Home Stretch

It's May.  Almost June.  Just a few more...  Anyway, let's skip the formalities and get right to the sentences this time.  As always, these are from student work, and my comments are in (   ).

- Subconsciously she has been creeping every night.

- The wallpaper woman is being help captive.

- At night she crawls around the room on all floors.

- (This was the title of a paper.)  Character Characteristics of the Characters of "Stalking"

- In the violet death of her adversary...  (I have always pictured death as more red than violet.)

- All the attention she has been longing for is now bottling up inside of her.

- Gretchen's beliefs help with the overall theme of the story.  (Those themes need all the help they can get, I guess.)

- She dreamed of killing villains and riding her horse off into the sun.  (Ouch?)

- (On a vocabulary quiz.)  vagrant = strong in smell  (Well, they often are, but...)

- In the passed...

- Her husband takes on the societal role of a perogative doctor.  (My prerogative doctor won't let me get a second opinion.)

- The choir dressed in long black ropes.

- ...the author goes on to give off symboliziom.  (Is that on the Periodic Table?)

- They were indeed placing a form of violence upon Dummy.

- There are many vivid deceptions of people.

- She believes that white people have more money and are, therefore in a higher social class.  (This is more a fact than a matter of belief, no?  If you have money, you are... never mind.)

- Her father just viewed her as his left hand man.  (He must have been a lefty.)

- This allows the creation of a perspective the reader has about the main idea when he or she reads the story.  (Did you get any of that?)

- She was beginning to feel a girly state.  (No comment...)

That's it for this round.

J

On the Fallacy of Grades

I could say a lot on this topic, but I would like to offer a short and simple example of how the idea that we can actually grade learning and real thought is laughably ridiculous.  I assigned my College English students to read two sonnets by Shakespeare, numbers 18 and 130.  Sonnet 18 begins, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and is all about how amazingly beautiful the woman is.  Sonnet 130 begins, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," and describes how unattractive his mistress is, but ends, "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare."  That day I put on the board this "Quiz" question with no stipulation as to length or format:

Ladies: Which poem would you rather have written about you?
Gents: Which poem would you give to your lady?
Explain.

The following is a response written by one of the gents:
"I see the  meaning in sonnet 130.  It shows honesty and unclouded sight.  However, I feel that my love is more extravagant like sonnet 18.  I would be completely drowned in foolish adoration which washes aside all flaws so that only the best can be seen.  The perfection depicted in the lines of sonnet 18 are what I would see in the woman I love.  Honestly, my lady in particular would probably be more accepting of 130, but I wouldn't give her anything but 18 because it is representative of how I feel, not necessarily how she really is."

How does one give this an "objective grade?"  It's a good answer.  It reveals an understanding of the poetry.  It reveals a connection to the poetry that goes beyond cursory reading.  It reveals a willingness to grapple with ideas.  It reveals honesty and self-knowledge.  Can any of those things be quantified?  Sure, I could grade him on things like the organization and development of the paragraph, or the number of specific references to the works; but who cares about those things if they were to come with no evidence of all the qualities previously mentioned?  And if I were to take this response as the "100%" against which other answers might be measured, how could I scale others against it?  What would constitute a response that was 85% as honest as this one, or only 70% as connected?  How do I measure, on a scale of 100, whatever that means, how well any student has understood these poems?  None of the things that matter can be graded, and most of the things we grade in school are the things the students forget quickest, truthfully because they are the least important to life.

I gave that response a 100.  Because I have to give it something.  I do not yet teach in a district that will let me get away with not giving grades, though the idea of not giving any grades is one for another time. However, we ought to realize that Oscar Wilde was right: "Education is an admirable thing.  But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."  Far less can it be graded.

J

Like a Boss

"A system based entirely on the division of labour is in one sense literally half-witted.  That is, each performer of half of an operation does really use only half of his wits." -G.K. Chesterton

As a rule I do not like reality TV.  However, I have found myself on many recent Sunday nights watching the show Undercover Boss.  The premise of the show is that a corporate boss or CEO will leave the corporate offices and, in disguise, will work in various franchises of his or her own company in order to discover more about the company's workings.  I have seen episodes featuring the CEO of a restaurant chain, a resort chain, a trucking company, the mayor of Cincinnati, and the chancellor of the University of California Riverside, to name a few.  The show does suffer from the obvious and annoying pitfalls of all reality TV: it is clearly selectively edited, it tugs strenuously at the heart strings, it digs a little too hard at times for drama, in short it's more TV than reality.

Yet I find myself drawn to the show.  I find myself surprised, when I know I shouldn't be, that the CEOs and big wigs seem to have very little idea about what goes on in the trenches of their businesses.  The bosses are consistently surprised that the employees they meet (clearly chosen ahead of time by producers because of their hard luck stories) are so dedicated to their jobs despite their financial struggles.  As a teacher I have never worked in the corporate world, but I can't imagine our superintendent walking into an elementary room and being surprised that the teacher had to deal with twenty-five third graders every day.  How can these people not know what is going on in their own company?  How can they not know that many employees struggle to make ends meet?  Do they not know what people are paid?  Again, I find it hard to believe.

Of course, at the end of the show the boss offers these chosen dedicated workers some sort of bonus, or a paid vacation, or training and promotion, or in one case a young worker was offered his own franchise and the franchise fee was waived.  "See!  The American Dream lives!" the producers are shouting at us.  I find myself wondering if the hundreds of other employees will reap the benefits of the boss's new perspective.  I can hope, but I have my doubts.

To bring in the quote I began with, it is always the boss who seems half-witted.  He or she is not able to hack the jobs performed by the employees.  That quote is from a book titled "The Outline of Sanity," (which I highly recommend) in which Chesterton lays down the principles of his economic philosophy, distributism.  One of his solutions is that the company ought to be run and owned by all of the people who work in it, not just a few at the top who give orders to the underpaid underlings.  It would be a company run on the principles of democracy, that system we supposedly believe in.  There would be no half-witted boss who sits in an office all day and has no idea how his company actually functions.  And maybe there would be no need to offer poorly paid and struggling employees what amounts to prizes for actually doing their jobs well.  It's a thought.

J

Back to Sentences

Writers write.  Did you know that?  So many of my students open their papers with sentences that say little more than, "Writers write."  "The author uses techniques to bring characters to life."  "The author uses symbolism to display the theme."  "The author uses theme to help the reader understand the story."  Banal; these sentences make me want to stab holes in the paper.  It' all I can do to make it to the end of the introduction.  Of course, then I get sentences like the following.  As always, these are from student work and my comments are in (  ).

- ... which includes violence and other workers of their castle.
- Lady Macbeth begins to plan her plan.
- What really made it real...
- Even a blind mane could tell that.
- ... is supposedly supposed to possess...
- Macbeth's gender roll...
- There are many characters in Shakespeare's play Macbeth.  (Thanks for the heads up.)
- Macbeth accepts to kill King Duncan in seek of power.
- Banquo would be father to a line of kinds.  (Which kinds though?)
- Without characters literature would be boring and uneventful.  (Really?  Then it's a good thing authors put them in there.)
- She... starts to question and think for herself in a more feminine quality.
- Cultural characteristics and differences have been defined by people's behaviors and belief statuses that are in one's society.
- Bush's policy would improve our ability to find, track, and stop tourists.  (So will that Arizona law.)
- Alcohol awareness classes make sure they won't be a treat to the community.  (Those drunks are a treat though, aren't they?)
- Individuals still decide to make decisions.
- A round character is one who changes overtime.
- He is the man that goes around doing nonsense jobs like cleaning the toilet and refilling toilet paper.  (Yes, what nonsense.)

That's it for now.  Got more ideas for posts, and more papers to read.  Stay tuned.

J

By Request

Imagine you are a doctor.  You have spent many years in school studying medicine, you have been an intern and a resident and now finally you are a doctor.  Now let's say that in the course of a week you see ten patients who are all overweight.  You sit down with each of them and map out a plan for losing those extra pounds.  It includes a healthy diet and some moderate exercise.  Then you reschedule them all for a checkup in six months.

Six months pass and your ten patients return.  One has lost a significant amount of weight, and two more you commend for dropping a good number of pounds.  Five are at the same weight as before, and admit that they have not kept to either the diet or the exercise regimen.  The last two have gained weight.  Only 30% of your overweight patients have made any dent in their problem.

Are you a failure as a doctor?  Most people would say no.  The doctor has no control over the patient.  How many doctors have told smokers to quit or heavy drinkers to cut back?  But we don't blame the doctor  if the patient fails to improve because he fails to follow medical advice.  If the advice is bad, it's on the MD; but if the advice isn't even followed, it's on the patient.

So why are teachers judged as poor if their students fail standardized tests?  Studies have shown that poverty, illness, home environment, and many other factors, when combined, have a far greater effect on student test scores than teachers.  Just like the doctor, we cannot follow our students home and make sure they read in their spare time or study in the evening.  We can't control the time they spend watching TV or at a computer, or even the time they spend at a job for that matter.  We can't be sure they have proper medical care and nutrition or that they get enough sleep so that they come to school ready to learn.  But if only 30% of our students pass a test, it must be poor teaching.  And the current trend in education is to evaluate teachers, pay them or fire them, based on student test scores.  Would you only pay the doctor 30% of his salary because his patients are still overweight?

One last note on the analogy.  Say the doctor tells the patient to follow a vegetarian diet and walk or run x number of miles a day.  Then say the patient follows a different diet and hates running so he takes up cycling or joins some rec-league teams at the YMCA.  And when he comes back he has lost the weight and is healthier.  Three cheers for him.  But in a school every student must take the same test in the same way and learn the same things in the same way.  That is why they call them "standardized" tests, and they are killing our school system.  But that is a topic for another time.

Doctors All

I blame Oprah and her gurus Dr. Phil (what is he a doctor of?) and Dr. Oz.  Or maybe it's WebMD.  Or maybe it's the relentless advertising by pharmaceutical companies.  Or maybe it's the fear inspired health reports on the evening news.  Whoever is to blame, it seems that America is full of amateur doctors.  We are all a bunch of self-diagnosticians; oh, and we love to diagnose our friends and neighbors, too.  The only thing worse than a few million hypochondriacs is a few million hypochondriacs with web phones who type in their symptoms and who think they are doctors.

This faux-medicine shows up in my classroom in a way that may seem harmless, but which I think is subtly insidious.  It is not as dramatic as my intro, but I think it represents something negative about the way we see medicine in this country.  We love to diagnose the characters in the literature we read.  The narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" has postpartum depression; Roderick in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is manic-depressive; Krebs from Hemingway's "Soldier's Home" has PTSD.  And I will admit I am as guilty as anyone of diagnosing and labeling.

My problem is not that these amateur diagnoses are "wrong," or unsupported by the text.  The problem is that these labels provide an illusion of knowledge which allows us to dismiss these characters.  And that is what happens.  Once we can label the problem the modern mind (student) believes that all these characters need is a pill and they would have been fine.  If we have a label that sounds quasi-familiar, because we have heard the term before somewhere, we can be comfortable feeling superior to the characters and dismiss them.

But we are not doctors or psychiatrists who really understand what postpartum depression is, or what a soldier who suffers PTSD is going through.  The label is an illusion; it is, in the words of G.K. Chesterton, "the worst illusion; it is the illusion of familiarity."  Once we have the label, we don't have to look closely at the character, we don't have to immerse ourselves in the world the author has created for us. We don't have to empathize.  Gilman and Poe and Hemingway and all great authors create fascinating characters who come alive on the page, and we prescribe them pills and close the book.  We are familiar with PTSD because we saw that feature on the news, we have no need of this story by some dead author (who happened to have witnessed a few wars up close.)

If you have read "The Yellow Wallpaper" you may see what I think is the final irony of my idea.  The narrator's husband is a doctor, and he thinks he knows what is best for her.  He confines her in the room with the yellow wallpaper, forbids her to write, tells her not to let her imagination get the best of her, treats her like a child; and in the end she goes crazy.  He knew what was best for her and he didn't listen to her complaints or suggestions, and she ended up crawling around a room like an animal believing she has escaped from the yellow wallpaper she had been trapped behind.  A hundred years later we come along and shake our heads; if only they had known about postpartum depression and given her a Valium and some antidepressants.  We don't listen to her either.

Over Due, Teach?

Yes, it has been a while. A quick note about the interwebs: the other day I was clicking around some sites, mostly education blogs that linked to other education blogs or articles, and I read a really interesting post. Something a student said to me today reminded me of what I had read. Do you think I can find that post again? I can't even find which blog it was on. If it had been a book I'd have had it in a snap. Perhaps I am just a digital doofus. Anyway, to the sentences. As always, these are from actual student papers and my comments are in ( ).

- Now his actions were controlled by preventing what could get the throne taking off his head.

- Macbeth ruled the nation as a viscous tyrant.

- Most literature defines the woman as domicile.

- ...everything is not what it seams.

- Lady Macbeth's subconscience... (subconscience: Jimminy Cricket's understudy)

- ...the consequences take their tole on Lady Macbeth.

- Lady Macbeth was a strong courage women.

- Lady Macbeth wanders the castle at night talking about the evil deeds her and Macbeth committed while in her sleep. (There she goes, committing deeds in her sleep again.)

- Macbeth seems torn between reality and imagery. (I often am.)

- ... his greedy conscience... (This just made no sense to me.)

- Lady Macbeth emulated guilt.

- Lady Macbeth goes crazy and ends up killing herself from the madness.

- I want to educate on Hurricane Katrina.

- After talking to their prophecies with the witches...

- He did not give awful memories.

- ... it's because them people are way against Hydrofracking. (Yup, they is; darn tootin'.)

- The male body prospective has grown. (Is that a good thing or a bad thing?)

- Many crimes were being committed such as rape, arson, and anarchy.

- After an individual plows into a breathalyzer... (after he has plowed through a few brews and your yard?)

- ... to see if they have an alcoholic abuse problem.

Back to the googles for me.

J