Lessons Learned

What I Know For Sure

By Marva Collins

The purpose of a good education is not to “stuff” facts into a child’s head, but to enable students to truly understand what is being taught.  The learning environment that now prevails across the country involves the use of worksheets, machines, gimmicks and prepackaged lesson plans. Students are being placed under extreme pressure to pass tests. The sad result of all this is that even if students are able to pass these standardized tests, they do not become owners of information for a lifetime. 

I think of these lines from Walt Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself.”

“Divine am I inside and out,
And I make holy whatever
I touch, or am touched from.”

There is a vast difference between textbooks and great books, and between hearing with the ear and hearing with the mind. Our students partake of a classical education. They begin in kindergarten with the fables from Aesop, where they are taught to diagram sentences, which enhances their comprehension, hones their writing and verbal skills and becomes the “soil” for greater crops to grow in the future grades. The average reading score of minority children across the country never rises beyond fourth-grade level.

The “remedy” used for children, especially minority children, is worse than the disease. Machines and worksheets cannot teach students to become articulate. Students need teachers who can lead, who can guide, who can bring out the best in each student.

The first stage of education is called the grammar stage. This must begin in kindergarten where students are taught to read, write, comprehend what is read and to begin sentences with “I think” or “I disagree” or “I think the author is saying.”  The first years are the foundation to reading well, thinking well, speaking well and expressing opinions. Worksheets may help students “take in” information, but they do not help them evaluate it. Memorization and repetition is very, very important in creating scholars.

The second stage of education is the logic stage. Here, students use analytical skills.   When reading Goldilocks in kindergarten, for example, students have a trial for Goldilocks’ parents. They are not very good parents. They allow their child to roam the forest alone. Goldilocks is very rude in that she enters someone’s home when they are away.  She eats their food, sleeps in their beds and then has the audacity to run away when the Bear Family returns. Her family must then pay for the damages done by their daughter. Kindergarteners are taught to become lawyers, judges and jury members, analyzing the story. They are exposed to cause and effect, syllogistic reasoning, etc.

The third stage of education, according to the trivium, is the rhetoric stage. During this stage, students are able to express their thoughts and opinions from the facts they have accumulated. They learn to read with there mind; to ask questions, to agree or disagree.  They also learn to put in writing the imagery memorized from past readings. I still believe in Aristotle’s principle of ideas. To put forth the question in kindergarten, “What is happiness?” we begin by saying to students, “Remember when you received a new toy, and how happy you were”? Did that happiness last? If it had been happiness, would it not have remained? Did we then give a name to something that it was not?

Many of the great classics have now been written for young children. For example, The Odyssey and the IIiad have been written for young children, so have The Epic of Gilgamesh, and there are wonderful books called Shakespeare for Kids that our kindergarteners and first graders use as basal readers. The students are asked to memorize certain passages from these selections as spelling words, for dictation, for proofreading lessons, and the students actually become reporters where they interview the characters they have just read about.

Memorizing great poetry is also an asset. It allows students to discuss the author’s point of view, to close their eyes and visualize the thoughts of the author. To have students listen to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (“Ode to Joy”) while they read the sonnets from Shakespeare or other great poetry. 

Great proverbs, Latin phrases, German phrases, French phrases are also used daily. Students learn to discuss what these proverbs mean to them, and ultimately they learn to write well-written précis using lines from these proverbs, and lines from great poetry, or great selections read.

Just as we are what we eat, we also are what we learn. In my opinion, there are few learning disabilities; but there are many teaching inabilities. For example, there are 11 ways to spell long (a), and yet as I traveled across America, children are only taught two sounds for long (a). What about (a-e) as in “made”? (ea) as in steak or break. Of course, the careful teacher will also demonstrate that (ea) also has a short sound of (e) as “bread, health, wealth,” (ai) as in “sail,” (ei) as in “neighbor, weigh,” (ay) as in “say, pay,” (aigh) as in “straight,” (et) as in “Chevrolet, Monet” and (e) as “Andre”. This cannot be done with sight reading, there must be a live teacher demonstrating at a whiteboard or chalkboard and, of course, discipline problems are eliminated when each student is a participant in the learning process. When children read orally, not using worksheets, each child will pay attention because they do not know when it will be their turn to read. Here the teacher can ask different students pointed questions such as: What do you think the author believes? What do you think? Read paragraph two and tell me in your own words what the author is saying. Give me four adjectives, nouns, etc., from paragraph five or paragraph six, etc. With oral reading, the teacher can easily identify students who may need further help in the reading process.

The first three years of schooling actually define whether students will do well in future grades. If students learn early to think critically, analytically, to ponder, to evaluate, to disagree, to agree, and to develop verbal skills, they are ready for more advanced academic skills.

Every child’s soul is a reservoir more or less filled with seeds that we, the teacher, plant in the fruitful soil of childhood. There is nothing greater for enhancing a child’s self-esteem, confidence and understanding than seeing their eyes holding wonder like a cup.

Our students have gone on to Oxford in England, MIT, Northwestern University, Tufts, the University of Chicago, Yale, Harvard and other great institutions. There is little wrong with our students, there is something lacking in our belief in our children. If we expect greatness, if we soak our children in greatness, they become great. What power, what great responsibility, what a challenge for the caring teacher. I conclude with the following lines from Shakespeare:

           “What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. How infinite in facilities. In
           form and moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In    
           apprehension, how like a God”

As a teacher, I never enter a classroom without reminding myself of the following:

          “Every sower must one day reap
          Fruit from the seed he has sown.
          How carefully, then, it becomes us to keep
          A watchful eye on the seed, and seek
          To sow what is good, that we may not weep
          To receive our own.”

There is not one seed that I have sown that I am afraid to reap. What a glorious and wonderful challenge. This is the assignment given me on this earth, and I have with energy, joy, and wonder hopefully received a passing grade.