Subscribe via Email
Subscribe to receive the Sustainable Teaching Blog via email by completing the form below.
Special Programs
| Sustainable Teaching |
Sustainable Teaching
Special Programs Notice
|
| The Road to Korphe |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Alden S . Blodget |
| Friday, 14 November 2008 12:29 |
 Note: This entry continues the focus on one of the principles on which Sustainable Teaching was founded: Learning is a shared responsibility; teachers and students are natural partners.The Road to Korphe Mortensen was struck by the “fierceness in their desire to learn, despite how mightily everything was stacked against them,” a desire to learn that was supported by a respect for learning evident in the adults in the village. When it was finally built, the new school and its full-time teacher were embraced with gratitude and enthusiasm, and it is easy to imagine the alliance between teacher and students that eventually produces Korphe’s first scholars. “Can you imagine,” asks Mortensen, “a fourth-grade class in America, alone, without a teacher, sitting there quietly and working on their lessons?” Well, here’s a story from a town in Connecticut, the story of a student named Chad. Like most of his classmates, Chad didn’t care for school. He didn’t like his teachers and he saw no point in learning anything, for his future would be underwritten by his father’s wealth. Chad’s midterm grades and comments were dismal, so his mother arrived to meet with the head of school. She complained about Chad’s teachers. “They don’t like Chad, and I don’t understand it. He gets along so well with all the other servants.” And it isn’t just the children of the wealthy or their parents who evince such disdain for schools and teachers. I work as a guardian ad litem, advocating for abused and delinquent children in Vermont, and have been stunned by the number of bright children who hate their public school—like Sarah, who at 8 declared she was quitting when she turned 16: “I hate the teachers. I hate everyone.” She comes from a family of dropouts, both parents, brother, sisters, cousins. At 16, still in the sixth grade and mostly truant, she quit. What a contrast between Korphe and America. What a different attitude toward learning and toward teachers. No wonder so many students and teachers in American schools—whether in the wealthy suburbs or in the impoverished inner city—meet like combatants in arenas, rather than like allies working toward a common goal. The natural alliance that ought to join students and teachers is undermined by a culture that neither appreciates nor has a fierce desire for learning. As a result, although there are wonderful exceptions, classrooms are generally characterized by resistance on one side and coercion or cajolery on the other, the latest tactic being to pay students to attend school or do their homework. Often, weary of struggle, the two sides declare an exhausted truce by agreeing to avoid the rigors of learning altogether—peace in exchange for a B. Or, like Sarah, students just drop out. All quiet on the last stern front. Education is a responsibility shared by teachers, students, parents and the other adults who shape the attitudes of a culture. The culture either nurtures an alliance between teachers and students or destroys any hope of an alliance. Given the messages bombarding our children, it’s not surprising that American schools excite neither the interest nor respect of the Korphe school. The McCain campaign’s antagonism to intelligence provides the most recent lesson. If you are smart and manage to get a good education at some of the best schools in the country, you will be vilified as an elitist. McCain’s apparent contempt for intelligence and for the attributes that result from a good education reflects our long history of anti-intellectualism. Since at least the 1800s, intelligence has been associated with wickedness or an inability to function in the world. McCain’s attacks on Obama simply echo George Wallace’s contempt for “pointy-headed intellectuals” or Spiro Agnew’s “effete corps of intellectual snobs.” The American psyche, it seems, responds to politicians who prefer Joe Six Pack to Boris Pasternak. Yet at the same time, these politicians insist that they support education because “our children are our future.” Staggering cynicism. Our children are our future, and the problems with education in our country stem not from too little or too much money or lack of standards or low test scores. The problem is the noxious atmosphere created by a country that is suspicious and contemptuous of the life of the mind. Young people need what they have always needed. They need to feel accepted and respected; they need to understand themselves, the world and other people; and they need the skills and knowledge to succeed in making a life for themselves. Meeting these needs is the basis of the alliance between students and teachers. But it takes a village to send a child to school eager to learn, hungry for knowledge, respectful of the opportunity to work closely with teachers, and mindful of the learners’ responsibility for learning. It takes a village to make an alliance between students and teachers possible. We shouldn’t have to travel to Korphe to learn this lesson. |
| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 09 December 2008 14:14 ) |