Book Excerpt: Republic of Noise

by Diana Senechal
February 16th, 2012

Posted in Education Practice, Education Theory, Teaching | 5 Comments »

“Discernment and the Public Sphere”

In her new book, Republic of Noise, long-time Core Knowledge Blog contributor Diana Senechal confronts a culture that has come to depend on instant updates and communication at the expense of solitude.  “Schools emphasize rapid group work and fragmented activity, not the thoughtful study of complex subjects,” she writes.  “The Internet offers contact with others throughout the day and night; we lose the ability to be apart, even in our minds. Yet solitude does not vanish; it is part of every life. It plays an essential role in literature, education, democracy, relationships, and matters of conscience,” says Senechal.

At age ten, in 1974, I traveled with my family to the Netherlands, where we were to spend a year (my parents were on sabbatical). We crossed the Atlantic on the Mikhail Lermontov, a Soviet cruise ship that had recently been converted from an ocean liner. It was my first time at sea, and the first moments were thrilling: pulling out of the New York harbor at sunset, with passengers cheering from the deck and others waving from land; watching the Statue of Liberty recede into the distance; feeling the rumble of the motor; and soon seeing nothing but waves upon waves.

I shared a cabin with my sister, Jenna. We had the run of the ship; no one worried about our whereabouts. There was a swimming pool, a lounge and dining area with a stage, an exercise room, a slot machine room, a gift shop with balalaikas and Matryoshka dolls, and a few canteens and bars. At night, the deck was aglow with lights; by day we could sometimes see dolphins leaping. At sunset, we would watch the changing colors over the sea and taste the salty chill; even the sounds grew darker as night fell.

On the second day of our voyage, when we were out on the deck, my parents struck up a conversation with the parents of a British family. There were five children: Anne, seventeen years old, John (fifteen), Ginny (ten), Diana (three), and David (eighteen months). Ginny and I became friends for the duration of the trip. We took lessons in Russian language, song, and dance—the crew kept us quite busy—and spent the rest of the time romping around. But I jump ahead.

While our parents were talking, I saw Anne walk away to the edge of the deck and lean over the railing. No one said anything about it for a few minutes, but then she started to lean farther. Her mother called her, and she ambled back in their direction, with a vague look in her eyes. As the trip progressed, I saw more hints of something unusual and precarious. She would walk away in the middle of conversation or give befuddling answers to questions. During the dance lessons, she would sometimes go in the wrong direction or leave the stage and wander around the hall. But while aloof and of her own world, she was never unkind. There was something captivating about her ways, so different from other people’s.

As our Russian song and dance performance approached, we all chose partners for the show. Anne was left without a partner; either she was the odd one out, or someone finagled her way out of dancing with her. Her distress was visible; she would walk around repeating mournfully, “Who will be my partner? Who will be my partner?” Ginny and I were already dance partners and didn’t want to change that, but we did want to find a partner for Anne. So we knocked on the cabin door of a woman in our class. The door opened; she stood tall before us, her long hair in a hurried bun with some wisps falling out. We explained the situation to her and asked whether she would be Anne’s partner, just for this occasion.

This woman (I’ll call her Mrs. Barrow) told us flat out that she wouldn’t do it and there was no point in pushing her. We stood in the hallway, pleading, telling her how much it would mean and how hard it was for Anne not to have a partner, but none of this moved her. “This is a free country,” she said, “and I have to consider my reputation.” In fact, we were on Soviet territory, by maritime law, so it may not have been the country she thought it was. I doubt, moreover, that her reputation would have been harmed if she had agreed to dance with Anne. Dancing with someone of the same sex was not the issue; most of the people in the dance class were female. Nor would anyone have thought badly of her for dancing with Anne in particular. Her response says something about how she perceived her country and her life. Americans often use the expression “free country”; it rolls off the tongue like a chocolate ball. Sometimes it has specific meaning; at other times it is a way of saying no. At other times it is a way of explaining things that would be difficult to explain otherwise.

In the end, it worked out somehow; Anne ended up with several dance partners (including Mrs. Barrow, if I am not mistaken). The performance was a great occasion; I had never imagined, before the trip, that I would one day be performing Russian dances and singing Russian songs out at sea. The crew gave us ample stage time; in addition to the singing and dancing, we had a talent show and costume contest. Anne, Ginny, Diana, Jenna, and I dressed up as Matryoshka dolls, with kerchiefs and rouged cheeks. Ginny’s father dressed up as a someone who had gotten seasick; he carried a giant blue pill, provoking a roar of laughter from the adults, who had been seasick for a great deal of the voyage. We sang “Kalinka” and another Russian song; for the talent show, we got to take turns at the microphone. Anne sang some songs and rattled off jokes, charming the audience.

I have often thought back on this experience—not with indignation at the woman who said no (she was within her rights, as she said), but with sorrow, bemusement, gratitude for the experience, and thoughts of the English family and how they are now. I recently made contact with Ginny, through the Internet; both parents have passed away, and Anne is doing well, living in sheltered accommodation and enjoying life. Ginny works in education management, as an advocate for arts education. The Mikhail Lermontov no longer crosses the seas; it hit rocks and sank near New Zealand in 1986.

If Mrs. Barrow was at fault, it is because she lacked discernment. For whatever reason, she mistook us and the very ground on which she stood. She responded to us as one might respond to aggressive political canvassers or missionaries, not as one might to two girls trying to help someone. While relying on the concept (or cliché) of a “free country,” she did not consider what that meant or where she actually was.

Of course, as the details of this event grow fuzzy over time, its symbolic significance increases—so it is possible that I would see it quite differently if I could replay it exactly. Yet, even with the distortions of memory, there is something monumental about that moment in the hallway of the Soviet ship, far out at sea. It ended happily, but there was a speck of tragedy in it all the same.

Discernment is the practice of distinguishing two similar things or recognizing something for what it is. It is not easily taught, nor does it necessarily transfer from one area to another. Someone with good character judgment may be unable to tell a good poem from a bad one, or a solid historical analysis from a shaky one. Someone with excellent business sense may fall for a medical fad or political ploy. Nonetheless, if one learns to make fine distinctions in one field, one becomes alert to the possibility of such distinctions elsewhere. Through ear-training of the mind, one may learn to guard against hasty judgments and false generalizations. In discernment there is also an element of courage: the willingness to look at something or someone, even when the thing or person causes discomfort. To look someone in the eye is to let down one’s own guard, to let one’s own flaws show.

To the extent that it can be taught, discernment relies on a degree of common ground. For example, students are much more likely to recognize the allegory in George Orwell’s Animal Farm if they have studied something of Russian and Soviet history; they are in a better position to distinguish Johann Sebastian Bach from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach if they have studied the works of both. Common knowledge provides a common language; when people are reasonably confident that they are talking about the same thing, they understand or can at least ask for clarification of each other’s terms. At the same time, an individual’s particular knowledge can light up the discussion; one student may have read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”; another might have advanced knowledge of harmony and counterpoint.

Thus, to teach discernment, schools should foster both common knowledge and individual interests. Finding the right proportion is a tricky matter. Many Americans are wary of a common curriculum, which they equate with homogeneous, “cookie-cutter” instruction and the imposition of a set of views. But diverse views and interests can thrive only when people have something to differ over.

In his 1902 essay “How the School Strengthens the Individuality of the Pupils,” educator William Torrey Harris wrote that recitations foster and develop individual thought. “All of the pupils,” he wrote, “concentrate their attention on the statements of the pupil who is reciting and on the cross-questioning of the teacher. It is a dialectic which calls for alertness and versatility of mind in the pupils who take part in it.” In an earlier essay, he wrote that “the pupil can, through the properly conducted recitation, seize the subject of his lesson through many minds. He learns to add to his power of insight the various insights of his fellow pupils.” The very idea of a recitation would be derided today as a form of “rote learning,” but his description makes it seem anything but rote. Harris assumed optimistically—perhaps too optimistically—that the students would all be concentrating intensely and trying to refine their understanding. Without such focus and desire, a recitation could easily turn dreary. But that is the case no matter what the approach. In a recitation, class discussion, or other format, the principle remains the same: through coming together over a subject, through straining to understand it better, students may find their individuality, even eccentricity.

It is not that American public schools lack any sort of common study; we have textbooks and the usually vague specifications of state standards. These half-measures have grown out of a longstanding resistance to common curriculum, yet they have come to define curriculum. Except where such textbooks and standards are of high quality, this bears little resemblance to a curriculum as it should be. A curriculum is an outline and sequence of the works, concepts, and skills that students should learn, along with a rationale. It should be flexible enough to allow the mind to play, yet specific enough to provide rich working material. Whether it exists at the school, district, or state level, it should do justice to the word. From there, one can determine the proper balance of common and individual learning.

Diana Senechal is the 2011 winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, awarded by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. This excerpt appears in her new book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, published by Rowman & Littlefield Education.

A Critical Look at the Critical Lens Essay

by Diana Senechal
December 14th, 2011

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Posted in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum, Education Practice, Essay, accountability | 7 Comments »

On standardized high school English examinations in New York, students must write what is often called a “critical lens” essay. They are given a quotation (the “lens”) and must interpret it, state whether they agree or disagree with it, and substantiate their position with examples from literary texts of their choice. This task has logical flaws and encourages poor reasoning and writing. The problem is largely due to the lack of a literature curriculum; when there are no common texts, essay questions on state tests become vague and diffuse. The test question needs an overhaul, and New York State needs a literature curriculum with some common texts and ample room for choice.

One flaw of the “critical lens” task is that students must interpret the quotation out of context. Students may or may not have read the source of the quotation; they are allowed to make it mean whatever they want it to mean (within reason). The test-taker must provide a “valid” interpretation of the quote, but without a context, “valid” simply means free of egregious error. When it comes to analysis, this is not good practice; the student latches onto the interpretation that comes to mind instead of searching for the most fitting one.

A sample New York Regents English examination illustrates how this might play out. (I discuss this example in my book, Republic of Noise.)  Here the quotation is from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.” (See p. 21 of the PDF file.) This quotation can mean many things, but it has particular meaning in The Little Prince. It is the fox who speaks these words, after befriending the prince and being tamed by him. They have been meeting, day by day, at the same time and place; the regularity of the ritual allows the fox to prepare his heart for the prince’s arrival. Seeing with the heart in this case has to do with caring for another, spending time with another, honoring rituals together. But students are more likely to take the quotation as a comment on romantic attraction (and some of the sample responses do precisely that). Then they agree or disagree with the quotation on the basis of this incorrect interpretation.

Another flaw in the “critical lens” task is that it hinges on the student’s opinion (about a statement that may apply to a range of situations). The opinion may be hasty or superficial, yet it is unassailable. It would make more sense to ask the student to explain how a particular literary work affirms the quotation in some ways and negates it in others, and to decide whether the affirmation or the negation is ultimately stronger. That would require careful, thoughtful analysis and examination of a work and would leave room for the student’s ideas and judgment. At the very least, the prompt could ask the students to show how a literary work addresses or touches on the idea in the quotation. That runs the risk of reducing literature to ideas and themes, but at least it keeps the focus on the literature.

A third flaw is that students must cite examples from literature in support of their opinion. It is possible to do this, but one must do so cautiously. Literature is not a direct reflection of life; often its messages are oblique and contradictory. So, for instance, if one looks to Romeo and Juliet for examples of people blinded by love (not seeing rightly with the heart), one will find them, but one will also miss the point. In the play, love has both delusion and illumination and is part of a larger scheme. Help and harm intermingle, as Friar Laurence suggests in his monologue:

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.

The play does not pass judgment on the lovers’ passion; rather, it shows the playing out of passions, feuds, and good intentions, where no one grasps the full situation until the end. But students who ignore this can get a high score on the essay. One can even ignore key details of plot and get a high score. A sample student response with the highest score (on p. 58) states that “if Romeo had not used his heart, he would have seen rightly. He could have stayed with Rosaline, and saved both the Montagues and Capulets from enduring his reckless, love-inspired antics.” The student neglects the fact that Rosaline has sworn herself to chastity, that the Montagues and Capulets have antics of their own (the play begins with a fight that escalates), and that it is the lovers’ deaths that brings an end, finally, to the warring of the two families. This is at least partly the fault of the essay question; by requiring students to cite literary examples to support their opinion, it encourages (or at least does not penalize) shallow interpretations of these examples.

In short, the “critical lens” task rewards poor writing and thinking, precisely because it can rely on no common knowledge. There is no check on the student’s opinion; nothing  challenges the student to examine the quotation or the works closely. The student who follows the directions does well. He may provide a flawed interpretation of the literary examples and quotation, yet receive a top score. He may even get basic plot details wrong without losing any points. It would not be surprising if some students made up the details and still passed. To fight this absurdity, we should have a few texts—just a few—that everybody reads, including those scoring the tests. The essay question could then pertain to the works themselves. This would allow for coherent, probing essays and would take students out of opinion’s muddier puddles.

It’s a Video Library, Not a Revolution

by Diana Senechal
November 17th, 2011

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Posted in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum, Education Practice, Teaching | 28 Comments »

Ever since the entrepreneur Salman Khan burst forth in 2011 with his
education revolution—a massive video library and proposal that the classroom be “flipped”—there has been no end to the euphoric roar from reporters. They delight in the idea that students could watch instructional videos at home, then come to school to solve problems, work in groups, and engage in discussion. That’s the flip, right there: the instruction takes place at home; the problem-solving, in school. Khan argues, and his fans believe, that such a reversal would “humanize the classroom.” But something about this humanization doesn’t sit well in the belly. Is it really so wonderful to make problem-solving a social activity, or to remove lectures from the classroom? Is the video as flexible a tool as Khan suggests?

Practical problems come to mind first of all. Who ensures that the students actually learn the material at home, or that the videos convey it well? Khan suggests that their activity should be electronically monitored, so that teachers know how much time they have been spending on each video and what they have been doing with it. But isn’t that a bit intrusive? Isn’t one’s study time at home supposed to be somewhat private? Moreover, what will students and teachers gain from such monitoring? Some will find ways around it: they will pretend to watch the videos while doing something else. Others will do the work yet need additional explanation. There is no getting around the difficulty of some material; it requires more than one mode of presentation.

The advanced students, those who already understand the material, have even more to lose. They may not want to solve problems among their peers, in the noise and chatter of the classroom. They might not want or need a teacher peering over their shoulder. During class time, they may need something that pushes their thinking further: a lively lecture or discussion or both. At home, they might need nothing more than challenging assignments and good books. Khan states that each student may progress at his or her own pace, but this goes only so far. Students ultimately reach a point where they need the insights of the teacher: not just a brief check-in, but a substantial presentation and discussion. Where will they get this, if the teacher must circulate from student to student?

Videos allow for thorough learning, proponents argue. Students may watch them repeatedly until they fully grasp the lesson. But who wants to watch an instructional video over and over, unless it is superb? Doesn’t a book allow for a more compelling sort of repetition? When reading a book, you can dwell on a sentence or paragraph as long as you want. If you need to find something specific, you can look in the index or flip through the pages. What’s more, you can hear the words in your mind and give them the emphasis or tone that seems right. A video can become a trap; though you may move backward and forward, you hear the same voice, watch the same gestures, and witness the same explanation in motion. The instructor seems a moving cadaver—unaffected by anything in the room, intent on repeating the same inflections and making the same marks on the board. This can get irritating, if not depressing.

The model has problems of principle as well as of practice. It implicitly downplays the importance of the lecture by taking it out of the teacher’s hands. Supposedly this “frees” her up for real teaching. But what sort of freedom is this, when the teacher is no longer supposed to present the subject? Lectures, even short ones, contain not only information but insights. Teachers and professors raise questions, take apart false conclusions, point to overlooked details, and leave the student with a keener view of the subject than he or she had before. A video—even a superb one—cannot do this as well as a teacher can in person, nor would many teachers want this aspect of their work taken away. Even when the lecture is purely unidirectional, there is subtle exchange: students’ facial expressions and gestures, the teacher’s tone of voice, and the anticipation of the discussion that will follow. A teacher, unlike a video, has the ability to enhance the instruction spontaneously—for instance, by offering yet another angle on a problem (“Here’s another way of looking at it.”). The “flip” model could turn out to be the opposite of freedom, as it would lack many of these subtleties.

In order to learn subject matter, one needs instruction, practice, review, reinforcement, and extension. A student listens to the teacher, thinks about the material, reads about the topic, thinks about it some more, works on problems, discusses the problems in class, and considers how the topic relates to those before and after it. Videos can play a part in this, but there’s no reason to flip anything at all for them. Why not have them handy and let teachers and students use them as they see fit? No grandiose terms, no education revolution—just a resource for those who need it.

But there is little glamour in a resource for those who need it. Khan started out with a modest vision—helping his cousins with school—but before long, it grew louder and louder until it reached the status of a momentous potential reform. Khan has some fine ideas: he recognizes the value of puzzling over material on one’s own, of repeating concepts until they come clear. But even a fine idea can be ruined when turned into a grand model. The challenge for the Khan Academy, and for much of education reform, is to offer something helpful without exaggerating its import. Those who do so will one day be recognized as wise.

Diana Senechal is the 2011 winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, awarded by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Her book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in January 2012.

The Online Dictionary Is No Dwelling

by Diana Senechal
November 8th, 2011

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Posted in Essay | 11 Comments »

Abandon hope for meaning, all ye who enter here. The online dictionary gives you quick definitions; you take one and run. What do you find when you look up a word? A flashy, crowded page; words corseted and adorned with videos, jingles, links. Which definition do you grab? The most popular one, the most convenient one, the one that fits the shopper’s purposes.

A dictionary should tell you words’ common and uncommon meanings, their history, their occurrences in literature and speech. It should be a place that stays relatively still, with updates from time to time—where meaning exists, where the less popular meanings have a place, and where one can wander, pause, explore, and think. As the Internet changes our conception of dictionaries, it changes our language as well.

Let us see what happens when I look up the word “dwell” by typing “dwell definition” (without the quotes) in Google. The first hit gives a single definition for the verb (“Live in or at a specified place”) and for the noun (“A slight regular pause in the motion of a machine”). Right below these definitions, there are links to Dictionary.com, Answers.com, Merriam-Webster, and The Free Dictionary. The Dictionary.com page for “dwell” has an animated banner, followed by several ads, including “1 trick of a tiny belly”—all of this before the actual definitions. (The ads here and elsewhere may change from visit to visit.) The page on Answers.com starts out with a link to dwellstudio.com and the description, “Unique, Modern Baby, Kids and Home Decor. Bedding, Bath, Table & More.” Merriam-Webster sometimes takes you to an advertisement page before loading the actual page; on the advertisement page, only the first definition for “dwell” (“to remain for a time”) appears. The Free Dictionary assembles definitions and examples from various sources but also has animated ads and commercial links.

Isn’t this typical of services on the Internet? Yes, but a dictionary has traditionally been a sanctuary for words (a messy one, granted), and now it is not. In a dictionary without distractions, one can read a definition slowly, peruse the surrounding words, and follow trails from synonym to synonym, from cognate to cognate. Online dictionaries emphasize functionality and commerce—get your meaning and move on (and buy some bedding while you’re at it). There are rare exceptions, such as the Online Etymology Dictionary, which attracts those who are interested in words in the first place (and is funded by donations). Certain subscription-only dictionaries, such as the online Oxford English Dictionary, offer rich definitions without ads, but even the OED gives quick definitions at the outset, and the user has to click further to see the full array.

Over the long term, people may lose a sense of words’ secondary, tertiary, and rare or archaic meanings. Let’s come back to “dwell.” The lexicographer Henry Cecil Wyld posits a Proto-Indo-European root *dwal-, meaning “obscure, dark,” which over the centuries evolved into Norse and Old English words meaning “to delay” and “to hinder.” This in turn evolved into the meanings “to wander” and “to abide.” Thus “dwell” (as I hear it) has a sense of straying and restraint, of willing and unwilling lingering. It carries hints of some sort of spell or force; to dwell in a house is not only to live in it but to have some bond with it, brief or long. The Oxford English Dictionary gives numerous definitions of “dwell”—not only the ones mentioned so far, but also “to persist,” “to remain,” and “to pause,” among others. To dwell on a subject is to will oneself to it or be willed by it. Likewise, if something dwells in you, then it isn’t just a bone or nerve; it is a spirit too. Satan cries out in John Milton’s Paradise Lost,

Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor—one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

One hears not only the suggestion of “dwell” in the rhyming “Hell” but also its absence. Hell is emphatically not a dwelling, not a home, and Satan knows perfectly well that he cannot make it a heaven, not even in his mind.

Stop complaining, says the pragmatic citizen of the 21st century. Just buy your own print dictionary and be done with it. Make a Heaven of Hell, relatively speaking. Yes, indeed, and I have done so, relatively speaking. Oh, relative hell! But like the vegetarian who eats meat when served by carnivore hosts, I use the online dictionary when it’s all I have before me, as do millions of others. People click for meanings in the office, at home, in school, and on the road. At this point online dictionaries have the run of the land and air. Given their ubiquity, we should insist that they make room for words and minds. Perhaps a publisher will step forward and give us a free online dictionary without ads or abridgements. That would be a worthy deed—and profitable over the long haul, too, as it would keep minds fed and good books in circulation. But maybe the long haul is slipping out of our view—precisely because words themselves have become quick fixes.

Diana Senechal is the 2011 winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, awarded by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Her book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in January 2012.

Evidence Isn’t Everything or Everywhere

by Diana Senechal
October 5th, 2011

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Posted in Education Practice, Essay, Teaching | 16 Comments »

I have nothing against evidence but am wary of the ascendant “evidence state.” I have seen nonfiction vigilantes marching around, asking, “where’s your evidence? where’s your evidence?” Those who question its rule get sneered out of town, if not steeply fined. This is not right. Evidence has its place, but it cannot and should not dominate everything. Even in the best arguments, evidence (strictly defined) is only one way of substantiating a point.

With the emphasis on “informational text” in the Common Core State Standards, students will be told, again and again, that they must back up their arguments with evidence. This is an important skill but only one of many. Some arguments use illustrative examples; some, reasoning; some, eloquence; and many, a mixture of all of these.

Arguments with evidence exist, of course, and can be quite convincing indeed. For instance, there’s Thomas Jefferson’s argument in the Declaration of Independence:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

And so on. Jefferson offers fact after fact to demonstrate the “repeated injuries and usurpations” of King George III. In this case, evidence makes all the difference, since those considering revolt would want to be convinced that the King has indeed established absolute tyranny.

Some arguments use examples that illustrate rather than prove the point. In his letter “On the Shortness of Life,” Seneca (ca. 4 B.C.–65 A.D.) posits that our lives are long but that we make them short through “idle busyness”—that is, by occupying ourselves with empty activities. Here’s one example he provides:

Tell me, would you say that those men are at leisure who pass many hours at the barber’s while they are being stripped of whatever grew out the night before? while a solemn debate is held over each separate hair? while either disarranged locks are restored to their place or thinning ones drawn from this side and that toward the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit too careless, just as if he were shearing a real man! How they flare up if any of their mane is lopped off, if any of it lies out of order, if it does not all fall into its proper ringlets! Who of these would not rather have the state disordered than his hair? Who is not more concerned to have his head trim rather than safe? Who would not rather be well barbered than upright?

This is not “evidence”; rather, it shows vividly how the waste of time might play out. Anyone in his day might have complained that he exaggerated—that no one spent that much time at the barber’s or gave that much attention to their locks of hair. But that isn’t the point. This vivid hyperbole (if it is hyperbole) is there to convey the nature of the problem, not to prove its existence or extent. Beyond that, it’s just plain funny.

Then there’s argument with reasoning: for instance, in G. K. Chesterton’s essay “On Turnpikes and Mediævalism” (in All I Survey, 1933). Chesterton refutes a newspaper article’s assertion that a turnpike-gate with a toll is a relic of medievalism.

If we were really relics of mediævalism–that is, if we had really been taught to think–we should have put that question first, and discussed whether a thing is bad or good before discussing whether it is modern or mediæval. There is no space to discuss it here at length, but a very simple test in the matter may be made. The aim and effect of tolls is simply this:  that those who use the roads shall pay for the roads.  As it is, the poor people of a district, including those who never stir from their villages, and hardly from their firesides, pay to maintain roads which are ploughed up and torn to pieces by the cars and lorries of rich men and big businesses, coming from London and the distant cities. It is not self-evident that this is a more just arrangement than that by which wayfarers pay to keep up the way, even if that arrangement were a relic of mediævalism.

The logic is as follows: instead of fretting over whether a thing is modern or medieval, let us consider its merit. In this case, it seems fairer to have the roads maintained by those who ride than by those who cannot afford a car. Thus a turnpike-gate is more reasonable than the absence thereof, even if it is a relic of medievalism. Of course the reasoning is only part of the essay; the rest is wit and soul and a gift for putting nonsense in its place.

Eloquence, or compelling language, is its own kind of persuasion, usually but not always mixed with other kinds. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s 1892 speech “Solitude of Self” stirs some kind of recognition and awe in the reader, through the very language.

And yet, there is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. It is more hidden than the caves of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle; the hidden chamber of Eleusinian mystery, for to it only omniscience is permitted to enter.

The speech employs reasoning and example along the way; it argues that women need education equal to that of men, precisely because they must face so much of life alone. But the description of solitude, the core of her argument, has no evidence to prove it; it persuades through its starkness and beauty. If such argument were not permitted, simply because it lacked evidence, then we would lose a great deal of our nonfiction and fiction.

Each of these ways of substantiating argument has many variations, and they appear in combination more often than not. If schools are to give more attention to nonfiction (and to argument in particular), then they should acknowledge argument’s richness. If we assume that all good arguments must have evidence, then we narrow our view at great cost. This narrowness threatens even freedom of speech, as anything without evidence (or the appearance thereof) will be dismissed. We should resist such limitation. Argument thrives not only on statistics and facts, but also on uncertainties, questions, and risks; reasoning that startles you out of your assumptions; examples that make you laugh or shudder; and language that persists in the mind.

Diana Senechal’s book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in January 2012. She is the 2011 winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, awarded by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

Class Warfare—Over What?

by Diana Senechal
August 17th, 2011

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Posted in Curriculum, Education Practice, Teaching | 13 Comments »

In a whopping 437 pages, Steven Brill’s Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools (Simon & Schuster, 2011) recounts a dramatic and vicious battle between two education camps: on the one side, hedge fund managers, aggressive chancellors, determined charter school leaders, teachers who work endlessly, all fighting for reform as they define it; on the other, the big unions who use their clout to block, complicate, or slow down reform. The book has good guys, bad guys, and a surprise twist. Yet it does not stop to consider what education is, what it contains, or what ends it serves. This weakness is not particular to Brill or his book; it is at the core of the battles he describes. But Brill takes part uncritically.

About a hundred pages into the book, Brill describes Anthony Lombardi, a tough-minded middle school principal in Queens, New York, who “would target the teachers he thought were laggards and make life miserable for them.” One of Lombardi’s initiatives was the implementation of a new curriculum that he had developed “with consultants from Columbia Teachers College”; at his urging, teachers uncomfortable with the new curriculum left the school. Former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein told Brill that “Lombardi had emptied his whole school of the incompetents”; Brill accepts this assertion at face value, without looking into the curriculum or the objections. At the very least, Brill could have examined the curriculum; those who resisted it may have had good reasons for doing so.

As the book continues, so does Brill’s error, his dismissal of the substance of education. When describing Children First, the initial education plan of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein, Brill fails to mention the new mandated curricula: Balanced Literacy, Everyday Mathematics, and Impact Mathematics. Balanced Literacy contained more pedagogical prescriptions than subject matter: for instance, a teacher’s direct instruction was to last no longer than 10-15 minutes, and students were to spend much time in groups. Literacy coaches told teachers how to arrange their rooms, what to say in their mini-lessons, and how to praise or correct students. None of this is brought up in the book. Brill notes that Randi Weingarten (at that time the president of the United Federation of Teachers) asked for “teacher input into textbooks and class configuration, more teacher discretion in classroom instruction,” and more. Instead of taking these demands seriously, or even considering them, Brill appears to join in with Klein, who “laughed off these demands from the union.” What is so laughable about a demand that teachers be able to exercise their best judgment? If they are not allowed to use their minds, how will they teach their students to do so?

In Brill’s view, the great teachers are the ones who do what they’re told (and much more), give students their cell phone numbers, agree to work longer days without extra pay, never sit down, and raise test scores. (Later in the book, he grants that teachers should be allowed to sit down now and then.) But education is not a hundred-meter sprint. To teach anything of substance, a teacher needs time for solitary planning and preparation, time to meet informally and formally with colleagues, time to confer with students, time to think. The class needs time to contemplate and discuss interesting topics, even when they are not related to the immediate goals. Often the goals are well served by such forays, as students learn to consider the subject from different angles. Such time does not exist in abundance, but there is nothing heroic about taking it all away.

To Brill, such quiet and ruminative work is unheard of. He criticizes the New York City teachers’ union (the UFT) for “Circular 6,” a rule that reduced teachers’ scheduled non-classroom duties from two periods to one daily. The other period would still be allotted to professional duties, but teachers could choose from a list, and they did not have to be in a specific place at a specific time. To Brill, this means an “extra period off during the day, a perk”; apparently, if teachers are not given tasks at specific places and times, they will do nothing. This assumption is false; it is precisely the self-motivated teachers who need flexibility and will be driven away by an overly prescriptive schedule. Suppose, for instance, that a teacher wishes to help write the school’s curriculum in a particular subject. She will need to write on her own, consult with others, and examine resources. To do this, she cannot always be in a specified location; she should be trusted to move around as necessary to get the work done.

Many other initiatives discussed in Brill’s book—charter school co-location in public school buildings, the Obama administration’s Race to the Top, the Los Angeles Times’ publication of teachers’ value-added ratings, the mass firing of teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island—evade the question of what the schools are seeking to teach. Brill visits a KIPP classroom that in his view resembles other KIPP classrooms he has seen: “full of focused, connected children with a magnetic teacher in front of her room.” But KIPP co-founder Dave Levin sees all sorts of things wrong with it: in Brill’s words, “an imperfect bulletin board, three students whose eyes were wandering, the teacher turning her back to face the blackboard, an incomplete reading log.” Brill does not question or scrutinize Levin’s criticism, but he should. There is a fine line between “sweating the small stuff” and neglecting the larger picture. Do wandering eyes necessarily mean lack of interest or involvement? How does a bulletin board affect the lesson, the course, and the overall education of the students?

Such classroom descriptions make up only a fraction of the book. Brill seems much more interested in the politics of education reform: who is aligned with whom, who knows what about whom, and so forth. Some of his favorite reformers share his predilection for power play. Brill describes a 2008 memo written by Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) leaders who sought to prevent the selection of Linda Darling-Hammond as secretary of education. Their memo stated, among other things, that Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, was DFER’s second-choice recommendation after Arne Duncan. According to Brill, this was an attempt to “lure” Darling-Hammond into a negative response that would weaken her prospects (she had written critically of TFA in the past). Here are influential policymakers using memos not to put forth their views but to manipulate and hurt others. Here is corruption of language and leadership, a void rolling at full speed. Brill rolls along.

Ultimately Brill discovers an error in his own thinking. For most of the book, he glorifies the teachers, leaders, and policymakers who relentlessly pursue success (in terms of student achievement on tests). Later, he acknowledges that such people—especially those who actually work in schools—cannot be sustained, let alone duplicated. He quotes a Harlem Success Academy teacher who reports feeling “overwhelmed, underappreciated, and underpaid” and who says that “this model just cannot scale.” Recognizing that not all teachers are or can be extraordinary, Brill recommends that reformers work with unions—particularly leaders like Weingarten—to “motivate and enable the less than extraordinary in the rank and file to respond to this emergency” (that is, the emergency of failing schools).

Reasonable as Brill’s conclusion sounds, it rests on a flawed definition of “extraordinary.” Extraordinary runners are those who run the fastest or longest (or both). Extraordinary—and good—educators are those who bring subjects to their students in compelling and lasting ways. Some may look like Brill’s high-energy heroes; some may not. A sense of urgency is helpful if one knows what one is doing and takes both a long and a short view. There are quiet teachers who teach their subjects with passion, knowledge, and expertise. There are schools that resist frenzy and fads and educate their students well.

Results are important, but only in relation to what we are trying to do. We may not agree on what we are trying to do, but we should ask what it is, listen to ourselves and others, and follow our best understanding. Class Warfare does not even pose the initial question; it reads like a video game, where the goal is to win points, period.

Diana Senechal has written for American Educator, Education Week, Educational Leadership, American Educational History Journal, and numerous blogs. She holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale and taught for four years in New York City public schools. Her book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in November.

Calm Down the Classroom Walls

by Diana Senechal
August 11th, 2011

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Posted in Education Practice, Teaching | 11 Comments »

With the beginning of the school year just weeks or days away, many teachers will be returning early to set up their bulletin boards and classrooms. That is an exciting time—except that there’s so much stuff to put up. In addition to organizing the room and making it inviting, teachers must put all the required teacher-made pieces in place, lest an omission be noted in a walkthrough observation.

Growing up, I attended eight different schools—public and private, progressive and traditional, in the United States and abroad. I have sat in bare and decorated classrooms, and I found something appealing in both. In elementary school, I usually preferred cheery, colorful places; in high school, I liked the calm of sparse rooms. But today’s classrooms are often neither cheery nor sparse. Across the grades, teachers are expected to cover the classroom walls with charts, lists, standards, rubrics, tasks, reminders, and student work. The argument is that children will learn more in a “print-rich” environment.

There is basis for the “print-rich” argument, especially in the elementary grades. Exposure to print, combined with explicit instruction, can boost students’ reading considerably. But even in kindergarten classrooms, the “print-rich” factor can be overdone. It is difficult to take in anything when there’s so much staring at you. One becomes immune to posters on strategies and processes (which often aren’t “rich” to begin with). Also, there is a hint of condescension in such overdecoration, as though students could not learn without prompts coming from every angle. Why so much stuff? There is something strong about a room that doesn’t protest too much, and it sets a good example for the students.

Even displays of student work may not always help students. If student work is posted just because it must be posted, it loses meaning. Few students, teachers, or administrators actually take time to read it. If it is on a hallway bulletin board, students may deface it (intentionally or not) when rushing by. Moreover, as David Riesman noted decades ago in The Lonely Crowd, the public display of student work can promote sameness of topic and voice. The treatment of all writing as publishable or displayable does not give students a chance to take risks, learn from mistakes, struggle with syntax, structure, and style, and work out ideas.

In addition, there is a problem of resources; classroom displays take time and supplies. Locating the appropriate materials—bulletin board paper, borders, staples and stapler and staple remover, construction paper, markers, and so forth—is only the beginning. There are the inevitable errors: lopsided letters, bad stapling, the omission of a required rubric. Finding space on the walls can be a challenge; it is common to see clotheslines strung from wall to wall, with student work hanging from them. If you’re short, you may have trouble hanging things up in high places; if you’re tall, you may find yourself bumping into the clotheslines.  Then there is the wear and tear: items falling down from the walls, taking pieces of paint along. After a few rounds of decorating, the room looks more dilapidated than ever.

Of course, no one wants a dreary classroom. It is exciting to enter a room and figure out immediately what is taught there. Sometimes this is conveyed invisibly; a good high school course has its own character, and there may be no need for displays at all. At other times, displays have a place. There may be descriptions of chemistry experiments, or biographies of composers. Some student work on the walls can be impressive and inspiring. A classroom display may reflect ongoing discussions; teachers may post questions intended to provoke further thought.

But what about all those charts and lists that are needed? Well, we have to consider whether they truly live up to their mandatory status. Take, for instance, the charts of the “writing process,” which hang on many classroom walls. They do not apply to every situation or student. Yes, writing often consists of five stages: pre-writing, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing. But within this, there is a great deal of variation: one may revise a piece at a late stage, and one might not publish it at all. If students have substantial and regular writing assignments, they need no chart to remind them of the basic steps. By contrast, vocabulary lists, chronologies, and scientific and mathematical formulas may well be useful.

To have good schools, we need focus and simplicity. Teachers should be able to concentrate on planning and delivering lessons; students, on learning the material and developing ideas. Schools should have the gumption to sort the essential from the extraneous. If schools stopped requiring the display of charts, lists, tasks, rubrics, and student work, they would have room for interesting displays. They would also have greater calm, on the walls and elsewhere. To do good work, one must have room for it; one cannot be crammed and crowded to the brim.

Diana Senechal has written for American Educator, Education Week, Educational Leadership, American Educational History Journal, and numerous blogs. She holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale and taught for four years in New York City public schools. Her book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in November.

Our Strange Descent Into Jargon

by Diana Senechal
July 7th, 2011

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Posted in Curriculum | 18 Comments »

At age fourteen, I took interest in curriculum—specifically, Soviet curriculum. My family went to Moscow for a year, in 1978–79; my parents were on sabbatical, and my sister and I attended Soviet schools. Before  our trip, I learned that students in the ninth grade read Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and other nineteenth-century Russian authors. That settled that: I was determined to enter the ninth grade (comparable to grade 10 or 11 in the U.S.). I wanted to read all of these literary works in the original; I knew it would take some effort, but that didn’t deter me. My wish came true; I was allowed to enter the ninth grade. I took to my responsibilities with fervor, participating eagerly, often clumsily, in class and poring over my reading at home. By spring I was reading Dostoevsky without a dictionary, carrying Crime and Punishment with me everywhere, living the phrases.

The literary works saved the curriculum from being dreadful. Despite the ideological slant of the textbooks, the curriculum tacitly acknowledged that the literature mattered in itself. This acknowledgment was hard won. Even in 1978, well after the Khrushchev Thaw, many works were still banned (including Doctor Zhivago), others hard to find, still others taught with narrow political interpretations—but the literature would not give into these limitations, nor would the readers. Many Russians and other Soviets read avidly, memorized poems, went to great ends to obtain books, published and distributed censored works through “samizdat,” and spent evenings arguing about favorite authors and works. (Yes, this stereotype has been exaggerated, but there is truth to it.) Literature was a serious matter for them, and the school curriculum reflected this.  

In American education discussion, we generally treat literature as an afterthought. To insist on this or that work, many say, is to “impose” one’s values on others or to demand that all children learn in “lockstep.” People shy away from recommending a particular work; instead, they refer to “text complexity” or some other generic feature that the book should possess. While short of censorship, this amounts to something similar: a concession to the flat culture of “whatever.” The priorities shift: the point is not for students to read Irving, Melville, Poe, or Twain, but for them to locate a central idea, trace an argument from start to finish, or engage in paired and small-group conversation about a text—any text at all, so long as it meets certain criteria. The Common Core State Standards make a gesture toward literature, but the very fact that is a gesture shows how touchy the matter is. The greater gesture is toward “informational texts,” which are considered essential for “college and career readiness.”

In a manner very different from that of the Soviets, we have created our own regime of jargon: “college and career readiness,” “text complexity,” “reading strategies,” “scaffolding,” “targeted assessments,” “differentiation,” “value added,” and so forth. Yes, these terms have a meaning and serve a purpose. All the same, when we surround ourselves with them, we lose touch with the language that makes all of this worthwhile, such as the lines from Othello, “’Twill out, ’twill out! I peace? / No, I will speak as liberal as the north, / Let heaven and men and devils, let them all, / All, all, cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak.” Of course education discussion cannot subsist on Shakespeare alone; of course it needs some terminology. But without any discussion of the things worth learning, it’s hard to make any sense of “achievement” and “improvement” and other such words.

There are several related issues here. First is the importance of subject matter to education discussion. Be it physics, history, or literature, the subjects themselves illuminate what we do. Second is the matter of a specific curriculum. At some level, the curriculum must lay out a good portion of what students will learn (including the literary works they will read). Without such specificity, curriculum discussion becomes personalized (“I don’t find Shakespeare developmentally appropriate for my students, but I’m not telling you what to do.”) Without common ground within a school, it is difficult, if not impossible, to build on what one is doing. Third, there is the value of literature itself. Teachers may disagree about which works are important, but the importance is there. To make it all a matter of opinion is to trivialize it. It is preferable to fight for a beloved work than to remove specific works from the curriculum.  

Is a national literature curriculum the solution? Probably not. But there are other ways to honor literature in the curricula and schools. A district or state curriculum could specify a few works and leave the rest to the discretion of teachers and schools. Or it could lay out a sequence of works and authors but allow for some substitutions. (Many high schools do this as a matter of course; elementary and middle schools could follow suit.) In any case, works of literature and literary nonfiction would be at the center, and skills would take their place around them. This would do more than prepare students for college and career; it would give them something to carry through their lives. It would give them a sense of language that goes beyond the usual. Students would learn to see past the jargon of the day, whatever it might be. They would become aware of aspects of life that push beyond assumptions, that don’t quite add up—in Frost’s words, “formulae that won’t formulate—that almost but don’t quite formulate.” They would learn, through repeated readings, that one’s initial understanding often isn’t the best—that it takes time for a work or concept or historical event to reveal its character. This awareness is no frill. It keeps the mind alive.

Diana Senechal has written for American Educator, Education Week, Educational Leadership, American Educational History Journal, and numerous blogs. She holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale and taught for four years in New York City public schools. Her book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in November.

Study Finds Lectures Worth Insulting

by Diana Senechal
June 2nd, 2011

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Posted in Assessment and Testing, Education News, Humor, Teaching | 29 Comments »

I am fond of the old-fashioned lecture. It gives me something to sink into, something to think about. It’s often supplemented with discussions and labs, so students don’t just sit and listen. If it is taught well, it can be intriguing, even rousing, even lingering. I remember those packed lecture halls in college, and other superb lecture courses as well.

But I must defer to research-based research. Research has just shown that certain research-based methods bring greater learning gains in physics than the lecture approach. Sarah D. Sparks describes the study in an Education Week blog, but I got curious and decided to read the report for myself (Science, May 13, 2011, available by subscription or purchase only).

Yes, indeed. Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver conducted a week-long experiment near the end of a year-long physics course. They found—

Wait—for a week? Near the end of a full year?
           
Don’t interrupt. This blog doesn’t get interactive until I’m done.

Yes, ahem, as I was saying, the students had been taking a lecture course in physics. The lectures were supplemented throughout the year with labs, tutorials, recitations, and assignments. In week 12 of the second semester, the researchers conducted an experiment with two of the three sections of this course. There was a control section (267 students) and an experimental section (271 students).  The instructor of the control section continued teaching through lectures. The instructors of the experimental section used “deliberate practice”—in this case, “a series of challenging questions and tasks that require the students to practice physicist-like reasoning and problem solving during class time while provided with frequent feedback.

The experimental group did much better than the control group on the test, which was administered in the first class session of week 13. All students were informed that this test would not affect their grade but would serve as good practice for the final exam. (Wait—what? —No interruptions. This is your second warning.) In the control section, 171 of the 267 students (64 percent) attended class on the day of the test; 211 out of the 271 students in the experimental section (78 percent) attended. The control section scored an average of 41 percent on the test; the experimental section, 74 percent. Victory for experimental things! Students in both sections took an average of 20 minutes to complete the test. (All this stir over a twenty-minute quizzy-poo that doesn’t affect the grade? —I’ve already warned you. If you interrupt again, I’m calling your parents).

The researchers state confidently at the end:

“In conclusion, we show that use of deliberate practice teaching strategies can improve both learning and engagement in a large introductory physics course as compared with what was obtained with the lecture method. Our study compares similar students, and teachers with the same learning objectives and the same instructional time and tests. This result is likely to generalize to a variety of postsecondary courses.”

Or, as they put it succinctly in the abstract: “We found increased student attendance, higher engagement, and more than twice the learning in the section taught using research-based instruction.”

I am convinced. It doesn’t matter that all of the students had been learning through lecture, lab, tutorial, and recitation all year long. What matters is what happened in this one week. The present is now. What happened was magical. There was learning. Even more learning in the experimental group—oh, much more—than in the control group. What this means—if you can just hold your horses for a moment—I’m telling you, I’m serious, I’ve got my cell phone here—what this means is that we should expand the findings to other courses. We should expand it everywhere! We should get rid of lectures altogether, or, at the very least, insult them.

Sarah D. Sparks seems to agree with the researchers: “While the study focused only on one section of college students, it gives yet more support for educators moving away from lecture-based instruction.” (One does this just as one might slide away from a misfit at a party.) According to Sparks, this study suggests that “interactive learning can be more than twice as effective as lecturing.” Take that, lecture!

Well, anything can be anything, except when it can’t. But that isn’t the point. The point is that lots of people are excited about this, and we really shouldn’t let them down. If I were to be reasonable about it, I’d suggest that “deliberate practice” of this sort works well when students already have a strong foundation. They need to know what they’re practicing. To get rid of the lectures would be simply reckless. But why be reasonable? Insulting can be fun. Bad lecture! Good experiment! More effective! Chopped thoughts! Research-based!  

Diana Senechal’s book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in November 2011.

What Do Teachers “Produce”?

by Diana Senechal
April 12th, 2011

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Posted in Assessment and Testing, Education News, Education Theory, Teaching | 17 Comments »

In a recent head-scratcher of an article in Education Next, economist Eric A. Hanushek puts forth the argument that effective teachers produce higher salaries in their students.

The logic? Well, according to labor data, students whose high school test performance is one standard deviation above average (that is, students at the 84th percentile) can expect to earn 10 to 15 percent more per year than the student of average achievement. Hanushek assumes, apparently, that this high performance was the result of large gains over the years (as measured by test scores). We’ll get to that in a moment.

Now, according to Hanushek, if we consider that a “high-performing” teacher (at or above the 84th percentile) produces achievement gains of 0.2 standard deviations above those of students with an “average” teacher, and if one takes into account attenuation over time, one finds that such teachers will boost their students’ collective earnings by hundreds of thousands of dollars. The figure offered for a teacher in the 84th percentile with a class of 20 students is $400,000 per year; even a teacher in the 60th percentile will raise students’ earnings by $106,000.

With all due respect to Hanushek, I find that his argument oscillates between the silly and the scary. The silly part is this: there is no evidence (as far as I know) that students in the highest percentiles in high school are those who made the greatest gains on their standardized tests over the years. In fact, I suspect that most of them did pretty well on those tests all along. The top level on many of these tests is not very high; once you reach a certain level of proficiency, your gains don’t show. Unless it can be demonstrated that these top-percentile students did indeed have the greatest gains—and that their teachers had the highest value-added scores—the argument flops.

Also, there’s no reason to assume that “high-performing” teachers—those whose students make the greatest gains—bring their students to the 84th percentile or higher. It is quite possible that the larger gains occur at lower levels. For many reasons, I suspect that they tend to cluster around the average—but whether or not that is the case, there is no indication that they continue in linear fashion up to the top.

As for the scary part, let us take the argument to its logical conclusion. Suppose teachers could “produce” higher salaries in students, and suppose the “highest-performing” teachers produced the highest salaries, on average. Wow—then you’d have a cadre of test score virtuosi churning out lawyers, CEOs, social network inventors, surgeons, and change readiness consultants by the thousands. Now, some people enjoy those professions, but not all do.

Who, then, “produces” the foresters, violinists, English professors, marine biologists, simultaneous translators, teachers, firefighters, museum guides, electricians, editors, and cabinet makers? Does this fall to the not-quite-so-high-performing teachers? If so, maybe the ultimate “effectiveness” is not entirely desirable. This does not mean, of course, that anyone should settle for so-so teaching and learning. Yet we cannot assume, across the board, that more or higher equals better.

Now, most people want a good salary, up to a certain threshold. Very few want to live in poverty, to depend on others, or to be left without choices. But beyond that threshold, many may choose a profession or job that doesn’t pay spectacularly but is otherwise rewarding. Many want to keep their job low-key so that they can do things outside of work.

I realize that that isn’t quite the point—that we are talking about the difference between those who reach a certain level of achievement in school and those who don’t—and the consequences of such a gap. But even there, many ambiguities remain. Although high achievers tend to earn higher salaries, not all do or wish to do so, nor do lower achievers (within a certain range) necessarily end up lost and impoverished.

What do teachers “produce”? If there is free will, they produce nothing. They teach, inspire, and encourage their students; they demand the best of their students; and they point to many possibilities, through the subject matter and their own examples. They help students reach a point where they can support themselves and do something they enjoy. But it is the student who takes off and does it—often making choices that confound the teachers and parents. That is how it should be. Otherwise, for all our fanfare over the Future, we would be trapped in an eternal Industrial Age, with teachers turning out remote-control dolls. 

Diana Senechal’s book, Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield Education in November 2011.

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