I have been
blogging a lot about change and the need to teach our children differently in
order to prepare them for the global economy.
I thought I would share some examples from Tony Wagner’s book, Most Likely to Succeed, to assist you
with understanding the changes necessary. Some of you who had outstanding
teachers prior to the days of a test-driven curriculum will actually remember
similar examples from your school days.
Here are a
couple of history experiences to contrast and illustrate the differences
between ineffective and inspiring history classes.
“Case
Study #1.
In one
middle-school class, students spend a week memorizing the capitals of the fifty
U.S. states. Students cram for the test questions like “What is the capital of
North Dakota?” Some get it right, others get it wrong, few remember it, and
those that do derive no benefit as an adult from this retained trivia.
A
second class goes back in time and reads newspapers, journals, and diaries from
the year 1850, when the seat for the first Legislature of California was,
believe it or not, Monterey. Students—at first alone, then in groups – are
asked to take a position on where they would locate the capital of California,
explain why, present their conclusions to classmates, and debate with peers.
Then they analyze whether the choice California made I 1854 was a good one.
Case
Study #2.
In this
conventional high school class, the teacher lectures for two class periods on
the history of the Vietnam War. Students take notes, cram on material (e.g.,
the year the first U.S. troops went to Vietnam), and are tested on factual (or
near factual) recall. Kids develop some
familiarity with the historical timeline around the Vietnam War, its outcome,
and its consequences.
In a second
high school class, students read a manageable number of primary documents
(newspaper articles, essays, op-eds, excerpts from history texts) from
1964. They are presented with the fact
that when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution came to a vote in the U. S. Senate,
only two senators opposed it. They work in teams on the following question:
“Why do you think the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gained overwhelming support?”
Each team presents its views to classmates and responds to questions. Students can use any available resource to
support their work (we observe kids doing these types of challenges who
resourcefully find people or classes all over the world and interview subjects
via Skype as part of their research). They
then explore whether the Gulf of Tonkin vote should have imparted lessons to
our legislators in 2002 when the overwhelming majority of U.S. senators voted
to authorize the invasion of Iraq.
In
these case studies, the first class spends a week largely memorizing facts –
any of which can be readily looked up.
The second class spends a comparable amount of time on engaging issues
that help them develop critical skills.
The first class is characterized by boredom, irrelevance, and a lack of
retention. With the second model (and
Stanford’s Reading Like a Historian program has challenges like these), classrooms
are bursting with energy, and the student learning is consequential. Teachers and peers give excellent
feedback. Students assess their own work
in a way that’s reflective. Achievements
can be captured on digital portfolios.
But you
can’t assign a student a precise score, or rank students on a national basis,
on a nuanced argument about support for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. And that’s why our history classes are, in
Joe Friday’s words, “Just the facts, ma’am.”
I hope these
examples help explain the direction of education that we should be moving
toward. My next blog, Teacher Spotlight,
will give you another example of one of our own teacher’s creative lesson.
