Snake Oil

This video is from a recent professional development session for Chicago public school teachers, the district that was previously mismanaged by current US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

I had to watch it several times to understand what was happening. The only experience I have with repeat-after-me chanting like this is church and political protests. These are professionals, collage graduates, some of whom who have been teaching for decades. Can you imagine this sort of "training" happening with, say, lawyers? Doctors? Architects? Massage Therapists?

The difference between church and protests is that they rarely sound as droning and dour as these teachers, which is, I'm sure, how their students sound when subjected to this dull, degrading sort of experience. They seem either beaten down or to have battened down against the humiliation. It is the worst kind of rote "learning," of mindless repetition, the sort of thing that sucks the joy out of childhood, that makes education unnecessarily arduous and hollows it of thought, which is what ultimately stands at the core of genuine learning. What you see in this video is what is meant by the expression "drill and kill," because it effectively kills natural intellectual curiosity.

Oh, I understand that this clip isn't representative of the entirety of this particular professional development session, or at least I hope it isn't, because otherwise we're looking at a vignette from hell. But here's what I'm asking myself: in what world is this an appropriate way to educate a human being? Even if what we're watching here is merely an experiential "example" of this particular teaching technique, in what world is this considered a valid way to teach anything to anyone, adult or child? What we see here has about as much a connection to education as prostitution has with with romantic love.

When I see this, when I imagine children being taught in this most humiliating fashion, one that demands compliance and debases the essential humanity of children, I see red. It's as if we've replaced the Pledge of Allegiance (which at least has the dignity of being an avowal of unity) and prayer (which at least has the grace of being about connecting with a higher consciousness) with this obedience crap.

From what I understand, this is one of the core teaching techniques employed by many for-profit charter school chains. From what I understand, the person conducting this mandatory "professional development" session is a paid consultant, likely employed by an education corporation, established for the purpose of creating a profit from the labor of our children.

This is an affront to children and to anyone who understands that children are not merely incomplete adults or empty vessels or essentially evil beings in need of a firm hand. You don't think children know this is humiliating? Then you haven't spent time with children, which is literally the case with most of those who come up with this garbage. This is snake oil being sold by charlatans off the back of clapboard wagons. The only thing for which it is possibly good is to help kids pass a standardized test, trivia memorized through drilling, then forgotten the moment the bubbles are darkened. How much do you want to bet that the same people who created our standardized tests are are the ones getting paid for these "professional development" sessions?

There is nothing worth learning that can be best taught using this technique.

When I watch this video I do so in disbelief that it is happening anywhere, to anyone, for any reason.  The instinct of education is as strong as any we possess: it is driven by curiosity and joy, the stuff of childhood. To have it stamped down and perverted in this way is heartless: indeed, I detect a palpable hatred of children beating where a teacher's heart belongs.

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