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Remember education’s chief role in cultivating higher virtues
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The BBC series “Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School,” which documents (or, more accurately, dramatizes) how British kids react to China’s “tough” teaching style, has created quite a stir.
As was observed in a recent commentary piece by my colleague Ni Tao, to accentuate the contrasts between China and the UK, the show’s producers might have edited out scenes that didn’t conform with stereotypical views of British students as undisciplined slouches or Chinese teachers as mechanical disciplinarians.
I’m not playing down the differences in teaching styles, which are a reflection of local needs within distinct cultures. But it may be unrealistic to expect a fair discussion in a reality show.
In China and Britain alike, there seems to be a shared perception that local schools lack qualified, capable teachers. Most teachers no longer talk much about the need to inspire children — let alone about arming them with the moral judgment needed to live properly and responsibly.
Education today is essentially a response to the immediate dictates of the market — with the end goal for students being a job, and a steady paycheck.
In her book “Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone),” former journalist and co-founder of the Chalkbeat news organization Elizabeth Green debunks the myth of the naturally capable teacher. As Green claims, teaching is a skill that anyone can learn and excel at with practice. But great teachers still have to work hard to capture students’ attention and encourage class participation.
Student participation
“What was the best way to show you really understood a subject, if not to teach it? And what was the best way to use research to improve education, if not to study teaching?” she writes.
Green cites examples to illustrate how great teachers strive to connect with their students and inspire them to feel excited by learning.
Rather than focusing on a few brilliant students, inspiring teachers should focus on and respect all students, including those who don’t excel at first.
In one case, a fifth-grade teacher at a school in Michigan wrote a problem on the board and Richard, a new student, volunteered to answer. Richard answered incorrectly.
Instead of discouraging him by calling on another student who probably had the correct answer, she asked if anyone else reached the same answer. When Richard explained his answer, she was glad to see that, at least, he was thinking mathematically.
Green argues that good teachers should also push their students to think on their own and come up with their own answers.
At another school in Los Angeles, students debated whether the female narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is literally dead or metaphorically so.
Later, the students were prompted to write literal and interpretive questions, discuss them with classmates, get feedback and present their answers. As John Dewey once observed, “a problem well put is half solved. Without a problem, there is blind groping in the dark.”
“It was important that every child stay ‘on task,’ but calling on students at random — the best way to keep them focused — was not always the best path to getting a good discussion going,” the author observes.
International comparisons can be revealing, though they must be interpreted in reference to their specific context.
In one study mentioned in Green’s book, professor James Stigler and his colleague from University of Chicago found that 73 percent of Japanese six-year-olds scored higher on a test than the average American child. By age 10, 92 percent of Japanese children scored higher. It was explained that cultural factors, including how kids spend their time at school and at home, played a role in these results.
In a separate study, Stigler concluded that American teachers taught in a vacuum, while Japanese teachers are more collegial, concluding that despite an obsession with standards at that time, US education was failing.
More than story time
Some entrepreneurs including Doug Lemov founded charter schools out of frustration with US education. They started the Academy of the Pacific Rim in Boston, founded on the principal that students need to learn discipline as well as how to pay attention, obey instructions and follow through. On the first day of school, several of the academy’s students were sent home for not wearing a belt, part of the school’s uniform.
An appreciation for discipline and order can be positive. As we can see from the Stigler study, it leads to better academic results. Or, as Green writes, “teaching was more than story time on the rug. It was the highest form of knowing.”
In the end though, discipline is only a superficial feature of education. It should be a means to achieve something higher. Questions like how to conduct oneself in a morally-upright, responsible way in society.
For education to be truly motivational, it is imperative to read a higher purpose and meaning into it.
Be reminded that Confucius was reverenced very differently from the way a good teacher is esteemed today.
The great teacher taught and exemplified the principles of proper conduct in all spheres of social life in reference to nature and destiny of humankind.
Similarly, Isaac Newton conducted his scientific inquiry under very different circumstances from today’s scientists, inspired as he was by a desire to glorify the works of God, rather than to have papers published and get a tenure.
It needs little imagination to observe that most teaching lacks depth and fails to deliver what is ultimately needed.
For education to be truly inspiring, it should go beyond the dictates of the markets and the shallow needs of consumer satisfaction.
Rather than merely adapting to trends in society, a worthwhile education should seek to make the world better.
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