The Seduction of Measurement

For as long as I can remember I’ve been part of a growing crusade of scholars gnashing their intellectual teeth on the accountability movement. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve quoted Eisner saying, “What gets measured is what matters”. . . . well, let’s just say my house would not need a new paint job and I’d not be the one scraping old wallpaper off the downstairs half-bath. I am a huge fan of Alfie Kohn, Deborah Meier, and Susan Ohanian. I’ve played the Harry Chapin “Not on the Test” song over and over again. In other words, I despise the testing culture of schools and all it represents.

Well, hardly two weeks into the school year have passed, and we got Niamh’s first DIBELS standardized test score. There it was, all nicely plotted on a spreadsheet: our daughter’s scores in both initial sound fluency and letter naming fluency. We saw the difference between the actual score and the “August goal,” and smiled. Yikes! We weren’t supposed to do that. Tests can’t measure the degree to which our daughter loves to read, where her mind travels as she reads, and the ideas that burst forth afterwards. This is just some simple instrument administered to every child in kindergarten. Surely the thought that she was “better” than some didn’t make us happy. That would be horrible to celebrate the lack of literary skills among her classmates if such existed. So why did we smile?

The power of certainty in a number is quite seductive. Right there in black and white we can SEE clear evidence of our daughter’s brilliance. It is instant affirmation of all our glowing adoration. Who wouldn’t be happy to see that? Of course, we make the numbers “say” whatever we want or need them to say. Is one score necessarily indicative of high achievement? Brilliance? Being better than others? Soon after we smiled, of course, we returned to our critically transitive postures (or at least some approximation thereof). No, it doesn’t really mean much. So many things mean far more. However, that moment of weakness – that smile – made me far less accusatory to all the parents out there. For years I’ve lamented that parents just don’t “get it.” They don’t see the need to fight back against all the accountability culture that is ruining our schools. Now, I have to see that we are all susceptible to the seduction of those test scores. I just hope I can fight the good fight along with as many parents as possible in spite of whatever seductive reports may come our way.

My Plea for Niamh

It has been a very long time since I've written a post. Since the early postings we’ve moved to Kentucky. The girls are now in public school in Bellevue, and the long afternoons together seem like ages ago. I wouldn’t trade the year for anything. It did teach me that “home schooling” – even part time – is incredibly taxing. I also learned that good intentions aren’t enough. So many times other agendas controlled the order of the day.

So now we are facing the long road ahead known as “public education” and how our girls will fare within it. It’s that thing we’ve written about for years. We’ve studied it and theorized about it. Now it is upon us in the form of Grandview Elementary.

When Rick and I started looking in the area, trying to decide where to live, we visited a lot of schools. There were a few that seemed fairly impressive. Some of them, however, were in communities that came with a great deal of baggage. “Oh, they don’t respond well to outsiders there,” or “It really matters there whether you live on the north or south side of town.” These were phrases that pushed us away from some communities and their schools – however progressive the schools may have seemed. Then we walked into Grandview. It was vibrant. The principal was incredibly energetic. They seemed to work really hard to support all students and to ensure that “haves” and “have nots” were not easy to discern. Lots of parents were there when we visited. Everyone seemed incredibly happy to be there. We were hooked. We told the realtor to only show us homes in Bellevue.

Now we are in the second week of school. We are both still very happy with the school. I think for public school you really cannot get much better than Grandview. Nevertheless, we are still confronted with all that is “public school,” and what that may ultimately mean for our girls. Granted, part of my angst may come from reading Ken Robinson at the same time school is beginning. In his book, Out of Our Minds, he challenges the ways schools have killed creativity in many ways. He doesn’t lay the complete burden of this problem on the schools. Society has certainly demonstrated a very narrow view of intelligence and achievement. He does note, and I agree, that schools are the primary instrument we use to kill creativity in youth.

As I read and as I think about the very real changes in our family as we enter the public education phase of our children’s lives, I can’t help but wonder about how my girls will change over the next 12 years and how much of that will be shaped by their schools. The reality really hits when I stop and watch Niamh. She is a bundle of creative energy. For years now she has tried to stay awake at night by creating her own dramas. Sometimes I walk by her room at night and see her using her dolls (or her hands on the nights when we take the dolls away) to enact dramatic skits with different characters all exhibiting different voices, moods, etc. Other nights I hear what appear to be full-blown operas with protagonists, antagonists, vibrant lyrics, and a variety of plot twists. When she and her sister play make-believe, Niamh is typically the one who sets up the storyline. When she is coloring, the characters on the page take on life-like qualities. It’s not just a two-dimensional form on a page to fill-in. It’s a princess calling out to her “honey” about some exciting event.

In addition to her drama, Niamh SEES things. She notices all sorts of nuances in the world and she makes connections between things that would seem so idiosyncratic to the average person. She connects things in nature to movies, songs, things she may have experienced a long time ago. Not only that, but seeing things gets her so excited. When one thing reminds her of another she gets her wonderfully big grin and looks like she is about to burst unless she shares what she has seen.

Rick and I have often wondered what Niamh’s bundle of imaginative energy looks like in the classroom. We’ve always gotten wonderful reports about her behavior, so we have to assume that the temperamental outbursts that sometimes come with this imaginative spirit are reigned in while in formal institutions of learning. While we appreciate this, we can’t help but wonder whether the creative energy itself isn’t likewise reigned in, and if so, what does that mean if she feels she has to turn off her creative spirit – that spirit that defines her – in order to do well in school.

We’ve seen an unsettling example of this during homework this week. For the past two nights Niamh has had a worksheet where she has to practice her letters. For the record, I don’t object to handwriting practice, and I know that she needs to review her letters for the sake of what is expected in kindergarten and first grade. Niamh was particularly frustrated the first night because she felt she was being forced to write big letters. The paper had the very wide lines with the dotted lines in the center – designed to be more developmentally appropriate for kindergarten students. But Niamh loves to write her letters with a very small font. She was initially rebellious and protested, “My teacher wants me to write big!” However, by the second day her protests subsided and she had accepted the required font size. Much of this, I am sure, is a direct result of her adoration of her teacher, Mrs. Skirvin. She wanted to please her. If that meant writing her letters bigger than she otherwise preferred, then so be it. While she was practicing her B’s, Niamh danced, laughed, and imagined the bumps of the B’s as bellies. At one point, however, she made a B almost identical to the B on the worksheet. She stopped, grew excited, and declared, “I made a REAL one. I made a real B.” She then ran into the next room with the paper to show Rick.

I was left quite unsettled at the kitchen table as she ran into the other room. What are we doing if we teach her that there is such a thing as a “real B” versus the creative bellied B’s (some of which she’d given accessories) on her page? I know she wasn’t directly “taught” that there is such a thing as a real B in her kindergarten class, but after only five days in a public school she had somehow managed to learn that there are right ways to do things and being creative doesn’t have anything to do with being right. In fact, it could very well prevent you from being right. While a “real B” isn’t necessarily an educational tragedy in and of itself, I still worry about all the other lessons both she and Audrey will hear about what is “right” and what is “real,” and how that will shape their views of themselves and their world.

So, I guess my plea to Mrs. Skirvin , Niamh’s wonderful kindergarten teacher, and Mrs. Simpkins, the wonderful principal of Grandview, is that in spite of all the powers that are trying to destroy creativity and enforce a culture of compliance, please save spaces in your school for the amazing potential of imaginative spirits. Honor SEEING and animated BEING along with the standards. I know this is a lot to ask, but when I think about what is at risk - both in my own home and in society itself – how can I/we not ask?

The Lived Experience

When pressed for my own definition of curriculum in curriculum classes, I often resort to “the shared lived experience” and then go into animated elaborations from Dewey, Van Manen, etc.  I argue that we need to see curriculum as something much bigger and much more complex than what a teacher has officially written down in a lesson plan book or what a company has outlined within a reform model.  In many ways, this “definition” is a default response to something exciting and complex – something that should, by its very nature, defy simple defining. 

 

This week I encountered a very real lived experience with Audrey that brought this image home.  I had to go to campus to sign a letter.  Audrey and I took the train with the intention of running in, taking care of the task, and then quickly returning home.  It was one of those days when the “to do” list would win out over more deliberate learning opportunities – or at least that is what I thought at the time. 

 

On the way home on the train a gentleman stood near us.  By the nature of his smell and appearance, it was pretty clear that he was homeless.  As soon as the train left the Five Points platform, the man walked to the center of the aisle right in front of us and began his speech:  “I was just released from Grady.  Somebody hit me over the head last night.  I was at Grady and somebody stole all my money.  They took my wallet and my money.  I’m not asking for money.  I just need food.  Does anyone have anything I could eat?”  After a brief silence a woman sitting near us held out the take-out container that held the remains of her lunch.  “Here.  You can have this,”  She said.  Sincerely grateful, the man took the container, walked back to the corner, and quickly ate its contents. 

 

Audrey was wide-eyed throughout the experience.  Then the questions followed.  “What happened to that man?”  “Why is he homeless?”  “Why did someone hit him?”  For the remainder of the trip home we talked about people who are homeless, hungry, and hurting.  I reminded her that the nights her dad leaves to go to the freeze shelter at church he is going to help people like that man – people who need a place to sleep when it gets so cold.  We talked about how the food we sometimes bring to church goes to help feed others who are hungry.  We also talked about how sad we were that we weren’t prepared to help this man on the train.  As we continued our way home from the train, we talked about putting together bags of food or food coupons to help others when we travel on the train or walk downtown.

 

Throughout the experience I was kicking myself.  I have planned for some time to have those “bags” of crackers, coupons, or something to give out when I encounter homeless around campus.  Here was a chance to “show” Audrey a way to be compassionate to the marginalized, and I was unprepared.  I felt as if I’d let her down.  Since that experience I’ve shifted my focus from the “experience” to consider the other part of that default definition I often give: lived.  Together Audrey and I experienced a lived moment of disappointment in ourselves- of recognition that there was more that we could do, and a feeling of sadness that we weren’t prepared to help someone in need.  We ended the experience with a new determination to be prepared next time.  Since then she has recalled the experience a number of times – telling her dad and her sister about it, considering levels of poverty and what it means to not have a home.  She has since learned through discussion that not all homeless are men and not all homeless are old – even children can be hungry and homeless.  She has also stopped asking to go and get “treats” every time we go out.  Granted, this hasn’t’ stopped completely, but I think she stops and thinks about that man and how he needed basic food – not treats. 

 

So, perhaps that brief encounter on the train did not instantly turn into an educative experience as I had always imagined.  It wasn’t an opportunity for me to whip out some pre-determined homeless support packet to demonstrate what a socially concerned person SHOULD do.  Instead, I think it was a chance for Audrey and I to live together in our wishes and our fallibility – to encounter an opportunity where we saw ways in which we could be better for others.  After all, if curriculum is the “shared lived experience,” then we need to be as mindful of the living as we are of the experience itself. 

 

A Case Of and For the Sillies

Today was going to be one of those “lost” days.  I was without a car, navigating a meeting on campus, a conference at Audrey’s school, and trying to get both girls home via the train after Niamh’s nap and before the rain came pouring down.  With that in mind, I knew I had a couple of hours to spend with Audrey before picking up Niamh, but I decided that I wouldn’t lug any of my bags of tricks with me on the train.

 

You see, from the beginning of the year I created numerous bags of tricks.  I have the art bag complete with sketch pads, pastels, portable easels, etc.  I have the reading bag with literacy manipulatives and early readers.  I also have the math bag with dice, cuisenaire rods, and other activities.  Early on I envisioned using these bags with Audrey as we sat in coffee shops, gardens, etc.  To some extent, we have done that – just not to the degree I’d hoped. 

 

So, when I went to pick Audrey up after the parent conference, I was “bagless.”  Nevertheless, we went to Ruby Tuesdays for lunch and for a comfortable way to kill some time while Niamh slept merely yards away at “Horsey School.”  Audrey immediately became engaged with the children’s menu. It had cute little activities, some of which were designed for older kids.  Nevertheless, she dived into them – asking for help but insisting on ultimately doing it herself.  One of the activities was particularly challenging.  The sheet had musical notes symbolizing numbers (e.g. a quarter note equaled 4 while two eighth notes equaled 8).  The picture then had four notes joined together with addition signs.  Audrey had to first translate the notes into the values and then add the four numbers together.  In spite of her typical tenacity, I figured the activity would get the best of her – it didn’t.  While it required a lot of scratch paper and a lot of “dots” being drawn, she figured them out. 

 

This victory led to a barrage of math silliness.  She started counting by tens, and then by twenties; then together we played with counting by 200s.  All the while I was secretly bemoaning the fact that I didn’t have my Cuisenaire manipulatives to let her literally embrace hundreds, tens, and ones.  It didn’t matter to her – just adding the zeros to the ends of numbers that were more familiar to her was fun enough.  We added 6 + 6, and then we added 600 + 600.  She squealed with delight to see how BIG 1200 was. 

 

Throughout our mathematical play Audrey was her typical over-the-top silly self – making noises, playing with rhyming words, bouncing up and down on the restaurant booth (thank goodness there were very few customers at this point).  Granted, I have more tolerance for this silliness at some times versus others.  There are times – particularly at dinner or when we are getting ready for bed – when I tend to chastise her for such loud and silly behavior.  After all, those are times where other agendas (completing dinner in a civil manner or preparing for sleep) are more important than being silly.  Yet, I know that this silliness is so much of who my daughter is right now.  She revels in silliness from the moment she walks in the door in the afternoons until bedtime.  The only time she is lulled into some calmer state is when she is anesthetized by television. 

 

So, when given the space to be herself, Audrey is happy, laughing, and above all silly.  When she is “contained” for pragmatic purposes (dinner, bedtime) or when she is lulled into a less active state by something like television, she is subdued and quiet.  What does that say about formal schooling?  Don’t get me wrong.  I was a teacher for many years.  I know that most of the instructional day must be spent in a subdued mode.  There is a time and a place for silliness, and even back in those pre-NCLB days, those times were sparse.  But I can’t help but wonder – if this is, in fact, a natural mode for children, what are we doing when we subdue it – and do we, in fact, eradicate it by virtue of the amount of time in which we subdue it?  In other words, at what point do children learn that it is not o.k. to be silly?  After all, we’ve certainly learned it as adults.  On the whole, most adults are not silly.  We may crack a joke on occasion, or if you are like my brother, uncle, or late grandfather, you may exhibit wit and more elaborate jokes around those who are close – most of which are calculated and appropriate for your age and circumstances.  However, on the whole we have become subdued.  I am so thankful that the girls have a silly father.  Those of you who know Rick may be surprised with that assessment, but at home, he dives headlong into the silliness with them.  It is because of his openness to silliness that our house if filled with laughter most of the time. 

 

So, how do schools create spaces for silliness?  In this era of performance-based measures for children, how do we ensure that children continue to perform this zest for life, this uninhibited embrace of fun and laughter?  And how do we use that incredibly excited energy as the impetus for learning for the sake of learning?  At this point, I have no idea how we do this, but watching Audrey’s antics at the Ruby Tuesday today helped me to realize how essential it is that we try.

Differentiation in the Garden

It has been a while since I’ve posted an entry.  Life and allergies have been getting in the way.  I decided it was time to get back on track, so when I picked Audrey up from school I let her choose whether she wanted to go to the Botanical Gardens or the High Museum of Art and try to reengage in our afternoon learning experiences.  She chose the garden.

On our way there, Audrey protested that she did not want to go without her sister.  While I enjoy spending time with both girls, bringing Niamh would mean interrupting her nap time – a very, very important time of the day for her and for the rest of the family that must endure her disposition should she miss it.  Nevertheless, we made a detour to “horsey school” and picked Niamh up.

The trip began as most trips to the garden do.  They had fun running up and down the paths.  They quickly made their way to the children’s garden, and once there they quickly made their way to the large slide and clubhouse at the back of the garden.  We managed to get in a few “learning” moments en route – looking at the beehive and looking for frogs in the pond.  The playground frolic was cut short by a large group of boisterous boys running around.  

By this time Audrey was protesting that she wanted to go do art.  Niamh, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with art.  She managed to convince her sister to delay the art activities and join her on the outdoor stage for a reenactment of Disney on Ice.  For a girl who is so pensive around strangers, Niamh lights up on stage.  She loves to dance – so much so that her whole body seems to beam as she glides across the stage.  After each performance, she hides behind the log column and hurries through her pretend costume changes so that she can perform her next number.  Audrey enjoys being silly on the stage and doing a pliè or two, but her response is nothing like her sister’s.   

After numerous encores, we make it to a secluded area of the garden where there is a small fountain and flowers.  We pull out the art pads and the pastels.  Audrey is in her official mode: she is ready to do art.  Niamh, on the other hand, continues her protests regarding the objective and dances around the fountain.  She then explores the area and returns to the fountain to throw leaves into the water and watch them.  Eventually Niamh decides to join us – of course, it had to be her idea.  She draws a series of flowers on her paper and excitedly points out that they are sunflowers.  She goes off again to explore and soon returns to add round objects below the flowers.  She later explains that they are the seeds that the flowers came from.  After more exploring she returns and adds grass below the seeds.  Later, upon Audrey’s suggestion, she adds a blue stripe at the top for the sky.  When she is done she looks at me excitedly and notes, “Mommy, I did the whole thing – the flower, the grass, and the sky!”  Meanwhile Audrey has been drawing the whole time – working diligently to create flowers similar to those she has drawn in the past.  When she talks about her pictures she notes the colors and the lines she has used. 

The whole time we are in the garden I try desperately to look beyond my “Mom” eyes to see my two girls.  If I was back in my educational psychology class at Oglethorpe and was conducting a case study on each of these girls, what would I notice?  It was much harder than I thought it would be.  In addition to being their mom and absolutely adoring them, I struggle with not seeing one in relation to the other – particularly Niamh.  Perhaps it was because they were born so close together that Rick and I are the most thrown by our youngest daughter.  It shouldn’t surprise us that she is not Audrey.  Other than in her appearance, she is really nothing like her sister.  Perhaps too it was because Audrey is predictable in many ways.  She responds to things in life much like I did when I was young, so I know what to expect from her.  Niamh, on the other hand, is only predictable in her unpredictability.  The same situation could bring belly laughs or full-blown melt-downs, so we just have to brace ourselves for both.  As challenging as her mood swings are, Niamh’s sensitivity to details in life and for people is amazing and her smiles and her sense of humor our uniquely her own.  She really does exemplify her name: “brightness illuminating from within.” 

The one minor “aha” I took away from our brief trip to the garden was how differently my girls encounter their worlds.  Audrey finds comfort in rules, and she practices to get things “right.”  If the flower she is drawing is not perfect, she gets very frustrated and often shuts down.  It’s as if the rules and the habits regulate her behavior and provide a predictable foundation for her learning.  Niamh, on the other hand, encounters the world in constructs.  Relationships between phenomenon animate her learning.  She makes connections – albeit often idiosyncratic ones – in order to understand her world, and as such the “outcomes” of her learning are not so easy to predict.  Audrey loves to memorize things.  She rattles off words that begin with specific sounds.  She learns foreign language easily, and she remembers series of notes in her piano book with little effort.  Niamh struggles with some of her letters and numbers, but she can pick sounds out of the middle of words quickly.  She remembers so many little details from stories we tell, movies, and books, and she often brings up these details at times when they connect with something else going on around her. 

This relatively minor observation made me realize how superficial most of our “talk” of differentiation in classrooms really is.  When we encourage teachers to “differentiate” in their classes, we typically assume they are going to pre-assess their students and group them according to how well they do on whatever outcomes they achieved.  Some teachers may assess students according to their “multiple intelligences” and occasionally differentiate according to their strengths, but I have a feeling this doesn’t happen often.  Even when it does, this still doesn’t address the beautiful complexity of the children in our classrooms.  It makes me think of the Huebner quote I enjoy so much.  I used to keep in next to my desk when I taught:

Think of it – there standing before the educator is a being partially hidden in a cloud of unknowing. For centuries the poet has sung of his near infinitudes; the theologian has preached of his depravity and hinted of his participation in the divine; the philosopher has struggled to encompass him in his systems, only to have him repeatedly escape; the novelist and dramatist have captured his fleeting moments of pain and purity in never-to-be-forgotten esthetic form; and the man (sic.) engaged in curriculum has the temerity to reduce this being to a single term – “learner.”

While Niamh may seem a lot more like the "cloud" of unknowing on many days, I love the fact that she is actually a beautiful ray of sunlight - sometimes peaking through and sometimes bursting forth with warmth and brilliance.

 

 

“It’s Just Art. . . .”

Anyone who knows me knows that I love John Dewey.  He has been the center of my research and scholarship since I was a doctoral student.  The first major scholarly project Rick and I did together was an edited book about Dewey that resembles a devotional book.  We even sent out Christmas cards one year with Dewey on the front (sporting a Santa hat) with the message “We hope you experience a wonderful holiday season!” I have framed a series of envelopes with the Dewey commemorative stamps in my office as well as the 1928  Time Magazine with Dewey on the cover.  I’ve even adapted lyrics to “Louie, Louie” to help students understand his theories.  This is not some superficial fascination.  The man and his ideas rock my ideological world.

 

So why would I be surprised by my daughter’s reactions this week?  On Monday we spent two hours sprawled out on a picnic blanket with pastels, easels, and art pads drawing the underside of a magnolia tree, trying to capture the fuzziness of the rabbit’s ear, and exploring patterns of leaves and colors while surrounded by the Decatur community garden.  Audrey’s thinking and conversation were incredibly animated and clever.  She made amazing observations about lines, colors, and patterns.  She played with a variety of ideas – determining that the wind was yellow, musing that mushrooms are ants’ trees, and making countless other amazing five-year-old interpretations of nature.  By the end of the day I felt as if we’d accomplished no less than Van Gogh and Gauguin had completed in their brief time in Arles.  We had a pile of pictures rolled neatly in our art bag and wonderful memories of a beautiful Decatur afternoon. 

 

With my new High Museum membership card in hand, I was already planning the extension activities for Tuesday afternoon.  Throughout the afternoon on Monday I talked about Van Gogh and Gauguin and how they both did art very differently.  I talked about how Van Gogh painted on the spot and tended to represent as much of how he felt as what he saw.  In contrast, Gauguin would sketch and practice before going back to their yellow house to complete his work.  I asked Audrey if she was painting like Van Gogh or Gauguin, and she said she was more like Van Gogh because she was doing her pictures right then and trying to show how the things made her feel.  “Aha,” I thought.  I can take her to the museum, show her paintings from Van Gogh, and see the light bulbs, hear the bells and whistles, and know that my daughter has experienced an aesthetic epiphany! 

 

Yeah, right.  As I picked her up from school Tuesday and excitedly talked about the ensuing trip to the museum, she gave me one of those premature adolescent looks and said, “It’s just a bunch of art.”  I tempted her with the adventure of the train – changing at Five Points and taking at least two escalators.  That appeased her to some degree.  Of course, the negotiations then began. “I’m hungry,” she protested.  Translated: If I have to go look at a bunch of boring art, there better be a cool snack in the bargain.

 

When we arrived at the museum, Audrey was immediately drawn to the large sculpture of the horse that precedes the upcoming da Vinci exhibit.  As she exclaimed,  “Wow, look at that horse!”  I replied, “Oh, it’s JUST art.  .  . “  While I know I would be marked down if I was assessed on Georgia’s Teacher Performance Assessment Instrument, I couldn’t resist the sarcasm.  After all, the Breault genetic code includes a very strong line of sarcasm as a way of being.  Therefore, I felt it would be not only appreciated but perhaps even necessary as we continued on our adventure. 

 

The sarcasm evolved into the running joke of the day. Audrey would point to various things around the museum – the water feature outside the entrance, the large fruit displayed outside the snack area – and challenge whether what she was seeing was, in fact, art.  After the obligatory snack, we went up to the top level.  She was somewhat interested in the Howard Finster Folk art as well as the other modern and folk art displayed.   Of course, the most frustrating aspect of the experience was the fact that she could not touch it.  I found myself saying over and over again, “Yes, but don’t touch, don’t touch,” in hopes of pre-empting the scowling security guards strategically placed throughout the floor. 

 

Ultimately, skipping down the ramps to the main floor seemed to bring far more animation and enjoyment than observing the art.  Large spaces with sculptures, paintings, and large arrangements of geometric figures, etc. are not exactly the ideal setting for skipping or loud giggles – all evidence to which was reinforced by the tense posture of the various guards throughout the hall.  One guard politely suggested that we go to the children’s section on the first floor.  

 

In the child-proof section of the museum we found various stations with blocks, easels, and large foam and vinyl shapes that could form interesting three-dimensional structures.  Audrey enjoyed building with the blocks and particularly enjoyed creating large structures – her houses – with the larger foam pieces.  Thus, the overall trip was salvaged by virtue of the things she could touch and then use to create. 

 

As we returned home on Marta, I pictured Dewey looking down and laughing.  I thought about his many lessons – how the child and curriculum are two limits that define a single process (a process we more often than not interrupt with our own agendas).  I thought about Dewey’s argument that as educators we often impose our images of learning from above and from outside children's experiences.  Instead, we should see learning as an extension of the child’s world:

 

If the subject-matter of the lessons be such as to have an appropriate place within the expanding consciousness of the child, if it grows out of his (sic) own past doings, thinkings, and sufferings, and grows into application in further achievements and receptivities, then no device or trick of method has to be resorted to in order to enlist ‘interest.’ (Child and Curriculum, 288)

 

So, perhaps Audrey and I won’t have those shared aesthetic epiphanies while walking quietly through the art exhibits at the High, at least not while she is in kindergarten.  Instead, I hope that I remember to listen more, impose less, and create those shared spaces where her experiences can become educative experiences for us both. 

The Importance of Being Earnest

A few weeks ago I found copy of the Barbie CD for The Princess and the Pauper.  One might ask why anyone would put himself or herself through the pain of hearing the songs from a Barbie movie that is already played over and over again at home.  Truth be told, the music in the movies is not bad, and the productions for the CDs are even better – they are actually Broadway quality in many respects.  The girls love it.  They want to hear the songs over and over again.  In particular, Audrey wants to hear them for the same reasons she likes to see some movies over and over again.  She wants to figure them out. 

 

Initially her interest centered around the language itself.  She would hear a word and like the way it sounds.  Then she would want to learn what the word or a phrase meant.  There is one song in particular on the CD that both girls like the most.  Preminger, the “mean guy”, sings a song about his evil plans to marry Princess Anneliese.   One of the word groups they both particularly like is “temporary setback.”  Initially Audrey wanted to know what the actual words were.  She wanted to sing it, and she wanted to sing the right words.  Once she knew them, she proceeded to sing it in the car, all over the house, etc.  Eventually she began to hear the words around it and became curious about what the words and phrases meant. 

 

This had led to all sorts of conversations.  As we talked about the role of Anneliese and her mother and how they are responsible for their people, we talked about feudalism, the social structure of England at the time, and the plight of indentured servants.  Granted, all of these conversations were done at a five-year-olds level and were considered interesting but not necessarily worthy of more in-depth pursuit outside of those particular moments and those particular conversations in the car.

 

In our conversations, we often shift from talking about the story to playing with the language again.  Audrey gets very excited when she hears rhyming words and starts to listen for them after we talk about the way some poems place rhyming words at the end of lines and often create a rhythm to the words.  She also starts to notice some of the alliterations and metaphors and questions why Preminger is saying those things.  She knows she likes the way they sound, but she also wants to know what they mean.

 

What strikes me most in all of this is her genuine earnestness to figure this song and story out.  She wants to hear the song every morning.  When I ask her if she wants me to replay it, she always says yes.  Each time we hear it, she asks more and more questions.  Sometimes she asks the same questions she has asked before – hoping perhaps more explanation will help her understand it a bit more.  I begin to think about whether I have that same level of earnestness to learn.  After all, I’m in the “learning business” in my day job.  While I am thrilled when I get those scholarly “ahas,” I can’t really recall moments in my life when I was that earnest to learn something.  I also think back to my second, third, fourth, and seventh graders as well as the elementary and middle school students I served as an administrator.  I search my memories for times when they appeared that earnest to learn something.  Then the inevitable questions stare me in the face: At what point do we lose this?  To what degree do parents’ relationships with their children and schools (trying to be fair here and not just completely bash schools) strip this earnestness from children?  Does our media-drenched society help to strip away the curiosity and earnestness by virtue of the passive way of being it perpetuates?  And more importantly, how do I preserve this earnestness in my children? 

 

In my original reflections on this on-going experience, the word “earnest” first came to mind as the most apt description of Audrey’s disposition.  Thinking ahead, then, about a possible blog entry, I remembered the play my friends and I did as seniors in high school.  We performed it in my basement with the rest of the AP English class looking on.  Admittedly, I had to go back and review the plot from Google (Sorry, Mrs. Johnson), and I realized how appropriate it is.  The play itself pokes fun at the necessity of being earnest during the Victorian period when the meaning of being “earnest” is quite superficial.  The fact that Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff deceive the objects of their suiting is acceptable.  As long as their names are ultimately “Earnest,” there is no need for their intentions to be so.  The parallels are striking.  How earnest are we in schools and society to sustain this genuine love of learning – a love that drives how children see their worlds and guides the way they see and hear things in their daily lives?  Does the language of our current policies designate our actions as “earnest” even though much of what we do contradicts a genuine search for knowing more?