We are tired of cliches. Every mission statement of every school I’ve worked for is full of them. They sound good, but they’re pro forma and have changed little in the past 20 years: “We want our children to become lifelong learners, to feel safe, be critical thinkers, and to recognize real world applications for what they’ve learned in their classrooms.”
Mission statements exist so schools do not get demerits from accreditation panels, and so superintendents/headmasters/principals/presidents can continue to occupy their positions for another year or three. What bunk.
| What Kids Are Reading | ||
| This column looks at lists of books kids are reading in various categories. Information on the children’s books below came from About.com. | ||
| Top 10 Books on High School Summer Reading Lists | ||
| 1. | To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee | |
| 2. | Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston | |
| 3. | 1984 by George Orwell | |
| 4. | Brave New World by Aldous Huxley | |
| 5. | The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald | |
| 6. | Dracula by Bram Stoker | |
| 7. | Les Miserables by Victor Hugo | |
| 8. | The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck | |
| 9. | The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien | |
| 10. | A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving | |
Enter well-meaning teachers, hopeful parents and worried students. Instead of contemplating lifelong learning or critical thinking, most teachers worry about getting lesson plans approved by administrators, filling out appropriate paperwork for instructional goals and student attendance.
Administrators spend time attempting to keep halls safe and tracking down students who have skipped class, misbehaved or forged a parent’s absence note.
Parents hope their children’s teachers will be kind, flexible, will know their stuff and will bring out their child’s best. Students worry about grades, clear expectations and academic acceptance by their peer group. (“Do I admit to liking a book? Doing well on a test? Will that make me the butt of jokes in the cafeteria?”) Where are the high-flown mission statements when you need them?
The trick for any good teacher is to game the system. We provide lesson and goals that fit in with largely meaningless mission statements, and then we get on with the real business of education. Students, parents and administrators also game the system; the appearance of conformity allows them to do what they think is really in the best interests of the child — even if it is not part of the mission, mandate or instructional goal.
For example, teachers who are required to do the identical lessons and give identical tests on grade levels may object to these commonalities. The intention behind the requirement is admirable: Students should receive similar experiences regardless of teacher. But where is the reality check?
Schools are different, classes are different, teachers are different. Homogenization smacks of “1984”; do we really want our children to be educated the same way? Isn’t our country founded on a philosophy that values independence and diversity?
Each year at my high school I pitched ideas to make classes more interdisciplinary, make assignments more writing- and thinking-centered, make the classroom less of a lecture format and more about student participation. Did those ideas catch on? Occasionally they did, but were squashed when I retired, and the administration opted for more separation between subjects and uniformity of curricula. That fits in better with national standards. Is that wrong? Not wholly. But students and parents love the exciting components of a less traditional curriculum.
And isn’t this just like political speechifying? We have candidates who are well meaning, but when they don’t give us the big picture and allow us to think for ourselves, we resent them. Their speeches sound hollow; it appears they are simply lobbying for election. So it is with education. Until we can make students, teachers and parents part of a risk-taking creative process, it will all seem formulaic. It will seem that way — because it is.
Erica Jacobs teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected].
