Thank you for sharing this story Michael, it's truly inspiring. I'm especially captivated by the bit in which you describe how students become more alert once they realize that they are in (i paraphrase) an "active" or "dynamic" situation. This is going to be such a useful reference for a lot of people who are doing similar work in all sorts of fields!
This is very impressive: it took a great deal of work and commitment, and I'm sure some courage too.
On the other hand, it says as much about the current state of American education i.e. where you had to start from, as it does about the progress you made. Schools in the US really do seem as bad as they appear in movies.
My view is that some people, especially early in the twentieth century, deliberately sabotaged education in the US. Probably most of the evidence for that that I'm aware of came from Richard Andrew Groves' interview with John Taylor Gatto.
How odd, appalling and sad that pupils do not expect to be listened to by their teachers.
I'm retired now, but I've been teaching since I was 14: first I taught sailing, then mountaineering, then chemistry, physics and biology. When I was doing my post-grad teaching course I had something of a crisis, since I disapproved on principle of coercing pupils.
Since I was teaching sciences, I managed to reconcile myself to the conflict between allowing pupils as much freedom as possible and getting things learned. In the UK sciences were still just as much about learning to think as the facts to be learned (certainly in my lessons). I would always try to start my lessons with a "hook" - something to grab the attention, to provoke curiosity, and then guide them into answering the question raised by it, mainly by practical means (experiment) which covered the ground to be covered by the syllabus.
I found your substack through looking through what my son had been "liking", as he subscribes to mine.
You might be interested in an article of mine "Coping with Disagreement and Being Wrong".
I wish you every success in your important project.
You created a space. You held that space open, allowing whatever was in the students to fill it or not. The result was magic. What you so carefully did not do made it all possible.
Thank you for recognizing the artistry involved. It is a great joy to do this. In another world, I could be training hundreds of bright young people to do this, with great benefits for the resulting students. But government control of education has largely prevented such work.
Thank you for sharing this story Michael, it's truly inspiring. I'm especially captivated by the bit in which you describe how students become more alert once they realize that they are in (i paraphrase) an "active" or "dynamic" situation. This is going to be such a useful reference for a lot of people who are doing similar work in all sorts of fields!
Thank you, much appreciated!
This is very impressive: it took a great deal of work and commitment, and I'm sure some courage too.
On the other hand, it says as much about the current state of American education i.e. where you had to start from, as it does about the progress you made. Schools in the US really do seem as bad as they appear in movies.
My view is that some people, especially early in the twentieth century, deliberately sabotaged education in the US. Probably most of the evidence for that that I'm aware of came from Richard Andrew Groves' interview with John Taylor Gatto.
How odd, appalling and sad that pupils do not expect to be listened to by their teachers.
I'm retired now, but I've been teaching since I was 14: first I taught sailing, then mountaineering, then chemistry, physics and biology. When I was doing my post-grad teaching course I had something of a crisis, since I disapproved on principle of coercing pupils.
Since I was teaching sciences, I managed to reconcile myself to the conflict between allowing pupils as much freedom as possible and getting things learned. In the UK sciences were still just as much about learning to think as the facts to be learned (certainly in my lessons). I would always try to start my lessons with a "hook" - something to grab the attention, to provoke curiosity, and then guide them into answering the question raised by it, mainly by practical means (experiment) which covered the ground to be covered by the syllabus.
I found your substack through looking through what my son had been "liking", as he subscribes to mine.
You might be interested in an article of mine "Coping with Disagreement and Being Wrong".
I wish you every success in your important project.
Many thanks, I'll check it out.
You created a space. You held that space open, allowing whatever was in the students to fill it or not. The result was magic. What you so carefully did not do made it all possible.
Thank you for recognizing the artistry involved. It is a great joy to do this. In another world, I could be training hundreds of bright young people to do this, with great benefits for the resulting students. But government control of education has largely prevented such work.
This was just thrilling to read, I could have read another 20 days of reports on this class’s progress without putting it down.
Thank you, I'd love to have the opportunity to document the trajectory of an entire class in this manner.