What are English teachers for?

[Michael Umphrey]

If public education doesn't succeed at pulling us into a common world, it fails altogether, I think.

If that's right, it appears to me that public education really is failing altogether and the vision of common schools is just part of an archaic philosophy, as inapplicable in the modern, urban, global world as rules about providing the teacherage with split wood.

I rarely hear talk about that common world. Mostly I hear about diversity and individual career success.

At present, each student charts a path toward individual career success, using counselors and pretty brochures listing courses by career cluster. The goal is to get the right set of skills installed, or at least credentials attesting to that installation, as each student moves on his solitary way toward his niche in the economy, which sends back to the schools projections about its needs so school employees can redesign courses to stay in sync.

Meanwhile, about half the kids from some populations drop out. Study after study indicates that levels of loneliness and unhappiness among the general population keep going up, even as incomes are rising. Increasing pressure is put on schools both to reduce the drop out rate and to increase the standardized test scores of those who remain.

Teachers complain of student disengagement, and they are directed to make their course work more relevant, which many insist on defining as more connected to employment. Teachers work harder, add meetings to their schedule, attend endless inservice sessions to get retrofitted to the newest change, try to comply with new directives to increase their communication with parents, to individualize instruction more, to incorporate more technology, but it's never enough. Programs to address the lengthening list of named problems proliferate, each generating more memos and more meetings. The problems provide rationale for increasing centralization, so more and more directives come from afar, limiting how people can respond to local events or individual needs. Governance becomes more vague, more rigid, more bizarre.

Students continue dropping out. Teacher retention remains an issue. Administrative turnover remains high. The educational publishing and guru industry flood the market with fixes that fail. Busy practitioners exchange the titles of more and more books, the stack beside their cluttered desks getting taller. They set their alarm clocks a half hour earlier.

Every discussion about what to do quickly diverges into a thousand unfinished threads, with someone always praising the diversity of the responses. Half of what is said is misunderstood by half of the participants, and most of the rest have stopped listening. Nothing very real can be planned. Nothing very big can be changed. It's enough to keep responding to the rising flood of tasks.

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I quit serving that world and those who manage it a long time ago. I know I'm not the only one.

As far as I've been able to tell, they have little to teach. At heart they are controllers, which is the opposite of teachers. Teachers work by making the truth clear, and then leaving people free to choose, I think. Controllers work by writing policies and standards and moving the decisions away from home.

Part of leaving that world, I think, is to believe that the economy is no god and that education's first mission cannot be to serve it.

Economics has no values of its own. It's simply the study of how best to allocate scarce resources that have alternative uses. The large corporations do have values, but mostly they understand their mission as a matter of maximizing profit. Such organizations need to be governed by citizens devoted to more humane values, because people who will do what money requires end by devouring everything, including themselves.

Cultivating those more humane values should be a core mission of public education. This only makes sense if some values are better than others--if, for example, justice is better than injustice, truth is better than lies, kindness is better than cruelty, and peace is better than war. A handful of core texts that clarify such values need to be re-read every generation, because there are always people in powerful places who do not particularly want to be governed by such values, who want to confuse every issue or lead people to believe morality is just a private matter.

In that way, money rules the public realm.

I believe that the most important things to learn about the peoples of the earth, right now, are not how we are diverse so much as what we have in common. We need to celebrate our common humanity, our kinship with each other. Isn't it fascinating that an ancient Greek from a pagan culture more than 2,000 years ago wrote what remains the book on education?

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I'm pretty confident that the world is not going to end. I'm also pretty confident that those who flourish in the future will be groups who have a strong understanding of what they mean by "we"--who are related to each other by bonds of understanding somewhat stronger than commitments to employers, who have a sense of shared meaning and shared destiny, who gather not just to use each other for professional advancement but because the greatest joys in life are found in shared work, in modern versions of neighbors raising a barn for a neighbor, before resting and chatting over the potluck dinner.

To them, I don't think race will matter or be much discussed. I don't think differing sized bank accounts will seem important--some people like to manage large projects while others would rather do the shift and come home. I don't think judgments about who is more smart or less smart will be much thought about.

And those people--the ones who will flourish--will teach their children their values, and how to live and work together for reasons quite different than maximizing profit. My suspicion is that they won't send their children to schools such as the ones we are now building.

[Michael Umphrey]

Thanks for posting that, Meredith. It's pretty close to how I see things, as far as it goes.

I think the humanities may become a luxury for the wealthy at college, which would make me feel a solid introduction at high school would become even more important. However, my sense is that we no longer have a significant number of teachers who think those ideals are important. They have become reading teachers and servants of power.

[Meredith S]

My never-ending school-related to do list and an overwhelmed feeling prevents me from posting here as much as I'd like :( However, I did think this article in the NY Times today about the need of place of the humanities in an economic downturn (catastrophe?) was interesting.

[Michael Umphrey]

Well said, Lydia.

Things are working themselves out, though it's hard to see just how. For me, the main thing is to keep getting more clear in my own mind about what I really do love. I think courage follows such clarity, and candor, and maybe even active voice.

My original faith in education was all wrapped up with freedom. Clarity of thinking would lead to freedom from folly, freedom from error, freedom from false gods, freedom from deception. That faith has never let me down, and it gets more clear as I see more.

It's good to "meet" you.

[Lydia Nolan]

"Cultivating those more humane values should be a core mission of public education. This only makes sense if some values are better than others--if, for example, justice is better than injustice, truth is better than lies, kindness is better than cruelty, and peace is better than war. A handful of core texts that clarify such values need to be re-read every generation, because there are always people in powerful places who do not particularly want to be governed by such values, who want to confuse every issue or lead people to believe morality is just a private matter." -Michael Umphrey

"I honestly don't know what to think about literature today. Who can imagine a human world without literature? And yet, I think some of what is done in English classrooms with literature does more harm than good--might be more accurately described as corrupting young people rather than educating them. How often that is the case, I certainly can't say and neither can anyone else. And as someone is sure to ask, "who's to judge?"" Michael Umphrey

I took these two quotes, Michael, just to make an initial comment; because there were so many others of those who commented in response to yours, that I wished also to comment upon. But, I have to start somewhere, and so, since you began this discussion, I will start with you (or pardon: I will start with the initial discussion of this group--passive voice.) I want to add observations, really, and then my "humble pt. of view."

I am probably older than most here, though I do not have the experience with teaching as most of you do. In that way--teaching--I am a babe. But I do have one thing: I have a lot of life experience, and I do remember the changing of the guard in the school system; a few times over, actually. For example, I remember when phonics changed to whole word reading, supposedly for the kids' sake. I have three children: one whole word taught; two phonetics taught; I have my observations on that. The two phonetics taught are excellent spellers, and understand words better in meaning. The one whole word taught reads fast, is a terrible speller, and does not seem to have as much insight, albeit he has gotten THAT from his mom.

I remember when writing (and reading) was direct in the active voice, and when in school the English departments decided that we must STOP using directness for the sake of political correctness (I notice most here use that passive voice, as most of the discussion is actually more judgmental than most of you may realize), then students (me) got low graded if they used direct/active voice. All these changes in English language, or reading/writing conventions affect the lives of people. We trusted those English teachers....why, I was even inspired by one (who taught Literature no less) that I decided after having children, growing older, etc., to be an English teacher.

What I observe in this forum is a lot of discontent, though none of it is direct, or pointed, for that would be evidence of anyone's actual discontent....This is exactly what I've seen always....rhetoric, and plenty of it; words without power, only nostalgia and melancholy...and putting the fear of everyone, or 'distrust' in not knowing who is really who...

I am really trying to be hopeful of my joining the ranks of the "Literature"-based teacher, but I never want to be a teacher for some of those reasons pointed out. Rather, Michael, your first quote "those more humane values should be a core mission of public education" and part B of it: "A handful of core texts that clarify such values need to be re-read every generation, because there are always people in powerful places who do not particularly want to be governed by such values, who want to confuse every issue or lead people to believe morality is just a private matter." THESE reasons are why I decided to become a teacher. I saw the oncoming "mousetrap" and the Cat waiting to devour each generation, and one of those groups in powerful places were the education system, and many of the teachers in it. They saw the "power" of education as a way to "initiate" young minds into their own agendas, camps, etc., and so forth....and they saw $.

I saw many teachers who got the paycheck and not the point of their significance to that young mind. I saw many teachers living for themselves without taking responsibility for what they were "modeling" to the students. I did not want to be one of those. Sometimes, it would be terribly disheartening. Some teachers can sometimes be quite arrogant, though, so you don't tell them anything they don't want to see about themselves.

I' ve been subbing since 1999. I haven't made that many teacher friends. One of the reasons is exactly because of the conversations like this discussion: you can never quite tell from which camp any of them are; what they are saying between the lines; whether or not they even like anyone, or if they distrust everyone that is not like them.

So I stay in my quiet little corner, and try not to make waves. Was that what teachers planned to happen when they became teachers? I thought teachers wanted to become teachers for the same reason I did: to instill the good (yes, and who's good, of course ONE will ask), to teach the young how to be kind, loving, caring, help others, and so forth. I thought this could be done through Literature because from ancient times to today, we can view all the activities of humans and human life, as they interact, as they treat their children and their animals, and see the difference between good and evil; kindness and cruelty, war and peace....love and hate.

I am trying very hard not to lose hope in this newly found profession I've chosen (I'm a lot of money into the hole for it to boot!) I haven't even gotten that 'cushy' job that I can ponder upon. But this aura of hopelessness, melancholy, and distrust makes me feel that same sadness as when I ate lunch in the lunchroom with those teachers who would not sit with the substitutes. I hope I can be direct here, without fearing retaliation from "powerful" educators. These are my observations, and I disclaim that any of these things are true, but only my evaluation of them, thus my pt. of view.

Lydia Nolan

[Michael Umphrey]

I think there is a war on, so the fight against darkness goes on, though fighting would not be my first choice. I also like to keep it simple. My experience suggests that doing things that work is actually simpler and more fun than the arduous things we tend to do instead.

I honestly don't know what to think about literature today. Who can imagine a human world without literature? And yet, I think some of what is done in English classrooms with literature does more harm than good--might be more accurately described as corrupting young people rather than educating them. How often that is the case, I certainly can't say and neither can anyone else. And as someone is sure to ask, "who's to judge?"

And so we will continue on, for a while, without judgment.

I just got back from a conference with a lot of good people working hard at doing good things, and I'm confident that, as Desmond Tutu put it, "We live in a moral universe, and righteousness will prevail." At a less cosmic level, I'm not so certain about schools as we know them or the profession of teaching literature.

[Jack Ward]

"Teachers work by making the truth clear, and then leaving people free to choose"
I hope you don't mind that I've kept this in my personal database of quotes (referencing your name of course!)

I am very grateful, looking down at the responses, that I for one will always fight against the darkness. Against the Firemen, Big Brother, and what ever great big "mindthink" is currently out there.
I've been controversial. I don't think you're doing an honest job as an English Teacher if you don't draw out controversy. Draw out strong emotional responses from your students, if only some of the time.

I'm put on this earth to do my part to pass whatever little knowledge and hopefully wisdom along.
For my part, it is equally important that I keep learning and growing so that my little patch in the quilt of existence becomes the "prettiest" I can make it.
J

[Karen LaBonte]

Michael, I just returned from a class where we've been looking at the history of the field (English Ed.) Your post reminds me of some of our discussions. While not one of the talented educators in that room has given up on education, many agree that schooling as it currently exists may be something we have to abandon. I think our field also faces an underlying question, one that's bedeviled us since forever: what is English for? It's been interesting to read Applebee, Mayher, Meyers on the subject. Ultimately though, I like to keep it simple. I think I'll go with you & Sonia Nieto and say that teaching, all human relating, is ultimately about love.

[Kim McCollum-Clark]

Michael, you know how to cut to the heart, and I mean that in both literal and figurative ways. Or perhaps I mean personal and professional ways. Thanks for this post, and the many others I have read of yours in the community.

[Dan Holden]

I didn't me to come off as so rude. I want to celebrate humanity for what it is with all of its greatness and failings. We can't help who we are, and it is depressing to sit around and try to change things that have never changed.

With that said, I still try to let my students know about the alternatives. I work in an alternative school and I am often faced with a future that seems bleak. So I tend to blend my hope with a little pessimism. It probably comes from reading Dawkins and Pinker too much. I think that some of my students really don't know a different way to act based on the family and environment that they were raised in, and for those students I present a choice.

However other students are not going to change no matter how hard I hit my head against the wall. In order to prevent brain trauma for the students and myself I have a tendency to detach. Because of Darwinism I can take comfort in the fact that we will survive.

As proof I offer

The Great and Bountiful Human Empire. .

In case my foray into HTML does not work here is the link:

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Fourth_Great_and_Bountiful_Human_Empire

[Patricia Lee]

Enter Without So Much as Knocking by Bruce Dawe
Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.


Blink, blink. HOSPITAL. SILENCE.
Ten days old, carried in the front door in his
mother's arms, first thing he heard was
Bobby Dazzler on Channel 7:
Hello, hello hello all you lucky people and he
really was lucky because it didn't mean a thing
to him then...
A year or two to settle in and
get acquainted with the set-up; like every other
well-equipped smoothly-run household, his included
one economy-size Mum, one Anthony Squires-
Coolstream-Summerweight Dad, along with two other kids
straight off the Junior Department rack.

When Mom won the
Luck's-A-Fortch Tricky-Tune Quiz she took him shopping
in the good-as-new station-wagon (£ 495 dep. at Reno's).
Beep, beep. WALK. DON'T WALK. TURN
LEFT. NO PARKING. WAIT HERE. NO
SMOKING. KEEP CLEAR/OUT/OFF GRASS. NO
BREATHING EXCEPT BY ORDER. BEWARE OF
THIS. WATCH OUT FOR THAT. My God (beep)
the congestion here just gets (beep)
worse every day, now what the (beep beep) does
that idiot think he's doing (beep beep and BEEP).

However, what he enjoyed most of all was when they
went to the late show at the local drive-in, on a clear night
and he could see (beyond the fifty-foot screen where
giant faces forever snarled screamed or make
incomprehensible and monstrous love) a pure
unadulterated fringe of sky, littered with stars
no-one had got around to fixing up yet: he'd watch them
circling about in luminous groups like kids at the circus
who never go quite close enough to the elephant to get kicked.

Anyway, pretty soon he was old enough to be
realistic like every other godless
money-hungry back-stabbing miserable
so-and-so, and then it was goodbye stars and the soft
cry in the corner when no-one was looking because
I'm telling you straight, Jim, it's Number One every time
for this chicken, hit wherever you see a head and
kick whoever's down, well thanks for a lovely
evening Clare, it's good to get away from it all
once in a while, I mean it's a real battle all the way
and a man can't help but feel a little soiled, himself,
at times, you know what I mean?

Now take it easy
on those curves, Alice, for God's sake,
I've had enough for one night, with that Clare Jessup,
hey, ease up, will you, watch it --

Probity & Sons, Morticians,
did a really first-class job on his face
(everyone was very pleased) even adding a
healthy tan he'd never had, living, gave him back for keeps
the old automatic smile with nothing behind it,
winding the whole show up with a
nice ride out to the underground metropolis
permanent residentials, no parking tickets, no taximeters
ticking, no Bobby Dazzlers here, no down payments,
nobody grieving over halitosis
flat feet shrinking gums falling hair.

Six feet down nobody interested.

Blink, blink. CEMETERY. Silence.

Epigraph: Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.


This is my best comment on what you are asking Michael. The poem is meant to be absorbed but essentially it is saying how commercialism has stripped away individuality and connection to nature. Dawe is an Australian poet. I suspect, Michael that your golden age of Amish barn raising together is now only seen in times of tribulation such as the floods and bushfires current here or in the cyclone devastation of New Orleans where people had to pull together for the common good and for survival.
I completely agree with the time wasting 'talking the talk' of modern education pedagogy ie quality teaching, engagement etc as espoused by the latest gurus who are in reality only renaming practices we already use in more subtle ways and have for many years.
cheers