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Michael Wesch "Anti-Teaching"

Is this going to count for a grade?

School’s relevance for students has become grades.  That is what they connect to their lives. They need a certain grade to move on, to get into the school or program they want, or to get a dollar from their grandparents.  Whatever the motivation, most students care far more about what grade they get than how much they learn.  In a world where a school is failing if everyone can’t earn a certain score on a standardized test, this is not surprising.  Even as a teacher I have to ask the horrible question: “What do they need to know for the test?”

All students are cut out for learning.

I have to agree with the "often heard lament, 'some student simply aren’t cut out for school'”(5).   It is my agreement with the statement that confirms my ideas that the system is broken.  We need to find a way to make schools something that doesn’t cut out kids.  

 Do most students see the value of education?  Why do we expect them to?  I remember saying I wish I was already working when I was in college, because the education classes would have had so much more relevance to me.  I was interested in education.   I cared about doing well, and learning something-but I still did not see the value and practical application of a lot of what I was doing in school until I had the experience of teaching.  I find a much stronger connection and interest in all of the work I have done at the graduate level than I did as an undergrad because I have the context for it now.  Part of education’s significance to the world around us is preparing students to become contributors to society.  School should introduce students to variety of subjects so they can explore them and discover what they are interested in and what they are good at.  It should also teach students how to think and multi-task and manage time.  It is unfortunate that in a world where even people with a solid education are struggling to find jobs, this is not enough to make students find meaning and significance in their education; but the fact of the matter is it isn’t.   “Meaning and significance are assured only when our learning fits in with a grand narrative that motivates and guides us” (6).  --I was a good student.  I went to class, I challenged myself with honors and AP courses, and I got straight As, not because I found meaning and significance in my education, but because my parents did.   We have explored the disadvantages those outside the culture of power face in today’s educational system, and here is another.   Since today’s model of education measures success in grades and places its relevance 12-15 years into the future, students, who do not come from a culture where education is seen as powerful  or as a means to create opportunity and improve life, will not  trust in its significance.  Many of these students are “cut-out” of schools.

  The larger problem with example of my experience is that since the meaning and significance of education was not mine, all I connected to was grades.  These were how I communicated to my parents that I was respecting the meaning and significance they found in education.   Everything we have read so far points to the obvious notion that education is designed for students from the culture of power and cyclically reproduces the gap between the these students and those outside it.  With the significance problem that Wesch points to, even the racially and economically privilege cannot escape unscathed. 
      I was cut out for school, but just because I knew how to get As doesn’t necessarily mean I learned anything.  I did in many classes, but there were plenty of others that I “beat the system.”  I went to my Animal Science class of 500 students 3 times: the first day, the exam review day, and the final exam day.  I got an A.  

A Vision of Schools Today  -“After I graduate I will probably have a job that doesn’t exist today.”

We are preparing students for a future that doesn’t exist yet, to face and solve problems that we can only hope to anticipate.  We must reach them; they are far too important.  

The students are giving us signs. They are reading 8 books and not opening the rest of them.  They are writing 42 pages, but they are viewing 2300 websites and composing 500 emails.  Maybe the student who isn't interested in reading a chapter, will explore a website. 

       My students never look at a dictionary. I alert them to their location, I even bring them to their desks, and sometimes open them to the right page, but they are resistant-sometimes it seems they would rather not discover what the word means than have to look in an ancient book.  This year I made all my student who had smart phones download a free dictionary app.  They are using these dictionaries all the time-some of them even get a word-of-the-day that they incorporate into their daily speech.

My point is not to replace the teacher with an i-phone app, or throw away all the books, but maybe we need to capture their interest with a website so they want to read the book.  Furthermore, students maybe able to text undetected under their desks, and bypass the block on facebook on any computer in the school, but most of them do not know how to really use technology to further their understanding of the world around them.  If we can teach them how to use technology in this way and grab their interest while doing so...2 angry birds with one technology stone?  

This networked student explores the learning opportunities the 21st century has to offer and explains how the teacher helped him get there...

   

The world is changing and we are educating our students in system that has not.  We must find ways to merge the what with the how and the why.   “When students recognize their own importance in helping to shape the future of this increasingly global, interconnected society, the significance problem fades away” (2).  We have to help them realize the value of education in their own lives, and we have to deliver the content through interactive methods that engage them and teach them to communicate with others, access technology and think critically and globally.  It goes back to what Finn said, it is our job to make the students “want what teachers has” (105).  We have digital learners in our classroom, we can just throw paper and pencils at them.

Ian Jukes argues today's kids are "screenagers...the first generation that has actually grown up with a mouse in their hands along with an assumption that that the images on the screen are supposed to be manipulated and interacted with - that screens aren’t just for passive consumption."  He suggests they are actually wired differently and prefer getting information quickly, and need immediate gratification and instant rewards among other things. 

Maybe it is time to stop measuring student learning with grades and test scores so we can compete globally, and focus on educating students so they can contribute globally.