Technology in the Classroom Post 4 -- but Question 8

I just watched the short films about technology, on Youtube. I write about it now in a blog. The television is on in the background, MSNBC is interviewing an author who wrote a book called Taking On the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era. I looked that up on Amazon.com just now, and dragged and dropped the title into this blog window.

Two things on my mind right now: Last week I substituted for an Eighth Grade Spanish class. More than half the class completed the assignment using the Spanish-English Translation Application on their iphones or cellphones. When I was there age, the PC-XT was the state-of-the-art -- it was a glorified typewriter.

I edited this blog, with cuts and pastes, and misspelling are all underlined in red.

"O brave new world, That has such people in't!" -- (I looked up that quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest with a Google search, which refered me to a Wikipedia article. I know Aldous Huxley used the term expressed by Miranda in wonder as the title of his book to refer to the miraculous and terrifying world brought to us by technology. -- I confirmed that with Google as well).

And I looked up this term on Dictionary.com (a program used extensively in a Seventh grade English class I recently substituted for) -- Also copied and pasted into the blog post:


Lud·dite

(lŭd'īt) n. Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment. One who opposes technical or technological change.

This is the world we live in.

I am moving this post up out of the assigned order, because, at this point, I should have an overarching theme to this blog. I think the subject of technology, and the writings of James Paul Gee, and the "iLife" article by Dana Wilbur, are really exciting and define the theme I would like this blog to have.

It is clear from these articles that in many important respects, students are not getting left behind, teachers and schools are. Gee and Wilbur understand the world in which students live. It is a world of technology, where the internet and its many tools put information at our fingertips, and allow students to communicate and express creativity in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. Even writing is no longer linear, it is three dimensional and fluid, as the "The Machine is us/ing us" video illustrates.

I defined Luddite above, because that is what teachers are in danger of becoming if they close their minds to these tools of technology. There is nothing to fear by these tools, in fact, the ability of adolescents and children to master these tools is uplifting and heartening to this future teacher. As Gee points out, video games are difficult, challenging, complex, and require learning esoteric and detailed language and skills -- But our students willingly learn all these things, for fun! There is a lot to learn from these games.

It seems that students are living in the twenty-first century, readily learning the skills necessary to live in a future we cannot even imagine. But schools are stuck in the past, using techniques and teaching skills to prepare students for a world that is long gone. Our students are using computers before they can walk, but we are still teaching them to use slide-rules. It is not students who are at risk, it is schools that are in danger of becoming obsolete.

This is my theme, technology and the way it has effected teaching. Technology is our way of reaching students, motivating them, and it represents the skills they need. We will continue to teach the core subjects of of Social Studies, English, Math, Science, but all must be taught with an understanding of the tools at our students disposal, and the demands the future will place on our students. I will try to relate these concepts to the other topics going forward.

I will end this post with a short clip from the TV show South Park, which I think illustrates the potential gulf of technological knowledge between teachers and students, if we are not more willing to adapt.

Post 2 -- Trilingualism and multiple literacies

This post will discuss the the idea of "trilingualism" and "multiple literacies", specifically as these are defined by Judith Baker and Michael Stubbs. Personally, I like these ideas because they are useful and specific. It is easily defined what we mean by these concepts and they can be applied to everyday teaching.

First, Trilingualism, refers to the idea that there are three forms of the English language that Americans must learn to be fully literate:

"'Home' -- English or dialect, which most students learn at home, and recent immigrants often learn from peers, and which for the first and second generation immigrants may be a combination of English and their mother language." (Baker).

Important to understand with the home dialect, is that it is not the mother language itself, but the way in which recent immigrants, who were speakers of some other language, speak English, usually among their families and neighborhoods. This might be called "Pidgin-English" or "Broken-English", but I would discourage the use of such terms, because they imply that this English is improper, a result of poor English language skills, or poor education. That is not the case.

Such discussions are necessary in this country because we are a multi-ethnic society. English must be understood as a living, vital, and adaptive language. "Home" English represents one way in which recent immigrants have adapted English to their own use, using it in a way that has meaning for them.

"'formal' or academic English, which is learned by many in school, from reading, and from the media, although it may also be learned in well-educated families." (Baker).

Formal English could be understood as trade language, or a common language, in which we can better communicate across cultures. It is universal, but only in the arbitrary sense of it having been imposed by those in power. Understanding this English dialect allows a student to better communicate outside of his family or community.

"'Professional' English, the particular language of one's profession, which is mostly learned in college or on the job." (Baker).

We are mostly concerned with the first two, and the connection between those two is important, because we must avoid the false choice between the two. Students should not give up home English to learn Formal English. Teachers can build on Home English to teach Formal English.

The next point ties with the ideas of Michael Stubbs. Stubbs discusses the attitudes towards language. Stubbs cites studies that a "speaker's language is often a major influence on our impression of his or her personality." (Stubbs, 67). Furthermore, "teachers evaluate pupils academically on the basis of their voices, and also their physical appearance, even when they have available relevant academic work on which to form their judgments." (Stubbs, 67).

Tying this to Baker's trilingualism, Stubbs is stressing that we should not devalue a students home dialect. The home dialect serves the people who speak it. There is no such thing, as Stubbs tells us, of a Primative Language, with undeveloped grammatical rules and minimum vocabulary. Every language serves the people who speak it, or they would not speak it.

I think that the main points to take away from these articles is that we all use multiple dialects, (Trilingualism) and it is natural to code shift between them. All language and dialect is vital, living, and a part of those who speak it, and serves the people who speak it. We cannot ask students to sacrifice their home dialect to learn formal english. It is important to teach them formal english, but the best method is to build on the home dialect, while respecting and honoring the home dialect.

I will end with a quote from a work that I read for another class. It is about slavery, but I think it touches nicely on the dangers of robbing any people of their home language:

"To be forced to employ the words of another is beyond oppression as such. It represents more than a socioeconomic inversion. It goes beyond the physical. It is a violation of my psychic space, an intrusion into the deepest recesses of my being. To completely acquiesce is nearly impossible, for it would mean the total collapse of the personality. I may therefore learn a few words, and may even speak them, but I will speak them in my own way, in my own cadence, and my own meanings. And I will share this attitude with my children and my children's children. I will subvert this language." (Gomez, Exchanging our Country Marks).

1 -- E.D. Hirsch

E.D. Hirsch Jr, in the excerpt from the list "What Literate Americans Know," (audaciously) attempted to compile an exhaustive list of what is worth knowing. My first task is to compose a post on what is worth knowing, from my own view.

I started out attempting to create a Hirsch-style list of all that is worth knowing for the field of History. I spent some time outlining the different historical period, then looking over wikipedia to get a list of terms, people, events, locations, technology, theories, groups, etc., etc. etc., that was forth knowing. It was all overwhelming. I tailored the list to just American history and started again. I started with something I thought I knew a lot about -- the American Civil War. It was easy enough to create a list of major battles (Gettysburg, Antietam, Vicksburg), and the major generals (Lee, Grant, Sherman, Jackson), a few important politicians (Lincoln, Davis, McClellan). What about others? I added Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, and John Brown to better include the slavery element before and during the war. What about the social element -- the draft riots in NYC, the role of immigrants in the north. The influence of the British in the South. The blockade, the Western battles that are not as well known? Where was the common soldier whose name is not recorded? Where is the human death toll? Where is the interpretation, the point of view? A list just one event could be infinite, and still would always be incomplete because it would be devoid of context and nuance, and interpretation.

Then I realized that this ludicrous endeavor had already been done. The NYS Social Studies standards is the big list that all social studies teachers in NYS must live by in order to prepare their students for the Regents Exam. It is generally lamented by teachers and future teachers that such a list forces us to "teach to the test." I think that Hirsch would generally approve of this idea, that a finite list of things worth learning has been handed down to teachers from Albany legislators, and that we must follow it because our students will be tested on it. It is not all bad, however. In addition to content-knowledge, the Standards also include skills, such Document-based research, and critical analysis of sources. The standards also help provide a framework on which form a curriculum and create lesson plans. A good teacher, I believe, can use the standards to advantage. It doesn't have to be a straight-jacket.

Recently, I had an interesting exchange with Dr. Tuck on the class discussion board regarding the finding of a middle path between Delpit and Hirsch. I will link this discussion as soon as I figure out how. I got to thinking about Hirsch again and what parts of his ideas I seem to still be clinging to. A part of me wants to defend some of Hirsch's ideas, while rejecting others. I decided to return to the Hirsch reading and see what exactly was it that I want to save, and what do I want to discard -- and once the parts I disagree with are discarded, is there anything left of Hirsch's position. In looking back at Hirsch, I stumbled onto another article by Hirsch on line that I say a little about -- and another educational theorist, Howard Gardner, who wrote a counter essay to Hirsch, whose ideas I like very much.

Those two essays can be found here.

So, taking Hirsch's "Literacy and Cultural Literacy" in a vacuum without considering any of his other writing, what is it that I agree with -- or at least seem to agree with if it's taken at face value?

First, Hirsch talks about the Illiad, and Shakespeare, and Dickens, and US Grant and RE Lee and Greek and Roman Mythology, and dozens of other examples from history and literature. The simple fact is that I like these things. I think they have value. I think that they have value even to learners from diverse backgrounds. We cannot, and should not, eliminate the work and deeds of every "dead white male" just because they are "dead white males". The goal, at least as I see it is to give the dead white males some more diverse company. "Many items of literate culture," Hirsch says, "are arbitrary, but that does not make them dispensable." (Hirsch 1988, 28).

"We know instinctively that to understand what somebody is saying, we must understand more than the surface meaning of words; we have to understand the context as well." (Hirsch 1988, 3). I agree with this, because the context comes from our shared culture. There is nothing that I find in this article that requires an abandonment of heritage culture for shared culture -- cultures can live within cultures, I think. The context comes from the shared part of our history, and it also comes from popular culture.

Hirsch quotes Sociologist Orlando Patterson in saying:

"To assume that this wider culture is static is an error; in fact it is not. It's not a WASP culture; it doesn't belong to any group. It is essentially and constantly changing, and it is open. What is needed is recognition that the accurate metaphor or model for this wider literacy is not domination, but dialectic; each group participates and contributes, transforms and is transformed, as much as any other group... The English language no longer belongs to any single group or nation. The same goes for any other area of the wider culture." (Hirsch 1988, 11).

I cannot see the problem with this idea. This seems inclusive and open-minded to me.

So, what's the matter with Hirsch? Why is he the boogie-man in so many of my classmates online discussion posts, and in-class discussions. Well, his article, linked above, "Finding the Answers In Drills and Rigor", I find very disturbingly wrongheaded. If Hirsch is advocating rote recitations of "agreed upon facts" then I definitely do not agree with him. This is the worst way to teach anything, especially history. In this article, he also defends the use of standardized tests, he states that "these tests, even in their much-maligned multiple choice forms, are highly correlated with each other and with real-world reading skills." -- This is likely only because Hirsch is self-defining the meaning of reading skills.

As I've said previously, I do not have a problem with the content that Hirsch is advocating that students learn, as long as his "list" is open-ended and willing to welcome the content of other cultures as well, on equal terms. This is something that our diverse society will constantly be doing. But, as is clear from his second article, his ideas about how this material is learned, and what we do with it is completely wrong.

The Howard Gardner article makes the important point that content is meaningless, like an unused tool, if we don't know how to think critically about the content, analyze, assess, interpret that content.

Gardner makes a very valid point, that we live in a world where content information is at our fingertips (in 1999 when he wrote this article, but certainly in 2009). We are rarely more than a few feet away from a computer hooked to the internet. Wikipedia, Google, are everyday tools that put content knowledge at out fingertips. We don't have to memorize "facts". Research doesn't require hours in the library anymore -- it requires a simple Google search.

But our technology raises a new problem, unique to the modern age, and I think Gardner's idea of critical thinking skills prepares students much more for this world than does Hirsch. We now have a problem of too much content, from too many sources. Wikipedia for example, is often criticized for being inaccurate because it is an open-community source (studies have been done that show that it is surprisingly accurate however). So what source do we trust? And how do we assess all this information? That is the skill of the 21st century that Gardner is advocating. We need interpretative and analytical skills to make sense of an over abundance of content coming from infinite sources. Those skills are much more useful than the rote memorization of "accepted facts."

So, this post is way longer than I think most of my others will be, but Hirsch has been a sticking point for me from the beginning, and I hope that I have more clearly separated those parts of Hirsch which I agree from those I do not.

Introduction

This is my first post for the graduate course at SUNY New Paltz -- Literacy for the Diverse Learner, instructor, Dr. Jessica Tuck.

The purpose of this blog, is first, to respond to Dr. Tuck's prepared questions regarding the readings for the course. Second, I would like to use of the blog posts to discuss my own understanding of the readings and to try to relate them to my own field of teaching, Social Studies. Thirdly, because it is very difficult to keep up with these blogs week to week and despite my best intentions, I am in a situation of doing a number of entries at once, I am going to try to use that to advantage. Rather than these blogs being my first impression of a weeks reading, I would like them to represent a longer term reflection -- my thoughts and questions after some time of living with the ideas in a particular reading. My initial impressions will likely come out in our weekly online and in class discussions -- I would like the blog to be something a bit different.

For example, I am still struggling, after several weeks, with how I should be thinking about E.D. Hirsch's idea of cultural literacy, and how it ties with the ideas from other readings, particularly Lisa Delpit. So in my first blog, I will try to work out for myself some of these lingering issues -- while still attempting to answer Dr. Tuck's original question for the blog.