“Why do we have to learn this?”
I hate that question. I think all teachers hate that question. We poke fun at students during staff meetings by “impersonating” their whining, making it at least 50% more nasally.
So, why do we hate this question? Part of it no doubt rests in the nature of the question, in that it is almost never an actual question. It’s usually a sign of mutiny in the ranks, a permitted sign of rebellion (after all, we can’t tell them NOT to ask it). It’s almost never asked in a cheerful tone, full of exuberance at the thought of another lesson with the potential to shape their future. “Why do we have to learn this?” is pretty much the more appropriate version of, “Do I have to?” It’s a stall tactic.
Or perhaps we hate it because we don’t know how to answer it. Heck, I don’t know how to answer it most of the time. Why do you have to learn how to divide fractions? Beats me. You have to learn it because you’ll need it to do harder math, which you’ll need to prove to colleges that you’re smart enough to get in, even if you don’t want to study math. Also, a select few of you in here may decide to work in a field which requires high level math skills, like an actuary, in which case you still won’t need to divide fractions, but you’ll have to do something much harder than that.
This is generally an unacceptable answer. I usually go with something like, “It’s good for your brain.” Sometimes we’re ace fibbers, sometimes we have thought of the one real life application that we can ride out for all time (do yourself a favor and please read this delightful answer by Dr. Math), sometimes we cleverly change the subject to avoid answering. Because this is usually the cold hard truth: you have to learn it because I have to teach you.
And why, I sometimes wonder as I stare into Evan’s poor doe eyes saying, “I still don’t get this!” do I have to teach this? Why do I have to teach this to Evan? Evan, who still hasn’t figured out what fractions even mean. I have to teach this to Evan because the aforementioned future actuary is in our class and needs to be exposed to this math, and because Evan is going to take a test at the end of the unit and his scores will report on my proficiency as a teacher, and because at the end of the year Evan will take an even bigger test that will be used to report on our proficiency as a school, and because those tests will be used to make decisions about Evan’s educational future… and how can Evan even have a chance at success in any of those outcomes unless I teach him how to divide fractions?!?
But am I teaching him how to divide fractions? Or am I perhaps teaching him that he is not very good at math? Am I teaching him that sometimes even the teacher can’t help? Perhaps I am teaching him grit (love me some Angela Duckworth)! Perhaps I will use this as a lesson in Growth Mindset (this graphic breaks it down)! Alas, I’ll never know what I actually teach him. He may not know what this is teaching him. But if, at the end of the year, he still can’t do most of what’s being asked of him, I think we can gather that something or someone has failed poor Evan. Perhaps it’s the teacher, perhaps it falls on previous teachers for leaving him unprepared, perhaps it’s the school system, perhaps it’s the test-centric climate which does a great job of reminding him he can’t do it, and perhaps it’s the curriculum.
This is not intended to be a down-with-the-public-schools, testing-is-Satan’s-mistress, Math-should-be-illegal, free-the-children-from-their-school-prisons rant. Schools do good. Schools do well, at a lot of things. We have entered a marriage with testing – for better or for worse, it’s probably not going anywhere. Math is fun (for me at least)! Children’s lives are, arguably, far better for their time in school than they were before the existence of public education, and schools are doing more than ever to make school a positive place for schools to be (Quest2Learn is a prime example).
To get to the point: what is curriculum? It’s a lot of things. It’s what we teach, it’s what we learn, it’s that “stuff” which we’ve decided is worthy to make up the collective brainpower of a nation. It’s a powerful mechanism in both free thought and censorship. It’s a lot of things – it’s BIG.
So BIG, I don’t think we know what to do with it. It’s a monstrous thing – the kind that probably keeps some of those scholars up at night. Gosh, what is worthy for our most precious and powerful resource? When we cut something out, what are we doing to our kids? When we pack more in, what happens then? It’s so big, and (frankly) scary, that I think we’ve pulled away from the question. Noddings informed me that we’ve gotten out of the habit of speaking towards our aims – our goals for doing something. This seems pretty silly. But people disagree on aims. They disagree on value. And curriculum involves a whole, whole, whole lot of people who, like the curriculum theorists in Schubert, like to dig in to the disagreements – how are we different? Little differences become a big, big deal.
I know of a school district whom embarked on a venture to be one of the foremost districts in Michigan for implementation of the Common Core. They brought in a national expert and committed significant funds to involving their teachers, at all levels, in “unpacking” the standards. There was a week-long professional development each summer and monthly meetings for each sub-committee (i.e., middle school Math).
It was “a red hot mess” as my aunt would say. They didn’t even live it to fruition. Committees couldn’t agree on language, departments couldn’t agree on much of anything. Everybody dug in their heels. I heard one story of a committee who spent all day on ONE standard. They couldn’t get past it because there were two warring definitions of the verb in the standard. The whole project just died.
When this happens, nobody benefits (except maybe the natural debaters). Nobody really enjoys it (save those drama fanatics). It’s stressful, and tiring, and it feels like a big old waste of time, because it (usually) is. So we stop talking about it. Teachers get manuals handed to them by their district, districts are given directives from the state. We complain, but we don’t do much to buck the system because it’s SO BIG. We find fault, but we carry on, because what can one person really do? Ah! Teachers are in the habit of defying the laws of what one person can conceivably do! We are, indeed, the gatekeepers (fabulous post on the topic).
My school district can’t agree on a spelling curriculum, so we more or less have nothing (this is a point of disagreement – technically we have a list of words, which is “something”). But it only took one year of watching terrible spellers remain terrible for me to realize I was uncomfortable with the status quo. I expanded upon what existed, just as I do for dear Evan who can’t divide fractions.
It’s like wearing a tight pair of jeans: with every wiggle, there’s an initial pinch, but then they stretch out a bit. Even in today’s skinny-jean world and skinny-jean climate of educational reform, we always have a little wiggle room. The best teachers rock it.
Although they also know not to rock skinny jeans at work.
July 21, 2015 at 4:27 pm
Hi Taylor,
Thanks for your post! I enjoyed reading it a lot.
I was up at Shorts Brewery last summer. I love MI breweries and have started a little T shirt collection. My wife spied out for me a brown button down that looked very UPS cool. I asked the bearded and tatted waiter if he thought I could pull it off. “It depends on how you rock it, man.”
I think part of my obsession with MI beer is that it is anti-BIG. Those people are doing something they love, producing a great product that brings joy to others, and totally rockin’ it along the way (in skinny jeans, too). Public schooling, right now, is the opposite of MI beer. In that way, I think Noddings is totally correct to return us to aims talk and to ask us in what way we are contributing to Evan’s (or anyone else’s) happiness. Or our own happiness.
This is not a shallow issue. I suppose most people expect schooling to be miserable because they were miserable in school. Kids play upon that, as you note, when they ask us why we have to study something. (Maybe they are testing us to see how honest we are?) We add injury to insult when we spend time fighting about standards that someone else has written.
Imagine if Bells or Shorts only made one type of beer. There would be a lot of fighting there too. So maybe this is our problem. We are making only one type of thing. What ever happened to consumer choice?
You ask what or who failed Evan? ” Perhaps it’s the teacher, perhaps it falls on previous teachers for leaving him unprepared, perhaps it’s the school system, perhaps it’s the test-centric climate which does a great job of reminding him he can’t do it, and perhaps it’s the curriculum.” What I would say is the present and past teachers, the system, the climate–this is the curriculum. This is what kids learn from. Subject-matter is in the mix, but it’s almost crowded out by the context in which we work with it.
Gatekeeping is a great term–one we will explore more in cycle three! It’s a great way to end the post, because it reminds us that we always have control over our response. We decide what we let in and we can, I suppose, teach kids to practice this art as well. It’s a good way to end the post.
Take care!
Kyle
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July 21, 2015 at 10:21 pm
Hi Taylor,
I am a high school math teacher and the opening to your blog post has described the majority of my days at school. Why do we have to learn the slope intercept form? When will I ever use factoring? When faced with a really long trigonometric identity problem I have told my students that I hate math sometimes too. When designing a curriculum it is important to ask, “Why do we need to teach algebra?” Or, “Why do we need to teach math in general?”
I’ve asked myself the last question a lot while in college and I have determined that math is not necessarily needed. Rather, math is a tool we use to help students develop the critical thinking and problem-skills they will need later on in life. To develop these skills, I do not think rote memorization of operations you can do with numbers I best. Rather, I like word problems. I like to give students situations that need to be solved and we explore different methods (which always involves numbers) to solve these problems. By using word problems as well, I can cover reading skills and strategies and writing basics too. The writing comes in because, once we found the answer to the word problem, I make my students reconnect that answer to the original problem in the form of a sentence or two.
Your summary about the test score process could not be more accurate or unfair. How can my skills as a teacher be judged by my students test scores to determine if they are performing at grade level when they came into my class three grade levels behind? Who even determines what at grade level? If we were given perfect situations with perfect students, perfect materials, and the perfect amount of time to cover everything in, then standardized tests would be fine. But, as we all know, what happens in schools is less than perfect and it is not fair to punish educators for this.
You’ve mentioned Common Core and this is a hot button issue in my school district as well. Here are these standards that are good in theory. All along we should have been teaching students to think critically and abstractly and that there is more than one way to solve a problem (a real-life, applicable problem). However, what the state of What Florida did, was roll out these new standards for every student at the same time. Meaning, my Algebra 1 kids, who have been doing basic math problems from Kindergarten through 8th grade, problems with just numbers and letters, finding an answer and bubbling it in, are now being asked, and to master in one year, the thought processes needed to identify key parts of a word problem, apply the proper math formulas to the situation, interpret their answer in context of the word problem, justify it, and (on top of everything) drawing a picture. These Common Core standards are a step in the right direction. However, asking students to change the way they have been doing math for nine years, and to be successful at it, is ridiculous. Start the kindergarteners off with this and slowly implement the new standards year by year.
Marissa Hoffman
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July 21, 2015 at 10:38 pm
Taylor,
I really enjoyed your post! It is certainly hard to tell elementary kids why something is valuable, but when students get to middle school, it becomes a lot harder to convince them! I tend to see all the wonderful reasons for different things in English, but my students have a hard time seeing it, especially when it comes to things like grammar, works cited pages, or MLA format. I feel like older students have an easier time telling when they are being played, so I really have to know and be able to explain why a topic is important.
I feel with math, students think if a math problem is not set up just the same way it is in class, that math is never used in real life. It is the same way when I teach my students grammar. They know the concept and in most cases can follow the rule, they are just not aware of why it is a rule or why it is important. Grammar gives me the opportunity to talk about linguistics and how words are used, which I find fascinating. The knowledge they gain by understanding the why helps me combat the ‘why are we going this’ question. It also helps that they see my excitement for grammar!
When trying to answer the ‘why are we doing this’ question, I tend to point to the future. As my department head (a high school English teacher) says, “You fix them before they get to me. You do all the hard work.” The basis for a lot of things my students will do in high school, college and career are learned in middle school, and I remind my students of this. It’s fun to remind my students that they will have a leg up on others, since they have had all of middle school to practice (certain topic/style of writing).
I can understand your frustration with your math curriculum. I know at my school there was a lot of debate about moving to Everyday Math, both from parents and teachers. Thankfully it was able to be resolved and decided upon. It ended up being a great move for our students.
I am blessed to have great administration that lets me try new things as far as curriculum goes. There are a few things that are givens and certain books I must cover, but if something is no longer working for my students, I have the support to be able to change. I also have a supportive English department that has helped me with decision making. Two years ago, I decided to pull a summer reading book from our curriculum due to it being not challenging enough. My department supported my decision and helped me pick a book that was appropriate for my students.
Thanks for a funny, and thoughtful post.
-Laycee
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