Last night, I watched a surprising episode of "Rita" and this morning I walked my dog through town, past the Hampton Academy, and on to Winnacunnet High School.
The Academy now has construction on two sides; the town, after many years of rejecting money for the rehabilitation and upgrade of the middle school finally approved it last year. Some of the reason for the refusal of the town's adults to part with their money for the school was, no doubt, the typical Yankee penuriousness but in the case of voting money for schools, which should be a no brainer, I have to believe has to do with the townspeople's own experience in public school. Even Peyton Place was centered on the town school, its students and teachers.
Walking by the athletic fields of the high school, I saw parents and children sliding down the snowy slopes to the fields. Happy scenes of children and their parents drawn to the school campus, not for any scholarly reasons, but just because it was a fun place to be.
And that got me thinking: What if the schools, the high school in particular, were the most exciting, fun place to be, inside the classroom?
But then I recalled: I am a long way from knowing anything about adolescents now. In Rita a benign, but definitely uncool teacher finds an inflated plastic naked women suspended from the ceiling of his classroom and while the students smirk and laugh at his loss of composure, he tries to fish it down, fails and flees the classroom. The next day, the students grin at him from their desks but refuse to answer him. He has written "To Kill A Mockingbird" on the blackboard, and you know he has some lesson plan about the significance of the book in illuminating racial conflict in the American South, but he will never be allowed to get to that. The following day, he arrives and all the students have turned around their desks and are facing away from him, their backs to him.
The headmaster calls a meeting of the parents, who are just as vile as their children, and you can see where these children come from. They complain the teacher, Erik, has asked their children to write an essay in longhand. Who writes out anything in longhand any more? Erik is humiliated. And he does not deserve it. He may not be the sharpest blade in the drawer--in fact he is not a blade at all--but he means well and he is trying.
Of course, one of Erik's problems is he is teaching something none of the students or the parents has any interest in.
Walking by Winnacunnet, I thought about what I would teach.
Years ago, I tried to interest the faculty of a private school in Washington, D.C. (Sidwell Friends) about a course I wanted to teach to high school freshmen, a biology course. I figured 14 and 15 year olds were most interested in sex and I could use that to teach a lot of things about hormones, hormone receptors, genes anatomy and physiology.
I flashed a slide of a naked woman and asked the teachers what struck them as odd. A teacher immediately pointed out the absences of pubic hair, something my medical school classmates and I had taken much longer to observe. Then I went on to explain about how this woman, who had XY chromosomes and intra-abdominal testicles had complete insensitivity to the hormone testosterone; her testosterone receptors didn't work because of a genetic mutation.
The teachers said it might be good for an "enrichment course" for seniors, but was no way to teach biology because you first had to teach kids what receptors are, what genes are, and build up with all that stultifying, boring stuff to the point where the kids could understand about this androgen receptor insensitivity. I just knew nothing about teaching, or kids that age.
They never called me back. To give them credit, they were willing to hear my pitch, but they were still unable to get past their own training in education, about building from the basics, going from letters to words to sentences.
But today, I thought, no. I did not get interested in endocrinology because of all the courses I had in genetics or biochemistry. It was seeing those patients that got me. Why not use that shock, to work back to the underlying science, once you've got the fires of questioning burning? Why not start with images of emaciated children, go on to Banting and Best, and the discovery of insulin?
Why not teach biology with David Attenborough and Blue Planet and the spider wasp? You don't need to get into evolution and all that; it'll be obvious.
Why not teach civics, sociology and anthropology with "The Wire?"
There are so many sources of material for real education out there. If kids had to get together at home and watch this stuff and use class time to discuss it with someone who might know more than they do (their teacher), would that not be an experience which would have kids just pulling at the leash to get back into the classroom the next day?
Imagine that: School the most fun place to be.
 |
| Hampton Academy |
The Academy now has construction on two sides; the town, after many years of rejecting money for the rehabilitation and upgrade of the middle school finally approved it last year. Some of the reason for the refusal of the town's adults to part with their money for the school was, no doubt, the typical Yankee penuriousness but in the case of voting money for schools, which should be a no brainer, I have to believe has to do with the townspeople's own experience in public school. Even Peyton Place was centered on the town school, its students and teachers.
 |
| High School |
Walking by the athletic fields of the high school, I saw parents and children sliding down the snowy slopes to the fields. Happy scenes of children and their parents drawn to the school campus, not for any scholarly reasons, but just because it was a fun place to be.
And that got me thinking: What if the schools, the high school in particular, were the most exciting, fun place to be, inside the classroom?
 |
| Poor Erik |
But then I recalled: I am a long way from knowing anything about adolescents now. In Rita a benign, but definitely uncool teacher finds an inflated plastic naked women suspended from the ceiling of his classroom and while the students smirk and laugh at his loss of composure, he tries to fish it down, fails and flees the classroom. The next day, the students grin at him from their desks but refuse to answer him. He has written "To Kill A Mockingbird" on the blackboard, and you know he has some lesson plan about the significance of the book in illuminating racial conflict in the American South, but he will never be allowed to get to that. The following day, he arrives and all the students have turned around their desks and are facing away from him, their backs to him.
The headmaster calls a meeting of the parents, who are just as vile as their children, and you can see where these children come from. They complain the teacher, Erik, has asked their children to write an essay in longhand. Who writes out anything in longhand any more? Erik is humiliated. And he does not deserve it. He may not be the sharpest blade in the drawer--in fact he is not a blade at all--but he means well and he is trying.
Of course, one of Erik's problems is he is teaching something none of the students or the parents has any interest in.
Walking by Winnacunnet, I thought about what I would teach.
Years ago, I tried to interest the faculty of a private school in Washington, D.C. (Sidwell Friends) about a course I wanted to teach to high school freshmen, a biology course. I figured 14 and 15 year olds were most interested in sex and I could use that to teach a lot of things about hormones, hormone receptors, genes anatomy and physiology.
I flashed a slide of a naked woman and asked the teachers what struck them as odd. A teacher immediately pointed out the absences of pubic hair, something my medical school classmates and I had taken much longer to observe. Then I went on to explain about how this woman, who had XY chromosomes and intra-abdominal testicles had complete insensitivity to the hormone testosterone; her testosterone receptors didn't work because of a genetic mutation.
The teachers said it might be good for an "enrichment course" for seniors, but was no way to teach biology because you first had to teach kids what receptors are, what genes are, and build up with all that stultifying, boring stuff to the point where the kids could understand about this androgen receptor insensitivity. I just knew nothing about teaching, or kids that age.
They never called me back. To give them credit, they were willing to hear my pitch, but they were still unable to get past their own training in education, about building from the basics, going from letters to words to sentences.
But today, I thought, no. I did not get interested in endocrinology because of all the courses I had in genetics or biochemistry. It was seeing those patients that got me. Why not use that shock, to work back to the underlying science, once you've got the fires of questioning burning? Why not start with images of emaciated children, go on to Banting and Best, and the discovery of insulin?
 |
| Before Insulin/After Insulin Toronto 1921 |
Why not teach biology with David Attenborough and Blue Planet and the spider wasp? You don't need to get into evolution and all that; it'll be obvious.
Why not teach civics, sociology and anthropology with "The Wire?"
There are so many sources of material for real education out there. If kids had to get together at home and watch this stuff and use class time to discuss it with someone who might know more than they do (their teacher), would that not be an experience which would have kids just pulling at the leash to get back into the classroom the next day?
Imagine that: School the most fun place to be.
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