"The standardization [of the the five paragraph essay] makes them easier to assign and grade for teachers who are burdened with too many students." (p.29)
From here forward, Warner launches a full assault on all of the underlying causes that are attacking and eroding our public education system. All of which in turn lead to students being poor writers. His text has a tendency to slide back and forth between tightly discussing specific issues and wandering in and out of the myriad social, economic, political, racial, and historical issues that have plagued and continue to plague students, teachers, and schools. But amongst these, there were three very specific ideas that stood out to me. These revolved around data, expectations for students, and treatment of teachers.
One of the first topics that Why They Can't Write gets into is data. Warner uses this excellent metaphor about how, in a hospital, data is constantly being gathered on a patient. However, the doctors and nurses aren't responding to every blip in that data as they know that small changes in either direction are natural and usually correct themselves (2018). This is contrasted with our schools, where we use data as a misnomer of measuring learning in every subject and every task in order to monitor both students and teachers. In many ways the collection of data in schools rivals that of the data collection being performed by big corporations like Amazon, Facebook, as well as your cell phone and internet providers. But in schools, the real-time application, manipulation, and often misuse of that data is far more apparent.
Students are constantly being earmarked for accommodations, different learning conditions, and additional testing every time there is even the slightest change (especially if it's downwards) in student “learning.” The danger here lies in what are the unexamined consequences when these data-initiated, external interventions "become an expectation [students] bring into the learning experience" (Warner, 2018, p. 44). The caveat being that while I completely understand that many students do need accommodations in certain topics and environments, we have also seen the rise in abuse of testing accommodations.
The collection of data and its uses and misuses is also leading us down a path where student control, especially control of student attention, is being valued above all. In a deviation into the ills of the educational technology market, Warner specifically comments on a number of products designed to garner, monitor, and manage student attention. This is of course all done under the errant belief that attention = learning. This dangerous belief has grown within the edtech market because it has grown among the educational reform movement as well, specifically at charter schools and so called No Excuses Schools. I won't get into the myriad of issues that center around schools like these and their zero-tolerance policies, but I will focus in on their role in creating what sociologist Joanne Golann calls the worker-learner. She describes them as students "who monitor themselves, hold back their opinions, and defer to authority" (Warner, 2018, p. 55). Some of you may be sitting there saying, that sounds like the ideal student! but research shows us that learning, real, true learning "requires time, space, and freedom" — all things that are stifled by zero-tolerance policies as well as "relentlessly tracking students in real time" (Warner, 2018, p. 56).
Warner goes on to extol on data and edtech pointing to the idea that the point of most of this is to drive an increase in "efficiency" in the class, but as he states it is "difficult to reconcile the value of efficiency with learning" (2018, p. 96). He goes on to question the value in efficiency, whether it is valuable "in our relationships" or "with our families" or even if our "most profound love [is] efficient" (p. 96). He pushes back on the idea of efficiency, as does with many others, by going to Dewey's belief that "education...is a process of living and not a preparation for future living." Unfortunately, Dewey's lament becomes more and more the reality with each passing day. We see education, both public, private, K12, and higher-ed being denigrated into a simplistic form of job training and career preparation. Education in this country is being transformed into a "vision of American values that substitutes gainful employment for freedom" (Warner, 2018, p. 137).
American educational values used to, at least in theory, be more about promoting learning. We wanted teachers to be instilling students with curiosity and critical thinking. These types of values and outcomes requires a specific type of of freedom and flexibility in the classroom. However, those making policy and in control of budgets have been adopting a more control-oriented approach to education. This approach is driven by increased means of collecting and monitoring data which exists in a feedback loop with educational technology. The more technology we use, the more data we collect. This allows us to create a more efficient and targeted technology, which allows us to collect more specific and tailored data. All of this is leveraged in an attempt to make schools and classrooms more efficient by “helping” teachers be more effective and efficient. The end result being that if a teacher is more efficient, they can have more students in the classroom. We already see this manifesting in the growth and expansion of online schools run by for profit companies financed by public funds. One of the leading states is Florida, which is no surprise since former governor Jeb Bush has been one of the strongest proponents of virtual schools since 2010, which was compounded by the state’s budget crisis in 2011 that led to a slashing of budgets for public education and a reallocation of the remaining funds to grow the sector (Rooks, 2017). These online schools and virtual classrooms can take on significantly more students per teacher and often escape the same levels of certification and oversight that public schools and public school teachers are subjected to.
Speaking of teachers, Warner spends a lot of time on them in Why They Can't Write. Early on, he appears to be laying the blame on them for why students in high school are so woefully unprepared for writing at the college level. Then he shifts that blame by acknowledging that while public school teachers may not be getting the job done, it's because of the incredibly long list of reasons that are interfering with and or outright preventing them from being effective and "efficient" in the classroom.
Many will acknowledge or at least pay lip service to the idea that teachers are overwhelmed and overburdened. But, it's my belief that many think well hey, I’m busy too, I have a lot going too, I'm stressed too and then discount it and move on. Warner actively goes into the hurdles faced by teachers today. He points out that research shows that U.S. teachers "spend 38% more time in the classroom" (2018, p. 121) compared with those in other developed nations and that educators are "least likely to report feeling their opinions seem to count" (p. 121). He sums it up by pointing out that while teaching is "honorable work" it is being performed at a "pace that is unsustainable and not conducive to effective teaching" (p. 120). This unsustainable pace means that teachers have "no time for professional development" or even "enough time for adequate rest" (p. 120). When you roll this in with the well documented teacher pay penalty , hopefully it beings to become a little clearer as to why there is a looming (just kidding it's already here) crisis in the hiring and retention of quality teachers.
This all has to be compounded with the fact that teachers are constantly juggling new initiatives. Warner has a whole section on fads in education, essentially how in the constant quest to “fix” education we are constantly seeking some now quick, singular solution. In his writing, he distills each of these into a "hype cycle" and how it plays out over 9 stages. Stage 6 really stood out to me:
"The burden of implementing this new curriculum falls entirely on teachers via administrative diktat. Nothing is removed from teacher’s responsibilities to make way for this additional requirement, although many things naturally fall by the wayside. Teachers are to be held accountable for how their students perform on these new metrics while being given very little, if any assistance in implementing these new programs." (p. 75)
At the end of the list of stages, it highlights how the failure of each successive initiative is always chalked up to "poor implementation" which I read simply as code for “'the teachers fault.”
Why They Can't Write isn't all about problems with no solutions. In fact, it actually offers up a number of answers to these issues. Unfortunately, they're the unpopular ones that require spending money directly on schools and teachers. The one that stood out to me the most, as it's a problem and solution near and dear to my heart, is class size. I'll expound more on this in later posts, but in the book, Warner cites specifically a list from the Conference of College Composition and Communication on optimal conditions for college writing classes. The list contains 12 principles, that while specifically written for post-secondary writing, could easily be adopted for all classrooms. Principle 11 stated that "instructors [should have] reasonable and equitable working conditions" which they went on to add, also includes that "teaching loads should be no more than 20 students per class" and that no teacher should have "more than 60...students a term." (2018, p. 114).
I want you to pause here and imagine that. Imagine what your school experience would have been like if all of your classes had fewer than twenty students, and if your teachers had been freed up to enable your learning by not being encumbered under 150 other students to teach. Imagine what school would be like for your children if they could receive that kind of clear eyed, focused attention and feedback.
But this would also require acknowledging that teaching and learning are not things that can be rushed or forced. It would also require acknowledging that if we really want to help teachers we "should first recognize that teaching is a profession with its own practice," and that that practice, like any other, law, medicine, etc., "requires what any professional needs: time, resources, and motivation." (p. 229). This acts as the heart of Warner’s argument: that teachers can't effectively serve students because they're not allowed to serve themselves. But he also connects it back to students, noting that this failure to support teachers "trickles down to students" (p. 122).
If we want students to be better, and to do better, we have to give teachers the means to be better, and to do better.
Algretto, S.& Mishel, L. (2018) The teacher pay penalty has hit a new high. Economic policy Institute.
Retrieved July 3, 2019, from https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-gap-2018/
Florida department of education. (2019). Identification of critical teacher shortage areas. Retrieved July 3,
2019, from http://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/7584/urlt/CTSA1920.pdf
Lombardo, C. (2019) Why the college admissions scandal hurts students with disabilities. National Public
Radio. Retrieved July 3, 2019, from https://www.npr.org/2019/03/14/703006521/why-the-college-admissions-scandal-hurts-students-with-disabilities
Rooks, N. (2017). Cutting school: Privatization, segregation, and the end of public education. New York, NY: The New Press.
Warner, J. (2018). Why the can’t write: Killing the five-paragraph essay and other neccessities. Baltimore MD: John Hopkins University Press.
