The Poverty of Pedagogy

This blog is a general observation of substitute teaching, and is not directed at any urban or suburban or rural area specifically. Just a few notes about a day when I decided to "shake" the familiarity of some high school ghosts. I like to write "OMG WE HAVE A SUB" on the board. Perplexity is the name of “the game.”

Just so we clear it up, this is NOT how it went down:


I did not have to recover any "ice picks." I did not have to be the "warrior chief." But my students, geographically isolated by BOREDOM, offer a slight comparison to urban youth (I think). Regardless, they are bored by education.

Stood in front of a history class in RURAL Wantage Township, NJ. A substitute, only partly a teacher. Just standing in for _____. Might as well have been behind that class. No eyes in the back of their heads, though. Only Ipods in their ears. Brains in the back-seats. But they're smart. They get good grades. As Haberman offers, they "succeed without being involved or thoughtful." This is implied, I think, as a gesture of failed system, and not solely due to the failed learners of that system. These students have not failed, and they will carry the empty weight of "success" with them, almost unknowingly, as they have scammed the system. Played the game...

Playing the "game" of education was brought up in class today. It got me thinking about how much writing becomes a method of this game. I revisited imagining school and its prescribed actions as a template for competition. The dictionary simply defines "game" as "a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators." Does writing adhere to this kind of activity? It instantly reminded me of a Nick Tingle article I recently read concerning writing as a competitive activity. Tingle feels that student writers respond according to three categories: a) the rageful, b) the listless or de-energized, and c) as the anxious. Writing, to these students, does not become an outlet or cathartic and affective experience it is intended to be. It becomes the byproduct of some forced and expected response. Writing merely mimicks their attitude toward learning. Tingle offers that “They have learned the game, or more precisely they have learned that learning is a game.”


This is a very interesting perception of learning, one that regretfully seems innocuous to us. Playing a game includes knowing the strengths and weaknesses of a competitor or the game itself, of an adversary that defies you. The challenger can be considered a counter force or the very person playing the game; in some circumstances it can be both. There are competitive games such as sporting events and board games, where two or more opposing forces battle each other. There are also “brain games” such as puzzles and crosswords, where one force opposes itself. Contrasting the two similarly challenging tasks, brain games bargain the intrinsic motivation to succeed, while a sport challenges the learner to succeed out of fear of inferiority or losing (extrinsic motivation).

To extend the analogous nature of playing and learning, I think that Tingle is making this link obvious to us through writing, just as Haberman is making it obvious to us through urban education. But we already know the game quite well… we are college students, after all. We had to learn it to get this far, right? The very nature of competitiveness is inherent in public education, so much so that learning has become less a “brain game” and more so a sporting event. Just as a basketball player would wish to please the punitive and coercive coach, students similarly submit to the teacher’s wishes. Is this borne solely out of fear of being punished by parents and/or teachers? A basketball coach will “bench” a player if they do not succumb to the expectations of the game. If they turn the ball over or miss an important free-throw, they are reprimanded accordingly. Now, there is always an exception to this; good coaches will reinforce the positive and negative contributions of a player. This helps foster courage in the player, so that the player can attack all the elements of the game regardless of faults and fouls. Good teachers may act in the same manner; students who are not doing well must be praised just as much as the classroom idols that are “achieving,” the ones who will pass through the required filters to get to where they (think they) want to go. Behaviorist BF Skinner denounced these idols, simply because they only accounted for a small population of students in the school.

In a complete analogy, the classroom is the court, grades are statistics, the coach is the teacher, the player is the student, and fouls are detentions. These titles are oppressive measures of limits and boundaries of contemporary education. They are there simply to instill fear within the system, so that acting out of line will result in inevitable failure. Losing a basketball game is akin to failing a class, in that a student’s inability to conform to the regulations of education will result in untimely dismissal from school. If players do everything they are supposed to do, maybe- just maybe- they will succeed. This perpetuates throughout society beyond schooling, as evident in author Kalle Lasn’s take on powerful informational institutions freely wielding their dominant influence on a susceptible public. This omnipresent public void has been internalized throughout time. Lasn writes, “We’ve spent so much time bowed down in deference, we’ve forgotten stand up straight.”

...The other week, I subbed for a history teacher in the high school I attended eight years ago. My friends think this should be “awkward.” I find it comforting. Read through those "sub plans" as I downed my travel mug of coffee. Those plans always seem to demean my abilities. Never really challenging me. Playing it safe. Coercing me to sit at the teacher’s desk without a thing to do other than monitor and observe the “free class” these students will think they have… I was faced with a decision. Should I play the "sub" game or flip this game on its axis? I guess Mr. History was playing it safe when he demanded that his students read the section out of their history text concerning "Watergate." Read and respond to the questions. Silently OR ELSE. Here's a worksheet kids! Get to work! Was he playing the game of teaching while absent? Was I going to aid in this standoffishness?


The flip on the axis seemed more fun. More adventurous. I had Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" in my car, so I grabbed it during a break and made some notes on Zinn’s Watergate. When I introduced the assignment and began to bombard students with exotic, “outside the box” questions, they looked at me like I was a madman. What the hell is this substitute doing? Shouldn’t I be exempt from class work if Mr. History isn’t here? I sympathized with their uncertainty. I am only 8 years removed from high school- I probably would have acted in a similar manner. Besides, I kind of am a madman. So be it.



On the board (is it weird that I took a picture of this?), I wrote down some thought-provoking questions. “High-order thinking” questions. I prefaced each class with “I am not a history teacher, I am just a dude.” Break the “ice.” For the entire duration of the day, I would quietly whistle Sam Cook’s “Wonderful World” as I meandered through the hallways. I saw Mr. History a couple days later. He jokingly, I think, asked “What the hell did you do to my kids?” I took it as a compliment.