Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Adventures in a Traditional High School

Since my last post, I moved across the country and began work at a traditional comprehensive high school. What I've observed so far may not be a revelation to anyone but me, as I've never worked in a traditional school setting. However, I'm quite literally in shock about how many aspects of this environment just don't make sense. I'll try to describe them here in a way that reflects their absurdity:
  • During each 45 minute period, teenagers and adults are expected to engage fully in absorbing information and/or participating in activities that have no connection (explicit or otherwise) to either the 45 minutes that came before it or those that would follow it.
  • The chunks of the day are meted out by loud ringing noises, whose volume is intended, one must assume, to cut off any train of thought they might be interrupting.
  • Students' behavioral patterns are regulated in innumerable ways, so that they must adhere to appropriate use of speech, restrooms, physical space, movement from place to place, and exercise. Similar behavioral patterns are imposed on inmates in prison.
  • The vast majority of students' intellectual (and sometimes physical) output has no practical function; its sole purpose is to demonstrate a set of knowledge or skills (as determined by the teacher, often without adequate justification provided to students), after which it is usually discarded.
This is only the beginning of what could be a much longer list. It's been said before that education is the least changed public institution of the last 150 years. It was designed for the needs of industry, at a time when schools were expected to produce factory workers and tradespeople; now, in a country where the vast majority of workers produce no physical objects and do most of their thinking about abstract concepts, our schools are woefully ill equipped to educate most people for their expected futures.

Sir Ken Robinson argues the point masterfully in his TED lecture about the need for schools to teach creativity. He says that, in today's world, creativity is just as essential as literacy, and it should be given the same gravity in schools. You wouldn't believe the number of blank stares I get when I ask my students the last time their teachers asked them to be creative. The implied message (and sometimes even the stated one) seems to be that, in the confines of a traditional school - with all the trappings presented by the bulleted list above - schools aren't equipped to encourage creativity; students will just have to wait for college to get that.

4 comments:

Cynthia said...

Spencer,

I stumbled upon your blog (I have no idea how, the power of the internet I guess) and found this post, as well as the post on your Masters Thesis topic to be very interesting.

I do agree that "traditional" high school methodology may seem foreign after HTH, but it seemed to me that the list was presented in a negative light and HTH was far from perfect. Some examples:
* Having students give TPOLs instead of taking final exams, in the attempt to prepare them for the "real world" of business presentations and the like. A little impractical considering the next 4 years after high school (college) consists strictly of finals and very few oral presentations.
* The lack of textbooks or literature books. I didn't start "reading" until 12th grade @ HTH and never had a Geometry book in the 10th grade.

These are things to consider, every school had its pros and cons.
Although, since I did go to a traditional high school my freshman year, I must agree with you on the bell schedule thing...very annoying!

Hope everything is well!

Your former student,
Cynthia

James J. Griffin said...

Spencer,

Well said. As I'm coming up on my 10 year reunion this month, I've been thinking back on my high school days.

I distinctly remember walking from one extreme on campus to another. From English in Senior year to Calculus and remembering how tacitly related the two could have possibly been.

It was that day (and remembering a little thing called the unified field theory in physics) that I became interested in holistic education.

How are we intended to produce abstract thinkers, capable of entertaining and executing complex and interrelated ideas if that thinking isn't trained in a traditional environment? It's absurd.

Which is a long winded way of saying, I think this is why I went into philosophy in college. To study interrelated disciplines. I wanted to learn "how" as opposed to "what" to think. Since I was shafted on that ability in high school.

Keep on keepin on.

Jim

Anonymous said...

Jim, I agree that "what" is the question most asked in traditional schools, although "how" and "why" are often more important. I'd love to talk philosophy with you some time!

Cynthia, I see what you mean about the prevalence of written exams in college. That's a really good point. I think it's more discipline-specific in college, though...For example, I was in a creative writing program, so I almost never took final exams (I just turned in projects I'd been working on). But a lot of disciplines still value the standard test. Maybe HTH could emphasize discipline-relevant assessments?

Thanks for the comments!

Jack Shoegazer said...

My favorite teachers in high school were the few that required creativity and original thought. They were few and far between. An English teacher, my science fiction teacher. Both required not rote repetitions but thought and well-reasoned opinion and in both cases, many kids dropped the class after the first couple weeks because they weren't used to being asked to flex some grey matter.

This is a very big problem; both our education and economic systems are set up for industrial production and in the current times, both are useless systems that do not accurately reflect modern needs. Like the combustion engine, we're running on 19th century technology in a Jetson's world.