Moon on Education Myths

There are many myths that have pervaded the schoolhouse through the years and some of them have lasted so long that their image has been transformed to one more aligned with reality. A favorite of mine is one I encountered recently on a private school website, that the purpose of school is to prepare students for life. This jumped out at me, because this is a rationale I get from many of my graduate students for retaining ineffective teaching strategies.

This often appears when we discuss grading practices, like the use of grades as punishment or giving students zeros for any reason. I use an article by Doug Reeves, entitled The Case Against Zero, to kick start our talk. It doesn’t take long before it degenerates into anger and emotional discourse. For the majority, the bottom line is that giving students zeros for cheating or for failing to complete work is teaching them a valuable life lesson – in real life, this type of behavior has consequences. Therefore, grading practices that make no sense and have no educational value, are worth retaining because students who receive these grades will be prepared for the “zero” grades in life.

Similarly, those that promote the lecture method, or the “chalk and talk” pedagogy, claim that this is readying their students for the auditorium-style classrooms of college. This university-type auditory training, would be more effectively done if teachers taught a variety of note-taking skill sessions, which is a research-based strategy known to increase achievement. Sitting and listening has no basis in the research on sound educational learning tools.

Which brings me back to the myth that the purpose of school is to prepare kids for life. The purpose of school, in my opinion, is to promote learning – we need to teach our students how to learn, to motivate them to want to learn, and to be facilitators of both – not to condition them to accept failure, to live with damaged self-esteem, or to be drained of their desire to be life-long learners.

As a high-school principal, I often heard my traditional teachers state that they were not in the “self-esteem” business; that they were in the education business – like the two were totally disconnected. The research on confidence and self-esteem as being predictors of student success is very positive. Intuitively, it makes sense that if a young person arrives at school feeling like their learning is directly controlled by their own hard work, and that they are indeed capable of doing it, the odds are good that it will happen.

But how can this happen in the way schools are currently structured – not easy, I am afraid. With our current system of lock-step learning, progressing through grades, and departmentalized subjects, it will not be an easy fix. Yet there is hope – the emphasis on teaching strategies that have been demonstrated to increase achievement is one way. We can no longer allow practices, like lecturing for long periods of time, or grading practices that do not reflect achievement, to continue in use.

We also need to become aware of ego-based practices – those customs that are rooted in our own need for approval or for satisfying innate desires of which we are not even aware. But that is a topic for another time.