>From http://www.newsscan.com/
WORTH THINKING ABOUT: WHY DO TEACHING METHODS CHANGE SO SLOWLY?
Wondering, "How can we account for the persistence of a mode of
teaching that has so many critics, so many obvious faults?" author Parker
J. Palmer explains:
"Some say that lecturing, assigning readings, and giving tests is
simply the easiest way to teach, and that teachers (like everyone else)
will take the line of least resistance. Others argue that mass education
has forced this method upon us: how else do you teach a class of two
hundred except with managerial techniques? Still others blame educational
economics, pointing out that our underfunded schools are unable to buy the
time or staff necessary for more personal and interactive modes of teaching
and learning.
"All of these explanations are factual and reasonable, but nothing in
history would ever have changed if facts and reasons could not be overcome.
Laziness, conceptions of efficiency, and budgets are not forced upon us by
cosmic superpowers. They are all matters of choice, and we always have the
freedom to choose otherwise. Why do we not choose otherwise? Why does this
pedagogy persist?
"The critics have come closer to the answer by suggesting that this
style of teaching persists because it gives teachers power. With power
comes security: the security of controlling the classroom agenda, of
avoiding serious challenges to one's authority, of evading the
embarrassment of getting lost in territory where one does not know the way
home. Teachers are unlikely to relinquish such power even in the face of
students who hunger for another way to learn.
"But that is only half the story. Students themselves cling to the
conventional pedagogy because it gives them security, too, a fact well
known by teachers who have tried more participatory modes of teaching. When
a teacher tries to share the power, to give students more responsibility
for their own education, students get skittish and cynical. They complain
that the teacher is not earning his or her pay, and they subvert the
experiment by noncooperation. Many students prefer to have their learning
boxed and tied, and when they are invited into a more creative role they
flee in fear.
"The conventional pedagogy persists because it conveys a view of
reality that simplifies our lives. By this view, we and our world become
objects to be lined up, counted, organized and owned, rather than a
community of selves and spirits related to each other in a complex web of
accountability called 'truth.' The conventional pedagogy pretends to give
us mastery over the world, relieving us of the need for mutual
vulnerability that the new epistemologies, and truth itself, imply."
***
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060664517/newsscancom/ref=nosim
for "To Know as We Are Known" by Parker J. Palmer -- or look for it in
your favorite library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations
to adult literacy programs.)
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