See?
Of all the strategies I learned in the NWP, #1 in effectiveness is the teacher writing and thinking aloud in front of students. #engchat
— Kelly Gallagher (@KellyGToGo) October 8, 2012
(Yes, he’s tweeting about writing, but I’m sure he thinks similarly about reading.)
Kelly Gallagher, author of Readicide and proponent of the Article of the Week, is my favorite overall English teacher.
Is “teaching character” just code for “teaching conservatism?”
That’s the argument advanced by detractors of Paul Tough and Angela Duckworth. Students with grit may know how to regulate themselves, delay gratification, and demonstrate perseverance, but they’re not always happy people, plus they buy into the conservative bootstraps metaphor of success.
Leading this charge is Alfie Kohn. Yes, he’s the guy who extols intrinsic motivation, the development of the whole child, and the extinction of homework. (I respect his work — but go back and forth on what I think about his views.)
A few years ago, he wrote an essay titled “Why Self-Discipline Is Overrated: The (Troubling) Theory and Practice of Control from Within.” (You can also find it at Iserotope Extras!) Prof. Kohn is an excellent writer, and I like how he first defines his terms of self-discipline and self-control:
Self-discipline might be defined as marshalling one’s willpower to accomplish things that are generally regarded as desirable, and self-control as using that same sort of willpower to prevent oneself from doing what is seen to be undesirable or to delay gratification. In practice, these often function as two aspects of the same machinery of self-regulation.
Soon after that excellent introduction, Prof. Kohn organizes his opposition to self-discipline into three areas: psychological, philosophical, and political.
His psychological argument — that too much self-control is bad, just as too little is bad — is a good one. If a student is too self-disciplined, she is always looking toward the future and never enjoying the present. Prof. Kohn writes:
Dutiful students may be suffering from…the “tyranny of the should” — to the point that they no longer know what they really want, or who they really are. So it is for teenagers who have mortgaged their present lives to the future: noses to the grindstone, perseverant to a fault, stressed to the max. High school is just preparation for college, and college consists of collecting credentials for whatever comes next.
Unfortunately for Prof. Kohn, most of the students I teach do not suffer from the above problem. Indeed, some may suffer from anxiety, but that anxiety does not usually come from an overabundance of academic self-control. It usually comes from trauma and a lack of self-discipline outside (and sometimes inside!) school.
His philosophical argument — that teaching self-discipline means you’re telling students to obey authority, no matter what — is stronger than his first. He quotes George Lakoff, who says that exhorting self-control comes from a conservative worldview. Young people, goes this theory, are bad and must learn to respect their elders. Prof. Kohn writes:
A commitment to self-discipline may reflect a tacit allegiance to philosophical conservatism with its predictable complaint that our society — or its youth — has forgotten the value of hard work, the importance of duty, the need to accept personal responsibility, and so on.
Here Prof. Kohn gets me thinking. Surely I don’t want to go down the path of placing too much pressure on the individual when I realize that many factors go into a student’s trajectory. At the same time, there’s nothing wrong with a little personal responsibility.
After that strong philosophical argument, too bad Prof. Kohn loses me on the political one: that the real problem is how power gets negotiated in the classroom. Prof. Kohn has long criticized schools for their capitalistic structure and teachers for their conveyor-belt pedagogy. He wishes for a more open environment, where students construct their own knowledge and where young people do not need to exercise self-control:
Why does the teacher ask most of the questions in here – and unilaterally decide who gets to speak, and when? If the question is: “What’s the best way to teach kids self-discipline so they’ll do their work?”, then the questionisn’t: “Are these assignments, which feel like ‘work,’ really worth doing?
Um, Prof. Kohn, though I like to be student-centered, if I chose not to “unilaterally decide who gets to speak,” there would be less learning. Simple as that. And while I may occasionally harbor some (jaded?) assumptions after 15 years of teaching, I think it’s safe to say that strong teacher presence is critical for student achievement, particularly in urban public schools.
Overall, though I disagree with Prof. Kohn’s article, I appreciate his thoughtful opposition to the teaching of self-discipline. It’s important, after all, not to follow a trend in education just because Ira Glass talked about it on This American Life.
But what’s clear to me is that self-control and self-discipline are worth teaching as long as the goals worth striving for are the student’s, not the teacher’s. If I’m doing a good job helping a student define and focus on her passion, and if I’m coaching her to get closer to her long-term aspirations, then I’m doing my job well. And if that’s “teaching character,” then it’s a good thing.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I’ve seen several inspirational (and poignant) documentaries about young people. There’s Spellbound and First Position and Hoop Dreams and Stand and Deliver and plenty more.
But I’m really looking forward to Brooklyn Castle, playing now in select cities, about the most dominant school chess team in the United States.
The school is I.S. 318 in Brooklyn. Check out this clip (about four minutes):
And here’s an article to read if you want to know more about the chess program at I.S. 318. (An interesting tidbit is how the chess teacher, Elizabeth Spiegel, links chess with character skills, like self-control. “You do a lot of thinking about how you think, especially about how you make decisions,” she said. “You’ll hear a kid say, ‘I made this mistake because I was very emotional.’ ”)
I am hopeful that this film is as good as it seems, and it gets me thinking about what’s possible in schools. Someday, I’d like to build something, through hard work and persistence, where students can achieve at the highest levels and feel powerful and proud while doing so.
There has been a lot of talk lately (this radio show, this book) about how teaching character skills can promote long-term academic achievement and life success among students.
In my first post, I narrowed down a lengthy list of 24 performance skills to a tidier, more manageable five.
In my second post, I tried to define those five character skills: zest, grit, self-control, empathy, and integrity.
Now comes the post about why. In this era of No Child Left Behind, in this time of standardized testing and academic achievement and content standards, why would I — why would any teacher — devote class time and energy into the teaching, assessment, and development of performance skills?
One way to answer that question is with a moral argument. In addition to teaching my students how to read and write, I believe strongly that it is my job to help my students become good and strong people so that they can persevere, advocate for themselves, and keep learning.
(The statistics that Paul Tough offers in his book is also pretty convincing.)
OK, that’s a start. But can’t I do that informally? In other words, do I need to make performance skills a dedicated part of my grading scheme?
I think yes. What I value is what I give time for in class and what I grade. I can talk about grit all I want, but until I explicitly teach it (by naming it, defining it, modeling it, identifying it, and having students demonstrate it) and assess it, then I’m just hoping that it happens. By making character skills a part of my class, I send the message that they’re important and that they’re not personality traits — rather, that they are attainable skills that all students can practice and improve.
Now maybe I’m getting somewhere. But over the past few years, I’ve tried to move toward standard-based grading — or at least in the direction of moving my gradebook toward mastery-driven skills. Wouldn’t grading performance skills be a shift away from that goal?
Perhaps, but I think I’ve come to terms that grading shouldn’t be entirely standard-based. Instead, grading should be about what is valuable to be learned. I got rid of my traditional grading scheme long ago because I don’t value quizzes and tests and projects and homework in and of themselves. Rather, I value reading and writing and exhibiting solid habits of work. Therefore, if I believe that character skills are important, then they should be reflected in my grading, even if it’s impossible for students to master them.
After all, I believe there is a part of standard-based grading that is disingenuous. It may seem right to base grades on student achievement on an outcome; it doesn’t matter where you start as long as you master an objective by the end of the semester. But frankly, if the standard is to analyze a fictional text at the ninth grade level, and I’m reading at the fourth grade level in September and then the eighth grade level in June, shouldn’t I rewarded as much or more for my grit (and other character skills) than the kid who began reading at the 10th grade level?
Yes, this is getting both too abstract and too complicated at the same time. But it’s a first stab at figuring out why teaching and assessing character skills matter. And it’s also a little foray to suggest that there is no such thing as a fair grading system, so I might as well grade what I think is most important.
Your thoughts?
It’s looking like the Kindle Classroom Project is gaining some momentum. Kindle #15 has arrived!
There it is, our second Kindle Touch, over there on the right, all ready to be placed in a ninth grader’s eager hands.
I’m very appreciative of everybody’s contributions. This Kindle came from a generous donor from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who found Iserotope after doing a Google search.
There is real power in complete strangers — especially when those strangers believe in young people and the need to read.
We’re just 10 more Kindles away from completing a class set of 25. Once that happens, the Kindles will become even more powerful. The students could use them for reading and annotating teacher-assigned texts, not just for the books they choose. A student’s thinking would appear on another student’s Kindle, and vice versa. It’s very exciting to consider!
Once again, thank you very much, and as always, if you know of someone who would like to donate his or her Kindle, please direct them to my email: mark at iserotope dot com.