No, I do not have the audacity to advocate for purely lecture-based learning, where an “expert” presents “knowledge” to “passive recipients” who then “regurgitate” it back. I do want, however, to write about the limits of active-learning, how difficult it is to do it, how we expect too much from it, why it sometimes works, why it sometimes does not work, why it is not really active learning and how we could be missing the point completely by thinking we need this so badly in our classrooms. Is there a better model than what is called active learning, based on the passion, goodness and integrity of the individual teacher, and the desire to help elevate the life experience and self-development of others?
About 20 years ago, when I was working toward my master’s degree at Teachers College Columbia University, a professor challenged us to break down into groups and create our own model schools. Three other students and I formed the “breaking the mold” group; we were going to go through all the research available about radical transformations possible in the field of education and we imagined designing a school that would probably resemble the Sorbonne in May, 1968, where students themselves had taken over the university and were doing unheard of pedagogical things (before being silenced by the French military). Fashion designers create impractical clothes to show what clothing can be and we were going to design something possibly impractical to show what a school could or should be. We even thought of eliminating teachers altogether and facilitating a gathering of active, motivated learners pursuing the meaningful and relevant (even at K though 8 and high school levels).
Since graduating with my MA, I have never come close to the ideals we grappled with in graduate school. Most students do not come to school inherently motivated to learn the 6 different subjects they might be required to tackle by the state – cajoling, coercing and/or beguiling become de rigueur for each teacher as he/she often struggles with how one can get children to learn anything. Yet, the rhetoric of the educational community has caught up somewhat with that of our little group of many years ago. I now hear principals constantly talking about the need for active learning. Active learning is one of the new mantras in American schools and everybody has to believe in it and act as if they are doing it.
When we were designing our school, I still recall the debate we had over teachers. One guy said, basically, “Listen, I would not be in this graduate school now if it had not been for some amazing teachers I had. If you folks are going to make me design a school without teachers, I’ll leave and join the conservative group over there!” We ultimately agreed that if “active learning” means abandoning the great and amazing teachers who transform lives through their unique personalities and passion for learning, then it is “all in” for passive learning. One principal at one of my schools admonished us at a faculty meeting: “This is not your show! This is not the Mr. E or Ms. F show. The students must dig for knowledge themselves! Make them dig! Make them teach you! You are not the stars of a daily education show!” He was wrong. Principals and educrats often are. If a teacher has a unique personality and can be engaging, funny, witty and naturally interactive, he/she is actively engaging others. The idea of “making” anyone do active learning is the big problem anyway.
I know what a good teacher is. You know what a good teacher is. I have modeled my own teaching on the good to great teachers who made it possible for a working-class nerd to go to an Ivy League graduate program and have amazing experiences and (hopefully) positively impact others here and there throughout his life. And, most importantly, those teachers were my models who helped me learn purely through my own motivation, outside of the classroom.
Based on my experience, a good teacher works hard, tries to positively affect every student in the class, and is EMPATHETIC. A good teacher feels emotion, cares about his/her students and the students can see this. A good teacher believes what he/she is going to teach is worth knowing – there is something stimulating and provocative in what he/she teaches even if the topic is weather. A good teacher is always teaching values through role modeling – kindness, concern, forgiveness, fairness, toleration. Even when students don’t seem to be getting it, the good teacher is potentially planting those seeds of possible personal transformation to a higher level of awareness and behavior, without even articulating those goals.
The good teacher is not the “expert” who is passing on knowledge to “passive recipients,” which is how they define passive learning these days. In fact, you only learn something if you want to learn it. There is absolutely nothing “passive” about the learning process so the term passive learning is fatuous anyway. I had a student who recently scored in the upper 1% of test takers on a standardized test in the science category. He goes home and watches science documentaries on TV. The guy is in the 5th grade and can explain how messenger RNA works. He knows our oceans are turning into carbonic acid and how this is happening. That is active learning. That is a type of passion. For that guy to go home and pull all of that from TV, that’s not passive learning.
If I go to see a production of experimental theater and I sit there and watch and think and my perspective somehow gets changed, nobody says, “Dan, why were you so passive! Why didn’t you jump on the stage and do some acting yourself and take over the production!” If I go into the MET Museum and say, “This Courbet is so wrong! Give me some paint, I will not be a passive recipient of such nonsense!” I will be thrown in the hoosegow. My passion for the theater and for art galleries is generally praised, although I approach each as an ostensibly passive recipient. Of course, as I wrote earlier, no real learning is passive. The most enthusiastic, passionate and knowledgeable teacher is not supposed to say anything, he/she is supposed to “make” the students dig until they learn one of several Common Core standards.
Qualms about “passivity” in school hearken back to a concept articulated in the late 1960s, by educational psychologist Philip Jackson, called “the hidden curriculum.” According to Jackson, underlying everything being taught in schools was a deep structure of obedience. He said, in a nutshell, that we learn obedience in school while also learning some factual stuff. This is, of course, unsupported by any empirical studies. It is a theory of redundancy and its effects – the more you do something the more likely you are to accept something and be affected by it. Active learning, thus, still brings about the hell of the hidden curriculum as it is another type of redundancy pattern in a school.
Do the principals who demand active learning ever think about the redundancy principle and how students are still wallowing in obedience structures by being “made” to dig for pre-established Common Core bits of knowledge? We still do not have the Sorbonne, May 1968 here – we do not have students coming into school saying, “Today I want to move in this direction! I’m fascinated by x,y,z…I want to study this today!” We have the Common Core standards and the teacher coercing the student to learn the standard then assessing whether the standard was learned and rewarding or punishing the student with a grade which can permanently alter the student’s self-assessment and self-esteem.
Lesson plans are never open-ended. There is always the “goal”, how you will teach the goal and how you will prove you taught the goal effectively. This exposes active learning for what it is. We have “experts” who “demand” that knowledge be “regurgitated” by students “coerced” into activities calculated to “limit” one’s search to “standards” mastered by everyone. Bye, bye, creativity and individuality. Students are actively obedient to the authority making them dig until they find what they are supposed to find.
So active learning is not learning with freedom toward meaning and relevance; it serves the same master as alleged passive learning: the state standards. Indeed, active learning is now embraced because it serves the state standards better according to some (possibly flawed) research. This hearkens back to the time of Horace Mann (the mid-1800s) who believed we needed one curriculum throughout the country to make sure the poor learned the same things as the rich, and who wished to use school to instill a behavior of intense self-control which would pacify and aid a student in his/her future workplace. Everyone had to learn the same thing; that’s democracy. (No, that’s not democracy.) It is a wonder there is any innovation and creativity in this country at all and no wonder that some of our greatest innovators drop out of school in order to succeed. We are still working with concepts from the 1840s. Active learning is not self-directed learning. It is still the stuff Horace Mann would have liked. You do not improve student motivation to learn by making students look for already found information and rewarding them when they do it.
It is a wonder that we have innovation and creativity in the USA with our educational system, but we do because of the great teachers. It is a flawed system which is redeemed by the teachers who go into it and somehow make it work for some students. A good teacher is an alchemist who goes into a lousy system and learns how to make a dead learning process, based on a collection of standards, meaningful and vital: how to make lead into gold. Relevance, meaning and personal growth toward a greater level of humanity is pursued by the good teacher every day.
More than anything, the teacher must be there to convince the student that something is worth learning. Teachers are convincers. The key is motivation. Is it worth it to learn interesting things about American history while also learning obedience to a learning authority at the same time? No, but I am not convinced that is what has to happen and the good teacher will not let it happen. Lovers of learning can go into classrooms and seek cooperation, not obedience. The good teacher will take a system based on coercion and obedience and strive for self-directed desire and cooperation. You get cooperation through sincerity and convincing. If students consent to cooperate with teachers over and over again, is this a harmful redundancy pattern? No. It is a benevolent feedback loop. Teachers also must create space for individual development outside of school. In a world of mind freezing video games, and many opportunities to throw one’s life away, the teacher must help the student to carry his/her quest for meaning and personal change beyond the school and to continually make wise choices.
Many proponents of active learning seem to reject the possibility that meaningful knowledge can be passed directly from a teacher to a student. But this is what great teachers often do. We have to accept the possibility that a good teacher might try everything including what is mistakenly called passive learning. The conscientious teacher must be keenly aware of the fact that our classroom processes are often based on coercion and we want our children to be exposed to forms of learning which will allow them to prosper emotionally and be of service. There is probably nothing wrong with the coercion that brings kids into the classroom as opposed to letting them do frivolous things. Yet, there is something wrong with the coercion that often happens within the classroom. A big agenda for this paper is the message that the exceptional teacher must fight against coercive tendencies and continually explore ways to move toward cooperation, self-directed learning and a role modeling which shows that kindness is a worthwhile value.
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