A PROBLEM WITH U.S. EDUCATION: OVER TEACHING

Over-teaching may be the wrong title but the point is young enthusiastic teachers tend to teach beyond what their students are prepared to “own”. I had a colleague who used to say, it is one thing to learn something and quite another to own it. In my own experience, I have seen this over and over and often talked to students who clearly demonstrated they could we in passion of useless knowledge. They could answer questions on a very difficult topic but had no idea of what they were talking about; they had learned “it” but not in a position to appreciate or use what they had learned.

I mentioned “young and enthusiastic teachers” as being the guilty party but it is also the system that sometimes over reaches. Maya Angelou said, “If you learn teach”. A young teacher in possession of knowledge feels compelled to teach what they know, no matter what it is even if the students are not at a level they allows the to appreciate what is being taught. That is something that goes with being a natural enthusiastic teacher—a rare gift prevalent among underpaid teachers. I say that because how else can you explain why young people go to college, obtain a degree, and then spend the rest of their life working 10 or 12 hours a day in an over crowed class room for a marginal salary. These are the same people whose only reward for a lifetime of work is perhaps a nice plaque that says, “Teacher of the year”, not a big dollar bonus to go along with a high salary like their college mates who pursued other professions. With time, the students go out into the world and apply what the teachers taught them with success; that is the teachers reward. Realization of failure comes the same way. This process takes time.

Both over enthusiastic parents, who believe their child is especially precocious or educational administration who want credit for doing a better job than other administrators, may force this same mistake on to a teacher. A simple example is a young teacher who has learned to appreciate the beauty of Shakespeare; hence, tries to teach it to students who have not yet learned how to write a descent sentence let alone an entire paragraph, and call it teaching English—this is exactly what happened to me. I ended up barely learning either English or Shakespeare and certainly do not feel comfortable with either one nor do I feel compelled to satisfy by shortcomings in either subject; I own neither one.

We are seeing this same thing across the board in our educational system today; when the results of worldwide evaluations show our student rank low in language, mathematics, and science, for example, our educational administrators, urged by politicians and parent, respond. They push teachers to teach more advanced versions of these elementary topics in lower and lower grades when they should be trying to teach what they are teaching but teach it better. If students are struggling to learn addition and subtraction, division and multiplication, why try to teach them algebra, or algebra students plan and solid geometry, and then try to teach these confused students integral and differential calculus.  I often hear parents of young children make remarks about the subject matter, and volume, of homework their children bring home. For example, they say things as I tried to help them with it but couldn’t understand it. This is a successful businessperson or a skilled laborer talking about his or her ten year old child’s homework—unbelievable. There is no doubt in my mind that many of these students are not going to be enthusiastic about pursuing education of any kind because of their bad experience in over learning.  

The results of evaluations of their students in international rankings are devastating to teachers as well as students. No one seems to recognize that Common Core is doing something about all of this in a subtle way; in fact, no one seems to recognize or see over teaching for what it is. For those who are teaching way beyond what they should the “core” suggestions are dampening—bringing teachers back to reality where they should be. On the other hand, for those who are not teaching up to standard, Common Core provides corrective guidelines. It is sad, sick really, that primitive states like North Carolina Oklahoma reject Common Core guideline under the guise of fear for their state sovereignty as if they are living in the 1714 and not 2014. Of course, the worst scenario is home schooling under the pretext of not agreeing with Common Core but really, for what some parents see as their religious freedom to teach creationism, evolution, right to life, and other Church perpetuated religious beliefs reverting back over 2000 years; this is a very small but vocal group, hence dangerous.   

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