Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

In a report entitled, “Captive Kids,” the U.S. Consumers Union analyzed 111 different sets of educational materials sponsored by commercial enterprises, trade organizations and corporate backed nonprofit organizations.  The Consumers Union found that nearly 80% of the sponsored educational materials it analyzed “contained biased or incomplete information, promoting a viewpoint that favors consumption of the sponsor’s product or service or a position that favors the company or its economic agenda.” It concluded that this practice posed a “significant and growing threat to the integrity of education in America.”  Unfortunately, a school district’s endorsement of these materials and pressuring teachers to use them comes at the cost of teaching children the critical thinking skills of being able to scrutinize marketing messages objectively.  Children are often not able to discriminate between genuine education and the manipulative messages of corporations.  Many assume that what they are taught in school is the truth and one area that perpetuates myths and outright lies is social studies.

Is there a connection between the increasing corporate invasion into the classroom and how textbooks portray the history of this country?  Essentially, the question is this.  Do the corporations which publish social studies textbooks and market them to school districts for mass purchase at $50 or more each purposefully choose authors who present a bias in their writing that downplays or omit events that portray the United States in a less than favorable light.  James Loewen, in his book, Lies My Teacher Told Me:  Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, makes the following observation, “…textbooks seldom use the past to illuminate the present.  They portray the past as a simple-minded morality play.  ‘Be a good citizen’ is the message that textbooks extract from the past. ‘You have a proud heritage.  Be all that you can be.  After all, look at what the United States has accomplished.’  While there is nothing wrong with optimism, it can become something of a burden for students of color, children of working-class parents, girls who notice the dearth of female historical figures, or members of any group that has not achieved socioeconomic success.  The optimistic approach prevents any understanding of failure other than blaming the victim.  Students exit history textbooks without having developed the ability to think coherently about social life.  As a result of all of this, most high school seniors are hamstrung in their efforts to analyze controversial issues in our society.”  Is it intentional that school districts have presented our high school students with a bland narrative of history that does little more than provide them with selected facts?  Is there a corporate conspiracy?

Rather than being designed to prepare students for democratic life, most schools are more like benign dictatorships in which all decisions are made for them, albeit in what schools may perceive to be in “their best interests.”  They are more often organized around issues of control than of collaboration or consultation (Nieto p. 105).  One important consideration in any collaborative venture is the question:  Who decides?

A colleague, good friend, and university administrator puts it this way. “It is not altogether clear where great ideas come from or how to get them.  Often great ideas come out of the head of one individual, the solitary ruminating alone in the office, or the shower for that matter.  Great ideas for teaching classes often are born of dialogue; they have their origin in discussion as we pointed out at the beginning of the book.  The idea is born when people begin to talk.  A team comes into play to nurture the idea, elaborate it, and deliver it.” ( Dr. Michael Anderson, Wayne State University)

Author, educator Alfie Kohn suggests we should engage in dialogue with our students, parents, and teachers and ask them why they are not spending more time thinking about ideas and playing a more active role in the process of learning.  In such an environment, they are not only more likely to be engaged with what they are doing but also to do it better.

Let me provide you with a few comments from students who were members of a class that bucked the trend.  It was a team-taught interdisciplinary class of United States History and American Literature.  The two instructors, an American Literature teacher and I, presented a curriculum that integrated our two subjects, developed abstract and critical thinking skills, and engaged students to view experiences from multiple perspectives.  The class was two hours long with the first class size of around fifty students and within a year doubled to one hundred.  The teachers had to move to a larger room and with some trepidation on the part of the associate principal responsible for establishing the class schedules, created two classes to accommodate the increased demand.

Here are some of the student comments:

I really think that this class has done a lot more for me than I could have ever imagined.  I have made a lot of decisions in my life that I know I would have never been able to make without the encouragement that I received in this class.  I have gained a greater respect for not only myself but also every other student in this class.

            The class has changed the way my mind works, therefore changing everything I do and the way in which I do it.  Once your mind has been fixed like that, there's no going back.  I truly think that you have installed a program or system in our minds of how to determine what's right for everyone.

            All in all I think that this class has taught me more than any class I have ever taken.  I have been forced to learn about the most important subject ever, yet for some reason it has never been taught in school!!  I have been forced to learn about myself.  Something I think I have wanted to do for a long time, yet have never been sure how.

           

            Then came the “Zinn” book, which changed my mind  forever.  When I first started to read the book, I hated it.  I hated it because it ruined my image of our nation.  But I kept reading.  Soon I got angry along with many others because we had never been told the truth.”   

 

            Over thirty years ago, Neil Postman wrote in his book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, “The body of custom, convention, and reputable standards exercises such an oppressive effect on creative minds that new developments in a field often originate outside the area of respectable practice”.  What this means is that the school system is so entrenched in tradition that change and creativity in teaching does not originate within the system itself but rather, from observers of the system, often from progressive minded teachers. This is, however, one of the stumbling blocks in creating a democratic learning environment.  According to Deborah Meier, when starting the Central Park East secondary school, “…the most serious barrier facing us was the dearth of experience with progressive education at the secondary school level anywhere in the country, even in private or suburban schools…” You can almost not blame teachers for this.  In many public high schools teachers see, on the average, 140-150 students a day usually 30 at a time for five, fifty minute periods.  Then, at the semester, they get another similar load.  There is not much time to develop working relationships with young adults but, in those rare classes where something special does happen, the relationships are ended after eighteen weeks. Can you think of any “real world” work environment where you change personnel supervisors so often during the course of a day and where you are required to hourly shift your focus from one topic to another which rarely have anything in common?  Yet, somehow, this is the way public schools are organized and we are making conscious decisions to subject our children to this type of academic terrorism.  In a climate survey at a local high school, one of the questions was, “Students like to come to school each day.” For white students, 54% disagreed.  For students of color, 87% disagreed.  Can you blame them?  Apparently we need to do something with the system.

An integrated seamless curriculum classroom can encourage students to explore issues and problems of personal relevance, both existing and emerging.  Essentially, it challenges students to make new connections to rethink what they know and do.  Instead of artificially dividing the world into “subjects” and using textbooks and seat work, this model immerses students in an enriched environment that reflects the complexities of life.  This provides a holistic context for learning that leads to a greater ability to make and remember connections and to solve problems (Kovalik and Olsen 1994).  Indeed, a number of researchers have concluded that interdisciplinary instruction results in students making connections among subject areas, increased students’ positive attitudes toward school and their self-concepts (Schubert and Melnick, Lawton).  Perhaps this model may increase student desires to come to school each day.

The interdisciplinary approach is a powerful alternative, integrating teaching and problem solving that allows students to work in meaningful situations as they examine an issue, gather data, research relevant information and resources, contact experts in the field for current findings, work collaboratively to divide and share tasks, and test possible solutions.    For this proposal to be successful, students should be prepared with essential skills before they reach the secondary level, but even if they lack some required skills their deficits will become learning issues that the teachers and students will solve together.  This is not, however, advocating more emphasis on the process than on the content material; but merely reaches an effective balance where content problems drive the students’ daily work. 

Students can access knowledge and information from multiple disciplines as needed.  There are not arbitrary lines delineating one discipline form another (Nagel, p.12).  In this design, the curriculum is centered around issues/problems that have some significant social importance.  Students work together in teams to integrate multi-dimensional knowledge.  From this integration, new knowledge is developed by students thus creating an environment of new experiences and new meanings.  Students are able to present their learning using Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences (http://howardgardner.com/multiple-intelligences/)  and are assessed by criteria they have previously developed with the assistance of their instructors.

As students get to high school they begin to question the rationale for continued, active participation.  By doing math for math sake is akin to doing the facts of history only, neither one motivates the student to understand, only to accomplish the tasks.   This idea is usually expressed by students as follows, “Why do I need to know this”?  This is an important question that must be answered through the curriculum and teaching process.   There is a belief that the “when will I ever need this” question ought to be answered by using “real” problems that demonstrate applications, thus providing a rationale that students can understand.  The American public and parents should ask themselves if this is how they want their children, future leaders, and citizens to learn their lessons or if a “just the facts” approach is sufficient.  

To end this chapter, there is a quote from a student who was in the two hour block class I taught with my colleague.  The evolution of our class, American Experience, will be discussed in the next chapter.

“Throughout the semester I have learned a lot about myself.  Many of my previous beliefs have been challenged, some have changed and some haven’t.  There were many issues that I never realized existed before, so I never thought about them.  In one class semester I have been faced with harsh realities dealing with all of these issues.  My view of the world is probably more confused now than it has ever been, due to the complex doors that have been opened.”