Is fun in learning a 'childish thing'?
I've been listening this morning to Ben Wilkoff’s podcast about Articulating Vision. His concern is that without a coherent vision of the future of education, we will flounder around in the professional dark rather than actively move schools and classrooms and students (and ourselves) towards an innovation-fostering model. He’s excited by the possibility of taking on the role of visionary promoting change on a larger scale.
Although the ‘throw over the old system’ vanguard may not like me for saying so, I think they often suffer from a lack of comprehensive vision. They are only forward-looking. They tend not to see themselves at the head of a long line of educational reformers stretching back at least to the 1700's and Pestalozzi whose focus was on educating the whole child by cultivating their powers of seeing, judging and reasoning through what he called "self- activity" by which students would arrive at answers themselves (Siber, 1965, 140 as cited by Smith at the above link).
For the vanguard change starts from this moment and goes forward. To some extent, I think that’s why these movements often don't seem sustain themselves -– because these reformers don’t learn from past swings between traditional and progressive education and find a truly new path that integrates the strengths of both. Running forward becomes a kind of running away from. Embracing change is a way of rejecting the status quo.
Ben, no one can see as far into the future as you want to –- all we can do is strive to provide students with opportuities to gain an optimal blend of traditional values and ability to cope with change. Thoughtful, slow change may be frustrating to those who feel they really get it when ‘old school; doesn’t, but it often lasts longer because it’s evolutionary and becomes systemic.
Speaking as an educator who grew up professionally in the counter culture 70’s, I don’t think any generation of teachers ever thought they were not preparing their students to better cope with the future. I didn't always beleive this and it's taken me a long time to get it, but you’ll really alienate many outside your circle of like-minded peers if you don’t start from the assumption that everyone in teaching is trying to do their idea of what’s best for their kids. Old school may be old fashioned but that doesn’t de facto make us misguided. It was Bob Dylan who wrote the anthem embraced by many of your teachers: The Times They are a'Changing.
As I write Blackboard Jungle is on in the background and Glen Ford as Mr. Dadier is saying he went into teaching out of a desire to shape young minds. A former WWII soldier, he lands a teaching job in a neighbourhood tyrannized by violent youth. He is frightened by what the future will hold for his family, his students and for society as a whole if he can’t find a way to reach his students and get them to reflect on their actions. He believes his boys confuse violence and power with manhood.
Listening to this reminded me of "childish things" quote from the first letter of Paul of Tarsus –- a teacher speaking to the school at Corinth: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” The source I looked at says Paul was talking about anger, jealousy, cruelty, spite, judgment and all the childish emotions in which we lose ourselves, forget ourselves –- hurt ourselves and others for no gain and much loss. Real adulthood comes when we begin to apply our understanding of a system of ideas to our lives so that real change –- change from within -- in the way we size up and respond to the outer world -- can occur. Mr. Dadier wanted his boys to set aside childish things; that's what I want for my students as well.
What I'd like to know, however, is when did teachers put having fun into the realm of ‘childish things’? When did the transition from grade 7 or 8 into high school become a boundary line between active learning and a more passive venture where students have to suck it up and learn to take it because it’s good for them? Has it become that way because we’re afraid of not meeting standards? of not preparing them for the real (and apparently largely ‘unfun’) world of responsibilities? because we’ve put teaching the content ahead of teaching the people? I don’t have the answers –- but perhaps it has to do with engaging students in a learning process that will help to increase their tolerance for frustration, to give them ways to solve problems rather than just reacting to them, and to help them find ways to communicate their reasoning and reflections -- to embrace thinking as adults.
If this is what you’re up to, Ben, I’m with you. If I can incorporate Web 2.0 tools into my class to better connect with my students, I’ll learn to, but I’m not sure that means I have to give my way of teaching a complete overhaul. I think that in whatever future that’s coming, the basic interpersonal values –- thinking and speaking as adults as Paul meant it -- will still be needed in order to keep us from devolving into a society of completely self-absorbed units incapable of empathy.
Here’s a woman whose class is full of computers and she’s working with paper and tape and rulers to give her students a project-based approach to learn about area and volume. Is the activity fun? Certainly more fun than just memorizing the formulae and doing problems from the book, but on the other hand it’s probably a lot more frustrating as well because the students have to come up with their own solutions.
A CHALLENGE TO CONSIDER:
π day presents us with a unique opportunity to set aside the exam-driven timeline for one day and involve students in a problem solving process such as this one. Rather than teaching the information about pi, we can try honour the spirit of the great mathematicians by engaging the students in inquiry and discovery. Can we find a way to design problem-based activities in all subject areas that will incorporate all the skills we’d ordinarily have kids practice through the 15 -20 questions on a page? create a story to make the problem real? be sure the students know what skills they’ll be expected to take from the project? have the wisdom to know when to hold back and when to interject? engage the students in reflection and communication? and finally to assess whether they really got it or not?
I think we're up to it. Care to share a lesson and start a movement?
