historically speaking
guilty as charged
I've always known that a particular experience in seventh grade—combined with my competitive nautre—encouraged my need to read for speed. We were tested for speed reading and comprehension (during the same year we were tested for IQ, by the way). I embraced that challenge wholeheartedly! And I wasn't satisfied until I'd had the machine at the highest setting it could go. Of course, the teachers doubted that I was retaining the information, but I contined to pass each comprehension test - a few times with as low as a C average, I must admit. And I continued eating up books at a record pace. Now I understand a little better the real cost of this compulsion. I still tend to read in this fashion to this day. I understood completely the mindset of the graduate student (actually a sociology professor in medicine) who approached Paulo Friere in his lesson of the 12-hour, six-page manuscript. After having read through the document in 20 minutes, he was curious to find out how the reading could possibly be spread out to fill a three-hour seminar. Little could he (nor I) have imagined that many hours of meaningful learning would be the outcome. "After spending twelve hours reading this text of six pages, my conclusion is that I did not know how to read before” (Ulveland, Unit 8).
It's really only been in the last few years that I've learned to slow down. I still battle giving myself permission to read in this way. It seems so silly now, and somewhat self-destructive at the same time. Why was reading so fast so important to me? Is it just about the competition, even if only against myself? I know now how much I've missed in the richness of those experiences; spending time "wondering" with the authors, as well with the characters or ideas that sometimes jump right off the pages. In thinking more about this testing experience, I only just now put the two tests (speed reading and IQ) together in my mind. Two of my closest friends had scored at or near 140 on their IQ tests. I scored lower, only 127. (I always "knew" I wasn't as smart. One of those friends became a nuclear engineer. The other a professor of English Literature. Nearly forty years later, I'm still trying to learn and understand my own path.) When such a big deal was made out of my speed reading results, I'd felt smarter. Validated, in some way. I look back now at what that pride cost me in terms of deeper understanding of literature - or texts in general. And how effectively I had honed my short-term memory skills. That skill did serve me well in the public school system, as expected. Short term victories as such, I now recognize as less important in light of what is gained by getting to "hear" the voice of the author. And by allowing myself the time it takes to do so.
shallow vs. deep thinking
Today's youth have their own challenges, somewhat akin to that long ago speed-reading test. Speed reading has been replaced with sheer brevity of text. It's not about getting through the text as quickly as possible, necessarily, but about reading as little text as possible in order to "get" the general idea. And not in the least Hemingwayesque. I just re-read an article from The Atlantic by Nicholas Carr last week - he expressed this idea of deeper reading (similar to Friere) so well: "The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking" (Carr 2008). Friere takes that process of reading a step further, perhaps, talking more about really dissecting a text, committing completely to the page at hand, and not moving forward until the meaning, or intent of the auther, is thoroughly understood. I don't know if I possess that amount of patience—even as much as I enjoy reading—to practice that extreme a degree of deeply thinking.
I start to understand a little more how much I've missed in through years of quick reading. I know I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice, for example, but wouldn't the experience have been richer had I contemplated the words at depth? To really chew on the words? Does this surface-deep reading lead to shallow-level thinking as well? What is our culture absorbing from the constant onslaught of soundbytes and tweets that have replaced even sustained conversations, let alone reading for content? Does the average person recognize the shift in reading and writing that has resulted from increased dependence on technology? This shift seems more significant somehow, than the changes we've seen historically. Now I'm channeling my inner Postman, thinking of the public (and critics') reactions to the historical (technological) inventions from the printing press to radio to television, etc. But are our brains changing because of this past decade's progressive lack of deliberate, sustained focus, as Steven ? Is the need for speed (instant messaging, news that fits in five-second windows, talking/texting/mp3-listening-while-watching-TV-and-playing-computer games) changing not only our brains, but the way that we think? Carr noticed the difference in his own thinking process—an awareness that something was being shifted. "Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortible sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going—so far as I can tell—but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think" (Carr, 2008). On some level, we can probably all relate to that feeling.
instrument of domination?
Compulsory schools create a dazed population...a mentally pretentious population as we have never seen before" (Ivan Illich). "The last 50 years of intensive improvement of schools here, or in Germany, or in France, have created television consumers." When asked by the narrator about Illich's theory (from his writing in the 70s) that this would change - "would have to change, and would change quickly," he quickly admitted that he was wrong. Illich "didn't believe so many people could be so tolerant of nonsense" (ibid). Education, according to the narrator's summation, "was no longer restricted to schools, and had become a pervasive and universal myth." Illich had hope his idea of deschooling education would result in a free pursuit of learning. But he began to ask himself how society became addicted to education - "learning under the assumption of scarcity" - schools became governed by the assumptions of economics.
"Let's declare education a disaster and move on." I did enjoy the review of Smith's theory of the classical vs. official theory of learning, and the importance of that sense of belonging: learning from the company you keep. If you identify with a community of writers, for example, you can more easily become a writer. We learn not as a task, but by identification - "what fits our sense of who we are. Or who we want to be." But if school teaches a child he can't write (too many spelling or grammar errors, for example) he learns more about the attitude of the learning or teaching: to themselves and to the subjects that are taught. What you learn in school is the kind of person you are. And realizing that as hard as I work to remember something for a test, the more likely I am to forget it...Such good stuff in this podcast. He agrees in spirit with Illich - that this universal classroom is too big to change, "we have to recognize that the educational system itself is not working, and the only thing worth saving is the relationships between teachers and students. The social interaction in schools has been removed" (Smith) - whether students helping each other, or teachers helping students. The key will be to reestablish the classical way of teaching.
Gatto brought a smile to my face with his comment about his first teaching experience (teaching Spanish as a substitute - and being screamed at for ruining the entire curriucum for the month of June by teaching the kids to tell time in a single afternoon) and that he had a "natural young man's antagonism toward stuffed shirts and stupid people. So I decided to stay in teaching for a couple years" (Gatto, 31 min). In listening to him for the past couple of weeks, I'm not entirely convinced that antagonism wasn't exclusive to just his age at the time...he's a bit of a cage rattler - in a good way! His passion for students comes across loud and clear, in past readings as well as in this podcast. His view of the educational system is enlightening, and because he backs up his views with historical examples, harder for those in charge to dismiss. Or at least should be. Gatto understands what our youth could be capable of, and what they were able to accomplish in earlier times. (Before the era of the modern government-managed public school system!) "Teachers aren't teachers, they're pedagogs. [in Roman times, he adds, they were academic slaves] They don't create curriculum, they administer a curriculum created by strangers" Gatto 48:40). According to Gatto (the narrator said), schools create a condition of dependency because it fits the social order. Yikes! I know he's speaking to the system as a whole, and not individual teachers who do more parrot the party line. (When they can, of course, because job security is also at stake.)
This is in stark contrast to the vision John Dewey had for teachers and their students. He was more naive perhaps, than John Gatto, having come from the early stages of public school curriculum and policy. There was one quote I found from Deweys' Pedagogic Creed that I related to (okay, one quote I think I understood, if I'm honest, because most of it reads like academia/policy-speak, and my eyes blurred while reading it), ties in with Gatto's faith in kids to learn beyond what we deem capable, and what we should be teaching them. "I believe that much of the time and attention now given to the preparation and presentation of lessons might be more wisely and profitably expended in training the child's power of imagery and in seeing to it that he was continually forming definite, vivid, and growing images of the various subjects with which he comes in contact in his experience" (Dewey, Article 4: The Nature of Method, #2).
Gatto expands on this idea of teaching children various subjects, with vivid imagery, he'd even like to see a wide variety of different kinds of schools become available. Despite the tone of his voice, which comes across to me as depressed or tired at times (but doesn't negate the utter conviction from which he speaks in all his other videos), he ends his segment with an affirmation of the human spirit, our ability to thrive in spite of the odds. And with the same kind of positivity of spirit that Dewey demonstrated through his faith in humanity. It's nice to conclude with an affirmation.
"I have absolute and utter trust in individuals," Gatto concluded, "and their ability to live decent moral lives and take care of themselves."
Additional works cited
Carr, Nicholas. Is Google making us stupid? The Atlantic. July/August 2088. p. 56-63
