Status Updates From How Children Fail (Classics...

...She was silent for
a minute or two, perhaps remembering her own generally unhappy
schooling. Then she said thoughtfully, "You know, kids really like to learn;
we just don't like being pushed around.
this just breaks my heart

When Anna was in the
sixth grade, the year after she was in my class, I mentioned this idea to her.
After describing very sketchily how such a school might be run, and what
the children might do, I said, "Tell me, what do you think of it? Do you
think it would work? Do you think the kids would learn anything?" She said,
with utmost conviction, "Oh yes, it would be wonderful!" ...

We always find out,
too late, that we don't have the experts we need, that in the past we studied
the wrong things; but this is bound to remain so.

our education system was, and very probably is, fucked.

"For heaven's sake, stay out of
the classroom until you have got over some of your fear of the world. Do
something else first. Travel, live in different places, do different kinds of
work, have some interesting experiences, get to know and like yourselves a
little better, get that seated expression off your faces! Or your teaching will
be a disaster.

...
at something, as they once grasped at everything, with all their minds and
senses; they forget how to deal positively and aggressively with life and
experience, to think and say, "I see it! I get it! I can do it!"

The case against
boredom in school is the same as the case against fear; it makes children
behave stupidly, some on purpose, most because they cannot help it. If this
goes on long enough, as it does in school, they forget what it is like to grasp...

4/22/1960 CRAZY

That reminds me. In a number of first-grade classes I have seen tacked up
on the wall a notice saying, "When two vowels go out walking, the first one
does the talking." Very nice. A little further inspection shows that in that
sentence there are two pairs of vowels, both of which violate the rule. Now
what are children expected to make of this?

The answer to that question was not hard to find. What the schools wanted
was good test takers. Nothing else was anywhere near as important.
I remember an old chief machinist on an obsolete training submarine in
Key West saying bitterly about his worn-out engines, which he had spent
many hours polishing up for an official inspection, "They shine, don't they?
Who the hell cares if they don't work?"

5/3/1959

april 11 1959

For all our yammering about loyalty,
not one adult in a thousand would have shown the loyalty that this little girl
gave to her friend and former teacher. And she scarcely had to think to do it;
for her, to defend one's friends from harm, blame, or even criticism was an
instinct as natural as breathing.

I was touched and very moved. How many adults would have seen what
she saw, that what she was saying about Miss W.'s teaching was, in some
slight degree, lowering my estimate of Miss W.? Even more to the point,
how many adults, given this opportunity to shift the blame for their
difficulties onto the absent Miss W., would instead have instantly changed
their story to protect her from blame?

Here she saw the smallest shadow of doubt on my face. She knew instantly
that I did not approve of this rule, and without so much as a pause she
continued, "... it wasn't Miss W., it was someone else..." and then went on
talking about long division.

March 20, 1959
Today Jane did one of those things that, for all her rebellious and annoying
behavior in class, make her one of the best and most appealing people,
young or old, that I have ever known. I was at the board, trying to explain to
her a point on long division, when she said, in self-defense, "But Miss W.
[her fourth-grade teacher] told us that we should take the first number..."

...
chance to cram for them? Why do teachers, even in graduate schools, always
say quite specifically what the exam will be about, even telling the type of
questions that will be given? Because otherwise too many students would
flunk. What would happen at Harvard or Yale if a proof gave a surprise test
in March on work covered in October? Everyone knows what would happen;
that's why they don't do it.

It begins to look as if the test-examination-marks business is a gigantic
racket, the purpose of which is to enable students, teachers, and schools to
take part in a joint pretense that the students know everything they are
supposed to know, when in fact they know only a small part of it--if any at
all. Why do we always announce exams in advance, if not to give Students a...

The question sticks like a burr. In school- but where isn't it so?-we so
easily fall into the same trap: the means to an end becomes an end in itself.

...
Aside from involving numbers, all this is true science, not the passive
science of the schools where children are told about the wonderful things
that scientists have discovered, or the fake science of other schools where
children do "experiments" to find out what is already well known, or to get
answers which a teacher marks "right" or "wrong."

Or children might do various tests of speed and
strength, running timed distances or lifting weights or doing other exercises,
and see what happens when they try to do this a second time, and how their
performance varies with the amount of rest they have, and how their speed
or strength, and their recovery times, vary from week to week or from month
to month...

but generally said what he
thought and showed what he felt, and who above all generally liked,
enjoyed, trusted, and respected them. Almost any adult who felt and acted
that way would have done about as well.