Photo by Yo Spiff
I’ve been working on a theory lately.
According to the Foundation for Child Development’s “2006 Child Well-Being Index”, children’s educational achievement levels have largely “flat-lined” since 1975. They had been declining prior to this, and from my perspective, they’ve done more than flat-line, they’ve fallen down a very deep well.
At the risk of oversimplifying what is apparently a very complex issue, I’m going to tell you what I think is a large part of the reason for this decline.
Xerox machines.
Yup. Mimeographing was popular in the 70’s, and then came the ubiquitous copier. Now, instead of having to copy notes off of a chalkboard, students often have the notes handed to them, already copied. Instead of having to write questions and answers out of a textbook, they are provided with the ever-popular worksheet, made possible by Xerox. Instead of copying math problems off of the board and figuring them out on paper, they are provided with, yep, worksheets that often have part of the problem already completed.
I could go on and on.
I have so many students who I believe have brilliant minds, but they cannot read or write at what would have been considered a third grade level 40 years ago. Why should they know how to write? They haven’t ever had to do it, at least not in an academic manner, aside from the occasional research paper that they either purchase, plagerize or painstakingly write with one hand while the other is being held. They are, however, quite proficient at writing with MySpace syntax, proving that practice makes perfect.
Here is what I see many of my students do if I give them a typical fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice worksheet. They flip through the book, looking for keywords as fast as possible. They are impatient. They bubble in the correct choice and turn in the paper 10 minutes later. It may be correct. Did it help them learn to read or write? No. Did they learn the content? No way!
I keep thinking about schools in economically depressed parts of the world that manage to turn out students who speak, read and write proficiently in more than one language. Lots of times, all these schools have to work with is chalkboards. Many are lucky to have books! But still, learning occurs. Shoot, even in the war-torn country of Afghanistan, you can find many youth who can read the Koran and have memorized it. While this education may not exactly be comprehensive, my point is that the teaching methods have been effective. Would we have had plane-crashing fanatical terrorists attack us if mullahs had handed out Xeroxed copies of the Koran with a couple of fill in the blank exercises? If we want to cripple a country, perhaps we should send them a copier.
