A friend of mine had a teacher in high school, back in the 1970s, who told everyone the first day of class that they would have an A, no matter what, on the last day. Liberated from the tyranny of grade anxiety and the stifling fraud of teacher-centric assessment, they could acquire real knowledge guided by their interests. No one ever did any of the homework he assigned and after a few weeks, hardly anyone showed up to class.
Foolish idealism perhaps but his impulse is worth considering at a time when most ideas about reforming public education are based on "accountability" as a code word for mistrust.
The public doesn't trust those in charge of education who have reasons not to trust onsite administrators who in turn have reasons not to trust teachers who have reasons not to trust students. Education codes have institutionalized this mistrust, much of it necessary to prevent all manner of corruption and hazard but if the ultimate expression of such fears is our inability to trust our students then the education codes aren't education code at all.
Students look to us--parents, teachers, other adults in their lives--for structure. They want to be told what to do, much as they may complain about it. But does that justify authoritarian schools? Or is our mistrust the cause of their dependency? The most meaningful teaching, for me and many of my colleagues, comes out of the high expectations as expressed by a deep and genuine trust in our students.
There are many ways this can happen. Showing a student what good writing looks like and then trusting her to replicate it in her own original way--rather than preaching formulas that replaces analytic thought with word puzzles and produces lifeless, derivative prose. Assigning students to read something and having them express their understanding in a deep and insightful and original way rather than testing them on whether they read it or not. Giving students responsibilities within the classroom and within the school.
Trust is leaving students in the classroom after you go home because it's the only safe and quiet place for them to work--call it foolish crazy you-could-lose-your-job trust, breaking the rules trust, but also change-a-student's-life-because-someone-finally-trusted-him-trust. Ask successful adults about the teachers to whom they feel a debt and they will often tell you about those who entrusted them in some way.
Trust is believing what students say. Even if they are lying--and trusting that a conscience will somehow emerge from the realization that they have betrayed our trust. Trust is not unconditional and the desire to earn and keep our trust can be a powerful motivator.
I have broken up dozens of fights in my career without ever making a report because I believed--arrogantly, perhaps--that I can more effectively quash the animosity than anyone else and because in many cases reporting the altercation would requires the administration to send a troubled kid to a school that is probably going to care a lot less about him. More than a few times I've thought I might regret those cover-ups. But on every such occasion, my faith in the young men's pledges of non-violence has been realized. I trusted them and they didn't want to let me down. Some of these guys were former gang members trying to be something else but unsure how to change internally, how to build a character that could react to stress without violence. A teacher's trust helped them find the way.
The mistrust that is the guiding principle now in education is both a moral and a psychological failure on our part. Call it accountability--call it whatever you want--but I'll call it an intellectually stultifying soul sickness.
Many of our best students are alienated and demoralized by a system preoccupied with restricting them while many of our best teachers are frustrated by mandates about teaching that come from people who don't understand how children learn. The teachers we want working with our children are the ones who hold themselves accountable much more than any legislation ever could. They work countless extra hours for which they are not paid and agonize over pedagogical failures no one else would ever even notice. But they aren't trusted--and that's a tragic disrespect of our most valuable resource.
Accountability? Let's turn things right-side-up:
- Make teachers and everyone else accountable to our students;