QUIET MINDS: NONFICTION

I received a survey, one of those simple Survey Monkey survey requests, that came to me because I am a ?literature teacher.? The email reminded me about the new educational Standards initiated by governors, written by non-teachers without educational experience, and now well on their way to being accepted by every state legislature in the nation. For several years I've been encouraged to focus more on the reading of nonfiction. And because of this, when I was asked what "informational texts" I assigned and could recommend, I listed the creative nonfiction about Dr. Paul Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, which I teach to juniors and the memoir Wild by Cheryl Strayed, which I excerpt. I also pointed out a flaw in their question: It is not the responsibility of literature teachers to provide more "informational texts." It is the job of literature teachers to teach literature. Certainly, students are in other classes during the day. They need to read history and current events, they need to read science and health articles and books, books about nutrition and word cultures and religions and mathematics and government. They need to read the newspaper and magazines. I teach a broad range of literature, but that's what I teach--creative nonfiction, essays, poetry, novels, and short stories. That's my job. I would also point out a flaw in the public educational reform movement. Few of the people planning how to improve public education have any experience with public education. This is the thesis in a New York Times article by Michael Winerip who traces the evolution of the recent reform movement and points out that ?there is one thing that characterizes a surprisingly large number of the people who are transforming public schools: they attended private schools.???Cheryl Scott Williams wrote about this at Education Week. What Mr. Winerip discovered is that the most prominent K-12 education "reformers" today are products of private education, either for their entire precollegiate schooling, or in part: from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; to former District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee; to Microsoft co-founder and Gates Foundation co-chair Bill Gates; to "Waiting for 'Superman' " producer-director Davis Guggenheim; to, most prominently, President Barack Obama. The list could be expanded to include many others.

All of us self-refer. We build our opinions based on personal experience, and it has become evident that the personal experience of many of the most vocal education "reformers" whose initiatives, financial resources, and bully pulpits are crafting policy for K-12 education in the United States have no valid reference point in the realities of the public school experience for both students and their teachers and administrators.

Would any reader here be surprised to learn that the last American President to send his children to public schools was Jimmy Carter? Can you imagine what happens to a public school when the President?s children are in attendance? Because I can. The school becomes safer, more accountable. The school draws attention. The district has a way to attract great teachers even if they don?t have any more money to lure them in. The President?s children attend school here. How fast do powerful people want schools fixed when their own children attend them? But that doesn?t happen. Instead we have well-intentioned parents who send their kids to private schools that cost more than my private graduate school, and then complain about what problems they imagine exist in the schools that the children of their employees attend. And they don't want to pay for improvements, or even for maintaining the status quo. I would like to say I have nothing against private schools. After all, my first teaching job was in an excellent private school. But, in fact, I do have something against private schools. They undermine support for public education and public education is the greatest tool the United States has in preserving and serving democracy. People with money send their kids to private schools for the same reason they own three homes, store money in off-shore accounts, and fly to the Caribbean on vacation. They can afford it. Eliminating private schools was one of the first things Finland proposed when beginning their astounding educational reform. They wanted a level playing field and the first step was ensuring that every single child receive a public education. And that is what they did. Every child, country or city, east or west, native speaker or not, rich or poor, has opportunity in Finland. We give lip service to equality and liberty and freedom, but in the end, the wealthy buy the best they can afford and complain about their taxes and ?those lousy public schools.? It?s an entirely different rant to point out that studies prove U.S. schools do just fine in typical middle class neighborhoods, and that poverty (over 20% of American children live in poverty) is the real villain in public education, not teachers or administrator, or even old, rotting, falling-down buildings like the one I teach in. Right now I?m simply annoyed that I am again being asked to fix someone else?s problem. I teach my students to write. That I am teaching them to write persuasive essays and research papers I will accept, though when I was in school such writing was accomplished in Social Studies classrooms. But to ask me as a literature teacher how I?m going to ensure that students read more "informational" nonfiction, is unreasonable and plain unfair. I am a part of the system, not the entire system. And public education is part of how we guarantee opportunity in our country, not the whole kit and kaboodle. Everything is not my responsibility, and I am going right on teaching novels, stories, essays, memoir, and poetry.?

Every child deserves poetry.

ABOVE: That's my cat who thought she should settle down on my desk because no one else was lying on it. This feels like an analogy to me.

Source: http://janpriddyoregon.blogspot.com/2012/11/nonfiction.html

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