It was a chilly, winter evening in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia sitting around a fire on our back patio with my wife, Billie Jo, and our dear friends James and Susan, another teaching couple . Some deep conversations and many problems of the world got solved by the four of us during what we refer to as Porch Chats. You know these chats. When good friends get together around a fire on a porch, on a beach, in your kitchen, or even in a booth at a favorite pub with scribbles on a beverage napkin, these conversations are the best. This one, however, has stuck with me and has now become a philosophy of sorts for me. Why? Because I cannot find the answer to the question. Or at least an answer that is not superficial.
James, my wife and myself were all working in the same high school at the time of the conversation. It was because of this that sometimes the conversations were a little heavy on the high school side. This Porch Chat in particular was one of these times. The three of us were talking pretty deeply about the content of courses, credit counts, preparing for university, or some other extremely important and very interesting things high school teachers talk about. Whatever it was, I honestly do not even remember so that is how important it truly was at the time, it was consuming the three of us...until Susan, an elementary teacher and the voice of reality of this evening, spoke up and said "Since when did high school become harder than college?" It was at this point that Billie Jo, James and I stopped talking and all stared at Susan. The three of us couldn't speak for a moment so we just looked at her. In the most perfect Susan way, she then went on to tell us that she was listening to everything we were saying and that she just couldn't believe that it was high school we were talking about. We all just looked at each other and began to laugh because what Susan was saying was absolutely true.
I continually go back to this conversation, not just because I absolutely love our Porch Chats but because after five years, I still do not have an answer to Susan's question. Why does high school have to be harder than college? What are we doing in schools? Are we pushing so far ahead and becoming that competitive that all of the pressures that were once associated with colleges & universities are now living in the high school world? It used to be that the horror stories we would hear about education involved the incredibly long thesis papers, vastly complicated Calculus problems that spanned three or more chalkboards, interpretations of literary works that went so deep that entire courses were designated to a single author, or sometimes even a single piece of literature. Several thousand word essays were due before each class. Timeless experiments with accompanying, countless page, lab reports were done on a regular basis. Sitting at a desk for 60, 90, 120 or even 180 minutes during a lecture and having to regurgitate everything the professor said for the exam. These portrayals about university academics, the depth and breadth of knowledge that university students were undertaking, was intimidating.
The problem is that the last few sentences of the paragraph above are no longer common place at universities. They are what is going on in high school. Yes, some of these things do still happen at the university level, but now they are far too often what you hear if you ask any high school student to describe their workload. What happened to the fun? What happened to building a passion for learning? What happened to learning where your passions lie so that you can pursue them after you graduate from high school? In short, when did high school become harder than college?
What is the typical scenario in a classroom around this time of year? It is a mad rush to get the curriculum covered before the end of the year. Or, frantically cover the material so the students are at least exposed to it before they sit for their final exams. Teachers pile on projects, assessments, HW, quizzes, etc. in a mind blowing proportion. Then we wonder why students, and teachers, are stressed? Really? Grade 12 teachers say they have to prepare students for university. Grade 11 teachers say they have to prepare students for Grade 12. And on down the assembly line to the point that Grade 5 teachers are stressing their already stressed out students about the intimidating halls of the middle school. Even the kindergarten teachers are in on the game saying they have to prepare their students to enter first grade! Let students find their passions. Focus on fewer topics, but do them well. Is there really a need to teach students in middle school about quadratics if they still have not mastered adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions? Do we still have to use Shakespeare to teach literature? What happened to looking forward to Science because you, the student, were actually doing an experiment?
Stop the madness, people! Look around. Why enter the mad dash when we could just as easily discuss with the next grade level teacher what it was that got covered and what did not get covered? Our students are people, not robots. They are not going to end up at the exact same point at the exact same time, so stop wasting energy trying to make this happen. Bring the fun back into learning.
No comments:
Post a Comment