kitchen table math, the sequel: David Mulroy on 'critical thinking' in the late Middle Ages & 'looking for bias'

Monday, July 2, 2012

David Mulroy on 'critical thinking' in the late Middle Ages & 'looking for bias'

The "critical thinking" discussion brought David Mulroy's The War Against Grammar to mind.

I remember Mulroy making an argument that what we call critical thinking today corresponds in some sense to "disputation" and "logic" in the Middle Ages. Mulroy is on grammar's side of grammar, obviously.

Unfortunately, looking at my copy of Mulroy's book, I see that I'm going to have to do more than skim my underlinings and notes to reconstruct exactly what he's saying.

So, for the time being, here is one of my favorite passages from the book: Mulroy on "interpretation by free association" ("making connections," presumably) versus "precise interpretation of the meaning of complex statements." [boldface added in the passages below]
The tendency of modern teachers to disparage the importance of literal meanings reinforces and is reinforced by the low status of grammar, since the rules of grammar play an indispensable role in establishing the literal meanings of statements. Grammar and literal meanings have both become pariahs, and this fact lies at the root of several troubling tendencies.

To a teacher in the humanities, the most obvious of these tendencies pertains to reading comprehension. We increasingly encounter students who can speculate about the "hidden meanings" of literary texts but miss their literal sense. To gauge the extent of this problem, I recently asked members of one of my large mythology classes to produce brief paraphrases of the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
I was looking for a restatement of the proposition expressed in the main clause, that respect for public opinion makes it necessary for parties who are abandoning an established union to explain why they are doing so. It was disconcerting that of sixty-one students who tried to paraphrase the sentence, none seemed to recognize its source. Some thought that it had to do with ending a romance. I estimated that twenty-five comprehended the gist of the sentence. 
[snip]

Most disturbing, however, were a large number of students who responded to the assignment with misguided enthusiasm.

[snip]
It doesn't matter where you came from. In the end we are all human beings. Humans are at the top of the food chain, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't respect nature. Because we have one earth, learn to preserve it.
I was taken aback by how poorly the students had done on this test and repeated it twice with essentially the same results. Most recently, in November 22002, I offered the paraphrase exercise as an opportunity for "extra credit" on a mythology test. Sixty-four students of 228 attempted it. Thirty-three seemed to have grasped the essential thought. Among the others war e some more vivid examples of interpretation by free association.

For example:
Mankind is in a state of separation. There will come a time when all will be forgotten, and man will be one with mother earth.
[snip]

These responses seem to me to exemplify a kind of higher illiteracy. The students who suffer from this are proficient in spoken English and can express their own thoughts in writing adequately. They lack the tools, however, for the precise interpretation of the meaning of complex statements. This kind of illiteracy boils down to an ignorance of grammar. If a student interprets the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence a an exhortation to "preserve the earth," then how can you demonstrate the error? There is no way to do so that does not involve grammatical analysis: the subject of the main clause is respect to the opinions of mankind, the main verb is requires, and so forth.
Mulroy goes on to connect "a-grammatical interpretation by free association" with what he sees as a focus on ad hominem argument in many state standards:
By far the worst effect of interpretation by free association, however, is the legitimation of ad hominem arguments. Of all the associations that are attached to statements by reflective judgments, those having to do with the speaker's or the author's motives are the most common. In a culture in which interpretation is typically based on free association, people have inevitably lost sight of the fact that speculation about motives is an invalid method of argumentation, a well-known logical fallacy....Most discouraging, however, is the fact that new state academic standards in the language arts actually encourage students to engage in ad hominem arguments. In Wisconsin, for example, a standard for grade 12 under the heading of "Effective Participation in Discussion" reads: "Detect and evaluate a speaker's bias." And later: "Appraise the purpose of discussion by examining their context and the motivation of participants." California's Listening and Speaking Standards for grade 8 include this: "Evaluate the credibility of a speaks (e.g., hidden agendas, slanted or biased material)." In Kansas, fifth-graders are supposed to perceive an author's "purpose"; eighth-graders, his "point of view"; eleventh-gradesr, his "point of view or bias."

This is not the way to train students to participate in serious discussions. Charges of hidden agendas or biases and raising the question of motives are sure ways to turn conversations int o shouting matches. Students should be exhorted, when engaged in serious discussion, to analyze the meaning of statements according to the rules of lexicography and grammar and then to test their truthfulness according to the rules of logic and evidence, while disregarding extraneous associations. One arrives at truth and maintains civility by obeying well-grounded rules, not through exhortations to be sensitive and certainly not by trying to psychoanalyze one's opponent. We cannot have good conversations in our society unless we attend to the literal meanings of what we say to one another, and we cannot do that without greater emphasis on understanding grammar.

Or so it seems to me.
Until the moment I read Mulroy, I had simply taken for granted that 'looking for bias' was an OK thing for students to do.

Mulroy opened my eyes. Then, when I visited the Cambridge Pre-U course, I saw the fallacy of "looking for bias" in action. "Looking for bias" when you lack background knowledge easily turns into an exercise in being - or becoming - biased yourself.

One group of students in the class, whose Google search had turned up an article in Haaretz, the liberal Israeli newspaper, reported that: "Since this is an article in a newspaper in Israel, it might be biased against Arabs."

No one present challenged this reasonable-sounding observation, including the two teachers, and I remember feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Is it OK to assume that any news article written by any Israeli reporter should be suspected of bias against Arabs?

Really?

The answer seemed to be 'yes,' and to me that 'yes' comes pretty close to being an expression of (unintended) bias against Israelis.

So I'm off the boat when it comes to looking for bias, etc. Looking for logical fallacies and the like is another matter -- although I suspect it's more valuable for students to look for logical fallacies in their own work than in the work of others.

Setting aside the basic question of civil discourse, however, Mulroy is right: students need a great deal of help throughout their educations in reaching a precise interpretation of the meaning of complex statements.

I suspect most college-level instructors, not to mention SAT critical reading tutors, would agree.

35 comments:

Catherine Johnson said...

Ed taught an undergraduate course this year, and he spent a lot of time teaching students to read John Stuart Mill. He found that their immediate impulse, always, was to debate Mill. That's what they've been doing in high school, it seems.

He would say, "I don't want you to argue about Mill. I want you to understand exactly what Mill is saying."

gasstationwithoutpumps said...

I suspect it's more valuable for students to look for logical fallacies in their own work than in the work of others.

Maybe true, but getting students to find logical fallacies in arguments whose conclusions they agree with is very difficult.

Many times the problem is not in the logic, but in the premises. Getting student to analyze the unwritten premises that an argument is based on is what should be meant by "looking for bias", though I admit not knowing exactly what is being taught in English and history classes these days.

AmyP said...

"He would say, "I don't want you to argue about Mill. I want you to understand exactly what Mill is saying.""

That's very insightful. Just understanding what the writer is saying is a very big deal. I keep hearing that college students are not reading (or in some cases even buying) their course textbooks, and an inability to read and understand those texts may be partly responsible.

Reading for information (rather than just seeing key words and free associating) is a crucial skill.

"Maybe true, but getting students to find logical fallacies in arguments whose conclusions they agree with is very difficult."

Very true.

MagisterGreen said...

This is a HUGE problem for me with my AP Latin students. On the AP test they are asked to critically asses a passage in response to a prompt but most of them start out in my class unable to provide anything apart from 1) A personal response to the passage or 2) An attempt at a critical essay but one which essentially boils down to their personal interpretation of a handful of individual words. Students will seize on a word like iratus, angry, and compose an entire essay discussing how the character's anger causes this and that and so on...when in fact the passage says, more or less, the opposite. Occasionally they fail to grasp meaning but even when they do know what the Latin means they lack the ability to limit themselves to the words in front of them and to analyze what those words mean, as opposed to the words they'd prefer were there. It's gotten so bad that it's a standing joke in my class that when a student starts to venture afield I just say "Stop with the English."

Gasstation...I don't know exactly what's going on in English class either, but I suspect a lot of the problems I see stem from this ridiculous thing called "active reading". Apparently "active reading" is characterized by students underlining or highlighting their books where they find "key ideas" or such. I suspect this recent trend has been enhancing the students' inability to encompass an entire piece as a whole since they spend all their time looking for "key phrases" or "key words" or the like. It drives me nuts.

SATVerbalTutor. said...

@MagisterGreen, I think that when English teachers ask their students to read "actively," their implicit assumption is that their students already know how to read literally and will automatically be able to relate "key ideas and themes" to the bigger picture. It's a case of grownups not understanding that teenagers don't approach a piece of text with the same level of context and knowledge of what reading involves. It never occurs to them that literal comprehension is a skill that needs to be taught. That or they're so clueless themselves that they don't understand what's really going on either.

Speaking of relating things to one's personal life, this piece encapsulates everything I struggle with in tutoring the SAT: no, I don't CARE about your interpretation of what the author is saying. I care about what the author is ACTUALLY saying. Literally. Word for word. As in, "read me exactly what it says in the passage." I can't believe students taking Latin have so much trouble with literal meaning. And here I thought it was the last bastion...

I think David Mulroy is my new idol.

Jen said...

"Most recently, in November 22002,"

These are clearly intractable problems!

AmyP said...

"I can't believe students taking Latin have so much trouble with literal meaning."

AP Latin, no less.

Jen said...

SAT verbal tutor says: struggle with in tutoring the SAT: no, I don't CARE about your interpretation of what the author is saying. I care about what the author is ACTUALLY saying. Literally. Word for word. As in, "read me exactly what it says in the passage."

Yup. I tell them that I don't want the answer that they think they could write an essay about -- I want the answer that tells exactly what's actually there in the passage.

Anonymous said...

With regards to ad hominem argumentation, I wonder if perhaps part of the problem is that students simply don't truly understand what ad hominem is. When I was teaching a Quant Lit class four years ago I gave an assignment where the students were supposed to collect real-life examples in the media, etc. of the ten basic fallacies that we had covered. (It was election season, so I figured there'd be no end of fodder for this particular assignment.) I was thoroughly dismayed to find that any sort of negative political ad whatsoever got slapped with the label "ad hominem" - as if saying anything "bad" was somehow fallacious. No attempt was made to examine negative ads for veracity.

Glen said...

I have a similar problem getting my son to parse word problems. He'll skim over a complex problem, then stare into space for a while thinking about...well, who knows what he's thinking about. So, I ask him to think out loud. [sound of crickets]. "I don't really get it," he says, as he stares thoughtfully into the heavens.

"Hey!" I'll shout, jabbing my index finger on the problem. "It's down here on earth. Read the problem."

"I did," he insists, raising his eyes again to the heavens. "I'm thinking about it."

I look at the problem, and see that, typically, the second sentence is carefully worded information that needs to be translated into mathematical notation. The third sentence likewise. The last sentence tells you exactly what information you need to derive from the previous sentences.

He apparently doesn't see what I see. He's not looking where I'm looking---at the problem. He just skims it and stares off into space, hoping to be struck by inspiration, I guess. If inspiration doesn't strike, well, whaddya gonna do?

I tell him what to do: "Read it!" I tell him his eyes should be rubbing holes in the paper, Carefully. Studying. Each. Word. I tell him to go over and over it, extracting every speck of information encoded in the text and converting it to math, then staring at the math. If he hasn't done that, claiming he doesn't get it is ridiculous. If he has, he'll usually get it, to his surprise.

He tends to treat difficult literary passages similarly. His teacher at school tells him to look for keywords, to think about the broader story, to not worry if he doesn't get it, because he can probably keep reading and still understand it.

At home, I'm much more demanding in giving him challenging reading (interleaved with easy, fun reading) and making him work on parsing it. He calls it "old people language." He insists that his generation just talks and writes normally. "My generation doesn't parse."

MagisterGreen said...

Speaking of relating things to one's personal life, this piece encapsulates everything I struggle with in tutoring the SAT: no, I don't CARE about your interpretation of what the author is saying. I care about what the author is ACTUALLY saying. Literally. Word for word. As in, "read me exactly what it says in the passage."

Heh. This is, more or less, exactly what I tell my students when we start doing essays in Latin. I give them three rules to remember: 1) No one cares what you think, 2) Limit yourself to the passage in front of you, 3) Respond to the prompt.

I can't believe students taking Latin have so much trouble with literal meaning. And here I thought it was the last bastion...

Oh, the kids unlearn a lot of bad habits after a year with me. But it's a horribly uphill slog, in the snow, both ways. A real problem is that almost everything they write in English class is, more or less, a personal response and their writing in history class - which is actually often more rigorous than their English work - adheres to no particular standard. I've proofed students' history work before and it's often wretched, with a conversational tone, personal assumptions masquerading as assertive evidence, and sloppy citations. Still, it's more than they do in English class but it makes my job that much harder. More satisfying when they improve, but harder. :)

AmyP said...

Good work, Magister Green!

cranberry said...

I suspect students learn "active reading" during the blocks spent teaching "reading skills" in elementary school. I agree with E.D. Hirsch--it would be much better for the students if they were reading content, rather than "practicing reading skills."

The personal response thing? Well, it was the first bad habit my eldest had to unlearn when she changed to her current (private) school. She was indignant, we were very happy.

Her former school bought into the Writers' Workshop model of teaching, thus most Language Arts essays were personal. It's as if the entire chain of language arts instruction were aimed solely at the college application essay--"it's all about me!"

As a result, much of the content of written work could not be checked for accuracy. If a student opines his grandmother's car is red, his teacher can't object.

Also, notice how the "humans are evil/Nature is good" line is a good default option. When in doubt, fall back on "critical thinking."

So, don't assume that the students are stupid. These habits of mind have been taught. This is what results from a refusal to teach content and a desire to encourage "creativity."

Catherine Johnson said...

getting students to find logical fallacies in arguments whose conclusions they agree with is very difficult

I've got to start writing about this (and taking notes come fall).

I don't think this has been my experience at all.

In my experience (I think), students find it pretty easy to look for underlying assumptions once you give them some examples.

Logical fallacies don't seem to be a difficult issue...

Slightly off-topic, I HAVE found, in my political efforts here, that it is extremely difficult to get people to agree on what an 'ad hominem' argument actually is & to recognize when they are making one ---- I base this on an opponent of mine who I think has probably never written an argument that did not address my motives or psychology.

At one point it seemed clear to me that she was trying to observe the 'rules' I had more or less set, and she was **still** making an argument about my character. But her tone was great. She had completely edited out any nastiness, snarkiness, hostility --- all those negatives were gone. She was using a civil tone to make another ad hominem argument.

Anyways, back on topic....I teach entry-level composition in a non-selective college, and I consistently find that students think well when they're talking.

It's thinking on paper that is extremely difficult.

Thinking on paper is quite different from thinking out loud .... I wonder whether anyone has written about this.

It's the creative part of thinking-in-writing, the 'iterative' part, the testing-this-paragraph-against-that-paragraph aspect that is so very challenging -- and that is quite different from what we do in an intelligent verbal discussion or debate.

I've come to suspect that **some** of the near-obsession with "critical thinking" in public schools comes from the perception that it's much easier to produce intelligent discussion than good writing and reading.

Catherine Johnson said...

Here's an example of what I mean.

In one of my classes, the single best 'classroom participant,' a young man who consistently came up with compelling and original observations about literature, which he supported with evidence from the text, was also one of the very weakest writers.

I've seen that more than once.

When I say 'weak writer,' I'm not talking just about grammar and paragraphing.

His writing was weak in critical thinking.

Catherine Johnson said...

Talk is cheap, maybe.

Catherine Johnson said...

Belaboring the point....so far my experience of actual students is almost the opposite of what you constantly hear, which is that students 'can't think,' 'can't analyze,' etc.

My students think perfectly well, as far as I can see.

What they can't do well at all is read and write.

Catherine Johnson said...

With regards to ad hominem argumentation, I wonder if perhaps part of the problem is that students simply don't truly understand what ad hominem is.

Just saw this --- and obviously I've already commented, but wanted to say 'ditto.'

btw, I myself was surprised by Mulroy's point that 'looking for bias' is a form of ad hominem argument!

But of course it is. You're looking for a quality you assume to be internal to the character of the person whose words you are reading.

Obviously, that's what made me feel so uncomfortable when the Cambridge Pre-U students said that a news article in Haaretz might be 'biased against Arabs.'

I didn't put it into words, quite, but what they were saying was that speculation about the private thoughts of an Israeli reporter should be part of the reading process.

AmyP said...

"Slightly off-topic, I HAVE found, in my political efforts here, that it is extremely difficult to get people to agree on what an 'ad hominem' argument actually is & to recognize when they are making one ---- I base this on an opponent of mine who I think has probably never written an argument that did not address my motives or psychology."

If the argument can be rephrased as, "You're only saying that because you are X or want Y," then it's ad hominem, correct?

"btw, I myself was surprised by Mulroy's point that 'looking for bias' is a form of ad hominem argument!"

That's very interesting. So, the ad hominem argument is a get-out-of jail card from having to look at what the other person wrote and check it for accuracy. It's a sort of intellectual labor-saving device.

"My students think perfectly well, as far as I can see. What they can't do well at all is read and write."

That's also interesting, and it sounds like something that my husband's mentor said years ago about the undergraduates at his not-so-selective college. They are smart, they just can't read.

Does this suggest that oral and written speech are very distinct language cultures? (By the way, have you ever noticed that it's a bad idea to simply read an academic article out loud? They're much too dense, content-wise--they aren't meant to be listened to.)

Jen said...

"He apparently doesn't see what I see. He's not looking where I'm looking---at the problem. He just skims it and stares off into space, hoping to be struck by inspiration, I guess. If inspiration doesn't strike, well, whaddya gonna do?"

I had written and then ditched a comment about these sort of problems in math. I taught middle school math and found that the kids (with an EDM background) very much favored the "stare into space and give any old answer" methodology.

It's quick and easy for them, if not effective.

One thing I ended up doing (these kids were waaay behind -- maybe two or three in each class who had basic facts at the ready in 6th and 7th grade) for all word problems was something along the lines of:

-- What are we looking for?
(that is, read aloud to me that part of the question with the actual question...i.e. how many doughnuts will they have?)

--Is that answer going to be bigger or smaller than ___________?
(go through each number/item in the problem, prompting them to say what the number is -- people, donut makers, etc. -- and how it will relate to the answer)

Many times this at least got them rereading the problem and stopped some of the ridiculous calling out of numbers that was very common as soon as a problem was read -- 57! 630! 2!

Most of them liked to just add all the numbers or subtract two of the most appealing numbers to get an answer. Because, of course, any answer is good enough, right? They *felt* it might be right and feelings are so very important.

SATVerbalTutor. said...

Because of course everyone is special in his or her own way and has the right to express a unique opinion and point of view. And of course there are no stupid questions. Or stupid answers.

My students spend obscene amounts of time time staring into space, waiting for the correct answer to strike. It doesn't matter how many times I tell them to look back at the passage; they just won't do it!

Glen said...

...got them rereading the problem and stopped some of the ridiculous calling out of numbers that was very common as soon as a problem was read -- 57! 630! 2!

Yes, excellent point: Machine gunning an answer. Part of the problem is the tendency for educators (of all stripes, including me) to reward students for quick answers. One result of this is pressure on them to make too much of too little information too quickly.

In both math and reading comprehension, they'll take a couple of numbers or keywords, stick them together in some likely-seeming way, and offer a guess. If wrong, they'll take another shot, and another, hoping something will hit the target and score.

This is Mulroy's "interpretation by free association" even in math.

Mulroy says, They lack the tools, however, for the precise interpretation of the meaning of complex statements. This kind of illiteracy boils down to an ignorance of grammar.

That's true, but there's more to it than just grammar. In a word problem, you have to be trained to understand the precise meanings of modifiers and phrases. "The cost of both is X," versus, "The cost of each is X," for example.

If we had significantly more word problems in math classes, we might teach less personal expression and more careful parsing in English.

Anonymous said...

"Most of them liked to just add all the numbers or subtract two of the most appealing numbers to get an answer."

I realize that a homeschooling environment is *quite* different from a classroom, but a medium amount of the math schooling is me asking "why" such-and-such an answer is correct/true (some days I'll even ask why a given step is valid ... just to be mean :-) )

Is this not possible in a classroom environment? I'd expect that the kids might slow down a bit if they expected to be asked "why" they added (or whatever) the numbers together that they did. Or do they really just not care? Or what?

-Mark Roulo

Jen said...

"Is this not possible in a classroom environment? I'd expect that the kids might slow down a bit if they expected to be asked "why" they added (or whatever) the numbers together that they did. Or do they really just not care? Or what?"

It's entirely possible -- and works great once you've got a class that knows how to learn and respond. What I learned from my time teaching was the huge chasm between what I'd experienced in school and was prepared to do and what my students were prepared to do.

All that stuff about intrinsic motivation, not using rewards, that I learned in ed school and reading about education, etc? That was for kids within sight of the bridge to the other side of the chasm!

I adjusted as quickly as I could, but I wasn't dealing with kids with classroom self-control, with a desire to succeed expressed by hard work (yet), and I had to pull it back to a much more basic level than I had anticipated.

Anyway, long way to state that my asking these questions was STEP ONE in a long process. A trial and error (and error and error) process.

I did ask both why or how do you know. One of the best questions though was "are you sure?" Cocky kids always said YES! And I'd say prove it. Tentative kids would say, uh, uh and even change answers -- but they'd still have to explain.

So, yes, we got to the point that this question was very useful -- it showed who knew what we were doing and who was mostly guessing. But, at least in my setting, it wasn't a successful first strategy.

Allison said...

I concur with everything Jen says, but would like to add that the shotgunning approach isn't usually because the student thinks it's right. it's because usually any answer will get the teacher to STOP ASKING more questions.

In TLAC, he names a technique something like "accepting no half answers". the idea is that most teachers are so tied into feeling uncomfortable at the silence in their classroom when they ask something, and are so anxious to provide what they think is esteem and respect to the student, that they accept (and even praise) any student attempt--they see even a stab as something to reward. no matter the answer is wrong. the teacher really may believe the student is "close" or "on the right track", and sometimes, this is self delusion brought on by their own yearning to think the student is understanding.

but a student who has not a clue what the teacher is asking just wants the asking to stop. a wrong answer isn't as embarrassing if you show no effort. and if a teacher will then be satisfied, and move onto "right what you meant was" then they are off the hook.

another reason why asking why is so difficult in a classroom setting vs at home is because literally standing there in front of them feels different than sitting at the table with your child. and it's a long time before a new teacher isn't experiencing that as class as "them". so the early habits at home are habits of authority and rapport already established (or else you wouldn't bother home schooling in the first place) but the early habits of classroom teaching are often defined by "how do i get them to engage? how do i make this feel comfortable (for them and me)?" but asking why makes people uncomfortable. that's a big hill to climb.

and last, if the teachers in k-5 could not answer the "why" of any math problem themselves, they won't want to encourage it in their kids--because they aren't going to want to face not knowing.

Anonymous said...

Kids are now being taught, from school entry (and often prior to that, at home) that they are intrinsically important; the rush to praise every piece of their "academic" output, however, sloppy, incomplete, incorrect and incoherent it might be, for fear of damaging their precious self-esteem. It used to be common for teachers, even in kindergarten, to fix gimlet eyes on such efforts and ask the dreaded question: "Is this really your best work?" Of course, it most often wasn't, and the kids knew it. From that point, kids get Readers' Workshop, Writers' Workshop, endless journaling (aka navel-gazing) and text-to-self approaches to literature - because it's all about them, the precious little snowflakes, each one the center of the universe. The idea that authors might have more valuable insights into the world and their works are therefore worthy of close study, separate from students' own feelings about the work, may not get mentioned. There's a lot to undo.

SATVerbalTutor. said...

And it's worse in private school, where parents are paying specifically so that their kids won't have to take responsibility for anything. Test too hard? Oh well, let's have thirty point of extra credit. Writing sloppy and unintelligible? Can't give it anything lower than a B! Student doesn't want (or know how) to write an analytical paper? Give a "personal response" option. The more prestigious the school, the higher the grading. It might be hard to get an "A," but you'd better believe that B- is the absolute bottom of the range, especially in the humanities. And then the parents talk about how the kids "just aren't good test-takers." Umm... maybe that's because the SAT doesn't have an easy out?

cranberry said...

SATVerbalTutor, that doesn't match our family's experience with reputable boarding schools. Kids are given Cs, Ds, and lower grades, and those who can't keep up flunk out. (Or aren't invited back.)

Dee Hodson said...

SATVerbalTutor-
I concur with cranberry. The rigor in our daughter's boarding school is humbling- grade inflation is near nill.

cranberry said...

I don't know how day schools handle it. We're also not in New York--I gather from the NYT parents hire tutors to tutor for As on a regular basis: http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2011/09/27/a-tempest-over-tutoring-at-riverdale/.

At top boarding schools, extra help is available--either from your teachers, or peers. So, if you're struggling in a course, your teacher or peers will know. There might be writing tutors available, but the tutors are school employees, not directly employed by the parents. Even if the parents pay fees for tutoring, the school calls the shots. In other words, even if a student receives tutoring, the school knows who's doing the tutoring while school's in session.

The schools also set a rigid, demanding schedule. There aren't blocks of free time available to catch up with the help of a tutor. The schools are structured to teach students to use time wisely. As an aside, being out a few days for a bad cold can put a kid behind for weeks. The work you miss gets made up--if it's an exam, you take a new exam set by the teacher.

The schools our kids attend expel students for cheating. I consider cheating to be a sign the student is struggling--either can't keep up, or doesn't have the discipline to use her time effectively. At any rate, the schools are able to fill the beds, although they don't usually accept transfers after the start of the school year. Tuition is set before school starts, and parents are liable for it, even if their son is caught cheating the third week of school.

Parents' Weekend usually features new parents walking around with shocked expressions--they've just seen their kid's grades.

SATVerbalTutor. said...

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that was true of ALL private schools -- just certain "top tier" NYC private schools. I don't doubt that are still prep schools giving out low grades (I think the average GPA at Belmont Hill outside of Boston is somewhere around a B-), but plenty of schools also claim to provide very rigorous educations, assign work that's way over the kids' heads, then give Bs for work that should be getting Cs or Ds. Pretty much all schools claim to have zero-tolerance policies for cheating, but at some schools that can be flexible if a kid comes from a sufficiently wealthy/influential family.

My general impression, though, is the boarding schools are in fact better about weeding kids out who really can't handle the work, and for grading harshly when work is subpar; I can't see what goes on at Horace Mann or Trinity being stood for in quite the same way at Exeter or Milton.

cranberry said...

Thanks, SATVerbalTutor.

I only know the New York private school world from the media reporting. It seems things are out of hand there, really crazy.

_Schooled_, by Anisha Lakhani, and _Academy X_, by Andrew Trees, are both satirical, but any good satire must resemble real life to sting. The cycle of ambitious academic assignments/kid overwhelmed/competitive tutoring/raise the bar on academic expectations doesn't strike me as healthy.

I happen to think it's healthy for very, very few kids to have a 4.0. If you know that the grading's harsh, you (paradoxically) have the freedom to make mistakes. If everything has to be perfect, you will be afraid to set a foot wrong.

palisadesk said...

Kids are now being taught, from school entry (and often prior to that, at home) that they are intrinsically important; the rush to praise every piece of their "academic" output, however, sloppy, incomplete, incorrect and incoherent it might be, for fear of damaging their precious self-esteem.

We might be an outlier, but I see a big change in this attitude over the last few years. I think it began with our curriculum people, or some of them, getting religion with Hattie's "Visible Learning," which has a lot to say about the importance of accurate, descriptive feedback.

One year a focus for all our PLC's was descriptive feedback -- what it is, when and how to provide it, how to get students to use it to produce better work, etc. I might have thought this was something our principal dreamed up, but the following year I was in an itinerant position and saw the exact same focus in other schools, with a lot of student participation.

One second-grade class stands out in my memory; they were all developing their own fairy tales as a concluding activity to a unit on fairy tales. The process they were required to follow was waaaaay more structured than "Writer's Workshop," and required them to develop characters and character traits and plot features according to a detailed guideline, with specific criteria.

After some discussion, the children went to their seats and individually approached the teacher, who would discuss their work with them, regularly referring them back to the criteria -- "Have you shown how you character exemplifies [this trait] and [that trait}? How about your dialogue -- are you using quotation marks the right way? "

What impressed me was not merely that the teacher was requiring the students to revise and improve, but that the students -- even "low" ones -- were able to discuss the requirements in detail and with understanding.

It was definitely a long way from the "journals" I was used to seeing in days of yore, or the "anything goes" mentality, and I've seen similar scenarios at different grade levels pretty consistently since. In one of our staff meetings there was a discussion about students' self-esteem, but the consensus was that real self-esteem is based on competence and accomplishment, so our first order of business was to foster those things, and then recognize them.

Catherine Johnson said...

Kids are now being taught, from school entry

We have the exact opposite.

I know I've told the story about teachers in middle school drawing bell curves on the blackboard, telling kids that the hump was a "C" and that's what they were.

One of the P.E. teachers told the boys (in 5th grade): "You all want to be athletes, but you aren't good enough" (or words to that effect).

Ed and I used to say the motto of the middle school should be: Your child. Not the little genius you think he is.

I'm not sure the self-esteem movement is still present in public schools (unless my district is different).

My sense is that "character education" replaced "self-esteem."

Character education has a negative slant on the nature of the child, at least in my experience.

Catherine Johnson said...

So, don't assume that the students are stupid. These habits of mind have been taught. This is what results from a refusal to teach content and a desire to encourage "creativity."

RIGHT!!!!

That's what I see.

My students aren't stupid ***at all*** ----

Their thinking isn't a problem. They're logical, they offer evidence for opinions during discussion, a lot of them come up with interesting insights and observations about the stories we read...

They need to become better readers and writers: reading and writing, not thinking per se, is the issue.