeffersonian reasons for school--to know when and how to defend liberty--than do current US political leaders. When will we come to our senses?

Georgia May OK Bible as Textbook

If anyone has any doubt as to the influence of the religious right on American education just take a brief look at this from the Christian Science monitor: Georgia may OK Bible as textbook | csmonitor.com. Aside from the obvious problems such as will the bible be read in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek? If read in translation just whose translation will be considered appropriate? Will differences of interpretation between Jewish, Catholic and protestant exegesis be considered as the Bible is read in class? If this is not a ploy to introduce a state religion then I must be far more naive than I thought I might be. I find it a troubling attempt to skirt around the first amendment establishment clause by cloaking the Bible in the guise of an academic study. Perhaps this is an appropriate course for a private, parochial school or religious seminary, but to introduce the Bible (as if there is but one version) in publicly supported institutions seems to me to be an egregious breach of public trust. But, it is Georgia after all. Oh, by the way, will other sacred texts be considered (e.g., the Koran, the Bagivad Gita, the Tao, the I Ching) as appropriate for a comparative study? Oh, the problems just mount one on the other.

Some Initial Thoughts on the Relationship of Teacher to Student to Teacher

For the sake of this discussion I adopt Newmann and his colleagues (Newmann, Byrk, & Nagaoka, 2001; Newmann, Marks, & Gamoran, 1995; Newmann, Secada, & Wehlage, 1995; Newmann & Wehlage, 1993) three-fold notion of authenticity applicable to educational practice.

1. That work assigned to or created by students has a value to those students beyond the four walls of the school.

2. That work engaged in by students is academically rigorous.

3. That the product of student work is produced for an audience beyond that of the teacher in the classroom.

Additionally, for the sake of this discussion I adopt Levinas’ (1969) position that the ethical focus of one’s personal responsibility to the other is an ongoing, permanent and obligatory availability.

Within the scope of authenticity and availability I want to examine the role of teacher as ethical facilitator in any given classroom, from the earliest grades to the most advanced levels. A question guiding this inquiry focuses on the epistemological issue of how knowledge is internalized by a knower in the presence of a teacher. I assert that all learning, not just some, not even most, but all learning takes place in the presence of a teacher. This foundational assumption does not, however, require that one’s teacher be formally designated. Quite the contrary, it simply asserts that an active knower without some form of expert guidance or teaching taking place internalizes nothing. In this sense the “teacher” need not even be human. It could be a segment of text, a photograph, a piece of music, or a scenic landscape. The only requirement for the “teacher” is that it be something external to the active knower. Unlike Cartesian doubt (Descartes, 1988), where the presence of self, in the form of doubt, is privileged, I am arguing that knowledge is internalized only when there is a reciprocal relationship between a teacher and a student. When viewed through this lens learning is profoundly guided by cultural, linguistic, special and economic contexts found in juxtaposition to and in combination with one another in both social and private contexts (Vygotsky, 1978).

Learning, as evidenced by the internalization of concepts, ideas, facts, and assumptions also requires that the learner, as self, relinquish that selfhood to the alternative proposed by the other. This act of internalization requires one to look outside the self with a gaze toward the other; the other serving the self as guide or teacher; it is grounded in the act of making the self available to the other. The relationship is reciprocal, residing in a focus on an ongoing, permanent and obligatory availability of the self in relationship to the other. The self as learner must respond to the question, “Where are you?” when asked by the other, with “Here I am! I am available to you.” The other, serving in the capacity of teacher, must respond to the identical question from the self by uttering the very same response. In short, the teacher/student—student/teacher relationship itself, as seen through the lens of the ongoing, permanent and obligatory relationship of the availability of the self to other – other to self, creates within itself the ethics of classroom engagement.

Classrooms exist in existential time

Classrooms exist in existential time. Roles played by teachers and students are response-able in that there are interactive, reciprocal, and synergistic elements that are worked out in the classroom. The ongoing transactions that occur in the classroom are based on a mutual trust that each of the players will take steps designed to fulfill appropriate roles assigned based on position or status. Teachers are response-able for teaching while students are response-able for studenting according to Gary Fenstermacher.

Classrooms are interactive places. Teachers work within assigned curriculum that is understood to be both age and developmentally appropriate. Within the notion of curriculum, teachers make decisions regarding what to teach, how to teach, and how to know that they have taught. In short, teachers exercise response-ability as they determine methods, strategies of instruction, and finally, appropriate assessment tools with which to evaluate teaching and learning. Planning is not execution. Interaction begins as the teacher executes his or her plan in the context of the classroom, a living, breathing organism encompassing the teacher and his or her students. The interactions in a classroom are varied. There are teacher to student, student to teacher, and student to student encounters every moment a classroom is engaged in the active process of teaching and learning. Students, as well, play an important role in the interaction of the classroom. As much as the teacher’s response-ability is to do the stuff of teaching, students are equally response-able for doing the stuff of studenting. Students must read the assigned work, do the assigned homework, participate in classroom discussions, inquiries and projects. In short, students student while teachers teach. While these response-abilities appear to be distinct, they are not. They begin to meld when one considers reciprocal and synergistic roles in the classroom.

There is a sense of reciprocation in the classroom as well. The notion of reciprocation hinges on the social nature of the classroom. The system breaks down if either of the parties fails to take response-ability seriously and neglects to plan, execute or student. Teachers cannot fail to plan appropriately. But, even if the teacher is meticulous about his or her planning and execution, if the students in the teacher’s charge fail to student then the system falls apart. The same is true if the students do, in fact, student but the teacher disregards his or her response-ability to plan and execute lessons in a meaningful way. The classroom is dependent upon the ethical behavior of all parties participating in the context of school.

So, when the teacher plans and executes his or her plan flawlessly and students, in fact, student so that the interactions in the classroom are focused, engaging, and just plain fun, and the classroom focus is on the mutual response-ability of the teacher and his or her students, then a sense of reciprocation can be observed in the day to day activities of the classroom. When this occurs then a synergy or sense of cooperation seems to wrap itself around the classroom like a blanket covering a bed. When there is synergy evident in the classroom, students and teachers trust one another to be response-able for the work of the class. There appears to be little tension, everyone is working to his or her potential, accommodations are being made for individual differences, work is getting done and children are learning.

This is all happening in existential time. There is a fluidity in the moments of teaching and learning that are observable. The classroom is temporal where from moment to moment new knowledge is being created because students are constructing knowledge presented by their teachers, teachers are learning from their students, and students are teaching each other as they engage in purposeful inquiry.

And then there is No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a force that invades the classroom in historical time. Imposed from without, NCLB disrupts existential time by imposing mandates that serve as historical artifacts, memories that harken to a time when things were simply better–the good old days. Even the language of NCLB–every child, for example, is entitled to a highly qualified teacher so that teachers scramble to become highly qualified by attending meaningless professional development workshops and fill out paperwork that attests to their new-found qualifications. All the while, the qualification game is just that, a game designed to satisfy some nameless bureaucrat that is not response-able to anyone directly.

When response-ability is removed from the mix we are left with something less than satisfying. To be unable to elicit a response is not unlike talking to the dead who are no longer response-able.

Once again, Justice Scalia gets it wrong.

Once again, Justice Scalia gets it wrong. CNN reporting what Newsweek uncovered CNN.com - Report: Scalia against rights for Gitmo detainees - Mar 26, 2006 demonstrates a certain disdain for human rights and, perhaps even more importantly, a disdain for the ethics that should govern an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Speaking publically about a case that is coming before him at the court, Scalia sounds far less like a jurist than an advocate. Placing personal principles before an impartial hearing is, it seems to me, without ethical foundation. Scalia is a very smart man. He even gets it right sometimes--but not often. He is far smarter than this story makes him out to be.

Let’s see if I can make the idea of historical time clearer

Let’s see if I can make the idea of historical time clearer. As an example, I want to compare the relationship of a parent to a child while the parent is alive and the relationship between them after the parent dies. While alive the parent and the child are both in a position of being response-able in that they are able to respond each to the other in real time. Further, both members of the relationship between parent and child are ethically obligated to think of the other even before one thinks of one’s self. This is especially true when either party is unable to care for one’s self. For the child, the parent is fully and completely response-able for the child from birth, through infancy, and in slowly diminishing functions of response as the child develops from childhood to adulthood. Even though the functions diminish, the ability, even the obligation of the parents response-ability does not. During the period of development, of growth from child to adult, the child is response-able to the parent in many ways. Because s/he is dependent on the parent for life and sustenance, the child’s role is to respond to the parent in ways that please, albeit constantly testing the limits of response-ability. At some point, however, he child, often in his or her own adulthood finds that s/he has to reverse roles with the parent. The child becomes the care giver, offering sustenance to the parent, often in the last stages of the parent’s life. All of this happens in real time, in existential time. In short, existential time is interactive, reciprocal, and synergistic or cooperative. There is discourse between the participants in existential time, a relationship that is fluid and dependent upon direct interaction one with the other.

Historical time begins at the moment of the death or upon the entry to a vegetative state prior to death of one of the parties, generally though not always, the parent. At death existential time ceases to be for the one that has passed on. The dead member of the relationship is no longer able to respond, is no longer response-able. This does not mean, however, that the dead have no influence on existential time, quite the contrary. Paul Simon once wrote:

Time it was, and what a time it was
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
It’s all that’s left you.

Simon’s words mirror the idea of historical time quite well. The death of a person removes that person from existence, from participation in existential time, from being able to respond. There is no possibility of interaction between the living and the dead in the sense that stands up to notions of interactive, reciprocal, and synergistic. The dead, however, exert a strong influence on the living so long as they are remembered, so long as they live in memory. This influence is much like the influence an author has on a reader when all the reader has is the printed page. The transaction the reader has with the words on the page are interactive, reciprocal, and synergistic with regard to the text and not with the author. Jacques Derrida argued that even if the author were able to directly respond to a reader, the author would be creating a new text rather than commenting on the old.

Existential time is fluid, lives in the moment of what Derrida called the trace, is temporal and perhaps temporary. Historical time is fixed, living in the photograph, text, headstone, or artifact that has been left behind. Historical time has a permanence to it that is unchanging, is dependent on the artifacts and not on response-ability. Interpretations may change with regard to historical time, but this change does not occur in historical time, rather it only occurs in existential time.

Can a Single Test Determine One's Fitness under any Circumstances Continued

If the Other exists outside of human existence, exterior to existential time, then it is reasonable to ask if the Other has influence upon existential time. The simple answer is yes, but only as the Other is remembered by human beings through complex metaphorical and allegorical narratives that rest, like the Other, wholly in historical or non-responsive time. That human beings living in the limbo between two infinities have a need to recall those infinities without existential reference fills page after page with stories that attempt to explain one’s relationship with the Other, one’s reliance upon the Other if you will. But, because one cannot know the Other in any direct way, the stories fail, are often contradictory, and leave many more questions open than are ever answered.

There is not a more complex response to the question of the Other. The act of trying to remember is a response-able undertaking that is doomed from the start to fail. Human beings are story-telling creatures. According to Jerome Bruner, we tell stories to explain that which is not normative. We do not need stories to explain the norms of cultural intercourse. Stories serve the express purpose of helping us to remember that for which there is no response—that which exists outside of existential time. Within the human experience of existential time there is no need to explain the unknown, rather there is a pressing need to discover and overcome barriers to knowledge. Yet, because there is a missing piece, the infinite Other, human beings require a way to engage with that Other in a way that helps explain the why of existence.

It is clearly no accident that, as Joseph Campbell argued, storied themes flow through all of cultural narrative. Every cultural group has a sacred text that references the creation of the world as well as stories of birth, death, and resurrection. These narratives serve to acquaint one with the infinite in ways that satisfy curiosity without actual empirical knowledge. Stripped of their particulars, the stories are remarkably similar one to the other. This is no accident, claims Campbell. The explanatory stories require leaps of faith that transport one back to the time before birth or forward to the time after death by providing a glimpse of the world outside of the closed universe.

Can a Single Test Determine One's Fitness under any Circumstances

In a rather well known Midrash, Moses is tested by God so that God can discover just what kind of a leader he will be for the Israelite people. In the Midrash the story is told that one day, while tending the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, Priest of Midian, a small lamb wanders away from the flock. Moses notices the lamb is missing and he sets out to find the lost one. The disoriented lamb is found near a wadi where it has had a drink of water and is seeking shelter in the shade of a tree or rock. Moses, out of compassion for the lamb, and after engaging the lamb in conversation, decides that the lamb is just too tired to walk back to the flock on his own, so Moses places the lamb on his shoulders and carries it back to the flock and its mother.

The rabbis conclude that Moses met and, of course, passed the test. If Moses paid so close attention to one lost lamb within his flock, then how much more attention might he pay to the entire house of Jacob?

The test, like most of God’s tests, is problematic. While showing compassion for the one lost lamb of his flock, he wanders away from the main body of the flock demonstrating an utter disregard for the whole of the flock. While seeking the lost lamb, Moses exposes the rest of his flock to untold dangers. Thieves could come by and steal some or even the rest of his sheep while he is rescuing the lost one. Wild animals could also come by and feast on several members of the flock while Moses is showing compassion for the lost one. More sheep might wander away while Moses is out saving the lost one. In fact, the very real possibility that even if Moses manages to save the single lamb that wandered away, all, or, perhaps some of the remaining sheep would be lost. The net gain to the flock might be negative rather than merely breaking even.

The question posed here is what is a greater good, serving the many or serving the one? Moses and, simultaneously God, seem to come down on the side of the good being that of serving the one, a value that somehow surpasses the good of the many, at least so far as the sages are concerned. That is simply not good a good enough explanation because it leaves far too much unanswered. Are there occasions where the single life is worth more than the life of say the community, or should the communities interestes outweigh the single life of one individual. It depends on the context, on the complexity of the lived experience. Perhaps Moses had reason to believe that no harm would come to the remainder of the flock as he set out to rescue the lost lamb. Perhaps he knew that there were no thieves in the area, that no wild animals were around to cause harm, and the sheep had settled into an afternoon nap. This gave Moses leave to search the wilderness for the lamb that wandered off. But we aren't told of these possibilities so we are left with the question to ponder. The point is that life is far too complex to be judged by simple tests and singular experiences--especially if the test is imposed on us from some external source..

The question could be put in terms of responsibility, or response-ability. Just what is meant by the word and how can that meaning be applied to God’s test of Moses? Responsibility is generally thought of in terms of accountability, of accepting blame or praise for specific actions. One might also think of the word in terms of dependability, the ability to depend upon another for the right action. But, accountability and dependability have clearly different focui. The former is understood through a lens of exteriority, that which remains external to and apart from the self while the latter is deeply embedded in interiority, that which adheres to and is an intimate part of the self. In the former view, one is responsible for an action while in the latter one acts responsibly.

The difference between the exteriority and interiority of responsibility may be understood in terms of why one must act responsibly in the first instance. From where does the obligation to act responsibly derive? Levinas suggests that it derives from the infinite, from the absolute Other, the unknowable unknown. All meaning derives from the bookends of life, the infinite from which life came and to which it must return. In short, meaning is a function of the absolute Other in its manifest unknowability. Yet, because the Other is outside of human experience, is essentially unknowable, it is naïve to expect the Other to intervene in existential time--the time in which human beings are response-able, or able to respond to the other. The absolute Other sits outside the world unable to issue a meaningful response, unable to be response-able. The Other exists, not in existential time, rather, it exists in historical time--the time in which only the results of one's actions can be judged because one can no longer (if ever) respond for one's self.

Ethical Education: An Analysis of American Educational Practice from a Levinasian Perspective—Some Preliminary Thoughts

Teaching is not a species of a genus called domination, a hegemony at work within a totality, but is the presence of infinity breaking the closed circle of a totality.

Emmanuel Levinas (1969)

Teaching should be emancipatory – not predatory!

Nel Noddings

American public education is in a state of siege. Constant vitriolic assaults from the neo-conservatives and the religious right have educators at all levels running for cover while trying to comply with outrageous demands that are necessarily doomed from their inception. In this paper I will adopt an ethical stance described by Emmanuel Levinas across his long and productive career, one that focuses on three fundamental concepts. First, Levinas argues that ethics is the “first language,” one that is present prior to any other language. Secondly, ethical language is based on the relation of the self (ego) to the absolute Other (infinity). That the self is in an aysemetrical relationship with the other, one that approximates an aysemetrical relationship with the Other. The relationships of self and other together comprise a totality (existential time); that they are accommodated by what Levinas calls the face-to-face in which language is the medium of the encounter. Finally, it is through the aysemetrical responsibility of the self for the other that makes the self responsible for even the responsibility of the other that the ethical encounter is most visible (Levinas, 1969, 1994, 1996, 1997).

I contend that the assault on education from the neo-conservatives and religious right fails to meet the ethical concerns outlined by Levinas and, as such, are both unethical and immoral at the core. Levinasian ethics require a conversation, a face-to-face exchange. This exchange necessitates the self taking responsibility for the other in an aysemetrical, yet, recipricol relationship. Without the reciprocity embedded within the asymetery the exchange is onesided and reductionist, reducing the other into the same; a necessarily violent, negative exchange. I maintain that the neo-conservative and religious right assaults on public education are exchanges without reciprocity, that, while maintaining an aysemetrical quality, the asymetry is not based on responsibility for the other but, rather, it is bound up in issues of power, control and reductionist politics.

The asymetry of the ethical relationship is recipricol in the sense that the other is also a self and has the same responsibilities toward his or her other as the same as the “I” has for its other. In other words, each human being as self is responsible for the well-being and even the very life of the other even at peril to the life of the self itself. The nature of the responsibility to care for the stranger and the orphan, even at significant risk to the self, is dependent on an acceptance of and a relationship with the Other—the absolute Other—that resides outside of the totality of the self and other. While the relationship of the self to the other has its foundation in situated space and time, the relationship of the self to the Other is external to space and time. It is a relationship that cannot be described, objectified or thematized in any phenomenological sense. The relationship to the Other is an unthought, perhaps unthinkable, thought, one that cannot be formulated because it is outside the totality that is comprehendable. Levinas understands the Other to be the Infinite, that which cannot be comprehended, yet the Other provides a model for the self-other ethical relationship.

Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math

Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math - New York Times. So do you think it is because NCLB places so high a premium on reading and math that schools seem to be willing to sacrifice biology, chemestry, physics, history, geography, civics, and so much more. Reading without a link to content is no way to engage students in learning. Decontextualizing education is perhaps an unintended consequence of NCLB but here it is anyway.

Paulo Feiere would have us always ask, "Whose interests are being served here?" In an earlier post I focused on the testing industry and their interests. Profits are being made but at whose expense. If students have no idea about history, science or politics then do we have a chance at survival as a nation? Someone please come to your senses.

The Case Against School Vouchers

The National Education Association (NEA) makes a rigorous case against school vouchers on their web site: NEA: National Education Association: School Vouchers. For years the right wing and especially the religious right have been pursuing vouchers as the only way to preserve quality education in America. The real agenda is not to improve education, rather, it is to dismantle public education as the foundation of our democractic republic replacing it with an untested parochial approach that fails to insure predictable outcomes for American school children.

Now I am not one to argue that schooling does not need reform. I am a strong proponent of school change. The question is not if we should reform schools, rather, the question is what should reform look like? Public education, especially in large urban districts, has become a scapegoat for all of the ills of society. No Child Left Behind, with its mindless testing programs and uninspired requirements for academic success, leaves much room for critique. The simple truth is that if reform is to be effective it must have several components:

• It must revolve around Standards Based Instruction (SBI)
• It must develop effective Standards Based Assessment tools
• It must create classrooms that are engaging, rigorous and authentic
• It must account for all students in the classroom including the exceptional learner
• It must remain publicly funded with access to all

Without these attributes American education is likely to Balkanize schooling and ultimately the nation itself. For the sake of my own children and grandchildren I hope that we all come to our senses soon.

Time to rethink No Child Left Behind

Elaine Olund writes about No Child Left Behind in this opinion piece appearing in the Cincinnati Enquirer The Enquirer - Time to rethink No Child Left Behind. Writing from the perspective of a parent with kids in the Cincinnati Public Schools, Olund questions the efficacy of NCLB testing procedures, especially the notion that students are not learning meaningful content, rather they are learning how to take a test. This piece is certainly worth the brief read.

How to discover asteroid impacts--An Authentic Classroom Approach to Science

Looking for impact craters on earth using Google Earth is a fantastic idea. Found at Astroseti.org : How to discover asteroid impacts, this activity provides students with an authentic look into the work of geologists. I am especially drawn to the idea that findings are published on the internet and then subject to independent verification by a wide audience. Full instructions and some warnings are found at this site. Have a ball hunting impact craters!

A Random Thought

Teacher Quality: The notion that just about anyone with a college degree can teach is simply wrong. Teaching is a skilled profession that requires training and personal development in order for classrooms to become productive places for students. I believe that three factors have a strong influence on the quality of teaching:

• Quality teacher preparation that includes exposure to educational foundations, history and philosophy, pedagogical methodology, a strong background in appropriate assessment techniques, and a solid background in one or more content areas.
• A committment to continuing education and professional development that is self-initiated leading to advanced degrees in education and specific content areas.
• A rigorous approach to classroom inquiry and reflective practice so that teachers may enter the professional discourse as informed practitioners.

Additionally, teachers must become familiar with the community in which they teach. This means learning about the cultural norms of the students in the classroom in order to teach effectively; this is especially important when the students being taught are other than the teacher’s normative understandings. Without understanding the students in front of us, teachers are doomed to fail the very people they are working so hard to educate.

Finally, quality teaching is engaging for students. If students are not rigorously engaged in the classroom they will find other places to seek out the level of engagement that satisfies their need to be so challenged. Teachers must find ways of authenticaly stimulating students to reach toward academic goals, to become excited about learning so that school becomes a joyous encounter rather than a dull intermediate stop on the way to adulthood.

Margins of Error

Margins_of_Error.pdf (application/pdf Object) provides a stunning analysis of the testing industry, NCLB, and the impact of unfunded mandates on public education in the United States. This rigorous analysis points to the flaws of the rush to testing that has taken over American educational practice since NCLB and makes several pointed recommendations to help set straight the mess that Congress and the President has us in.

Evidence Suggests Otherwise: An Analysis of the Testing Industry In America

Evidence_suggests_final.pdf (application/pdf Object) is a very interesting study of the American obsession with lists--in this case how lists impact education. What I find most interesting is that the data reported in this report unpacks the rather simplistic notion that schools can be ranked by a single measure. Much like students should not be ranked using a single testing instrument because they are complex and the process of teaching and learning is complex, so too schools must not be ranked by single measures.

Begining Thoughts on Educational Standards from a Deconstructionist Perspective

If by the neologism, différance, Derrida (1978) is representing the idea that existence is framed by the past and the future, presented only as a trace of the present formed between past and future, and that the moment represented in the trace of present is neither fixed nor fluid, rather it is movement attached to all of the periods of past laid out prior to the phenomenon of the trace, while adapting out of necessity for survival to the alterity, or otherness, of the future, then, it seems to us that différance forms a frame from which to address the out-of-control movement toward standardizing American education through an appeal to the absolute nature of culture and the need to transmit the fixed nature of the values obtained by that culture to the young.  For our purposes, we assume that différance includes, at the barest minimum, the idea we summarize above and, while this may not be the only useful definition of différance, for the purposes of inquiring about standards it forms a workable frame from which to investigate how standards may or may not do justice to American Democracy.

As we use the word trace it is only reasonable to make clear what we mean by the term.  At once trace references the now and beyond the now bi-directionally.  Derrida (1993) refers to the idea of trace indirectly as he writes autobiographically about writing in Circumfession:

Without what I wrote in the past, or even what I seem to be writing here, but do without, forseeing or predicating what I could well write in the future, so that here I am deprived of a future, no more event to come from me, at least insofar as I speak or write, unless I write there, for every man for himself, no longer under his law, improbable things which destabilize, disconcert, surprise in their term… (p. 30)

Here Derrida is responding to Bennington’s (1993) critique and categorization of Derrida’s work.  Bennington focuses on both categorizing the schema of thought but offers predictions on what Derrida might have to say in the future.  Derrida’s response is to explore the underlying nature of the trace as found in writing as writing focuses on the future while becoming an artifact of the historical past the moment it is abandoned by the author.  Once inscribed to the past, writing provides no surprise or rich interpretative approaches to thought, rather, it simply is.  The act of writing, on the other hand, is, at once, rooted in the future as it becomes embedded in the historical.  Once written writing exists without change or changeability.  The act of writing, because of its proximity to the future remains fluid, surprising, and potentially destabilizing as the writer struggles with alternatives presented.  The idea of trace is extended to and lies within the period of time that is instantaneously formed, and then immediately unformed, between the static past and the fluid future.

Trace can also have a strong proximity to the historical past.  The trace obtained in this writing to this point is anchored in the text of Derrida’s (1993) reflection Circumfession.  As we write we are tied to the text of Circumfession seeking to construct meaning from the words of another as that other was writing with a proximity to the future.  In either case, however, the proximities turn around on top of each other for while we are tied to the text, we also write with a proximity to the future as Derrida, writing with a proximity to the future, was tied directly (or not) to Bennington’s text.  Furthermore, Derrida chose to tie his writing to additional texts including St. Augustine’s Confessions, borrowing both form and language to record his own trace différance.  This is not simply to say that the bi-directionality of the writer is tied to a singular historical past or a multiplicity of possible futures only one of which will play out, rather, it is to say that the reciprocal interplay of past and future play themselves out within the idea of trace which is, in turn, represented by différance.

Différance itself accounts for trace by insisting that the writer strive to investigate all that is different from, in opposition to, and perplexing about a given proposition while differing a permanent solution to the problems posed by the given inquiry.  In this sense différance accounts for the ability of the writer to alter his or her position upon subsequent readings of the same text.  In short, différance suggests that problems investigated never are subject to ultimate solutions, rather, they remain open questions allowing one to not categorize thought but account for the “improbable tidings, which destabilize, disconcert, surprise in their turn.”

Différance suggests that to know something is, at best, diaphanous, a shadowy figure on the cave wall, subject to a trace  “One write,” states Derrida (1993), “only at the moment of giving the contemporary the slip.” (p. 63).  Because the trace exists only in the moment and then vanishes without a trace only to give way to a trace in its place—ad infinitum, or at least until the moment of one’s death, and because each subsequent trace opens the door to surprise, the notion of knowing and différance is contained within linguistic boundaries.

I am the last of the eschatologists, I have to this day above all lived, enjoyed, wept, prayed, suffered as though at the last second, in the imminence of the flashback end, and like no one else I have made the eschaton into a coat of arms of my genealogy, the lips’ edge of my truth but there is no meta-language will mean that a confession does not make the truth, it must affect me, touch me, gather me, re-member me, constitute me, without that meaning, as always, putting an end to, and speaking before you, confiding in you at present what in another period I called my synchrony, telling you the story of my stories… (p. 75)

 Knowing, for Derrida, is storied.  It represents the intricacies of story telling and the momentary intersection of différance as represented in the ever-present trace.  It is the notion that as one moves forward in time toward the future while remaining shackled to the past, the writer is never subject to categorization or systematization.  Quite the contrary, while categories and systems may arise from the relationships to past and future, the word that is penned is always open to a surprise to both the self as writer and the other as reader.

Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in the Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing make a whole lot of sense. Point 2, for example, "The primary purpose of assessment is to improve teaching and learning," makes clear that assessment is a natural part of the process of educating children, not a punitive measure designed to assuage the egos of legislative bodies. If, as stated in point 1, "the interests of the student are paramount in assessment," and assessment is used to inform teaching and learning, it seems to me that the current craze of the nation to focus on high-stakes assessment instruments that have a profound effect on the development of a child, is misplaced. The real issue is what do we want from school for our children? Do we really believe that high-stakes testing helps develop critical thinking among school children? Do we really want to create a generation of students that can guess well but then (as in the case of Florida) cannot identify key political personages in the state or nation or, as in the case with some of my own students, cannot identify key continents, oceans, and cities on a map? I am quite concerned that what we are becoming is a nation that, in trying to cope with the onslaught of information, has decided to retreat into a cocoon of safety without metamorphosis.

A Really Bad Idea in a Really Dumb State

So what's wrong with this picture?
Fla. to Link Teacher Pay To Students' Test Scores
Linking teacher pay to test scores has it all wrong. What it does in the end is link compensation to the performance of others not to the performance of the teacher. This makes no real sense you argue. If a teacher is doing her job then students will learn. This argument creates a causal relationship between teaching and learning. If one teaches then students WILL learn. The problem is that the relationship between teaching and learning is not cause and effect, quite the contrary. Learning takes place only if the student does what students must do, what Gary Fenstermacher calls studenting. Teachers are responsible not for student learning but for creating learning environments that are especially engaging and, therefore, conducive to learning, to students actually engaged in studenting.

The role of the teacher is clear. Teachers must plan and execute their plans in the classroom, they must be knowledgeable about the content they teach, and they must be knowledgeable about the students they teach. Planning is critical to the work of teaching. Excellent teaching looks seamless because it is well planned. Planning leads to quality execution in the classroom. But planning goes beyond simply preparing lessons. Planning requires that the classroom be arranged in such a way as to foster learning. Examples of content literacy must surround students; the availability of books and resources for inquiry must be evident and easily accessed by learners. Knowledge of content is critical. Teachers must be lifelong learners. They must choose to engage in scholarly inquiry examining reflectively their teaching and the stuff they teach. Finally, teachers must be aware of the cultural and social makeup of the students they are teaching. Without this knowledge teachers are merely engaged in a continuation of hegemonic colonization of the other. These are, among other things, the responsibilities of teachers and represent what teachers can and should be evaluated upon.

To evaluate teachers on what their students do gets it all wrong. Students should and must be evaluated on what they do in the classroom, on what they can demonstrate as learning. Reliance on a single instrument (in this case the FCAT) is only one possible measure of a child's performance. Many argue that reliance on a single instrument is unethical and immoral. A child is measured by many things; the ability to bubble in answers to multiple-guess questions is just one among many that should be considered. The FCAT and other tests like it fall into what Alfie Kohn calls The Bunch-o-Facts Model of education. Sounds more like schooling to me.

Enough of scapegoating teachers. If teachers are to be measured on the performance of others whose actions teachers have no direct control then the politicians that think up these crazy rules should also be measured on the performance of others. Perhaps we should tie legislators' salaries to the poverty rate in their state, or to the crime rate, or to the performance of students in schools that they are responsible for funding--now there is a novel idea!

The Relationship between Authenticity and FLOW

Constructivist scaffolding fits neatly into categories of authentic teaching and learning.  For purposes of this paper I will define authenticity following Newmann and his colleagues (Newmann, Byrk, & Nagaoka, 2001; Newmann, Marks, & Gamoran, 1995; Newmann, Secada, & Wehlage, 1995; Newmann & Wehlage, 1993).  For them, authenticity is defined as having three components:

·        Assignments and assessments must have value to the student beyond the four walls of the classroom.

·        Assignments and assessments must be academically rigorous, and

·        Assignments and assessments must have an audience beyond the teacher (this does not exclude the teacher from being a part of the audience).

Authentic teaching and learning environments encourage students to ask questions, to engage in important inquiry in the classroom and engage in optimal educational experiences.  Authenticity is, to a large extent, an active teacher process and a passive student process.  Students cannot plan for authenticity, only their teachers can do so.

Csikszentmihalyi (1990) describes what it is like for one to engage in what he calls the optimal experience.  Optimal experience as it relates to the classroom is, fundamentally, a participant active and teacher passive process.  In this sense, what Csikszentmihalyi calls FLOW and authenticity are flip sides of the same coin.  In FLOW the optimal experience may be understood as having the following components:

·        Activities must be challenging and require skills.

·        Activities must merge action and awareness.

·        Activities must provide clear goals and immediate feedback.

·        When engaged in optimal activities one must concentrate on the task at hand.

·        Optimal activities present the engaged participant with a paradox of control.

·        Participants in optimal activities experience a loss of self-consciousness.

·        Participants in optimal activities experience a transformation of time.

Both Newmann and his colleagues and Csikszentmihalyi argue for rigorous, interesting and meaningful work in the classroom.  While Newmann’s focus in on the teacher and her preparation for authentic work; Csikszentmihalyi focuses on the performance experience of the student himself.  Without teacher planning the optimal experience in the classroom is far less likely to occur than if the teacher plans for and, in turn, engages students in inquiry.  What is clear, looking at both Newman’s and Csikszentmihalyi’s constructions, is that an engaged student is more likely to perform well in school than one that is not engaged.  While this appears to be too obvious to commit to paper, it is my experience that students are not so engaged in the vast majority of schools across the country (Passman & McKnight, In Press).  The issue in question is how to engage students in long-term inquiry projects in the social studies classroom in which the inquiry is integrated into the defined themes of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).

 

A Fundamental Distinction

A distinction can be made between schooling and education.  Schooling, it seems to me, is linked to vocation and democratic participation.  Those whom we school do not rock the boat; rather, they find work and generally function as productive members of society.  The purpose of schooling is to train, sort, and generally allocate human resources to the work force so that one can maintain society as we know it.  Schooling follows a societal script in which schedules are followed, assignments are made, and students tend to resist.  It is what Mary Metz has called “Real School.”  Schooling relies on external control in order to exist thriving on standards and test scores.  So long as the purpose of school is to train, sort, and allocate very little in the way of critical thinking will take place.

On the other hand, schools can educate rather than simply school.  When education is the purpose, teaching and learning take on a very different hue.  Education has as its foundational purpose to fundamentally challenge one’s taken-for-granteds.  When the purpose is to cause one to think, to take on investigations that focus on possibilities rather than on facts or truths, then one unleashes a fundamental examination of beliefs that may rise to great creative heights. 

To be complacent is to allow oneself to be schooled.  Education requires an aggressive approach to learning and therefore teaching, one that does not allow for complacency, to the contrary, it requires active participation in a process of thinking that, like the genie, once set free cannot be put back in the bottle.

Authentic Teaching and Learning

Authenticity is a term that is loosely used around schoolhouses.  Often, it refers to having students do original work, as opposed to mindless worksheets or skill and drill practice.  I would like to be more precise, and so I will adopt a definition first put forth by Newmann, and his colleagues (Newmann, Byrk, & Nagaoka, 2001; Newmann, Lopez, & Byrk, 1998; Newmann, Marks, & Gamoran, 1995; Newmann, Secada, & Wehlage, 1995; Newmann & Wehlage, 1993) that help us understand how to think about and plan authentic activities and assessments in the classroom.  I like to think about authenticity as a three-legged stool.  Such as stool in order to stand must have all three legs or it will collapse in a heap on the floor.  Such is the case with authenticity.  There are three aspects to authentic classroom behavior; all three must be present or the activity, inquiry, project, or assessment cannot be called authentic.  These three aspects are are:

• Assignments or assessments must have value to the student beyond the classroom.
• Assignments or assessments must be academically rigorous so as to challenge students to think that the highest levels.
• Assignments or assessments must have an audience beyond the teacher, although the teacher may be included in the audience.

Let's think about these for a moment.  The very simple idea that assignments and assessments must have value to students appears so obvious that it hardly needs mentioning.  The sad truth, however, is that assignments and assessments that are valuable students often do not fit in the epistemological pattern of real school (Metz, 1989).  Often, what counts as knowledge in school, consists of facts or factoids; what Alfie Kohn (2000) calls the bunch-o-facts model for teaching and learning.  Of course the problem here is that details are boring and have been little value for students in isolation.  Don't get me wrong; it's not the facts aren't important or that details aren't significant--they are.  But importance is not excitement and significant is not engaging unless one comes to the conclusion on one's own that they are foundational to understanding.  Practitioners of any discipline are so deeply engaged in the critical practice of their discipline that the facts and details surrounding ideas are no longer boring, rather they become second nature.  In order to encourage students to develop into practitioners they must first be engaged in valuable activities without which there is little reason to willingly participate in stuff of learning.  In this sense, learning has to be so much fun that what students are doing doesn't translate into being beneficial in their minds.

 But wait, how can learning the rigorous and fun at the same time.  The concept of rigor is one that refers to the appropriateness of the challenges posed students; it is the stuff of normal discourse or the ability to pose meaningful and appropriate questions or problems that challenge students to think critically about what it is their studying.  In this book, I pose problems like:

• If Columbus wasn't first, why does he get all the credit?
• What was so revolutionary about the American Revolution?
• How did Jews become White Folks and what does this have to say about assimilation and acculturation patterns in America? (Brodkin, 1998)

Each of these problems, along with the others will find in the activities section of each chapter, poses a significant and engaging question for students to tackle doing inquiry based assignments.  In order to answer even tentatively any of these or other questions students must understand the background of each question and make inferences about the facts and details they discover as a result of doing their rigorous inquiry.  These are questions that are asked by practicing members of the discipline and as such are by definition rigorous.

But what's this about audience?  Why, as a teacher, should I let go of my responsibility to assess student work?  After all, isn't that one of the primary purposes of teaching?  In this case, shifting audience from strictly the teacher to a broader base, which may include students, parents, members of the administration, members of the community, or others, is, in fact, not designed to usurp or replace the teacher's responsibility for assessing students progress, rather, it shifts responsibility, in very subtle ways, for how students approach the work that they are doing.  When students perceive that they are only performing for the teacher, especially if the work is likely to be dull and boring, there is a tendency on the part of students to work below their potential.  When an audience for the work is introduced, especially when that audience is comprised of peers, there is a strong predisposition to perform well so as not to be embarrassed in front of one's peers.

 

Illinois leads new push for universal preschool | csmonitor.com

Illinois leads new push for universal preschool | csmonitor.com

Floridians Falter On Civics Quiz - Yahoo! News

Floridians Falter On Civics Quiz - Yahoo! News
If preparing students for participation in a democratic society is among the goals of the American education system, how does Floridia explain this one?

Anglican Leader Says the Schools Shouldn't Teach Creationism - New York Times

Anglican Leader Says the Schools Shouldn't Teach Creationism - New York Times

Do Standardized Tests Hurt Standards? - New York Times

Do Standardized Tests Hurt Standards? - New York Times

To those suggesting the wrath of God

To suggest that an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent deity causes suffering in order to test the capacity of human beings to be compassionate is, on its face, obscene. In this case I refer to a definition of obscene as follows: 1) abhorrent to morality, or 2) repulsive by reason of crass disregard of moral or ethical principles, or perhaps 3) so excessive as to be offensive. It seems to me that such an argument can only be justified by a child-like need to explain that that cannot be adequately explained because it is beyond human comprehension—to find answers that transfer blame from human action to divine intervention. If we cannot ‘know’ God directly (think about Moses asking to see the face of God and being told that no one can see the face of God and live) then what can we know? When it comes to God, it occurs to me, not much. By describing God as omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent—all-powerful, all-knowing and compassionate—then aren’t we guilty of ascribing human attributes to that which we cannot describe? If God does indeed possess all three attributes and also possesses the attribute of intervention in human affairs, then God’s benevolence precludes an intervention that causes suffering. God, if God is really God, must not participate in an immoral or unethical act or the attribute of benevolence is no longer ascribable to God.

How about thinking about God as tout autre—wholly Other, ineffable, indescribable. If we think in these terms then we lose the ability to blame God for causing suffering. Furthermore we abandon the need support that blame by reaching for reasons to explain why God acts as God acts. If we simply ascribe a single attribute to the divine, that of benevolence and assume that other attributes exist but cannot be understood, then a case can be made that human beings have an ethical responsibility to act as the tout autre, as God in God’s place. This responsibility carries with it the Torah obligation to care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, to be of service, to allay the suffering of others even before one addresses one’s own suffering. When I read stories written by Primo Levy about his experiences at Auschwitz I am filled with a sense of ethical hope as Levy depicts how inmates, living in the most horrific of conditions, still managed to step outside of themselves, to be of service to others around them in order to alleviate the suffering of others even at a cost to their own well being. To my mind, this is an essentially Jewish response. Because we cannot know God, and we cannot describe God adequately, and we cannot ascribe motives to the acts of God we have the ethical obligation to act in God’s place in order to grow closer to the infinity that is God.

Teacher Compares Bush and Hitler...

firstamendmentcenter.org: commentary

Writing as Knowing

Writing is a unique way of thinking.
Janet Emig (1977)

This (therefore) will not have been a book.
Jacques Derrida (1983)

Writing is often described as communication; the text represents a tool of description, persuasion, argumentation, and or narration, among other things. To this end, writing is often taught as a rhetorical exercise, pitting the writer's skills against the diaphanous vagaries often associated with the notion of writing. Writing classes are often disarming places for both students and teachers alike. When audience is privileged over self-awareness, and the construction of knowledge through the act of writing and rhetorical skills are emphasize to expend expensive content a disconnect between form and function created. This leads to disengaged failures on the part of learners. I have no intention of arguing and rhetorical form is not important. That will not be my point. In fact, strongly supported ground inappropriate use of discourse models. Rather, much in the language of Bauhaus architecture, I will argue that form follows from function, not the other way around.

My argument rests, in part, on the two quotes the preface is paper. Emig (1977) and Derrida (1983), it seems to me, share an important characteristic when it comes to and understanding of how the act of writing functions for the writer him or herself. The creation text is not focused on transaction with an audience; rather, the act of creation is an effort at the construction of knowledge -- of making meaning on the part of the author.

As an autonomous transaction, writing may be considered through the lens of the reader or that writer. When considered through the reader's lens construction of meaning is derived through transactions with text (Rosenblatt, 1978, 1994). When the creation text is understood through the author’s lens quite a different picture emerges. The author to it has transactions with text in which meaning is constructed. However, the meaning constructed by the author is centered on the process of creation rather than on the transactions with creative thinking or creation.

Both Emig (1977) and Derrida (1983) help us to understand ways of looking at the author's purpose in writing text. Derrida's contribution is to privilege formation of text as an internal process of constructing meaning; of lending permanence, however fleeting, to the construction of textual ideas resulting in publication (at any potential level) of the text prior to authorial abandonment. In short, from the author's point of view writing functions as a means of coming to know; it is an internally motivated project, allowing authors to construct personal meaning from otherwise disconnected tidbits of thought, nothing more. In this sense, writing is a transaction between the author and the author's experience.

Emig (1977) suggests the interiority of the writing process itself. When she writes, "Writing is a unique way of thinking," two words focus on her main point: unique and thinking. I want to explore these two terms, and how they contribute to an understanding of how writing informs the writer without regard to the reader or audience. On this view, audience is turned inward, rather than functioning as an external ideal -- something to be satisfied through the absorption of text.