Starving and Feasting: the Conundrum of Modern Education

Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.

-from“Tables Turned” by William Wordsworth

Murder to dissect. I think Dr. Strait repeated those words about fifty times. Wordsworth and my undergraduate self had already formed a rather dubious relationship, further strained by my attempt to read forty pages of The Prelude in one night. Wordsworth, it seems, cannot be gulped down in chunks. I consumed him thus, and my general impression after taking him in so abruptly was a murky collection of ideas about nature and imagination and a somewhat passionate dislike for stream-of-consciousness writing. It wasn't until years later that Wordsworth and I were no longer grudging companions—and it was equally as long before I finally made sense of Dr. Strait’s dicta against dissection.

When I was in high school, I was often left to my own devices to order my time and complete my work. In my mother’s ideal world, I was to spend an hour a day reading, an hour working on mathematics, etc. What instead happened was that I would spend several hours a day reading and complete my English work far in advance of my mathematics. Arithmetic was put off until the eternal tomorrow. I would simply do all my English homework for the next week now. Who could argue with such productivity? As it turns out, I still follow much the same formula today. I teach English and pay an accountant to do my taxes.

However, the American public school system is not the place to go for enjoying English. It really isn't the place to go for joy at all. Within the halls of the public schools walks an emaciated populace, students ironically starving in a country noted for high levels of obesity. But these children are not so much starved for physical food as they are starved for something else—something equally nourishing.

However, the students are not the only ones suffering from this epidemic of starvation. The teachers are its first victims. The longer I taught in a system dictated by data, testing, and standardization, the more I began to feel a slow, unmistakable draining: I didn't love English anymore. My days were not filled with discussions about Shakespeare, or poetry, or novels. They were filled with the endless collection of data, the unrelenting burden of constant assessment. Teaching was a battle—but not a battle to captivate the heart with the power of words—rather a battle fought for an End-of-Course exam consisting of sixty-five multiple choice questions.

The tragedy of teaching in the American public school system is this: those who enter its gates are invariably bound to the tyranny of the practical. Functionality, often attractively masked under the phrase “College and Career Readiness,” is the unmitigated deity of the system. But the irony of this worship is that the endless pursuit of the practical invariably drains the student of motivation, even motivation for the practical. Learning for higher test scores may temporarily raise such “achievement,” but in the end, the student despises learning and the teacher sees little meaning in her work.

As I sweated away under the yoke of slavery to the idol of test scores, a curious change occurred. At first, I didn't have much time for reading. Then, I simply didn't care to read much at all. What did it matter? My job was not about getting students to read books. It was about raising test scores. Reading a book was a luxury—a luxury that I couldn't afford. Who can read a book when one needs to make sure that a hundred and twenty students have “mastered” the standards and are all passing one’s class?

After four years of teaching, I abruptly realized how much I had changed. The kid who wanted to spend hours reading was gone. I didn't care about literature anymore. Test scores were all that mattered. But somehow, even they didn’t matter that much. In fact, not much seemed to matter at all.

At that time, the unstoppable wave of Common Core was looming before us. Common Core is neither evil nor salvific. It is simply another version of the same thing—another attempt at increasing performance by focusing on the practical and endlessly measuring and assessing and standardizing abilities. Real reform isn't anywhere in sight.

So I left. I left the country, actually. And what did I find?

I found myself curled up in bed at night, enchanted by Fahrenheit 451, hungrily rereading Lord of the Flies, putting off other obligations so that I could finish a few more chapters of To Kill A Mockingbird. I found books again. And I didn't just find them. I fell in love with them. I’m sad that my students are writing a paper this week, as I’m anxious to be “obliged” to start reading another novel with them. I feel like a high school kid myself, reading ahead, reading more than I should. I read when I should be cleaning. I read like someone starved for words. And when I read now, I begin to feel…alive.

My appetite for literature is resurrecting itself as the distance between myself and the American public school system increases. The murder done to my love of books by the endless dissection into standards and benchmarks and assessments is being reversed. And I’m unabashedly glad, for I had forgotten how nourishing a book can be. The pabulum I meted out to students in preparation for state exams was mere cafeteria food in comparison to the richly satisfying consumption of a novel—consumption not for the purpose of “mastering a standard”—but consumption simply for the felicity of it. Learning for the sake of enjoying learning—knowledge for the sake of savoring knowledge—art for the pleasure of seeing it—music for the solace of hearing it—this is the banquet of which America’s children are deprived. To dissect learning into data and standardized tests is to reduce eating into a flavorless exercise only meant to provide protein and carbohydrates with no regard for the merriment of tasting.

For education, in its simplest form, ought to be an invitation. It is an invitation to a feast.