Of all my old posts, I keep coming back to "What is the purpose of public education?" the most.
I still think this is a major part of our problem as a society in dealing with education. We don't agree on what it's for, and we often say we think it's for one thing while legislating based on some completely antagonistic purpose. We expect miracles from a system that we denigrate while simultaneously hero-worshipping and hating the people who work in it.
I gagged during the Presidential debates last fall at the "I think we all love teachers" comment. I shouted at my television about how they sure have a funny way of showing it. (Side note: I tell my students this all the time. They do something ridiculous, I give them The Look, they say "You know I love you, Mrs ---", and I say "You sure have a strange way of showing it.") We talk about how great teachers are one minute and then complain about how lazy they are the next. We say that school is the best way out of poverty and then refuse to truly desegregate or fairly fund schools and then blame the teachers or the students or the parents or anything but the well-documented effects of poverty for our failures.
I'm tired of the talk about needing to improve our public education system so that our kids can compete in the 21st century world. (Read: We better improve our education system so those scary yellow people won't do better than us. I'm sorry, I can't even hear anything but the racist subtext anymore considering how often people immediately point to "oh no, China's growing" to prove that we aren't competing enough any more.) I'm tired of the talk about how education is the answer to our broken economy. (Really? So why are there so many angry un(der)employed college graduates right now?) I'm tired of all of this because it posits one sole purpose to education: creating compliant hard workers.
What about unlocking creativity? What about educating our citizens to make better choices than their forebearers did? What about creating empathy and an understanding of the strength in diversity embodied in our motto "e pluribus unum"? What about leaving the world a better place than we found it? (I firmly believe that this is golden rule #2: you leave anywhere you go nicer than you found it. Something to do with being a Girl Scout, I guess.)
Look, the reason our economy is in such a bad place is partly that we already live in a post-scarcity society. We don't actually need people to work that much in order to provide for everyone's basic needs. Accepting that won't bring massive profit, though, so we invent new needs and push a ridiculous tech cycle. That way no one is ever satisfied and people still have to work so hard that they don't get enough sleep or time with their families. We live in a world of overabundance, in which productivity continues to increase, and yet we seem to have to work more and more to keep treading water. How does this make sense?
I don't believe in the idea that hard work for work's sake is moral. Rather than worrying about how prepared our children are to do pointless work for the sake of beating another country, let's worry about how prepared they are to work together to make the world a better place.That's a purpose of public education that I can get behind.
How about you?
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Friday, January 11, 2013
Monday, August 6, 2012
AtSG Ch. 4
The book we are reading for the summer for the Teacher Leadership Academy is Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders by Marilyn Katzenmeyer and Gayle Moller. I'm blogging chapter by chapter my thoughts and impressions.
Chapter 4: Understanding Myself and Others as Teachers and Leaders
The title nicely sums up the point of the chapter. Going to do this one a different way, with some quotes from the chapter and then my thoughts about them.
p. 69: "It is difficult for them [teachers] to think differently about schools when traditional education served them so well."
I find this to be very true, even as someone whose education to be a teacher focused on non-traditional methods and ideas from the start (Gettysburg was all about constructivism, George Mason focused on progressive and social justice education, with a nice dose of action-research and collaboration). I know that many things work better than the traditional education I got in much (not all!) of my schooling, I know that how I learn is unusual, but I still find myself seeing it as the default. It's what I do when I'm out of interesting ideas - and anything else still counts in my head as an interesting idea.
p.70: "Inviting teachers to compare what they say they believe with their actions can also test their assumptions." "The focus of the school may be proclaimed through a lofty mission statement, but the actual practice in the school may violate the expressed mission and supporting values."
Yes and yes! I had a huge crisis of faith in myself as a teacher when I realized how far my teaching style had strayed from what I truly believe is important due to the pressure to conform to the state standards and have students succeed on the state test. Grad school helped me start to find ways to do both, but it is still hard. I doubt it will ever be easy since the educational philosophy that the whole idea of standardized testing is based on is opposed to much of what I believe about education. As for schools, it often feels like the mission statement of most should actually be "our mission is to make AYP." As a teacher I've learned that what you assess is what students focus on and put more effort into. The same holds true for schools. Nobody assesses us on "preparing digital citizens" or "creating lifelong learners" or whatever other buzzwords we've stuffed into our mission statements, so most of our effort actually goes to the things we do get judged on.
p. 71 "The balance between the needs of different generations is a major factor in today's schools."
I often tend to discount a lot of generational politics and generalization. I feel like a lot of it is silliness drummed up to make news. Also, people have been complaining about people younger than them being lazy, selfish good-for-nothings since there have been people older than other people. ("I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint." - Hesiod, 8th century BC).
However, I do give some credit to their discussion of generational differences in context of their later discussion of the fact that teachers will be at different stages of adult development and have different life responsibilities that may be affecting their willingness to step forward as a leader or get involved in change. Certainly someone who has young children is going to have a different perspective on work than someone who is old enough to be my parent and already done raising their kids. I like the reminders that they give to realize that your colleagues who you might want to diss for not participating may have other priorities or issues you don't know about.
p. 77 Disillusioned: "Teachers may have begun their careers with an idealistic view, but after years of disappointment in frequently shifting innovations, they may protect themselves by refusing to accept change."
This is incredibly common. I know it is one of the major factors discouraging change among many teachers that I know - why put effort into something that you will be told to stop doing in a year or two? It's also completely understandable - how are they to know that this change will actually be supported and given a chance to mature? Also, teachers are so often taught some new strategy that we have to use without being shown any justification behind it. Often there is no valid scientific basis for all sorts of educational fads.
p. 79 "A first step may be to facilitate activities that focus teachers' attention on the diversity of educational philosophies in a specific school."
This would be really interesting to do in my building - I'm very curious to see the results and discuss it! I went ahead and did the educational philosophy assessment in the back of the book that they refer to, but I'm still organizing my thoughts about it.
Chapter 4: Understanding Myself and Others as Teachers and Leaders
The title nicely sums up the point of the chapter. Going to do this one a different way, with some quotes from the chapter and then my thoughts about them.
p. 69: "It is difficult for them [teachers] to think differently about schools when traditional education served them so well."
I find this to be very true, even as someone whose education to be a teacher focused on non-traditional methods and ideas from the start (Gettysburg was all about constructivism, George Mason focused on progressive and social justice education, with a nice dose of action-research and collaboration). I know that many things work better than the traditional education I got in much (not all!) of my schooling, I know that how I learn is unusual, but I still find myself seeing it as the default. It's what I do when I'm out of interesting ideas - and anything else still counts in my head as an interesting idea.
p.70: "Inviting teachers to compare what they say they believe with their actions can also test their assumptions." "The focus of the school may be proclaimed through a lofty mission statement, but the actual practice in the school may violate the expressed mission and supporting values."
Yes and yes! I had a huge crisis of faith in myself as a teacher when I realized how far my teaching style had strayed from what I truly believe is important due to the pressure to conform to the state standards and have students succeed on the state test. Grad school helped me start to find ways to do both, but it is still hard. I doubt it will ever be easy since the educational philosophy that the whole idea of standardized testing is based on is opposed to much of what I believe about education. As for schools, it often feels like the mission statement of most should actually be "our mission is to make AYP." As a teacher I've learned that what you assess is what students focus on and put more effort into. The same holds true for schools. Nobody assesses us on "preparing digital citizens" or "creating lifelong learners" or whatever other buzzwords we've stuffed into our mission statements, so most of our effort actually goes to the things we do get judged on.
p. 71 "The balance between the needs of different generations is a major factor in today's schools."
I often tend to discount a lot of generational politics and generalization. I feel like a lot of it is silliness drummed up to make news. Also, people have been complaining about people younger than them being lazy, selfish good-for-nothings since there have been people older than other people. ("I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint." - Hesiod, 8th century BC).
However, I do give some credit to their discussion of generational differences in context of their later discussion of the fact that teachers will be at different stages of adult development and have different life responsibilities that may be affecting their willingness to step forward as a leader or get involved in change. Certainly someone who has young children is going to have a different perspective on work than someone who is old enough to be my parent and already done raising their kids. I like the reminders that they give to realize that your colleagues who you might want to diss for not participating may have other priorities or issues you don't know about.
p. 77 Disillusioned: "Teachers may have begun their careers with an idealistic view, but after years of disappointment in frequently shifting innovations, they may protect themselves by refusing to accept change."
This is incredibly common. I know it is one of the major factors discouraging change among many teachers that I know - why put effort into something that you will be told to stop doing in a year or two? It's also completely understandable - how are they to know that this change will actually be supported and given a chance to mature? Also, teachers are so often taught some new strategy that we have to use without being shown any justification behind it. Often there is no valid scientific basis for all sorts of educational fads.
p. 79 "A first step may be to facilitate activities that focus teachers' attention on the diversity of educational philosophies in a specific school."
This would be really interesting to do in my building - I'm very curious to see the results and discuss it! I went ahead and did the educational philosophy assessment in the back of the book that they refer to, but I'm still organizing my thoughts about it.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
A Mathematician's Lament
I recently came across this fascinating article about everything that's wrong with math education according to Paul Lockhart. (Click through and read the pdf, I promise, it's worth it.)
He starts with the idea of what music or art classes would be like if taught as math is:
It certainly appeals to the part of me that never remembered formulas but did remember the principles the formulas were based on, and would re-derive them all on the test because that was more fun than memorization. His "real" description of the standard math courses seems pretty accurate, especially in judging the utter uselessness of Algebra II and PreCalc. (Do you know how many definitions of limits we had to learn? Me either, but it was a lot. Why? We never used them in Calc.) Despite all that, I enjoyed math, because solving a problem is fun, an interesting challenge, and has a definite end-point. This is a much-needed break when you're also writing papers, themes and doing research--there's always more research you could do, more editing you could give that paper. At least, that's how I feel: I'm never done with a writeen assignment until I turn it in, and even then I'm only turning it in because it's due now.
Anyway, I started to write because I could take a lot of his points and apply them to history. As I've mentioned, I don't actually think that the point of learning history is to learn a set of facts. Especially not the set of facts currently contained in the curriculum, which are heavily political history biased, as well as being heavily biased in general. Facts without context are useless. (A problem he has with formulas, heh.)
Context isn't the whole problem though--I don't really want my students to learn history because I think they need to know everything that ever happened, or even certain important events that happened. I want my students to learn to do history: to analyze primary sources, to go digging for information, to construct narrative around a pile of facts, to argue interpretations of said pile of facts, to wrestle with deeper questions of morality and human nature and to think. Lots of thinking. Just as Lockhart wants his students to discover math for themselves, I feel that the most valuable history is that which you discover for yourself.
He starts with the idea of what music or art classes would be like if taught as math is:
"A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.This goes on for a few pages before he gets into the real rant. His main point is that math is actually as creative an endeavor as art or music or history or anything else generally recognized to be interesting and creative, yet we teach it as something to memorize and practice and kill most students' interest in it. I think there are some elements of his argument that could be critiqued, but he does have some valid points.
Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school."
It certainly appeals to the part of me that never remembered formulas but did remember the principles the formulas were based on, and would re-derive them all on the test because that was more fun than memorization. His "real" description of the standard math courses seems pretty accurate, especially in judging the utter uselessness of Algebra II and PreCalc. (Do you know how many definitions of limits we had to learn? Me either, but it was a lot. Why? We never used them in Calc.) Despite all that, I enjoyed math, because solving a problem is fun, an interesting challenge, and has a definite end-point. This is a much-needed break when you're also writing papers, themes and doing research--there's always more research you could do, more editing you could give that paper. At least, that's how I feel: I'm never done with a writeen assignment until I turn it in, and even then I'm only turning it in because it's due now.
Anyway, I started to write because I could take a lot of his points and apply them to history. As I've mentioned, I don't actually think that the point of learning history is to learn a set of facts. Especially not the set of facts currently contained in the curriculum, which are heavily political history biased, as well as being heavily biased in general. Facts without context are useless. (A problem he has with formulas, heh.)
Context isn't the whole problem though--I don't really want my students to learn history because I think they need to know everything that ever happened, or even certain important events that happened. I want my students to learn to do history: to analyze primary sources, to go digging for information, to construct narrative around a pile of facts, to argue interpretations of said pile of facts, to wrestle with deeper questions of morality and human nature and to think. Lots of thinking. Just as Lockhart wants his students to discover math for themselves, I feel that the most valuable history is that which you discover for yourself.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
What is the purpose of public education?
No, really, I want to know.
I know what I think the purpose should be, but I'm pretty sure that the current system is some sort of purposeless monster stumbling around like a headless chicken while we argue about whether to bring it back to life with electricity, clockwork or good old-fashioned black magic.
(Okay, that was a little grotesque.) It's just that I've become pretty convinced that we can't fix anything until we can agree as a society on what we want our public education system to achieve.
What do you think is our purpose? (Multiple purposes are acceptable, I suppose.)
I know what I think the purpose should be, but I'm pretty sure that the current system is some sort of purposeless monster stumbling around like a headless chicken while we argue about whether to bring it back to life with electricity, clockwork or good old-fashioned black magic.
(Okay, that was a little grotesque.) It's just that I've become pretty convinced that we can't fix anything until we can agree as a society on what we want our public education system to achieve.
What do you think is our purpose? (Multiple purposes are acceptable, I suppose.)
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Democratic Education vs Standardized Curricula
Pragmatically I get the purpose of curriculum, standards, et cetera. I'm not even sure I want to live in a standards-free world. I like having an idea of what is expected of me and my students during the year ahead of time. I like the idea of deciding that certain knowledge and skills are important. I also like not making up my curriculum from scratch! There are things that I teach that I wouldn't have thought of and have made me learn more about aspects of US history that I previously didn't care about.
I have this problem, though. An idealistically mandated curriculum is a form of authoritarianism. I object to authoritarianism in all aspects of life. I live in what is supposed to be a great republic!
People scratch their heads over low voter turnout in the United States, especially among the young adult crowd. I think a large part of the problem is that people don't have practice with democratic institutions outside of voting. It's not just schools, but schools are part of the problem. Schools don't teach democracy because they're undemocratic.
Consider for a moment the irony of memorizing the democratic process because you are forced to by someone you didn't elect, have no influence over, and who runs their classroom like a totalitarian dictatorship.
Mandated curriculum makes truly democratic education nearly impossible. When teachers are teaching based on a decision they had very little input into, then they're more likely to teach as authoritarian authorities. Sages on the stage, not guides on the side, as my education professors would say. Learning is messy, it leads you into tangents and no-exit alleys and all over the place if you let it. You can't, though, if you see teaching as following a set-list slavishly.
"Why do we have to learn this?" is a pretty depressing question to deal with if you're teaching something you don't think is important. After all, telling your students "because a faceless bureaucracy said I had to teach it to you" doesn't really do much for their motivation either. The answer should be something like "because it's interesting and useful" or, even better, "because you asked to!"
I don't know how you reconcile mandated curricula with democratic teaching. How do teachers provide students choice (proven to be one of the best motivators out there) when they are given none?
Next time: Why I think this is so important. Also, a possible middle way through this dichotomy.
I have this problem, though. An idealistically mandated curriculum is a form of authoritarianism. I object to authoritarianism in all aspects of life. I live in what is supposed to be a great republic!
People scratch their heads over low voter turnout in the United States, especially among the young adult crowd. I think a large part of the problem is that people don't have practice with democratic institutions outside of voting. It's not just schools, but schools are part of the problem. Schools don't teach democracy because they're undemocratic.
Consider for a moment the irony of memorizing the democratic process because you are forced to by someone you didn't elect, have no influence over, and who runs their classroom like a totalitarian dictatorship.
Mandated curriculum makes truly democratic education nearly impossible. When teachers are teaching based on a decision they had very little input into, then they're more likely to teach as authoritarian authorities. Sages on the stage, not guides on the side, as my education professors would say. Learning is messy, it leads you into tangents and no-exit alleys and all over the place if you let it. You can't, though, if you see teaching as following a set-list slavishly.
"Why do we have to learn this?" is a pretty depressing question to deal with if you're teaching something you don't think is important. After all, telling your students "because a faceless bureaucracy said I had to teach it to you" doesn't really do much for their motivation either. The answer should be something like "because it's interesting and useful" or, even better, "because you asked to!"
I don't know how you reconcile mandated curricula with democratic teaching. How do teachers provide students choice (proven to be one of the best motivators out there) when they are given none?
Next time: Why I think this is so important. Also, a possible middle way through this dichotomy.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Imagining the Invisible Teacher
An artist is invisible in their work.
Despite this, I can wander around art museums with my mom guessing at the particular Impressionist who painted something and we get it right often enough to earn a solid B.
A masterful performer is one who makes it look easy.
If you don't know what's going on, dressage looks like the easiest equestrian sport. Somebody sits on a horse, doesn't move much, and the horse backs up and walks sideways and maybe dances around a little. What you can't see, but can probably guess at, is the incredibly amount of training that goes into preparing a horse for this sort of competition. You can't ask any old hack to do a capriole and expect results. The riders, too, must be the best. A beginner can get on a horse and yank its head around and kick it and get it to go the right way at a trot, but it takes someone who knows their stuff to communicate with miniscule movements of feet and hands while looking relaxed.
I was going to keep going, but I think the analogy is obvious. The masterful invisible teacher does a lot of work to become invisible. Their presence, in fact, is necessary for the creation of the masterwork, the classroom full of independent students engaged in their learning. You can't get the same result from throwing a bunch of kids into a classroom with some computers and a vague goal any more than you can get that dressage performance from throwing me on a camp pony.
Despite this, I can wander around art museums with my mom guessing at the particular Impressionist who painted something and we get it right often enough to earn a solid B.
A masterful performer is one who makes it look easy.
If you don't know what's going on, dressage looks like the easiest equestrian sport. Somebody sits on a horse, doesn't move much, and the horse backs up and walks sideways and maybe dances around a little. What you can't see, but can probably guess at, is the incredibly amount of training that goes into preparing a horse for this sort of competition. You can't ask any old hack to do a capriole and expect results. The riders, too, must be the best. A beginner can get on a horse and yank its head around and kick it and get it to go the right way at a trot, but it takes someone who knows their stuff to communicate with miniscule movements of feet and hands while looking relaxed.
I was going to keep going, but I think the analogy is obvious. The masterful invisible teacher does a lot of work to become invisible. Their presence, in fact, is necessary for the creation of the masterwork, the classroom full of independent students engaged in their learning. You can't get the same result from throwing a bunch of kids into a classroom with some computers and a vague goal any more than you can get that dressage performance from throwing me on a camp pony.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Skills and School
Sean, of Slam Teaching, asked a question I should probably answer.
Take your example of five-paragraph essays. I want my students to know how to organize their thoughts, come up with a thesis, defend it, cite evidence for their opinion, and end with a solid conclusion. All of these skills are used in a good five-paragraph essay, but the essay in and of itself isn't the important thing. It's those skills, which can then be applied to other forms of writing, verbal debate, habits of mind, whatever. Similarly, if students spend time learning different writing formats in English class, I want them to do so with the idea that they are learning about making choices when expressing oneself.
In history and social studies, the major skills I see as relevant outside of schooly-ness are those having to do with analyzing and evaluating primary sources. I want my students to be able to look for bias, to interpret a variety of documents/photos/speeches/videos/artifacts/etc for information about their source, to use primary sources as data to support an opinion, and to evaluate the usefulness of these sources for a particular inquiry. All of these things are skills I see as critical for survival in the "Information Age." Sorting through the mass of documents available on a topic of research in order to determine what's relevant, after all, is pretty much the essence of the web.
I also see historical awareness as a highly important and lacking understanding. This is more of a perspective than a skill, though, so I'll come back to it some other time. Still, I'm convinced that if history classes in grade school did a better job of developing historical awareness, many of the myths of our national history and their negative consequences would not survive.
Knowing how to learn is important too! In my teacher-prep classes, we had a huge emphasis on reflection and metacognition. Why don't we do this with students?
Also, I'd love to hear more about this idea that school is for skills. What kind of skills? Are we talking broad, generalized skills (like knowing how to learn), or specific skills (like writing five-paragraph essays)? Any thoughts?I'm going to attempt to answer this without digging out my giant concept map as referenced earlier, so this will be an incomplete list. The skills I'm talking about are primarily broad, generalized skills, the sort that you can apply all the time in life. Skills that aren't just needed for playing the school game, but for being an active citizen.
Take your example of five-paragraph essays. I want my students to know how to organize their thoughts, come up with a thesis, defend it, cite evidence for their opinion, and end with a solid conclusion. All of these skills are used in a good five-paragraph essay, but the essay in and of itself isn't the important thing. It's those skills, which can then be applied to other forms of writing, verbal debate, habits of mind, whatever. Similarly, if students spend time learning different writing formats in English class, I want them to do so with the idea that they are learning about making choices when expressing oneself.
In history and social studies, the major skills I see as relevant outside of schooly-ness are those having to do with analyzing and evaluating primary sources. I want my students to be able to look for bias, to interpret a variety of documents/photos/speeches/videos/artifacts/etc for information about their source, to use primary sources as data to support an opinion, and to evaluate the usefulness of these sources for a particular inquiry. All of these things are skills I see as critical for survival in the "Information Age." Sorting through the mass of documents available on a topic of research in order to determine what's relevant, after all, is pretty much the essence of the web.
I also see historical awareness as a highly important and lacking understanding. This is more of a perspective than a skill, though, so I'll come back to it some other time. Still, I'm convinced that if history classes in grade school did a better job of developing historical awareness, many of the myths of our national history and their negative consequences would not survive.
Knowing how to learn is important too! In my teacher-prep classes, we had a huge emphasis on reflection and metacognition. Why don't we do this with students?
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Hello World!
I know, it's a cliche title, but some cliches are meant to be.
So, hello world. Who am I?
I currently teach 10th grade World History II (1500-Present) and 11th US History in a public high school in Virginia. My philosophy of education is so complicated in my head that last time I sat down to write it all out it worked best as a very complex thinking web. (I wonder what I did with the Inspiration version of it I made...) Still, you could sum it up as the belief that the purpose of public education is to create good citizens, and that in order to create good citizens in this day and age we need to teach our children two main things: information literacy and decision making skills.
You may notice that despite being a social studies teacher (a field usually characterized by content-based tests, i.e. names and dates) I firmly believe that the point of school is skills, not knowledge. Yes, there is basic knowledge that you need to exercise these skills. Yes, there are things that my students ought to know about their own history before they graduate high school. But it's the skills that will serve them well wherever they go.
Enough philosophizing. Time to answer the question on all your minds.
The answer is 42.
Also, I decided to name this blog "Where's the Teacher?" for two reasons. The first is an attempt to deal humorously with the fact that because of my height and apparently youthful appearance, new students and parents on orientation night regularly walk into the room, look around, and wonder where the teacher got to. Even when I wear a full-on suit, somebody thinks I'm a student. The other reason is because I like to think that I am working towards a student-centered style of teaching that should mean that when people walk into my class, they have to take a minute to find me wherever I am in the midst of students working self-directedly, rather than just look up front for the lecturer.
Do I still lecture occasionally? Heck yeah. History is fun because it is a story. Someone's gotta tell the stories, and I get my turn too.
So, hello world. Who am I?
I currently teach 10th grade World History II (1500-Present) and 11th US History in a public high school in Virginia. My philosophy of education is so complicated in my head that last time I sat down to write it all out it worked best as a very complex thinking web. (I wonder what I did with the Inspiration version of it I made...) Still, you could sum it up as the belief that the purpose of public education is to create good citizens, and that in order to create good citizens in this day and age we need to teach our children two main things: information literacy and decision making skills.
You may notice that despite being a social studies teacher (a field usually characterized by content-based tests, i.e. names and dates) I firmly believe that the point of school is skills, not knowledge. Yes, there is basic knowledge that you need to exercise these skills. Yes, there are things that my students ought to know about their own history before they graduate high school. But it's the skills that will serve them well wherever they go.
Enough philosophizing. Time to answer the question on all your minds.
The answer is 42.
Also, I decided to name this blog "Where's the Teacher?" for two reasons. The first is an attempt to deal humorously with the fact that because of my height and apparently youthful appearance, new students and parents on orientation night regularly walk into the room, look around, and wonder where the teacher got to. Even when I wear a full-on suit, somebody thinks I'm a student. The other reason is because I like to think that I am working towards a student-centered style of teaching that should mean that when people walk into my class, they have to take a minute to find me wherever I am in the midst of students working self-directedly, rather than just look up front for the lecturer.
Do I still lecture occasionally? Heck yeah. History is fun because it is a story. Someone's gotta tell the stories, and I get my turn too.
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