We’re Educating in Sound Bites
Public schools are supposedly in crisis. I figured immersion tactics might help me to understand why. So I signed up to teach high school this past semester: Two units of journalism through a program called “writers in the classroom.”
Besides, here was an opportunity to mold a few young minds before some other crackpot gave them the wrong ideas. It seemed the least I could do for my community.
My tenure lasted two months, thus I can only draw preliminary conclusions. But I think it’s safe to say, yes, there is a problem in the classroom.
It’s not exactly what I expected, however.
And, of course, it has little to do with all the quick-fixes we hear about these days.
The problem I see is the problem of 15-minute attention spans in our nervous culture of 15-minute crises and multi-tasked 15-minute solutions.
Not surprisingly, the high school students I encountered are as anxious, as impatient, as restless, as easily distracted, as head-dropping tired, as TV-synchronized, as headline-oriented, as self-absorbed, as lacking in curiosity as, well, their parents.
“You’ve got to mix things up to keep them with you,” my classroom advisor told me. “If you stay with one thing the entire 40 minutes, you’ll lose them.”
She was speaking of the students. But I’m beginning to suspect she could have been referring to the larger world of adults, circa 2001.
Forty minutes is just too long to bear down. People squirm, nod off, drift away.
So hurry, you have only 15 minutes.
Spanish verbs? Fifteen minutes. History? Writing? Then, we have to change tempo. Divide the students into groups and do something else. Now where were we? Then switch again. High school is a frantic daylong kaleidoscope of activity. Much like home. Read, watch TV, play a CD, drive to a friend’s, dial the phone, make a snack, download.
Can’t you see I’m busy? Stressed out?
Where did they learn this?
Well, haven’t their parents been living agitated lives ever since these kids were born? What’s the best kind of riches? Those made overnight. Lose 15 pounds in 15 minutes. Hand me the remote. Ding, there’s the microwave. Let me call you back, I’m on the other line. Yes, excuse me, celery, lettuce and tomatoes count as one item in the express check-out lane. You’ve got mail.
I know how to get our test scores up. Cut the tests to 15 minutes. Turn on the TV. Stick a Walkman in one ear and a cell phone in the other. Ready, go. I’ll put these kids up against any in the world.
OK, I’m being a fogy.
But it strikes me that the real challenge in educating a sane generation does not rest, or even begin, here in the classroom. Teachers I met would much rather write a lesson plan that begins, “Today we offer an overview of .... “
Instead, they must adopt the scattershot entertainment pace demanded by the raw material that lands on the schoolhouse step each semester. Scene, cut, action, fade, lights.
The teachers I worked with seem to be doing a pretty creative job of it, trying to make a hearty meal by serving out instant snacks.
So what’s wrong with 15-minute bursts, anyway?
This: Learning is not just burst encounters with information. It is a process. Patience and perseverance are necessary components, and themselves sources of lifelong rewards once mastered. They cannot be taught without allowing for practice. I don’t care how skilled the teacher, concentration cannot be broken into 15-minute lessons.
For my part, I introduced my students to Annie Dillard and her book “The Writing Life,” which is inspiration for anyone who sets out to explore the magic of prose.
“The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe,” she begins. “You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.”
In 15 minutes, you can’t dig much of a path. You can’t probe very deeply. You can’t loosen much rock with that pick.
