Navigationally Challenged : Schools must give children not only academic knowledge but also a sense of where their studies are going.

I get lost easily, especially in my car. The slightest detour sends me miles from my intended destination. Whenever I find myself lost, my first reaction is to get mad. I’m angry at whoever gave me the directions, irritated at the Thomas Guide for getting it wrong, furious at the streets for having moved.

Many children feel the same way about their journey through school. They navigate in uncharted and what to them feels like shark-infested waters, waiting for the predators, sometimes called teachers, to attack. Teachers don’t intend school to feel this way. We work hard to create lessons that make perfect sense to students, much as any map maker would take care with his drawings. Our lines are neatly drawn, the directions clearly marked, all major bodies firmly identified. The only problem is that we forget to tell the children that there is a map.

Jenny stared wide-eyed when I asked to see her portfolio from last year. Why would I want to look at that old stuff? What she didn’t know was that I had a plan for Jenny and her collection of old papers. At first, students groaned when I asked them to reread last year’s essays, but flipping through the pages, they soon began to see the point of the exercise.

“I can’t believe I wrote this. Can I throw it out?”

“No, we’re going to use it. Would everyone please find a truly terrible passage?”

We put sentences like “The several different religions in our society bring about a person’s morals and ethics as well as a vast multitude of culture to share and observe” on the board and tried to recast them for clarity. Because we were using old essays, the pressure was off. We weren’t editing for the sake of a better grade. We were learning how to revise. Students began to see that they genuinely could improve as writers. The proof was on the page.

Jenny’s portfolio also contained a log of the books she read last year as well as a commentary about herself as a reader: “When I don’t like a book, for example ‘Great Expectations,’ I fall asleep and don’t get the chapter read. Then I have to fake it in class the next day. I need to figure out how to keep reading.”

Only a fool would fail to take advantage of such valuable data. I wasn’t prying when I asked for Jenny’s portfolio, only trying to make her work this term build upon what had gone before. By looking back, she was able to look forward with me and also was learning about educational navigation.

My 12-year-old son takes a more sinister view of my prying eyes. If I ask to see homework, he demands, “Don’t you get enough of this at school? Why do you come home and correct me too?” Sheepishly, I return pen to scabbard and reply that I was only trying to help. An adversarial relationship between those who teach and those who learn only reinforces children’s notion that assignments are purposely confusing and textbooks purposely obscure. Drivers know that the Thomas Guide was created to help them get from Point A to Point B. No one believes that a conspiracy of cartographers lurks behind every page. But too often, children believe that teachers create assignments simply to trip them up.

What students miss is the big picture. Few have been asked to think deeply about why they spend all this time in school. What do they hope to accomplish in a particular year, in a particular class? How can they reach these goals? What skills do they need that they haven’t yet acquired? Students follow a plan for kindergarten, primary school, junior high and high school because they have no choice, without ever generating an educational vision of their own. Lacking direction, these children founder. They become frustrated when, after going through all the motions of traditional schooling, they are told that intellectually they still come up short.

I know the feeling. It’s what happens to me behind the wheel. I try hard to follow directions--go down five blocks, take a left, at the next stop light hang right, then straight onto the freeway. But with no picture of the city on my cerebral screen, I cannot make sense of the directions. Without a clear idea that Pasadena isn’t in the San Fernando Valley, I misread one sign and am hopelessly lost.