A Good Education

As I currently prepare to say goodbye to my wonderful class of second graders and take my first break from teaching in five years, I have been reflecting on what makes a good education. So for those not interested in educational views, skip this post. :)

Here are a few educational myths that I find extremely pervasive and that I wish to leave behind forever.

1. Myth 1: More difficult equates to a better education.
I heard this one reflected when a fellow teacher proudly told me he gives extremely few As. I heard this one reflected when a parent complained that our students have far less homework than their peers at a neighboring school.

Here's the end-all: An excellent education will include the difficult bits, but it will not attempt to make things difficult.

Giving almost no As means the teacher failed to bring almost any students up to an A level of understanding. This does not mean the majority of the class should receive an A, but my goal as a teacher is to create an accurate assessment on what I taught. Very low grades overall is a reflection on either my teaching or a poorly aligned assessment.

Lots of homework=busywork. There's no data supporting that homework helps student achievement.

2. Myth 2: The earlier the better.

If reading at age 6 is good, reading at age 4 is better! If doing multiplication at age 9 is typical, doing multiplication at age 7 is terrific!

Faulty.

There's a reason to the older, slower paces of learning. While some children may be ready earlier and may automatically learn these skills ahead of the game at home with their parents, subjecting all children to these schedules lacks an understanding of child development (I say this after being required to teach multiplication to second graders who haven't had the chance to fully master subtraction with regrouping). Take your time.

3. Good grades are a sign of your child doing well.

Well, no.

They're a sign that the teacher gave the right pieces of paper to the child on which he/she could at least copy or imitate the correct answer/process. A wise teacher creates scenarios in which the child must demonstrate further thinking, but even among the best of teachers, I am skeptical of grades in general. How was the child feeling on the day of an assessment? How did the teacher take the child's answer to form a number grade? Was partial credit given for where the child had the right thinking but only missed on a minor calculation error?

Mostly I am opposed to grades in the elementary school, because I think what most parents are looking for is really information about where their child is succeeding/not succeeding. Numbers just don't give that. An 80% in math doesn't tell a parent that the 20% he/she did poorly on all had to do with fractions. I think assessments and feedback can be done better than numbers, but numbers are easy shortcuts for schools (I feel the draw of them, certainly, because doing away with them would be way more work for me).


What do you all find to be the pervasive myths your encounter daily?

Cameras, Traveling, and Poverty

Lately I've been struggling with the role foreigners, particularly privileged foreigners, play in visiting or living in communities struggling with poverty. For any of us who have been regulars in this struggle, we know there's always a bit of an awkward factor--and there's also the just downright "bad feeling" that comes with it.

It's awkward to be seen has having dollar signs on your forehead, for sure, and then it's simply painful to walk into a house with simple clothes on your back and feel like a queen for what you're wearing.

I think most people who've been involved in development work or simply Christ-centered "downward mobility" have struggled with this. For me, I didn't shop for a time. My clean clothes always had holes. Forget make-up splurges. And still we might feel like royalty. We get asked for money. And it's such a struggle! How do you answer? Maybe you've been offered a baby and there was no legal way to take that child and bring him/her to safety (I was--back before I even knew my husband, and it affected me deeply).

I have often not known what to do, but one thing I felt compelled to do was take pictures. Of children laughing. Of clouds settling far below the mountain peak where I resided. Of gardens, full of vegetables, conveying hope in the midst of trying circumstances. Of fires blazing during the dry season. Of kids studying at school. These were beautiful moments, and I wanted to record them, and I believed that in capturing them I could, perhaps, explain just a bit of the life I'd chosen to those far away.

That's the context for what I need to write and is the source of a great deal of inner turmoil right now.

You see, there's a certain camp for IDPs (internally displaced persons) that my husband has had the privilege of visiting many times. He has also taken doctor teams to the camp to assist the clinic with training or in other various ways.

On a recent visit, a villager in the camp came up to him and said something along the lines of, "Look, I need the money that the last team raised for me."

My husband understood immediately (I wouldn't have) and had to explain to the man that the team had simply enjoyed taking photographs around the village and with people they'd spoken to when they had finished at the clinic.

This man was still quite confused, because, after all, they had taken photos of him. What's the point of all those photographs, in the midst of his poverty, if not to show the world and raise funds? He did not see the potential beauty worth capturing in his surroundings. In fact, he still felt that funds must have been raised, and either the team or my husband was holding it back from him. He had to be reassured a lot.

To my surprise, this was not the first time my husband has dealt with this issue. Apparently in the village we live in (which is far more comfortable than the IDP camp), there had been several similar events. Westerns come, do their thing, then take pictures, and villagers begin hoping for the help that is not coming.

What I realized is that when Westerners have often felt they were capturing a beautiful place, moment, or event, what so many local individuals have felt was an unpleasant exposure, to which they willingly succumbed, because Westerners have represented monetary hope for them.

Of course, it's the postmodern age, and some of these same villagers are also on Facebook. That means, they also see Facebook campaigns from their foreign Facebook "friends" to raise funds for this or that, sometimes individuals persons. Sometimes accompanied by photos.

And my heart broke when my husband said this to me.

Yes, in most of these cases, monetary support is not the best way to help. Really, it's not. And, yes, a major education campaign needs to occur everywhere to stop viewing foreigners as ATMs, but what hope does such a campaign have when Facebook tells them otherwise?

So what about the camera? Here are my requests of those who may visit me (and probably for anyone who visits similar situations), in no particular order:

1. Only take close-up pictures of people you know the names of and think you might loosely call "friends."

2. Do not take pictures immediately following someone telling you of their struggle, previous persecution, pain, or poverty, unless you actually intend to do something to help them. If not, wrong message. Take pictures of JOY.

3. Take pictures of mountains, lakes, clouds, and rice paddies.

4. Take far away silhouette photos of non-recognizable people doing work, which is beautiful and culturally specific, like rice planting or monks gathering alms in the morning.

5. Be upfront about the reasons for your visit (ie. not to raise funds, unless that is the reason, and even then, state what the funds will be used for).

6. Do not post fundraising campaigns for local-to-here situations on Facebook publicly. Use your privacy settings to determine your audience on Facebook.

7. Do not act like an ATM.

8. Tell people if you intend to use their photos and for what.

Most of all, let's keep working on showing deeper respect for the communities in which we find ourselves, understanding that what we may perceive as beauty (such as clothes on a clothesline) might not be understood that way by someone overwhelmed by the painful reality of their situation. Let's be slow to pick up that camera and quick to listen, love, and laugh together.