I am a professional teacher, and with a school having decided they want me for the forthcoming year, I will be continuing in that capacity for at least another year, despite now being 71 years old. In fact, it is my hope to continue in that capacity for as long as I am able to make a positive difference in the lives of adolescents.
Officially I teach social studies, and over the years have taught American History, World History, Comparative Religion, Economics (Macro and Micro), US Government, Comparative Government, and Social Issues. I have also taught English and Study Skills. Outside of school I have taught SAT Prep (verbal and Math) and writing. And for what it is worth my undergraduate degree was music and my first graduate degree was religion.
Beyond that, before becoming a teacher I spent 20 years in data processing / computers, was a Certified Systems Analyst and am still a Certified Data Processor.
This is preface.
I read often about how we need to teach students to code, about how important it is to teach STEM (Science, Technology,Engineering, Math) subjects (sometimes modified to STEAM with the inclusion of Arts). I think we are missing some important things in thinking about education, about what we want our children to learn. I am going to offer some thoughts, developed over all of my life, not just my 2 decades as a classroom teacher.
I do not assert that my ideas represent a complete approach to education. But I do offer this: I have not only been a professional educator for some two decades, I have been a life-long student. I took ten years to get my undergraduate degree. I continue to learn constantly, even though I am no longer formally enrolled in any degree granting program, having ceased that some 14 years ago.
What I will offer is a reflection based on my experiences, observations, and the challenges we should all be able to see not only in our own society and country, but around the world.
What is missing from much of our education — critically so, in my opinion — is learning metacognition and meaningful self-awareness. We develop patterns of learning and thinking often without reflecting upon the limits they may impose upon us.
I often do an exercise at the beginning of a history class where I put around 10-12 objects on the floor and ask students to put them into three groups, and explain why they did those groupings. I do this because something we all tend to do is to attempt to make meaning based on prior knowledge. The items will include paper, chalk, white board marker, sharpened pencil, cup, plate, fork, rectangular piece of cloth, scissors, and some other items that might vary. Usually the items through the pencil will be grouped together, as will the cup, plate and fork. When asked the students will say the first grouping is involved with writing and the second with eating/drinking. I will then pose the following: what if I told you these were artifacts of a society about which the one fact we clearly knew was that they did not have a written language? Someone will surely at that point regroup the pencil, scissors, and fork together as possible weapons.
We attempt to make meaning of what we encounter based on our prior knowledge. Included in that is a tendency of many to view the familiar ways of thinking/believing as superior, to view that as unfamiliar or possibly different as inferior. This leads far too often to misunderstanding which can lead to otherwise avoidable conflicts.
Children are natural scientists. They form hypotheses even if they do not know the words, they try things out, they attempt to explain why things are as they are, even when they do not work as they expected. One of our tasks is to teach our students how to SAFELY explore — that is, to take risks that are not dangerous to them or to others, to learn how to push the limits of their knowledge by failing, and learning from that failure. Unfortunately, too much of our schooling involves a different kind of process, memorizing what others tell students is important, picking out from a pre-selected group of four or five responses the one response we want them to give. This is convergent thinking, and does little to increase human knowledge and understanding. Similarly, much of our religious and historical instruction is to inculcate why WE are correct and others are inferior or wrong, for example, a distorted notion of American Exceptionalism that ignores our extended histories of slavery, religious intolerance, maltreatment of various groups starting with those already on this continent when White Europeans arrived and extending through various “racial,” national origin, language, and religious groups throughout our history. We ignore the distortions of those of backgrounds/belief groups similar to us as aberrations while we attempt to tar all those of “other” groups with the worst examples we can cite.
How do we think? What implications does that have for how we learn? Do we teach our young people how to learn on their own?
I am all for having students being ”literate” in different kinds of knowledge, including those included in STEM. Yet far too many adults have not thought through many of their assumptions, which they pass on to young people. Let me give a couple of examples.
If you ask the average person, adult or child, why it is warmer in the United States during Summer as compared to Winter, s/he will probably respond that the Earth is closer to the sun. Rather than telling them they are wrong (and they are), ask them if it is Summer in the US, what season is it in Brazil or Australia, and most will recognize that it is Winter. But if the greater warmth is caused by closeness to the sun, that is not possible. At that point it becomes possible to correct the thinking to the correct notion of angle of the sun’s rays as a result of the tilt of the earth on its axis and which hemisphere is receiving more direct sunlight.
Similarly, if you ask most adults what BC means in terms of a date, they will correctly respond “Before Christ” but if you ask them what AD stands for, they will incorrectly respond “After Death.” At that point you could ask how then could you account for the 30-33 years of the life of Jesus of Nazareth? You can show that we go from 1 BC directly to 1 AD. That can get to the knowledge of Anno Domini as the explanation of AD, and that since Jesus is NOT “Lord” to more than half of the world’s population, why the alternative dating of BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) might be a better way of using a dating system that became common because of the superior military power of the European nations that colonized much of the rest of the world.
John Adams sent a letter to his wife Abigail on May 12, 1780, in which he offered words, which are very relevant to this discussion. I will bold the words that are those most commonly known, but I wanted to include the entire text for context.
The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Studies Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.
I am going to some what disagree with Adams — as he phrases things, one could justify not studying things like “Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine” on the grounds of the need to put our other needs, assumed to be of higher priority, in proper order.
I would in fact argue that the study of arts is fundamental to the understanding of human society. We often learn more through art and music and poetry and drama than we do from philosophical text. Those who would seek to manipulate us understand this well enough to use various artistic forms in propaganda. Think in our own time how much people’s understanding of things is shaped (often inaccurately) by things like representation in popular film. Do we teach our children how to understand how they are being manipulated? Do we teach them about point of view, and how that shapes representation? What images/representations are allowed? To what do we object, and why?
Similarly, most Americans have a very poor understanding of statistics (which can contribute to why so many play lotteries and make poor decisions in card games beyond the reading of the “tell” of their opponent). Understanding of what statistics means is something one would think is essential to the making of public policy, and yet I have seen legislative arguments and Court decisions which are shaped by very inaccurate understandings of data and of statistics.
Connected with this is the very notion of moral reasoning. When I was younger I used to argue that humans were not rational beings but rather rationalizing beings. We as a species have a tendency to reason in a fashion that supports what makes us most comfortable and/or which justifies our actions and positions. We have seen this exacerbated as media has fragmented in recent times, and people obtain information only from sources that tend narrowly to represent what they already believe or want to believe. The entire notion of media literacy is alien to far too many people. I used to try to address this with my AP Government student by having them look at what Fox News covered as compared to MS-NBC or CNN, or to read the coverage and the editorials of say The Wall Street Journal and/or The Washington TImes versus those of The New York Times and/or The Washington Post. Getting them to go even further, say to The Nation was very difficult. While I do not doubt that there are some media voices that are very much deliberately distorting, to my mind ignoring them for that reason does a disservice to learning how to interpret.
I have rambled quite a bit. I do not claim to have a cohesive or coherent approach to address the issues I identify.
I know that I have to be aware of my own prejudices. As a teacher, I have to model for my students how to think beyond those, which is only possible if one first steps back and recognizes that we all have limitations from prejudice (even if unintentional) and limitations of prior background. Again I remind you, is that yellow object with a sharpened point a writing instrument or a weapon? Or could it even be both? After all, I am most likely to use a pencil to write, but I know it can also be a lethal weapon.
Several other things relevant to this rambling discourse. Our students are always learning, sometimes far less from what we say than from what they see and experience. Most children start with a keen sense of fairness as they perceive it, and are very quick to note when adults do things that contradict what they attempt to teach. They also note when the words and actions of adults are unfair (in the minds of students) to some of those (students or fellow adults) who are the target of those words/actions.
Students are quite capable of learning when it interests them. Think of how quickly they learn the lyrics of songs/raps or even movie dialog. Among the tasks this therefore presents us with as teachers is how we invoke student interest, either by connecting with interests they already have, or showing them how different material or ways of looking at things is something that not only we can say is of value to them, but which they personally might find interesting or of value. Of course, to accomplish this, we as adults must have the time and the interest of finding out about each of our students. That means not only not having too many students (and in my teaching career I have had more than 190 at one time), but also having time even in the classroom to be doing things that demonstrate to the students that we in fact do care about them as individuals so that the masks and barrier they have learned to protect themselves become less obstacles and they become willing to trust us more — we have to show that we trust them first, which may include satisfying some of the natural curiosity they have towards us. Here I note that for someone as active online as am I this is something I could not avoid even were I inclined to it. When I was coming into a school in Fairfax County in midyear in 2015-16, when my predecessor told his students I was leaving and I was coming in, they almost all immediately went online to explore both Ken(neth) Bernstein and teacherken, and trust me, they found a lot. While I accept the importance of some professional distance between teachers as adults and students (we are not there to be their “friends”) I think far too many schools and districts go too far in the opposite direction.
I’d like to think I have been an effective teacher for most of those who have passed through my classrooms. Perhaps that is why so many either stay in contact with me and/or reach out later to reconnect. One I taught many years ago recently tried to get me to come to the school in which she is now teaching because she thought I could make a difference for those middle schoolers the way I had for her as a 9th grader. I am honored by that high opinion, and while I am going to a different school in the district, I will remain in contact with her, as I do with many of the now approaching 5 dozen former students who have themselves become classroom teachers.
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
Those words of Henry Adams are never far from my mind. That influence can be positive or negative. I think of one occasion when I had said something to a student out of anger and frustration. I realized I needed to calm down. I stepped out of the room, composed myself, came back into the room, and apologized to the student in front of the entire class, because my remarks had been in front of the entire class. As I was finishing I happened to glance at the faces of several students, who seemed to be amazed.
When I inquired, they told me they had never seen/heard a teacher apologize to student, for anything. My response was that we all make mistakes, and that we should own them and acknowledge them and make amends. I recently re-encountered one of the students from that class, and the first words directed to me were about that incident. For him, it was one of the most profound learning moments of his high school career. But think of what the memory might have been had I not acknowledged my error.
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
What we should be teaching our students, even beyond the content for which we are responsible, is how to monitor their own learning, their own predilections and prejudices which could limit their learning.
We should also be teaching them that they can expand their horizons, that they have choices.
In a sense, we are teaching them how to live by how we teach.
At least, from my two decades as a classroom teacher, that has been my experience.
Does this make any sense?
I cannot answer that.
I do not seek to universalize my own experience.
For me teaching should involve challenging all of us — teacher included — to think further, to reflect, to process….
So this is as much a series of notes to myself as it is an expression to those who choose to read my words.
Make of it what you will
Peace.