The Essential Ingredient for Meaningful Teaching

The most effective sorts are teaching are the ones that are student-centric rather than curriculum-centric. While curriculum-centric teaching focuses ostensibly on what students "ought" to know, student-centric teaching emphasizes that which students will actually find personally meaningful. This is not a paradigm generally embraced by teaching institutions. Curriculum-centric teaching is the norm in American public schools, private schools, and churches today. This misplaced focus is one of the major reasons why most teaching is perceived as irrelevant. If the goal of teaching is for students to be better prepared for life and better equipped to face various challenges, then it is imperative that students learn things that practically impact their lives. In order for students to learn things that practically impact their lives, it is necessary that whatever is taught directly addresses things that pertain to students' lives.

Curriculum-centric teaching does not effectively meet this need since curriculum-centric teaching has several instrinsic limitations. The first limitation of curriculum-centric teaching is that curriculums are developed by the people who teach, based on their own impressions of what students will find useful rather than being developed directly based on feedback and inquiries from students. The second limitation of curriculum-centric teaching is that it is fairly inflexible. Since curriculum-centric teaching typically emphasizes specific lessons that must be taught in a specific order, there is little room for day-to-day flexibility or deviation from the scheduled content. Additionally, since curriculums are generally developed and refined over a period of time and not prone to be changed rapidly, many of them are based on the real or perceived needs of students in times past, rather than being developed in response to the needs of today's students. The third limitation of curriculum-centric teaching is that it is uniformly "taught" to a broad range of students, whose varying levels of foundational knowledge and learning styles serve to negate the effectiveness of what is taught. Curriculum-centric teaching cannot be easily adapted to the needs of individual students or groups of students.

Student-centric learning, contrastingly, focuses on what students actually need to know. It is form of responsive, dynamic teaching, rather than being static and inflexible. For a teacher to teach students content of relevance, it is indispensible for teachers to be aware of what matters to students, what students struggle with, what students think about, and how students think. For this sort of awareness to be developed, teaching must be a relational experience rather than a merely "academic" one. An atmosphere of open dialog and direct student feedback must be continually cultivated. Simple "factual" communication is insufficient to gauge what students are actually learning. Instead, two-way communication must be the foundation of learning.

As an illustration, there is a profound difference between a teacher informing a student of a fact, and a teacher answering a question posed by a student, even if the hypothetical content is exactly the same. When a teacher informs a student of a fact, this may be a fact that the student does not care about, has no deeper comprehesion of, or already knows. However, when a student poses a self-motivated question, the answer then given is one that is desired, likely unknown and one which the student is prepared to develop a comprehension of. The best way to prepare students to learn is by encouraging them to ask questions, showing them how to ask questions, and having an environment where question-asking and open discussion are encouraged.

Upon the foundation of open dialog and relational learning, is it certainly possible to teach specific lessons about specific topics, since relevance has already been established. After (or even during) the teaching of specific lessons, it is best if there is room for direct feedback about the helpfulness and relevance of the lesson. Apart from establishing that a specific topic is relevant to a student, however, there is limited usefulness in teaching specific lessons. Relevance is the most essential ingreident for meaningful teaching. Anything that is taught must be relevant to the students' lives, comprehensible by the students, and taught in a manner that ensures students are able to connect with the way it is being taught.

The focus in developing lessons should be on quality, rather than quantity. Rather than throwing lots of factual content at students and hoping for them to retain some of it, teaching would be far more effective if most of the time were spent on seeking to develop relationships with students and determining topics of relevance. A few lessons that are highly relevant far outweigh the practical value of many lessons with limited relevance. This is a paradigm that is utilized by effective salesmen, effective couselors, and effective entrepreneurs. Developing a strategy that ensures relevance to the target market is the key to success for those sorts of jobs. If a similar paradigm were adopted towards teaching methods, the quantity of teaching and time spend teaching would decrease, while the quality of the lessons taught would increase exponentially.

Insights on What Is Actually Taught In Classrooms - Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

Neil Postman summarizes the messages that are taught through the classroom environment as primarily these:
1 - Passive acceptance is a more desirable response than active criticism.
2 - Discovering knowledge is beyond the power of students.
3 - Recall and the collection of unrelated "facts" is the goal of education.
4 - Authority is to be trusted and valued more than independent judgment.
5 - One's own ideas and those of one's classmates are inconsequential.
6 - Feelings are irrelevant in education.
7 - There is always a single, unambiguous Right Answer to a question.
8 - Each subject is unique and distinct

He goes on to provide some examples of how these lessons are played out in adult life.

Take, for example, the message that recall - particularly the recall of random facts - is the highest form of intellectual achievement. This belief explains the enormous popularity of quiz shows, the genuine admiration given by audiences to contestants who in thirty seconds can name the concert halls in which each of Beethoven's symphonies had its first public performance. How else explain the great delight so many take in playing Trivia? Is there a man more prized among men than he who can settle a baseball dispute by identifying without equivocation the winner of the National League RBI title in 1943 (Bill 'Swish' Nicholson.)

Recently we attended a party at which the game Trivia was played. One young man sat sullen and silent through several rounds, perhaps thinking that nothing could be more dull. At some point, the question arose, 'What were the names of the actor and actress who starred in My First Nighter?’ From somewhere deep within him an answer formed, and he quite astonished himself, and everyone else, by blurting it out. (Les Tremaine and Barbara Luddy.) For several moments afterwards, he could not conceal his delight. He was in the fifth grade again, and the question might have been, 'What is the principal river of Uruguay?' He had supplied the answer, and faster than anyone else. And that is good, as every classroom environment he'd ever been in had taught him.

Watch a man - say, a politician - being interviewed on television, and you are observing a demonstration of what both he and his interrogators learned in school: all questions have answers, and it is a good thing to give an answer even if there is none to give, even if you don't understand the question, even if the question contains erroneous assumptions, even if you
are ignorant of the facts required to answer. Have you ever heard a man being interviewed say, 'I don't have the faintest idea', or 'I don't know enough even to guess', or 'I have been asked that question before, but all my answers to it seem to be wrong?' One does not 'blame' men, especially if they are politicians, for providing instant answers to all questions. The public requires that they do, since the public has learned that instant answer giving is the most important sign of an educated man.

What all of us have learned (and how difficult it is to unlearn it) is that it is not important that our utterances satisfy the demands of the question (or of reality), but that they satisfy the demands of the classroom environment. Teacher asks. Student answers. Have you ever heard of a student who replied to a question, 'Does anyone know the answer to that question?' or 'I don't understand what I would have to do in order to find an answer', or 'I have been asked that question before and, frankly, I've never understood what it meant? Such behavior would invariably result in some form of penalty and is, of course, scrupulously avoided, except by 'wise guys'. Thus, students learn not to value it. They get the message. And yet few teachers consciously articulate such a message. It is not part of the 'content' of their instruction. No teacher even said: 'Don't value uncertainty and tentativeness. Don't question questions. Above all, don't think.' The message is
communicated quietly, insidiously, relentlessly and effectively through the structure of the classroom: through the role of the teacher, the role of the student, the rules of their verbal game, the rights that are assigned, the arrangements made for communication, the 'doings' that are praised or censured. In other words, the medium is the message.

Have you ever heard of a student taking notes on the remarks of another student? Probably not. Because the organization of the classroom makes it clear that what students say is not the 'content' of instruction. Therefore, it will not be included on tests. Therefore, they can ignore it.

Have you ever heard of a student indicating an interest in how a textbook writer arrived at his conclusions? Rarely, we would guess. Most students are unaware that textbooks are written by human beings. Besides, the classroom structure does not suggest that the processes of inquiry are of any importance.

Have you ever heard of a student suggesting a more useful definition of something that the teacher has already defined? Or of a student who asked, 'Whose facts are those?' Or of a student who asked, 'What is a fact?' Or of a student who asked, 'Why are we doing this work?'

Now, if you reflect on the fact that most classroom environments are managed so that such questions as those will not be asked, you can become very depressed. Consider, for example, when 'knowledge' comes from. It isn't just there in a book, waiting for someone to come along and 'learn' it. Knowledge is produced in response to questions. And new knowledge results from the asking of new questions; quite often new questions about old questions. Here is the point: once you have learned how to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have leaned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know. Let us remind you, for a moment, of the process that characterizes school environments: what students are restricted to (solely and even vengefully) is the process of memorizing (partially and temporarily) somebody else's answers to somebody else's questions. It is staggering to consider the implications of this fact. The most important and intellectual ability man has yet developed - the art and science of asking questions - is not taught in school! Moreover, it is not 'taught' in the most devastating way possible: by arranging the environment so that significant question asking is not valued. It is doubtful if you can think of many schools that include question asking, or methods of inquiry, as part of their curriculum. But even if you knew a hundred that did, there would be little cause for celebration unless the classrooms were arranged, so that students could do question asking; not talk about it, read about it, be told about it. Asking questions is behavior. If you don't do it, you don't learn it. It really is as simple as that.

Not only is Postman highly critical of the current goals and methods of learning, but he goes further by beginning to suggest what the goal of education should be. Rather than the goal of education being to know a large quantity of decontextualized information, the goal of education should be that students should be capable of learning relevant things. The goal isn't to learn stuff, the goal is to learn how to learn and what to learn. In today's classrooms, few people are taught how to learn, and no-one is taught what to learn. This is a major flaw with our present educational paradigm. It is one which requires a remedy.

The necessary means of achieving those two goals cannot possibly be a standardized approach, since every person is different. Individuals differ in their learning styles and they also differ in what they need to know. There can be no single answer to the question, "How does a person learn?" Instead, there are many various answers. Likewise, there can be no single answer to the question, "What does a person need to learn?" What a person needs to know to function well in life diverges greatly from one person to another.

While the educational goals that Neil Postman hints at are somewhat different than those that I view as the main goals of education, yet it remains that his observations are incisive and his perspective is clearly valuable in considering the best methods of education.

Insights on What Is Actually Taught In Classrooms - Part 1

Education is something that matters deeply to me, because what one learns profoundly impacts the way one functions in life. Education is something that matters to individuals and something that matters to society as a whole. Even within the blogosphere, education is something that people are currently contemplating. Not long ago, Dave in Hawaii wrote a blog summarizing some of the key things that are taught in schools, according to John Taylor Gatto.

While my inquiry into the ideal method of education is still far from complete, the insights that Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner offer in their book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, strike me as profound and novel. Inquiring minds will find these excerpts are excellent food for thought.

"The medium is the message" implies that the invention of a dichotomy between content and method is both naive and dangerous. It implies that the critical content of any learning experience is the method of process through which the learning occurs. Almost any sensible parent knows that, as does any effective top sergeant. It is not what you say to people that counts; it is what you have them do. If most teachers have not yet grasped this idea, it is not for lack of evidence. It may, however, be due to their failure to look in the direction where the evidence can be seen. In order to understand what kinds of behaviors classrooms promote, one must become accustomed to observing what, in fact, students actually do in them. What students do in the classroom is what they learn (as Dewey would say), and what they learn to do is the classroom's message (as McLuhan would say). Now, what is it that students do in the classroom? Well, mostly, they sit and listen to the teacher. Mostly, they are required to believe in authorities, or at least pretend to such belief when they take tests. Mostly, they are required to remember. They are almost never required to make observations, formulate definitions, or perform any intellectual operations that go beyond repeating what someone else says is true. They are rarely encouraged to ask substantive questions, although they are permitted to ask about administrative and technical details. (How long should the paper be? Does spelling count? When is the assignment due?) It is practically unheard of for students to play any role in determining what problems are worth studying or what procedures of inquiry ought to be used. Examine the types of questions teachers ask in classrooms, and you will find that most of them are what might technically be called "convergent questions," but which might be more simply called "Guess what I'm thinking" questions. Here are a few that will sound familiar:

What is a noun?
What were the three causes of the Civil War?
What is the principal river of Uruguay?
What is the definition of a nonrestrictive clause?
What is the real meaning of this poem?
How many sets of chromosomes do human beings have?
Why did Brutus betray Caesar?

So, what students mostly do in class is guess what the teacher wants them to say. Constantly, they must try to supply "The Right Answer." It does not seem to matter if the subject is English of history or science; mostly, students do the same thing. And since it is indisputably (if not publicly) recognized that the ostensible "content" of such courses is rarely remembered beyond the last quiz (in which you are required to remember only 65 percent of what you were told), it is safe to say that just about the only learning that occurs in classrooms is that which is communicated by the structures of the classroom itself. What are these learnings? What are these messages? Here are a few among many, none of which you will ever find officially listed among the aims of teachers:

-Passive acceptance is a more desirable response to ideas than active criticism.
-Discovering knowledge is beyond the power of students and is, in any case, none of their business.
- Recall is the highest form of intellectual achievement, and the collection of unrelated "facts" is the goal of education.
- The voice of authority is to be trusted and valued more than independent judgment.
- One's own ideas and those of one's classmates are inconsequential.
- Feelings are irrelevant in education.
- There is always a single, unambiguous Right Answer to a question.
- English is not History and History is not Science and Science is not Art and Art is not Music, and Art and Music are minor subjects and English, History and Science major subjects, and a subject is something you "take" and, when you have taken it, you have "had" it, and if you have "had" it, you are immune and need not take it again. (The Vaccination Theory of Education?)

Each of these learnings is expressed in specific behaviors that are on constant display throughout our culture...

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner present a compelling case that what is taught is school isn't primarily the content that comes to mind when we think of the various subjects that are hypothetically being taught. Instead, the most powerful and enduring lessons that are taught in classrooms are ones concerning structure and method. Personally, I find it no coincidence that my own personal experiences with formal education yield similar observations.

On Educational Methods and Christian Schools

Fellow blogger Michael Duenes wrote a great post regarding the importance of training Christian men and properly preparing them for righteous and godly dominion. In his post, he raises an important query:

When it comes to educating boys, whom Douglas Wilson aptly calls, “Future Men,”, we have to follow the same procedure we would for any venture to succeed. We must start with the end in mind. We have to practice “learning by design” here, too. What we are, in fact, doing is training these boys to be “lords of the earth.” That’s what having dominion means. And boys and men have a particular role to play as such lords, but do we know what it is? Do we take our cues from Genesis, chapters one and two? Are we teaching and training them toward that end?

It seems to me that our educational model wants to squeeze young men into the female role, and they rightly resist. If we are interested in training young men to be such lords of the earth, under Christ, then six hours a day in mixed-sex classrooms behind desks and more Bible studies is probably not going to do the trick. Surely being a lord of the earth, for a young man, means a good deal more than passing U.S. History exams and mastering Geometry. Can fathers shoulder this training alone? I’m inclined to think not.

How do Christian schools further their progress? How do we buck the dominant educational paradigm, which clearly isn’t sufficing, and start fulfilling our mandate to help train these boys up, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, into such biblical manhood?

While I have many thoughts on this issue, one specific point that isn't much discussed seemed pertinent to point out. In many ways, regarding education, the structure is the message. When Christian private schools pattern themselves after secular schools, they tacitly agree with many of the methods and aims of secular education. Unless we are aware of the messages that are conveyed by a given means of education and by certain methods of education, we stand thoroughly unable to craft an intentional and well-reasoned response to such messages. Most of the Christian private schools that I am familiar with are almost indistinguishable from their secular counterparts with the exceptions of the sociological composition of those involved and the addition of a Bible class. This suggests that there is a tacit acceptance of many modern paradigms of education, including a vast array of ideologies and methods which should be skeptically regarded.

When the primary learning a child receives occurs in the artificial environment of a classroom, many subliminal messages are communicated. The process of learning in the classroom is of a very specific kind, bearing a very specific structure. The teacher, as the certified instructor is, for the children, the source of truth. Children are rewarded for behavioral conformity to the classroom rules and they are rewarded for intellectual conformity to the teacher's and/or the state's ideas. This pattern establishes a dangerous epistemological reliance on institutions and credentialed people. Most classroom teaching also encourages a passive reception and regurgitation of information, rather than stimulating an active and passionate pursuit of truth.

Additionally, what is taught in the classroom is generally decontexualized information, stripped from its real-life context. When a student's education consists primarily of decontextualized information, it is very difficult for the student to take his learning seriously or see the practical value of what he does learn. Since classroom learning is requirement-driven and mandated rather than student-driven and optional, the forced learning of decontextualized information often does more to innoculate a student against true learning (which he hasn't experienced), than it does to prepare a student to face real-life challenges and scenarios. The prevailing paradigms utilized in today's Western education are very stifling and restrictive, in terms of required hours of classroom attendance, targeted-testing, narrow academic standards and limited class selections.

So long as Christian private schools remain largely identical in structure and methodology to their secular counterparts, they should expect to see largely similar results in the outcomes of their students. If Christian schools do wish to further their progress and increase their capacity to effectively prepare young men and women for adult life, then those involved in the leadership of such schools must be willing to step back and challenge modern educational paradigms. If Christian schools wish to offer a truly different scholastic experience, they cannot do it by adding one little class, hiring Christian teachers and marketing to Christian families. Instead, there must be a radically different structure and atmosphere that is specifically designed to raise up young men and women to follow God's precepts, boldly seek truth and courageously confront lies.

The Five Goals of Education

In developing my own paradigm on the ideal methods of education, my attention has turned to the purpose and goals of education. What about education is valuable? Why do we desire to educate children at all? The purpose of education is simply this: education is the means by which a person is taught the things they need to know to live life well. Any form of learning that better equips a person for practical life is of worth. Those methods of learning that best prepare a person for practical life are the most worthwhile. In order to achieve that end, it seems that there are five different goals that a complete educational program must seek to achieve. These goals are presented in order of priority. Though there is unavoidably some overlap between each of the goals, the ones presented first are the most important and the ones presented last are the least vital (though still quite indispensible).

1. Moral and Spiritual Indoctrination
In order to live life well, it is unavoidable that one must define what is meant by living life well. Without a philosophical framework that serves as the foundation of a person's worldview, whatever knowledge is gleaned exists in a decontextualized form. Decontextualized knowledge is useless for providing meaningful direction in life. Therefore, before any knowledge is useful, a person must be instilled with a sound moral, metaphysical and epistemological foundation, upon which all further learning will be supported. Apart from sound morals and a unified life purpose, a nation cannot thrive or, in many cases, even survive for a prolonged period. Apart from individuals being properly educated in the ways of Godly morality and a Godly vision for life, no society can hold common sound morals and a unified life purpose. The first goal of education, then, must be to properly indoctrinate young minds so that they understand their duties in society within the context of Biblical teaching.

2. Complex Communication
In order to properly interact with people, to understand ideas and be able to effectively communicate, it is necessary that education equip a person with the skills needed to engage in complex communication. The ability to comprehend that which is conveyed through speech, imagery and written word is an indispensible part of this. Well-developed verbal skills are essential for being able to learn, being able to communicate with others, being able to relate to others, being able to function and excel in the modern economy and being able to clearly and concisely articulate one's opinions on a given matter. The ability to communicate at a high level necessitates not only sound verbal skills, but also the ability to process and interpret non-verbal information, especially since in-person communication primarily consists of non-verbal information such as unspoken context, body language, facial expression and tonality.

3. Expert Thinking
Another crucial skill that enables people to live life well is the skill of expert thinking. The ability to cognitively process a variety of problems and challenges and figure out practical solutions is a necessary skill for handling the dynamic array of challenges of which life consists. While some problems may be routine and can easily be solved by applying simple heurisitics, people are often faced with challenges and tasks unlike anything previously dealt with. A person's problem-solving skills are dependent both on their possession of applicable knowledge and on their ability to utilize expert thinking to determine the best way to apply such knowledge. For this reason, it is vital that education teach a person how to mentally approach challenges and figure them out. It is not enough to simply know a few answers, instead it is vital that a person be able to think outside the box and figure things out for themself. Expert thinking is extremely helpful both in the job market and in day-to-day living.

4. General Body of Knowledge
Typically, this is regarded as one of the main goals of education. While it isn't the most crucial goal, there is no doubt that having a broad knowledge of various topics is quite practically useful. Generalized knowledge is extremely useful whenever one encounters a new piece of information. With a sound mental framework for contextualizing new information, it can easily be processed and added to one's long-term memory bank. The broader one's knowledge of any given subject, the more easily new information can be considered, processed and mentally filed. For this reason, once one has well-developed communication skills and cognitive thinking skills, it is quite useful to develop a large breadth of knowledge, with at least a little bit of familiarly with each subject that is encountered in daily life.

5. Specialized Body of Knowledge
While possessing a sound foundation of general knowledge is quite useful, it is also essential for a person to possess at least one specialized body of knowledge, with a greater depth of understanding and familiarity of that subject. Having a large quantity of specialized information in a field highly demanded by the modern economy will ensure that good jobs are relatively easy to acquire and simple to retain. Specialized knowledge is also something that is naturally developed related to a person's hobbies or personal interests. The more effort that is put into learning about any specific topic or pursuit, the broader one's knowledge of the topic and the greater one's mastery of that topic will be. One of the goals of education is to prepare a person for life by helping them develop sufficient mastery over fields that are applicable to their life.

Before considering the best and more useful methods and means of providing education, it is necessary to consider these five goals of education, and how each aligns with the overall purpose of education.