Alternative Education

Rick Santorum's recent comments on the notion of universal college education have spurred some interesting debate.  While it may be true that his rhetoric was based on a flawed perception of Obama (Obama's actual speech included trade schools as perfectly valid career options), and designed to appeal to a stereotype of liberal "elitism", there was an element of truth in his denunciation of the common assumption that public education should be preparing all students for college.

In a perfect world, all students would have the social and human capital required to pursue a traditional course of academic study.  Even those setting their sights on a technical career should certainly have a solid understanding of liberal arts, math and science.

However, that is not the world we live in.  Communities all across the country are profoundly damaged, and hundreds of thousands of children raised in them are coming of age with profound deficiencies, such that even technical school, let alone 4 year university careers are out of the questions.

What we always have to remember in talking about education is that students vary widely in their levels of human and social capital, thusly emotional, cognitive, behavioral development.  Vocational programs would need to be structured with this differentiation in mind.

I teach at a continuation high school, and the majority of students have suffered academically their whole lives because of the severe circumstances in which they have developed.  Most come from incredibly dysfunctional homes, many have emotional and mental problems, most have substance abuse issues.  It is quite common for them to be currently living in abusive homes, or to be members of incredibly dysfunctional peer groups.  Numerous students read at an elementary grade level, and absolutely despise standard, grade-level curriculum.

Before these students can even think about academic learning, they need to develop basic emotional and behavioral skills.  So what I'm interested in is the element of vocational schooling that better facilitates the remediation of these skills through cooperative, non-authoritarian, student-centered learning that provides the kind of hands-on, project-based, real-world enrichment activities that return to the student a feeling of confidence, purpose and ultimately a sense of self-control. 

For these at-risk students, dropping out is a severe problem.  What they need is to want to come to school, to feel that it is a rewarding, satisfying, and genuinely stimulating experience.  Because of their limited development, the traditional model of relying about student interest in academic learning simply doesn't work.  They hate reading, listening to teacher lectures, taking notes, and otherwise engaging in learning as a positive experience.  In their world, with their norms, authorities are not to be trusted, and reality is to be escaped at all cost - generally by looking forward to getting high, drunk, etc. at the end of the day - often with family and friends.

If anyone has not yet seen the documentary The Wild, Wonderful Whites, I would recommend it as a primer for the kinds of behaviors and lifestyle of the very poor and dysfunctional in every community across the country.  What you see in that movie is exactly what we're dealing with in the continuation environment, only often with minority groups having the added frustration of being cultural outsiders and having developed dysfunctional defense mechanisms.

At my school, vocational classes were long ago abandoned in favor of strict adherence to state standards and an assumption by administrators that the traditional, mainstream model of classroom pedagogy - if only perfectly applied - will somehow lead to students engagement and better test scores.  The result is a sort of cacophonous medley of worksheets and teacher hoop-jumping in which administrators are placated with show-lessons designed to represent an imaginary administrative ideal, as opposed to the reality of what the students really need, and a pedagogy that delivers it to them.

Two classic concepts in education are currently being violated in this model: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and
 Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development.  The former is a psychological model for the order in which human needs must be met before advanced thinking and behavior can be performed.  Before something like algebra can be learned, the body must be fed, rested, adequately free of stress, etc.  The latter describes the process of learning itself, in which new ideas and thought is constructed not from nothing but by a continuous cycling back to prior knowledge and experience.  You can't expect a child to do multimplication if he hasn't masted the concept of addition.  You can't teach moral relativism without first defining morality.

Most of my students have severe deficiencies not only in academic, contextual knowledge, but in basic emotional, behavioral and cognitive development.  Worse, they'll have come from toxic home environments that on a daily basis actively deteriorate their ability to even consider higher-order needs, i.e. traditional academic instruction.  The current model represents a sort of social-Darwinian dynamic in which only those students who for whatever reason have been able to have their needs met succeed, and the rest drop out.  Any initiative that is truly egalitarian (i.e. allows every student to be successful), and makes a meaningful difference in all of these students' lives, must take these two concept into account as a foundational premise.  Vocational training, with its utilization of hands-on, kinesthetic, co-operative and real-world problem solving, and  properly designed and administered to facilitate not only academic, but more importantly personal, emotional, behavioral, social and cognitive development, would seem to be a clear pedagogical alternative the the traditional, mainstream model.

Dead Horses

Apple Pipe in the Boy's Room

I often wonder how much I sound like a dead horse on this blog.  Err... you know what I mean.

But a Bloggingheads conversation between Harold Pollack and Glenn Loury spurred me to write.  The discussion lingered over Newt Gingrich's dubious statements on poor students and their behavior, and the kind of world in which the students to which he refers come from.

These are the kids I work with everyday. For instance, I nearly had a student physically assault me last week when I wouldn’t return his ipod. Many of these kids have been through so much – and continue to live through so much – that they are on a hair trigger.

Here are just a few factors in the escalation and perpetuation of their poor behavior:

- cognitively and emotionally “poor” homes: lifetimes spent with little vocabulary, world knowledge, emotional regulation and positive reinforcement modeled at home

- absent role-models: incarcerated or absent fathers, parents on drugs, or otherwise neglectful; or parents simply struggling to pay the bills working multiple jobs with little time for parenting

- negative role-models: many people in their families or neighborhoods who actively model poor behavior, both adults and peers who they are often left to be essentially raised by

- daily stress: this is huge. It could be from poor behaviors around them, but also from the circumstance of poverty, such as demeaning, low-pay occupations, or lack of health care in a population often defined by the advent of major illness or life hardship. My students’ family members seem to frequently be suffering medical problems.

- mental illness: genetic mental illness often leads to generational poverty, especially when conditions aren’t diagnosed and treated properly – especially without health care.

- cognitive deficits: learning disabilities and the effects of environmental toxins, or parent substance abuse while in utero lead to cognitive and emotional deficits

- multiplier effect: ghettos are by proxy filled with a low human/social capital population, leading to a net deficiency in social capital; the group just isn’t heterogeneous and lacks the kids of resources that might have been available were more high human/social capital individuals around.

- violence: at home and among peers, threat of violence is real and constant. Kids come to accept it and prepare for it, coming from any adult or peer.

- cultural isolation: different behavioral/cultural norms come to exist that envelop a community that are far outside normative behavior of wealthier neighborhoods. My students routinely express little regard for the property of others outside their kin group, and view drug use – especially soft drugs like pot or alcohol as perfectly normal daily activities.

This list isn’t nearly exhaustive. What should follow is the net effect this has on their brain and conscious state. Higher-order thinking is often difficult to achieve because of so much negative stimulus that the body will always prioritize. Education is often impossible because the student’s cognitive capacity has essentially been shut off. As long as they are living in this environment, it is very difficult to dial back that stress in a timely manner, so as to facilitate the acquisition of new skills.

However, as Harold points out, simply helping them learning self-regulation is enormously important. Unfortunately, it’s kind of like treating PTSD while a soldier is still in a war zone. Further, because of years of academic failure, school has become a place not of love, understanding and support, but an institution that demands what is often an unrealistic normative environment, thus setting the students up to fail. Still further, the focus on standards and superficial achievement leaves little room for the kind of non-academic learning that help teach practical human-human interaction skills.

As a science teacher at a continuation school, my task is to try and funnel in as much science knowledge as I can, while at the same time recognizing the unique circumstances these students face.  All are credit deficient, with some being merely a semester behind, and others 2-3 years behind.  A huge number of them test at an upper elementary grade level in reading and writing.  The average science textbook is written at a 10th grade level.  The state test questions are largely college-level.

Truancy is enormously high, so some students only make an appearance once or twice a week.  The overall graduation rate is probably 25% if we are lucky.  These students take yearly state tests, which they routinely fill in half-heartedly - no doubt torn between the idea that their teachers all want them desperately to try their best, and the knowledge that the test has zero meaning or impact on their lives as they live them. 

So I must decide, on what often seems like a second-to-second basis, between raising the bar so that they might one day graduate, and that their diploma will be meaningful.  For instance, I know that many students aren't getting the best education.  And I know that others are put off by the amount of work I require, and might leave and never return.  Yet others are learning self-control, determination, and social skills, as well as whatever content they might remember.  Divining this behavioral sweet spot is a form of educational wizardry even Newt Gingrich might struggle with.

So, between the principal breathing down my neck about portions of my students failing to take notes on the lesson during my evaluation, students recounting tales of rape and violence, others hiding meth pipes in their socks, personal confessions of illegal border crossings when they were barely out of diapers, drunken parents and fisticuffs in the lobby, after a night spent worrying what to do about this or that student, I'll try to keep my eye on what is best for my students.  And one day, I may find out what that is.