Stealing Time
In a 1937 cartoon for The New Yorker magazine, James Thurber skewered wine lovers and critics in his usual pitch-perfect voice. It showed the host of a dinner party saying to his guests, “It’s a naive domestic burgundy with no breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.”
One of our magazines actually includes some wine reviews from time to time, and I always hear Thurber whenever I read about a wine that has a “flinty nose,” leading to an “elegant structure” with a “layered, spicy, petulant depth,” plus a “hint of mango” and “pear notes.” Petulant? Really?
Although I wouldn’t know the difference between a Rothschild and a Ripple, I don’t doubt that some people can distinguish very subtle differences among wines. I’m not sure what presumption or petulance tastes like, but it is truly amazing what humans are capable of learning when they combine a passion for some particlar experience with a constant exposure to it.
One thing I have often wondered is whether it is necessary to know a lot about wine in order to develop a sophistocated taste for it. In other words, could someone become an expert without becoming familiar with the history, the manufacturing process, and all the various labels and nomenclature, based solely on drinking the stuff?
Thirty years ago, when I was a young salesman, I acquired a taste for jazz while sampling the night life in New York, Chicago, New Orleans and other seminal spots. I am not a musician and knew nothing at all about the genre, having grown up along with rock and roll, but whenever I heard something that appealed to me I would go out and buy a record.
I still don’t know that much about jazz, but over the years I’ve picked up a rudimentary knowledge of its progression over the past century, and I know who most of the significant players have been. I’ve even met a few of them. More to the point, I’ve developed a pretty good ear, so while I might not be able to name the artist on any given recording I can make a good guess about the time period in which it was made.
By now, you are almost certainly asking yourself “Who cares?” Well, it may not matter how adults aquire wine-tasting skills or music appreciation, but it matters a lot how kids learn to read. On February 2 of this year, The New York Times ran an op-ed piece entitled “Playing to Learn,” written by Susan Engel, the director of the teaching program at Williams College in Massachusetts.
She maintains that our current, test-driven approach to reading and other critical skills flies in the face of science, because it emphasizes facts over process. Developmental psychologists now understand, for example, that learning the sequence of letters in the alphabet does little towards helping children learn to read. What does help is for kids to participate in extended conversations, to listen to stories, and also to tell stories themselves.
In Ms. Engel’s ideal elementary classroom, the story hour would be extended to two hours. During that time kids would hear stories, tell stories, read aloud and be read to. They would discuss the stories with each other, and teachers would give individual instruction wherever needed.
Then there would be an additional hour devoted to writing. Students could write anything from letters to jokes to newspaper articles without the pressure of grading. Writing is a way to organize thinking and structure communication, which will become essential tools that kids will need in high school and college.
A shorter period would be spent on practicing computation, developing proficiency in the four basic mathematical functions. Similar to the writing model, those skills should then be applied as much as possible to the real world, so that kids understand the relevance of what they are learning. They should be counting things, making estimates and observations, and designing their own experiments.
Here’s the kicker, which will endear Professor Engel to the specialty toy community and the readers of this magazine. She advocates a greatly expanded segment of the elementary curriculum dedicated to constructive play. Children should be building things, making up games, collaborating on projects and acting out stories. The skills they develop may be difficult to test, but they are more important than many of the things we’ve been testing for over the past eight years.
I am not opposed to testing. On the contrary, I was tested a lot as a kid and I don’t think there was anything wrong with that, nor do I think it’s bad for kids to compete for grades or test scores. Competition is the most fundamental trait of our, or any other, species and it’s silly to pretend otherwise.
What I am opposed to is the idea that standardized testing should be the determinative factor in everything from curriculum to funding to sanctions. It would be nice if the problems with education were that easy to solve, but they aren’t.
Since the No Child Left Behind law was passed the improvement in student performance has actually slowed, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and vital subjects such as art, music and phys ed have been neglected.
In spite of all the studies which show that participating in art classes and learning to play instruments improves learning overall (and produce more well-rounded citizens), when budget constraints and federal mandates rear their ugly heads, we go ahead and cut them anyway. Meanwhile, as we fret about the obesity epidemic, we eliminate gym class and recess.
Our pre-eminence in science is in jeopardy and many of our young people are shockingly ignorant of our history, and yet surveys indicate that public schools have reduced instruction time in those subjects by 40 minutes a week since the inception of No Child Left Behind. That’s the result of “teaching to the test,” otherwise known as letting the tail wag the dog.
When NCLB was originally proposed by the (George W.) Bush administration, a number of prominent educators spoke out against the concept, but administration officials were dismissive. The MBAs had everything figured out, and apparently felt that the educational community was merely trying to protect its turf and preserve an inefficient, self-serving bureaucracy.
I don’t know about you, but I am no longer amused by that presumption.
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