Academics. What’s it good for?
Our school system doesn’t need to create kids who are good at school
Academics. Most of our current school system revolves around it, and yet, I think it falls miserably short of what our kids need. To be honest, I think our academic system of education is highly overrated, at best. At worst, it destroys a number of our kids. Now hear me out. I’m not saying that our kids shouldn’t learn to read, or do math, or even a number of other valuable skills. But too often, the focus of our kid’s school day is on content with little connection to why it matters or even with each other. Instead, many of our students spend hours filling in worksheets or copying down lecture notes that they could Google in 30 seconds. Too often what they listen to is boring and irrelevant to their lives. And from my experience, most of this content is simply memorized, spewed out for an exam and then quickly forgotten. But beyond this, there’s often only one right answer, which frequently cultivates in our students a fear of failure.
For the most part, kids who we consider “academic” tend to be good hoop jumpers. They’ve figured out the system and can jump through the hoops. But rarely are they engaged. Rarely are they transformed by their learning. They’re going through the motions. Research shows that some of the least engaged students are the high achievers. They do well because they know how to “do school”. Is this really the best we have to offer them? Or worse, what if you’re not “academic”? Most of these kids live too many years of their young lives feeling like they don’t measure up. Feeling stupid. And for some, it radically alters their trajectory of their lives. Unfortunately, too many students have to recover from school once they graduate. Is this really the best we have to offer them?
In all honesty, I have to admit that I used to believe in this system. For too many years my students sat in straight rows. I asked the questions. I had the answers. I controlled the learning. But the truth is I did this because it’s what I knew. It’s how I’d been taught. It’s what I saw replicated in university and in other teacher’s classrooms. I sincerely believed that good grades mattered. I’m an English teacher, and I subscribed wholeheartedly to the belief that the pinnacle of success in English was the ability to write “the essay”. But I’ve radically changed my position. To be honest, I’ve come to believe it’s one of the most useless things we teach our students. Recently, I’ve started to ask people I know, “Do you ever write an essay?” I’ve never had one person say yes. I wonder how many teachers, except those who are taking university classes, ever write essays. If I may be so bold, I wonder how many English teachers frequently write essays.
In all honesty, I have to admit that I used to believe in this system. For too many years my students sat in straight rows. I asked the questions. I had the answers. I controlled the learning. But the truth is I did this because it’s what I knew. It’s how I’d been taught.
I’m not saying our kids shouldn’t be able to write. On the contrary, I think our students should be able to argue gracefully, and persuade powerfully. And know what they believe and why. I simply think the essay is a medium that has outlived its usefulness, at least in high school.
I’ve come to realize that being academic doesn’t tell you much. It tells you you’re good at school, which is fine if you plan to spend your life in academia, but very few of our students do. It doesn’t indicate whether or not you’ll be successful in your marriage, raising your kids, managing your money, or giving back to your community. Things that matter much more than being good at school.
Instead, school should be a place where kids can discover what they love. They should be able to ask the questions that matter to them and pursue the answers. They should discover what they are passionate about, what truly sets their hearts and souls on fire. They should discover they can make a difference now. But above all, they should leave school knowing what they are good at. And at this point, I think most kids graduate only knowing if they’re good at school or not. Often our students have many talents; they just don’t fit in our current curriculum because they’re likely not considered “real knowledge”.
Yet, oddly, in the Biology curriculum that I’ve taught for the past several years, one of the objectives that my students need to know is earthworm reproduction. Really? Out of all the things we could be teaching a 17-year-old about biology, someone decided earthworm reproduction was essential?
I’ve come to realize that being academic doesn’t tell you much. It tells you you’re good at school, which is fine if you plan to spend your life in academia, but very few of our students do. It doesn’t indicate whether or not you’ll be successful in your marriage, raising your kids, managing your money, or giving back to your community. Things that matter much more than being good at school.
We are born curious. Babies explore their environments to learn; they do it naturally without being told. Three-year-olds constantly, at times annoyingly, ask, “why?” And yet, by the time I get my students in Grade 10, my students have all but lost their curiosity. Consequently, when I get a new class of students, we start by unlearning. We need to begin to imagine what school could be, instead of what they’ve known for ten years. Only then can we begin to do the work that will help them become lifelong learners who truly enjoy the search for answers, rather than the mark on the top of their exam.
Recently I’ve been reading Amanda Lang’s The Power of Why. In it she states:
Curious kids learn how to learn, and how to enjoy it – and that, more than any specific body of knowledge, is what they will need to have in the future. The world is changing so rapidly that by the time a student graduates from university, everything he or she learned may already be headed toward obsolescence. The main thing that students need to know is not what to think but how to think in order to face new challenges and solve new problems (p.14).
Our school system doesn’t need to create kids who are good at school. Instead, we need to create an environment that engages learners, fosters creativity, and puts responsibility for learning where it belongs – with our students. Instead of rote learning, teachers need to use content to teach skills. We need to build environments that allow our students to get messy and build things. Where students learn how to learn, and know how they learn best. Where students engage in significant research, and learn how to identify credible resources amidst a plethora of information that, at times, may seem overwhelming. Furthermore, our students need to be able to problem-solve, innovate and fail over and over again. Throughout all of this, our kids should be collaborating with each other, as well as virtually with students across the globe. They need to be able to communicate powerfully using the mediums of print, photography and video.
As I’ve worked with my students, we’ve come to realize they need to be able to answer three questions, regardless of what we’re researching: What are you going to learn? How are you going to learn it? How are you going to show me you’re learning? How they get there is often their decision. And what they come up with never fails to surprise me.
Our school system doesn’t need to create kids who are good at school. Instead, we need to create an environment that engages learners, fosters creativity, and puts responsibility for learning where it belongs – with our students.
My classroom hasn’t always looked like this. But over the past three years we’ve shifted to a constructivist pedagogy that has transformed not only my thinking, but my students as well. Now we learn in an inquiry, PBL, tech-embedded classroom. The journey at times has been painful and messy, but well worth the work. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that my students will often exceed my expectations, if only they’re given the chance.
This blog post is part of a series of thoughtful responses to the question: What’s standing in the way of change in education? to help inform CEA’s Calgary Conference on Oct 21-22, (#CEACalgary2013) where education leaders from across Canada will be answering the same question. If you would like to answer this question, please tweet us at: @cea_ace