Talking Points vs. Perspective

I’ve been having a bit of writer’s block lately when it comes to this blog.  I’ve also been doing a lot of soul searching when it comes to both my writing about education and my teaching career in general.  I’ve been able to overcome the writer’s block a little–there are a couple of posts that will be forthcoming before I take a break until after the New Year (well, provided the Mayans aren’t right)–but I still find myself doing a lot of that soul searching, which I’m not sharing a lot of for a couple of reasons.  One is that it’s very personal, another is that it’s nothing I am ready to share at the moment, and another is that I’ve found myself very angry at times.

Back at the end of October, I wrote a post, “Connected Educator Disconnect” wherein I expressed my frustration with how #edchat and the like have made me feel like I’m a bad teacher–it seems that everyone is setting the world on fire but me.  I haven’t really been on #edchat since and have only done one or two tweetchats altogether (though part of that is due to being too busy), and have cut back on the number of articles and blog posts I have been reading as well.  So I haven’t been wanting to post a lot of my thoughts because I’ve been quite frustrated and I didn’t think it was constructive for me to express my anger, especially since I didn’t feel like being eviscerated by certain bloggers if I dared expressed frustration with students.

Which I don’t, really.  Oh yeah, there’s the standard-issue things that annoy me but this year, my classes have been all right.  I’d rather not go off on administration, other teachers, or policy, because I’m trying to maintain some modicum of professionalism here, and that’s not what bugs me.  What bugs me is that the same rhetoric I’ve been hearing for the better part of the last couple of years still persists and that’s what sends my blood pressure spiking when I’m reading my usual blogroll.  Because the talking points never, ever, ever change:  I’m a cog in a 19th-Century industrial model system that is abusing children, stealing dreams, and destroying the country.  I don’t have a monopoly on knowledge.  College is unecessary.  There are many examples of students out there who go on their own and don’t need the system to succeed.  Oh, and I make too much money and have too much time off.

Though I honestly dismiss the writer when those talking points come up, there is some truth here and there to what I read.  I’m working in a system that is far, far, far from perfect and I am trying my best to enrich the 100 or so young  minds I encounter on a daily basis and make them feel like they’re getting something out of my class.  But then I read articles like “In New Castle, Pa., trying to outrun poverty,” which was in today’s Washington Post and I feel that things are put in perspective.

Reading 9/11

The front page of The Washington Post from September 12, 2001. Image courtesy of The Newseum.

Around this time of year, there are a good numbers of articles and blog posts about how to teach about September 11, 2001, especially to a generation of students that doesn’t know what happened or may know what happened but doesn’t have much of a memory of it.  It’s an issue that makes total sense–eleven years passing may not seem like an incredibly long time to someone like me who was 24 on that day and is 35 now, but for the high school sophomores I teach, eleven years ago was preschool.  Being the father of a kid in kindergarten, I know that when you’re four or five years old, you don’t fully comprehend what’s going on in the world, so I can’t expect to have my students share deep reflections on where they were that day.

I have always felt that it’s necessary to teach about that event, and teach it in a way that is more than simple lip-service patriotism or a special moment of silence or whatever your average school will do on an otherwise ordinary September 11.  As an English teacher, doing so isn’t necessarily in my domain; after all, this is probably the jurisdiction of a history teacher.  But the journalism teacher that’s still in me has always felt the need to really take a look at the day’s events because it was such a huge media event, and one that really tested the mettle of those chosen to report the news in the way that a presidential election (which is more or less the same story every four years) doesn’t.

Virginia’s changing of our SOLs actually provided me with a chance to do so these past couple of years, as the Dept. of Ed. has added a standard that addresses “media literacy.”  My colleagues seemed hesitant when we first talked about it, but I had the opposite reaction–in fact, my eyes probably lit up when I thought about how I could crack open my old journalism lesson plan binder and see what I could repurpose for English.  I created a small unit for my advanced English class that I called “Reading 9/11.”  A condensed version of a unit that I once did with my journalism I students a number of years ago, I set out not to study the history of the event, but the way its story was told.

My goal in crafting the unit has been to get my students to consider where information comes from, and the quality of those sources.  Added to “What happened?” and “What do you remember?” were questions like, “What makes a good source?, “How is this being reported?,” “What is the value in reading different types of sources to look at the same thing?,” and “How have these events been interpreted?”  This, hopefully will lead to maybe not a full understanding of the events of the day (which requires a significant amount of research), but at least an understanding and appreciation of the scope of 9/11.

I took five days of class for work and discussion, although I assigned all of the reading ahead of time (I tend to do this in advanced English so that my students have the opportunity to plan and manage their time), and tried my best to take a back seat to their own “discovery” of the events (with some guidance on my part–I am still allowed to do that, right?).  Here’s how it broke down:

Does AIDS education need another look?

The cover of Time, August 12, 1985.

I first saw the word “AIDS” on the cover of Time from August 12, 1985.  I was eight years old and had no idea what AIDS was or what I was seeing in that cover photo, but it seemed important.  A few months later, I’d see a story about Rock Hudson dying of the disease on Entertainment Tonight; again, I still didn’t know what it was but since the program about movie stars was taking the time to report about it, it seemed important.  Three years later, I’d learn quite a bit more in my fifth grade class when my class took part in the first wave of AIDS education that was attached to the Family Life Curriculum that our district had introduced that year.

This Family Life Curriculum–which was basically a series of filmstrips featuring rather sterile-looking diagrams of human reproductive systems and dull narration about our growing bodies and how a baby is made punctuated by loud beeps that told us when to go to the next frame–was pretty controversial when it was introduced in my district, or at least that’s the impression I got in 1988.  There were at least a few meetings that the district held to introduce the curriculum to parents, and I remember that my sister’s friend was not allowed to go to school on those days because her mother–a born-again Christian–would not allow her to take part in sex ed.  To be honest, the sex stuff was pretty tame and the only reason it really had an impact on me was that I would wind up studying human reproduction every year for the next three years courtesy of Family Life, then science and health classes.

But the AIDS lesson had a little bit more of an impact.  By the time I was in the fifth grade, the disease had received much more media coverage and there was a solid push for AIDS awareness to help stem the public health crisis.  In fact, the education I received at the hands of my public school about AIDS was incredibly thorough–we even had an “AIDS Awareness Day” in school two years in a row.  That was  not without its share of drama (apparently one teacher decided to take 45 minutes to preach from the Bible and talk about the evils of homosexuals) or boredom (a presentation of pieces of the AIDS quilt is fascinating, but when it rolls on for more than an hour, you get a little restless), but I have to say that by the time I was a senior I had raised money for and participated in three LIAAC AIDS Walks, and really felt prepared for when I would start having sex (read: I bought the strongest condoms they made).

What I’ve learned from UVa. (so far, anyway)

Earlier this afternoon, ousted University of Virginia president Teresa Sullivan was reinstated by unanimous vote at a Board of Rectors meeting.  Being local to Charlottesville and married to a Wahoo, I was one of the many cheering the results of this meeting and I have to say that I also agree with Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post:

the U-Va. story of the last few weeks is really about the school community — the 99 percent who had been left out of the decision to fire her — successfully rising up to demand their leader back. University of Virginia faculty, students, alumni, administrators and others refused to go along with the secret decision by the board, and with a voice loud and persistent enough, won the day.

But as my mind often wanders when it comes to education, I began to think of my role as an educator and what this might mean for people in my position.

You know, because IT’S ALL ABOUT ME.  Just wanted to get that out of the way.

Okay, seriously … as this has been going down these past couple of weeks and all of us around here have been following it in the local media, I kept thinking about how Helen Dragas, the Board of Rectors head represented everything about the culture of accountability gone wrong.  She was, to me, the personification of what happens when every blowhard (who is usually on the internet or in your local paper’s letters to the editor column) who thinks that teachers have it too easy gets his or her way.  It was accountability on a whim, so to speak … an abuse of power by someone in charge because … well, I’m still not sure why.

I still think that, but as the University moves on, I go back to that eternal question, “What can we, as educators, learn from this?”

I have a simple, three word answer:  cover your ass.

This was a victory for the people, sure, but if Sullivan were your typical teacher at a typical school district, I’m not so sure there would have been a massive protest to get her job back.  In fact, I’m not so sure there would have been much of a protest at all, because she wouldn’t have made a public statement about it (and if she had, at least to her students, she would have been accused of “using them” the same way we’re often accused of “using them” when it comes to budget battles) and even if there was a bit of an uproar at a board of education meeting, reinstatement would have definitely been an uphill battle.

Of course, this is why it seems that your typical school district seems to be moving toward more quantifiable criteria for teacher evaluation.  Call me paranoid, but the “accountability” that people get so hyped up about is clearly “the ability to be fired” so as a result, it’s time to come up with numbers that justify the firing.

Here, btw, is where the typical teacher can chime in with “tests don’t test learning” and “I’m not just test scores.”

And I’m not just test scores.  You’re not just test scores.  We’re not just test scores.  And there are principals and other administrators out there who know this.  But there are plenty who do not.  So we all have to be careful.

One of the most important things to know when you work just about anywhere, whether it be a school or a company, is the politics of the place.  Yes, you can have ideals and big ideas and dreams and all of those things that you tweet about on a regular basis, and you don’t really have to compromise them.  What you have to do, however, is be aware of who holds what power and what you have to do to make sure you aren’t the next example of their accountability practices.  If this means having good test scores, it means having good test scores.  If it means visible use of technology in your classroom, it means visible use of technology in your classroom.

It shouldn’t have to mean that you completely change who you are for their sake, of course.  There’s a difference between playing the game and being a whore.  But the smarts that come with saviness are a must now more than ever.

Commencement Speaker to Class of 2012: Drop Dead

No, commencement is life’s great ceremonial beginning, with its own attendant and highly appropriate symbolism. Fitting, for example, for this auspicious rite of passage, is where we find ourselves this afternoon, the venue. Normally, I avoid clichés like the plague, wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, but here we are on a literal level playing field. That matters. That says something. And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all. Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same. And your diploma… but for your name, exactly the same.

All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special.

You are not special. You are not exceptional.

The headline says “Commencement speaker blasts students,” and at a glance it seems that David McCullough, Jr.’s speech at Wellesley High School in Massachussetts was doing so, spending the first half of his commencement address pointing out how not unique the members of the class of 2012 are.

It’s the type of sentiment that teacher-hating bloggers out there snatch up and butter before Hoovering it like a certain orange tabby does lasagna.

But the whole speech is actually brilliant, the kind that should be passed on and on because it is empowering and reading it here on my last day of school (with nobody in the building), I definitely had a “Hells yeah!” reaction.

You can read it at the Washington Post:  “Commencement Speaker Blasts Students” (WaPo’s The Answer Sheet Blog, 6/8/12)

The competition to steal your child’s summer

In the last week or so, as my fellow edubloggers (is that the term now?) and I prepare for the annual rite of summer vacation, I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of posts about summer homework, whether it be the summer reading that I and my fellow English teachers prescribe or math work that teachers like my late, great calculus teacher prescribed.  The posts seem to be clearly in one of two camps:  there is the “here’s some reading suggestions” group and the “summer work steals their time” group.  I wrote a post in the former a couple of weeks back, sharing books that I loved and thought my students might like.  I’ve read plenty of posts in the latter, which tend to have the same sentiment: by asking students to read a book over the summer, you are “stealing their learning” or something like that.

I can’t tell from personal experience whether or not that’s true.  I was always a student who did his summer work and never felt that it intruded on my fun, unless I procrastinated until the very end of August and had to cram it in to a day or two, in which case that is my fault more than my teachers’.  I remember summer recreation at the old junior high school where I would make crafts, play dodge ball, and basically be babysat for the better part of 6-8 weeks when I was in early elementary school.  I also remember two years’ worth of summer enrichment classes at my district’s junior high when I was in the fourth and fifth grade, learning about video production and computers (and going to see that godawful Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, Starlight Express).  But I also remember summers spent sitting on my ass up until my father more or less forced me and my sister to leave the house by turning a dehumidifier on in the den and therefore making it hotter than it was already.  And then, when I was a teenager, getting a job.

But … learning?  All the time?  I never really looked at it that way, and now as a parent I do have to wonder if that is a challenge I’m supposed to accept.  Do I make sure that every single day of my son’s summer vacation is spent learning something, or can we just play with his action figures (I seemed to do plenty of that when I was on summer break as a kid, btw)?  Do we, as teachers, knowing all–or at least some–of the ins and outs of educational theory, put too much pressure on the summer even if we have a disdain for summer work?  Do we really assume too much of what learning will happen on its own?  I mean, I had plenty of “learning-filled” summers, but I also had plenty of “lazy-assed” summers … so which was it?

Plus, for those of us who want summer to be an enriching experience, it might not be that easy.  My son is attending a summer day camp through his school and it was not very tough to get him enrolled–we just asked him if he wanted to go and then signed him up–but Dana Milbank in today’s Washington Post points out that if you really want your kid to have a full experience this summer, you should have taken care of it six months ago (“Welcome to Camp Competitive,” WaPo 6/3/12):

It was Jan. 27 — and already too late for summer camp.

This called for handling the matter in a uniquely Washington way: paying to play. The Smithsonian’s camps, it turned out, would give a one-day head start to register for their camps if you “become a donor to the Smithsonian Associates at the Contributor level ($300 or higher).”

Eleven hundred dollars later, including $800 for the camp, and an hour waiting in the call queue the moment the registration period opened, my daughter was accepted for two weeks of camp. It was Feb. 8.

When you have a culture that is dedicated to giving kids as much as possible and not letting students miss any opportunity available, the side effect is cutthroat competition, especially among those who can afford such things, and before another blogger writes another polemic about summer work, I think he or she should think long and hard about who is stealing from whom.

Dead men do tell tales

In this 1992 file photo, Frank Edward Ray stands in Chowchilla, Calif., by the bus from which he and 26 students were kidnapped. Ray, the school bus driver hailed as a hero for helping 26 students escape after three men kidnapped the group and buried the entire bus underground in 1976 has died. He was 91. (AP Photo/Merced Sun Star, File)

I started reading obituaries on a fairly regular basis back when I was in college.  One of my professors had the class subscribing to the New York Times on a daily basis (this was in the days before the NYT had a digital presence) and another one of my professors shared what he thought were captivating obituaries with my senior writing seminar class on a regular basis.  I believe it was under the auspices of “Somebody interesting dies every day.”

Every Sunday, I get the Washington Post delivered to my house.  It’s a hold-over from an earlier time for me, in a way–plus, I clip coupons–because when I get the chance, I do like sitting down with a cup of coffee and a newspaper (and there’s something satisfying about washing newsprint off your hands.  Call me old-fashioned, a luddite, or non-innovative, but that’s just me).  Anyway, Sundays are when I leaf through the Metro section and read the obituaries.  Usually most of the pieces (the obits themselves, not the death notices, btw) are mildly interesting and barely keep my attention beyond the first couple of paragraphs.  But today had a great one, that of Ed Ray, a bus driver who once saved a group of students after they’d been kidnapped and buried (“Calif. bus driver who helped 26 students escape kidnappers in 1976 dies at age 91″):

“I remember him making me feel safe,” said Jodi Medrano, who was 10 when three men hijacked the school bus and stashed the group in a hot, stuffy storage van in a rock quarry.

Medrano held a flashlight as the bus driver worked with older students to stack mattresses, force an opening and remove the dirt covering the van so they could escape after 16 hours underground. She never left Ray’s side during the ordeal.

The entire story itself–recapped in the article–is so incredible you’d swear it was fiction.  And it reminded me that obituaries can make for great reading in English class.  It’s been a while since I did anything with obits–not since I was teaching journalism, to be honest–but seeing what a fascinating story exists in Ed Ray, I wonder if this could be a gateway to a really cool research project or something on how “ordinary” or “everyday” people are as extraordinary and important to our society as celebrities and other figures.

It’s food for thought at this point as I gather up what’s left of my year and think about what I’d like to do in class next year.  But I highly recommend reading the obituaries every once in a while, especially since you don’t know what you’re going to find out.

Shakespeare doesn’t matter anymore

Recently, Alexandra Petri wrote a column for the Washington Post entitled, “On the Bard’s birthday, is Shakespeare still relevant?”  It’s a great article and I suggest you click through the link and read it.  Now, I don’t know what got into me this afternoon while I was reading the article on my lunch period, but my response to this particular article came pretty quickly–so quickly, in fact, that it’s hard to read what I scribbled on the back of a detention referral during the last ten minutes of lunch.  Reading it a little closer, it seems pretty defensive of the Bard, but then when I think of it, in this day of social media, maybe the question finally has an affirmative answer.  Maybe we can finally stand up and say: Shakespeare is irrelevant!

And he is NOT innovative!

Because come on, Juliet did not text Romeo that she was faking it (though Romeo couldn’t check a pulse and since when can a teenage boy tell that she’s faking it?) so it has no meaning now. Because it’s not savvy and does not use 21st Century skills and therefore …

THEREFORE … SHAKESPEARE MUST HAVE BEEN STUPID!

And why should Juliet die anyway?  Don’t you know that heroines don’t die now; they just come back to sparkle?

And what about plain Kate? You know, Bonny Kate, Kate the curst, Kate the pure that everyone hates? Does she not now nobly sacrifice herself for  fair and prim Bianca, instead of being dragged kicking and screaming down the aisle?

Oh, it’s all so irrelevant!

If Shakespeare were smart and savvy, Olivia would be checking into Foursquare and checking her brother’s Facebook status so they don’t get mixed up, and even if they did, she’d be very good at tweeting about Orsino.

And don’t get me started on that group that falls asleep in the forest.  We’re supposed to believe that there’s something magical about it?  They obviously did what any other group of kids do in the woods these days–drink, drink, pop the painkillers stolen from their parents’ medicine cabinet, and drink.  Oh, and post the footage to YouTube.  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to dream.

(Of course there’s nowhere to dream, the public school system stole that from them)

Anyway, we are too smart of a modern (or is it post-modern or post-post-modern?) society to believe sarcastic ad hominem statements made at funerals, and nobody in our modern culture would ever use underhanded means to get and keep what they want.  Power does not corrupt, siblings do not fight over inheritance, and people do not get into debt so deeply that paying back said debt feels like literally giving part of themselves over to someone else.  Our society is beyond all that.

So he’s irrelevant.  Not innovative.  Not authentic.

Oh, and he’s also hard to understand, and it’s not fair to my students that they have to unwrap his words.

Completely unfair.

Totally.

#irrelevant

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
‘Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

On the Washington Post’s Spring Cleaning

Every year, the Washington Post‘s Sunday Outlook section runs their “Spring Cleaning” feature, where different people weigh in on ten things that they think should basically be done away with.  This year, two of those things exist within the sphere of education:  the 3 p.m. school day and grades.   Both seem like things worth getting rid of, but I thought since I was in the mood to do so, I’d take a closer look at them (note:  I’ve summarized the arguments very briefly.  I’ll link to the appropriate pieces so you can read the full argument), because while it seems like a good idea to get rid of them, I’m not so sure they’re going anywhere anytime soon.

The 3 p.m. School Day

The Argument:  It’s based on an agrarian economy (ironic considering how many “industrial model” arguments I’ve heard lately), it puts unnecessary stress on parents, it creates latchkey kids who tend to get into trouble

Why It Should Happen:

1. As a parent myself, I know how finding after-school care for a young kid can be both tough and expensive.  If the school day were more aligned to the average 9-5 workday (a 9-6 day, perhaps?), then the cost and other problems associated with after-care might not be as hefty.
2. As a high school teacher, I know how comatose teenagers are at 8:00 a.m., especially in a school district where the buses start running as early at 6:30 because they have long distances to travel (I teach in a rural area).  If we shift to a later starting and end time, perhaps they’ll be more alert or have more time in the morning to wake up.
3. By making the day longer, we can add more time for students to eat lunch or have recess.  I don’t know about you, but wolfing my food down inside of 25 minutes isn’t exactly my idea of a fun way to eat.
4. Lengthening class time from 45 minutes to a full hour (if you’re on this type of schedule) might allow for more engaging and differentiated instruction where teachers and students can feel like they’re getting their hands dirty without constantly looking at the clock to see if it’s time to clean up.

Why It Might Not Happen:

1. Well, if you’re one of those people who complains about schools being testing factories, you probably don’t want kids to spend more time in the testing factories.
2. Employers would be upset because their cheap labor is no longer available.  You think I’m joking, but here in Virginia we have a law nicknamed the “King’s Dominion Law,” which basically mandates that school start after Labor Day so that teenagers are able to finish working out the entire summer and therefore support tourism.  With a 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. finish time, your average McDonald’s or Starbucks might not be too happy that they have to hire actual adults who will want to work for more than minimum wage.
3. After-school sports would start too late.  Again, that sounds silly but look around your average school and its culture and see how important sports are to said culture.  I’m sure that you could pull those athletes out of school early to participate in sports, but then that would perpetuate the “special status” that too many jocks unjustly deserve.
4. You’d have to pay teachers more.  And you know we can’t have that.

Grades

The Argument:  The idea of grades takes away from real effort.  If a student gets a bad grade, it’s demoralizing and discouraging.  If all a good student is working toward is good grades, then they’re not going to give any extra effort.

Why It Should Happen:

1. I often have problems with rubrics that break down tasks into numbers.  Why did your paper get an 85 and not an 88?  Uh … because of some idiotic formula?  Because a number has to be there?
2. Grades often lead to b.s. work, especially in English.  We might spend weeks without any graded work because we’re discussing stories or a novel and then … well, here comes the progress report, so I probably should give them something to do so there will be a grade in the book.  Time for a worksheet, kids!
3. Grades shouldn’t be the main motivator anyway.  There’s something to be said for enjoying the learning process or feeling good that you’ve accomplished something no matter what the letter on the report card says.  Some realize this sooner than others.
4. I’d like to feel that true feedback matters and true feedback is in the words that are on the paper as opposed to the number in the gradebook.

Why It Might Not Happen:

1. Parents expect them.  When you don’t have a lot of grades in your gradebook, parents will question whether or not you’re doing anything in class.
2. Standardized testing is so important to bureaucrats and politicians and Pearson that it’s hard to see where they could function without scores and data.
3. Piggybacking onto that, without grades, where are the measurables?  How are we objectively going to know how a student is doing in his classes?
4. This is a culture change that goes beyond just schools.  Think about how the profit motive and other sort of rewards-based systems are the basis of our entire society, from the economy to an individual’s social life.  People take jobs because of salary; I’ve had students refuse to do anything if it wasn’t graded.  That’s an attitude that is ingrained deeper that anyone thinks and probably one of the hardest things to change.

So yes, another clue into the massive headache that is “fixing” education.  Anyone got any Advil?

The Paper Problem

Image by ilovebutter from Flickr (CC licensed)

The best thing I read yesterday was on Washington Post’s “Answer Sheet” blog.  Valerie Strauss posted something written by Steven Horowitz, an economics professor from St. Lawrence University.  Called “A guide to writing an academic paper”, it is a quick-and-dirty look (okay, it’s 4,000 words long, so not exactly quick-and-dirty, but you get the gist) at writing your average term paper:

Though it may seem excessive to write almost 4,000 words on how to write better papers, the reality is that writing papers in college (and the sort of writing you will do for the rest of your life) is not the same as you were asked to do in high school.  My purpose in writing this guide is to help make you into better writers and to help you become better able to articulate your perspective….The point is not to give you pages of rules and regulations, but to give you the things you need to know to create and present your ideas in a legitimate and persuasive way.

He walks through each of the different parts of the paper and what constitutes a good paper, even getting into the details of proper formatting (the best moment comes when he says: “Automatically numbered pages.  Figure out how to do it in Word.”).  And it gets to the heart of the truly good academic paper: one that is clearly organized, whose thesis is exact, and that supports said thesis with thorough proof that is properly cited.

So naturally, being a high school English teacher, I had to ask myself where his need to write a 4,000-word piece on how to write an academic paper comes from.  Why can’t college freshmen write?

I have two guesses as to the answer.  One is obvious, and that’s standardized testing.  If you look at the way classes across various subjects have changed due to an increased focus on passing state tests, you can definitely see that the idea of the academic paper would fall by the wayside.  But in all honesty, spending any more than a couple of sentences complaining about testing is kind of a waste of time because it’s taking the easy way out.

Besides, testing has been around for so long that teachers like myself are trying to find a way to teach what’s important in spite of the test (and even in spite of how tests have “damaged” incoming students), so it’s not like I am going to throw my hands in the air and not attempt it because it’s “not on the test.”

But again … why?  Why is it so hard for them to grasp a concept that I have to say (not to brag … okay, to brag) that while I didn’t completely grasp in high school, at least had a decent amount of practice in (full disclosure: my big paper in my Ancient World History/Lit/Philosophy course my first semester of freshman year was a disaster; then again, that may have more to do with the fact that the semester itself was a disaster)?

I blame technology.

Now, I’m not going to go on some rant about Wikipedia in an effort to sound like every other scared English teacher out there.  I happen to really like Wikipedia.  I’d never cite it–for the same reasons I don’t cite the World Book Encyclopedia–but I still like it.  Where I see part of the problem is in this push for project-based “meaningful” work for students when they are tackling large subjects.  In theory, it’s a good idea because it seems more engaging and students can get their hands dirty and work with media that are better suited to their strengths.  But in practice, it has resulted in a downgrading of the paper to something that is considered as much of a relic as the desks-in-rows “industrial model” lecture-based classroom that is the ire of all reformers and innovators (at least that’s what the talking points seem to be).

It’s also resulted in countless bad PowerPoint presentations that feature groups of students standing in front of a class reading off paragraphs worth of information they have crammed onto a slide (and probably copied and pasted from Wikipedia, mind you), a clear demonstration of … well, that they know how to copy and paste and read what is on a slide.

I know that sounds flip, and I know that the point of doing something like a research project or a paper isn’t the end product, but teaching or developing the skills that lead to that end product, but if we keep throwing out the individually written academic paper in favor of PowerPoints or Prezis or something creative with iMovie or a Twitter feed, we aren’t necessarily preparing those who want to go to college for what their professors will expect.

And yes, I can hear the voices of protest: not everyone goes to college, our job isn’t to prepare kids for college, papers aren’t the future.  But when you have colleges like CUNY overloaded with remedial writing courses and professors complaining to the heavens that their students can’t properly write a basic research paper, talking about all those new things and collaboration sounds more defensive than anything.

We need to make sure we don’t lose it completely.  For my part, by the time my advanced English 10 students leave the classroom in June, they will have written at least four academic papers (in addition to at least two personal essays) because many of them have their eyes set on AP-level coursework and then college, so I would like for them to at least not be completely shocked when they’re assigned a 4-5 pager on The Aeneid three weeks into their very first semester.

For more information on how to write a research paper, check this out.