The Consensus on Our Public Schools Is Wrong (2)

by Donna Schoenkopf

Public schools are great because they make silk purses out of a sow’s ear.

By that I don’t mean people are sow’s ears. The silk purses are the students. The sow’s ear is The System.

It’s always The System to blame, folks. Not the humans in it. Every system starts off with the best intentions, but the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, if you know what I mean.

Being on the left side of the political spectrum, I think humans are basically good but The System messes things up.

People on the right believe humans are basically bad and need rules, regulations, laws, prison, police and a whole lot of other things to keep order. Otherwise we’d all kill each other. You know the old Hobbesian philosophy that says that life would be nasty, short, and brutish without the heavy hand of the law because people are bad.

I know that’s not right. If that were true we would need a cop with us 24 hours a day to make sure that we weren’t violating a law. And then, there are the cops. What’s to keep them from being bad boys? (Some of them are, but I argue it’s The System that does makes them that way.)

“But!” you say. “People made the system.” And that’s where Bobbie Burns comes in. I repeat, “The best laid plans of mice and men ...”

We humans start off with the best possible intentions. We try things. They don’t work or they work for a while and then go awry or, once in a while, they hold steady for a long, long time.

For instance, one of those ideas that has stood the test of time is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” You can find that maxim in every culture. That one seems to be holding its own.

But most things have to be reconfigured because circumstances change.

The System does not like change. The System doesn’t like change because the people at the top are benefiting from The System. They are not bad people. They are people who are holding on because they are profiting. Who among us would actually buck The System, at great cost to ourselves? It’s not easy.

My basic premise, that the general public sees public schools as failures, is based on the fact that even though there are problems in the public school system, somehow, somehow, schools and especially teachers are performing miracles for our society, in spite of The System.

Well, what do I mean by The System?

The System for public schools is a series of decisions that are made regarding what to teach, materials to use, and how to test to see if students have learned what they have been taught. These decisions are codified and reworked from time to time.

This article gives you a basic idea of how textbooks are adopted and gives you a little idea of how it works. (You can skip it if you want. It’s pretty dry. But it does have some interesting information in it. The part I want to stress is the “California Mathematics Curriculum Framework.”) I chose mathematics textbooks because they are the least “class and ethnic sensitive” and the most universal as far as actual material goes.

The California Mathematics Curriculum Framework is the problem. That is what needs to be seriously dealt with.

I have direct experience in this.

Years ago I was asked to participate, along with other teachers, in reviewing California’s Mathematics Curriculum Framework. I was asked because I was the union rep for my school and the District wanted to be sure the union was on board. (We like to challenge The System. It is our job. Yayyy, unions!)

I had a lot of concern about the curriculum because I saw that there were too many mathematical concepts in it and we couldn’t get through the whole book in one year. I also was concerned with the willy-nilly aspect of the texts and how they didn’t directly relate to what was being tested in standardized testing. There was very little match-up, both in style and in substance.

I voiced those concerns at the meetings. A lot. Because I am a Big Mouth. The person who headed these meetings would get extremely annoyed with me. He didn’t want to make waves because that would mean ruffling the feathers of the people over him. Essentially I came to understand that we were there to rubber stamp the curriculum.

I, of course, was outraged, and there were a couple of nose-to-nose confrontations between me and the guy in charge. I was told, flat out, that we were going to be adopting what was on the books and to keep my hand down and my mouth shut.

And that is the ethos of The System. Don’t make waves. Keep the train running. It’s okay the way it is.

I know for a fact, that if that person who was heading our little study group wasn’t so worried about his job and ruffling feathers he would have been in favor of some very important changes. But what was behind his fear? It was the power of the administration and the power of corporate interests. Pretty hefty. And scary to go up against. I wasn’t scared because my job wasn’t threatened. I was a peon in The System and at that point, because I was a union member, they would have had to have something more than being a loudmouth to get me fired. (Yay unions!) I am saying that guy had a lot more pressure on him than I had, so I’m no hero and he’s no boogyman.

It’s The System that’s to blame.

But why am I so concerned with the curriculum?

Here’s why (I shall deal only with math because it’s less complicated):

Did you know that Japan has roughly ten discrete math ideas a year that they teach their students?

The United States has about thirty. THIRTY!

There are thirty-six weeks in a school year. So you have to teach about one concept a week and if a kid doesn’t get it ... oh, well.

(Do you remember how hard it was to learn long division? The times tables? Thought problems?)

And to go along with that crazy curriculum, we have crazy textbooks.

If you read that long article I linked to above, you’d know that California law says all students in K through 8th grade are to receive new textbooks every six years.

Now, I am not a conspiracy nut type. But somehow the general public thinks students don’t have new textbooks. How did they get that idea? Hmmmmm? Just a little thought ... maybe the Powers That Be find it in their interest to have that little piece of bullshit circulating so they can keep their places at the public trough.

The publishers get very, very, VERY rich feeding at the public trough. And, like the military or some members of Congress, school administrators, especially superintendents, upon retirement from the school system, are often hired by those publishers. How cozy.

(I cannot speak to high school textbooks. It seems that there is a short supply. I don’t know. Can’t find anything on the Internet about it. Maybe you can. Write me if you find something.)

So ... textbooks.

They do not, I repeat, do not, follow any kind of rational sequence. They just plop one thing after another, willy-nilly, with no concern with how things build on other things.

Students have to learn a series of things without having prior knowledge on which to hang it. Not easy. And the textbooks are in English, which many of my students were not exactly fluent in.

The System, folks. Don’t rock the boat. Keep those in power safe.

And the actual style of textbooks!

The most grievous examples of poor textbook design are in reading, science, and social studies.

I don’t know who decided to hire graphic artists as the professionals who decide how the actual page looks, but it was a bad decision. (The hiring of graphic designers was not done out of malice or greed. Just an error in judgment. But the inability to fix it is The System.)

In reading texts, the print swirls artistically across the page. The print changes color. The margins disappear in and out from the edge of the page. “Oh! The kids will love this,” the graphic designer thinks. “This will really keep their interest.”

In science texts, graphs and illustrations and different colors push and pull eyes hither, thither and yon.

In social studies texts, long, impenetrable writing with the same swirling sentences and graphs and colors twirl the brains of little kids.

The texts are pretty. Those artists know how to make a pretty page.

But they are very, very hard to read.

The kid with dyslexia gets absolutely and totally discombobulated by all that stuff. Imagine having to consciously force yourself to keep the letters and the words and the sentences “filed” in your mind because you have dyslexia and then coming upon textbooks that have the words swirl across both open pages.

Sigh.

(I swore right there, but deleted it in the interests of professionalism.)

IN SPITE OF THIS FACT, students are reading. Every student who ever went through my class could read at the end of the year.

“How did you do that, Donna?” you ask.

I bought Dick and Jane primers from garage sales. I found old textbooks in storage in the bowels of the school. The text was large. The margins were steady. Nothing swirled. The pictures were happy and colorful. The stories were funny and simple.

I did this secretly, at first, because I was told that the curriculum (The System) called for ALL students to be reading on grade level from grade level books. Even if they couldn’t read. (After my principal found out that my kids were doing well, she gave me a wink and a nod and left me alone.)

And how do kids feel when they can read?

Thrilled.

It is like riding a bicycle for the first time for them. It feels like flying.

Another thing. At the beginning of the year I would explain dyslexia to my students. I would tell them that there were some kids who couldn’t read yet, even though they were in third grade, because their brains saw words differently.

Then I would write a word, all scrambled and upside down, and ask if they could read the word. They couldn’t. I told them that that was how kids with dyslexia saw the word. And it wasn’t because they were dumb. That most people with dyslexia were very, very smart and that LOTS of people had dyslexia, some had it more than others. And that my dear son, Jesse, had it. And when, not if, they learned to read, it was because they were smart and worked hard. And dyslexia had a good side. It made children hard workers, which is the key to success in anything you want to do. So the kids with dyslexia were, in a way, very lucky. Then I would tell them about famous people with dyslexia.

It is very, very, very important for kids to not be afraid or embarrassed in school. When you’re afraid, your brain shuts down. I explain that to them, too.

Like I said, they all learned to read in my class.

I read to my class every single day. Hard books. Slowly. Savoring each word. We talked about it, not while we were reading, but afterward. Each child had his/her own book to follow the words themselves. Or not. Their choice. Some just liked to listen, which is very important in language development. If you read to students, they will be able tell you the main idea, the sequence, the main characters, and any other damn thing you can think of. Learn it by listening first. Then, when you get proficient in reading, you can do it yourself.

Reading comprehension. Listening comprehension. Comprehension in general.

Silk purses out of a sow’s ear. (Kids = silk purses; The System = sow’s ear.)

Teachers, in all their forms and shapes and sizes and talents, pull together a bunch of discrete, unconnected things, connect them somehow, and get their kids learning. At least most of it. Or some of it. Every single one of them learns some of it.

Next week—testing.

Heh.

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