PHOENIX, 2/20/90, SPC,ELB/lb, SP 1

Transcription

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I.
THE SHRINKING OF OUR GLOBE
Twenty-first century teachers will need to
•
help students not only achieve "cultural
Literacy"—to use E. D. Hirsh's helpful
formulation.
•
But also help them gain a more integrative
understanding of our world.
The harsh truth is that students will live in a world
•
Where the protective ozone layer is endangered.
•
Where our shorelines are polluted,
•
And where the tropical rain forests are being
depleted at the rate of 100,000 square kilometers
every year.
And yet, for far too many students, their knowledge of the world
goes about as far as the refrigerator door, the VCR know, and the
light switch on the wall.
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PHOENIX, 2/20/90, SPC,ELB/lb, SP
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What we urgently need today is a curriculum that helps students
•
more beyond the splintered dumbness,
•
see themselves as part of the larger human
community,
•
and gain a perspective that is not only national
but global.
But how is this larger, more integrative view to be accomplished?
loco OOOI
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THE COMMON CORE
Several years ago, Art Levine and I,
•
in a little book entitled Quest for Common
Learning,
•
suggested that we organize the core curriculum,
not on the basis of the disciplines
but on the basis of what we called the human
commonalities.
Those universal experiences that are found among all people and
all cultures on the planet.
But what are these experiences that "non-uniform people" have in
common?
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A.
4
LIFE
F i r s t — a t the most basic level—are the universal human
experiences of birth and growth and death.
The sad truth is that most people on the planet live and die,
never reflecting on the mystery of our own existence—
•
never understanding conception,
•
never considering the sacredness of their own
bodies,
•
the essentialness of health,
or the imperative of death.
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Recently I brought my mother, who is eighty-nine, from a nursing
home to live with us in her final years.
care.
She is in need of basic
And every evening as we attend her, I am reminded of the
cycles of our existence.
But I'm also r e m i n d e d — h o w — i n our modern age,
•
we have turned life's most basic functions over to
institutions,
•
how we no longer participate in birth,
•
how we remain ignorant about how our bodies work,
•
and how we are not called upon to care for loved
ones as they approach the end of life.
I am suggesting that the new core curriculum should begin by
looking at life itself
•
at birth
•
at growth
•
at death.
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For such a course of study I suggest that we bring the
disciplines together
•
biology, physiology, and geriatrics—to name a
f e w — t o help students better understand
the miracle of life,
the sacredness of their own existence.
And perhaps if we all knew more about ourselves
•
we would respond more reverentially to the world
around us.
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B.
LANGUAGE
Beyond birth and growth and death, all people on the planet
communicate with each other.
•
We all use symbols to express our feelings and
ideas.
•
And the new curriculum should surely include a
study of how the written and the spoken word
connects us to each other.
Language makes us "truly" human.
And I'd like to see a core curriculum in which students study
•
the origins of language.
•
Learn how signals vary from one culture to
another.
•
Become familiar with a language other than their
own.
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And also learn that
to achieve human understanding
core curriculum means
not just clarity of expression,
it means honesty and integrity as well.
8
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C.
ART
Third, all human beings respond to the aesthetic.
•
And students in the new curriculum should study
the universal language we call art.
Dance is a universal language.
•
Architecture is a universal language.
•
Music is a universal language.
•
Painting and sculpture are languages that can be
understood all around the world.
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I'm suggesting that for the most intimate, most profoundly movi
experiences we need more subtle symbols,
•
and students should learn—through the new
curriculum—
•
how different cultures express themselves through
music,
through dance,
through the visual arts.
D.
HISTORY
Fourth, all human beings on the planet recall the past and to
anticipate the future.
•
And surely as a part of the common core students
should study our own heritage.
And also he asked to study a non-Western
culture, too.
T.S. Eliot wrote that
•
Time present
•
time past
are both present in time future,
and time future is contained in time past.
I'm suggesting that in preparing our students for the twentyfirst century
•
they urgently need historical perspective with
western and non-western studies, too.
•
They need to see connections.
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E.
INSTITUTIONS
Fifth, we all hold membership in groups and institutions.
•
And the new curriculum should include a study of
how different cultures organize to carry on their
work.
/
•
Drawing on sociology and anthropology, for
example.
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Our son, Craig, lives in a Mayan village
•
with his Mayan wife
•
and with two little children who are the smartest
grandchildren in the world.
Craig is the only non-Mayan to live in that village for 1000
years.
•
And when we visit him each year and sit around the
fire, I'm struck that the social structures used
to maintain community life in Santa Cruz, Belize,
•
are both remarkably unique but they are also
strikingly familiar.
And in the new curriculum, students should be asked to make
cross-cultural studies to better understand the universal web of
institutions.
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VI.
14
NATURE
Sixth, we share with all people on the planet a relationship with
Nature.
•
All life forms are inextricably interlocked.
•
And no education is complete without the students
understanding of the ordered interdependent nature
of the universe
in which we are all embedded as working parts
as Lewis Thomas put it.
I'm suggesting that in the new curriculum all students must learn
•
about our connectedness to nature
and about the urgent need to protect the system at
which we are all inextricably a part.
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VII.
15
VALUES
Finally, we all live by values and beliefs.
•
And students should learn that all people
regardless of their cultures,
search for meaning in their lives.
•
And students should learn how religion has
consequently shaped the human story.
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These then are the commonalities:
•
we all sustain life,
•
we all communicate with others,
•
we all organize ourselves,
•
we all recall the past and anticipate the future,
•
we all respond to the esthetic,
•
we are all a part of Nature,
•
and we all seek to give meanings to our lives.
And I suggest that a cross-cultural study of these universal
human experiences should help all students see connections.
And that in such a study
•
the disciplines would be used
•
to illuminate longer, more integrative ends.
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Preparing students for a Global Community means
•
Not just a new curriculum
•
But a new way of learning, too.
What we'll need in the twenty-first century are classrooms where
students learn
•
to cooperate with ( each other rather than compete.
Some twenty-first century problems will be solved only as we
learn to work together.
Is it possible to imagine classrooms where most of the class
projects—whether on language, or science or social studies and
the rest are organized as group activities
•
with student working on assignments together
•
And even "helping each other" during examination
time.
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None of these ideas are new of course—they go back to at least
to Dewey—but, in the twenty-first century these idealized ways
of learning will become essential ways of living.
What we need to create is a view of education in which "Knowledg
of Learning Is Viewed as Communal Sets" as Burke
puts it.
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II.
THE IMPACT OF THE TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION
This brings me to Priority #2.
Looking to Century 21, I can't
resist saying a word about technology in the schools,
•
which has been so surprisingly neglected in the
debate about better education.
Today's kids
•
watch television 4,000 hours before they even go
to school
•
They know about computers.
•
They're hooked on videocassettes.
And yet, day after day, these same children sit lethargically
classrooms—with only chalkboards—and perhaps an overhead
projector.
•
In our national survey many teachers told us that
they simply can't compete with the new technology
that seemingly captivates the imagination of their
students.
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•
20
"Increasingly I feel 'obsolete,' like the rerun of
an old movie," is the way one teacher put it.
Frankly, it's a scandal that every other major enterprise in this
country
•
from airlines,
•
to hospitals,
•
to newspapers,
•
to banking
Every other institution now uses technology to improve its
work.
Yet the nation's schools have been bypassed by the
revolution.
We need active, not passive learning.
And, I'm
convinced that if we could bring
computers and videocassettes and educational
television into the nation's classrooms,
if we could blend "electronic images' with great
teachers and great books, our students would
become creative, independent learners.
And America—within a decade—could have the best
education system in the world.
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Today's parents seem ambivalent about TV.
21
A recent survey
revealed that forty percent of the nation's adults believe that
television has a negative effect on children.
And yet a quarter
of those surveyed said their family life is "centered around TV"
{Louis Harris).
Seventy percent feel their children are watching
too much television, and sixty percent rate the job television is
doing in providing the public with information on children's
issues as only "fair" or "poor."
Children confirm that television fills the empty spaces of their
lives.
Surveys reveal that twenty percent of today's 8th graders
watch 6 hours or more a day and 38 percent watch 3 to 5 hours
(1983-4 assessment).
Recent Nielsen reports revealed that
preschool children, ages two to three, watch more than 25 hours
of TV every week.
When we asked youngsters what they do after school, most of them
said "watch TV."
One fifth-grader spoke for many when he said
that the first thing he does when he gets home from school is
"open the TV and watch it."
An eighth grader from Oakland,
California, said she sometimes is bored after school:
"I watch
TV when there's not enough to do."
Television has, in short, become the nation's baby-sitter, the
ubiquitous companion for our children.
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Percentage of Children Who
Watch TV After School
8th Graders
Boys
Girls
8th Graders
Boys
Girls
47
56
55
55
Planned Parenthood recently found, for example, that one-half of
teen-agers surveyed thought television painted a realistic
picture of sex, including pregnancy and venereal disease.
Weekly
Reader found that 57 percent of children believe what they hear
and see on the television screen.
At Sweden's Lund University,
Inga Sonesson, a sociologist,
states the findings of her ten-year study, of the impact of
television on children, this way:
"We found a clear and
unmistakable statistical correlation between excessive television
and video viewing on the one hand and the development of antisocial behavior and emotional problems on the other."
report's most surprising conclusions:
Among the
children of well-educated
parents are just as likely to suffer as those of less
intellectually-advantaged families.
Swedish researchers also found that six-year-olds who watched
less than two hours of television daily were far less likely to
develop learning difficulties or emotional problems as they
grew.
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Conversely, tots who saw two-and-a-half hours or more of
television every day were far more likely to develop such
troubles as they approached adolescence.
These were the children
who were more aggressive, more anxious, and had greater problems
maintaining concentration."
Finally, the Swedish team asked teen-agers if they'd ever
committed a violent act against another person.
Those who had
were most frequently children who had spent lots of time in front
of the tube.
Sonesson concludes her study with the significant
observation:
"What this shows is not that television viewing
automatically leads to violent behavior, but, just as smoking
increases the risk of cancer, television increases the chance of
children having problems.
The dangers are not as apparent,
perhaps, but they're real all the same" (National Council on
Families and Television).
Dr. Daniel Anderson from the University of Massachusetts recently
analyzed forty years of research into the impact television has
on children.
declared:
Recently, in testimony before Congress, he
"Although there are questions about the degree,
there's no question that television promotes violent behavior.
Kids do absorb messages from television shows, but that doesn't
make them good judges of the messages they're absorbing.
Producers don't see their programs as teaching devices, but that
is, in effect, what they are.
Right now, they're showing kids a
lot of violent behavior and that's reflecting in kids' attitudes
and outlooks."
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Anderson also reported in his study that, "There's no real
evidence to support the popular idea that television makes kids
dull.
But there's also none to prove that it doesn't"
(Television & Families, Summer 1989, p.2).
teachers see it.
That's not the way
The ones we heard from have no doubt that
excessive TV viewing makes children impatient, cuts the child's
attention span and reduces learning to "impressions."
One
teacher, with a master degree who has taught for twenty years,
said:
"My student's today have a hard time formulating sentences
on paper and orally because they watch too much TV."
Here's how another teacher put it:
to keep their interest.
"I feel I have to tap dance
Just lecturing is a sure groaner.
Students just want to be passive viewers.
It's frustrating to
have to be ABC/CBS/NBC when I really want to be PBS and NPR!
I
teach at an allegedly good high school where 75% go to college.
Imagine what it must be like elsewhere!"
A third teacher said that today's kids have been raised on movies
and televi sion and think all learning is simply fun and games.
"[Learning is] pretty dull stuff when you're used to car chases,
machine gun fights, and love scenes.
We have told kids form day
one that going to school is a lot of fun.
having fun, then you're not learning.
That if you're not
That's a lie!
who has ever been in school knows that it's a lie.
And anyone
The fact of
the matter is, learning requires work that can be quite a
contrast to the "A Team" and "Family Ties."
m
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Television has great potential.
It can spark curiosity,
encourage reading, and bring us information quickly.
At its
best, it can open up the world for children, taking them to the
moon or to the bottom of the sea.
But the high hopes many had
for television as a teacher have been dashed and the current
state of children's television adds up to a shocking case of
child neglect.
Responsible viewing can be taught in school, too.
Popular shows
can be discussed in class and teachers can assign good programs
that relate lessons in the classroom.
Since television is a
powerful part of the life of almost every child, a candid
discussion of its impact should be a part of the school syllabus,
as well.
Television can, if carefully guarded, be enriching, but if the
nation's children are to grow up well informed and emotionally
secure, they must turn off the set occasionally and participate
with confidence in the larger world.
Critical viewing with children and some thoughtful pre-selection
of certain programs probably has the greatest potential for
increasing the benefits of TV and lessening its harm than any
other solution.
ictc cool (M>1
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The past year has seen a great deal of controvery and turmoil
about the ways in which television might legitimately be further
integrated into our elementary and secondary education process.
In my judgment, the mandatory viewing of commercials in the
classroom as the quid pro quo for providing electronic equipment
to the schools is an emphatically bad idea.
On the other hand, I
do believe that television does provide an extraordinary
resource, the learning and teaching potential of which is only
barely beginning to be understood and implemented.
As part of a renewed interest on the part of the television
industry, particularly the cable television industry, a magazine
called Connect makes the television resource truly accessible to
the classr oom teacher.
It provides a comprehensive listings by
subject matter of all the televised programming which is
appropriate for classroom use, homework assignments, or a
teacher's own educational renewal.
The magazine is filled with
articles and features to encourage and facilitate the use of
television in the classroom.
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III.
27
THE CRISIS AMONG FAMILIES AND CHILDREN
This leads to Priority number 3 — t h e crazy lives of children.
Several years ago, we at The Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching set out to study the early years of
education.
But slowly our focus shifted.
Listening to themselves we
concluded that we should begin to focus less on schools and more
on children.
•
A veteran teacher from Minnesota put her concern
this way:
"We're raising a generation of troubled
youth who will, in turn, raise a generation of the
same.
What is the future of this country when we
have so many needy youngsters."
•
I worry about what's going on in neighborhoods and
homes," says a teacher with fifteen years of
experience.
neglected.
"More and more of my children seem
Their lives are not well regulated.
Meals, I know, are sporadic.
They don't get
enough sleep and it affects what they do in
school.
More than that, a lot of them seem
anxious.
children."
I really worry about the future of these
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•
An eighth-grade history teacher in rural Maine
feels torn between teaching and responding to the
needs of children.
"My students face such
enormous upheavals in their personal lives, I feel
sometimes that I should throw out the history book
and help them deal with those things which are
certainly more pressing on their minds."
•
A fourth-grade teacher in Missouri feels a special
ambivalence about family life:
"I believe parents
love their children, but in today's society
everyone works and is just plain tired.
babysits, day-care programs babysit.
The TV
Kids starve
for attention and I do everything but teach."
We feel that many youngsters live isolated lives, unconnected to
the larger world.
For many children loneliness begins at home, where relationships
have become more fleeting and more fragile.
•
A teacher in rural Virginia summed up her feelings
about contemporary family life when she observed,
"My main concern with education today is the role
of parents.
In my community, most parents work.
More than half my class goes to day care after
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school.
night.
29
They do not get home until 7 o'clock at
I realize that this cannot be helped, it's
just a big concern to me."
•
We surveyed five thousand fifth and eighth graders
from coast to coast and found that 40 percent of
them go home after school to an empty house.
Sixty percent said they would like to spend more
time with their mothers and their fathers.
•
One youngster who lives in the suburbs of a large,
Midwestern city described his life this way:
"I
don't have very much to do after school.
Sometimes I go home right away, but usually
there's no one there.
I'll either flip on the TV
or call up some guy, and he may come over.
Once
in a while a bunch of us will go down to the mall
to hang around.
•
A lot of times I'm by myself."
Many children told us how members of their family
live separate lives and how they rarely have
significant contact with each other.
"I'm always
alone," one seventh grader from suburban
Philadelphia told us.
"I don't have any sisters
or brothers, and my parents always go out with
their own friends and leave me by myself.
home, there's nothing to do.
parents are going
And at
Meanwhile, my
out, and I feel really lonely."
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Today's home life is more isolated.
Parents lack a network of
support, and families, it seems, are more vulnerable.
Often only
one p a r e n t — u s u a l l y the m o t h e r — n o w must shoulder
responsibilities all alone.
It's a world where the extended
family has all but disappeared.
Relatives are far away, where
neighbors barely know each other, where the spirit of community
is diminished, and where parents now turn to outside agencies for
help, becoming dependent on people they hardly know.
One mother, bringing her five-year-old to kindergarten on the
first day of school, told us she felt "caught in the middle."
For two years, this single working parent could find only
makeshift child-care arrangements for her youngster, moving him
from one day care center to another.
"It will help a lot," she
said, "now that he's old enough for school, but I still don't
have anyone lined up to take care of him in the afternoon.
I
need help."
In many homes, parents are not around after school, and children,
with nothing much to do, switch on TV.
their companion.
The pale screen becomes
A fifth grader in Chicago told us his father
works until 10 p.m. and his mother doesn't get home until
dinnertime.
"It's boring," he said.
An eighth-grade boy from
New Mexico said that, because both his mother and father work, he
spends his time alone at home after school.
watch TV and talk on the phone usually."
"I just sit and
loco ooo( £>14,7
beginning.
32
Nor can children learn to love unless they are l o v e d —
treated with kindness and tenderness and respect and concern and
consistency over a long period of time. . . . "
{Robert Coles and
Maria Piers, Wages of Neglect, 1969, p. 175).
And such intimate
and sustained support must begin in the family, at home.
Teachers told us stories, often poignant, about how children
reach out to them for affection and how they try to give comfort
by squeezing in a few moments between or after classes.
One
teacher said she goes home practically every night frustrated by
the lack of time she has with children and thinking of those she
wishes she could adopt.
Teachers are caught in an almost impossible situation.
Most care
deeply about students, and when children hurt, they hurt, too.
But schools cannot give deep and sustained emotional support to
students.
There are lessons to be taught, papers to grade, and
parent meetings to attend—all the tasks that everyone accepts as
the real work of teachers.

PHOENIX, 2/20/90, SPC,ELB/lb, SP 1

Transcription

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