Ozymandia: Notes on Teaching & Learning

By Donald Wilcox Thomas

This book comprises a series of thirty-one essays addressing all aspects of teaching and learning in our schools. Each essay addresses a single aspect of secondary education (e.g., choice, libraries, grit, grading, exams, and so forth).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543445435

Donald Wilcox Thomas

A graduate of Princeton and Harvard, Donald Thomas is a veteran teacher, principal, and professor. He has taught in a junior high school, an elite prep school, a comprehensive high school in Nigeria, a university academy, a graduate school, and an inner city charter school. But the bulk of his career was devotd to twenty five year in a suburban high school as a teacher of English, of semiotics, and as a department chairman. His signal achievement has been to found and direct a hih school in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where he continues to visit and consult.

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Ozymandia

Notes on Teaching & Learning

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DONALD WILCOX THOMAS

Copyright © 2017 by DONALD WILCOX THOMAS.

Library of Congress Control Number:         2017912873

ISBN:                      Hardcover                        978-1-5434-4541-1

                                Softcover                          978-1-5434-4542-8

                                eBook                               978-1-5434-4543-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 08/21/2017

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Contents

PREFACE

CHILDREN

CHOICE

COMPETITION

CRAFT

EDUCATION

EMPOWERMENT

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

EXAMS

FORGETTING

GOALS

GRADES

GRIT

HEALING

INTELLIGENCE

LIBRARIES

METCO

MOOC

MORALITY

OVERDRIVE

OZYMANDIA

PLEDGE

PREPS

PROFIT

QUESTIONS

REVOLT

SERVICE

SKILLS

STANDARDS

STEM

THINKING

TRAINING

NOTES

Also by Donald Wilcox Thomas

Far Reaches of Instruction: Notes on Teaching and Learning

Rummaging in the Fields of Light: Notes on Teaching and Learning

Pushing the Pencil: Notes on Teaching and Learning

Schoolmastery: Notes on Teaching and Learning

Esse Quam Videri (a coming of age novel)

Semiotics 4: Language in the Making

Semiotics 3: Communication, Codes, and Culture

Semiotics 2: Communication in Man and Beast

Semiotics 1: Language, Thought, and Reality

This book is

dedicated to all my students near and far who have honored me with their patience and attendance, listening to my deliberations however distant or germane. Only students know what their teachers think.

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Ulysses

Alfred Lord Tennyson

PREFACE

I HAD NOT THOUGHT to write another book, having already published four previous volumes of essays on teaching and learning. After all, there is only so much that can be said about a given subject. Or so it seemed. My mistake was in penning a single essay which then begot another and then another. First thing I knew, I was once again launched and running.

In what follows, I have attempted to be brief and concise, including the assigned titles, all of which turn on a single name. I am once again confirmed in my belief that there is not too much that can be said about learning and teaching, so central is it to our lives and ultimately our civilization, most especially in these times when education is being disrupted – to use a current economic term – in so many ways. The title of this book - Ozymandia – as well as of the essay it names, stresses how much of a pattern are the changes now taking place with charters and choice, for profits and massive open online courses. These are important and in some instances damaging developments.

What is more important, however, is that in the sweep of these changes we not lose sight of teaching and its centrality. However teaching is delivered or learning encouraged, there is always going to be a teacher and a student, like Mark Hopkins on one end of the log and the student on the other. This is the relationship we must keep foremost in mind so that we do not get swept away by the exigencies of modernity. We have to keep talking and writing, refusing to be silenced by the prophets of change and the priests of entrepreneurship.

CHILDREN

W HENEVER I INTERVIEWED for a job in education, be it teaching, department chair, or principal, one question that inevitably arose was whether I liked children. It is not the sort of question I would choose to ask about adults – whether I liked them. To begin with, I found it difficult to confess my liking of those I did not know, whether children or adults. Perhaps the intent of the question was whether there was something special about children that one could like – their innocence, ignorance, youth, callowness, itchiness, untoward optimism, inferiority, obedience. As with adults, one could naturally take a liking to individuals for a variety of reasons, none of them quite the same. And so, my inevitable answer would be that, yes, as with adults, I liked some children but not others. Still, the thrust of the question was whether I liked children indiscriminately, whether I would treat all children the same despite their obvious differences.

Were I to deal with primary school students, perhaps the question is warranted, given the special treatment that the very young require. In my very first job as a teacher of seventh grade, I was dumbfounded by the extent to which my colleagues would go in decorating their rooms, each one hugely creative and totally different. There was Autumn and Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and so forth. Once these sets were created and posted and then dismantled to make room for their replacement, teachers would sell each other their designs. It was like converting classrooms into movie sets. Recognizing my betters, I could not begin to compete and therefore left my room stark and unchanged.

Is it therefore possible to teach and not to like children? That depends. I teach primarily because I am fond of my subject matter, not necessarily those who choose to learn it. As a teacher of the humanities, I am interested in humans – in what and how they think, regardless of their age. I am interested in the process of learning – its triumphs and struggles, its discoveries and defeats. Every child I have known - every student - is different. I am interested in their differences. I am interested in the way they think and how this differs from the way I think, insofar as this is discoverable. Some of my students become lifelong friends, others do not. I remember one of my colleagues who always asked her students whether they liked her. I would much rather be liked than not, but I do not see either as relevant to the job. Primarily, students want to be known and understood insofar as that is possible.

My job is to know them rather than like them. This is a little easier with children than it is with adults. Part of our job is to let ourselves be known as well, not to hide behind our delegated authority. It is an awesome responsibility, never fully realized. In my various assignments in private schools and public schools, the inner city and the suburbs, Asia and Africa, I have found children pretty much the same. Stripped of cultural traits, they are indelibly human wherever we find them. Children’s souls are not so well hidden under the sediments of society, which is what I like about them – their souls, not their behaviors or their foibles.

CHOICE

C HOICE