The article aligns very closely with how I feel about teaching. One of the greatest challenges that I see in the classes that I will be teaching is the tremendous amount of material that we are expected to cover. Due to the extensive lists of names, facts, and dates that students are responsible for learning, I feel that they gain very little of the type of knowledge that is described in by Wiggins. Much of the material is so superficial that I question the value of even mentioning it, much less requiring it to be memorized to answer a question on the final exam. The analogy of standards being like a game of Trivial Pursuit is a good summary of how I feel about the content that we are required to teach. There is so much focus on memorizing these facts that there is little time to teach methods of inquiry and allow students to develop a historically-minded way of thinking that will prepare them for future educational and professional tasks.
One of the most striking things I have noticed while in my placement is the superficial manner in which world events are treated. One of the chapters in our world history textbook covers 700 years of African history in one chapter that is less than 20 pages long. A few tribal chiefs are listed and the students are expected to memorize their names and basic accomplishments, but there is no need or desire to question motives, causation, or connectivity. One of the most disheartening things I’ve seen is the fact that it doesn’t even appear to have occurred to the students to think about these things. It would seem that they have had the “Trivial Pursuit” driven way of learning history so strongly ingrained in their minds that they no longer take it upon themselves to formulate the deep questions that are required of “experts” in historical fields.
The largest teaching problem addressed in the article is finding the balance between teaching to the standards and teaching the students how to reach beyond the standards to execute higher-order thinking. When I am teaching, I hope to remember to ask myself what inquiry skills I am teaching my students. I hope to be able to find a way to balance teaching state-mandated content with these skills that I think will be valuable. It will be a challenge to find the time to do this because of the fast pace that the curriculum standards mandate, but I believe that it is worthwhile.
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Good point. I find the same problem in math too. Students are so used to memorizing "rules" or formulas for doing things that they don't ever question why the rule works or where these formulas came from. The funny thing is that if students took the time to understand how the equations were forumated, the equations would be easier to understand because they would actually mean something or students could derive them on their own when they forget the formula. It's sad how the good intentions of all these standards have the negative effect on how we educate our students.
ReplyDeleteKristina, I couldn't imagine a more worthwhile challenge to put before yourself than this very thing you describe. As you clearly understand, it's both an important philosophical issue within the discipline (WHY teach history?) and it also points (I think) towards a potentially important tool for engaging more students in a discipline that they too often write off as boring. To quote the historian R.G Collingwood, "all history is the history of thought -- not 'one damn thing after another.'"
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