The Trouble With School
It will not surprise anybody that knows me or is a reader of this blog to hear me say that I have a complicated relationship with the public school system. I love teaching and learning but I feel like the educational system does a good job of making meaningful learning difficult, if not impossible. I consider myself an expert on school. It is true that I did not spend four years of my life in an institution of higher learning and did not get a Bachelor of Education. But I did spend my formative years educated in various public schools in small towns around the province of Saskatchewan. I also have spent many years employed by the public school system to educate many children as an educational assistant. I have observed the inner workings of a school, the various roles played by different people, I have seen how people teach and how people learn. I have two young children that I have sent to public school and have had the opportunity to see school from all sides of the educational fence. I have been the angry parent, the neglectful parent, the bored student who writes swears on her desk, the parent of the child that will not wear shoes, the advocate for a student, and the eater-of-words when things don’t go the way that I think that they should. I wear a lot of hats.
I could and really should write a book about all the ways that school fails people and society. But in the meantime I will just throw up the odd post to vent and see if anybody else in the blogosphere feels the same way.
Educators all talk too much. If you think of a classroom, what immediately comes to mind? Straight rows of desks, probably five rows of six desks, with the teachers’ desk at the front of the room. A chalkboard or possibly a whiteboard at the front of the room. More recently, smart boards have made their way into classrooms. I still haven’t seen one, except on youtube and I have no idea how the work, but there you go. Smart boards are a recent invention so they must be good. All the desks are facing the front of the room so that the students are all facing the teacher and waiting to have their young minds filled with wisdom.
I don’t think that this set-up is inherently evil, as long as the desks are occasionally moved around and the kids get to talk to each other once in a while. This traditional setup lends itself to the exact model of education that is so completely problematic: Teacher talks while students listen.
As a child, I used many coping mechanisms to deal with the boredom of listening to so many people talk on and on about mostly uninteresting things. Fiddling, fidgeting, passing notes, and pulling hair. Does anybody remember what the principal had to say during all those school assemblies? Nope, me neither. This also applies to a lot of the speeches and lectures that teachers present.
If you were to be completely honest, can you really claim that people are listening while teachers talk? By the way, I am including myself in this. I also talk waaaaaay too much. But I do have a proposal to cure this problem that currently has no name. I have decided to call it the 15-minute rule.
Never speak uninterrupted for more than 15 minutes. This includes reading out of books or giving speeches. Students must be allowed and encouraged to engage in class discussions and give feedback on whatever concept is being taught. How else can you tell if your students are getting anything out of your class?
I’m calling it the 15-minute rule.
What do you think? Is the 15-minute rule a good idea or am I full of bunk?
June 8th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Talking too much is a big problem at university, too. I taught a class last term and had a good time mixing things up and getting students involved. Next term, however, I’ll be teaching a class with 70-90 students and I’m more baffled about how to encourage the student involvement.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I think it’s a great rule, because I start to get bored or even nod off if I don’t get to interact with a class. That’s why I sat up front in most, so I could interact more easily with the professor.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
The best teacher I had in high school had the only classroom I can remember (except art) that didn’t have rows of desks. He somehow got those tables that can be put together to make a hexagon. I’m assuming he asked for them since no other non-art teachers had them.
I’m going to teacher’s college and this reminds me I met a prof already who’s into the history of education and he said a big change in education was when schools started having movable desks in the 20th century.