Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English (Part 2)

As I was reading the second half of Arthur Applebee's Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English, I was again struck by the fact that the tensions and issues we (English teachers) think about and grapple with today are the same issues that spurred debate in the 1920s. One of those tensions is between different types of preparation for students. Do we prepare students for life or for college? Is it possible to prepare students for both at once? Should students have to decide between the two?

That brings me to another debate...ability tracking. I was surprised to read that individual differences were considered in schools and pedagogy during the 1920s and 1930s. In the school district where I worked the past six years, "differentiated instruction" were buzz words used in nearly every faculty meeting and teacher in-service. Applebee states that ability grouping was one way that schools tried to differentiate (p.91). He explains that "teachers thought it would be easier to provide individualized instruction if their classes were homogeneous" (p.91). I completely understand that mentality; when a teacher has 30-35 students at a time for only 50 minutes a day, it can seem overwhelming to differentiate instruction, especially when the students are so vastly different. I do sympathize with wanting a way to make it easier. However, I also know what happens when students are tracked according to ability, and Applebee acknowledges the situation when he describes the simplification of texts and methods for the "lower" tracks (p.161) and more "creative" and "out of the ordinary" approaches for the "talented students" (p.191). Shouldn't all students receive the very best of what schools have to offer? I have found that tracking stems from and creates deficit thinking that is harmful to both students and teachers.

Applebee mentioned an outcome of the Basic Issues conferences (1958) that I had not thought about before: the methods used for the "best" students should be used for all students but should be modified or adapted for the "lower" students. Applebee raises an interesting point, though: "When it came time to modify the curriculum for the less able...it would take radical reform rather than simple modification to produce a viable structure" (194). Do the same methods and courses of study not work for all students? Why would "lower" tracks of students need a completely different curriculum?

The high school / college debate has been ongoing since the universities felt that the Progressive movement lacked "intellectual rigor and historical perspective" (p.185). Should high schools base their methods, texts, and courses on college English classes or require certain assignments because "the colleges require it" (p.131)? I know I often used that very phrase in explaining to my students why we were doing certain assignments. Does high school need to be like college? High schools serve all students whereas colleges are selective about whom they admit. High schools serve teenagers while colleges consist of young adults. I'm not sure that high schools should always look to college as the model. The tension between focusing on the subject matter and focusing on the child also seems to play out here: historically, high schools have focused more on the child while colleges have kept the subject matter central. Another interesting tension is between the English departments and the Colleges of Education. In the backlash against Progressivism in the 1940s and 1950s, English departments began influencing high school teaching methods and texts (such as the New Critics and Great Books).

I'm still thinking about the role of analysis in the study of literature. Must we conduct a close study of the language of a piece before we can appreciate it? I actually love analyzing texts, pulling apart the language to see how each piece affects the whole. I used to have a poster in my classroom that said "The purpose of analysis is not to destroy beauty but to identify its sources." But now I am wondering if students need to analyze literature. Does it benefit them, or is it something we do because "the colleges require it"? Or because the AP exam requires it, which is about the same thing.

I am very interested in using students' interests to drive curriculum and in making education more about authentic experiences than about learning isolated skills or facts. The "life adjustment" movement (p.144) focused on problems in students' lives, and the "human relations" movement focused on social problems and action projects (p.148), which almost sound a bit like Freire's culture circles. Both of these movements were criticized because they are not systematic and cannot be standardized. If the curriculum comes from the interests of the individual students in that particular place and time, then that type of teaching and learning cannot fit with an efficiency model. And that is most likely why we don't see anything like that in schools today. Bruner also called for a discovery approach to learning (p.195), but how can we "do" English? If children learn physics by doing the kinds of things a physicist does, then how do children learn English? By reading and writing? This is one of my big questions: How can we apply a discovery approach to English, and how can we use students' interests in a way that works?