Right Wing Nation

The understatement of the year comes from Joanne Jacobs, who says,

Teacher creativity is over-rated

in summarizing this article. The only thing more over-rated in education than teacher creativity is student creativity.

“Creativity” is one of those edubabble terms nobody ever defines, but from the examples I’ve seen, it would include things like presenting your math class using interpretive dance (for the teacher), or making a diorama of Gettysburg (for the student). There’s nothing wrong with making a diorama for history class, of course, provided that the diorama doesn’t substitute for the content: Does the student know why Gettysburg is important? Does the student know who the major players were? You know, content. Making a diorama not only is not a substitute for content, but nobody has learned content from making a diorama.

God forgive me for being a cynical, curmudgeonly coot on Christmas Day, but I suspect (from what I’ve seen from teachers) that “creativity,” like “constructivism,” is popular for one reason: Sheer laziness. Why prepare for class if you’re going to turn them loose to “create their own meaning”? Why bother with silly things like content if you’re going to have them fingerpaint?

We had those MBA students with no experience, interest, or motivation teaching for us, and we created scripts specifically for them (we called them lab manuals). The class would have been a disaster without those scripts. Some of the MBA students didn’t like having to use them, but that was just too bad. Oh well. Life is like that. Get over it. The relevant concept is quality assurance.

Only in a class with no real content can student “creativity” count for much of anything. Hey, look! Little Johnny subtracted three from five using beans! Give him an extra 20 points for being creative!

What utter crap.

Creativity is for art class. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time and energy. Our duty as educators is to teach the material, that is, get our students to learn the material, not spur their “creativity” or any other nonsense. I’m quite sure that if any cohort brought cute, colored construction paper objects d’art to their presentations, I (and the rest of the class) would have snickered — and then I would have docked them for their non-professional “creativity.”

Getting back to those scripts, experienced teachers were not expected to follow them, but everybody was expected to cover the same material on the same days. Indeed, when you give departmental exams, everybody must cover the same material, or students get cheated. Had we had faculty who could not teach the class without the scripts, we would have shuttled them into doing something else. But that’s not “creativity”; that’s knowing the material, and knowing what works, and it only comes with experience. Somebody right out of ed school has no business being “creative” in class.

“Hey, I know! Instead of talking about this dull story, we’ll put on an impromptu play today!”

But as I’ve noted before, educators seem to lack the common sense gene. Here’s a stunning example from Joanne’s comment thread:

First, who can decide what’s supposed to be taught in a course? There’s a course of study, but what about the specifics? I teach physics and AP Physics. In AP, the College Board decides. That’s taken a lot of the guess-work and teacher preference out, but my regular physics can be almost anything within the vast realm of physics. I’m sure other subjects are similar.

Second, how do you define success?

Where does one start with such mindless blather? Who can decide what’s supposed to be taught in a course? Didn’t they teach you about curricula at your ed school? And if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be teaching, why are you being allowed within ten miles of a classroom?

How do you define success? Well, Einstein, how do they do on the exams? See, that wasn’t hard, was it?

And you wonder why I’m horrified at the state of education? It’s less the students than it is morons like this who are being allowed to teach. He then goes on to say:

Third, does anyone look at the educational research?

That’s truly laughable, given what passes for “educational research.” Ken DeRosa has a reader who has commented on this article, and everything he says, supposedly with authority, demonstrates that he knows nothing whatsoever about what he’s talking about. Educrats, like post-modernists, love to “pull” buzzwords from other disciplines without any understanding of what they mean (here, connectionism), and use the buzzwords to support their own empty ideas, empty ideas whose purpose is always to supplant students’ learning content. We have “integrated,” which now means playing a polka on the accordion in chemistry class. We have “authentic assessment,” which means finding some way to pass students who haven’t learned the material through to the next class, presumably so they’ll be even more lost, and fail even more dramatically. And of course we have “digital” or “21st century” which means clicking a mouse on a little icon instead of actually learning why Gettysburg is historically important.

Yeah, they’re experts — experts in equine manure.

Here’s what we care about. Do students know what they’re supposed to know? Are they prepared to work their little butts off at the university? Do they know who Shakespeare was, what century he wrote, his major plays? Can they add, subtract, divide, multiply, and estimate without a calculator, and are they fluent in basic algebra? Can they write intelligently and coherently, and do they know what plagiarism is and is not? Can they do research, other than using Google or Wikipedia?

What we don’t care about is their creativity. Can it. Don’t. Care. At. All. Mary is a great fingerpainter? Don’t care. Billy makes great 3-D construction paper projects? Don’t care. Juanita creates the prettiest macaroni-art projects you’ve ever seen? Don’t care. Terry gave a great presentation on Harry Potter and made his own costume to wear? Don’t care.

So educators, like I said, get in touch with your inner grandfather. Reactivate that common sense gene for a change. Teach the material, and stop playing kindergarten teacher. And stop throwing around concepts you don’t understand.

By the way: Merry Christmas!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 at 8:25 am and is filed under Education.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.