“Democracy” in ELA: What do 8th graders have to say?

 

I took this picture on the beach of Gulf Shores, Alabama as I waded in and out of the waves trying to get nice pic.  We had just driven south from Chicago through towns displaying the Confederate flag, and, in light of recent Supreme Court rulings, the waves made me think about how democracy is a lot like those waves: ever-changing — sometimes powerful, sometimes calm, beautiful and yet capable of great trauma.

Ethical teaching practices in ELA is, in my view, anchored in democratic principles.  I think , however, that schools tend to see democracy as one dimensional and static, as something we’ve already achieved. If we can illuminate the hidden dimensions of democracy and see it as dynamic and capable of change, we might get closer to what  “ought” to be happening in classrooms: preparing students to make our world more sustainable, more peaceful, and more just. I know that ELA teachers are just the right people for this job.

One way of thinking about democracy is to say that it is already in place. We have voting, a market economy, property rights, free education, and we value meritocracy (e.g., that if you work hard, you can succeed). However, there is a darker dimension to this, one that has made it financially impossible for an average citizen to run for office, one that has halted class mobility, increased poverty, and perpetuated racial segregation in our towns and schools. What I want to call attention to is this dimension of democracy, this darker side lurking and even undermining the potential of schools to trouble the status quo and promote a more just, equal, and peaceful society.

Discourse of Measurement

I became a teacher in 2004, one year after No Child Left Behind was implemented. (See my post on my first year teaching.) Its social force was in full effect to promote equality in education. Here is a list of phrases and ideas that drove education and sort of high-jacked (harsh?) the way we talked about our love of reading and writing with students (perhaps you can add others):

• Standards based education reform
• Measurable goals
• Assessments in basic skills
• Standardized test
• Adequate yearly progress
• Data-driven instruction
• Scientifically based research practices
• Test prep

This language shifted the discourse in the ELA classroom from talk about books, stories, and writing to talk about goals, objectives, and scores, i.e., a discourse of measurement. The rhetoric of education reform was such that “good” teaching meant that we had measurable objectives for improved achievement, and if schools “failed,” then schools (and teachers)  would be labeled and targeted for increased accountability. The rhetoric was such that no child would be left behind and that this reform was in line with our democratic values of equity and justice, but that was just rhetoric.

My school district is K-8. As an eighth grade teacher, I am the last English teacher our students have before going on to high school, and I have seen the result of eight years of learning English with a measurement discourse. Eight years of measurement, accountability, and AYP. The eighth grade students in my English class last year spent all their schooling years in this discourse of measurement. With a population of about 76 students, 68 percent are low income, and this is in a suburb of Chicago. My school did not make AYP in 2005, 2008, 2012, nor 2013. In fact, last year 50% of the students did not meet or exceed on the state test.

These numbers weigh on our administrators; numbers cause waves of panic in the halls of our schools and create a tide that pulls down all the good work our teachers do. But after a decade of this measurement talk, we also have increasing numbers of students hospitalized for various manifestations of depression. Now, failing test scores are one thing, but the increasing disengagement with life is even more concerning. What are we teaching about education to our students?

What has NCLB taught students to believe about ELA and education? 

During the first month of the school year, I invite my students to take an informal survey on Google forms  to get a sense of their beliefs about reading, writing, school, and just being a student.  In addition, I ask them about what it means to be a citizen (a word we throw around a lot but is tough to define), what they think the world needs, and what they want to learn in school.  The response boxes were left open to invite narrative responses. Here are results from last year’s survey.

Survey Results

On the question of why we read, some common responses included the following: to learn vocabulary, to read faster, to learn spelling, to apply for a job, to work on grammar, for comprehension, to speak and read fluently, and to explore different genres.  One student wrote: “…to learn how to read certain materials that will later turn into techniques that we will need later in life. For example, to apply for a job or to help our future kids with their homework.”

On the question of writing, the responses were mostly skill-based, and the words “proper” and “correctly” came up most frequently. Here is one representative excerpt: “Writing class is important because for every job you apply to you will need to write. Any paperwork you fill out you will need to know how  to spell and how to put words into sentences correctly.”

As for what makes a good student, the words that came up in their responses were homework, good grades, on time, pay attention, best work, doesn’t get in trouble.  One student wrote: “If one student wants to apply to a certain college, they will look at his or her grades and compare those grades to another student and see which one was more involved and wasn’t lazy and actually put in the effort to get good grades.”

On the question of education,  “success,”“future,” and “knowledge” came up a few times, but mostly, students talked about education helping them prepare for jobs. One student said, “With all the advanced jobs in engineering, doctors, business people and etc., children need to slowly learn the education skills and more advanced skills learned in college to be able to qualify for the specific job.”

After looking at these three categories, it seemed to me that students were seeing the work they had done in K-7 (this survey was given at the start of eighth grade) as preparing them to get good grades, go to college, and get jobs (for the most part). Are these responses what you expected? Is this what we want students to think and believe about ELA and education? Before I respond, let’s look at some other responses.

So when they got to questions about citizenship, the language was a little different. The words that came up most frequently were these: volunteering, helping, community, contributing, being a member. And then some students used language of belonging:  living in a place, having papers, and legally belonging. This language of belonging is not surprising because so many of the students in our school were not born in the U.S. and are not “citizens” in the legal sense.

Looking at the survey results, the way these students talked about reading, writing, and grades in school seems to be related to democracy in the sense of the market and meritocracy whereas with citizenship they talked about something more qualitative, more communal.

I added a question about what sort of hopes students had for their world in order to see if I could get a sense of what ideas or actions they thought we “ought” to be working toward. Here there was dramatic shift in discourse, and they had a lot more to say:

I don’t know what the world needs, but I do know the problems are racism, power, and money.

We need love. Lots and lots of love, understanding , giving, care, and all that sappy crap. We need to bring the peace everyone makes fun of because they think it’s not real and too hipster.

I don’t honestly see the world joining together to become one big continent anytime soon so the best we can do is to not interfere with each other’s problems at all unless of course it effects us and otherwise keep our trade/industry business going as it was.

Finally, here is what students wrote when I asked them what they wanted to learn this year: “Everything”;” …the world around us and how little by little we can help make it a better place.”; “We should learn about psychology.”; “We should not be reviewing how to throw a ball in gym.”; “…how to be great in life.”; “about the world and what has happened in the past and what is really happening in the world.”

It seems to me that when talking about education and ELA students were using the discourse of measurement from NCLB – skills and achievement. Maybe they were writing what they thought I wanted to hear. I can’t be sure, but their responses about education (about getting a job) seem disconnected from their concerns about the world.

This survey does not attempt to indicate any sort of causality necessarily, and it does not account for the vastness of teachers and even students’ home environments. I simply wanted to know how students talked about my subject and what they thought they would be doing in my class 80 minutes a day for 170 days together. When I think about the rhetoric students are espousing here, I can’t help but be troubled by it.

What do we want students to say about their ELA education? 

First, it is disheartening for me, as an ELA teacher (and teacher of other teachers) to read what these twelve and thirteen year olds think about our discipline. I worry about how they’ve come to understand the purpose of reading, of writing, and what it means to be a “good” student. Very few (though there are some) pre-service and in-service teachers say they want to teach English so that their students can write a resume or learn vocabulary, right? I want students to discover the power of literature, to develop empathy, to use writing to make sense of the world, to create, to connect, to understand? What do you want your students to say and believe about ELA?

Second, looking at the context in which students are learning and living,  I have to consider the discrepancy between what the students say they are learning and preparing for and what is actually awaiting them.  Remember, 70% are low income, and for most, this is generational poverty rather than the result of the economic downturn.  So, what sort of world are these students entering? What will be their place in that world? If we look at the numbers coming out of this rhetoric of schooling — this message that skills-based instruction, testing, and accountability leads to achievement—we see nothing short of failure. The test scores, the joblessness, the poverty, the hospitalizations tell a different story. The democracy schools espouse is not the democracy they live, and kids are being left behind.

This narrative that education reform is spinning is full of gaps and flawed logic.  I think students know this, which might be why test scores are down and there is a lack of engagement with the possibility of reading and writing (at least in my school). Some students, I think, are being quite subversive (i.e., not taking high stake tests seriously, defying school rules), which can be infuriating, but it is also sort of beautiful.  Those students who click through the MAP test or day dream during the Common Core — they know. They know numbers don’t define them. They won’t write for the state. In spite of all the good work teachers do to know their students, develop engaging lessons, and show they care,  I think many students in are skeptical of schooling, which is hopeful but not necessarily healthy unless they are invited to use that skepticism for critical awareness or intelligent social action.

What am I working up to here? This year schools rolled out a new reform era:the Common Core Standards with PARCC and Smart Balance tests, too. This is not to say that NCLB is gone. In fact, many schools are still required to offer school choice for not making AYP. Nevertheless, the students who enter kindergarten this year will be at the beginning of another (re)form of schools (albeit one with the same market-driven meritocracy). What will be the outcome eight years from now? What will we hear the voices of future eighth graders say after their Common Core-driven schooling (if CCSS makes it that long). And as schools are thinking about curricula, lesson plans, and the sort of habits of mind they will purport, I am wondering what teachers can do to change these survey results (and if they even want to).

In my view, what is missing from the national reform movement, from these standards,  and from any discussions across the U.S.  in this first year of implementing these new standards is any discussion of democracy.

Redefining Democracy and Thus the Role of the ELA Teacher

According to John Dewey, the sort of democracy our world needs is not in place. It is a thought system that has yet to arrive because it is ever-changing. Dewey wrote that “the greatest mistake we can make about democracy is to conceive of it as something fixed…democracy, in order to live must change and move.”

How can ELA teachers mediate the policies that are narrowing the potential of our citizenry and  put “democracy,” a more dynamic democracy, back into the curriculum? I think we have to illuminate the shades of democracy within our classrooms and teach students to make waves, to move democracy. John Dewey writes:

Only as schools provide an understanding of the movement and direction of the social forces and an understanding of the social needs and the resources that may be used to satisfy them will they meet the challenge of democracy.

Education, in my view,  is about being skeptical of democracy, for we have seen the darker side. We have seen the consequences of inequality and social exclusion in hate crimes and genocide.

Our greatest hope for a just society is our students, our youngest citizens, but they are not going to get to understanding of social needs if they think education is about knowledge and skill accumulation.

Re-making the ELA Classroom

Who better than English teachers to make visible this complex narrative of democracy and to teach about social forces? This is what we do. This is what literature is. This is what writing does. We read into the gaps of a narrative and call attention to flaws in logic. We select and share stories and poetry that illuminate the human condition. We analyze how a text works on its readers and advances an idea. And we write for all the same reasons. We can lead this new era of reform.

Our students want school to be about something more that achievement. They want to know about the world and be able to “little by little help make it better.” Such is the remaking of education so that we can see our students as citizens of the world rather than merely job seekers. 

I will not present to you a list of steps or guidelines to re-imagine the English classroom because I am not sure how I want students’ answer the question: What is the purpose of English?  But I do know that I want it to be something more than vocabulary and resume writing.

Next week, I will post some ideas I’ve tried, but I would like to hear from you. How do you work to encourage students to talk about ELA in more qualitative terms and to think about how reading and writing might enlighten the darker dimensions of democracy? What do you think about teaching students to be skeptical of “democracy” or, as one student wrote, to teach how to love? Is the ELA classroom a place to teach students to make waves in their education?