Michael Smith, author of several books geared towards public school teachers, principals, and administrators, and a school superintendent himself, thinks we should stop teaching kids how to write, type correctly, or spell. He also suggests we don’t need to teach the periodic table of elements, how to use a dictionary, the memorization of “useless” facts like the state capitals, or poetry.
Before I address his specific complaints, I’d like to make it clear that I have very little respect for anyone (let alone an educator) who brags that he made 12 typos in the writing of his blog post and was able to fix them with spell-check. Was I supposed to applaud? Is “Bad Educator” going to be the new “Bad Mom” trend? Considering how insufferable I find those Bad Moms who play up how disengaged they are with their children, how badly/frequently/proudly they’ve screwed up, and how much time their kids are likely to spend in therapy, I’m not on the short list of people who are going to line up to praise Bad Educator.
Consider yourself informed that I didn’t read Smith’s blog with a particularly open mind. Much of what he writes just reinforces my sense of relief that my child isn’t in public school. I think he’s an anti-intellectual and isn’t nearly as funny as he believes himself to be. On the whole, he pisses me off, so here are a few of his bones, from which I am picking the meat. Smith writes:
Penmanship is rarely used by most adults. Unless they are signing their name, so spending hundreds of hours teaching children how to make the perfect “Q” in cursive could be a waste of time.
Rarely used by some adults. Other adults use it quite often. I personally do a lot of my first drafts in longhand. My husband has to take legible notes when he’s out on call (good thing they’re legible, too, because sometimes he calls home for information and I have to retrieve it from his notebooks). It’s also pretty hard to take thorough notes on a laptop while trying to read from a large textbook. Take notes during a lecture, sure, but I can barely fit my laptop and, say, Bevington’s Complete Works of Shakespeare on my desk at the same time, let alone use the laptop to take good notes from the Bevington. Legible handwriting is also very important during the moony teen years, because only cursive can truly impart the angst and passion of teenage poetry. Typing simply will not cut it.
There are benefits to teaching proper handwriting that extend beyond writing letters or poetry or notes, however. It’s a way to develop fine motor skills (a different set from those used in typing). A 2006 study found an increase in letter confusion (specifically mixing letters up with their mirrors, d and b, for example) among those who first learned the letter through typing, and that the “stability of the characters’ representation in memory depends on the nature of the motor activity produced during learning.” In other words, writing letters by hand, not typing, more firmly and accurately implanted the letters into the memory. Handwriting, particularly cursive, stimulates the frontal cortex in a profound, lasting, and measurable (via PET scan) way, not only helping the student retain that skill, but greasing the pathways for later learning.
Keyboarding? Haven’t we progressed past the point of controlling our students by making them sit straight up and down with both feet on the floor while they type? I don’t know of any former students who have computer skills and weren’t hired for a job because they didn’t type fast enough or use the proper technique. Last time I checked, most elementary students know their way around a keyboard.
A) “Controlling our students?” Really, Michael Smith? Really?
B) We haven’t progressed past the point of back problems, carpal tunnel, or a host of other posture-related health problems that are in large part the result of incorrect body and arm positioning at the keyboard. Why not help our kids develop the muscle memory to hold their bodies in a more optimal position while typing and help decrease their risk of these conditions? When I’m having back/hip pain or my wrists are starting to hurt, I’m always amazed (though no longer surprised) by how much better I feel when I put my feet flat on the floor, sit up with a straight back, and position my hands properly on the keys.
C) He’s never met anyone who wasn’t hired for a job because they lacked adequate typing speed? I suppose none of his students have ever been an administrative/personal assistant, then, as typing speed is still pretty important. When being hired for data entry jobs, as well, the ability to quickly and accurately enter the data actually plays a role in getting the job. In my line of work (writing/editing), speed and accuracy in typing may not be a determining factor in getting a contract, but definitely can mean the difference between meeting deadlines (and getting paid) or not, between turning in usable work or not. The faster and more accurately I could type, the more contracts I could take, the more work I could do, and the more money I could make.
D) Captain Science has been using a keyboard since he was 2 or 3. He still has to hunt and peck when asked to type an essay. Playing games online requires the mouse and a few keys, while writing papers takes the full keyboard and very little mouse usage. Please don’t confuse computer gaming proficiency with typing proficiency. Or, as the Nana so eloquently put it, “There is a vast difference in the keyboarding skills needed to hack NASA and the skills needed to write an eloquent term paper.”
Lastly, what’s with all the time on spelling? Do we really need to know how to spell in this day and age? Can’t we just come close when we are typing and then let the computer correct us? During the typing of this blog, I misspelled 12 words. Maybe it’s my keyboarding skills, maybe I’m just stupid.
Oh yes! Let’s just let the machines do all the thinking for us. What could possibly go wrong?
I’m dumbfounded by Michael Smith’s hoisting of the banners of “Meh. Close enough.” Here you have an educator who is not only not particularly concerned that we are, as a nation, becoming dumber (or maybe, to be more fair, lowering our expectations and then falling to meet them), but is actually encouraging it! While I don’t think spelling is a barometer of intelligence (I know of one incredibly gifted girl who struggles with spelling, but excels in practically everything else), I do think that spelling has an important place in a well-rounded education. Far from being a mere “exercise in confusion” that we should get rid of, as Smith extols in another post, or foist off on a computer game (really? do we need less human interaction in education?), spelling teaches patterns, reveals roots of words, and allows for a tremendous degree of playfulness with language. A spell-check program can’t tell which of a set of homophones is appropriate in a given context. Did you really mean that kind of meat, Mr. Smith?
Stop with the memorizing state capitals. [...] If you find yourself desperately needing to know the capital of Delaware… look it up. [..]]I haven’t even gotten to the Periodic Table, poetry [...]
How trendy! Someone in education knocking the value of memorization!
Of course, many professions require an extensive amount of memorization. Think of what doctors have to memorize to graduate medical school, of the laws and cases lawyers must remember to pass their bar exams, of the codes and pathways that programmers must remember. If college is the first time in your life you’re called upon to memorize a large amount of information, you’re going to be in for a real treat.
Smith mentions poetry as one of the things to ditch from education. Memorizing poetry isn’t just a tedious task for filling classroom hours. Poetry teaches us about language patterns, stimulates parts of our brain we don’t normally use, imparts important lessons about rhythm into our cores. I won’t belabor this point too much, because Michael Knox Beran did a far superior job in his In Defense of Memorization. Suffice it to say, it’s not about the importance of knowing the state capitals (though it’s amazing how many times in my life that knowledge has come in hand), but about the importance of the art of learning by rote (or as Michael Clay Thompson prefers to call it, by heart).
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think I understand the point Smith is trying, but ultimately failing, to make. Technology must, absolutely must, play a more central role in our children’s educations. Technical literacy is becoming increasingly important in colleges and careers. Not only should children know how to use a computer for things like typing, graphic design, and programming, but they need to learn how to become fully participating online citizens. They need to be conversant in social media, because it has an undeniable power. Blogging reaches people in ways that other media can’t. Failure to respect the permanence and reach of anything that happens online has cost more than one job, friendship, or marriage. While my digital literacy soapbox can wait for another day, I wholeheartedly agree that digital literacy must be taught in public schools, private schools, home schools.
That doesn’t mean it needs to be taught to the exclusion of everything else. There are benefits to most aspects of a classical education that extend beyond memorizing a poem in that moment, studying Latin or Latinate vocabulary in that moment. Education isn’t just (or even primarily) about what happens in that moment, but about the big picture of lifelong learning, and Michael Smith’s inability to see that big picture is troubling. It’s particularly troubling that he is giving advice to teachers and (worse) administrators, urging them to sacrifice skills that have much greater benefit than what is seen in that moment.
Incidentally, Mr. Smith, spell-check may have corrected your 12 spelling mistakes, but not your attitude. Do you think they make a computer game that can address that one?
