Well, I can't say it's the first time I've had an emotion that I wanted to express in a title. The standardizing of our education seems to be reaching an all time low, and the biggest issue I have at the moment is that one of the last pieces we've read for the semester is from a well established teacher in New York, Lynn Astarita Gatto. The piece is entitled "I don't buy it", and finishes with the sentence: "When will teachers, administrators, and teacher educators realize literacy cannot be bought (Success Guaranteed Literacy Programs, Larson 2007; Chapter 5)?" A topic already touched on earlier this year was that of the economic drive entering education through privatization and competitive markets. Well, in this article we see the result.
The majority of teachers within the district Gatto works in rely heavily on the books provided by her school (and bought by administrators from education companies, mind you!) to teach what the state and district requires, whereas Gatto relies on her experience teaching to create a learning environment that engages students and taps into their deeper learning (Ibid, p. 76). In such defiance, her literacy coach (hired by the district) is leading her to use certain literacy programs provided by a specific company--and most likely (my point of view here) this literacy coach will get a kickback from the company later (Ibid, p. 73). Gatto is a nationally renowned teacher, and most certainly well known in her field within New York. She has a very high success rate with her students, and they score well above average on high stakes tests. So, why change?
In part, I think it's because, for whatever reason, young, fresh, new people in business/work believe their ideas are best. No matter what. They have little respect, nowadays for the established traditions and methods--even if there's a tried and true method to the "madness". Interestingly enough, Gatto's method has been highly influenced by the theory of education elaborated by Freire in his book originally published in 1968 in Portuguese. Though inherently socialist in method, phrase, and point (and ironically fights against the established "banking" education so heavily relied on in Soviet and other socialist regimes), it points to the individual education of people as rational thinkers, and not as receptacles (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1997; p. 60, 61).
Gatto designs her coursework according to the needs of individual students, and the needs of the classroom as a whole. By circumventing the conventional, she is able to use other materials to elicit a desire to learn--not from textbooks designed to make children learn, but by causing the children to seek information themselves. She brings numerous non-text books to the classroom for her students--and that at many levels!! She is familiar with all of them, and uses them to suit the needs of all her students (Larson 2007, p. 81). This is, in my mind, the ideal teacher--making personal sacrifices of her own pocket to get the reading materials her class needs.
For me, as a social studies educator, I want to follow this example. It will be hard to provide numerous texts for my classes and multiple levels of reading, but worthwhile. As a high school teacher, vs. Gatto who is an elementary teacher, I believe my struggle against the high stakes tests will be harder--as well as with my administration and other faculty. However, in order to create discussion that incorporates all levels of my students abilities, the pressure rests on me to "produce": produce conversation, salient response (written, oral, and formal letters) to current political issues, past issues, and historic circumstances and applications.
Indeed, what Gatto does is what I define a distinctly American education--it is different than any I have seen around the world. The QUALITY of our teachers must improve. The fact is that some are not as good as others--just like students. But that is part of the tangible reality that makes life so interesting! We need to be alive, and not robots slaving for a system or "standardization" that eliminates the bumps in the road.
Let's hope teaching can regain it's status and freedom.
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