Teachers and the Quest for Meaningful Pedagogy

A fellow student in class just asked me a question in response to a discussion we were having about Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development. Here is the relevant tail-end of my initial post:

"Finally, I think that teachers should emphasize imaginative literature that forces such moral questions upon the characters and upon the reader, so that children can begin to understand what certain choices mean, and can begin to place themselves in others' shoes when viewing moral disagreements."

An excerpt from the well-reasoned response I was given is as follows:

"...I can appreciate your opinion that students can be presented with imaginative literature that poses moral dilemmas that encourage them to understand consequences of choices and will also help them to learn empathy for the plight of others who have to deal with moral dilemmas. The whole concept of helping students learn to think instead of just presenting a set of facts for them to memorize and pass a test is certainly a more challenging task for educators, but a concept that will spill over into all areas of learning." [emphasis mine]

This got me to thinking. Is it a more challenging task for educators? Learning to teach the high-school way, or, I guess, the education-degree way, has been daunting for me, used to the college way of teaching: lecture, discussion, essay. The repetition, memorization, and testing of material seems so baroque, so antiquated. And, I must admit, I always had the niggling feeling of "college is better," even though college teachers don't for the most part receive actual instruction in, you know, pedagogy. Still, I say, why bother with all that? Aren't US high schools very poorly ranked, and yet US universities very highly ranked? Sure--but if teaching is a skill, it can be taught, it can be learned. As long as we don't get too caught up in the old ways of doing things. And a lot of education theorists we've discussed agree. Here's my response to my classmate:

"The thing is, though, that I don't know if it is more of a challenge. We learn easier if we have a meaningful connection to our learning. That "meaningful connection" can be seeing something useful, as we see things in this class that helps us in the classes we teach, but that "meaningful connection" can also be a connection that provides, allows, strengthens meaning. Across the board you'll find that straight memorization fails most of the time: students commit something to memory, test over it, forget it, and then have nothing to build on for the next test. Because they're not interested, because they aren't forced to think, evaluate, decide, they have no connection to what they're learning. On the other hand, if we can get our students interested in something by showing just how cool or weird or interesting it is, the students on their own look for it.

And I don't really think that's challenging for educators. We wouldn't be doing anything harder. Because this is the way humans naturally learn things for themselves, we don't have to work as hard past the initial point of engagement. The biggest obstacle is getting kids interested in learning in general, and after that, showing them that one particular area, whether it's math or science or 1870s century German poetry, is fascinating when you get right down to it.

This style doesn't involve making giant lists of things to discuss. It primarily uses essay questions, not true/false, matching, or fill-in-the-blank. And instead of lecture-response, class discussions often bring about greater truths than one single teacher can provide. The problem with it is that it's anathema, completely the opposite of how a lot of people think of teaching, of what teaching should be, because with all the subjectivity, there's a certain lack of objectivity, the source of all grading and evaluation. But I would willingly sacrifice easy-to-determine grades for authentic learning any day of the week."

I stand by that. We in university need to learn pedagogy--skills to actually help our students learn. Especially in testing methods, for crying out loud--true/false tests are patently lousy, by almost anybody's judgment. But those in high school need to learn as well that some methods don't actually work, and they're only the easiest methods because they're the ones that people already know. Teaching can be easier through guided class discussions, even though testing is harder through grading essays. I'm fine with the tradeoff: less mind-numbing lecture, more exploration of personal relevance and meaning.

--All Rights Reserved

Preamble: On Writing, Being Read, and Copyright

My first question to the world: I have no idea what I should do about licensing. Here I plan to write essays on literature, religion, teaching, and other subjects, as well as post my translations of Old English poetry, and I am torn between two principles, and, of course, sub-principles. First I do not want to lend my thoughts to anyone without remuneration, but I know this is selfish. The opposite of course is to give everything I have away freely, but in this too is a little madness--do I disdain myself to the point where I am content as an unknown, writing anonymously and wishing to always be known as such? I do not wish to be anonymous completely, and though it is my pride that tells me this, I listen, knowing that there is sometimes wisdom in dark things. I accept that pride is what motivates me to write, to suggest to the world that a thing that I produce is worth the time to notice, and so I accept the prideful nature of wanting credit, although I deny the idea that credit is due at all points. I ask, but do not demand, because I believe, even if I do not at all times adhere to it, in a polite society, where "demand" is a foreign word when applied anywhere but to the inward self.

But still, I desire first of all things that what I write be read, and what I admire be admired in turn. As my desire is to translate Anglo-Saxon poetry, I find my root belief is in the quality, the originality, the goodness, of Anglo-Saxon poetry. That it cannot be easily read by an audience over a thousand years linguistically removed proves a problem, so I wish to translate it so that it can be read, enjoyed, and savored. I want to make it as easy to find and read as possible--not simple, but as far from inaccessible as can be done. This means that I wish to translate into a modern, contemporary language (although not necessarily a contemporary idiom), but that even more I desire my translation to be easily disseminated. As such, I lean towards Public Domain, which is about as free as free gets, copyright-wise. If I publish on the web in Public Domain, theoretically Dover Thrift, Barnes & Noble books, and even you (if you own a publishing company) could publish what I wrote and not give me one fat nickel, and be legally fine.

So what do I ask? What are the guidelines of this post, and of others on this blog? My authorial mandate is truth and my authorial request is to be recognized. I ask that anything I post be regarded as All Rights Reserved, in accordance with U.S. law, until I note otherwise. I plan that any translations that I produce be a lesser license, possibly even fully Public Domain, but I will note as such in each entry in the header. For now, the bracketed ARR represents that this entry is All Rights Reserved, and any post marked PD will be immediately and permanently public domain.

[6-24-2009 edit--I'm going to rescind on this and remove the bracketed ARR from the title--titles are too serenely simple to muddy with such nonsense. I'll instead use...]
--All Rights Reserved