Scholastic Rigor: ALSO DOIN IT RONG

[naomikritzer]

Today's paper also had a local article that annoyed me, for a completely different set of reasons.

It's a piece about Minnesota schools, and how they're getting harder. "Pressure from business for more skilled graduates to compete globally, from colleges that want better prepared freshmen, from other schools competing for students and from politicians is ratcheting up what kids are expected to learn and master. Rigor has become the new education buzzword."

So then they give a bunch of examples.

First example: "It means that eighth-grade students in Heather Good's 21st-century literacy class in Edina will have to work with another student to complete a project without ever meeting face-to-face. The Valley View Middle School students will use e-mail, Google, Skype (the Internet visual phone service) and other technologies used in real business situations, Good says."

BZZZT. Using e-mail, Google, and Skype is trend-chasing, not rigor. In fact, when parents say "we want more rigor in the schools," they typically mean, "we want our children to learn to write essays with correct grammar and coherent sentence structure, instead of wasting time on e-mail and GOD HELP US Skype, WTF?"

Second example: "It means Abby Boehm-Turner's seventh-grade English students at Murray Junior High in St. Paul will spend at least half their class time reading or writing, and they will read biographies such as "Bone Black" by bell hooks, not just to know her life story, but how she told it."

OK, I'll give you that one. This is an example of rigor.

Third example: "And it means that Nancy Berg's ninth-grade biomedical science students at East Ridge High School in Woodbury must learn to read an electrocardiograph (EKG) machine as well as a gel electrophoresis report (which identifies DNA)."

BZZZT. Not rigor. For ninth graders, this would actually be a great example of overspecialization. No one needs to learn to read an EKG in ninth grade; in fact, they really shouldn't be taking "biomedical science," they should be taking things like "biology" and learning what DNA is. If "biomedical science" is just a fancy way of presenting 9th grade Bio, and analyzing a gel electrophoresis report helps to bring the DNA lesson to life for them, or if studying EKGs helps them to learn how the heart works, that's great; it might be an example of inspired teaching, but it's not an example of rigor.

I don't teach at a college, but both my parents do, and a number of my friends, so I have a pretty good idea of what deficiencies college professors see in their incoming freshmen, and it's not their inability to read an EKG machine and it's sure as hell not their inability to use Skype and Google. Here is what colleges want that they are not getting:

1. Students who write well, or at least coherently -- who can write a paper that makes a proposition, supports it with something resembling an argument, wraps up with a conclusion, and cites sources.

2. Students who are at least not stunningly behind in math and science. Who can do basic algebra, at least, and understand fundamental concepts like atoms and gravity. I'd really like to include the Scientific Method on this list, but in fact I think most science professors are resigned to having to teach it.

3. Students who know how to do basic library research -- that is to say, they can go to a library catalog, search for a topic, find the relevant books in the stacks, evaluate them to pick one or more (and "ooh, this one looks short" counts as evaluation), and read or at least skim them to gather information.

4. Students who take responsibility for their work and learning -- who do not approach the college with the attitude of, "I am your customer; your job is to spoon-feed me."

5. An ability to follow simple directions is also a plus.

Molly is only in third grade, so my personal knowledge of exactly what happens in the upper grades is limited. But rigor, IMO, would include a lot of writing; there would be high expectations for coherency; there would be at least some papers that required outside reading. Of books, not EKGs. That may be happening, but that's sure not what they talked about.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Most college professors I know would be satisfied if their incoming students could form a coherent sentence. Turning a series of sentences into a coherent paragraph, and going beyond that into maybe a page or two of sense, would be gravy.

[naomikritzer]

Ha. This is a good point.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Okay, I disagree slightly on the first one--it would be very useful if students had an awareness of how to use Google judiciously and how to use appropriate register and tone in e-mail. As a tutor at the university level I had to tell students not to write "u" and so on in their e-mails to professors and prospective internship contacts. They often can't get good advice on these issues from their parents, because a fair number of them have parents who don't use computers. Sure, yours and mine may, but theirs may not. (I run into similar issues now as a private ESL tutor.) Business letter format has long been included in high school typing and English courses so I don't think that's inappropriate. Students desperately need more awareness of register and so on. Academic essays are not the only form of communication in the world--in fact, I think they're overrated and overemphasized, and their distorted importance in the curriculum is one reason why I'm doing something else with my MA in English. (Of course, I totally agree with you that people need to be able to write coherently and back up their arguments, but there winds up being such an emphasis on the superficial form that I think the real goals--the clear thinking and clear writing parts--get lost.)

And I think internet research *has to* be included as part of part 3, including things like JSTOR and PLOS or at least scholar.google.com and appropriate use of Wikipedia (which is a wonderful lesson in judging sources and why citations are important) and so on. They are already using Google, but they're using it badly, and that's a big problem. It was so frustrating to be working with grad students on their papers, and see them with not enough sources because our library didn't specialize in ethnomusicology or whatever, and ask them if they had consulted JSTOR, and get a blank look. I was using JSTOR as a sophomore...

The EKG thing is odd unless that school has some sort of pre-pre-med track...huh.

Sigh. It's all very frustrating.

[naomikritzer]

Well, this is a good point, both about learning to write a formal or formal-ish letter (I am suddenly flashing back to the lesson I had that was entirely about how to indent and where to put the return address, with absolutely nothing useful about tone -- my education had its own "rigor" issues) and about Internet research.

It didn't sound like they're going to emphasize that sort of writing, though, in the example they gave; if you're ever e-mailing a peer, why not say "u" like everyone else?

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, oh boy. You're probably right! Trainwreck.

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

I miss JSTOR something fierce. Reason number ten thousand I'm glad my dad's teaching, I guess; can always borrow his username if I need a resource. Or, y'know, for geeky pleasure reading. Either one.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's good stuff. :)

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

There's also a lot of research-based evidence that the writing problems could be partially solved by more encouragement of pleasure reading rather than by more emphasis on painful and irritating grammar classes (which often backfire), but virtually no school cares to actively include time for pleasure reading.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Wow. ::boggles::

My job involves reading final versions of peer-reviewed academic papers (not in the "hard sciences" but in the humanities and social sciences), and I would be ecstatic if all my authors could follow simple directions (e.g., "submit all tables in a single Word file; submit each figure or illustration as a separate high-resolution JPEG or TIF file"), write consistently grammatical sentences that mean what they were intended to mean, and cite their sources correctly.

One of my mom's jobs is teaching business writing to Cont.Ed. students, and I think she would be ecstatic if she could get through a single semester without having to turn in at least one of her students for massive plagiarism in his/her final report (and this after spending an entire class session on how to cite sources and the difference between research and plagiarism).

In fact, when parents say "we want more rigor in the schools," they typically mean, "we want our children to learn to write essays with correct grammar and coherent sentence structure, instead of wasting time on e-mail and GOD HELP US Skype, WTF?"

OMG YES. Although for this year I'd settle for a Grade 2 teacher who knows how to use apostrophes...

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Wow. Yes.

I'd have been happy if more of my upper-division students could have consistently ended the same sentence they started.

And I'm still a bit traumatized by the college-freshman-roommate conversation that started with "What's valence?" and ended with "what's an atom?" -- which is when I asked the roommate as gently as I could if she was really in the right chem class.
She never forgave me for that, either.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Hey! The other day my, and apparently your, friend [Unknown site tag] pointed me to a couple of stories you'd written and said I should read them, and I read "Nira and I" and posthaste told everyone I know on Facebook to read it this very second. Woo! *has a soft spot for SF&F from a non-Western perspective*

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Where by "unknown LJ tag", I mean dolohov.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Goodness! I haven't seen dolohov around in ages, and didn't realize he was on lj. *adds him* Thank you!

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Eep! Thank you :)
I shall take ruthless advantage of your soft spot with... er, so far it's looking like about every other story. Which makes sense since I write the things that are poking at me, and culturally I'm about half-and-half.

[terrie01.livejournal.com]

I'm an academic law librarian. That means the students I work with all have a BA. I would love it if students came out of undergrad knowing how to read a Library of Congress call number, how to look up a KNOWN book in the catalog, and what a citation is. Oh, and how an index works.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

*feels your pain!*

I'm in library school right now, and I find myself answering a lot of random questions my friends are asking about basic how-to-find-and-comprehend-stuff-in-a-catalog, and many of my friends are in grad school.

OK, I admit that I did very little library use (and had less library education) as an undergrad, and that if smart and educated people are having problems like this it is *also* an impeachment of catalog design. But a lot of the things I'm teaching people are really simple, and it is rather astonishing people don't manage to learn them outside of library school.

[terrie01.livejournal.com]

A lot of it is also the growing mentality that if it's not on Google, it doesn't exist.

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

Cripes, there are people who don't -- people who stayed in school that long for something academic?!

[naomikritzer]

THIS BOGGLES MY MIND.

LC call numbers are weird if you're used to Dewey. But they're not THAT weird.

By "index" do you mean a book index? They may have never learned because so many anymore are utterly worthless, because hardly anyone hires an indexer anymore, at least judging from the indexes I've tried to use to find stuff.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Many of my middle school students simply did not notice that the index existed, unless they were specifically pointed to it. Same thing with all the other potentially useful features of a book (table of contents, captions on photos, appendices, etc.). Naturally the first thing I did was familiarize them with these features, but I don't know how much they really used any of them, except the dictionary at the back (Latin textbook).

Anyway, I think a lot of people just do not naturally think of a book as a resource. Books they read for pleasure don't generally have these features, and books they use for class they don't read; they use the pages required by their assignment, but don't explore, and don't think about problems they could solve by using these features.

[naomikritzer]

See, it doesn't freak me out that kids would come into middle school not ever having noticed useful features like indexes, captions, etc.

What's appalling is that kids get out of high school and even college without having learned how to use this stuff.

[servant-of-clio.livejournal.com]

I definitely had a lot of college students a couple years ago who had no idea their textbook had an index. I'm not entirely sure some of them knew, on general principles, what an index is for.

[terrie01.livejournal.com]

I am the first to say there are very few good indexes out there. But the students try and use them like a keyword search. If they have a question like "Look up the law on unconscionable contracts using the index" they look under "unconscionable," fail to find it, and then come tell me it's not there.

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

Annnnd this is why nearly everyone I know at my alma mater, including my dad (new adjunct, hurrah!), has had to pick up extra basic English courses. One of them has two ENG 101 classes in a row, followed by two ENG 200 classes, all before noon. The difference appears to be whether or not one bothered to pay attention during high school English.

At least he gets to teach Sci-Fi Lit after lunch. ^_^

[branna.livejournal.com]

Students who are at least not stunningly behind in math and science. Who can do basic algebra, at least, and understand fundamental concepts like atoms and gravity. I'd really like to include the Scientific Method on this list, but in fact I think most science professors are resigned to having to teach it.

Since the teaching of the "Scientific Method" in most high schools, in my experience, rarely resembles anything that I'd actually _call_ the scientific method, I'm almost at the point of saying it's just as well.

On the other hand, I'd add to this wish list of basic math skills the ability to graph simple functions. Graphing calculators and computer math programs like Mathematica and Maple are wonderful things, and I don't graph complex functions by hand these days either. But if you don't have certain basic skills, it's impossible to assess whether those programs are giving you screwy answers, and you won't have the conceptual framework to make good use of these sorts of tools.

4. Students who take responsibility for their work and learning -- who do not approach the college with the attitude of, "I am your customer; your job is to spoon-feed me."

Oh yes, this. This a thousand times over.

3. Students who know how to do basic library research -- that is to say, they can go to a library catalog, search for a topic, find the relevant books in the stacks, evaluate them to pick one or more (and "ooh, this one looks short" counts as evaluation), and read or at least skim them to gather information.

On this one, I'd argue this is one of the few places that modern computer skills should be part of the definition of rigor. Even major universities have heavily computerized catalogs these days, not old fashioned card catalogs. You'd want to train kids in some of the basic classification systems, but you'd also want to train them in how do use sophisticated online catalogs, how to request an inter-library loan if they've got access to them, and so on.

I'd also add that rigor should include kids developing basic competence---both in conversation and in literacy--in at least one other language.

[naomikritzer]

Since the teaching of the "Scientific Method" in most high schools, in my experience, rarely resembles anything that I'd actually _call_ the scientific method, I'm almost at the point of saying it's just as well.

This is an excellent point.

It's frustrating, though, because everyone ought to have a basic grasp of How Science Is Done, and many people never go to college (and those who do may never take a college-level science course.)

[terrie01.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I'd add to this wish list of basic math skills the ability to graph simple functions.

y=mx+b.

As one of my older colleagues likes point out, we went to the moon on slide rulers.

[joykins1.livejournal.com]

Skype is not used in business. I work on a virtual team--members all over the country & world.. Businesses use something like that abomination microsoft calls livemeeting. We do not care to see your shiny happy face while you talk over variable internet connections. We want to see what's on your computer screen while we talk to you on the real phone.

Agreed also library research has really changed since we were in college. My company sells to the academic library market. When I started in 1992 our major products were print indexes and CD-ROMs of those indexes. Now, we have many excellent products and product features which are simply not available any other way but online.

[joykins1.livejournal.com]

I just looked it up and skype does have screen sharing so maybe that's why they use it.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Skype's free. This is a compelling reason for a lot of people to use it.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

That's for sure why my boss uses it. I work for a non-profit publisher...

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Skype isn't used in your business, but it is used in my husband's.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

hear, hear!

[imponderabilias.livejournal.com]

If you have kids that are over 10 (or good readers!), "Nibbling on Einstein's Brain: The Good, the Bad, and the Bogus in Science" by Diane Swanson is a very good intro. to the scientific method. Which so far I haven't seen in any of my 12 y.o.'s science books.

It's a lot like those "Beginners" cartoon books I remember from the 80's - anyone remember "Darwin for Beginners", "Einstein for Beginners" etc.?