Spell check, or check out?

At the risk of this turning into a rant, I feel compelled to talk about the craft of writing and the slippery slope that today’s school children – at least in my community – find themselves careening down (rather than scaling successfully).

In my community, the prevailing wisdom (and I use that phrase very loosely) seems to be that spell-check is the great solution to all that ails the beleaguered education system, a system that apparently doesn’t have the time, will, leadership, or vision to put basic communication skills high enough on the list of “basics” that our children need to learn in elementary school.

For my son, an incoming seventh grader, his last spelling drilling took place in 3rd or 4th grade – around the same time he had his last instruction in cursive writing – though that’s a subject for a separate rant, er, I mean, blog entry. Anyhow, since then, there has been sporadic spelling work, though it’s usually wrapped into vocabulary homework for social studies, meaning that the meaning of the word is more important than the spelling thereof. In 4th grade, there was a little of this and that for spelling, grammar, and handwriting, but certainly how words were spelled was not a priority. And in 5th grade, where written homework increased both in quantity and required quality of expression, the fact that spelling mistakes occurred just wasn’t that big of a deal. My son’s teacher – a wise but career-end-stage teacher – said, quite frankly and on more than one occasion, that since kids mostly use computers to do their homework, spell-check will take care of most of their spelling mistakes. There was simple no acknowledgment that whether the child could actually spell correctly without spell-check was or should be a point of concern.

So far, I’ve only dealt with spelling…grammar is yet another sad story. Other than a glancing blow past the concept of outlining (yes, the classic subject-predicate-dangling-modifiers graphic scheme of olde), there was absolutely no attention paid during class time to whether kids used necessary nouns and verbs, proper punctuation, correct capitalization, sensible sentence structure, or anything else. The language arts/social studies teacher seemed more concerned with covering the requisite course material than making sure the kids could communicate their knowledge.

And – in one of those mixed-up bits of edu-think these days – the teacher followed a strand of prevailing thought about “reaching all learners” by requiring the students to do posters and drawings and storyboards for some of their assignments – and grading the students on the quality of their projects. What the heck ever happened to putting words on paper to demonstrate one’s knowledge? Or giving a speech in front of the class? And what consideration or accommodation is given to kids who are crummy artists, or can’t translate fact-based content into sketches and pretty colors? No knock to the kids who actually can draw better than write…but for the kids who find drawing a struggle, or an unsatisfying way to communicate, they become double losers – penalized in their learning process and their grades by having to draw a picture rather then put into words what they learned about, say, the trading/commercial practices of ancient Africa. And note, this doesn’t even begin to approach the question of why the kids aren’t learning to express themselves via 21st-century tools such as websites, blogs, wikis, Nings, PowerPoint, podcasts, and video as opposed to antique approaches like drawing with freakin’ colored pencils! (Check out Vicki Davis' Cool Cat Teacher blog and some of my other ed-blog links for a glimpse at the possibilities.)

Where does all this lead? In the near term, it presents a class of seventh graders who are entering a new school term woefully unprepared to perform at the level or writing quality that their teachers will expect – thus dragging down the learning process. It means our kids are being taught using old-school methods when the world is moving to Web 2.0 and beyond. And in the longer term it points to kids who are going to struggle in high school if they somehow don’t learn writing and spelling and note-taking skills ASAP. (Did you hear the rumor about the Brookline high schoolers who can’t read the blackboard when the teachers write in cursive?)

As a parent, it leave me angry for my son, livid as a taxpayer, frustrated as an editor who spends his days covering 21st-century education gains, and disheartened as someone who simply cares about our nation’s role and standing in the future. Do I think it’s all a lost cause for my kid? No. My son is a smart boy who will pull it together in his own time. But, man oh man, I don’t like what it says about my local school district and it’s ed policies.

Great expectations

It’s a wonderful thing when a piece of architecture does the job its builders intended. And I don’t mean just keeping the rain off our heads.

I am in Washington, D.C. today – home to a lot of spectacular architecture – to attend an event at the Library of Congress. It’s a “hall rental,” if you will – the building is just the stage. But, oh, how well it works in that regard. The Great Hall is designed to celebrate and elevate the written word, noble ideas, and the men and women responsible for them through the centuries. It is a breathtaking space, for its scale and craft as well as for the message.

That tonight’s event is a confluence of commerce and high ideals is notable, perhaps, but in the end, the high ideals win out. Cable in the Classroom, the education foundation of the NCTA, is hosting its annual Cable’s Leaders in Learning Awards in the Great Hall to celebrate the innovative work of a dozen educators from around the U.S. Lots of ed-speak will be spoken, and a fair bit of cable business will be done too, among the invited guests – educators and education proponents, and lots of “industry” types, which in D.C. means cable owners and operators and the senators, congressmen, committee staffers, and aides who matter to them. Celebrating the good work of teachers is a “win” for educrats, and celebrating cable’s role in supporting and promoting those teachers is a “win win” for cable, especially in “today’s competitive climate” (i.e., not everyone likes cable – just ask FCC chair Kevin Martin … better yet, don’t).

Staged in the Library of Congress, this evening’s event will send a potent message: education ranks right up there among our nation’s highest aspirations. It is not a bad thing that there’s a business angle to the proceedings, don’t get me wrong, because without the support of the cable industry's system operators and programming networks, the teachers who are the stars of the event tonight might not be able to shine, or shine as brightly. It’s just good to remind oneself, while being overwhelmed by the awesomeness of tonight’s event and setting, that in order to achieve lofty goals – whether educational or architectural – somebody’s got to foot the bill. Cable deserves credit for understanding that and making the most of it.

On a different note

I just came across David Byrne’s YouTube video "Playing the Building," in which he wired the metal fixtures, pipes, tubes, and pillars of an abandoned building to solenoid valves and various motors via an old organ. Pressing the keys on the organ activate individual switches and make the valves bang into the metal and create cool , echo-y sounds.

He regales his guest in the sense of wonder of it all, and touts the fact that everyone is equally good – or bad – at “playing” this instrument. A clever egalitarian construct, I suppose, but it ain’t music.

Makes me want to hear something by Harry Partch. He knew how to make pipes and tubes really sing!