A friend recently sent me this link:
Fascinating if true, I thought. I read something like this and think “If only Herb Grosdidier could have had access to this technology in 1968.” Herb, as I’m sure you all know by now, radically restructured Payette High School’s math program. The idea was that each student could move at his own pace, the idea being to master the course skills, not to see who could learn how much in a prescribed time; you can have it one way or the other. Algebra traditionally begins September 1 and is as done as it is going to get on June 1, when the music stops. If you have mastered enough to allow you to survive in the next course, well and good; if not, well, whose fault is that, anyway? Herb called it “the tyranny of the calendar.” The courses were as interactive as spirit duplicator technology allowed, which is as not very, compared to the kind of interactive software available today. Results were promising, but its implementation clunked, and it was too labor-intensive to be really practical. Remember, nothing like this had ever been done, not in this benighted part of the world anyhow, and everything had to be invented from the ground up.
Now, we have entered into a new age when technology can completely transform instruction. Supposedly. Frankly, I am skeptical. The computer is a teaching tool, no less, no more. It is as good as how it is used and as good as the software that is on it. I fear that such instructional materials could too often be naught but glorified worksheets, although I have never examined any. I am less worried about math, because it is more linear, because I know that a math class does not have to have a traditional structure: I saw Herb’s program and have seen such promising resources as the Khan academy. Furthermore, I am confident that I was not too far from being able to package my 12th grade English as an on-line course. That would be fun. The new rules do not allow such things, of course.
Would that have enabled me to teach more students? Only insofar as it would free up class time for me to spend in my office reading essays. For an English course to be competent, students must write – lots. And sooner or later, the teacher must read this writing. In my subject, anyhow, the limiting factor to class size is total paper load (assuming that every student has a chair on which to set his butt). Yet this article repeats the tired old Reformist rhetoric that yes, all this will cost lots of money, but we can save that much and more by getting rid of teachers – in this particular district, 37. At this point, the whole article becomes suspect as mere pleasant words to hide the zinger… Perhaps I grow cynical in my geezerhood. Perhaps I am morbidly sensitive. But last year, I heard our Legislature and our state Superintendent sing this same song over and over.
Why does it never occur to these people that it might work better if first, teachers could sit down, with or without their administrators, and come up with ways that technology can serve the curriculum, not how the curriculum can be jiggered to serve the technology? (After all, It’s the Curriculum, Stupid!) They might find a lot of reluctant teachers, like the ones weeded out during the last round of layoffs, dragging their feet a whole lot less.
I used to have this nightmare: One morning I would show up at school, and there would be a SMART Board in my room. On it would be a note “Use this, and it had better make a big difference, or else.” Now, I have never figured out what I would use a SMART Board for, if I had one. I have only seen them used for boring Power Point presentations in boring in-services. Oh, yes. My computer and the bank of student computers would be gone, and in their place another note, “By the way, now that you have a SMART Board, you won’t need these anymore. Embrace progress!” Think how I would feel if my globe were gone, if I had a globe.
These student computers can only be as good as the software on them. The selection of it is something that teachers have no part in or control over. It is contracted for by the State Department of Education, at least here in Idaho. What the selection criteria are, I have no idea. Lowest bidder? Sweetheart deal with a crony? Who knows?
One day, after an administrator had finished rhapsodizing about SMART Boards (not that any of us got one); I gave him my perennial pitch. My dream was that before I retired, all of my students would have routine computer access, so that I could require all essays to be typed. Remember that many of my students did not come from prosperous families and did not have computers at home. Actually, computer access went downhill the last few years, not counting dedicated computer labs. Students could submit papers electronically. I could check for plagiarism electronically. I could, if it would be helpful, read, critique, and return papers electronically. I’m sure applications would have grown from there. The administrator replied, “Hey, remember we’re the technology district. What you’re talking about was OK a few years ago, but now, it’s just so over.”
In the edbiz, there is always some new Big Thing coming along every few years, usually after we get a new administrator. Everything gets shaken up and turned upside down, and we stand on our heads to accommodate it. About the time it is starting to work, out it goes, and another Big Thing comes along, sweeping away all that came before. Then we teachers get blamed for being fickle and inconsistent. Some of those reluctant teachers this superintendent seems so glad to have gotten rid of would be a lot less reluctant if they could shake the feeling that This Too Will Pass… And then what?