X Marks the Spot

Ernest Hemingway highlighted the need for good writers to have “built in, finely tuned, crap-detectors” and Neil Postman highlighted this to teachers back in 1969, noting that the most useful thing teachers can help students to learn is how to make distinctions between useful talk and bullshit.  However, children start to become very astute to what their parents know and to what their teachers know from a young age.  There is nothing wrong with a parent or a teacher not knowing something or making mistakes, the problem is what they do about it. 

In terms of classroom practice, McNeil (1982) highlights certain techniques that some teachers use in order to control their students, to save face per se (that are readily applicable to parents), and the result of such techniques could be argued to perpetuate a culture unwelcome of mistakes.  These techniques relate to:

1. Fragmenting knowledge – reducing knowledge to lists makes things easier for teachers in that teachers will not have to try to aid students in connecting ideas and they can get students to simply learn things as lists (the fact that this is a list is ironic, but for the sake of four points you can connect the dots),
2. Mystifying knowledge – teachers can create mystery around a topic in order to stop discussion on it, which in many cases is a means to covering their lack of knowledge on a particular area, e.g., I could explain that, but it is too complicated to go into right now.
3. Omitting knowledge – teachers can omit material that they do not see as important, particularly for their generation, but could be important for their students’ generation, or omit material that may cause debate and may lead to more questions they cannot answer, e.g., You do not need to know about that scientist, it is not on the test.
4. Defensively simplifying knowledge – teachers can obtain student compliance with material by promising that it will not be difficult and that they will not go into too much depth, e.g., this is boring material, but I promise I will keep it simple and get through it as quickly as possible.

I believe that a culture that patronises mistakes has partially caused the development of such strategies.  When this culture meets a classroom where teachers are perceived as experts or perceive themselves as having to be experts, such practices are personified.  It is because of such a culture that I partly do not agree with Neil Postman’s terminology as it can be interpreted as intimidating and witch-hunting in nature.  How is a student supposed to feel in completing a task if mistakes are going to be interpreted as bullshit?  Ernest Hemingway was also quoted as saying ‘The first draft of anything is shit’.  In other words, mistakes are a natural part of the learning process.  I would say that the first draft of anything is shit, but it is something.  What it becomes is a matter of choice.

Reference

McNeil, L. M. (1982) Defensive Teaching and Classroom Control. National Inst. of Education (ED), Washington, DC.

Image taken from the following link.