Tom Liam Lynch :: New Literacies, New Literatures

Academic journals are a vital component of the scholarly world, and yet, the peer-review system is veiled in anonymous reviewers, stalled by exceedingly long assessment processes, and their digital products are usually protected by subscription firewalls that only university libraries can pay.  (And even they struggle with the cost.)  The value of the peer-review process is the feedback from colleagues, a sense of collective knowledge-sharing and -making.  In these times of social media and open source movements, you’d imagine that stubborn peer-review academic journals might get a makeover.  One has.

Mixing traditional and new methods, the journal posted online four essays not yet accepted for publication, and a core group of experts — what Ms. Rowe called “our crowd sourcing” — were invited to post their signed comments on the Web site MediaCommons, a scholarly digital network. Others could add their thoughts as well, after registering with their own names. In the end 41 people made more than 350 comments, many of which elicited responses from the authors. The revised essays were then reviewed by the quarterly’s editors, who made the final decision to include them in the printed journal, due out Sept. 17.

I’ve been continuing to develop my dissertation study about teaching English in online environments.  I begin the study by telling the story of Boss Tweed and how he had certain textbooks tossed out of NYC schools in 1871.  The textbooks were all published by Harper’s Brothers, whose popular Harper’s Weekly featured the political cartoonist Thomas Nast.  Nast had some nasty things to say about Tweed and Tweed sought his revenge through Harper’s.

At the time, Harper’s published a textbook on English composition, from which I’ve lifted the excerpt below.  To see more of the original publication, click here.  Otherwise, here’s how composition was taught in NYC back in the day:

Online learning needs to go social.  So says the founder of Einztein.com, a free course search engine, which is well worth a visit and a browse.  In his piece on Mashable! recently, Marco Masoni writes:

What’s required are innovative approaches to course design that set aside old models of instruction where theory often trumps actuality. Online course providers must embrace the web’s potential to match students with the kinds of timely knowledge and skills that address current issues head-on, and enable them to thrive in the global marketplace.

Yes, the web’s potential to make learning experiences dynamic and real-time is seemingly limitless.  And exciting.  Still, when I search through what’s out there using Einztein’s site, I’m disappointed.  Like iTunes U, Einztein allows users to connect with myriad courses and online instructional videos.  I did a search for Milton, for instance, and it linked me to Yale’s Open Course on the poet.  That’s not what disappoints me.  In fact, it’s incredible that these kinds of courses are available for free to anyone with internet access.  What does disappoint me is that for Masoni (and Apple, for that matter) learning still resembles one-way communication from an expert to unknowing students.  Students are empty vessels whose minds are to be filled with factoids and figures.  He skips scrutinizing this point and jumps eagerly to the use of “real-time” lessons:

It’s not enough for a course to be accessible online, it must also be designed in a way that keys into the digital pulse of current events, trending topics and insider knowledge endemic to the web.

No.  It’s not enough for a course to be accessible online if it used as a way to perpetuate the kinds of monolithic teaching that are iconic of traditional means of instruction.  I think the merits of real-time learning are not talked about enough.  Still, it is what students do with the information they learn that matters.  If all a student does is watch a professor lecture on Milton for nine hours and take an exam (which I myself might enjoy immensely) have we really innovated teaching and learning?  The medium is not enough, not without equal attention paid to pedagogy.

In her piece on college textbook costs, MoneyWatch’s Lynn O’Shaughnessy not only lists a $1,215 communications encyclopedia, but also adds this quick insight:

One reasons why more students don’t turn to the Internet for cheap college textbooks is because many college bookstores, which are more expensive, don’t release the names of required college textbooks for classes until the last minute. To get the cheapest textbooks possible, contact professors this summer so you’ll have plenty of time to find the best textbook deals.

As I’ve described elsewhere, this might be another reason to work toward students writing their own textbooks with the teacher’s expert guidance.  Certainly in this age of free and shareable media, these kinds of prices will remain a distant superlative.

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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…

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.

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.

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?

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.

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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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.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan held a town meeting in which he demonstrates the problems with words like “creative” and “innovation” in conversations about policy.  It always seems to stumble:

“We need to be much more creative and innovative in how we do things,” Duncan said. For instance, students today use cell phones and PDAs on a regular basis, he said, so coming up with creative ways to deliver content and curriculum involving technologies that students like to use is one way to grab students’ attention.

With all due respect to Secretary Duncan and eSchool News, is there not some incongruity between the ideas of creativity and innovation when used to talk about delivering content.  What about the notion of learning as something more than content to be delivered, banked, deposited, dropped off, absorbed, etc.? What about the idea of students constructing knowledge together?  which, is something new technologies lend themselves to quite well.

Rigor is a tragic word in education.  On the one hand, it has gravitas–it conveys a history of academic excellence and challenge.  On the other hand, it gets volleyed around in educational politics with the whim and witlessness of a group of school children playing hackysak during lunch. 

This is the word that is being hacked and sacked in education now.  Some policy makers have hesitations about the Race to the Top initiative, especially as it concerns the relationship between the state and the fed.  Ed Week writes,

Some House lawmakers suggested the initiative could help address the frequent criticism that the 8-year-old No Child Left Behind Act, the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, allows states to set their own academic standards.

That policy inadvertently encourages states to reduce rigor so that they can clear achievement targets, said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the education committee and an author of the NCLB law.

As a result, “the quality of education a student may receive is left up to their ZIP code. It’s a matter of geographical luck,” he said. “Having 50 different standards in 50 different states undermines America’s education system.”

I smell a rigor argument afoot.  The “quality”, they say.  Such a simple word that means precisely nothing.  The worry is that we are embarking on a national standards campaign with accompanying exams.  I’m not completely convinced it would be such a bad thing; certainly not as bad as what post-NCLB has been.  It behooves schools, collectively, to have some common language or point of assessment.  But the language must be precise. And precise language takes time.  That’s my own worry: I don’t object to national standards on any principle; I don’t even object to national exams if they are created smartly and if they are prevented from dominating instruction.  What I object to is dodgy rigor–the word without the vigor.

This article explores reasons why education doesn’t get the press coverage it deserves. And when it does, it joined at the hip to political topics:

There are few things better than a great speaker.  As my wife and I watch West Wing cover-to-cover I reminded of this: President Bartlet is now running for re-election and when he speaks (with or without a speech) he dazzles crowds.  Our current president isn’t so bad himself.

More than that, I’m struck by how new media is bringing the oldest form of communication–speaking–into a new space.  Professor Joshua Kim wrote a piece recently about the need to have Google help organize great talks by university faculty:

Here’s the idea. Google buy or partner with a lecture capture vendor – there are plenty to choose from. Make available the lecture capture equipment, cameras, software and training on campuses – free of charge. Maybe wire a few rooms or classrooms with presentation capture appliances. In exchange for the equipment and the software campuses agree to record and publish as many talks as possible to the Talks@Google and YouTube/EDU sites. Of course, campuses could also put their talks on their own institution’s channel.

Of course iTunes U has begun doing this already.  But iTunes’ lectures aren’t searchable the way Youtube videos are.  (At least, not yet.)  What is it about great speakers or lectures that still captivates us?  Might we be wise to reconsider the lecturing for secondary education?  Part preacher, part performer, part pedagogue?

(I’m indebted to Meredith, a colleague from NCTE, who listed me as a great speaker at the conference in Philadelphia a couple weeks ago.  I’m no Jed Bartlet, but I did make a web site for the talk.)

In this piece from Harvard Education, school leaders grapple with bringing the system of departmentalization to elementary schools. (Gerald Gaff writes extensively about departmentalization’s role in secondary and college.) Opponents say that learning is more than just conveying content to students; it’s social, emotional, and communal.  In these testing times, however, even our youngest learners might find school to be quite different than their parents.

This piece from the NY Times makes a terse argument for the use of iTunes U to share courses with others, even if it seems counter-intutive to traditional university business practices.  Make learning free; make learning easy to access; make learning portable.  Here’s the argument, in brief:

Other universities say that limited resources, copyright concerns or the reluctance of old-fashioned professors are keeping them from recording and uploading lectures. But Mr. Bean challenges his peers around the world who are not participating in iTunes U at all, or who are making lectures available only to registered students who sign in with a password.

“There are still a lot of universities in the world that define the value of their experience as somehow locking up their content and only giving people access to the content when they enroll in the program,” Mr. Bean said. “The courage comes from taking the next leap of faith. Universities no longer define themselves by their content but the overall experience: the concept, the student support, the tutoring and mentoring, the teaching and learning they get and the quality of the assessment.”

If only students could just play games and learn, all our problem would be solved. 

I mean that with a wink an a smile, of course.

Still, this piece in Ed Week this morning caught my eye.  It’s about various game-based learning sites that help students learn about financial literacy.  This seems to be becoming all the rage: Quest to Learn opened a few months ago, which is a NYC school in partnership with NYU’s Institute of Play–the whole model blurs lines of traditional learning and is built on various gaming theories.  Florida Virtual School has a course that gets a lot of press in which students learn about history by playing a role-playing game.  Even NYC’s School of One, written up as one of Time Magazine’s 50 greatest inventions of the year, sought to automate and differentiate learning by creating daily “playlists” for students. 

It’s worth considering voices like that of the UK’s David Buckingham.  In contrast to the ra-ra cheers of James Paul Gee and Marc Prensky, Buckingham notes that the scholars in greatest support of game-based learning don’t really scrutinize it.  They just give it the old homecoming cheer and dance. 

Quite a lucrative game of their own, you might say.

Last week I tweeted whether or not anyone knew about a Google meeting devoted to education.  Thanks to Lucy Gray, now there’s a video summary (over an hour and a half) and also her own narrative.  The full video is below:

A report from the Everyone Graduates Center has come saying that 9th grade is unusually good at holding students back.  What seems to be a study that focuses on a particular year of study could equally be interpreted as a reflection on a wide disconnect between middle schools and high schools in terms of what is taught and assessed, not to mention how in both cases.  Here’s an table from the study to consider:

From Pics for Blog

In an education technology conference in Denver a few days ago, several high profile presenters bemoaned the way in which academic scholarship is copyright protected.  In short,

Stanford law professor and activist Lawrence Lessig told the gathering of campus technology chiefs Nov. 5 that restrictive copyright laws are “destructive of science and education,” because academia has adopted a copyright model that largely mimics that of the entertainment industry.

Lessig is also the founder of Creative Commons, an online movement to make the sharing of content more free and legal.  I read this thinking: the tighter the restrictions on the exchanging of ideas, the slower our collective understanding will grow.  With invaluable, but bloated, companies like Lexis-Nexus putting the choke hold on scholarship.

This article recently described how 2 out of 5 teachers are disheartened with the profession.  It connects this study–conducted by a NYC-based research group–to Arne Duncan’s recent murmurings that rewarding teachers and focusing on teacher preparation is essential to improving education.  What can teacher preparation programs be doing, I wonder, to help pre-service teachers have a more realistic sense of what teaching is and isn’t? 

This article discusses how some schools of higher Ed are now handling email addresses for students. It’s worth noting that school system the size of NYC still don’t provide email addresses, though many schools do on their own:

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=61503

Arne Duncan’s work in Chicago schools has received criticism recently as the NY Times reports that a University of Chicago study says students benefited little.  While I’m skeptical about how data is gathered and interpreted, it’s worth considering whether the Secretary did or didn’t improve schools in Chicago.  I’m more interested, given Duncan’s recent speech at Teachers College, in his plans to support teacher preparation programs. 

Still, I recently met with a principal of a large public high school yesterday who suggested that New York City’s own system of assessing schools (called the Quality Review) is inherently flawed–favoring small schools, English Language Learners, and special education students.  His is a large school, with English speakers, and most students have no individualized education plan.  The principal is concerned that his school is destined to be marked low.

Questions raised about Duncan in Chicago can well be asked of Klein in New York.

Later today I’m meeting a group of 8th grade students from New Haven who are visiting NYC.  Their stopping at Columbia as part of their trip and my friend asked if I’d present to them.  As I thought about what’s worth presenting on, I quickly came to the question of 21C learning and built a quick Google Sites page to share with them.  Check it out here and feel free to share at will.

A recent NPR piece makes the case that adolescents regard Facebook as the social network for more affluent (and according to one teen, “white”) users.  Myspace is for “trashy” people:

MySpace pages do look busier than Facebook; on MySpace you can customize graphics and music while Facebook is limited to one spare blue-and-white design. The MySpace clutter seems to symbolize something more to these kids. Sixteen-year-old Nico Kurt lays out his view of the MySpace users this way: “It seems trashy to me. The only people who use it are trashy people.”

Later in the piece, danah boyd notes that the same way people divide themselves along class lines in reality, they do so in social networks as well.  As the conversation heats up about this, it’s worth considering this map, which charts the popularity of social networks by country:

Pediatrician Perri Klass has recently written a kind warning to adults who are quick to criticize young people for multi-tasking.  Adolescents might well be able to both IM and listen to music and blog and do their homework. While texting with their toes, of course.  Dr. Klass writes:

A recent and much-discussed study showed decreased productivity in adults who were multitasking — or as Dr. Christakis put it, “The truth is you don’t really multitask, you just think you do; the brain can’t process two high-level cognitive things.” What you are actually doing, he went on, is “oscillating between the two.”

So are teenagers any better at oscillating?

“It may be that multitasking is more of a problem for us old brains,” Professor Hobbs said. Dr. Christakis speculated that teenagers might have some advantages, partly because of their presumably greater mental dexterity and partly — “and this is the part we don’t understand,” he said — “because they really have come of age with these technologies.”

When you consider how little even the medical and cognitive experts know, it’s a wonder how confidently we teachers can dismiss such behaviors as mere distraction.

The federal government’s i3 grants are going to require much more than an open palm and a “please”:

The U.S. Department of Education is proposing high hurdles for school districts and nonprofit organizations that want a piece of the $650 million Investing in Innovation grant program, including evidence of past success in helping students most in need, and a significant financial commitment from the private sector.

What’s more, Education Week notes that that the public will also have a say in weighing the merits of the grants. 

It stands out to me, however, that by placing emphasis on “evidence of past success in helping students in need”, what room will there be for schools who haven’t been able to help its students precisely because they haven’t had the money.  It’s worth watching out for how this particular provision is worded as it connotations will divide schools into haves and have nots.