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Blog: FCAR
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Words fall victim to
educational chain saw
By Marion Brady
*April 14, 2005
I like to build things. Got it from my dad. In the mid-1930s, during the Great
Depression, we lived for awhile in a travel trailer he built. When times got
better, he remodeled a succession of our houses. He built me a motorscooter long
before they became commercially available, and electrified our old reel-type
lawn mower when nobody had even thought of such a thing. When he retired, he
bought an abandoned school, had it moved and turned it into a house.
What made those and his many other projects possible, of course, were tools.
Tools shape experience. Without the astrolabe, world history would have unfolded
differently. Without the cotton gin, it's likely there would have been no Civil
War. Take away air compressors, scalpels, hydraulic presses, microscopes and the
like, and modern societies would quickly collapse.
Tools translate imaginings into realities. Indeed, tools expand imaginings.
Fifty years ago, even the wildest speculation about the uses to which computers
would eventually be put didn't come close to predicting how they've stretched
our thinking.
Of all tools, none approaches in importance those called "words." Because
they're so familiar, so much a part of minute-by-minute experience, so taken for
granted, we sometimes have trouble thinking of words as tools, but they're basic
-- tools for thinking, constructing ideas, educating.
The link between words, ideas and educating led researchers Betty M. Hart and
Todd R. Risley to study the verbal interactions -- the word exchanges -- of kids
from welfare, working-class and professional families. In their book, Meaningful
Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, they say that
by the time kids are 3 years old, those in professional families have heard a
total of about 30 million words, working-class kids have heard about 20 million,
and welfare kids about 10 million.
They also kept track of how the kids were spoken to, how much they were listened
to, whether or not things were explained to them, how many choices they were
given, and what tones of voice were used. The kids of professionals heard about
700,000 positive words, and about 80,000 negative ones. In contrast, the welfare
kids heard about 60,000 positive and 120,000 negative words.
Schools are in the word business. In fact, they're too much into the word
business. But manipulating language is the only academic game schools are
playing seriously right now, and score is being kept. Everybody wants the scores
up, so when teachers say that some of the kids in their classrooms just don't
have the necessary tools, they're told, "No excuses! Deal with it!"
If it were possible for teachers to speak out and still keep their jobs, they'd
be telling legislators, "Get real! If you think scores on word-based tests are
what quality education is all about, then you need to figure out how to send us
kids all of whom, by the time they're 3 years old, have heard 30 million words
and been encouraged many times more than they've been criticized."
Legislators should hear and act on that demand, but they won't. So giving kids
word tests will continue to be the main "education reform" strategy. To
accommodate that narrow strategy, whole fields of study are being hacked away
from the curriculum. Goodbye, words. Within the remaining fields,
corporate-produced "programmed" instruction is turning teachers into robots.
Goodbye, words. Field trips and other enrichment experiences are being cut or
completely eliminated. Goodbye, words. Kids are being locked into seats for
practice and drill, practice and drill, using condensed, canned reading and
writing exercises. Goodbye, words.
It's hard to imagine a policy more likely to turn out a nation of kids who
despise reading and writing, a generation less able to put words in the service
of imagination, a generation less well equipped to actually think its way
successfully through an unknown, obviously perilous future.
A few days ago, an e-mail friend -- Hugh McGuire, in Bethpage, N.Y. -- sent me a
paper explaining his work. Evenings and weekends, he gets about 30 parents and
kids together in churches, community centers, libraries or homes, and shows them
how they can have fun reading stories together. He has them actually do things
-- read aloud if they're able, mime, talk, visualize action, "crawl into
literary characters in plays and stories that will help them understand and
articulate emotional conflicts." He tries especially hard to involve troubled
families.
Contrast Hugh McGuire's strategies with those coming out of Washington.
*Originally published in the Orlando Sentinel. Published here by
permission of the author.
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