In our last few days together, I want to try to highlight a few points and G-Town reminds me of the early days of our course.

G-Town Talks » Blog Archive » Spit It Out or Think and Defend?
We have a recurring theme here in G-Town surrounding our students and academic achievement. As our teachers analyze data and discuss new literacy strategies, I keep hearing the same thing. Our students don’t want to think.

This is an echoing theme from back in our early days here — the idea that we should be thinking like learners and not thinking like students. The challenge for you was to let go of the preconceived notions of course and grade. We had to work together so you would learn to trust that I’d not punish you for thinking. This was very hard from some. I’m still getting questions about what I’m “looking for” in terms of assignment.

Personally, I’m convinced that the attitude is drilled into us very early. “This color is RED.” “Three times nine is twenty-seven.” “The SATs are important!”

For some reason we seem to think that kids need concrete answers. They need to be told stuff and they need to be told what’s important stuff. After years of indoctrination, it should come as no surprise that kids in school don’t want to think. They’ve been trained from the earliest days that thinking is counter-productive. Tests are bubble-sheets and abiguity isn’t allowed. We teach in a world of “right answers” and lose sight of the reality that the world is made of shades of gray. In school, the questions always have a right answer. One right answer. The answer that the teacher will give us good grades for. Thinking is restricted to trying to solve the riddle of what the teacher wants.

In this class, we’ve broken that mold. You all have come a long way from the early days. I told you what I wanted you to do in fairly ambiguous terms and you weren’t comfortable because you didn’t know if you were “doing it right.” But in the end, you realized that “doing it” was more important than “right” and you were, eventually, able to get into learning for learning’s sake. In return, I didn’t grade you on giving me the answers I wanted. I graded you on your willingness to think and do. I didn’t grade your answers, or your questions. I graded your participation in the conversations. I graded your willingness to stake out a position and defend it. Even positions I didn’t agree with — or even thought were wrong.

Because there are no universal answers. Thinking is the lesson and only the subject changes as we move from domain to domain.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 12:45 am and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.