Editor’s note: This commentary is by Kathleen Kesson, who is professor emerita of Teaching, Learning, and Leadership at LIU-Brooklyn; former director of the John Dewey Project on Progressive Education at UVM and director of Teacher Education at Goddard College. She currently sits on the board of the Community Engagement Lab and is researching the implementation of Act 77 in Vermont.
I always read Peter Berger’s commentaries (Effective education involves student effort) with interest because he captures a coherent and persistent ideology of education so well. It is clear that he is someone who values student learning and strongly supports the traditional role of a teacher as a wise guide — a container of knowledge with the task of transmitting what he knows to the next generation. If Berger is willing to engage in serious and reciprocal discussion and debate around important educational topics, his voice could be a valuable one in the current public discourse around how best to educate young people in a complicated, rapidly changing world. However, his tendency to invoke “straw people,” choosing the most banal examples of student work in order to promote his personal ideology, negates the usefulness of his rhetoric. And to highlight one instance of student criminal activity to neutralize the idea of student engagement does a real disservice to students, teachers, and communities who are serious about finding solutions to the many social and educational problems that plague our society.
“Motivation” is certainly a significant classroom issue and millions of research dollars have been spent coming up with methods to encourage student engagement (and we should note that motivation and engagement are not synonymous terms, one signifying the desire to do something, the other suggesting absorption in an activity). Yes, there have been too many misguided notions in the form of trivial rewards and punishments, rightly critiqued by Berger. However, educators in Vermont are discovering a very simple idea: When you take the time to listen carefully to students, build authentic relationships with them, find out what they are deeply interested in or perhaps even just curious about, and then work with them to construct meaningful learning that connects to these interests, many problems of motivation and engagement disappear. And no, this is not about “having fun” in the classroom (another “straw person”) — it is about understanding what we know about learning and the brain – that there can be deep and lasting pleasure in learning when it is connected to what interests you. We need to get rid of the “either/or” mentality: EITHER we have students engaged in robust experiential learning OR we have students learning rigorous academic content. Skilled educators know that good education lies in the seamless integration of these supposed opposites.
To trivialize community engagement does a disservice to the many community members who, like Berger and other professional educators, are also committed to the learning and growth of our young people. Hats off to the college professor who took the time to invite elementary students into her lab, so that they might see a career path where all the “facts and figures” might lead. Kudos to the many business people, farmers, writers, retired engineers and others who are also committed to sharing the knowledge and skill that’s been “handed down through the generations.” We need engaged communities in order to thrive in these difficult times, and we need students who are engaged in their communities. Vermont officials worry about the exodus of young people from Vermont – what better way to keep them around than to help them see that their local communities are places where they can “solve problems, explore ideas, rally for a cause, or learn a new technical skill?”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Kathleen Kesson: Moving beyond either/or.