Fast Food Workers of the Mind

Where is the empirical evidence for academic standards?

As I draft other posts, I’ll experiment with the SmartBrevity style to preview working ideas.  This previews a series called “English as a Fine Art.”

The big picture. After ten years in the classroom, I’ve never taught “English Language Arts.”  Just plain “English.” As someone who enjoys reading about art history and composers, the “Arts” designation puzzles me.  Where are the “Arts”?

How it works. Our skills-focused and standards-based approach creates disconnection.  Content without context.  The sum becomes less than its parts.  Said parts are measured (tested), but never assembled (applied).  Isolation distorts.  Without context, the simple becomes complex.

If a task has three parts, the task itself is discarded and the parts isolated and distorted:

• I don’t have the time to teach writing, I have to teach spelling.

• I don’t have the time to teach writing, I have to teach grammar.

• I don’t have the time to teach writing, I have to teach literature.

Can you write about literature without proper spelling? Can you write about literature without proper grammar?  Writing works all skills in context.  Ten minutes writing about literature practices other skills.  Just shift your lens.  But ten minutes for spelling, ten minutes for grammar, ten minutes for literature—time balloons!

What else?  What if bands never played music because they had to play notes? To practice dynamics? To practice posture? What if quarterbacks were judged by their benchpress rather than their game stats?   

Yes, but. “Don’t academic standards ensure equality control? Shouldn’t public schools be consistent?” 

This works for fast food, but not people.  All children are different.  They grow at different rates.  Under the “quality control” argument, public school teachers are fast food workers of the mind.  Is your child like every other child?

Go deeper. Academic standards reflect deeper, unquestioned assumptions about human nature.  I could fill pages with axiomatic statements about this theory of mind:

• 1. All knowledge can be split into facts and subjects.  Math facts are not English facts, and third grade English facts are not fourth grade English facts.

• Corollary: Teachers should only teach testable academic standards.  Teaching testable standards is morally good; not teaching testable standards is morally bad.

• 2. Intelligence can be legislated.  I.e., what students will know and how fast they learn it.

• 3. All learning can be measured.  We measure by standardized tests.  Learning therefore functions like economic output (knowledge units produced).

Why do we just accept these tests measure what they claim?  (Is writing an essay about a novel the same, distinct cognitive task as multiple choice questions about a short passage?)  Where is the empirical evidence for academic standards?  If we treat standardized tests as knowledge units produced, have twenty years of mass measurements produced more?  If not, end them tomorrow.  Lack of testing never hurt the politicians or businesses behind testing.

What next. Art provides a better framework for skill-improvement.  The aesthetics never confuse means for ends.  Beauty guides.  We never say “creative” singing or “creative” drawing.  Techniques are task-generated and task-driven.  Student sketchbooks prize mistakes.  Musicians continue after missed notes. Culture should be thankful the Arts were never tested.