Lifelong literacy

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Cooperation, not Coup D’etat

It is a mystery to me how school reform in the 21st Century has become something that is done to teachers, rather than something that is achieved by administration, teachers, students and parents together.  To be honest,  some teachers’ unions have been exposed as  intractable and not negotiating in the best interests of children. And admittedly it is very hard to dismiss bad teachers, because of the protections granted by tenure. But the “reform” of the school should not be characterized as the overthrow of these institutions.  They were once instruments of reform themselves.

The language of former New York Chancellor Joel Klein in Joe Nocera’s column in the New York Times today (April 26, 2011) is quite revealing. Asked about the impact of the child’s home environment on his or her education, Klein asserted, “We don’t yet know how much education can overcome poverty. To let us off the hook prematurely seems to me to play into the hands of the other side.” Spoken like a true lawyer.

If teachers unions remain intractable in this century, then Klein may have a case to make against them. But his adversarial approach, and the fire-breathing politician’s approach, to the reform of schools will never change the institution. They can change the rules, but not the quality of education.  They can raise the test scores, but not the critical thinking skills of the students.  They can hire younger, more compliant teachers, but the novices will not assimilate the standards of 21st century literacy, unless they remain in their positions more than three years.  The nature of reform runs deeper than these superficial adjustments to education.

Reform will come with the cooperation of all the stakeholders, the students, the parents, the teachers and the administrators, or it will not come at all.  Ramon Gonzalez, principal of M.S. 223, a middle school in the Bronx, understands this and has labored to bring his entire community together to the task.  Gonzalez was featured in a New York Times Magazine article by Jonathan Mahler and similarly on a broadcast of Sixty Minutes.  Joe Nocera portrays him as an independent reformer, somewhat dismissive of the top-down “experimentation” emanating from the central offices of the NYPS.  Gonzalez offered “goodie bags to lure parents to parent association meetings, yet barely a dozen show up.” But that is the strategy of reform: get everybody on board.

But Gonzalez and holistic reformers like Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone are success stories of reform. Writing about Canada in this week’s  Time Magazine (May 2, 2011),  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declares,

When Canada, 59, started HCZ Project 14 years ago, it was a one block pilot program. Today it covers 100 city blocks and serves 8,000 kids, providing not just a good education but also early-childhood programs, after-school services and guidance to help parents play a key role in their kids’ learning. Canada is driven by a deep belief that all children can succeed, regardless of race, wealth and zip code.

But this was not done with union-busting and lawsuits. Reform was a full-participation program. And it takes time or it doesn’t take. It is not a coup d’etat ala Michelle Rhee. Her reforms are being dismantled as fast as she installed them. And the same for any hit-and-run school superintendent who promises radical change, then leaves town before the test scores peak and fade. If a superintendent promises results in less than four years, watch him or her exit before the fifth year. Everyone knows that reform is a time-released medicine, but everyone wants it “fast, FAST, FAST.”

Bring back the reform that was a full-participation venture, the reform that included all the stakeholders and ripened like vintage grapes.  Bring back the reform that changed students, not their test scores.  Bring back the reform, where the adversaries lay down their non-negotiable demands and wondered together “What if?”  Bring teachers back into the process, instead of alleging they are the problem.

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A Shared or Shackling Curriculum?

The call of 75 national leaders for a common curriculum to accompany the emerging national standards for English language arts and mathematics should be considered judiciously by educators.  The position that schools should categorically resist a common curriculum for some fraction of the school year may be too extreme. However, the impact of such a curriculum on the individual classroom may be seriously underestimated by its proponents.

Curriculum reformers  need to borrow a phrase from the physician’s oath: “First, do no harm.”

School reformers at the highest levels usually underestimate the disruption that a “voluntary” curriculum can cause in K-12 classrooms.  What is pronounced as a friendly suggestion comes down through superintendents and principals as a high priority mandate to teachers. Why? Because their schools will now be judged by how well they perform on the goals of this “voluntary” curriculum.  Curricular pressure on teachers is completely understandable, in this case, because superintendents and principals are judged entirely on their students’ performance on the “voluntary” curriculum.

Moreover,  the ELA and mathematics standards now being touted are a culmination of numerous prerequisite standards that are not firmly in place in some schools, especially struggling high schools.  Take the new standard for reading that involves analysis of so-called “foundational documents” of U.S. History:

Analyze seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, , and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes and rhetorical features (Reading Standards for Informational Text, 6-12, #9)

As worthy a goal as this appears, it comprises so many sub-goals that it might generate a whole new course of study: 1- arcane vocabulary (“a well-regulated militia”?) 2- rhetorical strategies (ever read a “declaration” before?) 3- historical context (what was happening before that “Second Inaugural Address”?) 4- ambiguity (why does no one agree on the First Amendment?) 5- genre (what is  the effect of a”preamble” and the “amendments” on the whole?) 6- syntax ( how does the adverbial clause affect the main clause?) 7- themes (how is the Red Badge of Courage connected to the Inaugural Address?)   8- context and interpretation (how has the meaning changed over time?)

Sometimes I think curriculum and standards writers imagine that topics will merely be “covered” in the classroom and students will be tested on the gist of the meaning. These same writers will then complain that students do not read closely or rigorously and thus stumble on the challenging tasks presented by international tests of reading. Because the curriculum and standards writers have no, or very distant, classroom experience, they forget that “covering” a text does not produce good readers. When new and historically remote texts are added to a curriculum they multiply the topics and the time needed to address them. Nothing worth reading  should be merely “covered.” It should be studied.

The time consumed by these curriculum “suggestions” displaces effective curricula, which may involve students choosing texts to read, genre for writing, and language strategies to address, related to these choices.  The growing edge of writing and speaking, especially, involves reading and writing about non-canonical texts, i.e. texts that relate to students’ daily experiences.   I know curriculum writers tend to belittle young adult texts, even though they are proliferating in subject matter and quality. They assume students are not being challenged by age-appropriate subject matter.

But students learn to write and speak by addressing books and topics from their own experiences, topics which include, conformity, integrity, decision-making, respect, loyalty, independence. These lessons are assimilated and expressed through age-appropriate reading and viewing.  Writing and speaking are complex skills that are first tested on familiar ground before racheting up the difficulty of reading and listening.  Active classroom teachers understand how to bring students up to more challenging texts by “successive approximation.”  Those who abandoned teaching years ago have forgotten that teaching is a continuum of experiences from the familiar context to the remote centuries and cultures. These familiar and age-appropriate texts should not be carelessly discarded in favor of new curricula.

New curricula have a ripple effect on existing curricula, starting as a trickle and ending with a tidal wave.  Curriculum writers may anticipate the trickle and perhaps the stream of curricular change, but seldom do they understand the torrent of prerequisite goals they have unleashed with their “modest proposals.”  They expect to influence the teaching of English and mathematics, but they have no concept of how they may throttle the curriculum from top to bottom.

If a “shared curriculum” can be introduced with the caveat that the best of local curriculum can be preserved, then the change could be beneficial. We could have cross-district and cross-state dialogues about how to infuse these new topics with the old.  We could have celebrations of successful learning units around these topics.  We could have the joy of shared goals, successfully implemented.

But a shared curriculum requires respect for the those who implement it. It should come in increments, with funding for teachers to develop their own units, with  grace periods for implementation, and with caveats for school administrators who fret about test scores. It should be shared constructively and deliberately with schools, not delivered like a subpoena.

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Critical of Critical Thinking

The most troubling question about the study “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” is that Bob Herbert, New York Times columnist, like most of his colleagues, does not for a minute question whether the “critical thinking” of college students has been adequately measured by whatever assessment was administered.

It is indeed troubling that “Thirty-six per cent of the students said they studied alone less than five hours a week.” And perhaps alarming that the same students are pulling an average 3.16 GPA.  There are some disclaimers that might be made about “studying alone,” because colleges encourage study groups and collaborative effort is considered a crucial skill of the marketplace.  Did they ask how many hours were spent studying in groups?

But more troubling is the undisputed claim that “after the first two years of college, 45 per cent of the students made no significant improvement in skills related to critical thinking, complex reasoning, and communication” and that two years later the percentage had only improved to 36 per cent.

Does anyone know how these critical skills were assessed? Has anyone taken such a test, in which “critical thinking, complex reasoning and communication” were validly measured? I have not investigated the testing instrument used in this study, but I would think someone would, before proclaiming that college students are dumber than they used to be.

Suppose the assessment of critical reasoning was the time and accuracy it took to fill in a crossword puzzle with the content knowledge expected of college students? Suppose it was a version of the Miller Analogies test, with content expected of a liberal education (be sure to cover art history and music) ? Suppose it was a thirty-minute essay question asking for the causes of terrorism in the Western world? Ask yourself, college graduates, do you want your critical reasoning skills assessed on any one of these tests?

The irony is the utter neglect of critical evaluation of a study that purports to measure the critical reasoning of college students.  How can we claim to know such things without knowing the nature of the assessment? The news media are the most uncritical arbiters of news about education in the literate world. They accept every test at face value. Heaven forbid we might test journalists this way.

I admit I am disturbed by the findings of Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, because, regardless of the validity of their thinking assessments, where there is smoke, there is fire.  I try to learn what I can from studies that probe the learning habits of college students.

But I think it either hypocritical or delusional that the news media in general and Bob Herbert, in particular, would report on studies of student competence and knowledge, without asking if the tests were valid.  This is a classic case of uncritical thinking.

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The Seed on the Path

When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in the heart. This is the seed sown along the path (Matt 13:19).

The difference between hearing and understanding has been pondered by educators since long before Jesus and ever afterward. It is not limited to the word of God. It is current in our demand  for  “rigor” and “college readiness.”  It is inherent in the notion of literacy as a structure built on a foundation–each year new standards are added to the structure, which ascends toward the gates of the college of your choice.

The notion of “cultural literacy,” that we are what we have read, supports the edifice metaphor of literacy.  Our knowledge is sequentially built upon classical authors, like Hawthorne, Shakespeare, and Ben Franklin, and we are judged illiterate in proportion to the texts we have not read.  Sometimes we mock those who claim to be educated, yet have not read our honored texts. What, you call yourself a high school graduate, but never read Hamlet?

Literacy is more like an organic process, like the body absorbing food for growth. Readers and writers process language selectively, and turn it into living tissue. It is not like we absorb protein at a certain age and vitamins later on. We absorb them as our body requires them and turn them into something living and functional. The body’s demand for iron and calcium very much depends on our age and gender.

“Understanding” a text is the kind of rigor we should advocate. “Understanding” means that we assimilate what we read, as the body assimilates nutrients from food.  You know what happens to the food we don’t assimilate. In cases where understanding is not part of the reading experience, nothing is assimilated. It is all waste.

The point is not what we hear, as Jesus said, or what we “decode,” as cognitive theorists currently say, but of “understanding.”  You can read Animal Farm in sixth grade or Romeo and Juliet in eighth grade, but what do you get out of them? Perhaps a good story and certainly “exposure” to a canonical text, but what about “understanding”?  In many cases you get a lifetime of alienation from allegory and Shakespeare, because the reading was so distant from the understanding.

Many adolescents hate reading, not because they are addicted to visual and social media, but because their understanding of assigned texts is so cloudy. They would give up on video games as well, if their computer monitor lost its resolution or if the enjoyment of the game relied on an extensive background in the canonical games of yore. They can be seduced by reading that addresses developmentally appropriate issues and that challenges their thinking at their own level.

Why do we now have a version of Huckleberry Finn that purges the “N-word?” Because we treat reading as though it were hearing. I am offended by those who use that word in my hearing, and I would demand that they restrain themselves, regardless of their cultural background. But in a book the “N-word” is a portrayal, not an actual event. It is fiction, where characters may display their ignorance with impunity.  If we are offended, we consider the source and learn more about people we might not otherwise associate with.  The same rule should apply to other offensive literary texts, the portrayal of the Jew in Merchant of Venice, the portrayal of the clergy in The Scarlet Letter. We can read without sanctioning the behavior of literary characters or being corrupted by it.

The problem often arises from adult texts being forced on the young. Maybe Huckleberry Finn shouldn’t be assigned in ninth grade.  Maybe Lord of the Flies should not be required reading in middle school. In our relentless pursuit of rigor, we assume that more difficult reading is also appropriate reading for adolescents and pre-adolescents.  Even a young adult text like The Giver can be assigned prematurely, because adults love the notion of collective memory, but young children may not.  Yes, they can read it. But understand it?

As the “Parable of the Sower” teaches us, not all seed takes root and grows to full stature.  So it will be with the scattered seed of the “rigorous” curriculum and the treasured fruit of “college readiness.”

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The Seed Among Thorns

What is sown among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful” (Matthew 13:22).

The Parable of the Sower tells us everything we need to know about teaching.  It’s not the seed we sow, but the soil it falls on.  And the corollary to that is: There are no sacred documents, but there are sanctifying and corrupting documents.  So we should stop grasping at symbols and instead preserve the spirit that gives them life.

The U.S. Constitution received a lot of symbolic attention at the opening of Congress, but even more serious scrutiny as we heard Congresswoman Giffords read the First Amendment with great conviction.  We heard  it in the context of a citizen violating her right to speak and assemble, indeed violating her right to live. And then we heard it in the context of a national conversation about how we should speak and the limits of political discourse. That has been an inspiring conversation.

When citizens talk about what free speech means, then we are revering the Constitution, not when we give it a public oration, congratulating ourselves that we have a splendid document to govern us.  We revere the Constitution when we ask ourselves how its seeds fall among us, how they invade and transform our hearts.  Our country has had a period of serious self-examination, because of the events following the reading of the First Amendment, but not from the words of themselves.

The words themselves may sow corruption. Before 1964, the Constitution did not protect the voting rights of all citizens. Before 1920 the Constitution did not protect the voting rights of half of its citizens.  It was good seed, but it fell in bad soil. But some of the seed fell on good soil, and it produced the Nineteenth and the Twenty-fourth Amendments. The Constitution would be sham without them.

The First and Second Amendments to the Constitution have been driven north, south, east, and west in attempts to justify what citizens wanted and believed.   Opponents on both sides of political controversy have invoked the same amendments to their advantage. Corrupting and sanctifying. That is how laws get made and rights are protected. To invoke those amendments as though they inherently protected our political convictions misses their point. They are the seeds sown by our Founders. We are the soil they fall upon. We should be more concerned with the soil, than who owns the seed.

Let’s stop invoking the Constitution as if it were the guarantee of everything we want. Let’s stop demonizing those who disagree with us as though they were the enemies of the Constitution. Let’s stop using the Constitution as a symbol and remember that its value is in how we live it.

Jesus compared the word of God to seed. If the word of God is no more than seed, which is barren without soil, how can we presume that the words of men, however eloquent, can be any more than that? How can we use that word against our fellow citizens, when we are all soil, all the resting place of seed, the producers of fruit?

When we are considering the limits of free speech, we might consider if we are the soil for our treasured documents or the thorns.

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Days of Our Reading and Writing (continued)

In our last episode we left reading and writing in the plight of many marriages: can’t live with them and can’t live without them.  We saw that many who call themselves “readers” resist the name of “writer,” but that the writer enriches the life of the reader. Thus, the question persists: Can this marriage be saved?

Many adults, who would be humiliated to confess they could not read, might freely admit they could not write.  And not because they couldn’t fill out a traffic accident report, but because they could not write with flair and conviction and grammatical precision. Such writing would be for the chosen few. On the other hand, to read meant to understand important information and to live a fulfilled life. The option of not reading at all would be unthinkable.

In contrast, writing has always been attributed to professionals whose living depended on writing. The writing process was considered mysterious.  Grammar and style were viewed as arcane subjects best left to experts.  Probably the most memorable declaration of the ground-breaking reform document The Neglected “R” was “Writing today is not a frill for the few, but an essential skill for the many” (11).  That was a consequential pronouncement.

Recognizing that our jobs often required a different kind of reading than our personal lives, theorists combined the many forms of literacy in the term “lifelong literacy,” with the goal of reading to become “lifelong readers.”  Reading has played so many roles on the stage of life, that to confine it to functional literacy, critical literacy or personal growth missed the point.  Reading was pervasive, and the way we read shifted relentlessly in the kaleidoscope of 21st century literacy.

A lifelong reader understands that reading impinges on every moment of living, from reading the side effects of the pill taken after breakfast to deciphering the manual for a new cell phone to reading a favorite political writer in the online edition of the newspaper.   Reading pervades life and has become indispensable in a literate culture.

In contrast, writing has been regarded as a skill of the workplace. Even the groundbreaking The Neglected “R” and its successors described writing in its public roles: in school, in business, and in government. These reports raised the profile of writing as a tool of productivity, but not as an essential  part of living. Reading has continued to overshadow writing in the realm of “lifelong literacy.”

Why should we care whether writing is number one or number two or equal in significance to reading? Primarily because reading and writing are less efficient as singles than as a couple. It is a little like consumption and production in the economies of life. One must offset the other. Or to return to the competitive and noncompetitive sports analogy (see yesterday’s blog), we have to nurture both kinds of urges, the competitive and the noncompetitive, and not let one overwhelm the other. So, if we are planning to be lifelong readers, we should also put lifelong writing on the agenda.

To gain “lifelong” status, writing has to be acknowledged as pervasive and self-fulfilling in the same way reading has been.  More than for its art and for making transactions, writing has to make a case for enriching the lives of literate people in the same way reading makes this claim.  Traditionally writing has not taken this central position in life, unless in the lives of writing teachers. And writing teachers struggle to sell this image of the “lifelong writer” to their students.

According to Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell (Guiding Readers and Writers, Heinemann 2001), lifelong writers exhibit certain social and personal characteristics:

  • Writers write voluntarily and often
  • Write in a wide variety of genres
  • Have confidence in themselves as writers
  • Present themselves as writers to others
  • Use writing as a tool for thinking
  • Write to communicate on personal and professional levels
  • Write to share experiences or information with others
  • Are sensitive to other writers, noticing techniques and styles
  • Invite comments on, responses to, and critiques of their writing
  • Draw on literary knowledge as a resource for their writing
  • Use  organized sets of information as a resource for their writing
  • Explore favorite topics and genres

Starting with “Write voluntarily and often,” these characteristics suggest daily living outside of the workplace, and such traits as “communicating,””sharing,” and “exploring” suggest self-fulfillment rather than productivity. Although these traits are integral to many K-12 school curricula, it would be overstating their importance to say they pervade the lives of average citizens. Becoming a lifelong writer is hardly a shared value of literate citizens in the United States. Me, a writer? Are you kidding?

So, as we leave the aging couple, lifelong reader and lifelong writer, we see that one (the reader) is much more prepared for retirement than the other (the writer).  The writer is infatuated with productivity and his or her role in the workplace, while the reader believes that reading is a continuous, pervasive activity from workplace to self-fulfilling recreation.  This is not merely an issue for retirement, but an issue of balance and compatibility. The question persists for another day of our lives: Can this marriage be saved?