Six on Schools: Professional Learning Opportunities - Social Studies Department; The Six Biggest Problems with Data-Driven In
philip panaritis
"4. Reduce
Most teachers talk too much and struggling teachers talk way too much. The result is that within a short period of time, ten minutes even, the flood of information becomes overwhelming to students.
They can only take in so much.
They can only pick out and decipher what’s important for so long before they completely tune you out. Your voice then becomes background noise that merely agitates and inspires their own chatter.
If you can cut your talking by one third, you’ll notice a dramatic difference in attentiveness. Your students will have time to process, ponder, and comprehend.
And they’ll come to know that everything you say is worth listening to."
|
|
"Wineburg writes that A People’s History “substitutes one monolithic reading of the past for another, albeit one that claims to be morally superior. . .” I encourage you to read David Detmer’s dismantling of Wineburg’s accusation of monolithism, but I want to spend a moment addressing the question of moral superiority. Indeed, this is one place where Wineburg has it right. I do see histories that highlight women, workers, people of color, immigrants, and grassroots resistance as morally superior to textbooks whose pages drip with dangerous nationalism, glorify the already-famous and powerful, and that continue to marginalize the already-marginalized in sidebars and “enrichment” activities. To say I believe A People’s History to be a better kind of history does not mean I abdicate my role as educator, becoming a mindless automaton attempting to stamp Zinn onto the minds of my students. Yet, this assumption — that teachers do not or cannot teach Zinn and critical thinking — is at the heart of Wineburg’s critique. He disrespects teachers and offers zero evidence that such disrespect is warranted.
Wineburg’s disrespect extends to students as well as teachers. All good teaching begins with respect for young people, a belief in their intelligence, curiosity, and ability to learn. But Wineburg paints a picture of young people who are overly emotional, dangerously naïve, and vulnerable to Zinn’s overwhelming “charisma.” He writes,
Zinn’s undeniable charisma turns dangerous, especially when we become attached to his passionate concern for the underdog. The danger mounts when we are talking about how we educate the young, those who do not yet get the interpretative game, who are just learning that claims must be judged not for their alignment with current issues of social justice but for the data they present and their ability to account for the unruly fibers of evidence that jut out from any interpretative frame. It is here that Zinn’s power of persuasion extinguishes students’ ability to think and speaks directly to their hearts.
What a strange notion that one’s ability to think is compromised by one’s ability to feel. In my own experience, it is often the opposite. The engagement of my heart leads to the devotion of time and intellectual labor toward knowledge, understanding, and expertise. Wineburg simultaneously insults teachers — implying that they simply turn their students over to Howard Zinn’s charismatic prose — and students, whose emotions will inevitably stifle their critical thinking."
|
|
