I Can Read, But I Don't Want To: The Dumbed-Down Path to Aliteracy

There's a difference between being able to read and reading. Most kids can read by a certain age. But, according to a recent report from the National Endowment for the Arts, most choose not to.

"Many still read, and read well," NEA Chairman Dana Gioia said, "but we are at a delicate point, and the trends are toward the negative. Americans are reading less and, therefore, less well, and so they do less well in school, in the economy and in civic life."

Nearly half of those ages 18 to 24 who were surveyed read no books for pleasure at all. Those ages 15 to 24 who read voluntarily did so for only seven to 10 minutes a day.

So why are kids who can read choosing not to read?

In his book titled Reading the Naked Truth, Gerald Coles writes,

"Putting an excessive emphasis on word skills might result in beginning readers not achieving competence in a variety of additional strategies of reading, strategies especially necessary for high-level material in later grades. An excessive skills emphasis that encourages children to see reading as 'word work' rather than as an experience that informs and excites them and fires their imagination could discourage enthusiasm for reading and thereby encourage aliteracy, that is, students who know how to read but have no interest in reading."

In low-income classrooms I've visited, I see this deadening effect at work. Low-income minority children are being given the lowest of the low when it comes to a rich curriculum. The reading program is designed for one thing: to help kids pass the state standardized test. The rationale is understandable: these kids need help in "the basics" because they don't get it at home. But this then leads to the creation of a curriculum that is nothing but the basics.

To see this phenomenon of "nothing but the basics" in sharp detail, read Linda Perlstein's extraordinary book, Tested. Perlstein painfully documents the dumbed-down, test-centric path that a Title 1 school in Maryland follows to make AYP. In reading this book, I was saddened, enraged, and disgusted. After being exposed to a constant regimen of "BCR's" (brief constructed responses), decoding drills, and endless test prep, it's little wonder why no one would ever want to read anything ever again.

Educational Frankenstein: Collateral Damage on the Way to AYP

I am now seriously considering homeschooling. I'm not so much attracted to homeschooling as I am repulsed by traditional education. I support public schools, but not in their current bastardized form under NCLB.

I’m an example of how the system works and yet doesn’t work. I’m part success, part failure.

Kids can be educated in the basics, but the basics is not the solution. It’s part of the problem. Critics charge that the basics were good enough for them, why aren’t they good enough for everyone else? The basics seemed to work for me. After all, by almost any measure, you might say that I’m a successful product of a basic education. I graduated from Princeton University, went on to get my master’s at New York University, and now work as an instructional designer at a state university. But I achieved all these things DESPITE my education, not because of it. As a student, I valued winning above all else. “Learning” was a means to an end, not an end in itself. Sure, I learned a thing or two along the way, but the underlying message was always “Prove that you are better than others.” So I did.

Upon reflection, I feel like I was robbed of the kind of education all children deserve. In an extraordinarily twisted way, I turned out to be a success in a dysfunctional system, an educational Frankenstein. I suspect that many people are also educational Frankensteins, monsters that were taught to compete, to win, to value grades, to do just enough, to seek praise, to read to pass a test, to memorize Spanish vocabulary words to pass a test, to memorize state capitals to pass a test, to memorize the preamble of the Constitution to pass a test. I memorized the Spanish vocabulary words – every one. I got a perfect score on almost every test I took. But can I speak Spanish? No. I studied the names of Roman senators and the symbols for all the chemicals, but I can remember neither senator nor symbol.

As a student, I was passive. Or, more precisely, the educational context governed by the basics put me in the role of a passive learner. Teachers did the teaching. Students did the learning. Or, again more precisely, students were taught AT by teachers. So I sat back and took hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes. From about the 6th grade until my second year in graduate school, I sat and listened and took notes. And took more notes. And still more notes. Because the basics assumes I am an empty receptacle into which knowledge is poured, I sat and let knowledge be poured into me. In grades 6-11, I’d go home, read my notes, memorize my notes, and come back the next day and regurgitate the contents of my notes onto a multiple choice or short answer test. And I would do well, every time. I was good at regurgitating information from short-term memory. But after I had taken the test, I would promptly purge my short-term memory of all that information. Well, not all of it. I pride myself in my ability to recall trivial bits of information about geography. I know that Burma is now called Myanmar, and that the capital is Rangoon. I know that Ho Chi Minh City was once called Saigon. And I know that the Nile flows north. So, as you can see, my basic education has prepared me well to be a contestant on Jeopardy and to impress people at parties.

We have to ask ourselves: do we want our children to grow up to be contestants on Jeopardy? Or do we want something else for our kids?

Even at such an impressive school as Princeton, I sat and I sat and I sat and I took note after note after note and I regurgitated, regurgitated, regurgitated. I wrote paper after paper after paper. I don’t remember any of it, none of it, not a lick. I go back to my old files and read papers that I wrote and think to myself, “Wow – I used to know this???? Gee, I used to be smart!” Oh, sure, I definitely became a better writer as a result of all the papers I wrote. I’m not saying there was absolutely NO benefit to it. But much of the value – most of the value – was and is lost. It’s not about the Nile flowing north or Burma changing to Myanmar or the mitochondria – “the powerhouse of the cell” – or “to find the percent of a number, change the percent to a decimal and multiply” or the storming of the Bastille in 1789 or the fact that the Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought on Breed’s hill. It ain’t about none of that. But that’s what it was for me. And that’s what it is for most kids. This is the basics. And there could be nothing more antithetical to learning than the basics.

And why? Because under these terms, you are either good at the basics or you are not good at the basics. I was good at the basics because I liked winning and I was good at memorizing. So I got all A’s. From the time I was in the 4th grade, I was on the Headmaster’s List at my school. I worked hard – very hard – to stay on the list. Was I driven to learn? No. Was I driven by a burning curiosity? No. I was driven to be better than everyone else. And by George I was!

Talk about a monster. So here’s a success story. A kid who gets all A’s. A kid who goes to Princeton and NYU. A kid who has this impressive vocabulary. But it’s also a kid that hates reading books. I abhor novels. Reading was never something I did for pleasure. From the very earliest age, I had to read a book and write this thing called a “book report” to prove that I had read the book. So reading was all about writing a report that showed I had done the reading. There was nothing – NO THING – that was inherently interesting, challenging, or valuable about writing the book report. For the most part, book reports were about summarizing the plot. So the little voice in my head kept asking, “If I read in order to write a plot summary, what inherent value is there in reading?” The answer: there is none.

Now, mind you, I could prove that I had read books. I wrote book reports until they were coming out of my ears. I read lots and lots of books and wrote lots and lots of book reports. And guess what? Every single book report got an A. Every one. But in getting an A on all those book reports, my love for reading was destroyed. Like “gone.” As in “I don’t have a love for reading.” Reading is about proving that you have read. While reading, I felt this pressure to remember everything that happened because, if I forgot, how could I ever write the book report? And if I bomb the book report, I won’t make the Headmaster’s List! But that can’t happen! I’ve ALWAYS made the Headmaster’s List! What would people think of me if I didn’t make the Headmaster’s List?

Now imagine all the kids who are not good at the basics. Not only do they get to have their love of reading destroyed, they also get the distinction of being labeled “slow” or “needs improvement.” They’re not so good at memorizing Jeopardy-style nuggets o’ facts, so they can’t walk into a test and regurgitate the contents of their brains onto the page. So they fail these tests. The teacher calls them “average” or “not too bright.” Their parents call them “good kids.” They call themselves “stupid.”

What kind of future do these kids have? And what kind of future would I have had? Sure, I’m “successful” by most measures. But how much more successful could I have been? More importantly, how much more fulfilled would I be as a person? Living a life where learning was synonymous with self-expression, not competition? Living a life where reading was a joy, not a burden? Living a life where I didn’t have to live in fear of failure, having to prove that I was smart, fearing that I really wasn’t?

So, for me, educational reform is inextricably linked to my desire to seek revenge. I simply cannot imagine what my life would be like or who I would be now if I had received a truly extraordinary education. Nor can I imagine what the planet would be like if the millions and millions of kids who have been chewed up and spat out by the basics had had a truly extraordinary educational experience.

In me, there is a profound need to make things right. Because what we have today is not right.

So is homeschooling the answer? For me and my kids, perhaps. But I shudder to think about the other kids, the kids who will continually be ground up and spat out, collateral damage on the way to AYP.

Waging a battle on standardized tests

Here's a very strong piece from Dan Brown, a former teacher in New York City and author of "The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle." This piece appeared in the 11/03/07 Boston Globe.

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Waging a battle on standardized tests

By Dan Brown | November 3, 2007

TEACHERS NEED to pick their battles. I scanned my fourth-grade students in the Bronx and considered several battles in my mind.

Battle Number One: Manolo arrived in my classroom determined to fight the world. His mother had died when he was in second grade and he had to repeat the year. However, Manolo took substantial steps when he began to write creative stories, favoring historical fiction in which he inserted himself into a famous event. His writing revealed great imagination and interest, but his spelling and mechanics remained poor, and state exams continued to label him a failure.

Battle Number Two: Sara entered my classroom leaps ahead of her peers. She wrote hilarious, irreverent poetry and had already mastered grade-level math. She fired off endless questions about current events. Sara was a dream student, hungry to be challenged. However, the administrators at my school discouraged creative lesson planning in order to cram in endless "drill-and-kill" packets of basic skills test-taking strategies.

Battle Number Three: Eddie was in his fourth year in fourth grade because of absences and test failures. It seemed impossible to get him engaged in class. However, he loved to draw and showed a remarkable, natural talent for perspective sketching. Tragically, my class was deprived of all arts in order to allot more time for standardized test preparation.

How could I help these children face their challenges? Every moment, I felt pulled in 26 directions, invariably drawn to the louder children who act out. And then there was the ever-looming Test.

Everyone involved in education policy claims to be on the side of students, yet I quickly learned that the needs of my students fell quite low on the school's priority list. Nearly six years into the No Child Left Behind era, American public schools have more money than ever, but students are still widely denied the most crucial tools for their success: individual attention and specialized support.

In a more rational, equitable system, Manolo would have access to small-group tutoring, Sara could flourish in a challenging, high-level classroom environment, and Eddie could explore his artistic inspiration in school. They would meet with guidance counselors (my school had a ratio of 550 students per counselor) and mentors. Knowing their school supported their individual needs would further engage these children.

However, the resources that my students badly needed were being spent elsewhere; the money was going into high-stakes testing.

We have entered a dangerous era in which the fad for education policy is to import statistics-driven paradigms from the business sphere. These mechanistic models are an ill fit in education, a wholly human institution. Testing may provide easy-to-crunch metrics, but it creates a negative, all-consuming test culture, and does not paint a comprehensive picture of students' abilities.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools, particularly in high-poverty areas, are under intense pressure to meet quotas on one-size-fits-all standardized tests. Prepping for the test and getting a well-rounded education are not the same thing, but there is not room in the school day for both tasks.

The suffocating squeeze that my students and I felt was not a case of a few rogue administrators misunderstanding the law, as Assistant Secretary of Education Doug Mesecar has said. A recent report by the Center of Education Policy discovered that 44 percent of schools have reduced instructional time in untested subjects (social studies, science, art and music, physical education, lunch, and/or recess).

It's not just the government trumpeting high-stakes testing as the way to get "accountability" from schools. The media have largely gone along for the ride as well, trumpeting minute shifts in test score graphs as headline-worthy successes or failures.

We have taken our eye off the ball on what is most important in schools - students' needs. Senator Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Senate committee overseeing the creation of a new No Child Left Behind bill, has an opportunity to recommend changes to the sweeping law.

Manolo, Sara, Eddie, and every other child, parent, and teacher in America are counting on him.

Why not let kids be kids?

I'm worried that kids are not allowed to be kids any more. I'm worried their lives are either too scheduled and overly structured, or they are left on their own to vegetate in front of the TV set or their video game consoles. We have an achievement gap, yes. But what's the best way for schools to participate in bridging that gap?

I keep coming back to the issue of harm, i.e., the evidence that an emphasis on academic instruction in pre-K and K (esp. an emphasis on phonics and decoding at the expense of socio-dramatic play and hands-on, experiential activities like art and music) causes both short-term and long-term harm. The Alliance for Childhood makes a strong case for a correlation between the lack of play and aggressive behavior, as well a possible connection between the absence of play and mental illness in children. Of course, play is getting a lot of attention due to an increase in childhood obesity. But it seems that folks like Vivian Paley are being completely ignored. I think this is largely due to NCLB and the recognition that low-income kids need help to close the gap. But the Alliance for Childhood handles this really nicely, arguing, "While low-income, at-risk children need and deserve special attention to close the gap, there is no evidence that current methods will do that."

Most disturbing are the reports from teachers that if they give five-year-olds time to play, the children literally do not know what to do. “They have no ideas of their own,” reported experienced kindergarten teachers in an Alliance for Childhood pilot study in Atlanta.

Note - the list of people who signed the Alliance for Childhood's call to action include such heavy-hitters as Howard Gardner, Linda Darling-Hammond, Jonathan Kozol, Mel Levine, Deb Meier, Sam Meisels, Vivian Paley, and George Wood. Pretty powerful group!

The National Association for the Education of Young Children has a strong position statement on school readiness. It's really quite good. Very concise.

Here's a particularly good/relevant excerpt:

"A prevalent, fundamental misconception is that children's learning occurs in a rigid sequence and that certain basic skills must exist before later learning can occur. In fact, much of children's learning is from whole to part. Children's acquisition of higher order thinking processes and problem- solving abilities occurs in tandem with and may outpace acquisition of "basic" skills. For example, children are able to comprehend far more complex stories than they can produce. While the beginning acquisition of basic literacy and numeracy skills is important, these abilities are unlikely to flourish when presented out of context as isolated skills. To focus only on sounding out letters or forming letters properly on the lines ignores children's complex language capabilities, often squelches their burgeoning interest in reading and writing, and deprives children of the meaningful context that promotes effective learning."

Consider also what's happening to recess in public schools.

The timeless institution of recess is in jeopardy. A survey by the American Association for the Child's Right to Play shows that about 40% of public schools have already cut, or are planning to cut, at least one recess period from the school day.

Since the birth of the American schoolhouse, children have enjoyed regular breaks from textbooks and classroom routines. Teachers 100 years ago knew what modern research studies prove today: Recess provides the means for fidgety students, especially boys, to expend their energy and refresh their minds. As Time.com put it: "Multiple studies show that, when recess time is delayed, elementary-school kids grow increasingly inattentive. Goodbye recess, hello Ritalin."

New elementary schools in Atlanta have been built without playgrounds, and recess has been curtailed in other Georgia school districts as well. Schools in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, New Jersey, Florida, and California have all jumped on the eliminate-recess bandwagon. "This is an example of good intentions gone awry," Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, told the Chicago Tribune (9-27-01). "There's huge pressure these days on superintendents and boards to show that they're serious about achievement, so they do something symbolic - they get rid of recess."

So what does this mean? We honestly don't know what the long-term effects and the possible harm that an over-emphasis on developmentally inappropriate activities can cause. Some kids -- my pre-K daughter included -- might even appear to have fun doing worksheets and seem like they are learning something. Maybe. But my daughter, in her free time, has never asked me to create a worksheet for her. She has, however, asked me to bark at her toy dog, pretend I'm Miss Piggy, dance, sing, and look for buried treasure. If she wasn't doing these things with me, and if she's being given fewer and fewer opportunities to do this at school, and since she doesn't live near any of her classmates, what would happen to her imagination, that one thing that childhood is supposed to be synonymous with?

We look at the huge percentage of children that drop out of school each year and we wonder why they drop out. So policy makers decide to make school more about school and less about fun. And they're starting in the year BEFORE Kindergarten. I don't know about you, but I suspect this will create more drop-outs, not fewer. School is clearly not working for these kids. It is clearly irrelevant. It clearly has nothing to do with them. The way to keep kids active and engaged in school is to make school a place where kids want to be and want to stay. School should be fun. Kids should be allowed to be kids.

If you don't buy this argument, then consider this: in the absence of open, unstructured play, when will children learn to share? When will they learn to cooperate? When will they learn how to make friends? When will they learn how to resolve conflicts? When will they be able to develop their own interests in things that stimulate their curiosity? When will they develop their own identities? It's these very things that form the core of childhood. And it's these very things that are slowly disappearing from our classrooms.