Measure! Quantify! Demonstrate! Produce! Verify!
The word teacher and even the latin words magister / magistra seem a bit old-fashioned to those of us at Bill and Melinda Gradgrind Foundation so we are suggesting a new descriptor for those whose classrooms we seek to transform.
Our proposal is that the word be changed from "teacher" to " Information Delivery System." After all, that is the most accurate description of what we at Gradgrind believe teachers to be. Further, IDS has the advantage of not suggesting a human relationship, the idiosyncrasies of which (classroom management, encouragement, spontaneity, HUMAN BEHAVIOR) often interfere with the delivery of information and its efficient monitoring.
We know that some would claim a teacher's job is not to deliver information but to inspire (or as Yeats said, "Teaching is about catching fire").
We at Gradgrind acknowledge that the acronym for "Information Delivery System" (IDS) can also be used by the Yeatsians to mean "Inspiration Delivery System" but we at Gradgrind will pretend we never heard of such an interpretation, and stick to our 'full pitcher / empty vessel' paradigm (see below).
We reject the notion of teaching as inspiration.
Teaching is quantifiable, as are the results of teaching.
Inspiration is not quantifiable and is therefore irrelevant to Gradgrinds.
It is essential for us Gradgrinds to be able to measure, measure, measure every bit of information delivered and received by students.
Students (AKA "children") in our view are empty vessels into which the teacher pours (i.e. delivers) information. At the end of this pouring, the amount students have received can be measured. Leaks and spills are also measured, and the plugging of defective vessels is accomplished. Similarly, training in pouring is administered to the pourers, until their techniques are flawless. (We at Gradgrind FILM the pouring techniques, and require pourers to watch the films regularly to master the perfect pouring technique.)
The results, we are sure, will be a quiet, harmonious classroom of empty vessels yearning to be effectively hooked up to an Information Delivery System for rapid, carefully monitored delivery of information, digit by digit, ounce by ounce, inch by inch.
Heil Gradgrind !
No comments:
Post a Comment