Blast from the Past: November 1992 By Molly Schen, past president of MCELA

2024 Introduction & Reflection 
By Beth Carlson, Nationally Board Certified Teacher/English Department Chair at RSU21, Kennebunk High School, [email protected], current MCELA Executive Board Member, and past president of MCELA

The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education by Stevenson and Stigler (Simon & Schuster, 1992) documents a large-scale research study which examined elementary schools. As a secondary English teacher, the book was a good read for me, too. I thought the book would be depressing--you know, Americans are slipping in the world market, our infrastructure is eroding, kids aren't learning anything, and it's a downhill ride from here. But truthfully, I feel optimistic. Some reasonable, although controversial, ways of organizing our work are explored in the book.

​Blast from the Past: November 1992 by Molly Schen, past president of MCELA

On the teaching profession. Most of us in the States have little time for interacting with other teachers. Contrast this practice with the Asian norm. During nonteaching time in China and Japan, teachers often prepare their lessons with colleagues in the "faculty room," a spacious room equipped with a desk for each teacher. "How could they collaborate on lessons?" I would ask myself. "Why would one language teacher who is working on a poetry unit want to share ideas with someone who is teaching journalism?" You have probably already guessed the answer. The curriculum is rigidly determined, so teachers are teaching the same thing at the same time. Prescriptive? Yes. Stifling? I thought so at first. Now I'm not so sure. 

Imagine talking with three colleagues about ways of teaching a particular poem, knowing that tomorrow all four of you will be teaching the poem and that after class you'll share what worked and what didn't. That sounds to me suspiciously like a professional conversation! One Asian teacher reported that a great deal of collegial conversation "is spent talking about questions we can pose to the class--which wordings work best to get students involved in thinking and discussing the material. One good question can keep a whole class going for a long time; a bad one produces little more than a simple answer" (195). What yeasty talk this must be. 

On grouping practices. Children are not grouped by ability in Asian elementary schools. My stance on tracking is well known (see "A Case for Heterogeneous Grouping" in Jan. 1991 News and Views). "Chinese and Japanese teachers do not adjust the curriculum according to children's ease of learning but emphasize instead that slower students may need to put out extra effort in order to keep up in the curriculum" (103).

How students view effort and ability. Stevenson and Stigler document test scores and make classroom observations that reveal wide disparities of achievement between Asian and American children. We've heard that evidence before. Perhaps more interesting are the culturally encoded views of effort and ability. Ask a student the importance of effort and the importance of ability for success in school. According to this study, the American child holds more of an "ability" model, one in which "motivation to try hard depends to a great extent on the individual child's assessment of whether he has the ability to succeed" (102). By contrast, the Chinese and Japanese hold more of an "effort" model, one in which progress "is potentially available to anyone" (103). Think of the implications!

What does it take to be a good teacher? The researchers asked teachers to judge which of the following attributes are most important for a good teacher to have: ability to explain things clearly, sensitivity to the needs and personality characteristics of individual children, enthusiasm about teaching, having high standards for children, and patience. In Beijing, the top trait was clarity. In Chicago, the top trait was sensitivity (116-67). These differences are revealing. Stevenson and Stigler describe the Eastern view as one of the "skilled performer" and the American view as the "innovator" (168). That description rings true to me. How many nights have I spent brainstorming a creative, original way to present a lesson? My racing heart quieted when I read the words: "It is hard for us in the West to appreciate that innovation does not require that the presentation be totally new, but can come from thoughtful additions, new interpretations, and skillful modifications" (168). I know that some of my best teaching comes from this moderate approach, but I still feel compelled to invent new approaches, design a jazzy activity, concoct an intriguing prompt--It's exhausting. 

So? How receptive are we to shifting the very foundation of how we decide what to teach, how we plan our lessons, how we organize students, and the standards upon which we assess our own and our student's achievement? Is it possible to view change as continual improvement instead of as an indication of the status quo? Some teachers I've talked to this fall are tired of changing. Teaching strategies have shifted due to de-tracking, cooperative time, the MEA writing/scoring guide, longer blocks of time, portfolios, and more. Teachers are tired of making adjustments to one thing, then another, and another. "There's been too much change all at once," one teacher said. 

But–dare I suggest it?–perhaps we're just at the beginning. Frankly, I hope we're just at the beginning. My own vision of schools as learning organizations–for students and teachers alike–has not yet been realized. Has yours? I believe that we can work much more efficiently in concert with another. I believe that the vast majority of our students are capable of speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, and appreciating at much higher levels–with a lot of effort on the part of all of us. Let me know what you're trying this year. Do any of these notions make sense to you?