Resistance and the Promised Land
“We need to keep teaching writing with pen and paper if for no other reason that the kids need to have the physical strength to handwrite the 90 minute Regents exam.” (Comment heard during a recent workshop.)
That might be the most depressing thing I’ve heard in a long time, but it epitomizes, I think, the depth of the resistance that many teachers are feeling about the shifts that are occuring. It’s a legitimate concern, I know, in an environment where passing the test is at the end of the day what it’s all about. (Even though you know that in a few years, the Regents and the SAT are going to have to start providing kids with digital ways to take tests.) Our resistance, our inability to see new ways of learning is going to get us into very desperate times.
I love this comment that Terry Elliot left a few days ago.
Our tools have pushed beyond the ability of the existing institutions to adopt them. School is a zero sum game as it is practiced today. There are efficiencies to be had, but none so revolutionary that current administrators will be able to “fold in” Web 2.0. (I am sorry to use that term, but it is the only shorthand word I know to describe the networked zeitgeist.) Look at the fear most administrators feel toward weblogs. Weblogs demand freedom of a larger kind than schools know how to give. Many of us have simply routed around that fear and become a conduit by which students can exercise that freedom, but it is risky business professionally and personally. Yet we do it. Why? Because in our gut we know that this is where our students will live in their future. It is a sin to let them out into that world totally unprepared…I think that is the most frustrating part of being in the middle of a revolution. You have enough perspective to see that where you have been is not prologue to where you really need to be. It is there to be seen, but your brain cannot process it. If I may engage in some hyperbolic analogy, I feel like Moses must have felt: the Promised Land is out there, but we will never live to see it.
If true, that may be even more depressing.
technorati tags:education, learning
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It absolutely is not true, unless we’re all 83 years old. Why can’t we fold this in? Why can’t we make it happen? It’s what we all do that’s the answer: education. Nobody knows better than I do that teachers resist change. And I started talking about the read/write web at a principals’ meeting last week and admit that only a few seemed to get me at all. Sometimes it seems hard to even explain the change necessary, but what choice do we have? I didn’t become a principal to bury my head in the sand and follow the status quo. I did it to effect real change for a larger group of students than I could get to in the classroom. We do exactly what Terry says in the post, we follow our gut and make it happen. One day at a time.
“We need to keep teaching writing with pen and paper if for no other reason that the kids need to have the physical strength to handwrite the 90 minute Regents exam.”
I don’t get why this is depressing. Are you saying that we DON’T need to teach children to write with a pen and paper anymore?
Writing with pen and paper is FANTASTIC! I’ve finally realized this at the age of 27, having done nearly all my writing since the age of 11 on word processors. I carry a notebook around with me all the time and can’t get enough of it.
David…nothing wrong with writing on paper, but if that’s the only reason we continue to teach it, that’s depressing. It’s the idea that the test is always hanging over our heads that is really depressing.
Just for the record, I write on paper too, but you have to admit, that it’s much less flexible than writing digitally.
Some of us may need to continue writing (and teaching) with paper and pencil because there are still large numbers of students who still do not have access to the Web at all or very limited access. That may seem hard for some to believe, but those are probably the same people who didn’t realize there were so many poor people in New Orleans until after the levee broke.
[…] We’ve had some interesting commentary on my last blog about teachers coming into the 21st century with their teaching methods. I thought long and hard about some of the reply’s, emails and even a trackback about the post. So as I was reading Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed blog today this quote from one of his posts from Tuesday, October 10th struck me with interest. “We need to keep teaching writing with pen and paper if for no other reason that the kids need to have the physical strength to handwrite the 90 minute Regents exam.” (Comment heard during a recent workshop.) […]
[…] Resistance and the Promised Land“We need to keep teaching writing with pen and paper if for no other reason that the kids need to have the physical strength to handwrite the 90 minute Regents exam.” (Comment heard during a recent workshop.)That might be the most depressing thing I’ve heard in a long time, but it epitomizes, I think, the […] […]
[…] Resistance and the Promised Land“We need to keep teaching writing with pen and paper if for no other reason that the kids need to have the physical strength to handwrite the 90 minute Regents exam.” (Comment heard during a recent workshop.)That might be the most depressing thing I’ve heard in a long time, but it epitomizes, I think, the […] […]
[…] Resistance and the Promised Land “We need to keep teaching writing with pen and paper if for no other reason that the kids need to have the physical strength to handwrite the 90 minute Regents exam.” (Comment heard during a recent workshop.)That might be the most depressing thing I’ve heard in a long time, but it epitomizes, I think, the […] […]