by J. Thorn
“Oh, you asshole,” I murmured as both men let loose, slapping each other on the back and pointing at me between gulps for air.
Although I was the mark, I must declare this to be the best reverse prank—ever.
***
Teachers fight the use of technology because students always know more. This paradigm of learning baffles educators who see themselves as the repository of all information. They refuse to let go of the reins and give students the necessary opportunity to explore the new tools.
Socrates once said, “A multitude of books distracts the mind.” To put this perspective in modern terms, a teacher today might say, “A multitude of websites distracts the mind.” Resistance to change is nothing new in the world of education. In 1991, Kenneth Hoffman wrote a piece for the Eugene Register-Guard in which he defended the use of calculators as an educational tool.
The real problem with calculators, I think, is that many Americans view mathematics as something painful that youngsters must study because it’s good for them. If Mom and Dad spent countless hours doing long division problems, then, by God, Jason and Kimberly can, too. Such attitudes explain why our students perform so miserably. They have been led to view math moralistically rather than as a liberating tool for understanding the world. Mathematics is seen as a test not only of brains but of character, of whether someone has the grit to calculate problems day after day, year after year. No wonder people hate it.
Technology is not a panacea, as many school systems have learned with computer-based learning materials and other repeated innovations. Dedicated teachers and sound pedagogy remain essential. Yet, used appropriately, calculators can make the job easier, and we should not fear them. They give students what their parents lacked: time and freedom to become better problem-solvers and to discover the beauty of mathematics.
Almost twenty years later, the focal point of the argument has shifted to the use of mobile computing in the classroom. Opponents of calculators now have bigger fish to fry.
Many parents and educators want to make kids suffer. They feel that children must run a kind of intellectual gauntlet that builds a resilient adult. While children should be exposed to the real world, they should not be intentionally forced to take the harder path for the sake of it. The rise in the use of laptops, tablet PCs, and mobile computing have brought this fundamental discussion of technology in schools to a new level. The hypocrisy of the argument makes it difficult for kids to accept. They see adults using technology to make things easier, more efficient, and yet those same adults withhold those tools from them. This is very apparent in the teaching of writing.
***
On a cool afternoon in October of 1990, I sat down at the dining room table with a yellow legal pad in hand.
“The French Revolution, the French Revolution,” I sighed while rubbing my chin and staring at the dusty ceiling fan spinning over my head.
Nothing.
The only thoughts that invaded my head were those of joining the “crew” at the park and hoping I could make it down there before they packed up the sticks and hockey nets for the day.
The class was a fucking bore, and so was the professor. Trying to come up with a paper topic about the French Revolution was as much fun as getting your head chopped off and eating your cake too (a rare reference mixture of Marie Antoinette’s famous line about having your cake and eating it. You know, because she lost her head during the French Revolution? Never mind). New to college and not yet proficient with a keyboard, my twenty-year-old self thought he was going to knock out a first draft with chicken scratch on the lined paper.
I hated writing, and it made my hand hurt. I knew the paper would end up being 50 percent of my grade for the class, and yet I still could not motivate myself. I think I scribbled a bunch of bullshit on the paper and paid my mom to type it while slinging my skates over a shoulder on the way to the pick-up game.
Needless to say, I stood in line at the registrar’s office the next week with the realization that an F on the mid-term paper meant that I would need to get an A on the final just to get a C for the course. Fuck that. My parents were not as flippant about losing the hundreds of dollars I tossed when dropping the course, but it did not matter to me at the time.
The daunting part of writing a paper as a college freshman in 1990 was that the computer was not as accessible or as easy to use as it is today. You had to tolerate white text on a black background and know all kinds of keyboard shortcuts to do mundane things like set a margin. In addition, I had to find a computer lab on campus to type it. Looking at the proliferation of people hammering on keyboards in coffee shops today makes me want to shake them and ask an important question.
“Do you know how good you have it? Do you? When I was a kid, blah, blah, blah.”
And then I stop myself because the next statement goes something like this:
“How are kids today gonna learn how to do X without the blood, sweat, and tears of Y?”
People resent it when others reach the same goal without struggle or effort. We want kids today to suffer through the same crap we did because otherwise we feel cheated.
“Why should it be so much easier for them when I had to suffer through that?” we ask.
Many educators inherently feel that the technology makes writing “too easy” and for kids to learn how to do it right, they must suffer. For instance, some teachers believe a first draft must be handwritten because typing does not employ the same creative energies. They believe that the brain is wired to respond to the handwritten text and that typing does not work as well. Not only is this foolish but it’s sadomasochistic as well.
When is the last time you manually set margins on a Word document? Never. Even though I was taught how to do this in typing class (best class ever, and I’m not joking. Hot chicks and fast fingers, oh yeah) as a junior in high school, the skill is all but useless today. Once, I had a disagreement with a colleague who insisted his students manually create a bibliography page for a research project. The students had to know the indentation rules, punctuation, and more. When I asked why, he said that they “had to know how to do it.” I remember tilting my head like a dog smelling a good fart.
“Because?”
“Because they do,” he replied.
“But what about EasyBib, or NoodleTools, or the references” tab in Microsoft Word? Are you telling me they’ll someday do a research paper without a computer or Internet access? Are they going back in time to write?”
“It’s a skill they need,” was the best he could come up with.
If you go to EasyBib and type in the ISBN number of any book, it will automatically populate the information for your source. When you are done entering all of your sources, EasyBib will produce your works cited page with one click. Microsoft Word incorporated a similar concept in Office 2010 that integrates into your document. Sweet.
Why in the hell do you still need to know how many spaces to indent the second line of an entry? The APA style changes so frequently that even they cannot keep up with the specifics.
***
The technology debate is nothing new. Socrates thought books would ruin learning. Math purists in the ‘70s thought calculators would destroy a child’s ability to understand concepts. Neither happened.
Part of the reason the Luddites continue to question the role of technology in education is based on their own reluctance to understand how it works. There could be a biological explanation for it as well. Maybe our own self-preservation is threatened by the next generation, which usually learns how to do things better and faster than we did. Maybe we are jealous of those little shits and how fast they learn how to use machines that we are still afraid of “crashing.”
Teachers who fear technology the most are the ones who don’t know how to use it, or see it as “cheating” the child out of necessary life lessons. Learning how to lose is an important, hard lesson in life. Learning when to use a semi-colon on a bibliographic entry for a Chicago-style works
cited page is not.
Live Like a Convict
There are two things that make me want to put a bullet in the head (Rage Against the Machine style, for those of you who remember 1992) of many of my fellow educators. Hypocrisy and lack of conviction are threatening the future of education.
***
I recently ran sound (it means I’m the weird-looking guy in the corner who says “check” into the microphones before the band begins) for a group of Iranian nationalists who celebrate the Persian New Year on the first day of spring. Old grandmothers, disenchanted teenagers, toddlers, and an occasional MMILF (Muslim MILF) show up to eat, dance, and celebrate, much like a garden-variety wedding reception. The Persians are Muslim, and yet they have an open bar and curse openly. None of the women cover their heads, let alone their entire bodies (which is good for me, as I have a lot of time to watch the hot chicks practice their belly-dancing moves). Islamic custom strictly dictates that women should be covered and that the consumption of alcohol is forbidden. Take that, Christians. You ain’t the only ones cornering the market on hypocrisy.
However, the Christians have become Jedi Masters of hypocrisy with an efficiency and self-delusion that makes me weep.
Because I was raised Catholic I know their jig, and I am fully qualified to bust it open. I was baptized, took my first communion, made my confirmation, served as an altar boy, and played “church” in our basement with my brother. I did everything for our parish except let a priest diddle me (although I can’t vouch for others. Seems like the men of the cloth in the Catholic faith take a liking to boy penis). There are hardcore Catholics who would stab a Jew if the Pope told them to do it, and I admire that. The Crazy Christians drink the Kool-Aid and they live it. Some may think their beliefs are arcane, outdated, and medieval, but they do not care. They are not hypocrites. In the same manner, I have respect for Islamic warriors of the Jihad. Anyone dedicated enough to blow himself up for God does not lack conviction. Don’t do it half-assed. If you believe God hates gays, then be a homophobe. In my book, that’s more admirable than hypocrisy.
Most of my interactions are with moderate Catholics. This segment is much more dangerous than the Jesus Freaks, but they lack the guts to jump in with both feet. They like their religion à la carte.
“I’ll take a little bit of Sunday mass, a slice of confession, and about a third of the homily.”
The hypocrisy rears its ugly head when it comes to abortion. If you are Christian, especially Catholic, you are ordained by God to blow up clinics and murder doctors performing the procedure. The Catholic CEO, the Pope, has confirmed the evil indoctrination of abortion. However, many Catholics put conditions on their faith.
“I’m against abortion if the woman is raped or in case of incest.”
Hold the phone, Mother Mary. The leaders of your church have unequivocally stated that abortion is wrong and you will burn in hell for it. How can you modify God’s word as delivered through the Holy Pontiff?
Imagine that for a second there is a gay Pope. Floyd lives somewhere in the Napa Valley and is the recognized, legitimate leader of the gays. He represents them and sets the policies for what it means to be gay. He blessed the rainbow flag and rides the last float in all of the Gay Pride parades. Now imagine that you are a straight man who has never had gay sex, and you say something like this:
“I’m totally gay, except I don’t do the cock-sucking thing and I don’t take it up the ass. Other than that, I’m gay and support the gay lifestyle.”
Or imagine for a second that you are an addict. You have hit rock bottom and have been attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings for years. At one point during a meeting, you say something like this:
“It feels so good to be sober. Getting off the crack cocaine and only doing prescription meds has made me proud to be sober. Other than the prescription meds, Jack Daniels, and an occasional beer, I’m completely sober.”
The hypocrisy of these two situations is laughable, and yet moderate Catholics do this kind of thing all the time. They pick and choose what tenets of the faith to follow even though the institution they belong to dictates the canon.
Thanks to religion, our world has made hypocrisy acceptable. In the spring of 2010, the Catholic Church was rocked with yet another child-molestation scandal in Germany. Over three hundred accusations have been filed in over half of all German dioceses. Half, motherfucker. We are not talking about a disturbed, rogue priest. Half! In addition, His Holiness was an archbishop of a German diocese at the time, and some believe he intentionally covered it up. Catholics and the rest of the world shake their head and move about their days as if this is all an unfortunate natural disaster, like an inevitable hurricane best dealt with by cleaning up the aftermath.
Imagine this kind of scandal breaking within any other organization. People would be rioting in the streets. In the 1990s the media made a big stink out of the Boy Scouts of America’s stance on gay men leading troops. What if half of all troop leaders in the United States had accusations of child molestation leveled against them? The Boy Scouts would be ruined faster than a Van Halen reunion tour.
***
Hypocrisy in education is not as apparent or extreme as the examples of moderate Catholics or boy-fucking priests, but it is just as damaging. One administrator would routinely discuss her parenting style at lunch and during recess. She would brag about the fact that her children never ate candy, that she baked with sugar substitutes, and that they only ate natural foods grown in the South American rainforest on hand-tilled land prepared by virgins. This same administrator kept a huge bowl of candy on her desk and allowed students to come by at any time and take it.
The use of cell phones is another display of hypocrisy. Teachers continually whine about students using them, and yet every day I see phones clipped to the belts of the adults or, worse yet, hear them holding conversations while walking down the hall.
Administrators and school leaders preach about the need for balance in the lives of students. They tell parents not to overschedule and to let kids have unstructured time. You would be hard-pressed to find unstructured time in the school day.
Another former colleague of mine never submitted his grades on time. Every single marking period, the rest of the team waited a day, sometimes two days, until he calculated and input the grade. We’d all laugh and snicker, but the problem was real. The hypocrisy of this situation is that we would never permit this from our students. This same teacher would complain about students who did not do their homework or who turned it in late, but he did the same thing.
If modeling is the most powerful form of teaching (it is), the ramifications of hypocrisy reveal a tremendous gap in the system. Rules are in place to ensure an equal and fair experience for all. Students and adults alike sniff out hypocritical behavior if the rules are skirted or adjusted. Making an exception for every rule is akin to not having the rules at all. Without a baseline standard to measure expectations, the community drifts on an open sea of gray area.
***
“Every child is unique, and every situation is different.”
This is the mantra of private-school administrators who wish to cater to the desires of the parent body. It allows them to skirt the rules or handbook in favor of “individualized” education.
The spectrum of discipline in schools today stretches from the purely unique consequence based on a unique offense to the zero-tolerance punishment. Like most things in life, neither extreme is healthy, and most schools fall somewhere towards the middle.
Public school systems can be pigeon-holed at the zero-tolerance end of the spectrum. Because teachers and administrators deal with unwieldy numbers of children and unknown or absent parental support, they must function as judge, jury, and executioner.
On the website run by Building Blocks for Youth, a factsheet lists the following disturbing figures:
In public schools, ‘zero tolerance’ means that students are quickly suspended or expelled for breaking the law
or violating school rules. These policies were initiated on the federal level by the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act, which responded to several notorious school shootings across the country. The federal law required states to kick out students who brought firearms to school.
Unfortunately, many states and school districts have gone far beyond the federal Gun-Free Schools Act by enacting policies that suspend or expel students for carrying virtually any object that could be considered a weapon, illegal drugs, prescription drugs, and even some drugs available over-the-counter. Some of the most troubling stories and trends have made headlines:
Nationally, students have been subjected to disciplinary action for bringing Midol or Advil to school, bringing a water pistol to school, and taking a slurp of Listerine during school hours.—Education Week, October 23, 1996.
In Philadelphia public schools, 33 kindergartners were suspended in 2002 under a tough new discipline policy.—The New York Times, December 14, 2002.
An 11-year-old died of asthma because his school’s zero tolerance policy prevented him from carrying an inhaler.—The New York Times, November 19, 2002.
It is easy to see how removing decision-making by the authority figures in schools creates common-sense problems at the ground level. Seeing the world only as black or white, right or wrong, robs a child of a chance to make a mistake and the teachable moment when he does.
At the other end, you will find situations of individualization that abound in private schools. Without Board of Education mandates or state standards, independent schools are free to create their own system of consequence or punishment, as long as it falls within constitutional rights. This approach is flawed as much as zero tolerance because it assumes there is no black or white, right or wrong behavior, only shades of gray.