What's Good for Kids

I love my profession.  I love working with students and with people who are passionate about kids’ well-being, whether they are my fellow teacher educators, teachers, administrators, 4-H sponsors, social workers, or parents.  While I fell into teaching by accident, it is no accident that I am still passionate about education 20 years later. 

That’s why the steadily deepening divide between teachers and policymakers is so dispiriting.   I believe that as wide as this gap is, we all want “what’s good for kids,” as my former principal, Chuck Holloway, used to say.  We just have different interpretations of what that means.  It seems to me that the central argument is linked to two competing theories:  positivism and critical theory.  The current testing and evaluative culture comes from the positivists, who believe that knowledge accumulation comes from the development of “building blocks” adding to an “edifice of knowledge” (Lincoln & Guba, 2003).  Quality criteria are judged by “conventional benchmarks of ‘rigor’: internal and external validity, reliability, and objectivity.”  This is an example of what Paulo Freire famously named the “banking system” of learning, where the teacher deposits the knowledge in the student’s head, and s/he then dutifully reproduces it.

In contrast, criticalists believe that knowledge is situated and historical—that as culture shifts and changes, knowledge also changes; that who we are and where we come from influences what we come to know and how we know it.  Criticalists attend to the diversity of human experience by valuing individual knowledge AS MUCH AS they value communication, literacy, and numeracy skills.  The trouble is, it takes time and thoughtfulness to evaluate projects that require multiple drafts, collaboration, creativity, independent thinking, and critical analysis. The evaluative process is necessarily messy and complex to match the messiness and complexity of the learning. 

I have heard from multiple teachers in a variety of districts who have had to give up projects that required just these skills in order to meet impossibly long lists of objectives.  Some have to follow curriculum guides requiring classic texts be taught in lock-step (be on p. X on Wednesday).  Lesson and unit planning are foundational to teaching, and should include space for dialogue and “wrestling with the text,” as one of my professors put it.  It takes time—and often repetition—for students to understand academic discourses in any depth, no matter what the subject.  As an English teacher, it pains me that texts are positioned as items to “get through” before going on to the next.  Literature shapes our consciousness and our identities; and as such, deserves rich discussion guided by thoughtful and knowledgeable teachers.      

Clearly, I belong in the critical camp.  However, I am not going to demonize the educational positivists (well, I’ll try not to, anyway).  The same thing is happening in business culture.  Friends of mine have left (or been fired from) their professions because emphasis on the bottom line precluded the innovation, relationship-building, and risk-taking that made their work worthwhile. This relentless by-the-numbers game—whether it is test scores, sales figures, or any other narrow measures of success--diminishes us all.

In this time of great technological and cultural change, there is more and more attention paid to children’s physical safety (bike helmets, sitting in the back seat, locked schools, etc.) and after-school enrichment activities (every kid I know is in gymnastics, T-ball, soccer, and/or music).  Attention is being paid to developing the whole child.  Why then, is intellectual development being narrowed in the schools?  It is an interesting question.

When positivists and criticalists use negative rhetoric to target the other, the argument becomes personal, when the larger picture is about philosophical differences.  If leaders would take the time to hear, understand, and appreciate the other’s perspective, perhaps we would find that there is room for multiple kinds of teaching, learning, and evaluation.  Actually, I would just settle for hearing one another’s ideas on what is good for kids.  Surely, there is some common ground there.

          

Before your Mom was your Mom

Who was your mom before she was your mom?  Before you identified her as the person who had the power to give or withhold what you wanted, whether it was a bottle, a toy, her attention, or freedom? 

Most of us grow up with stories of our mothers’ growing up, sometimes filtered by their parents, siblings, and friends.  My grandparents died when I was young, so I never got a chance to see their perspectives.  My family spent several vacations roaming the countryside of south Georgia, the Decatur neighborhoods, and the grounds of the boarding school and college she attended with her older sister, Charlotte, whom everyone calls Chartie.  I heard stories on those trips about my mother’s identity as a pianist, first taught by her mother, who trained her to read and memorize music by learning the treble clef first, then the bass clef, and then bringing the two together.  Grandmother’s teacher, Aunt Grace, eventually took over, and Mother was on her way to being a classically trained pianist, practicing at least two hours a day, and then later much more when she attended graduate school at the Indiana University School of Music in the 1950’s.   

I had heard these stories before, but what I didn’t know was the fruits of those long hours of practice.  That is, until she gave us all of her record albums.  Included were some long-forgotten vinyl recordings of her undergraduate and graduate recitals.  Nels cleaned them using one machine especially for that purpose, and then transferred them to compact disc as a Mother’s Day present for her.  I came down to the basement as he was doing this, and was caught up in wonder.  My mom, who used to wear polyester shorts as she folded load after load of laundry at the kitchen table, and overcooked chicken because she was afraid if she didn’t it would kill us, could do this?  Of my three siblings, I am the only one who did not become a musician.  If I had to choose a favorite pianist, I would probably pick Stevie Wonder.  But listening to my mother play pieces by Hindemith (a 20^th century composer), Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin is not only a path into her virtuosity, but into who she was as a young woman in her early 20’s, before marriage and definitely before children.    

After we gave Mom the CD’s, she told me that the  Beethoven Opus 110 Fugue was the most difficult piece.  She also said that it might be familiar to me, as she practiced and played it for a concert when we lived in Little Rock while she was pregnant with me in the late 1960's.  As I listen to it now, a little distorted by time and scratches on the vinyl, I can feel her passion and concentration.  This, too, is my mother.  She is more than the person who didn’t want me to drive alone at night; who put a vase of snapdragons on the bathroom counter when I despaired at ever learning to put in contacts; and who let more go than I will ever know.  My mother’s piano playing is one of her gifts to the world that had been buried.  Like an archaeologist digging up artifacts from a lost civilization, I feel humbled and delighted to be part of something from the past that is so beautiful and mysterious. 

To all the mothers out there:  don’t be afraid to excavate your pre-mom identity.  You are a whole person, full of history and legend, and your children will appreciate this about you.

To all the children out there:  one of the biggest gifts you can give your mother is to see her as that whole person who existed before you; and now, exists beyond you and your scope of understanding.  Please appreciate and cherish that.  This is not just for your mother, but for you.  Your life will be richer.  I promise.