Vindication, Of a Sort

There is a very interesting article in the current issue of The American Scholar magazine about a charter school in Chicago attempting to adapt a teaching method from Phillips Exeter Academy to both larger class sizes and an entirely different cohort of learners. The teaching and learning mode is called the Harkness Method and relies to a much greater degree than is the norm on student interaction, student participation, and student ideas. The article outlines how this works in the rarefied atmosphere of Phillips Exeter but it also shows how it is used in a radically different setting.

Generally I am not a fan of charter schools because around here they are perverted by profit motives and anti-federalists. There is less interest in seeing students learn than there is in advancing a particular political agenda. That doesn't mean that I am entirely smitten by any top down administration of schools whether it is from the federal or state government either. What I do want to see is results and those have been sorely lacking lately.

Anyway, I don't want to beat a dead horse but the Harkness method as described in the article begins by asking students to speak in class. This happens in all disciplines but of course my focus is on language. Two students in a literature class are given the assignment of describing to each other, and to the rest of the class, their ideas about the meaning of a work they have read. The very first homework assignment I give my tutees is to go home and talk to their parents about the book they are reading for class and also about any shorter assignments I have given them. Far too many students I work with have no familiarity with language. Sure they can talk to their friends or more likely text them but they cannot form arguments with language that use logic and structure. If you don't know how language works, how can you ever understand literature, no matter what language you speak. The kids say "My parents haven't read this book," and I say, "It doesn't matter. It's up to you to tell them about it."

So, parents, don't just ask your kid how school was. Ask them to tell you about their stories, their books, their math, their science.