View from a Farley The Current Events and Opinion Weblog of Chris Farley

Sanctity of School Breaks

There’s a sad moment in every student’s summer when they realize that school is again on the horizon. Even for those of us who absolutely love school, it’s sad to see the freedom we enjoyed get replaced by our studies. When we are in school, we take solace in the fact that we have a vacation somewhere in our future, and if all that fails we have the summer to relax. So when we reach that sad moment and realize that we still have summer reading, it’s annoying. I’m willing to accept a certain amount of annoyance for educational purposes, of course, but I doubt the educational value of summer reading. I don’t think summer reading is an educational annoyance; I think it is just an annoyance.

The idea of summer reading, as far as I can tell, is this: Students have a few months off. If they spend their time swimming and doing things other than learning (which many will), their minds will atrophy. Vocabulary will float away, math concepts will quickly be beyond their grasp, and they’ll completely forget how to write an essay. Enter summer reading. Have students read books, work on math problems, and read and write in a foreign language. That way students will retain more information when they return to school in the fall.

I have little doubt that remaining intellectually active over the summer is a huge benefit for students when they return in the fall, but the benefit versus the cost simply does not justify work over the summer or over any vacation of more than a couple days. I’m a big advocate of working hard on school days: waking up early, studying hard, learning as much as possible, diligently completing homework, and keeping a busy schedule; but I’m also a big advocate of the breaks that are actually breaks. It is incredibly important for students’ emotional and physical state to keep vacations sacred — a time for students to unwind, recharge, and get ready to work hard when they return. It makes students more productive when they are in school.

The best analogy I can think of for this case is pulling an all-nighter. A misguided individual might stay up all night to finish a project without realizing that his or her efficiency is probably only a small fraction of what it usually is. He or she would probably rationalize by saying that because they are spending more time on the project, they are certainly getting more done. In reality, he or she would create a much better finished product in a much shorter time span if he or she simply went to sleep and worked on the project after taking a break. The idea behind summer work seems to be that if we take up more time with education to prevent students from degenerating over the summer, they will automatically be better students. No one seems to have stopped to consider that if we all took a break, a real break, we might just come back to school ready to tackle new material with enthusiasm and energy.

There is one final component to this, which, as with many education issues, has to do with trusting students. If summer reading is eliminated, there is a gap that students will have to fill. It will be up to students to keep learning and keep interested in school material, but at least it will be on their own terms. If students return to school unprepared because they did not keep up as they should have, then it will be their own fault. The most important lesson that the student will learn, however, is that they ought to keep on learning over the summer. Choices about education are so often made for students that the education about how to make choices is too often forgotten. If students are given control over their own education, then they will learn how to keep themselves on track rather than having an oft-resented restriction placed on them. The result is a valuable lesson for the student and, once students self-adjust, no change for teachers in the fall. As a dedicated student, I don’t need my teacher to tell me to read a book in French over the summer to keep up with my French. I know that if I don’t, I’ll struggle when I return. Now if only a teacher could entertain the notion that I might actually learn something if I had a choice about how to keep myself education, that would be great.

There really is no valid reason for schools to intrude on breaks. Students should defend breaks fiercely because breaks, no matter when they are, belong to them. Breaks belong to students, and students should be trusted with their education in that time. The basic drive to succeed will surely keep students learning. The ineffectual cavalcade of summer work, the grievous inefficiencies it causes, and the inevitable aggravation that ensues can and should stop.

Digital Wave

I always love when teachers become the taught. Every once in a while, the student-teacher relationship is turned and students get to be the teachers. Those situations often arise as the result of a normal class discussion, and most teachers genuinely enjoy learning something new. In recognition of the fact that there are some areas in which students are more qualified than teachers, a wise teacher (Mrs. B) at my school developed something called Digital Wave. Once a year, a group of tech savvy students team up with some tech savvy faculty (there are more of us than them) to create a series of workshops on various technologies. The concept has evolved somewhat from students being in an assistant role to actually leading workshops.

We decided this year to do something slightly different. In the past, Digital Wave has focused on technology that teachers can use, but we realized that so many teachers don’t know anything about things like Twitter or Facebook. For a group of professionals working with a group of students who widely use social networks and other technology-related tools, teachers are often ignorant of them. Our task was to change that, and I think we were at least partially successful.

I ran three sessions this year on Twitter, iPhone, and blogging. You can see various pictures of me presenting courtesy of Riley Kaminer. My goal was never to get teachers (and a few administrators) to go out an start using Twitter, buy an iPhone, or start blogging, but to make them aware of how students are using these tools. Interestingly, many teachers realized that the iPhone in particular could be a powerful tool for education.

So why am I talking about this? I’m convinced that the typical student-teacher relationship is functional, but not ideal. It’s great for a student to learn about something from a teacher, but if the relationship isn’t reciprocal, then both sides are missing out on something. Students have the ability to improve the quality of education for everyone by teaching teachers how to use new tools, or simply making them aware of their existence so that they understand their students better.

In the coming years, I hope that we can expand Digital Wave to include more student-run sessions. There are so many areas in which students have the capability to enrich teachers’ knowledge, and reap the benefits afterwords. Outside of spontaneous classroom exchanges, students need the capability to break down the traditional one-way information flow between teachers and students. Programs like Digital Wave allow that to happen, and both teachers and students are better because of it.

The Ideal School

Whenever I think about how to solve the world’s problems (as I do frequently, with limited success), I realize that education is the most important tools to combat a plethora of issues. On a national scale, proper education would have, I believe, prevented the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Part of the blame for the crisis falls to consumers who accepted loans they shouldn’t have and lived beyond their means because they didn’t understand basic economics. Voters’ susceptibility to the various misinformation campaigns in the recent election (particularly those perpetrated against then-Senator Obama) underline how better education might focus voters better on real issues.

Then I thought more specifically about schools. My school does many things right, but like most students, I’m constantly thinking of ways things could be better. I eventually want to be a venture capitalist and, assuming I’m wildly successful (which is admittedly a lot to hope), I figure that I want to donate money to education.

So what would be in my ideal school? It would be an independent school (public education, at least at the moment, is fraught with complications) and the facilities would be state-of-the-art. Schools with amazing facilities, however, are not unique.

The standards for both students and teachers would have to be stringent, but at the same time I believe that teacher salaries should be very high. The culture of standardized testing in public education has reduced teachers there to babysitters instead of trained professionals. The ideal school would pay teachers like pros because they are pros. All contracts would be year-to-year. In the time I was in public school, I saw far too many teachers who worked hard until they got tenure. Job security should be tied to job performance.

Students should also have tough academic requirements. Schools are responsible for creating well-rounded people, but academics should always be the primary focus. In addition to disciplinary measures, the school should expel students for failing to meet academic standards. Students shouldn’t live under the constant threat of being expelled, but there are a few students in my grade who clearly do not live up to basic standards of academics. In the ideal school, they would be given the chance to improve and, if they didn’t, they’d be expelled.

Of course, it should be difficult to get in to the school to begin with. Ideally, an entrance exam would not only cover the subjects that you need to study for, it would include problems that require reasoning. It’s more important that people know how to think than it is that they remember things, particularly in a time when information is so easily obtained. Oxford and Cambridge do this really well. Admissions should also be blind – students shouldn’t be admitted because they’re likely high donors.

As far as the curriculum goes, ethical and moral reasoning should be featured prominently. Independent schools attract wealthy families and produce the next generation of important people. It’s important that ethics is introduced very early on. There’s a class at Harvard called “Justice” that would ideally be the model for the Upper School ethics curriculum. I also believe that writing should be a big part of the curriculum. My school’s most glaring curricular failing is not having a good writing program. We simply do not do enough writing and we don’t do enough long writing. Students should have to write papers of considerable length frequently. The result of the lax writing program has been students viewing writing as traumatic and poor writing quality.

Those are the few building blocks of an ideal school that I was able to brainstorm in a few minutes. My observations and conclusions are based on my time in both public and independent schools. My ideal school is based on my current school which is as close to ideal as possible. That said, there are always improvements to be made.

Happy 2009 everyone,

CF