Sunday, May 4, 2014

Letter from Instructional Jail

Letter from Instructional Jail

At the end of a past school year, my district’s social studies consultant informed me that there is only one way to teach U.S. History in Lincoln Public Schools; the traditional past to present.  She wrote, “There is no published research that supports the teaching of high school introductory survey courses in history in ‘reverse’ as a successful strategy to impact student achievement.”  I wrote her back on asking her to produce research and quantitative data that supported her claims that the traditional way of instruction has an impact on student achievement.  She never replied.  Is it because there is no data to support her claims? 
  I appealed to the district’s curriculum director.  She wrote a letter saying, “Teaching the curriculum in a different sequence than is prescribed by the curriculum is not considered an instructional strategy.”  She went on to say, “The policy on academic freedom (Policy 4860) states that instructional staff must teach the assigned curriculum using district-approved materials and research-based strategies.”  If there are no “research-based strategies” to support district claims then is Lincoln Public Schools not in compliance with and is violating its’ own policies?  Should the district be required to produce evidence that a linear-sequential, past to present instructional methodology is responsible for having an impact on student achievement?  Or, is this an instance where the policy makers are not compelled to follow their own dictates?
I appealed to the assistant superintendent and she told me that she would consider my request to “deviate” from the curriculum.  She eventually ruled that I had to comply with the earlier decisions.  Interesting that even at this level there is an apparent disregard of the district’s academic freedom policy.  In the district’s academic freedom policy there are also provisions for, “…a balance of biases, divergent points of view, and provide an opportunity for exploration by the students into various sides of the issue(s).”  Is not what I did a “divergent point of view?”  Apparently not, but it was certainly deviant behavior.
  I wrote a letter to my representative on the school board and he suggested I contact the superintendent.  I wrote her and she responded asking me to set a date in the afternoon at 3:30 p.m. or 4:00 p.m.  So, what was I doing that caused three district officials to try to suppress my instructional approach?  .
YO-YO is nothing unique, other than the name.  I taught using a bi-directional approach to the past.  There were no indications from the district office that what I was doing for years was, in any way, a deviation.  I started with the present and grounded students in what they know about the “now.”  I wanted them to try to understand the factors that influence the way they think.  Parents, spiritual beliefs, friends, media, and myriad other factors that help determine their sense of reality.  Then I took them back to a point in time of the not so distant past and we moved forward through time until we got to the present.  Essentially, students came to understand that they are the living effects of past causes.  In other words, cause and effect are reversed.  Then we went back to another point in time and moved forward so students were constantly re-engaging concepts and events they had previously learned.  The process was repeated until we reached the end of the designated curriculum.  However, the district mandated that the only permissible mode of instruction was a linear sequential approach starting at the “beginning” and moving forward to the present.  The assistant superintendent explained in her letter to me that history is a story, “And stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end.”  Resumes are stories too.  They are stories of sorts of our professional lives yet they seem to go in chronological reverse.  Wonder why that is?
The original purpose for my reverse chronology was to help students gain a vested interest in their education by making history relevant in their lives.  They are more interested in what is affecting them now than what occurred in the distant past.   I believe it is a psychology maxim that posits a necessity to understand the known before moving into the unknown.  This was my original intent.  Then I began to think about different learning styles.
 I know that we all learn in different ways.  Some of us are right-brained abstract random.  Some of us are left-brained linear sequential, But, it was at a multicultural conference at the end of last school year that it hit me.  I was listening to Peggy McIntosh, author of “White Privilege:  Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” and two of the participants in the film, “Color of Fear”, a poignant and hard-hitting documentary about racism. As they were sharing their experiences, I began to wonder if the learning styles of students of color may be adversely affected by the  euro-centric linear sequential teaching methodology traditionally used in U.S. History classes.  If so, could this hegemonic approach be perpetuating a cultural and instructional bias in our schools?
During a break, I introduced myself to them and posed the question.  I was rewarded by their consensus of agreement.  McIntosh was especially adamant about how many American Indian students’ holistic approach to learning comes in direct conflict with a teaching style that is only linear sequential.  The power of this statement made me realize that by mandating the traditional linear instructional strategy, my school district is perhaps, and maybe innocently and naively, promoting a discriminatory teaching practice that is having an adverse affect on an untold number of students who learn in diverse ways, and not just American Indians.
But, I had trouble with the innocent part.  My superiors in the district are given the task of providing a learning environment conducive to meeting the educational needs of all students.  They are paid handsomely and I expect them to be consciously aware of the reality that not all students learn the same way and therefore, in order to meet the educational needs of all students, there should be learning environments where those needs are being met.  And, the instructional strategies should be “research-based.”  There is abundant research-based data concerning this issue that finds when students who do not think or learn in a linear fashion are subjected to linear-sequential teaching, their weaknesses are being promoted over their strengths.
On the other-hand, maybe the alleged mission statement is simply rhetoric.  Perhaps these officials are truly unknowingly unaware of student learning issues because this is a district that is predominately white and they can conveniently mandate a Western oriented curriculum and instructional strategies.  As such, they can simply assume that students of color, who are over-represented in special education classes and produce the greatest percentage of dropouts, are the victims of a variety of social maladies.  Well, what if one of these social maladies is an ill-conceived mandate perpetuating a mode of instruction that ignores diverse learning styles and leaves teachers and students in an instructional jail?


Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Teaching U.S. History in Reverse Chronology

YO-YO History
An Introduction

Several years ago I overheard a conversation between two teachers about how one of them decided to teach United States History chronologically backwards.  At first, I did not grasp the significance so I did not bother to even explore the possibilities of doing something that contradicted accepted instructional methodology.  However, in the intervening years I read Paulo Freire, Howard Zinn, bell hooks, Noam Chomsky, James Loewen, James Beane, William Ayers, and others who advocate for social justice.  They did not address teaching backwards (except for Loewen), but I realized even more than I previously had that schools were not very democratic places and that the curriculum I taught catered to the maintenance of national myths.  So, what does this have to do with teaching backwards?  It has a lot to do with it.  But, before I focus on the method that I feel is a compelling approach to teaching history, I want to share with you how YO-YO evolved.

I became committed to trying to create democratic classrooms and began to read volumes.  The more I read, the more I convinced myself that we are in a profession that promotes the ideals and the dreams of the privileged and is highly supported by a corporate culture that wishes for us to produce compliant workers.  Having students think critically is inviting trouble.  I began to speak up and the more I did so, the more I realized the consequences.  I will talk about this in a later blog post.

It is not so much that I intentionally began to do things that would purposely go against the local status quo but my teaching was augmented because I agreed with the people I was reading and I knew that there had to be a consistency between my philosophical beliefs about education and my pedagogical approach in the classroom.  Essentially the two ought to be one and the same.

One of the first steps was to remove the district text from the hands of my students as their primary resource.  Virtually all United States’ History textbooks are the same.  They start from the same place and “cover” the same topics.  They weigh about the same and cost about the same.  But perhaps most importantly, they tend to perpetuate national myths that are so important for the maintenance and hegemony of a national culture dominated by a very small percentage of political and economic elites.  The focus is on the distant past while the recent events get little more than cursory attention.  Students who study United States’ history in high school are not really all that interested in venerating the heroic exploits and wars initiated by dead white men.  Yet that is what they are forced to endure because school districts are under pressure from states to have their students perform well on standardized, and in some cases high stakes, testing that are based on lofty and idealistic state standards.  One reason for the focus on the distant past may be that we have to wait for the dust to settle on recent history so we can get an “official” authoritative version of the facts that will be acceptable to book publishers and local school boards. Unfortunately, it apparently takes years for the dust to settle. In many cases the dust is still swirling around thus creating the environment for students to put on blinders to prevent them from seeing the whole truth. 

For example, a well-respected colleague of mine introduced me to a great video, “The Panama Deception,” that shed light on the growing symbiotic relationship between mainstream media and the government and how the American public was lied to about our involvement in that 1989 invasion.  I began doing research and came across articles that were critical of the official versions being spread by the Bush administration to the media and ultimately to the textbook industry that obligingly printed a false picture of that event.  I want to focus on the Panama Invasion of 1989 to illuminate a point. 

An historian is responsible for doing an incredible amount of research from multiple sources to arrive at a better understanding of any historical incident.  The teacher then presents the information to students or gives them the tools and the direction to be able to do the research themselves.  There needs to be an analysis of the information and in class, engage in critical dialogue.  Typically, this does not happen in a history classroom because many social studies teachers subject their students to droll lectures, worksheets, and endless videos.  If all you do is have students read a textbook for information, lecture from the text, and give them a multiple choice scantron test, you are teaching them “twigs”  “Twigs” is a term I learned from James Loewen.  He says that most teachers do not teach the tree but rather the twigs.  I like the metaphor.   Here is an example of what one district is doing.

This district is in the process of purchasing new textbooks for American History classes so I decided to see what the books had to say about the Panama Invasion of 1989.  American History, A Survey, published by McGraw Hill gives us this:
           
            “In 1989, that led the administration to order an invasion of Panama, which overthrew the unpopular military leader Manuel Noriega (under indictment in the United States for drug trafficking) and replaced him with an elected, pro-American regime.”

That’s all.  One sentence.  Does it matter that the regime that replaced Noriega was not elected but rather appointed by our government and that members of the new regime were also suspected drug traffickers and money launderers?   Apparently McGraw Hill doesn’t. Do you think the publishing company’s relationship with the Bush family has anything to do with it?  Perhaps, but I think the reasons are deeper than this.

Another book, The Enduring Vision, published by Houghton Mifflin puts it this way:

            “In December 1989 concern over the drug traffic led to a U.S. invasion of Panama to capture the nation’s strongman ruler, General Manuel Noriega.  Formerly on the CIA payroll, Noriega had accepted bribes to permit drugs to pass through Panama on their way north.  Convicted of drug trafficking, Noriega received a life prison term.”

Well, that is a little bit better, three sentences.  Again, there is no reference to the fact that while Bush was head of the CIA, he was protecting Noriega and paying him tens of thousands of dollars.  

The last book is, The American Pageant, also published by Hougton Mifflin.  Isn’t that an impressive title?  Sounds like a rather elaborate Senior Prom.  Let’s see what they have to say about Panama:

            “President Bush flexed the United States’ still-intimidating military muscle in tiny Panama in December 1989, when he sent airborne troops to capture dictator and drug lord Manuel Noriega”

Hmmmm.  What a pageant!! One sentence and no explanation.  Nothing about how Reagan and Bush were funneling money to Noriega so the Contra guerrillas next door in Nicaragua could use Panama as a staging area for attacks on the Ortega administration.  This is unacceptable.

There is something fundamentally wrong with all of this “twig” teaching.  Here are three books that are being peddled to school districts by these text mongers and yet all of them provide our students with only a modicum of the truth regarding an event that that Organization of American States condemned.  On the other hand, A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn at least gives the invasion several paragraphs and points out several critical issues that the other texts conveniently forgot to inform students such as the thousands of Panamanian civilians that were killed in the attack.  Maybe it is in our national interest not to tell students the truth so they will continue to believe that America can do no wrong. 

And, this is what happens.  Students read a textbook version of history that is filled with lies of omission and if you, the teacher, do not take steps to fill in the holes, who is going to suffer?  Perhaps it makes no difference to you.  Apparently it may make no difference with the students.  In an editorial for the New York Times (May 28, 2003) Maureen Dowd commented on the unsettling phenomenon that the many of our youth are becoming reluctant to question decisions that are made by our government.

           
“The tactical efficacy and moral delicacy of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq solidified a trend: the children of Vietnam-scarred boomers trust the government, and especially the military, far more than did their parents, whose generational mantra was "Don't trust anyone over 30."

… a Harvard poll found that 75 percent of college kids trusted the military "to do the right thing" either "all of the time" or "most of the time." Two-thirds of the students supported the Iraqi war, with hawks beating doves 2 to 1.

Mr. Bush runs a "trust us, we're 100 percent right" regime. So we've got a young generation that wants to take it on faith. And an administration that wants to be taken on faith.”

It seems apparent, then, that textbook publishers can continue to leave out critical elements of historical events in order to portray the government of this country in a favorable light.  There is nothing wrong with that except the texts and/or the teachers also need to provide students with alternative and, in some cases, disparate views.  Of course, this is not going to be done because textbook publishers realize that to print perspectives that challenge official truth would mean less profit.  Essentially what they are doing is creating, what Walter Lippman calls, ‘the manufacture of consent.”

Lippman, referred to by many as ‘the dean of American journalism,” worked with George Creel during World War I at the Committee on Public Information.  The main function of the Committee was to sell the war to the American public.  As a result of his experience, Lippman realized how easy it was to “manufacture consent” of the public because, in his view, the masses are victims of a system that expects and exhorts them to attain an impossible ideal, participatory democracy.


“The individual man does not have opinions on all public affairs.  He does not know how to direct public affairs.  He does not know what is happening, why it is happening, what ought to happen.  I cannot imagine how he could know, and there is not the least reason for thinking, as mystical democrats have thought, that the compounding of individual ignorances in masses of people can produce a continuous directing force in public affairs.” (“Making the Perfect Citizen” in The Phantom Public, 1925)



Students are not going to know any better and the teacher whose only content knowledge comes from the text allows for the myths to continue.  John Dewey, in his book, The Public and its Problems, contends that factual information regarding events and governmental policy should remain as part of the public trust and not be controlled or manipulated by private concerns.  However, our textbooks are withholding relevant facts and we are being intentionally manipulated by publishers who choose to place their distorted agenda of perpetuating myth above that of informing the citizenry. 

I choose to have my students compare textbook versions of events to the information we study.  Questions such as, “Why is the book not telling the whole truth?” are commonplace.  My response is, “Why do you think the book is not telling you the whole truth?”  This makes for some wonderful dialogue.  The discourse that follows could possibly label you though as some unpatriotic left-winger because you are asking students to engage in critical thinking by challenging the official version of history.  For the school district it is indeed “official” because they are the ones who purchase these books and then force students to take a standardized test over the curriculum, which is based, in some cases, entirely on a book.  How does this pressure to conform affect teachers who teach state standards and district objectives by some alternative methodology?  Can’t you still be in compliance without having to rely on a book that perpetuates myths and is conspicuously filled with lies of omission? An argument that many school districts will offer is that they want all students to be reading the same text to even the playing field.  I guess the logic is that if everyone reads the same book and the test questions come from that book, then perhaps test scores will be acceptable and the school district can use these scores to show the public that they are doing a good job.  I am sure that I don’t want to play on this game because the field is far from being even.  Instead, it is distorted, biased, and sometimes just wrong.  

I do, however, keep copies of the district text in my room for research purposes and for supplemental reading.  They come in handy when I have students do comparative studies.  The comparisons of textbook interpretations to alternative sources are intriguing.  You can provide your students with myriad resources that still comply with state standards and district objectives but are much more stimulating and controversial than your textbook.  I will get into these in later chapters because now I want to relate all of this to teaching Yo-Yo history.

I did some research and did not find many references to teaching backwards.  One of the more interesting ones is from a parent’s magazine in 1891/92:

“But, on the other hand, there is much to be said for the view recently enunciated by the Emperor William, that children should begin with their own times and read history backwards. We want to give reality to history by showing that it is not something remote, to be found in books only; we want to show that the life of each child forms part of history ; then we may lead him on to see that the whole world is different for each man that has lived… Not that I would put this into so many words, but endeavour, but bringing the child's life into immediate relations with the history of his own time, to help him to realise this as the reflective powers develop.” (Beale)

James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, puts it this way:

"Teaching history backwards from the present also grips students' attention. . . . Then students are challenged to discuss events and processes in the past that cause these differences." --pg. 310

Annette Atkins, in an article from “Perspectives Online” suggests:

I try to demonstrate that knowing history helps us understand ourselves first, then to understand our parents (and the generation relationship), then other ancestors, perhaps our own, but more often our collective ancestors. The point isn’t to convince the students that they stand at the bottom of a funnel, the inevitable result of all that has gone before, but the reverse. We are who we are for complex historical reasons. We make decisions in the present in particular ways and for particular reasons. Both are true of people in the past, too. Knowing ourselves helps us understand them and knowing them helps us understand ourselves—one way or another.”

Finally, the Franklin Community School Corporation in Indiana was the focus of a project entitled, “Backward History:  A New Application.”  The author of the study was a teacher named Michael Simpson.  The article about their project appeared in the Indiana Social Studies Quarterly in the autumn of 1983.  The methodology they practiced is essentially what I do.  They started from the present, moved back to a point in time, constantly making connections to the previous area of study.  Part of their rationale was adopted from Jack R. Frymiers’s 1955 article in The Social Studies, “A New Approach to Teaching History?”  According to Simpson, “Frymier observed that psychologists point out that learning is generally more effective when proceeding from know to unknown, and what is more known, ‘knowable,’ and accessible than the present and recent past?  He asked, ‘Why not start with current, known events and proceed logically into the unknown?”

The point in all of these examples is that once students begin to see themselves as an observer and thinker about what is going on around them, they may begin to understand themselves better and, as a result, understand the past.  In an editorial by Andrew Schmookler (Baltimore Sun, June 1, 2003) we find the following words, “What we learn about ourselves depends on the stories we hold before our eyes.”  What better place to start than to read not just the “official” stories published by textbook corporations about their interpretations of history but also alternative stories that offer students additional insight about their reality.  Simpson continues, “Therefore, students of history will learn better if the history they are learning is related to the newspapers they read, the documentaries and news they view on television, the experiences of their family members or teachers, and to other similar aspects of their lives.” 

I believe a good part of my presence in the classroom is to assist students to develop the necessary critical thinking skills in order to bring their worldview, and ultimately my own, into even greater focus.  This requires a commitment to critical pedagogy if a goal is to get students to develop an ability to analyze recent historical events and then make the political, social, and economic connections as you move backward and forward through time.  The world has undergone some fundamental changes in the past thirty years, specifically the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the United States is left as the lone superpower in a uni-polar world.  This makes teaching Yo-Yo history all the more important.
 
















Saturday, April 26, 2014

     A recent editorial in the Lincoln Journal Star (April 20, 2014, “The Consequences of opting out”) indicated that there are consequences for students who opt out of standardized testing.  According to the editorial, parents “…should remind themselves of why the tests were adopted in the first place.  They are part of the national push to hold educators accountable for their performance.  In too many schools students were graduating who could barely read or do math.”  The message from this editorial staff is that teachers are responsible for how their students score on a standardized test.  Although the editorial goes on to say that in Nebraska there is currently no requirement tying student scores to teacher evaluations why, then, are there “consequences” for opting out?

     First of all the belief that educators should be held accountable for student scores may apply if an educator is completely disregarding district standards from her/his instructional day.  Doubtful.  It has been known for quite a long time that the surest predictor of how a student scores on a standardized test is the wealth of the parents/guardians.  
     Education historian, Diane Ravitch, once a supporter of No Child Left Behind and standardized testing but now a major critic says, “…the best predictor of test scores is poverty, and that education reformers should be attacking poverty and segregation if they want test scores to improve. She said other effective reforms would be more prenatal care, early childhood education, smaller class sizes, enriched curriculums and expanded teacher training.”  Yet, the LJS editorial staff wants to put the blame on teachers.  Wonder what their motive is considering the fact that there is no empirical evidence that correlates rigorous state or national standards with student achievement.
 
     And, just what are the “significant consequences” if a parent/guardian opts their kid out of standardized testing?  The editorial staff chose to ignore or failed to pursue this issue thereby leaving the impression that by opting out, parents are to blame for possible loss of funding or even downgrading of teachers.  A consequence of the testing juggernaut is, according to one North Carolina parent, “…a narrowing the focus of instruction, prompting teaching to the test, placing unhealthy levels of stress on both students and teachers, reducing students’ love of school and learning, and driving excellent teachers out of teaching.” 

     A thirty-three year social studies teacher in Virginia who won awards for his teaching creativity and innovation resigned and stated, “I can no longer cooperate with a testing regime that I believe is suffocating creativity and innovation in the classroom. We are not really educating our students anymore. We are merely teaching them to pass a test. This is wrong. Period.” 
     The editorial goes on to say that standardized testing “exposed problems that resulted in changes that improved student learning.”  They used data from 1997 of reading test results for second graders and how after four years this same grade group increased their scores by almost 23%.  But, are they simply assuming that the increase of student learning is due to standardized testing?  It is a false assumption.  Test results can be tracked but to presume that any increase or decrease in learning is because of the test is deceitful and terribly misleading.


Message to parents/guardians:    Spread the word and OPT OUT!!

Monday, April 14, 2014

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.”






Thursday, April 10, 2014


Chapter Six
Subversive Activity

I am constantly reading stuff about education.  I want to know as much as I can so I can evaluate just what it is I am doing. Have you ever experienced a school situation when a teacher will give an assignment and the students will ask, “Why are we doing this?”  That is, potentially, a pretty deep inquiry and one that questions a teachers power and authority as well as asking for a justification of a teachers decision- making.  And when you start to go against the grain you might be going down the path of subversive guerrilla classroom warfare. 
One way to conduct guerrilla warfare in schools is to find ways to exploit bureaucratic rhetoric to your advantage.  Believe me, there is a lot of it.  Jonathan Kozol, whom I earlier mentioned, remarks that if schools were held up to the same standards as businesses, they would be guilty of false advertising.  Schools are prolific spreaders of bombastic, self-serving, deceitful messages to the unsuspecting public to maintain an image that they are serious about attending to the needs of all students.  Some of them actually believe it.  The reality, however, is that the majority of public school districts in this country and state and federal government education bureaucrats do not care for your children at all.  If they did, we would not be having this conversation.  Oh, they might say they care, but kids are way down on the list.  Number one is money.  How to get it.  How to spend it.  How to get more.
The federal government does not care nor has ever cared about your child despite the current administration’s claim of a Race to the Top.  If they really cared schools would be repaired, there would be free and decent health care provided, teacher education would be enhanced,  and no child would go hungry.  This is only a beginning.  The problems facing schools today are so immense that teachers and the teaching profession are getting less respect than politicians and corporate elites.  Yet, at the same time, teachers are being blamed for the problems.  Each aircraft carrier that this country builds costs in the neighborhood of $1 billion.  Now, if the government really cared about education can you imagine what can be done with this amount of money?  Do not be swayed by the argument that we can’t solve problems by throwing money at them.  The government does it all the time. So, why is it that schools can get away with the propaganda that they really care?   You can’t possibly believe that the needs of all kids are going to be addressed.  Just the massive size of many of our high schools means that there are going to be kids who are marginalized socially, educationally, economically, politically, and psychologically. 
At my former high school the students knew that the administration, teachers, and security guards had their favorites and treated them differently.  Kids who look differently because of the clothes they wear are followed and harassed.  Some years ago one of my students was being singled out by the school for harassment.  Her mom called me and we had a rather long, interesting conversation.  She had met with the principal and felt that she was a victim of patronizing and not really being listened to about the concerns of how her daughter was being treated.  The term, hostile environment came up in our conversation. 
Indeed, high school can be a very unaccepting place for a lot of kids and some adults who are in power positions, especially in schools whose population represents wealth, treats children who do not fit the prescribed mold differently.  In fact, when it comes to a controversy between a teacher and a student of wealth, you would be amazed at how often the administration will side with the student.  Reason?  Teachers have no power but students of wealth have parents who are capable of wielding an incredible amount of influence.   
Take the time to read various mission statements of schools.  For example, “All students will learn to respect others.”  Neil Postman talks about crap detecting.  Here is a perfect example of that.  First of all how is a school going to even reasonably expect to meet that goal?  What strategies are they going to use?  How are you going to measure success in meeting that goal?  You can’t.  Yet schools use the rhetoric to try to make it seem like they are all inclusive places where any kid would want to be.  When I questioned the administration about how we are going to measure whether or not we met this respect goal, the response was they wanted each teacher to turn in a lesson plan that was centered on respect.  In that way they could quantify the number of lessons being introduced in the classroom.  Well, is the goal being met or are they deliberately side-stepping the issue by creating essentially another goal that should read:  Each teacher will show respect by turning in a lesson plan on respect and hope that some of the students will end up by showing respect.  Come one, let’s get serious.  The unfortunate thing is that the power brokers are able to bamboozle the unquestioning public and timid teachers into actually believing that all students will show respect.
It is also unfortunate that the ones who wish to promulgate such lofty ideals, such as a building administration, do not abide by the tenets of their own idealism.  For example, a student accused a teacher of making an offensive statement to her.  The student went to a counselor and eventually it went to the administration.  The teacher was called in, was informed that she had made this statement and, despite the teacher’s denial, the teacher was suspended for three days without pay.  In addition, the teacher was required to see a district counselor for anger management.  Tell me, is this a respectful way to deal with a teacher-student issue?  Is this the way adults should treat other adults?  This teacher needed to file a grievance.  The message to students is that they can get away with making false accusations and potentially destroying a teacher’s livelihood.  The message to teachers from school officials is, we don’t trust you.  We are afraid to stand up for you.  We are afraid of parents.   Guerrilla fighters, get ready.
Do you remember when you were preparing to take a multiple choice test and you were forewarned about selections that had the word, “all,” in them?  That answer bubble should not be filled in because you knew the choice was incorrect.  However, when you look at building goals and each one of them has the word, “all,” in them should not a red flag go up?  As a guerrilla fighter in the class wars how do you go about using the information you have and the rhetoric the district spreads to be tools for you to subvert the system?   Here’s one way.
For example, on one of my teaching evaluation forms sent to me by the administration there was this goal that I should try to achieve.  It states that we can have an inclusive classroom by, “implementing the multicultural plan by creating a multicultural physical environment and creating a feeling climate that affirms multiple cultural perspectives.”  Well, for teachers who are devoid of any sensitivity to multicultural education or for teachers who are just beginning, this might be a good first step.  I agree that our rooms should try to reflect, as much as possible, our social diversity.  Whether they are posters, paintings, student work, whatever, do it.  My room was a welcoming environment of diversity for years but what is so incredibly ironic about this is that the administrative offices did not have a similar climate that affirmed multiple cultural perspectives.  For that matter, the school itself reflected very little, with the exception of the media center, of a welcoming environment.  Hell, even my department chair who had made it his policy to try to nail me for anything had a cold, uninviting room that lacked any semblance of our cultural mosaic.  He was, by the way, the self-proclaimed multicultural education guru of our school.  He anointed himself after our only black teacher left. So, here is a chink in the armor that is worth exploiting. 
Along the same lines, our district is allegedly following a state mandate to infuse multicultural education into the curriculum.  They spent thousands of dollars doing in-service training, bringing in nationally known speakers, and providing funds for conference travel for some teachers and district officials.  In addition, they created multicultural advisory committees and had committees to review district developed standardized tests to check for cultural bias.  I was engaging students with multicultural education for years before the mandate yet I was called into the principal’s office at least once a year by irate parents for not teaching the correct version of American History.  I used Howard Zinn’s, A Peoples History of the United States, and some parents just got livid when they found out that all the flowery stories about their traditional heroes are tarnished.  I focused on the experiences of women, labor, and the marginalized while paying less attention to the contributions of wealthy European-American males.  But I made it clear to them that I had to follow the district and state mandates, and was providing the students with multiple perspectives of historical events.  And remember, the counter-attack might have to come from the community. 
I believe a part of guerrilla warfare in education is to subvert and leave a calling card.  If you are one who has already been marginalized by the bureaucracy whatever you say will probably not be listened to by the power brokers.  They will dismiss your voice.  In the case above, have community members come into your school and make observations to see if the rhetoric and the reality match.  If not, then a meeting with the building principal is in order.  If some members of the community are fed up with the games and feel they are being patronized, bypass the administrator and go straight to the press.
      Another example.   Our district promotes multicultural education but the number of teachers, counselors, and administrators or color are few in spite of the growing diverse student population.  Making alliances with community organizations, such as the NAACP, can allow you to educate the public on school matters that are typically not communicated to the population.  For a couple of years, I was the education chair of the local NAACP and attempted to set up meetings between district officials and the parents/guardians to engage in a dialogue about standardized testing.  But, because my credibility was questioned, the superintendent did not respond to my invitation although I made it clear I was representing the NAACP.  I found it amazing that the superintendent actually thought he could get away with ignoring my invitations without people noticing his behavior which treated me as an invisible entity.
Anyway, after repeated efforts to get him to respond to me had failed, the president of our chapter called the superintendent personally and invited him to our meeting.  The response?  Sure, I will be there and so will the assistant superintendent for instruction.  Well, I am glad he showed up but you know, he ignored me during the meeting.  Quality leadership.  A guerrilla tactic that is effective in this type of scenario is simply to bring issues to the table where you have not been invited nor wanted by having community organizations force the agenda.  After all, they vote.
Our district has traditionally scored high on standardized test scores.  In fact, the officials regale in it.  A former assistant superintendent for instruction raised her fist in joy at a public meeting over her glee that the district Metropolitan Achievement Test scores were up.  Attack.  We arranged for the NAACP to present a request to the school board to disaggregate the test data.  This way, everyone will know how students of color and the kids who are on free or reduced lunch are actually scoring on these tests.  As expected, the standardized test score gap between schools with a large number of students of color and students living in near poverty and those schools whose student population largely represented upper middle class and the wealthy was growing.  How do you get the district to deal with this?  Attack the concept of standardized testing and what we know about the built in biases especially against students of color and the poor, sometimes both.
Well, school districts want accountability and they have thrown their hat into the testing ring.  We constantly hear this word, “accountability,” and unfortunately, teachers are bearing the brunt of the public outcry that we aren’t doing a very good job in educating kids. However, I have experienced that by being held accountable one strategy may be the temporary accommodating of your own teaching philosophy in order to subvert the dominant paradigm.  It is a guerrilla tactic.  For example, for years I refused to teach a class labeled differentiated or advanced placement.  Although, towards the end of my teaching in public school I did teach a Differentiated class because the students could earn dual credit at a local private university as well as the local community college. In my district the students who take those classes get weighted grades.  Instead of a 4.0 for an A, they get 5.0.  That makes a huge difference when applying for scholarships and entrance into highly selective universities.  Personally, I find this approach to grading elitist and separating.  There are students who only take these classes for the weighted grade not for the challenge.  I had a student who, as a Junior, took an A.P History class from another instructor and earned an A.  She then took my History class as a Senior for no credit the following year because, in her words, wanted to learn something other than memorizing the names of presidents and their wives. A daughter of a friend of mine took an A.P class in spite of her father’s pleading with her to take the regular class because that teacher was one who would make her think, practiced Socratic dialogue, and believed in social justice.  She didn’t follow through and although got her A in the A.P. class had, in her own admission, made a mistake because the teacher was inept.  She said that in her A.P. history class instruction was primarily lecture, taking notes, and filling out worksheets.  Tests were mainly multiple choice and short answer responses.  I witnessed my daughter go through high school and many of the classes she took that were labeled A.P. or Diff. were jokes.  Take notes, fill in blanks on worksheets, read a district approved text, and submit to a multiple choice test.  One teacher even went so far as to say that her class was preparing her students for college.  In part, this teacher is right.  Many first year college classes are auditoriums with a couple of hundred students taking lecture notes.  Therefore, the logic follows, at least in the mind of this one teacher that lecturing is a model for effective teaching in high school.  Let’s look at an alternative.


Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Chapter Five

Chapter Five
Before I get started on this chapter, I want to introduce you to this website: http://teachersofconscience.wordpress.com/
Here is a part of their position paper:
As teachers, we hold critical thinking and critical literacies in highest regard. As professionals, we resolve to not be passive consumers of education marketing or unthinking implementers of unproven policy reforms. We believe critical thinking, artistry, and democracy to be among the cornerstones of public education. We want creative, “thinking” students who are equipped to be the problem solvers of today and tomorrow; equipped to tackle our most vexing public problems: racial and economic disparity, discrimination, homelessness, hunger, violence, environmental degradation, public health, and all other problems foreseen and unforeseen.

Look, our kids are living in a world where they are being exposed to a variety of problems like those mentioned in the above position paper and are being influenced by an ever expanding three-ring media circus.  Increased speed Internet, video games, cable/satellite television with multiple channels.  Oh, let’s add more pressure from schools to score high on standardized tests.  The traditional mode of instruction is from a single, separate discipline where teachers are responsible for transmitting official, district/state approved information.  Now, for students, teachers, administrators, and parents who are comfortable with the traditional process of isolated, single subject instruction, interdisciplinary team teaching is most certainly not an immediate option.  Nor should it be.  Why?
First of all, this model is outside the box and when you step away from your comfort zone there is risk involved.  Many educators are unwilling to take the risk because of a variety of factors.  They have no one with whom they can connect, it is different, assessment can be too time consuming, and it is hard.  It also verges on democracy.  How much of a say do you have in helping to develop curriculum, structure the school day, or participate in resolving building issues?  The system rewards those who are obedient and unquestioning and penalizes those who challenge the status quo.  The model that is being offered here is a threat to many teachers and administrators, to their power and to the institutional structure. 
In his book, On Miseducation, Noam Chomsky provides this interesting piece of advice: “It is a moral imperative to find out and tell the truth as best one can, about things that matter, to the right audience.  It is a waste of time to speak truth to power for the most part they already know these truths.”  I am not so sure that the superintendents and Boards of Educations of most districts know what a fair and just education is and, instead, prefer to preside over schools where children are subjected to gross inequities and a woeful lack of democratic participation.  This makes their district fertile ground for corporate invasion.
I am not offering a cure but rather suggesting that an integrative curriculum combined with a problem solving focus that serves the cognitive and social needs of our students as well as the needs of a potential employer.  Ultimate solutions require people who are skilled in using many kinds of knowledge in a problem-solving context.  It seems that an interdisciplinary problem-solving model of instruction better prepares students to not only look at knowledge and information from multiple perspectives but also fosters within our students an appreciation and understanding of how we associate with one another and to know ourselves.  The challenge in teaching is to provide the conditions that will foster the growth of those personal characteristics that are socially important and, at the same time, personally satisfying to the student.  The aim of education is not to train an army that marches to the same drummer, at the same pace, toward the same destination.  Such an aim may be appropriate for totalitarian societies, but it is incompatible with democratic ideals (Eisener, Kappan June 1995).
Taking this assumption as true, what we have been witnessing for the past several decades, and arguably for over the past hundred years, is a system where teachers are told what to teach and when to teach curriculum. In the words of a former social studies consultant for my district, “Decisions about what to teach and when to teach it no longer rests solely at the discretion of the teacher.”  This is an excellent example of how districts are being pressured to make sure teachers fall in line and teach what is necessary to pass local and state standardized tests.  Districts are externally controlled by state departments of education and local boards to the degree that the individual teacher becomes more of an obedient test technician.  This is totally inconsistent with the goals of an integrated problem-based curriculum where we want students to be critical thinkers and problem solvers yet our teachers are being manipulated by decision makers outside of school.  The two are incongruent.
Deborah Meier (here is her blog: http://deborahmeier.com/) points out that the present system of schooling and accountability is chock-full of mistakes, after all, not to mention disasters that are perpetuated year after year.  Of course we’re accustomed to them, so we barely notice. (Meier, Kappan 98, p.361)  Perhaps it is time to take notice because it is unfortunate that the ones doing the imposing from above know very little about teaching, learning, or assessing our children.  Accountability ought to be displayed by these power brokers in their pursuit of instructional and assessment alternatives that are documented as being more effective than the factory model over which they currently preside. 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.”  It appears that schools seem to be more interested in maintaining control than they are of true academic reform.
The interdisciplinary problem-based model is a powerful alternative. Integrating teaching and problem solving allows students to work in meaningful situations as they examine a problem, gather data, research relevant information and resources, contact experts in the filed for current findings, work collaboratively to divide and share tasks, and test possible solutions. Students access knowledge and information from multiple disciplines as needed.  In this design, the curriculum is centered on issues/problems that have 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 present their learning and are assessed by criteria they have previously developed with the assistance of their instructors.  Essentially what has happened is a democratic practice of problem-solving.
Deborah Meier soundly endorses involving parents and families in the school’s democratic process as “simply shrewd common sense.”  The traditional system of patronizing our parents through condescending programs that give illusion of empowerment needs to be radically changed.  We need to start looking at our system from the perspective of the disempowered outsiders and to seriously look at what is fundamentally wrong.  The current system is the enemy of true diversity and has promulgated a deficit model of a culture of powerlessness.  As Meier’s Central Park East school project has demonstrated, traditionally schooling will be perpetuated unless there is a democratic involvement of parents, teachers, and students.
Certain changes in traditional school structures can spur democratic education.  These structured realignments may include:  democratic governance that includes teachers, parents, administrators, students, community members, and non-certified staff in setting school policy, school councils that includes teachers and students, smaller schools instead of the two thousand student factories may guard against dysfunctional bureaucratic structures; and a concerted effort to make obsolete, the fragmented conveyor belt school day, especially in secondary school, to more effective and educationally productive use of time in a learning community.  In learning communities, teachers, students, support staff, parents, administrators, and others who are involved in the school from time to time are viewed as members of a single community, whose common purpose, for everyone, is learning. As a side note, do not confuse this with a Professional Learning Community (PLC) which is nothing more than expensive scam (over $2 million spent in our district) designed Richard DuFour in order to indoctrinate teachers in conforming to district mandates under the guise of cooperation.
From the success of schools like Meier’s, the evidence suggests that parental and student involvement in education is associated with high levels of morale and achievement.  When schools are more involved with the community and when teachers, parents, and administrators see and talk more often with one another, they are more likely to know about one another’s needs and are better able to work together to promote the learning and welfare of students.  We can either prepare our young people for unrewarding jobs in an unequal and undemocratic society, or we can prepare them to understand their world and change it.  The first is education to meet the needs of the corporate global economy.  The second is education for democracy.







Monday, April 7, 2014

Chapter Four
Sound Familiar?
The following is a description of what often went on in my classrooms during the first few years of my teaching.  I have to be honest, but when I think back on it I realize that I was just modeling the behavior I saw when I was a public school student and what I was exposed to in the Teacher's College.  When I began high school teaching I noticed that most other instructors perpetuated a similar kind of classroom environment.  For that matter, this kind of classroom is still what you will see in most high schools today and is replicated in movies and on television.  Why is the media is not willing to expose you to alternative learning and teaching classrooms?  Simple.  Either they do not look for progressive educators or they wish to maintain the status quo. Is there an agenda to be followed? 
Students are sitting in straight rows facing the front of the room completing yet another worksheet, not unlike Mr. Ditto in the film, “Teachers.”  I am sitting at my desk in the front of the room figuring out questions for the next examination:  true/false, multiple choice (guess), fill in the blanks, and matching.  Maybe even checking my email or on the Web.  Often during my coaching tenure, I would be figuring out the line-up for that day's soccer match and going over some new strategy I gleaned from a coaching manual.  I actually witnessed other coach/teachers doing the same and figured it was a normal thing to do. Some of the students would be busily looking for the prescribed answer in the five-pound, glossily illustrated district approved textbook while others slept, talked to friends, or did homework for another class. 
I did not know it then, but I was actively subjecting many of these children to a form of academic terrorism.  What is agonizing is that it I allowed it to continue, and still does in hundreds of classrooms around the country.  Students coming out of this learning environment face a tough future after high school.  They simply will not have the tools necessary to advance in a world where accessing, analyzing, and applying information in a new context are essential skills (Stiggins).  
Instead of integrating multiple perspectives into the area of study, presenting content that is broad-based and demands problem-solving, having students develop research skills and team consensus-building, integrating basic facts with critical thinking, and integrating diverse disciplines into a seamless curriculum, I just did as I observed and was taught. Why was this deficiency in my teaching not noticed by someone? 
Studies clearly show that most administrators, principals, and department chairs are not trained in assessment either of students or of teachers, so the system endures by feeding on itself.  Excellent teachers often get frustrated by the bureaucratic games that diminish their instructional skills and are beginning to leave the profession.  A veteran social studies teacher in New York remarked on how Common Core is impacting him, “I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised.  Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are beingstifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education….  I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me….”
What seems to have happened is that mediocrity becomes the norm.  So, when school districts advertise through their brochures that their students are being taught critical thinking skills, the likelihood is that there may be some of that going on in a few classrooms, but for the bulk of the students, it ain't happening.  I am not suggesting that teachers who are one-dimensional in their teaching should be immediately removed because if they were, one third of the classrooms in this country would be sans instructors.  But, as teachers it is our personal and collective responsibility to continue to study professional literature to stay in touch with current thinking in the fields we teach (Stiggins p.59)

            I do not wish to languish on the current problems we see in high schools because I think it is more important to focus on alternatives to tradition.  But, it is necessary to at least give you a glimpse of what is seen on a daily basis and raise the question of why do we continue to see more and more of classrooms where students are dulled by continuous worksheets, traditional and incessant assessment, and department chairs, school administrators, and school boards perpetuating and promoting the status quo.  In order to move away from this tedium, it is prudent, instead, to replace it with a democratic problem-posing, integrated curriculum.