Math 1, Reading 0

At the beginning of a second grade lesson the teacher announced that the daily schedule had been changed. The next lesson was math rather than reading. The children cheered.

I was not surprised. After 30 years of visiting elementary and middle schools, I have seen a pattern: Math and science are often more popular among students than reading and writing. It’s a broad generalization for which I have no data, but much anecdotal evidence.

Why the pattern? Here is my theory: Math and science can satisfy the curiosity of children about the physical world. Reading and its affiliates (writing, grammar, spelling and literature) are tedious and abstract, at least as taught in the testing-crazed culture of modern schooling.

While reading and writing instruction tends to focus on the abstract rules of written language (the sounds of vowels and consonants, the rules of grammar and punctuation), math and science instruction is built on the concrete logical of the physical world. The content of reading and writing instruction involves ideas and events that are often imaginary or unfamiliar. Physical space and objects available to all, regardless of language, culture or region, unify the content of math and science. Butterflies, bugs and blocks are ever present. One bean plus two beans equals three beans, always and everywhere. Math and science provide the intellectual mechanisms for satisfying curiosity. If you want to build a tree house or a dollhouse, it helps to measure accurately. If Mom expects you home for dinner by six, you need to be able to read a clock and estimate how long it takes to walk a mile, or how much longer you could play if you could bike home rather than walk.

Curiosity naturally involves examining, arranging, hypothesizing and testing. The effects of mathematical rules and processes can be visually confirmed. Reading and writing instruction in the fashion of modern teaching, lacks that connection of common experience. Learning the conventions and grammar of standard language defies our native dialects. (Johnny: We was tired. Teacher: No Johnny, we were tired.) Language instruction requires students to trust the teacher is correct and the speech of friends and family is wrong.

While second graders in math instruction use small cubes to learn addition and subtraction, during reading instruction they summarize an unfamiliar story or infer a main idea.  While a second grader can take away one fourth of a pie to leave three fourths of a pie, they cannot point to a particular word or sentence that summarizes or represents an inferred main idea. Summarizing or inferring requires reconstructing what has been encountered – a mental task that can be very difficult for a young mind. Math for youngsters is concrete, thus more accessible and attainable. Language is abstract. No wonder young children cheer when reading is replaced my math.

It does not have to be this way.  Here is my advice to teachers about making reading and writing more enjoyable and successful for children. Make better use of the familiar and the meaningful:

•      Use rhymes, songs and stories that are familiar and memorable.
•      Use invented stories and real observations, discoveries and experiences dictated by children and transcribed by teachers (constantly transcribe children’s speech to text).
•     Dramatize and improvise familiar stories.
•      Use choral reading and reader’s theatre
•      Connect reading and writing to math, science, social studies, sports and recreation
•      Give equal time to writing (learning to write is learning to read)
•       Surround children with their own written language (flip charts, walls of their stories, reports, drawings with captions)

Learning to read and write can be at least as enjoyable as learning math and science if the teacher uses the experienced world as a bridge to the abstract world.

Not Fair. You're Picking on Me

Timothy, a seventh grader, is in trouble with the teacher. He’s talking while his history teacher is instructing.  The teacher pauses for a second and makes eye contact with him.  Timothy stops talking for a minute, then begins whispering again to the girl in front of him. The teacher pauses, looks at him and says, “Timothy, stop talking.” A few minutes later, Timothy is talking to the girl again. The teacher sends Timothy to a seat in the corner of the room. As Timothy ambles his way to the desk in the corner he says, loud enough for the teacher to hear, “This isn’t fair. Carlos talks more than me. You’re picking on me.”

The dilemma illustrated in this anecdote plagues every teacher and parent. What is fairness? What is justice?

There is the possibility that Timothy is right. The teacher may treat some students more favorably than others. If the teacher has favorites, if he has not established an understanding of “fairness” as it applies in the classroom, then the teacher has a problem. Providing justice is more than a momentary problem related to a couple of students. Failure to provide justice creates an ongoing problem that will interfere with the teacher’s authority and the students’ opportunity to learn.

But Timothy is likely wrong to claim he is being treated unfairly.  There are probably circumstances he is unwilling or unable to acknowledge; and therein lies the crux of problem for all.  We struggle to explain or understand justice.

Piaget said that young children are mostly concrete thinkers who understand fairness in a way that is different from adults.  From a young child’s point of view, the one who accidentally spills a carton of milk is in more trouble than one who spills a small glass of milk. The size of the mess determines the size of the wrong. A wiser adult sees it differently.

A young child is more likely to grant an adult the authority to establish justice. If a parent or teacher says a wrong has been committed and a punishment is necessary, a young child is more likely to accept the judgment than an adolescent. A middle school student’s sense of justice is closer to an adult view, but still varies in some important ways. Middle schoolers are likely connect fairness to equality – equal treatment for all. Adolescent also are more susceptible to group norms of justice. Membership in social groups is often determined by standards of dress, appearance and behavior. Adolescent who are excluded from a particular group feel that life is not fair.  It’s a hard lesson, unpleasant at the least. Life isn’t always fair.

Good teachers strive for fairness and can usually achieve it, at least within the walls of their classrooms. They provide a model of fairness and help students move beyond a concrete view of fairness and beyond the reliance on social norms to determine who is in or out or who has power or not. Fairness has to be achieved by the whole classroom community. If the teacher is sole arbiter of justice, then the scales of justice will often be unbalanced.

Let’s go back to the problem of Timothy who thinks he’s being picked on. The fact that the teacher warned him twice doesn’t give him much room to claim unfairness. The teacher should not interrupt instruction to deliver a lecture to Timothy about fairness. It wouldn’t be fair to other students. And, Timothy might be trying to provoke a confrontation that is going to be more disruptive.

If I were Timothy’s teacher, I would talk to him at the end of class. Maybe it would go like this:

Me: Timothy, I’m disappointed in your behavior today. Your talking was interfering with the lesson.

Timothy: But Carlos . . .

Me: Stop. This is about your talking. It is not about Carlos.

Timothy: But it’s not fair.

Me: It’s not fair when your talking prevents other students from learning. I know you are capable of understanding that. This conversation is about your behavior today. I expect better from you. When I pause while I’m teaching and make eye contact with you, it’s all about learning social studies. I’m doing it for you and everyone else. Do you understand what I mean?

Timothy looks down and is silent.  I bend down, make eye contact and raise my eyebrows.

Timothy: Okay.

Me: Thanks, I’ll see you tomorrow.

The classroom is a small space where a teacher can be authoritative and fair and can teach justice as well as the academic curriculum. We can teach students the relationship between classroom rules and ethics, but it cannot be done in a day and we cannot rely on authority alone. We need to bring content and activities to the classroom that help students see the room as their room – a safe place where home, neighborhood and cultural experiences are valued. Elliot Wigginton sent his high school students into their neighborhoods to collect oral histories about families and communities. Those stories became the content for their reading and writing. (Read about it at The Foxfire Fund.) Wigginton gave us a good lesson on teaching reading, writing, history and justice. 

We should not preach responsibility to our students. We should give responsibility by making students our assistants and teaching them to teach others. There are many ways to promote justice in the classroom. Maintaining fairness in the classroom is not easy, but it is possible.