1. The Report Card

I have written about this in previous blogs. The report card still stands for the ultimate standardized assessment. Unfortunately, the most democratic spin put on report cards cannot account for the fact that this is still a subjective assessment completed by a subjective adult based off of a whole bunch of subjective “measures”. Grades for university entrance have their place. But it is time to move to a pass/fail system supplemented with a paragraph or two that is derived from the teacher’s subjective assessment. This is especially needed at the elementary level. We need to stop lying about objectivity and just be straightforward with this holy grail of assessment.

2. The Textbook

Again, see my latest post. Textbooks should die. Point blank, period. It is impossible to create a culture of independent and creative thinkers with outdated textbooks that do not relate to students’ lives. Because learning is so situational and contextual, the prevalence of the traditional textbook becomes the ultimate symbol of irony in education.

3. The Bell

How have we not come to realize that those bells we hear every 40 to 70 minutes are a product of the old industrial model of education? Are we really still streaming our children for careers as factory workers, miners, or spinners and weavers? As soon as a group of students get into the groove of an assignment or activity, the bell rings. Then they must drop all streams of consciousness on a dime, pick up their belongings and whisk off to the next, entirely disconnected, subject. No wonder why some students are so disengaged with school.

4. The Foreign Language Requirement

A lot of people may hate me for this one. But, really? If one credit in a foreign language is required for a high school diploma, what is the point of it? I am not saying that multi-linguistics is not valuable and does not have a place in school. But if there is such explicit indifference to it, perhaps this requirement should be made voluntary. Let the students who really value foreign language sit in those seats while other students, who are inevitably only going to be there for one credit, take courses that they deem more valuable to their lives.

5. The Standard Test

The ugly step-cousin of the report card. This symbol of education has found itself on rather trivial ground as of late. We have standardized tests but are told not to “teach to the test”. The implications of this philosophy are confusing to say the least. Tests are an important aspect of measuring a student’s demonstrated knowledge. But we already have the SAT, the ACT, and the Report Card. We can’t politic about the importance of diverse learning styles and creative thinking and then sit students down for three hours and make them answer questions that will be marked in a dichotomous fashion. It’s plain hypocrisy. Maybe there is a place for it. But again, it is an overused symbol in education.

These 5 overused symbols in education illustrate the friction that comes when a field set in such conservative tenants attempts to become progressive. We have come a long way. But, as we can see, there is still a long way to go.

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I can’t lie. In my first two years as a teacher, I heavily relied on the textbook to teach the curriculum to my students. As I think about that sentence, I realize how hypocritical it sounds. How can a textbook authentically create authentic learning opportunities for students and become the spine of a course? But, this reality was true for the History, Geography, Science and Math subjects I taught. I will humbly admit that I was afraid to veer away from, what I thought was, such a valuable resource. No need to re-invent the wheel right? Why should there be a call for death to the textbook if it is clearly a valued resource in schools?

But as I put in a few laps in around the block of teaching, I began to zoom out and understand education from a macro-level. In my fourth and fifth year, getting through a day, week, or unit didn’t seem so daunting anymore. School would start and in one blink Christmas break would be upon me. Another blink, Easter. Another blink – another summer. As I became more comfortable with the curriculum, the ten months of teaching became more manageable. More importantly, the disparity between teaching and learning became a lot clearer to me. Oddly enough, because I knew what I had to teach, I no longer really needed that textbook to teach it.

It sounds rather hyperbolic to claim that the textbook should die in order to foster more academic excellence. This is especially true considering many states still use standardized testing. However, so long as that thick textbook is fixed to teaching, learning will always be stifled to a damaging extent. At least this is true for the learning that generates the creative minds and intellectual people that we claim to want to produce these days.

Teaching and learning are two polar symbols within education that need to come a little closer if we want our schools to produce the type of minds we intend it to. Both teaching and learning are important, but the “learning” part of school should take precedent in education. As long as the textbook maintains its traditional role in the classroom, the implication is that teaching matters more. And to be honest, it doesn’t. Death to textbooks eliminates this fallacy.

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