This is the title of a book written by Donald Finkel, a former professor at the Evergreen State College. Unfortunately Dr. Finkel passed away in 1999 but his daughter Zoe loaned me this book after reading a draft of my essay about Peninsula school. The book sat on my desk for a while until I happened to take it to a bluegrass festival one weekend. Finding myself digitally deprived and with lots of unstructured time on my hands, I started reading the book. It took only a few pages before I was taken in by both, the book and the author. I wish I could’ve met professor Finkel, I wish I were a student in one of his seminars, and I wish every teacher would read this book.

Finkel’s exhorts readers to abandon the prevalent model of teaching as TELLING, He writes:
“Our natural, unexamined model for teaching is Telling…The fundamental act of teaching is to carefully and clearly tell students something they did not previously know. Knowledge is transmitted, we imagine through the act of telling.” What we think of as good teachers just do this in a more captivating way than the not so good ones. (more…)

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry while reading today’s NYT article about how many teachers/schools are experimenting with giving students choice in what books they read rather than assigning required reading to the whole class. Turns out giving kids choice motivates them to read more. My only response was a proverbial “Dah?!” How long did it take experts to come up with this discovery? Has anyone bothered to just talk to any high school student? Last summer we held a roundtable at IFTF with about 15 high school seniors most of whom talked about loving to read when they were younger but hating “doing” reading in high school both because it was “assigned” and simply because they did not have time to read for pleasure. Is there anything we like to do when forced? Why should reading be any different? The sad part was to read about teachers having to make choices in whether to teach to the test or in in a way that develops the love of reading in students. Here is a reaction of one teacher who was observing a reading workshop where kids were given reading choices:

At the end of the first day the teachers discussed the demands of standardized testing and how some had faced resistance from administrators. Ms. McNeill said her students had so little freedom that they even had to be escorted to the bathrooms.

Suddenly she was overcome with emotion as she contrasted that environment with the student-led atmosphere in Ms. Atwell’s class. “It makes me sad that my students can’t have this every day,” she said, wiping away tears. “These children are so fortunate.”

Thinking again about unintended consequences and how oftentimes what you think is bad for you turns out to be good, this time in connection with education, specifically how what today is construed as “rigorous academic education” filled with AP classes, competitive tests, and loads of homework results in kids turned off from learning. This again based on personal experience.

For 10 years, starting in 1995, my family was engaged in an educational experiment. The experiment involved our son, Greg, who was enrolled at Peninsula school, an 85-year old progressive school in the San Francisco Bay Area. For about half of that time, mostly starting with 4th grade, my husband and I were nagged by doubt: yes, Peninsula is a great environment for kids; yes, Greg is turning out to be a creative, caring, thoughtful human being; but is he getting enough academics? Is he getting enough of the basics in math, writing, and sciences? Several times we seriously thought about taking him out of Peninsula and enrolling him in another “more academic” school. Usually this happened after a conversation with a parent whose child was doing algebra in 3d grade or writing 10 page essays in 5th. The only thing that stopped us from leaving Peninsula was the fact that Greg truly loved it—its teachers, its choices, its grounds, its smells, its music room (more about that later)—and that at some subconscious level we felt that for him, and for us, being at Peninsula was the right thing. We just didn’t know why—it went against all the prevailing wisdom of more accountability, more standards, more rigor, more home work, more time management for kids—all the prescriptions for improving our education system and preparing our kids for a world in which they will be competing for jobs with highly educated kids from China, India, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, noone at Peninsula was good at articulating for a couple of overeducated, analytically minded adults schooled in the “old” system why this was the best kind of education. We constantly saw examples of Peninsula’s success—poised, articulate, and reflective graduates who went on to high schools and did remarkably well. Every time, however, the nagging doubt was still there—yes, it worked for them, that doesn’t mean it will work for Greg. He still can’t do math very well. (more…)