Re: [school-discuss] Quote From Neil Postman

On 10/01/07, Joel Kahn <jj2kk4@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Below the dotted line is a slightly edited quote
from Neil Postman's 1995 book _The End of
Education: Redefining the Value of School_. I'm
not advocating that readers should draw any
specific conclusions from Postman's opinions; I
merely offer this as food for thought, especially
in light of the changes in technology that have
taken place since this was written.

................................................

We could improve the quality of teaching
overnight, as it were, if math teachers were
assigned to teach art, art teachers science,
science teachers English. My reasoning is as
follows: Most teachers, especially high school and
college teachers, teach subjects they were good at
in school. They found the subject both easy and
pleasurable. As a result, they are not likely to
understand how the subject appears to those who
are *not* good at it, or don't care about it, or
both. If, let us say, for a semester, each teacher
were assigned a subject which he or she hated or
always had trouble with, the teacher would be
forced to see the situation as most students do,
would see things more as a new learner than as an
old teacher. Perhaps he or she would discover how
boring the textbooks are, would learn how
nerve-racking the fear of making mistakes is,
might discover that a question that has
unsuspectingly aroused his or her interest must be
ignored because it is not covered by the syllabus,
might even discover that there are students who
know the subject better than he or she could ever
hope to. Then what?

All in all, I believe the experience would be
chastening and even eye-opening. When teachers
returned to their specialties, it is possible they
would bring with them refreshing ideas about how
to communicate about their subject, and with an
increased empathy for their students.

Here is another idea. . . .
We can also improve the quality of teaching and
learning overnight by getting rid of all
textbooks. Most textbooks are badly written and,
therefore, give the impression that the subject
is boring. Most textbooks are also impersonally
written. They have no "voice," reveal no human
personality. Their relationship to the reader is
not unlike the telephone message that says, "If
you want further assistance, press two now." I
have found the recipes on the backs of cereal
boxes to be written with more style and
conviction than most textbook descriptions of the
causes of the Civil War. Of the language of
grammar texts, I will not even speak. To borrow
from Shakespeare, it is unfit for a Christian ear
to endure. But worse than this, textbooks are
concerned with presenting the facts of the case
(whatever the case may be) as if there can be no
disputing them, as if they are fixed and
immutable. And still worse, there is usually no
clue given as to who claimed these are the facts
of the case, or how "it" discovered these facts
(there being no he or she, or I or we). There
is no sense of the frailty or ambiguity of human
judgment, no hint of the possibilities of error.
Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be
acquired, never as a human struggle to
understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble
toward the truth.

Textbooks, it seems to me, are enemies of
education, instruments for promoting dogmatism
and trivial learning. They may save the teacher
some trouble, but the trouble they inflict on
the minds of students is a blight and a curse.

On one occasion when I made this argument before
a group of teachers, one of them asked, "But if
we eliminated textbooks, what would replace
them?" My answer . . . was as follows: "When
Jonas Salk's vaccine eliminated polio, did
anyone ask, But what will replace it?"

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