Cycle One Post

First, I would like to talk about Donovan and empathy and then branch onto the crux of this cycle, the consolidation of curriculum with personal and professional views on education and what exactly education is in modern sensibilities.  

As a high school student in the 1990’s, I was educated in the Lansing School District and went to Everett High School, then the only school in the District that had a program for the severely learning disabled. Students who were physically and severely learning disabled went to the Beekman Center, however.  But Everett was special.  These students would one day be able to maybe live independently.  So these students, while they didn’t learn the basic math and science classes, they did learn consumer math and home economics.  Further, the classrooms were outfitted like small apartments and in them, the students learned independent living skills.  How to wash dishes, go to work, how to be independent adults.  And because these students went to high school with us, we never saw these students as different and in fact, protected them from the viciousness of other visiting high school students.  This experience made me both sympathetic and empathetic to these students’ plight and peripherally their education.      

Piggybacking off of this sentiment is a scene I remember from Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), starring Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte.  In it, the young son, Lorenzo is considered mentally stunted”, so his mother constantly reads books to him that she read when this supposed “retardation” took place.  But what actually happens is that his mind was fine, it was his physical body that was the problem, so when he was finally able to communicate with his mother, it was to tell her to stop reading him baby books.   Despite his inability to move on his own, his mind was intact and he needed and longed for mental stimulation.  

Finally, I think of Team Hoyt, a father-son duo I have followed since their first appearance on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.  The son, diagnosed with cerebral palsy is confined to a wheelchair and during marathons and Ironman Triatholons, the father, Dick Hoyt, pulls his son along in a wheelchair or other specially crafted vehicle so that his son can participate in the races with him.  Why this is important to the curriculum question is that his son is, despite being diagnosed with cerebral palsy and was non vocal until he was eleven years old, has a degree in Special Education from Boston University and worked from a time at Boston College to aid in developing communication systems for people who cannot physically or otherwise communicate. 

All of these people are trapped inside of their body but their minds are fine.  I could speak on Helen Keller, obviously, or countless others.  Why do teachers think that only the physically able are capable of learning.  Why do we have such a negative view of those that do not have able-bodies, so much so that we think their minds must be deficient as well?  So in thinking about Donovan, coming from this type of caring and involved environment, the best thing to do in evaluating his needs would be for me to figure out what was getting through to him in the best way possible and to replicate that success.  So often teachers talk about student centered learning but so few teachers or school districts actually practice this type of education.  If what worked for Donovan was a more traditional type of education, including music classes, that’s what he should have been getting.  This goes to all students as well, not just Donovan.  What is actually best for each individual student can be achieved even within the confines of “one curriculum fits all” educational standards.

Curricula, broadly, are the course of study a child should get in school and indeed it is hard to think of the word “school” without it being intertwined with classwork, but in fact, curriculum should be much more broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process.  I got that from Wikipedia because I enjoyed the terminology, but I will go deeper.   Every school has a “hidden curriculum” for example.  These things aren’t taught, but they include things like expected participation in extracurricular activities and school culture.  These things aren’t explicitly taught, but if you ask a student, how well they are able to navigate the school’s hidden curriculum is almost as important as their performance on the academic curriculum.  You cannot tell me that how I navigated my high school experience was not instrumental to how I completed my academic curriculum.  I had teachers that cared less about my shitty, shitty, grades and more about the ideas and the knowledge that I expressed. Which is why I have long been a “smart girl, but lazy student.”  But that was the hidden curriculum at my school. 

In my classes, how my students analyze the material is more important to me than the regurgitation of recall facts onto some arbitrary questions I ask.  Talk to me after class.  Tell me the things that excite you.  Follow those avenues and then come back and talk to me.  I have passed students that have never turned in one of those “nickel and dime” assignments I have to hand out to make it seem like I am doing my job. I have students that never take a note, but absorb everything that I say.  That child has learned.   And, if you were to ask those students to hit the benchmarks that are on the Standard Course of Study, or whatever Curriculum framework we are using for the course, the student will instinctively check off all those boxes.  Because in all of these instances, the students have actually learned the material and put it to use.

Therefore, how best do we navigate and develop curriculum for our students?  We do what’s best for them.  Period. I live in China, a country that is known for sticking its nose into the teacher’s classroom to try and regulate what is taught. What is best for the government is not what is good for the students I began to see long ago.  A curriculum that negates the need for critical inquiry, critical analysis and that punishes those that teach things contrary to the government line is not a good curriculum nor is it good educational practice. Not only that, but there is further a culture of rating, standing, and status, which makes learning not essential for learning’s sake, but learning for the sake of grades, which is not what learning should be in the 21^stcentury.  With a million ways to get into good colleges and despite evidence that Ivy League colleges are not best for everyone, the students still think that straight A’s is the best way to get into Harvard.  Because their Chinese counselors tell them, despite their foreign teachers telling them the opposite, that all they need are good grades to get into Harvard.  It’s not that easy.

Teachers know what students need, not bureaucrats and definitely not politicians.   Parents know to a degree but in China, I have become to detest parents.  They have entirely too much sway over their children’s lives and instead of doing what is right for their child; they do what is right for their “face.” What they think is the right thing.  And these ideas fly in the face of what Western psychologists and some Chinese psychologists have found to be in the completely worst interest of the child.   All students are not math and science whizzes and yet, there is a complete disregard and lack of respect for those that would like to pursue the arts.  If one more of my students say they want to be business majors, despite not knowing how to add 3+3, I might scream.  

The total sum of a child’s educational experiences is as simple as learning that patriotism can mean finding fault with your country and still being proud of it.  Until educators find out ways to consolidate that education is more than just what you teach in the classroom, that it is the time and the care that you put into making sure that your students are they best they will be, than as a teacher you are handling curriculum the correct way.