Most students do not find history an interesting subject before graduating from high school (unless they have an exceptional teacher, of course). Most students see no point to studying history, or what relevance most of it has to their lives now.
Sadly, most history classes at the high school level involve memorizing lists of military or political events, and names of leaders. But all this is meaningless to most students.
When I was a child in elementary school, I recall my father telling me, “History is like a big, long story. That makes it easy to learn and easy to remember.”
Yet the history lessons I had in school, and even in University classes, were nothing like this. Since 1960 or before, most history is now presented in Social Studies “Units,” or in disjointed tidbits mixed into lessons on geography or the arts. What is missing, however, is any sense of cause and effect, or how any of these periods tie together or transitioned from one change to another. Thus, history has become, for most, memorizing random facts with no meaning, in order to pass a test.
HOW OUR SOCIETAL VIEWS OF TIME CAUSED THIS SITUATION:
We must look briefly at the three methods of viewing time.
CHAOTIC TIME is how time is viewed by a small child. Events follow each other randomly, and it is hopeless to try to impute any meaning to these events.
CYCLICAL TIME arose with the very first societies. Natural cycles of planetary events began to be linked with human activities such as planting, harvesting, hunting, and feasting. Lengths of days, and times of year, were measured by watching the stars or other natural phenomena. Cyclical belief systems and practices arose in early societies all around the world. Examples of some cyclical systems include astrology, the Cult of Osiris, Feng Shui, or the Aztec Calendar. Through repetition, cyclical time was able to conquer chaotic time.
Most early societies believed in a cyclical view of time, in which patience, ritual, and the healing power of time-from-nature were valued. The ability to divine nature’s energy and use it was highly valued (Strauss, 11). One advantage of belief in cyclical time is that when societies have horrible wars, or fall apart, these times are seen as temporary, as being a “winter season” from which the spring and a renewal will eventually come.
Things changed with the arrival of monotheism, especially Christianity. From its earliest days, Christianity tried to stamp out the cyclical view of time. They denounced it as “calendrical paganism” and did their best to stamp out non-linear thought-systems such as astrology (Strauss, 10). Yet, they were never able to stamp it out completely. When modernity, and especially the Enlightenment arrived, the Western World switched to a LINEAR VIEW OF TIME.
The greatest achievement of LINEAR TIME has been to give all mankind the sense that we are improving ourselves, that we are MAKING PROGRESS TOWARD A BETTER END. We now “prize the ability to defy nature’s energy and overcome it,” (Strauss, 11).
By the sixteenth century, printed copies of the Christian Bible were now circulating, and there was a new urgency in European society, as people now began speculating about Christ’s second (and final) coming. Early English settlements transported this linearism of religious purpose in building utopias to America, where it greatly influenced future American society. Waves of immigrants saw themselves as the builders of new utopias–Calvinists, Puritans, and others transported ideas of “building a New Jerusalem, as defenders of ‘God’s Chosen Country,’ and pioneers in the service of a Manifest Destiny.” (Strauss, 10)
Linear societies define EXPLICIT GOALS (whether moral or material), and set out to deliberately attain them. When these goals are reached, people feel triumphant. This leads us to view life as SELF-DIRECTED, and our personal lives as SELF-MADE. These ideas instilled in Western societies the idea of LINEAR PROGRESS toward an EVER-BETTER MATERIAL and societal future. These were the ages of belief in technological progress solving all problems, of Manifest Destiny in America.
In America, the HAPPY ENDING is truly our NATIONAL BELIEF (Strauss, 11).
THE BIG CATASTROPHIC CHANGE:
This view held until World War I. The entire Western World was affected. Suddenly, we were NO LONGER SURE of the idea of continual progress. Now, we had the fear that our linear path may, in fact, be DOWNWARD.
Despair and dystopian ideas took hold. (The optimism following World War II created a reprive from these ideas for a time; however, they returned in the 1960s.) Progress doesn’t look as positive as it did in the past; the fear of nuclear winter (or planetary destruction), robotic technology replacing human jobs, and the new fear that HISTORY IS RANDOM AND DIRECTIONLESS has replaced Manifest Destiny and Belief in Continual Positive Progress. The FEELING of CHAOTIC TIME has returned, as if events follow each other randomly, without purpose or reason.
THE CHANGE IN HISTORY TEACHING:
Dramatic changes in history teaching methods during the twentieth century were caused by changes in our societal view of time.
When the narrative method was used to teach history, the glue which held it together was that it was a teleological view. This view means that history had a beginning and was headed toward a particular end. In more religious times (and among those who currently believe “End Times” are coming) this would mean the time of the last Judgement, or the times of Revelation, or the End of the World, or the Second Coming of Christ. In America’s past, the idea of Manifest Destiny came out of this teleological view.
Among the less religious, a secular teleological view was substituted, that of continual progress toward the self-betterment of mankind (Strauss, 11).
The teleological, linear, narrative view essentially taught (in religious times) that the victors of history were part of the God-approved progression of history toward an eventual religious triumph and religious conclusion: including the rise and fall of societies; the conquest of societies and peoples; the people in positions of authority having the approval of God to be there, etc. Events such as the genocide and/or enslavement of Native Americans were viewed in the past as replacement of inferior societies and worldviews with morally-correct and improved peoples and world-views. Today’s ways of looking at events was not even considered, since the teleological view implied God’s approval.
Generally speaking, science eschews teleology. Teleologically-based “grand narratives” are now frowned upon in post-modern society. However, in America, the belief in scientific progress leading mankind toward a Utopian end has persisted until recently.
For example, the television series Star Trek was so popular precisely because it supported the idea of hope and progress being able to solve all future social problems of hunger, poverty, wise government through democratic institutions. Furthermore, they go throughout the universe spreading hope, light, and progress by means of the morally upstanding Federation (seeming to represent the ideas of the United States after WWII) against the Klingon Empire of Darkness (seeming to represent the Western ideas of communist empires of evil and darkness).
WHAT WE ARE LEFT WITH TODAY:
History classes in schools and in text books (where they are even still used) tend to be very light on examining the time periods between major catastrophic or important events. This is partly due to time constraints, but it is also due to the fact that so many people and societal groups DISAGREE on the causes.
Text books took to leaving out anything controversial decades ago so that they can sell one or two versions of their books across most state lines. Books and history courses that offend no one are now the order of the day. When causes are taught, they are taught in isolation from other events.
Here is one example. Hardly anyone knows why World War I was fought. Students are taught, “The cause was the shooting of the archduke. Then everyone began fighting.” In fact, the real causes are found in the larger, global events of the previous one-to-two centuries leading up to the war, in the expansion of the British Empire, particularly in India, and the Great Game played between Russia and Britain, and alliances which took place in Europe, concerned with balance-of-power politics. Students learn little to nothing about any of these things, and learn nothing of how the basic geography of certain countries drives their foreign policy. Once these things are studied, World War I doesn’t seem so mysterious. (See references below if interested in pursuing these topics further.)
For years, as a teacher, I wondered both WHEN and WHY the teaching of history changed, and I am finally glad to at least understand what happened. I wish I had solutions toward improving it in modern society. But when every group seems to be pushing their own agenda, and with no one really in charge, I have no idea how to do that. Any thoughts would be welcome in discussion below.
The problem of students who are unable to adequately read their grade-level textbooks is not new; the problem starts in early elementary school and only gets worse as students move up in grade levels. Unfortunately, the rise of the internet in the past twenty years has only exacerbated the problem.
Let’s look briefly at the pre-internet reading situation in middle-class schools and above (poor schools have additional problems which will not be treated in this particular article). Looking back, the most important function of the school library was to be filled with books to be used for school research projects which were at the correct reading levels for students.
Not only were grade-level books provided, but there were plenty of below-grade-level books on every topic available to readers who were still below grade-level. For example, a middle-school student with a lower reading level could still find good primary-level books on any research topic assigned. There used to be hundreds of books available through publishers, on every conceivable topic, for school libraries and public libraries to choose from. Bookstores made them available to the general public.
Today, funding priorities are focused less on providing new books for the school library–partly because of the explosion of new topics and knowledge in our modern world, and also because of the explosion of information on the internet. Now funding must be divided between books, and new library computers.
The market for children’s non-fiction has plummeted since 2005. Sales to both libraries and bookstores have dropped substantially. Therefore, fewer nonfiction books for children are being written and published. Publishers and booksellers decided to drop most nonfiction, and focus primarily on children’s fiction–for which there does continue to be a market.
The lack of nonfiction is particularly damaging for boys. They tend to prefer autobiographies, nonfiction, newspapers, and realistic topics. Ever since 2005, as the internet has become more powerful, children’s nonfiction has declined. This decline is preventing many boys from developing as readers. National standards in Britain and America drive the decline even further, “…as the strictures of the national curriculum have driven many publishers to stop producing anything very original, and how many books on Vikings and rainforests do we really need?”
Starting in middle school–most commonly Grade 6 and above–teachers now direct students to the internet for research, instead of to school libraries. One reason is that science classes are now often researching topics which are not even available in books in the school libraries–things such as genetics, and various types of cells–and this is happening in Grades 6, 7, and 8.
Students are now being asked to research obscure people for reasons of diversity in the classroom, rather than famous people. This means that the information can only be found on the internet. Students are now expected to use the internet for all research. This is now true even in elementary school. Students may be assigned reports on animals, for example. Perhaps there are perfectly good books in the school library at the right reading level; however, it has now become “too much trouble” to even check , when one can “just look it up online.”
Using online sources creates a much worse problem–aside from the problem of whether a source is reliable, biased, or incomplete–that is, the problem of reading level!
Below is reading sample from a Grade 5 science text which more than half of students (even in good schools) might find too difficult to read without the teacher’s help. Why? Because students are now used to reading only fiction in reading class. They are not used to the vocabulary in non-fiction; nor are they used to reading expository sentences..
Not only have student reading levels declined in real terms, but the sources students are now attempting to use are usually written at far too high of a level for their age. Students in middle school and high school usually go first to Wikipedia (and are often specifically told to do so by their teachers, particularly in international schools that have much less access to English-language printed material). Unlike school library books or school text books of old, vocabulary is not controlled for difficulty. Sometimes the articles are poorly written, and written by scholars who are just trying to impress other scholars with their difficult vocabulary.
Below is a section of what one of my 7th-graders attempted to read for a report on glial cells last year, using Wikipedia. Most students now need adult help to translate and explain what they are trying to read. To a poor reader, this may as well be in Chinese:
Those students who can afford it hire private tutors. My students show up and say, “I have a project or report due next week on glial cells (or guard cells, or an obscure historical figure). Can you help me?” Students arrive knowing nothing about the topic, and are expected to research on line, and write a report listing their sources. So, together we look on line and usually find very scholarly articles, which I, as an excellent reader in my 60s with a graduate degree and decades of experience teaching, sometimes have trouble understanding! So we pull out little snippets of information from various articles, which I explain in plain English and then mark our source. Even many Wikipedia articles are written by scholars, seemingly just in order to impress other scholars!
I learned a great trick years ago when I was in a professional writers’ group. If you need good, concise information on an area or a subject, one of the best ways to find it is to go directly to children’s books, where you can find the information thoroughly distilled and written in clear, easy English. I use this same strategy now and show students how they can search on the internet using the search terms “my topic + explained for children.” It doesn’t always work, but it often does. Sometimes we arrive at a website where something has been clearly explained at a reading level appropriate for middle-school students.
The thing which most excited me about the internet when it first began, especially as an overseas teacher with little access to English-language reading materials, was its potential as a world library at our fingertips. Sadly, much of this potential is being lost for two reasons. First, children are not developing adequate non-fiction reading abilities to function in society. Second, most of what is available on the internet is written at far too high of a level for students to be able to benefit from it.
In most American schools, for the past several decades, the textbook has been seen by teachers as only one resource of many for classroom use. In fact, years ago, over-reliance on the textbook was almost seen as the mark of a lazy teacher, within the teaching profession. Unfortunately, the current result of this attitude has now led to teacher over-reliance on the internet, with students who are unable to understand either their textbooks OR the internet! I personally have come around 180° to the view that students would be better served if they learned and discussed in class everything which is in the textbook. Now, however, there is a new problem! Many schools are now moving entirely away from textbooks as a way to save money, and teachers are mostly downloading random worksheets from the internet. Unfortunately, it is students who are again losing out on their education.
Part II of this series will discuss what parents, schools, and teachers can do to address these problems.
“What ever caused history and geography (the two subjects in which Americans seem to be severely lacking) to be replaced by Social Studies?” As a social studies teacher by training (who mostly taught outside of the social studies area these past 30 years), I think constantly of this question.
History USED to be taught as a “grand narrative” giving students a global sense of when things happened, and what happened where, and WHY things were happening. That was apparently replaced by the “units” system in the early 1960s (the system I went through as a student). The unit system is far easier for teachers who lack sufficient background knowledge to teach the grand narrative, because with units, teachers can learn as they teach. Teaching with the narrative method takes far more reading, research, and thinking–maybe teachers, or even education as a profession just isn’t up to asking that of new teachers. The result of this has been that most younger Americans now know neither history, nor geography, compared with other countries, or even compared with earlier times in America.
Looking briefly at social studies standards from New York state (pre-Common Core), it is clear to see that even a student who mastered everything in the curriculum would still end up not knowing history or geography. What they would know instead is a large amount of disjointed information, such as feudalism, capitalism, the major religions, the neolithic revolution, etc., but without ANY sense of the narrative of history, nor any sense of the locations and boundaries of modern countries (geography), nor any sense of the cultures or modern thinking of these countries–much less, any of the history of those countries! Therefore, they are unprepared to understand those cultures, and countries’ behavior in the modern world.
Looking at the new Common Core Social Studies for New York State, the standards do a much better job. However, there is a new problem. The standards are so extensive that students rush through these time periods without seeing the overall grand scheme of things. The standards are heavily focused on reading original source material and pulling out facts for writing; in reality, those parts of the curriculum are actually LITERACY standards. Only the best students are able to measure up to these reading and writing standards. While I am highly in favor of helping students become more highly literate, not every student is able to attain this level of literacy. One of the reasons we will always need good teachers is that not every student is able to “teach themselves.” They need to hear the teacher’s thoughts, insights, and conclusions, in order to stimulate their own thinking and understanding.
One reason social studies has become focused too highly on facts, and less highly on analysis is that it avoids contentious discussions and political issues.
It’s easy and NON-CONTROVERSIAL to say, “This happened, that happened,” or read non-controversial facts in a text book. But all of the-important questions are side-stepped. “Why did ethnic cleansing happen here at this time?” “Why did the Salem Witch Trials happen? Could something like this happen again today? What similarities were there between the Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism in America, in the 1950s?” These are examples of the important questions in history, and the types of questions that inspire students toward critical thinking and an interest in history that will make its study useful in their lives. Unfortunately, questions and discussions of this type often get teachers in trouble with parents, principals, and school boards. So these important questions are mostly ignored, and students are usually given a barrage of facts, but often without the useful threads to tie them together.
It would be better to cover fewer facts and fewer original sources at the high school level. Students would be better served in their lives with general trends and principles looked at, which are then supported by fewer facts and documents; however those facts and documents used would be the most important. For example, we should be actually reading and discussing the Declaration of Independence point-by-point and how it relates to the world of today, compared to the world it was created in. We should be reading some writings by the founding fathers and discussing those writings, as well as the hopes and worries the founding fathers had for the future of our country. These are far more important than reading many obscure documents such as the private correspondence of a minor ambassador in a Middle Eastern culture of 1,000 years ago, that has little bearing on today’s events. Some things are just more important to know about than others.
Jumping from time period to time period, and civilization to civilization, is appropriate when we want to look at a general principle and see how it works in various societies. This style is less appropriate when we want to show cause and effect, or trends throughout generations. The old narrative method was far superior in helping students to remember what events happened, and why. It is also easier to remember a story than to remember disjointed events. What is really lacking in social studies education of today are the master teachers’ summaries for students, and discussions with students, of why we are studying certain facts and events, and what general conclusions we can learn from historic events to use for the future.
The National Council for the Social Studies (founded in 1921, just about the same time as the “narrative style” of history teaching went out of fashion) social studies promotes knowledge of, and involvement in, civic affairs. Instead of the old narrative method of studying history, they promote today’s curriculum standards which focus on ten areas:
1.) Culture
2.) Time, Continuity, and Change
3.) People, Places, and Environments
4.) Individual Development and Identity
5.) Individual Groups and Institutions
6.) Power, Authority, and Governance
7.) Production, Distribution, and Consumption
8.) Science, Technology, and Society
9.) Global Connections
10.) Civic Ideals and Practices
Most students now know a smattering about the above topics, but lack the cohesion to tie them together, and know very little about any particular society. This new form of social studies education has not made students more prepared to be good civic citizens. Returning to history as a narrative and studying more about the implications of world geography (rather than only studying names of countries and capitals) would be far better! Few of today’s teachers, however, would be able to teach in this manner.
Cursive – the new undecipherable secret code script!
Cursive was taught in my school until four years ago. When I left, the school discontinued it as a regular subject. Now those students are in upper elementary and early middle school, and can neither read nor write in cursive writing.
Among my tutoring students, several of them have expressed to me their sadness that their older brothers and sisters can read and write in cursive, and they cannot. Still being in the first few classes not to learn cursive, they feel babyish and incompetent. Perhaps in subsequent years, this embarrassment will disappear when none of the new students have older brothers and sisters who know cursive, when they don’t. In another six or seven years, no one will know it, and it will seem normal to upcoming students. It’s only those in these transition years who will feel the loss. But they will feel it for the rest of their lives.
How many adults remember the childhood feeling of waiting to learn “grown-up” writing, or scribbling to other young friends (at the age of five or six) on a paper and bragging, “I know how to write in cursive?” Of course, at that age, no one knew, so your friends believed you, because they couldn’t read it, either!
When I tutor these students, I have to slow down and print (much more time-consuming). Of course these students also will never be able to read historical documents or even old family letters. Furthermore, most European and Latin American countries don’t teach printing at all–they teach only cursive script starting at the age of five. I feel this bodes poorly for a future globalized world.
I’d be happy to teach cursive to these students (being an expert cursive teacher), but that is not what I’m being paid to tutor in–we generally spend the time on math, science, reading, and writing. Furthermore, teaching cursive at an older age can be done, but it is not generally enjoyable as it is for children. It makes children feel grown-up, and they enjoy learning it.
Several years ago, while teaching third grade, the school asked me to have students write stories. One of my third-grade boys (age 8) wrote a story unlike any I have ever seen in all of my years of teaching. Instead of writing about the usual kinds of stories which children do, he wrote about his experience as an adult man during war.
His story was about trying to save his family while he was being called off to war. He was rushing to hide them in the basement and get them necessities, while trucks of soldiers were coming by to pick him up and take him with them off to war. It was in Europe, and there were trucks. It’s been several years, and I no longer recall all the details, but the essence of the story has stayed with me ever since. Out of all the stories my students wrote over the years, it is the only one I can clearly remember today.
As someone who believes in reincarnation, I’ve always wondered if, in fact, this child’s story was a past-life memory. It was shocking to read. It sounded like one of the World Wars. His concerns sounded just as if an adult man of 35 was speaking about his feelings. There are a number cases now researched and published of young children who remember past lives, and even past lives in wars.
I mentioned the story to his mother, and she responded, “I know. He’s just like an old man, in a little boy’s body.”
“Thinking back to literature tutoring days, there’s a fine line between helping students, and doing the work for them. Students and parents are happiest only if the tutor crosses it. How do you handle such situations?” a fellow tutor asked me.
This is the tutor’s most crucial dilemma, in a nutshell.
Most successful long-term tutors have also been teachers. As teachers, we want students to benefit from doing their own work. However, as tutors, we have to remember who we are working for, if we wish to stay employed.
Most students who choose to use a tutor are not reading the required books in school anyway. Few students are. These days, tutors or not, I’m finding that upwards of 90 percent of students are just watching the movie, and a few students are going to Spark Notes and reading those notes, or taking those quizzes. (Few actually read the Spark Notes well, and even fewer bother to take their quizzes.)
As a tutor, what I’m really being paid for is to make sure my students get good grades. Parents are willing to shell out money for this, but not so much for someone who tells students that they must read on their own and who does not coach non-reading students for their tests. So, what is a tutor to do?
Formerly as a teacher, I prided myself on getting all of my students to LOVE reading for pleasure, and to become truly interested in whatever subject we were studying. Presently as a tutor, I pride myself on getting my non-reading students to read SOME, and to APPRECIATE what we are reading or studying.
I use all sorts of techniques to achieve these aims. I sometimes rewrite books that use difficult language, to tell the story in simpler language. I read these simpler rewrites with my students, and once they understand, they are sometimes motivated to read the original. Sometimes they are unable to read the original, but at least they read SOMETHING, and learned about the story, and are able to pass a test asking them about the story. We discuss the story and how we feel about it as we read it (even if it is in its easier version), and the students gain an appreciation for the piece of literature.
Is this acceptable?
As a tutor, I cannot take the same attitude I would take as a teacher. As a tutor, I am coming from the perspective that students are not reading, and are not going to read. If I can get them to read ANYTHING (even if I have to “spoon-feed” it to them), they are reading more than they would if they were not coming to me. If I can get them to APPRECIATE the story, they are appreciating it far more that if they were not coming to me. If they are PASSING THE TEST, they are learning far more than if they were not coming to me.
Should we spoon-feed pupils?
So yes, I DO cross that “line” as a tutor, but I try to do it stealthily, where I sneakily make the student work and understand more than he planned to do before he came to me!
This same dilemma exists in helping with writing assignments, with math homework, and with everything else that a tutor does As a tutor, I try to help lighten the students’ burden, while at the same time actually teaching the student on a one-to-one basis, in a way which would be impossible in a full classroom. For example, I often do math homework problems on individual white board along with the student. Then we compare answers. If they are the same, we move ahead. If they are different, we go back through the problems step-by-step to see where we diverged. I feel students learn more this way.
I would like to hear about how others deal with this dilemma. If you are a tutor, where do you draw the line? If you are a teacher, what are your thoughts? If you are a parent, what are your feelings?
As a teacher (or even homeschooler), have you ever considered how adding filmmaking capabilites could enhance your teaching abilities with students?
The only materials you need to do so are a computer with high-speed internet connection, and a simple point-and-shoot digital camera with video capabilities (although higher levels of video cameras or those with more manual controls are always a plus).
Filmmaker Luke Holzmann now offers a free, online, 36-week course to all who are interested. A brief description of the course and simple materials needed (which most of us already have) can be found HERE.
Filmmaker Luke Holzmann
Many teachers, students, and adults are interested in filmmaking, but most don’t have a clue where to start if they are not actually in school especially for this purpose. Check out this exciting course, either to enhance your career skills, or as an enjoyable hobby.
A well-behaved middle-school student I tutor expressed her frustration to me with some of her formerly well-behaved classmates who now talk back to teachers and act up in the classroom.
When my student asked these friends why they now behave this way, they say it’s all about fitting in and being accepted by the “cool” group.
Anyone not accepted by this group is a target for their bullying. My student has a mature attitude and refuses to behave this way; as a consequence, she has to stand up to various forms of insults and bullying constantly.
At one point, our school debated putting in cameras to film student behavior in every corridor and classroom, and then decided not to.
It may have been both about cost, and about invasion of privacy, as well as our school being a high-level college prep school in a Middle Eastern country.
However, lack of cameras is no longer a protection for privacy for anyone, as every student is now capable of filming anything and everything and posting it anonymously and publicly on-line. As this article explains, many students are now purposely provoking a teacher to the breaking point with the advance intention of filming it and posting it on-line. This form of bullying is both demeaning to teachers, and can cost many teachers their jobs.
All teachers need to remember that now, the eyes of the world are watching every second. This applies not just to teachers, but to everyone. Teachers, however, are more vulnerable because students with evil intentions are purposely setting out to put them in a compromised situation.
When I first began my teaching career, I made a great effort to be fair with all students by treating them the same way under the same circumstances. We all want to be fair with students if we are decent human beings as teachers.
However, over many years of teaching (and parenting) I discovered that treating all the same way was not producing the best results. Over time, my focus changed from concentrating on being “fair” to doing whatever was necessary to bring each student to his highest and best performance in my class. Furthermore, each student’s best performance was not at the same level as any other student. This is where teaching becomes an “art” rather than a procedure, or a delivery.
Let’s look at some specific examples. If students don’t do their homework (math, for example), they arrive in class unprepared to learn from their mistakes in that day’s lesson. It is not important if they got the right answer in their homework; what is important is whether they attempted the problems and knew at which points they encountered difficulty. Then they were ready for that day’s work and explanations.
So, how can teachers get students to do their homework (each student’s highest and best effort)? In my early teaching days, in attempting to be “fair,” I would have given an identical penalty to every student who did not do their homework. After two decades in the classroom, my approach had changed. In Grade Three, I put A’s on every paper where the homework was completed (correct or not, although grades were not counted–unknown to the students, but known by their parents) and F’s on any homework undone or uncompleted (again, not counted, as above). Other than that, I used different incentives for each student.
One student might need a threat–threat of a phone call to a parent, threat of staying in from recess, threat of extra homework. Another student might need a reward–verbal praise, positive note home from the teacher, getting to be first in line all day long, reading a book while others continue to work. Still another student might need extra help in class, extra time with the teacher, help from a classmate arranged with the teacher’s blessing, help speaking to a parent.
This is where teaching becomes an art. In order to know when to use the carrot and when to use the stick, and how much carrot or stick, or which carrot or stick to use, a teacher must know all of his or her students individually, and know them well. In a normal class of 25-30 students, it takes about two months to know the students this well.
Some teachers don’t want to know their students, and put up a wall. It’s also harder for younger teachers who are closer in age to the students they teach. The older one is, the easier it is to get to know students individually without compromising privacy or classroom discipline. Sometimes older students assume that younger teachers want to be their “friend,” whereas younger students with an older teacher don’t make this assumption even if they do become actual friends at some point. So the older the teacher is, the easier this is. Sometimes younger teachers need to erect more of a barrier.
So, how to get to know one’s students? The first way is through grading their papers, reading their opinions, and by commenting on their papers regarding what they have said. The second way is through classroom discussions, and by being open and honest with students in classroom discussions, which encourages them to be open and honest with teachers in return. You both learn about each other. It’s always easier to do this in primary school than in secondary school.
Regardless, any effort expended in knowing students individually will pay dividends both in personal rewards as well as for knowing what to use to motivate that particular student. Students who know and respect a teacher will work hard for that teacher as a person.
The reason students must not be treated the same is that some are motivated by carrots, some by sticks, and most by alternate use of various carrots and sticks at different times, and under different circumstances.
Imagine 46 students per class (with the teacher having 550 different students per week), no chalk, no electrictiy, and no heat in freezing winter conditions.
The current generation of young teachers are often placed in government public schools which are now built in agricultural and mountain regions. I spoke with one of these teachers, an incredibly dedicated first-year English teacher, who is teaching in one of these schools, and listened to him describe to me the teaching conditions he has to endure.
He teaches in a school without electricity or any sort of heat (and it is winter now with freezing temperatures), and without enough chalk for him to use. The school finally was able to obtain one box of chalk to use. When I asked him how long this was supposed to last, he told me the whole year. I asked him if it might be possible for him to buy additional chalk from his own pocket (even though he shouldn’t have to).
A rural, public secondary school.
He said that the problem was that as a new teacher, he hadn’t received his salary yet. When I asked why not, he told me that all the teachers placed in public schools did not receive their salary for the first one-to-two years on the job (although I am assuming that they do eventually get the salary to which they are entitled)! He said that teachers at private schools do get their monthly salaries upon starting, and that this is just a problem in the public-school sector. When I asked about salaries, it appears that new teachers in the public sector generally make about $400 a month; whereas veteran teachers of many years usually make about $700 a month. The top end of the salary scale is around $1,000 a month for the most veteran teachers in the most difficult subjects (possibly math, chemistry, physics).
My next question was, therefore, how was he managing to live, if he wasn’t getting any salary? I asked if students ever invited him to their homes for meals. He said no. He said that he was very fortunate, compared to some teachers, because his parents had actually moved to his new location with him (he’s 25) so that he could live with him and they could support him during his first few years in this job. (In this country, most new teachers are placed first in rural areas, and after several years of teaching in such conditions, they can apply to come to the city. But it usually takes many years to actually be able to get to a school in a city.)
School hours are from 8:00 am – 12:00 Noon, and again from 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm. This particular teacher is an English teacher in a middle school. He has 550 students a week. His classes average 46, and in each class, the age of students ranges from 13-20! Each of the 550 students spends about two hours a week in his class, once a week. So each day he has three classes. One goes from 8:00 am to 10:00 am. Then he has a ten-minute break. The next class goes until noon, followed by an hour for lunch. The third class is from 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm, and another class from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. He has tried assigning homework, but has so far found that only five or six students out of 550 actually did the homework. He says that most students take notes, but never open their notebook once they have left class. The school has no library at all, and twenty classrooms which are equally as crowded as his. The school has no extra resources even to buy an extra box of chalk for the teachers.
I asked about the sex ratio in his classes. He said that being a secondary school in a rural area, it’s about 70% boys and 30% girls, but that the girls are far more serious, and study better. Some of the reasons behind the lower attendance of girls have to do with girls’ labor being needed in the home, as well as it being dangerous and far for the girls to walk to school. They cannot walk alone (for safety reasons). The school is 2-3 kilometers from most of their homes. The older girls get, it is more difficult for families to keep them in school, than it is for boys.
This teacher told me that he started his class year by having only two rules, which he explained to his students. These are to have RESPECT, and to DREAM BIG. He talked to the students about respecting themselves, about respecting others, about respecting their teachers, and about what it means to have respect in each of these areas. Next he talked to them about their dreams. He tried to encourage them in whatever their dreams were, to take steps toward pursuing them, whether it be becoming a soccer or basketball player, or becoming an artist. The saddest thing, he said, was that most of them don’t have ANY dreams at ALL. He said they have been raised in such a way that such thinking and ideas are not encouraged.
A typical public secondary school in a small city.
I told him (speaking as a teacher of many years) that no teacher can hope to be that “special” teacher for everyone, but that every teacher CAN hope and expect to be that “special” teacher for at least some students. Teachers can change the lives of students by opening up possibilities and giving emotional support. We discussed it, and he said that while middle-class students are now having dreams, that lower-class students (the majority) are not yet to that level.
As a first-year teacher, he told me that he desires to be a “modern” teacher, using games, songs, and playing. However, he quickly found this did not work. “If you have fun with them,” he says, “then they think you are a cool teacher who ‘lets them do whatever they want’ and they don’t respect you.” He has problems with students getting up out of their chairs out of their chairs without permission, and many students talking in class, disturbing the others. When he tries to get them to CALM DOWN they don’t want to listen. These are the same problems I had for many years in my classrooms in this country, although I found getting older (as a teacher) helps!
Interestingly, English teachers in this French-speaking country tend to follow Western models of teaching, and the education departments follow modern methods from America. They are not being taught in ed school just to have students “memorize” and the like; however, they have the same trouble as foreign teachers do with finding that often more fun and interesting methods don’t seem to work with students who have been raised with different sorts of ideas by their parents, and by the local culture.
This teacher and I live in different parts of our country, and I spoke with him over Skype. His English was unbelievably good, even compared to other English teachers I have met. We are a French and Arabic-speaking country (upper classes speaking French, and lower classes speaking the local dialects of Arabic). It was as good as if he had been raised in England or America, and only had a very slight accent. He spoke with perfect grammar and pronunciation, and in our two-hour conversation I heard only one slight mistake, which he self-corrected. I think it’s amazing that someone of this quality is teaching in such a far-off rural school.
I mention this teacher’s good English as a comparison to my daughter’s experience less than ten years ago in respected private school in a big city in our country. I went to a presentation for parents in a large auditorium. The English teacher got up and spoke to parents for five minutes from the stage, explaining what the students were going to do. Yet, I could barely understand a word! When my daughter (a native speaker) was in her class, she used to tell my daughter that she wasn’t speaking English correctly (not true). Since that time, I have found that the English standards of the public-school teachers generally seem quite superior to those of many private-school teachers (although I’m not yet sure why that is).
This teacher’s dedication really impressed me and made me feel as if I wanted to be a student in his class!
Most students do not find history an interesting subject before graduating from high school (unless they have an exceptional teacher, of course). Most students see no point to studying history, or what relevance most of it has to their lives now.
Linear societies define EXPLICIT GOALS (whether moral or material), and set out to deliberately attain them. When these goals are reached, people feel triumphant. This leads us to view life as SELF-DIRECTED, and our personal lives as SELF-MADE. These ideas instilled in Western societies the idea of LINEAR PROGRESS toward an EVER-BETTER MATERIAL and societal future. These were the ages of belief in technological progress solving all problems, of Manifest Destiny in America.
For example, the television series Star Trek was so popular precisely because it supported the idea of hope and progress being able to solve all future social problems of hunger, poverty, wise government through democratic institutions. Furthermore, they go throughout the universe spreading hope, light, and progress by means of the morally upstanding Federation (seeming to represent the ideas of the United States after WWII) against the Klingon Empire of Darkness (seeming to represent the Western ideas of communist empires of evil and darkness).
Dilemmas of an Expat Tutor 