Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Berger, an English teacher at Weathersfield School who writes “Poor Elijah’s Almanack.” The column appears in several publications including the Times Argus, the Rutland Herald and the Stowe Reporter.
[E]veryone’s heard of the Emperor. He’s the sage who buys a set of magic clothes. Actually, the garments don’t exist, but his tailor tells him only stupid people can’t see them. The Emperor then parades around in his underwear while his puzzled subjects, who also don’t want to seem stupid, tell him how wonderful he looks.
The prologue to the story that most people don’t know is that before he ascended the throne, the Emperor enjoyed a glittering career as an education consultant. That’s why it’s particularly fitting that for a quarter of a century, our annual awards for outstanding achievement in the education world have proudly borne his name.
We always begin our awards ceremony with a look at education research. That’s because, from the American Education Research Association’s innovative “data poems,” by which experts creatively explain their research findings, to insights like the shocker that students learned more when “a majority of their teachers had a college degree,” research undergirds so many of education’s brightest ideas.
Inclusion, for example, is the decades-old reform practice that places special education students with significant disabilities and behavior issues in regular classrooms. This year analysts rediscovered that “time spent teaching goes down as the number of students with disabilities goes up.” Including “a high percentage of students with behavior problems” apparently “cuts into teaching time.” Experts speculated that this might be due to the additional class “time spent maintaining classroom order.” Their persistence probing the obvious earns them the Sisyphus Prize for Perpetual Research.
Our companion award, the Archimedes Eureka Honorarium, spotlights efforts to “test the theory” that “reductions in school violence” contribute to “improved academic outcomes.” The remarkable conclusion – it does. Researchers were at first puzzled when academic improvement likewise appeared to prompt reductions in student misbehavior and violence, but they concluded that schools exhibiting improvement in both dimensions might be working on behavior and academics at the same time. Honorable Eureka mention goes to an Ivy League team for their use of “hard data” and “brain scans” to establish that people “see the world more similarly when they’re friends.”
Our next presentation celebrates a fourth grade teacher’s published remedy for students who ask too many questions. She recommends giving every student three “tickets” at the start of each day. Whenever one of her elementary students asks her a question, he has to hand in a ticket. When his three tickets are “used up,” the “student may not ask another question that day.” Naturally, “the point is not to discourage questions” but to “encourage thoughtful questions.” For her grasp of the typical 9-year-old’s capacity to ration his curiosity over an entire school day, we present our Distinguished Priorities Cross.
Behavior experts offer assorted suggestions to “create calm” in classrooms. The inaugural Tigger Meditation Bowl salutes the proposal that teachers quell impending chaos by preemptively crying, “Brain break!” This sudden alarm is followed immediately by the command to stand up and spend the next 30 seconds touching items in the room that are blue, shiny, and organic in that order. The calming sequence concludes with 10 jumping jacks. Om.
As social-emotional education consumes an ever larger share of school time and resources, authorities are examining the factors that affect the development of students’ “non-cognitive” abilities. Based on the compiled vital statistics of everybody born in Sweden since 1932, including their occupational and military enlistment data, as well as available physical, psychological and intellectual evaluations, birth order may play a significant role in student performance. Older siblings are purportedly more likely to be “outgoing, emotionally stable, persistent, willing to assume responsibility, and able to take initiative.” In addition, “first-born teens are more likely to read books, spend more time on homework, and spend less time watching TV.” It remains to be seen exactly what education officials will do with all this, although with schools increasingly and routinely responsible for the “seamless” care and feeding of children, it probably won’t be long before teachers are expected to consult with parents about family planning. The 2018 Margaret Sanger Prize toasts all those who look forward to serving on the school committee overseeing conception and childbirth.
With the advent of the Common Core, nearly every state has moved from pencil and paper standardized testing to online tests. Tech boosters promoted this “mode” shift on the grounds that it would ensure more accurate assessment of student achievement. It also coincidentally ensured the sale of unprecedented heaps of technology to school districts. The trouble is it turns out that using computerized technology tends to “depress scores” and produce results that have more to do with the testing mode and “little to do with what students know and can do.” Over a typical nine-month school term, online math and English scores were five and 11 months lower, respectively, than scores on pencil and paper tests. For tech enthusiasts’ zeal and education officials’ willingness to boldly impose a costly, new, allegedly more accurate assessment regime before they bothered to check whether it was really more accurate, we present our Bill and Melinda Gates Silicon Star.
The coveted George Orwell Creative Use of Language Award always attracts fierce competition. Last year, for example, the simple, soothing deceit of, “Every child is uniquely brilliant,” narrowly edged out an assault on Girl Scout cookies for fostering “hegemonic gender roles.” This year, however, there was only one conceivable candidate for the prize bearing Orwell’s name. In Orwell’s 1984 “the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” In Kansas this summer the president of the United States told us, “Just remember – what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” His malign, unwitting echo of 1984’s nightmare world earns him his Orwell.
Some will no doubt applaud our honorees’ achievements. Those who find themselves in agreement with any of our winners should feel free to count themselves winners, too.
Bear in mind, as well, that each of us at some time deserves an Emperor of our own.
Even Poor Elijah and me.
