I’ve got to beat this dead horse some more. An excellent article in the New York Times by Randall Stross: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality reviews some recent studies on technology and learning in children. Though some of these studies were about the use of home computers, the results are applicable to technology in schools as well. This is especially true of the “technology immersion” study out of Texas.
Some ideas in education simply won’t die, even when they are demonstrably wrong. The supposed benefit of homework for younger students is one example. Another is the runaway obsession with technology in well-off school districts based on the notion that it improves learning, usually measured by test scores. Based on the studies covered in this Times article, not only does authentic learning drop by the wayside, but test scores drop too! I find the high stakes test scores irrelevant and detrimental anyway, but the technology lust in public schools is helping to crowd out the former emphasis on reading for depth and meaning, writing that is original and persuasive, and other fundamental skills. That I do find deeply troubling.
Two recent New York Times articles discussed the ways in which addiction to electronic communication is altering how children and parents interact. [See here and also here.] The general press has not covered these ideas in any great depth so I was heartened to see these articles.
Certainly there is a very good argument to be made that children are getting shorted by parents who are consumed with their electronic gadgets. Another good argument can be made that children are missing opportunities to develop the habits and means of thinking and communicating in depth and with clarity when they are, themselves, consumed with texting and similar forms of electronic communication. What disturbs me even more, though, is the reaction of educators to these recent trends.
We’ve seen this all before, of course, when, for example, television became the norm in American households and educators claimed that they could not compete for attention with this exciting media. Now, with distractions of high-end video games, internet, cell phones, and various hand-held electronics, educators again say that they cannot compete. The answer, they claim, is to fortify schools with the same technology and to use it to replace the former means of learning that now bore students to tears.
I think that is a cop-out for educators and a damned shame for students. While I have nothing against using tools of technology to enhance learning where it truly does that, I find that many educators are simply flailing about with little direction when it comes to technology. You want to use student-written blog entries to encourage stronger writing through public dissemination and peer review? Great. The focus is on the writing and the internet based blog is merely a means to that end. However, when schools are installing tablet computers, Smartboards, Ipods, and anything else they can get their hands on without any forethought as to integration into the learning process, they are putting the cart before the horse.
Educators are more often than not so anxious about being left behind, so concerned about competing with other school districts and so insecure in their own competence that they forget their professional purpose. Instead of planning how to teach students how to read dense material for meaning, or how to orchestrate comprehensive research, or how to write in a manner that is persuasive and factual, educators panic and flit about wondering how they will hold the attention of students distracted by modern life. They convince themselves that the only way to compete for student attention is to jump on the same bandwagon and fill the classroom with the electronics and shallow, short-term processes, as if somehow it will magically work itself out.
If educators would put aside their insecurities they might recognize that learning in depth and communicating with meaning still holds intrinsic promise and reward. Students can still be interested and even entertained in work and learning that includes quality, profundity and longer term challenge. The whole point of a professional educator is to instill these sorts of habits in young students. Yet, many educators today seem bent on ignoring that promise and challenge in favor of a string of sugar-highs in their classrooms.
My local K-8 public school district, like many others, has students and parents sign a contract of sorts for “acceptable use” of district computer resources. This contract, loosely modeled after similar documents familiar to new employees at larger businesses, is sent home for students as young as first and second grade to sign. The very idea is laughable and sums up the kind of twisted thinking common to educators in our public schools. My local school district’s version is viewable here.
Before we even look at the specifics of this document, consider the big picture here. My local school district is asking elementary students to sign a binding contract for use of district “computing resources” and yet these students have no concept of what a contract is, the younger students cannot read all or even any of the contract, they cannot understand many of the concepts and words even if the contract is read to them by an adult; an fact, many of the younger students have not ever had occasion to sign their names yet! To call a written contract for elementary students developmentally inappropriate is the understatement of the year. Author Chip Wood in his excellent book Yardsticks notes that cognitive development allowing for an interest in rules and rulemaking tends to begin developing around age eleven. So, it isn’t until middle school that a student could really grasp the implication of a contract, and, as we will discuss below, that doesn’t mean that a contract is a good idea even at that age.
Parents are also asked to sign this contract, and yet the parents are not in the schools to enforce the rules in the document. Presumably the intent is to force parents to explain to their children the rules in the contract and to serve as some kind of legal notice:
“Ultimately, parents and guardians of minors are responsible for setting and conveying the standards that their children should follow when using media and information resources.”
In another part of the document it states that, other than “clarifying” standards, the district is “not responsible for restricting, monitoring or controlling the communications of individuals utilizing the network.”
In other words, the district believes it is covering its collective rear-end by having parents sign this contract. The district will open up this can of worms, but will take no responsibility for what happens next. In the classrooms parents will have no means of observing the use of these so-called “resources” and no opportunity to prevent misuse (however that is defined) by their children. Yet, the parents will be considered ultimately responsible? What, then, is the function of the educator in the classroom standing over the child?
Before we have even looked at the specific language of this document it is clear that the thinking of the educators who thrust this contract onto students and parents is heavy with self-protection and light with the purpose of educating children on a developmentally appropriate level. Glancing through some of the language in this document reveals just how utterly stupid is the thought processes of these educators.
Sprinkled throughout the contract is the idea that computer and internet access is a “privilege” and not a right. Huh? Public schools are financed by taxpayers who expect that the schools will be doing their best to educate students by whatever means is necessary and efficient. If that means the use of computers, internet access or similar tools, then so be it—but this isn’t some kind of gift to students. The students in all but the poorest areas have their own internet access, not to mention a smartphone, a computer, and all sorts of other devices. They don’t need the “privilege,” thank you anyway. More to the point, what is the basis behind the idea that a public school is bestowing a privilege or gift to students through the use of “district resources”? Those are taxpayer resources and public education is not a gift, it is required by law.
More of this contract is comical. Is a parent supposed to explain to his or her third grader what “defamatory” or “obscene” means? For that matter, do most parents know what a “proxy server” is and what it does? One section explains that student work will be published to the district’s website with a copyright notice that prohibits copying of such work without express written permission. This is irony in the extreme, considering that both students and teachers routinely copy—steal—text, images, music and sound files from internet sites for use in their Powerpoint presentations and other school work.
Let’s cut to the chase. This contract typifies the way in which public education has been poisoned by so-called educators who have anything but the education of children in their tiny little minds. You want to introduce computers and internet tools into the workflow of students? Great. These are children, not yet fully developed, so you will need to teach them the pros and cons of using such tools. They will not need assistance in the mechanics of using the software and hardware—their natural curiosity alone will do that. What they will need assistance with is determining what is true and what is not true in what they discover on the net. They will need to be taught the meaning of copyright material and the ownership of intellectual property. They will need teacher guidance on the ramifications of publishing their personal thoughts in public forums, on the analysis of information by date, accuracy and expert corroboration, and on the limitations of technology tools due to legal and physical parameters. These and similar things must be the responsibility of the professional educators who want to use these technology tools. Yes, limits are needed for children learning these tools—but those limits must be taught in formal processes and in teachable moments in the classroom not referenced in a meaningless contract and forgotten shortly thereafter.
What is happening in many public school districts like mine can be traced back three decades. As technologies become useful in the adult world of business and personal life, there is a mad rush in the schools to install the same physical infrastructure. However, it is a checkmark in a checkbox, not an educational strand with forethought and integration into curriculum. Computers? Check. Internet? Check. Email and distance learning? Check and check. Just because you give a person a complete set of the latest power tools doesn’t make him or her carpenter. And that is the trouble with these contracts. The school districts have installed tremendous amounts of power tools for use by the children but the children are not carpenters, there is little or no guidance on becoming carpenters and there is great opportunity to lose a finger or two as a result. This contract says, essentially: we are making these power tools available to students whether you like it or not, we will show them where the power buttons are located, and it will be the responsibility of parents and students to watch for their fingers, not ours. I simply wish that educators would stop thinking of children as short adults and engage in the profession they supposedly embraced.
In an April 26, 2010 article in the New York Times, Marine Corp General James N. Mattis was quoted, “PowerPoint makes us stupid,” and Brigadier General H. R. McMaster was quoted saying that Powerpoint is an internal threat, “…dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
These two military commanders were talking about the ubiquitous use of Microsoft’s Powerpoint presentation software within the military and commenting on how it is negatively affecting decision making and the analysis and distribution of information. Anyone who works in the corporate world knows of the same issue there.
What should be even more bothersome, though, is how Powerpoint has infiltrated public schools both on an administrative level and on a student level. Just as Powerpoint slides oversimplify and overdress information in the military and the corporate arenas, it is being used by the educators who run public schools to gloss over entrenched problems or to elevate gross abridgement of information as solutions. A few vague bullet points mentioning educational jargon and nifty sounding program titles, a couple of charts about test scores, and the show is over. Yet, what has actually been communicated to parents or to school board members or to teaching staff?
On the student level, though, the potential for damage is the greatest. In many public schools Powerpoint presentations are assigned in class and as homework; encouraged as replacements for essays, reports, speeches, and other forms of communication which would require depth and thought. This is occurring even in the lower elementary grades.
A generation or more ago, middle school students assigned a topic would formulate an argument or theory, research source materials in a library, read and absorb those materials, create an outline for their arguments, write a paper or speech fleshing out these arguments, and then present the finished product to the class or the teacher for review. Shortcuts for these students might include asking for parental help during the process or even patterning their report or speech on the previous work done by an older sibling. Even so, the process of seeking sources, absorbing, examining and synthesizing the information in those sources for relevancy and accuracy, and building a case for their argument or theory with some depth and clarity could not be detoured. Yes, they may have received help from family or friends, but the process remained and that forced at least some level of genuine learning.
The Powerpoint assignments for students today are a different story. Instead of rewarding an investment in a comprehensive process of learning or even the intrinsic value of gaining knowledge, the Powerpoint assignments reward speed over depth, dazzle over content and the superficial summary of the topic. In fact, very often the point of these assignments is to learn Powerpoint software itself, rather than to use the software as a tool to present information on another subject. Successful Powerpoint assignments for class work or homework are those with the greatest amount of flash, of sound and of color. The content is subjugated by the mechanics of the presentation. It isn’t the product which is important; it is the tool the student uses to make the product which is paramount.
Today the learning process is very different. There probably is no argument or theory to be developed, only a topic to be described. Instead of researching potential source material, the student merely gets on his favorite internet search engine and clicks the first links which appear to mention the topic. Most middle school students, after all, have had no training to examine internet material for accuracy, relevancy, bias, timeliness, or any other measure of quality.
Instead of reading the material from the links, the student merely copies and pastes into his Powerpoint slides the first text he can find which appears to mention the assigned topic. The truly diligent will change a few words to avoid charges of plagiarism. Now the student will capture photos, artwork, music and sound files from whatever internet sites come up, and he will insert them into his slideshow without regard to copyrights or even attribution. He has seen his own teacher do the same thing numerous times and he doesn’t give it a second thought. His final effort will not be to polish his argument, to look for logical flaws or to back up his statements with quotes or proof. After all, there is no argument or statements—only a series of slides describing the assigned topic. No, the final effort will be aimed at creating interesting color, flashy slide transitions and humorous combinations of graphics.
As General McMaster points out, the student has now created the illusion of understanding. In truth, the student has barely picked up a passing knowledge of the topic and has certainly not begun to think about an argument or statement or theory about the topic. If any true learning has taken place, it is only about the nature of the Powerpoint software and not about the assigned topic or about a process of thinking about and analyzing unfamiliar topics.
What will this generation of Powerpoint students contribute to our society? How will they find fulfillment or success in their own lives having had little exposure to formal processes of analysis and learning? As adults will they be fooled themselves by the illusion of understanding? And, what will their expressions record the first time they meet up with their own General McMaster?
Merit pay for teachers is back in vogue in certain political circles these days. On the surface the argument seems like a no-brainer. Shouldn’t we reward good teachers with higher pay, just as we reward overachieving workers in private industry with more money?
Delve below the surface and the simplicity of the merit pay argument becomes far more complex. After all, what is a good teacher? Virtually all of the proposals from the political sector define a good teacher through student test scores on state mandated tests. Even if you have little knowledge of how these state tests work, you likely know that the tests are given once a year and that they do not even pretend to measure the progress or growth of a single student over the course of a year. Comparisons of state test scores in a single grade or a single classroom can—at best—only show how that subset of students compared to a large group of similar students on a particular day when a narrow and simplistic measure was used.
The proposals for merit pay all exist within the confines of the current and deeply flawed system. We all agree that there are awful teachers being rewarded for merely showing up and that there are great teachers not being rewarded for going the extra mile. However, using state test scores as the arbiter of a good teacher will not result in merit pay for teachers who actually excel at their work.
Since teachers can’t pick the students coming into their class, and since the ability and background of students can and does vary widely from class to class, it isn’t logical to compare state test scores either from year to year or from a subset of the total to overall averages. Given the way state tests work, and given the ways in which students are assigned to teachers, linking teacher evaluations to scores would be the same as using a lottery to evaluate their performance. A teacher given a particularly advanced (academically or otherwise) class one year would be lucky, but a teacher assigned kids who are a challenge that same year would be out of luck. In fact, in many districts it is the excellent teachers who are assigned the most challenging students because they have the skills to handle the academic, social, family, physical and emotional baggage that comes with a challenging student. However, those students typically don’t do well on state tests. The implication for merit pay based on state test scores should be obvious.
Even if we changed state tests to evaluate the same child at the start and the end of a school year, would that allow us to fairly use scores as the basis for merit pay? A child with a great and effective teacher can still be hampered by the divorce of parents, or a vision problem not caught early, or a bad cold on test day, or a thousand other issues. Again, the teacher is caught in a game of chance if merit pay is to be based on test scores. Plus, what would merit pay based on state test scores do to the way teachers operate in their classroom? If we pay more for better scores aren’t we asking teachers to concentrate on teaching to the test and to focus their energy primarily on the students most likely to achieve good scores? What we would be doing is setting up a system in which teachers would compete internally for the “easy” students and in which any classroom time spent on areas unrelated to test preparation will likely result in lower pay! Is that what we want?
If merit pay for teachers is ever possible, it will require wholesale change in the way schools are run and the elimination of the labor union/factory model of education which has polluted public education. Don’t blame the teacher unions, though; blame all of the federal law enacted from the 1935 National Labor Relations Act onward which has created coercive monopolies like the teacher unions. Teachers are required to pay into their unions, which creates political power far greater than would otherwise exist. The reason we have inflexible teacher contracts, the reason we have the impossibility of individual negotiation with great teachers and the reason we have to suffer the work of poor teachers with tenure is not because of the unions, but because of federal law which artificially props up teacher unions. Take away collective bargaining and agency shop rules and a whole new world opens up.
It is pure fantasy to imagine a successful merit pay scenario in today’s public schools. In fact, it is questionable if a bonus pay sort of system for teachers is good idea under any circumstance. Genuinely effective teachers—the ones who are requested by anxious parents and who administrators lean on when the going gets rough—are typically not motivated by more money. If you are familiar with Herzberg’s motivation hygiene theory, as well as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, then you are well on your way to understanding the motivation of truly effective teachers.
If you give it some thought, you’ll realize that the teachers you don’t want for your child are the very ones who are primarily motivated by money, and summers off and easy schedules. The truly good teachers–the ones you want for your own children–have intrinsic motivation related to the satisfaction of their jobs and their interaction with children. They need and want enough money to support themselves and to maintain a reasonable lifestyle, of course, but their primary motivation is the value of their work. We could pay them enough to get by or we could pay them like royalty and the quality of their work would be the same. They love their work, they love their students and they will not compromise their performance as long as they can afford to make a living. Not so with other teachers who chose their profession based on perceptions of an easy job.
We must be careful what we wish for. The law of unintended consequences can never be ignored in economics. If we set up a merit pay system (bonuses based on almost anything) we will be encouraging exactly the wrong type of teacher to stay in their position and we will be attracting exactly the wrong kind of teacher to the profession. If, instead, we figure out how to empower teachers in their own classroom, and we reward them with more responsibility, and we allow them to hone their craft instead of following a script, then we will find that a decent, living wage is all that is required for pay and that the right sort of teachers will be attracted to the profession. Needless to say, this will also require a sea-change in the types of administrators running our schools and the expertise we seek in those positions. Nobody said it would be easy.