You can submit a sample of your writing to this new web site and it will tell you what author you write like.  No joke.  Huffington Post wrote about it recently:

For anyone who has ever thought Charles Dickens was lurking inside his or her prose, a new website claims it can find your inner author.

The recently launched I Write Like has one simple gimmick: You paste a few paragraphs that exemplify your writing, then click “analyze” and – poof! – you get a badge telling you that you write like Stephen King or Ernest Hemingway or Chuck Palahniuk.

The site’s traffic has soared in recent days and its arrival has lit up the blogosphere. Gawker tried a transcript from one of the leaked Mel Gibson phone calls. The suggested author: Margaret Atwood.

The New Yorker found that an invitation to a birthday party was James Joycean. Many others were aghast to discover they wrote similarly to “The Da Vinci Code” scribe Dan Brown.

The New York Times tried putting in actual novels, such as “Moby-Dick.” Herman Melville, it turns out, writes less like himself than King, according to I Write Like.

Atwood, herself, tried the site only to discover she also apparently writes like King. “Who knew?” she tweeted.

There is a novelty to it for sure.  There is also a history to this approach to teaching writing. Education scholar Robert Scholes writes about the birth of English from classical studies.  When studying Greek and Latin texts, 19th century students studied the author’s writing so they could emulate them.  You read Cicero in order to write like him.  When English was struggling to be respected as a discipline in the early 20th century, it fell under the spell of critical essays.  To this day, exams tend to ask students to play the role of mediocre literary critic, because it somehow strikes us as more rigorous and scholarly.

My hope is that sites like IWL will rekindle our interest in what Scholes calls “writing literarily”, that is, in reading literature in order to write with literary style.  Imagine, rather than simple asking student to write a thematic essay on a short story by Hemingway, we asked students to also write like the author.  Students would have to have a sophisticated literary sensibility to do so and would develop a much richer understanding of how writers write in order to influence readers.  It has been over a century now and the time has come to mend the split between literary and composition studies.  Three little words can help us get there: I Write Like…

Google posted today about a series of grants they’ve provided to professorial teams committed to digitizing literary scholarship–with an emphasis, it seems, on the classics.  The post begins:

It can’t have been very long after people started writing that they started to organize and comment on what was written. Look at the 10th century Venetus A manuscript, which contains scholia written fifteen centuries earlier about texts written five centuries before that. Almost since computers were invented, people have envisioned using them to expose the interconnections of the world’s knowledge. That vision is finally becoming real with the flowering of the web, but in a notably limited way: very little of the world’s culture predating the web is accessible online. Much of that information is available only in printed books.

Read the whole piece here…

I’ve been thinking a lot about what is happening to the reading the books over the past few days as I’ve been carting my new iPad around with me like a gloating schoolboy.  I found two texts that might be worth a look for other bookish types.  They are:

This video about the history of books from the Wall Street Journal:

And this infographic that gives a long visual history of the book.  Only problem, it ends its history right before the advent of the iPad.

(Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for the links.)

An article in the Guardian spotlights drinking spots that have thick literary ties. Living in NYC, I have two spots I visit to drink and think: White Horse Tavern (Dylan Thomas drank here and there’s a titanic photo of him seated at the bar at the bar) and Pete’s: (made famous by O. Henry, as the canopy outside let’s you know quite clearly; love the burger).  These, of course, are real bars in which authors have written.  Another brew entirely are fictional pubs made famous in literature.  For that, check out the the whole Guardian piece here, with beer in hand…

David Brooks wrote a piece called “The Medium is the Medium” in the NY Times recently about a study that shows giving “disadvantaged students” books to take home to read improves test scores.  Brooks is quick to point out that other studies suggest that Internet-reading and activity is linked to slumps in test scores. A dichotomy, Mr. Brooks? Really? The Big Bad Computer against the Tried and True Book?

Three Cheerleaders in the Tomes vs. Technology Battle

Brooks then uses these two studies to set up Nicholas Carr’s new book about the dangerous effects the Internet is having on our brains.  Brooks writes:

These two studies feed into the debate that is now surrounding Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows.” Carr argues that the Internet is leading to a short-attention-span culture. He cites a pile of research showing that the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s abilities to engage in deep thought or serious contemplation. Carr’s argument has been challenged. His critics point to evidence that suggests that playing computer games and performing Internet searches actually improves a person’s ability to process information and focus attention. The Internet, they say, is a boon to schooling, not a threat.

Carr and Brooks might have in mind here the work of scholars like James Paul Gee, whose writings on the positive effects of video games on literacy have been widely cited.  So to review up to this point: Brooks is cheering for the victory of books, Carr is warning of the dangers of digital literacy, and Gee et al. are championing video games and online media as the new literacy that seems to transcend traditional approaches to reading and writing.

Teach the Battle, the Argument

Dichotomies are of little use if they aren’t used to dig into the nuances of issues.  This is no different.  While I respect the work of Brooks, Carr, and Gee, I can’t understand why such smart people get so comfortable in their either/or positions.  Wouldn’t we all benefit from a discussion about when we read digitally and when we read on paper?  Wouldn’t our students benefit from the conversation concerning how they read for different purposes at different times rather than the pontification that “Books are better for you!” or “The Internet is rotting your mind!” or “Video games are inherently educational”?  The only reason I can think of that such thoughtful men would become so comfortable slinging their ideas to one side of a dichotomy is this: it sells and the media eats it up.

The Validity of Heaviness

A few years ago I had a student who was clearly not reading for class.  I asked to speak with her after class.  When I posed the question to her–”It seems like you haven’t been reading the assignments. Is that true?”–she didn’t hesitate to say that she hadn’t read a page.  “Why haven’t you read?” I asked.  She looked down at the floor where her book bag was resting.  She pulled out the book.  “I can’t carry this home with me,” she added, “it’s too heavy.” It’s easy to say that she was making up silly excuses for not wanting to read and that I should have told her exactly that right there and then.  I did.  And she apologized, promised to read, and left. She didn’t read the next assignment.  Or the one after that. What did I gain by ignoring her complaint–that the physicality, the texture, and the weight of a book was too much for her to manage?  I wished I had engaged her further–do you read online? do you find other books more readable?  do you need glasses? I didn’t ask these questions, though.  I found a comfortable corner in a two-sided room and I ensconced myself there.  Quite happily.

Get Beyond the Dichotomy

Surely there is more to be learned by probing into initial dichotomies than by stubbornly claiming a side of one.  For instance, what would the above authors think about the fact that I read their texts online?  Or, to phrase it as one of my favorite question types, What was lost and what was gained when I read their pieces online rather than on paper?  Think about that.  By asking that question–a question that uses a dichotomy and pushes through it–I’m left asking about my own relationship to reading and encouraged to question, not to make staunch and flashy claims. It’s worth noting a small and significant moment in David Brooks’ opening.  He writes:

Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years.

Notice the parentheses.  Perhaps there is significance in students’ choosing.  Perhaps we, as adults in their lives, should guide them in better understanding their choices–to read or not to read, to read online or to read on paper, to read a serious text or to read a humorous one.  (Perhaps the medium is not the medium. Perhaps the reader is.)

I came across this advertisement in my research.  It’s easy to forget that the interplay between teaching and technology, education and businesses, is not as new or novel as it seems.  This ad is from a 1894 education magazine:

A product development group’s study recently found that readers read more quickly on paper than on e-readers, the iPad in particular.  Ian Paul, of PC World, writes

So it appears technology hasn’t quite figured out yet how to replicate the experience of the printed page. That said this study leaves a lot to be desired owing to its small test group size, but it would be interesting to see a similar study on a much larger scale. I’d be curious to find out, for example, if there’s any big difference in reading speeds based on age groups.

Paul is right to point out that the test group leaves much to be desired (only 24 people who already read with frequency) and I agree that a larger study would be intriguing.   Do reluctant readers, for instance, find the device on which they read to make a difference in a text’s readability?  Or, are some works better read on some devices (this study uses Hemingway’s short stories). There are other considerations raised by this study, too.

Reading Faster is Better

Or so one would think based on this study.  Why is reading speed so important?  Speed is important, perhaps, if one’s job requires them to sift through piles of information in search of only useful data.  Sure, then speed matters.  But, does speed help or hinder one’s experience of reading for pleasure?  Is speed pleasurable?  Or, what if you are reading to think more deeply about yourself as a person (a kind of reading we could all do more of… our young adult students are no exception)?  Is rapid reading a positive attribute in that case?  The emphasis on quick reading suggests to me that the study does privilege a certain kind of reading: reading for specific uses.  This kind of reading runs the risk of ignoring other reasons for reading… readings that aren’t easily aligned with the work-place or with data-gathering.

There Must Be a BEST Way to Read

This study makes you think there is a best way to read out there.  One would think reading more quickly or with clearest comprehension is necessarily a good thing.  And yet, reading slowly in order to enjoy a story or reading a story that defies comprehension can be convincingly argued to have a place and value (consider the kind of confusion, for instance, Italo Calvino masters or that Milton creates through his convoluted Latinate style).  And why choose one over the other?  I would argue that it is much more valuable to teach students to ask themselves what kind of reading experiences they wish or want to have with a particular text.  A student who chooses to read an article on an iPad or a novel on paper (or vice versa) is making a choice that can rightly be ascribed to a maturing reader.  And likely a lifelong one, too.

Who Reads, Not What is Read (or What it’s Read On)

Our attention is misguided if we find so interesting the reading pace of a small study group on iPads while neglecting the more important question: why do these readers read at all.  And equally, why don’t some readers read at all?  The real subject of study is NOT the text that is read or the machine that presents it.  The real subject is the reader.  It is the reader who reads and without whom there is not text or text-presenter.  And all readers CHOOSE to read; they cannot be forced to.  Why readers do and don’t read is–in my mind–a central question in this age of new literacies and technologies.  How they read is also essential.  But, on what they read?  That is only of interest if it helps answer the former questions. We must always come back to who reads and why.  Without that, studies like this one are of only fleeting interest at best and will be quick to go the way of yesterday’s iPad.

A piece in The New Republic by Jed Perl beautifully describes the complicated relationship between writer and reader.  He is especially concerned with the effect that speedy technology is having on this relationship.  He writes:

…the speed with which words, once written, are now being read—a speed shaped by technological innovations long before the Internet turned the quick turnaround into the virtually instantaneous turnaround—has set me to thinking about the extent to which writing, for the writer, ought to have a freestanding value, a value apart from the reader.

Writers’ Right to Remain Silent

He starts to tease out this idea: writers do themselves a disservice when they write in order to be read by some imagined reader.  (For the record, this is a point that conflicts with my own view on the matter. Or did, at least.)  Perl thinks that the thinking process is an intimate one, a messy one, a drippy one.  Writers make sense of things by writing and sometimes forgetting or rereading.  It’s that

most writing worth reading is the product, at least to some degree, of this extraordinarily intimate confrontation between the disorderly impressions in the writer’s mind and the more or less orderly procession of words that the writer manages to produce on the page.

Writers have a right to be left unread.  To be read is to be drawn into a relationship, a commitment, that etches one’s thoughts into some textual stone.  There is value, Perl argues, in simply writing and in NOT being read:

Nobody understands the extent to which, even for the widely acclaimed author with ready access to publication, the process of writing can sometimes necessitate a rejection or at least an avoidance of one’s own readers.

That avoidance of readers gives writers a sort of right to remain silent.  What’s more,

That silence is a part of writing—that the work of this day or this week or even this year might for good reason be withheld—is becoming harder and harder to comprehend.

Forcing Students to Publish

I agree that recently it has become a new industry to publish one’s ideas quickly and quirkily.  I say this, of course, while doing exactly that. (Have you checked my Twitter feeds or clicked on the suggested links below?!)  Still, there is something to be said here for what we do as educators as well.  Aren’t we in the business of making students publish there ideas, no matter how premature those ideas might be?

The Intimacy of Literacy

I’m thinking about this age of accountability and assessment in education when if it isn’t made public and quantified, it doesn’t count.  And yet, there is much to be gained, Perl says, in exactly that: not counting, not sharing.   What would it mean for us as educators to NOT assess students’ work until they are ready to publish it to us?  Are we, as a profession, guilty of disrespecting the intimacy of literacy?

Teaching What We Don’t Know

I’ve asked a similar question before with regard to students’ reading.  Teachers don’t know–for certain–that students read for class.  They know how well they read quizzes, perhaps, but reading itself is a private act and we only know as much as students wish to share with us.  We fight it, perhaps, or trick ourselves into thinking we “can tell” when a student reads for class.  But we don’t know.  Perhaps there’s a lesson to learn about writing too.  Perhaps writing merits its own distance and silence.  In these days of Tweets and Facebooking and blogging, making one’s ideas public is gaining uncritical acceptance.  For Perl,

But if there are risks involved in resisting the public, there are also dangers involved in running after the public. Nobody talks about those dangers anymore.

Someone should be discussing those dangers with students.  Teachers should.

A quick and fantastic collection of links on the topic here.

I came across this piece recently about the rise of digital textbooks.  In it, two experts on the topic take questions in a chat setting.  For instance:

Moderator: Katie Ash: Brian – do you want to go into a bit more detail about what exactly is going on in California, and what the different phases are?
Brian Bridges: @Katie. digital textbooks can be as simple as an electronic version of a print book, which is exactly what we’re reviewing right now. College professors and CK-12 have created a number of excellent books which can be printed out or can be read on devices. Digital books can also be web sites or interactive.
Neeru Khosla: @Caryn. Digital Textbooks is not just text, but it is next generation textbooks leveraging technology to make content available in various formats
Brian Bridges: Phase One of the Free Digital Textbook Initiative focused on downloadable PDF textbooks in math and science.
Neeru Khosla: including print on paper, as well as on web and mobile devices

Granted, this is “phase one” of the digitization of textbooks.  Still, I’m left asking myself: why are the adults still the ones writing textbooks here?  It’s a fair inference from the whole transcript that adults remain in the role of expert.  But, why?  Wouldn’t students learn mountains of knowledge and skills if their only task for the year was to write a textbook for other students on, say, an introduction to chemistry or English literature?  They could then share it with other students and schools and update it collaboratively.  For free. The role of the teacher, then, is that of editor: verify accuracy, project manage, and stay out of the way when needed to.

That’s exactly what students at one NYC school did a couple years ago when they created a rap album review for the NYS chemistry Regents exam.  They rapped a review and the teacher made sure the right topics were covered and that the information was clearly and accurately conveyed.  Then she got out of the way.

I am re-reading a book by education professor Sheridan Blau about teaching literature.  He describes a profound realization he had four decades ago: the work he did assembling content to teach his students was precisely the work the students themselves needed to be doing.  And, they couldn’t ever do that work because Professor Blau would walk in to his classes prepared to teach what he had learned.  The paradox is this: so long as adults prepare the content for students, students can’t prepare it for themselves.  It is the preparation of content–or, the curation, perhaps–that effects learning.

I do indeed think that the textbook industry is undergoing a major transformation.  Between online textbooks, the influx of devices like the iPad, and the surge in Apps for sale, there is little direction for this to go but up.  But, transformations in technology do not mean transformations in pedagogy.  A transformation in pedagogy would have students writing the textbooks for other students, sharing those online, and even voting on which ones were most effective.  That would be transformative.  Downloading PDFs of adults’ own learning of the content? Hardly.

It was a quiet match, literature fans, but it happened again: Shakespeare pounced Milton in a curricular smackdown. When the Common Core Standards were unveiled recently, they came with a series of recommended texts for study in multiple disciplines, including English.  Sam Dillon of the Times writes:

…the English standards do not prescribe a reading list, but point to classic poems, plays, short stories, novels and essays to demonstrate the advancing complexity of texts that students should be able to master. On the list of exemplary read-aloud books for second and third graders, for instance, is James Thurber’s “Thirteen Clocks.” One play cited as appropriate for high school students is “Oedipus Rex,” by Sophocles.

Battling over Books

The debate about which books to read when has been ongoing for decades.  Even going back to the 19th and 20th centuries, colleges put out reading lists of the literary works they expected students to have read.  These reading lists determined which books were taught in high schools.  So what? Each college had its own list!  Secondary schools were caught in a corner: either prepare students for a specific school’s entrance exam or give them a rounder exposure to texts, but leave them unprepared for college admissions.  As for the Common Core, there are five works that are deemed required:

High school juniors and seniors must study the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Also, said Susan Pimentel, a consultant in New Hampshire who was lead writer on the English standards, “Students have to read one Shakespeare play — that’s a requirement.”

One Shakespeare a year?  I respect the fact that Shakespeare is so lauded in our schools–and has been for generations.  Still, why not add others to the list of required reading, or, don’t require any single particular author.

Consider Milton Over Shakespeare

A few years ago, I refused to teach a Shakespearean work to my 10th grade students.  My rationale: Milton was more interesting, more rewarding, and had a certain novelty with students because he wasn’t Shakespeare.  We didn’t read all of Paradise Lost, but we studied three books closely.  When I shared with colleagues my Miltonian mission, they replied that Milton was far too difficult for high school students.

Difficult?  Milton?  Well, yes, of course he’s difficult.  And so is Shakespeare.  The difference is that teachers have myriad resources to teach Shakespeare well–movies, Folger’s Library, just to name two main ones.  Milton’s got nothing.  But Milton could have whole communities of educators whose mission it is to teach him.  They could create social networks and resource sharing points and thereby make Milton as accessible as Shakespeare.

But, there’s less hope of that happening now.  Thanks, Common Core.  Thanks for ensuring this particular literary treasure–or paradise–remains lost to pedagogues.

(Haven’t read Milton recently?  Click here.)

Ancient Greek Scholar Simon Goldhill breaks down for us the eternally useful lesson of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.  (I also highly recommend Goldhill’s book Love, Sex, Tragedy…).  Oedipus thought he was in control of his destiny.  Well, Goldhill says, “When you thought you were in control…”:

READ.

Originally uploaded by BruceLabounty802

So many thoughts come to mind when I look at this image: What makes someone do that? HOW on earth did the literary vandal do that? Why the period?

Thoughts aside, the image makes me smirk. And even nudges me toward my bookshelf.

I was in Border’s Books recently and saw this sign identifying the education section.  What does “Teaching is the greatest expression of hope” actually mean?  What an odd slogan.  Does it mean that education is the key to raising children well and children are our hope?  Any insights welcome.

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Well, not really.  But it should perhaps be the case, according to David Brooks’ op-ed in the Times.  Brooks writes:

Studying the humanities will give you a familiarity with the language of emotion. In an information economy, many people have the ability to produce a technical innovation: a new MP3 player. Very few people have the ability to create a great brand: the iPod. Branding involves the location and arousal of affection, and you can’t do it unless you are conversant in the language of romance.

Is that all we’ve got?  The humanities exist only to help corporations create new products?  Surely there are other reasons to study the great books.

Brooks has an answer.  He calls it The Big Shaggy:

You can see The Big Shaggy at work when a governor of South Carolina suddenly chucks it all for a love voyage south of the equator, or when a smart, philosophical congressman from Indiana risks everything for an in-office affair.

You can see The Big Shaggy at work when self-destructive overconfidence overtakes oil engineers in the gulf, when go-go enthusiasm intoxicates investment bankers or when bone-chilling distrust grips politics.

So, by my count we have bevies of English majors slated to market Apple’s latest gizmo and to explain away (with literary sensibility) why bankers caused the financial crisis.  What is Brooks doing?  The icon of humanitarian study Brooks offers is called the Big Shaggy?  Not exactly poetic stuff.

I appreciate that Brooks used his visibility and popularity to the humanities cause.  For weightier and more thorough treatments of the issue, though, see Martha Nussbaum’s new book Not for Profit.  Or, check out a piece I wrote last year on how educational technology will be the downfall of literary study in schools.

I’ve responded thousands of student papers.  The pre-service teachers I’ve taught in graduate school will tell you that I have laughed out loud and mocked those who seriously claim using red pens when grading somehow affects students’ sense of self.  Apparently, I’m wrong:

A study in the European Journal of Social Psychology suggests the use of red pens may make teachers more likely to spot errors on tests and to be more critical when grading essays. “Despite teachers’ efforts to free themselves from extraneous influences while grading,” write California State University Northridge psychologist Abraham Rutchick, Tufts University psychologist Michael Slepian and Bennett Ferris of Phillips Exeter Academy, “the very act of picking up a red pen can bias their evaluations.”

If I have responded to your paper in red pen or have enjoyed a good ol’ chuckle at the expense of those who insisted the color of the ink matters, I’m sorry.

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NYC’s iZone and Huff’s Oversimplification

As NYC creates its virtual school, there have been many articles that have begun cropping up about online learning versus offline learning.  Huffington Post’s Scott Olster wrote about it most recently:

New York City’s Department of Education launched the NYC Innovation Zone in April, a $10 million initiative in which 81 schools plan to test a variety of education methods, from expanding the hours of the school day, to using virtual education for advanced placement and credit recovery courses. Approximately $1.5 million of the $10 million budget is slated to be devoted exclusively to purchasing virtual credit recovery programs, according to school spokesperson Matthew Mittenthal.

The Innovation Zone is the city’s first major investment in virtual education. Until now, the city has lagged behind a national expansion of virtual schools and online learning programs.

Other cities have dabbled in virtual learning and the city seems to have learned from their lessons by diversifying their approaches to what virtual schooling could look like.  Olster’s article makes it seem like the city is focusing on AP and credit recovery, though.  He leaves out of his post the city’s pilot with blended schools, for instance, where up to one third of the teaching and learning will take place online while operating withing current brick-and-mortar parameters of the school day.  Oddly, Olster focuses much of his attention on schools that are not actually part of the iZone.  For a clearer representation of the work, see Gotham Schools or the DOE’s iZone site.  The piece also falls into the pitfall of presenting virtual schooling as an offline/online dichotomy.

The Dichotomy Problem

“Dichotomy” is a useful word here.  Business consultant Stephen J Gill uses the word when he writes about those who argue that online learning is more economically efficient and therefore necessarily better than face-to-face instruction.  In his words:

The problem with this argument is that it implies that all Web-based training and conferences are superior to all in-person events. The important question is not, “Is online better (or cheaper) than in-person?” The important question is, “What types of learning interventions for what results and under what circumstances are more effective?”This could include Web-based only, in-person only, blended or a multitude of variations within and among each of these broad categories.

For him, to think of it as online versus offline presents a “false dichotomy” and limits innovation.

What “Dichotomy” Teaches Us about Dichotomies

I’d like to tap into my love of words and literary theory here to offer another take on dichotomies.  In fact, the history of the word “dichotomy” brings much to the current discussion.  Most familiar is the definition of dichotomy that denotes the splitting of a whole into two parts.  Its etymological ancestor, diakoptos, breaks down into “dia” being Greek for two or across and “koptos” meaning to cut:  To cut in two or through.

Another definition of dichotomy, also stemming from the ancient Greek, is to break through.  In this sense, dichotomy means something very different from the creative splitting of a whole.  Here, quite different than above, dichotomy means to rupture a surface.  While not denotatively a negative action, it does connote destruction with little sign of affirmative generation.  This destructive meaning is furthered by others, including “to receive a deep cut” and “to cut off”.  In these definitions, dichotomy is very dark indeed.  And bloody too.

And yet in another definition, this one less bloody, dichotomy extends more metaphorically into social acts like conversation.  Rather than the fleshy slicing and lacerating above, Aristotle in his Rhetoric uses the word in reference to poor conversants who interrupt and cut short conversation.

Finally, the word has also been used to refer to the counterfeiting of Greek coins.  The creation of something that has the likeness of the original.  In this case, it merits unpacking what both the original and the duplicate represent.  The original coin serves as a common currency, a promise of an individual to both another person and a society that a debt would be honored.  The duplicate, however, endangers both the individual relationship between debtor and debtee, but also it is a selfish act that threatens the economic well-being of the whole.  Though at first this meaning of dichotomy seems a far cry from the others, it is, perhaps, a combination of these others.  It is both the creation of two from one and it is the a destructive disruption to all.

Advice for Mr. Olster of Huffington Post

Despite its etymological ambivalence, the use of dichotomies continues all around us today.  Even if it’s not explicitly used–or, especially when it’s not explicitly used–it is an effective rhetorical device to make a compelling point.  For example, pitting online learning against offline learning.  Or, as Scott Olster does (perhaps unintentionally), suggesting that virtual learning is gaining traction solely in opposition to the brick-and-mortar realities of schooling.  (For a rounder sense of what is possible in blended learning environments, t check out this op-ed by two iZone principals. Or, read postings by someone who works with teachers to use technology innovatively in their work.)  I would argue, along with Aristotle, that what Olster achieves when using a quiet and untroubled dichotomy is an interruption, an aborted dialogue, a rhetorical shout or barbaric yawp that in turn issues a deep intellectual cut to others.

A recent NPR piece discusses the tension between college graduates on the one hand and the needs of business on the other.  From the story:

Researchers had asked hundreds of business leaders and human resources managers across the country to assess the professionalism of recent college graduates, and the results were sobering.

“What we found was that there are a set of qualities, characteristics that these people would like to see in new college graduates,” says David Polk, a York College professor. “Unfortunately, they tend to be lacking.”

Before continuing, it’s fair to ask: is it the job of schools to instill these kinds of qualities?  On the one hand, it seems reasonable to say that one goes to school in order to get a job and advance in one’s career.  On the other hand, aren’t schools tasked with teaching rounder things: to expand one’s thinking, to critically analyze problems, to appreciate the history of oneself and others?  When did corporations begin to dictate what colleges teach?  When is such dictation OK and when is it definitely not?  The skills they are asking for, according to this piece, include:

the ability to communicate and listen respectfully, motivation to finish a task and attention to appearance. But Polk says researchers pointed to one area where recent graduates stand out: “There’s a sense of entitlement that we’ve picked up on, where people think they’re entitled to become, let’s say, president of the company within the next two years; they’re entitled to five weeks of vacation.”

Putting aside one’s vacation demands, are students entitled to an education different from the demands of the economy?  Are schools–and here I include K-12, as well as colleges–educating students according to their own educational missions or to the mission statements of companies?

Last week I posted about how ineffective the Convenience Argument is in defending e-learning: emphasizing that students-can-learn-anytime-from-any where while ignoring other crucial aspects of learning, like content quality, sells short the possibilities of online learning.  Nevertheless, here it is again.  This time, in Education Week, it marauds under the guise of Flexibility:

Just as the model of blended learning is pulling the worlds of  virtual and brick-and-mortar schools together, new theories within virtual learning are bridging the divide between synchronous and asynchronous instructional methods.

Online educators say they once debated whether to deliver courses synchronously, by allowing access to instruction during a given time, or asynchronously, by allowing access anytime and anywhere. Now, they are designing approaches that meld both methods.

“The online model is really designed to be flexible for the individual student,” said Pam Birtolo, the chief learning officer of the Orlando-based Florida Virtual School, or FLVS, which is seen as a trendsetter in virtual education. “I don’t know that you can separate the two anymore.”

It took three paragraphs to get there, but there it is: really designed to be flexible for the individual student.  Flexible and individual.  That might be true (but, it also hinges on how you define “flexible”).  What concerns me more is how rhetorical words like “flexible” and “convenience” are used.  It’s a sales pitch.

Show me flexibility and convenience in a curricular context, with rigorous content that pushes students to make meaning.  Then, you’ve got me.

Online models really designed to be flexible for individual students?  Not interested.

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I love that Google’s book-scanning endeavors have made it so digitally simple to find really old books that would otherwise be sitting unseen in some university basement.  Here’s a fantastic artifact from a 19th century education journal that comments on both the literature textbooks being produced and the importance of studying literature in the first place:

Michael Horn recently wrote about the value of for-profit educational companies in improving education.  His lead-in sets the stage:

If President Obama wants to achieve his goal of returning the United States to its former place atop all countries in higher education attainment by 2020, he is going to need the help of for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan, Corinthian and DeVry, as his own Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said recently.

He goes on to argue that those in education who would exclude for-profit companies from informing education reform are missing something. Yes, he says, there are good and “bad actors” in the for-profit sector; the same is true in the non-profit sector.  (I agree completely.)  He then cautions the reader that we must take the opportunity to learn from these organizations about what it means to teach and to learn innovatively.  (I agree again. Proponents of Pure Public Schooling like Alfie Kohn or the recently 180′d Diane Ravitch might well get uncomfortable the moment we allow schools and businesses to get too close…)

One main point Horn makes is that online learning opportunities “allow [students] to learn anytime and anywhere, many of these students would have no alternative to gain a formal education given the demands of work and family.”  He says this in response to critics who say that online learning is a poor substitute for the “real” kind of learning that happens in schools.

Horn’s defense is a problematic line of thought, I think.  It lauds the convenience of taking courses online without even so much as winking at other very crucial questions: especially the quality of the courses online.  Convenience for convenience’s sake is hardly a hardy argument for education reform.  What good is being able to take courses anywhere, anytime, if the course quality is shite?

This is not to say that all online courses are of poor quality.  Far from it.  It is to say, however, that to defend for-profit online educational companies on the grounds that are convenient–without equal attention to the quality of content that is conveniently accessed– is a weak defense indeed.  Convenience without quality is not compelling.

Horn could, for example, have discussed how some for-profit companies go to great lengths to ensure rigorous content.  Or, how some companies craft questions that challenge learners to go well beyond the simple multiple-choice blotting that naysayers claim makes up non-brick-and-mortar schooling.  Doing so, Horn could have then launched into a highly defensible tirade about the shaky quality of many “real thing” curricula.  How many teachers, he might have asked, fail to assess their students’ learning with a frequency that even comes close to online courses, which are constantly giving formative assessments?  Or, how many schools have purchased out-of-the-box curricula that denies teachers the opportunity to design curriculum and forces entire classrooms of students to move in step?

These questions aren’t asked.  It was a missed opportunity.  I myself can’t buy in to the idea that for-profit educational companies are good because they are convenient for students.  It is itself an all too convenient argument that avoids a crucial discussion we ought to be having: Are students getting quality courses at their convenience?

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This company has many book covers on t-shirts and donate books to readers in need with every purchase. Win win.

Fahrenheit 451 book cover t-shirt.

On the platform, reading

Originally uploaded by moriza

I’ve been sifting through Flickr lately looking for images of people reading. This one stood out as I’ve found myself doing the same thing: waiting for a train, engrossed in a book… but usually much nearer the train. On the yellow line, if I’m honest.

There’s a particular moment that occurs as the train enters the station. The pages of the book often flap ever so slightly at first. Then they wave wildly as the machine zips by.

Amidst all this–the speeding train and the flapping pages–the reader somehow finds stillness.

Facebook and Google have been the subject of prying eyes lately as concerns about their handling of users’ private information. Google’s Buzz, remember, broadcasted user contacts without consent.  As learning goes virtual in NYC and around the world, it’s worth asking:  is learning a private act?

To some extent, school is a very public space.  Teachers address many students at once, students inevitably know each others’ grades, and reading aloud is as likely to reveal much about a reader’s fluency, or lack thereof. Still, when is learning private and when is privacy essential for learning?

It seems to me that there isn’t a straight answer to this question. That might make it even more important. What if we have this unspoken assumption that public and social learning is always a good thing? (Not much of a stretch, in my experience.)  I think we might gain much insight from posing these kinds of questions to our students.  How might they respond?

I blogged a few weeks ago about the return of super-lecturers. Though I meant it only half in jest, I now think that balancing the public kinds of learning with a new focus on private learning could give us greater insight into students’ learning habits.

Another side of the issue has to do with the kinds of information learning management systems gather about kids. Could students argue that software which tracks how long they take to answer a question a breech of their pedagogical privacy?   What can online course providers learn from the missteps of Google and Facebook? That is, aside from “don’t get caught”!

I’ve become rather fixated on the claim that our 21st century schools are encumbered by a 19th century “industrial model”.  On a certain level, I understand it: large comprehensive high schools, compartmentalized courses like cogs in a cognitive machine and the like.  The danger of this presupposition, I think, is that it can leave the quality of 21st century “advancements” gone unchecked.

The Quotations

Here are some of the quotations I’ve found (and I’ll ask for yours, too, if you know of any)!  They are:

“Just as in the early stages of other industries’ histories, society’s expectations and behaviours actually conformed to the standardization; Americans no longer expected customized learning. Much of the support behind this standardization–categorizing students by age into grades and then teaching batches of them with batches of material–was inspired by the efficient factory system that had emerged in industrial America.” – p. 66, Disrupting Class by Clay Christensen et al.

“As we transitioned to a more urban, industrial era at the turn of the twentieth century, however, effective teaching and learning consisted of “bath-process” large numbers of students in assembly-line schools to teach the Three R’s–and so to assimilate rural workers and immigrants into the new requirements of work and citizenship.  For the most part, these are still the schools we have today.” – p. 256, The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner

“Businesslike efficiency and vocational education in secondary schools and colleges were seen as critical to preparing students for work in an industrial economy that was then competing with Great Britain and Germany.” -p. 9, Oversold and Underused by Larry Cuban

Each of these books argue, in part, that certain technological progress, like Web 2.0 tools, hold the key to breaking with this antiquated model.  While I’m not saying that what these authors are saying is false, it would be facile to say that simply because something is more recently technological–like, say, the digitization of academic content–it is necessarily better.

Are there other quotations you’ve come across yourself that might fit well with the ones above?  Please, pass them on!

19th Century NYC Textbooks

I was elated to learn recently from my friend that if I was on the move to identify popularly used English literature textbooks from 19th century NYC, I need look no further than across the street.  Standing on the steps of Tweed Courthouse (the current home of the NYC DOE) you can see the Municipal Archives.  There, I will find volumes of documents for review.  Specifically, there are Board of Education Annual Reports that might well have, among many other things, a listing of the textbooks ordered in schools.  (Many thanks to David Ment of the Municipal Archives for his clear and quick direction!)

Once certain textbooks have been identified and acquired, I’ll begin the study to better understand just what is so different (and the same) about the old textbooks and the new online courses.

Herman Melville, the Teacher?

While immersing myself in New York of the 1800s, I’ve learned that one New Yorker and author–Herman Melville–did himself teach in a school upstate.  It’s not clear what he taught, though he did focus on the classics, we do know that he had on his person an introductory book to teaching called The District School.  In it, John Orville Taylor makes many direct arguments about what good education is and is not: he holds no punches in telling parents they need to do their part and painting a picture of new teachers who have no ideas what they’ve gotten into.  Melville did only a couple years teaching; then he did other things: like write Moby Dick.

Still, for your amusement and edification, here is The District School, in its entirety.

A few days ago, I shared that I was beginning a study of 19th century textbooks to compare them to 21st century online courses, both in teaching literature.  It was with this topic in mind that two pieces jumped out at me: one new, and one old.

The Times reported recently that the NYC DOE’s new practice of buying textbooks has left smaller vendors and publishers in the dust–or pulp, I suppose.  The DOE argues that it is too large to try and manage the myriad vendors involved in purchasing and that in the end it costs the city more money because they aren’t getting the kinds of discounts they can get if they streamlined the process to only big companies.  The result:

In its first year, city school officials say, the streamlined process is on target to save $18 million. But, much as large book retailers have pushed out independent sellers, some of the small local companies that used to deal directly with the schools say they may be forced out of business, at a cost, they contend, to students.

It’s hard to argue that a public school system should save that kind of money by simply sharpening operations. 

What really interests me here is the relationship between the realities of educational business and knowledge.  Textbooks, after all, are used to teach students some sampling of academic disciplines.  What happens to the quality of academic content when some textbooks are admitted into the schools market and some not?  There is a necessary relationship between finances and knowledge in this instance.  This relationship is nothing new, historically. 

In 1871, this cartoon ran in Harper’s Weekly:

It shows the infamous Boss Tweed and his accomplices launching the city’s school textbooks out the window and replacing them with others.  The back story here is that the books being defenestrated are published by Harper’s–owner of Harper’s Weekly, in which Thomas Nast famously used his political cartoons (like this one) to draw public attention to the embezzling of the Tweed Ring–and the textbooks the rotund Tweed is replacing Harper’s with are those of his own publishing company or others in his circle of influence. 

Then, as now, there is a question to be asked: what is the relationship between the politics and business of schooling–which are necessary, I’d argue–and the quality of disciplinary content offered to students?  There is a tension, at least 150 years old, between economy and epistemology. 

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Lectures get a bad rap.  Sure, learning should be constructed and not delivered; students should create understanding and not absorb the understandings of another.  Still, nothing beats a good lecture.  A good lecture puts the intellectual onus on the listener.  A good lecturer creates a performance environment where those present are not only entertained or engaged, but they are are challenged to imagine the ideas of the lecturer as their own. 

The New York Times discusses how universities are currently using cyberspace to transmit great courses and lecturers to the world, often for free. Interestingly, what seems to be all the latest rage is in many ways a throw-back to an earlier day.  Since this ideas is the focus of my newest study, let me elaborate.

In the teaching of literature, this is nothing new.  As literature was gaining traction as a serious academic discipline, it was this kind of super-lecturing–part intelligentsia, part rock concert–that pervaded the countries major universities.  One really well known figure was Billy Phelps.  Education professors Robert Scholes and Gerald Graff discuss at length in their respective histories of teaching literature that Phelps brought the fervor of the preacher to the earliest literature classrooms in the US.  Students packed into lecture halls to hear Phelps interpret great literary works.  What was it that drew them then as students today are drawn to the courses of the professors in the Times piece? 

Sometimes, I think, there is something more intimate, more sincere, about one person performing his or her passion for a subject than group work and what-do-you-think pedagogies can offer.  I might even go so far as to say that a well-crafted and -performed lecture on a timely topic is precisely what many students want.  And if a particular lecturer isn’t hacking it, well, they need go no further than their computers and phones to catch a glimpse of others who are. 

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Over the next few weeks, I’ll be beginning to put a hypothesis to the test.  We often hear that our current schools are stuck using 19th century models of teaching and learning, that the 21st century student must be prepared for a new globalized economy.  I myself have nodded my head to these claims.  I might even have made them.  And I might make them again.  Before I do, however, I’d like to put them to a test.

What if I closely read and analyzed 19th century textbooks for teaching literature?  Then, what if I conducted a similarly rigorous content analysis of popular online content companies who provide English literature content to schools?  What would be new–or innovative, rigorous, 21st century–and what not? 

My suspicion is that the 19th century textbooks and the 21st century online courses will prove to be remarkably similar.  I’m open, though, to the contrary. 

Are there other questions I’m missing?  What might you yourself expect to see in such a comparison?

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This recent speech was posted on ED’s web site.  In it, Secretary Duncan criticizes teacher preparation programs.  He spoke:

In a speech last fall at the Teachers College at Columbia, I noted that education schools have long been treated as the Rodney Dangerfield of higher education. Colleges of education have traditionally been the institution that got no respect—yet still they are described as cash cows for other, more academically-prestigious departments of the university.

Once teachers finish their preparation program, they enter a profession that continues to treat them as something less than highly-skilled professionals. Smart induction policies and well-designed mentoring for new teachers is the exception, rather than the rule. Professional development is generally of poor quality. Pay is based not on your performance in the classroom or your impact on student learning but rather on your credentials and time spent in the job. Performance evaluations of teachers are largely a sham.

So, how do we explain this paradox of on the one hand revering teachers, yet on the other hand, failing to elevate the teaching profession?

In the context of the current political climate, it seems like these questions fit conveniently with hot topics like of teacher tenure, teacher training, and the use of online courses and blended learning models to broaden the school day.  The iZone work I am a part of in NYC is one example of a major city trying to better understand how new approaches to teaching and learning might be used in over 1500 schools.

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When my wife and I waited to learn the sex of the child months ago, I recall the weight I felt on my shoulders as the doctor told us: it’s a boy. A boy? Immediately, I began rehearsing scenarios in my imagination. The kinds of conversations all men have had but don’t necessarily remember: how to aim at the toilet bowl, how to play football, how to treat friends and lovers. And of course The Talk! Our train ride from the hospital that morning might as well have been a rehearsal studio for The Talk, starring Declan and his bumbling daddy.

Still, during this time I decided–out of the blue–that I would give Declan one of the greatest gifts I had gotten: the gift of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

I searched for weeks for a copy of Paradise Lost that I could gift to Declan after our reading. Most of what I found were paperback editions busting at the bindings with critical notes. Not quite what I had in mind. Then, I found a copy on my book shelf that I received from a student years ago. I don’t remember which student (though I’ve narrowed it down to a few). The book is an 1888 edition of Milton’s poetical works. It’s stunning. I don’t know how I forgot about it.

The first 20 pages or so are falling out, but in a clump.

My hope is that a New York based book binder can help restore it so Declan and I can get reading.

It’s something to be looking at a book that is so very old. The way the book smells, for instance… like a some strange mixture of smoke and musk and wood. To think: that book was published over a century ago. Jack the Ripper was marauding around the very same London Milton inhabited over two hundred years earlier. Appropriately, the book is called a “family edition” because of the pictures that decorate the pages throughout.

I saw this posting this morning in an Education Week email update.  “Really?” I thought.  It’s that explicit?  How is an educator supposed to attend this webinar and not feel like they are being pitched to the whole time to buy Lenovo’s computers? Will Lenovo list fairly what its computers can and can’t do so education technology leaders can make an informed decision? Check it out:

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Just moments ago, I submitted my second certification exam.  It’s a fifty-page review of studies related to my own present and future work.  In it, I ask a series of questions to guide the review:

- Why don’t policymakers read educational research?
- Why don’t researchers write for policymakers?
- What gaps exist because policymakers and researchers don’t read and write for each other?
- What assumptions about reading and writing underlie this gapbetween research and policy?

I’m becoming particularly interested in learning more about policymakers and implementers as readers, non-readers, and re-readers.  Many thanks to Jon Becker who replied to my last post and gave me invaluable direction. 

The next steps include meeting with my adviser for breakfast Friday, discussing the kinds of studies this lit review lends itself to, and beginning preparations on a dissertation proposal for a hearing in the May.  If you have any ideas, leads, or links, please send them along!

** On another note, I’m also beginning now to prepare for a reading of Paradise Lost to my son, Declan.  These tender, but literary, posts will pepper the blog in the months to come. **

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Over the past several weeks, the blog has been quiet.  In part, that’s because I have a new son and am thoroughly enjoying being a father.  It’s also because I’m at a bit of a crossroads with my doctoral research and hitting a bit of a wall.

In the past, I had expected fully to be writing a dissertation about new literacies and how they relate to the teaching of English, literature especially.  I’m not so sure about that now.  While I do think such a study is important, there are other aspects of education that have begun to intrigue me.  This is greatly due to the new work I’ve begun this year in NYC’s iZone initiative. 

Since beginning the new job, I have become increasingly aware of the way in which educational research does and does not affect how policy makers go about reform.  This gap between scholarship and schools fascinates me.  How does the way educational researchers represent their ideas affect how those ideas are realized in schools?  I wish to spend the next week with this question.  I’ll be posting snippets from some writing I’m doing that begins to grapple with this question.

And I’m asking for any insights and ideas you may have regarding what is needed in the fields of reform and educational research. 

I was in the hospital with my new son one night a few weeks when I saw that one of the authors of Disrupting Class, Michael Horn, replied to my previous blog posting.  My son is three weeks today; his father finally has a chance to reply to Horn.  Horn wrote a comment to my posting that begins:

While I appreciated the kudos, a “good catch” does not adequately respond to my point.  Even Horn’s later series of rebuttals do nothing more than dodge the core of the critique.  At the heart of the posting is the concern that the authors of Disrupting Class knowingly misrepresent and dismiss research and scholarship in the field of education.  As a result, the Disruption Theory they create is inherently groundless.  Though it is compelling–no one would argue that the book has had great effects on education policy and reform–it neglects to seriously consider what is going on in actual schools with actual students, and it doesn’t consider what experts in education have to say about those realities.

I agree with Horn that much of educational research doesn’t prove causal relationships (if you do X students will ace their exams).  But that doesn’t mean you disregard it completely.  The weakness of Disrupting Class‘s stance toward educational research is that it finds value only in the answers to questions, not the questions themselves.  What questions would have been raised in their book if the authors had seriously considered educational research? What questions, then, would policy-makers and educational leadership have asked?  Questions, after all, are far more disruptive. 

Here’s an example.  One of the gaps I point out is that the authors make “the hasty assumption that adolescents’ use of technology means they can simply learn from it.”  Horn replied to this critique (which was the third in a list) that “we pointedly don’t rely on point #3 that you cite. Others write about this, but we ourselves don’t hinge our argument on this point.”  I’m sorry, but Horn and his colleagues pointedly do rely on students’ use of technology to learn.  If you remove students-using-technology-to-learn from Disrupting Class there is no book.  Who uses the online courses they speak of?  How do the authors imagine students sharing content they create?  And let’s not ignore the fact that not all students learn well in online courses; not all students have any interest or natural skill in posting materials for classmates to learn from. 

If the authors had consulted–just as one example–Donald Leu’s study in which he compares students’ offline and online literacy skills they might have disclaimed that research shows students’ offline and online literacy abilities have no direct relationship.  Great online readers might be shoddy offline readers.  And vice versa.  If they had considered even just studies that compare students online and offline lives, they might have explored certain realities of applying their theory to a school system: not all students are digitally literate; students’ social digital literacies don’t simply apply to online schoolwork; not all traditionally successful students’ talents translate to the online world; not all students even have equitable access to online worlds and therefore to those crucial online skills. 

The above response, I might add, says nothing about the authors’ disregard for the roles of teachers in student-learning.  While they do compliment educators for their hard work, they don’t seriously consider what it means, for instance, to disrupt teacher education using their framework.  Nor do they consider the setbacks and advances being made in the professional development of educators.  Their solution is to take a master teacher like Jaime Escalante and broadcast him to as many students as possible.  I wonder what kind of relationship Escalante would form with his students in such a scenario.  After all, wasn’t it his ability to connect with his classes that made his success possible? 

In sum, we need a real series of exchanges in which the educational research community dialogues with the authors of Disrupting Class.  Ideally, there would be a think tank in which some organization (a university, consulting group, a city) would invite the book’s authors and an array of educational scholars to the same table to talk about ways to ground so influential a book.  The authors of the book might dismiss educational research, but researchers are also quick to categorically dismiss the book.  Disrupting Class has been incredibly influential and is shaping education reform around the world.  Scholars who ignore that simple truth are too tangled in their own academic robes to see that real principals, teachers, students, and parents are and will be affected by this book.  Time to disrobe, if need be, and to seriously consider what it means to disrupt.

NB: There are other critiques of the book as well. One especially thoughtful review is by John Sener.

I wanted to take a moment to say thanks: thank you (that is, you, Reader) for supporting my work.  I’ve been spotty over the last few weeks with the birth of my son, Declan.  In the new year, I look forward to seeing how this new being in my life will jibe with the new work I’ve been doing since September–work which I love.

I’ll be looking to gain greater clarity on what my “niche” is on this blog.  (Though, to start, there is a response needed to Michael Horn’s comment to my Disrupting Class post…) I’ll also be looking to narrow my study for my doctorate, which, is still far too broad. 

Still, today is Christmas and I’m simply content: I can hear my son feeding while drinking my coffee, writing to you, and about to head out to family’s for dinner. 

What a merry day indeed!