Guerrilla Education : Teaching From the Trenches (Part 2)
There once was a time in the not too distant past that any education was seen as a blessing and a gift. Most people before 200-300 years ago did not know even how to read. It was a skill for the upper class. Reading was a way to get out of the gutters. Go back 500 years and books were a thing for the uber rich. Tyndale, a protestant reformer, had the dream that the plowboy would be able to have a Bible and read God’s word for himself. Pastors were the first ones who started to teach the poor. That is where the idea of Sunday School started. It was a way to teach poor children when they weren’t working. Gradually, broad, general education was seen as a positive thing for all people. The government got involved and soon, education, at least in the U.S., was required for all children. Now, we are having seniors graduating who can’t read. Mathematics is now racist. School is now for indoctrination instead of education. My how society has come full circle and crumbled in just a few short centuries.
I am convinced that there are plenty of people who still want to teach in our country. There is a problem with our students though. Most students are not prepared to be learners. John Milton Gregory, in his book The Sevens Laws of Teaching, comes to the second law, the law of the learner, to address this problem. He distinguishes the different between a learner and everyone else as someone who has an interest in the subject and attention to give the teacher. The law, as he states it, is “The learner must attend with interest to the fact or truth to be learned” (pg.48). Now, I have 4 kids ranging from a few weeks to seven years old, and I have been involved with youth ministry long enough to know that the vast majority of kids are naturally curious. My biggest problem with my kids when it comes to learning is getting them to stop asking questions. The question “why?” can be so annoying when one is trying to focus on something, specially something broken. So, if a kid is naturally curious, why are students not learning in school? Perhaps because their curiousness has been squashed out of them? Parents who aren’t curious and looking to teach their children the things of life, who want their children to sit still all the time and have no voice, to be constantly amused by the world around them, always receiving input without having to do any work to get the dopamine hit. These are the types of kids who can’t learn in a classroom. Children who have no idea of discipline or discipleship are sent to teachers to basically start from scratch. These students have little hope to learn from a teacher because the teacher is not a music video that is driving sick beats through the airways in such ways to garner thousands of likes. A value is not built into education as it once was because everyone now has access to it. The blessing has now become common place. It is now seen as a hurdle to get past rather than a gift to a better life. This is the fault of every adult in a child’s life for not instilling the value of a good education. It starts with the parents, but it does extent outwards. Education should be something that brings life, not stops it. A good teacher given a classroom full of students who have no capacity to learn because of their inability to give attention is burdened by a task that no single person can overcome. It is a battle that can’t be won. This is a parenting crisis in our country.
Working at a small school, I have the privilege of working with parents that do care. The rise of first-generation parents who see the problem in the education system of America and want something better for their children is huge throughout the US. Covid helped with this. Covid woke up the majority to see the thing that had been staring at them for a generation. It was the tumor that was festering that had finally grown big enough to start to cause problems. Now that we have all seen it, there is no going back. Now, caring is half the battle. We now see the problem with our education, what are we going to do about it?
There are two things that I would ask all parents to do for their children when it comes to their education. First, parents need to build in the value of learning in their families. Is learning something that only children do in school? Once they have enough, they can then graduate and go about work? I have yet to find a single successful person who is not an avid learner. If that is the case, then model learning for your child. Show them how you learn. This is the parent becoming the teacher. Strangely enough, your child comes from you, more than likely, your child will have the same struggles in school that you had. How did you overcome them? Teach them. If you haven’t overcome them, there is no better time than the present. Learn with your child. As a parent is meant to bring their child up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, modeling for them how to be a Christian. so should a parent model for them the value of education and how to be a learner for life. Show them how to learn and teach them. They want this from you. They yearn for this attention. Attention is the key to this all. Build into your child interest and the ability to give attention.
Now, Gregory gets into two different kinds of attention: compelled and attracted. He calls compelled attention cold and mechanical. I think of this attention as the kind that one gives because he knows that he has to give something. The kind of attention that one gets from the class clown. He is looking at you for a moment and that is all the time you get before he will start to cause trouble in your class. It is this vital time that a teacher must pounce upon and capture. The teacher should be looking to turn this attention into attracted attention. Attracted attention is living and full of power. It is an enjoyment in the subject at hand. It is sustainable attention because it doesn’t take any added work. This is the kind of attention that a teacher should seek for his students to have because they will follow along the lesson easily. A way to keep this attention is to use the tastes of the students to keep the attention growing. A bond should form between teacher and student to allow the teacher to communicate to the student in a way that the student will understand and grow in knowledge.
A caution about using the students interests in hold their attention. The interests used should not be ones that put other subjects down. For example, a student “gifted” in composition and who “struggles” in mathematics should not have one subject used other another subject. While one subject may come easier to a person than another subject, that does not make the person bad at either subject. They just need extra time or effort in those subjects. The knowledge that is within each subject is still accessible to each person if they take the time and energy to do so. I have seen plenty of people take the label upon themselves that they are bad at a subject and so they do not try as hard in that subject, but rather redirect their efforts into something that is easier for them to do. Each person does have giftedness and they should spend their lives exhausting their giftedness, but in the realm of education, each person should strive to master all that is put in front of them in order to become a balanced person, citizen, and worshiper. Specialization is something that takes place outside of general education. People will take the limitations put onto them by other people and hold to that their entire life. Someone who is “bad” at math will stay bad at math because they never take the time to get good at it because it is hard for them. This is wrong and should not come from a teacher or a parent until much later in life. The stage of general education is not the place for those kinds of labels.
Now, we can’t let teachers off the hook for this problem either. This does bring up the problem of bad education. If parents do their job in raising their kids to be curious and a student is prepared and ready to be taught and comes to a teacher who is not ready to teach, there is little hope for that student to thrive in that environment. A learner should approach class with an attitude of attention and interest. It is a teacher’s job to not start until attention is given from each student, and then they should work to not lose it. It is the teacher’s job to keep the interest going. Learning is fun. Discovering things for the first time should be exhilarating. Seeing the world unfold in new ways of understanding should enlighten the life of both the student and the teacher. If this is not happening, the teacher is at fault. The teacher should be the one who restructures their lesson in order to keep the attention of the student. This involves working within the frame of the students. Kindergarteners have a much shorter attention span than seniors. A teacher should shape their instruction time in order to work best with the age that they serve. Attention span is something that a teacher should be looking to grow in their students, constantly pushing them to mature and be able to handle more instruction for longer periods. It does need to be measured in order to not exacerbate the students.
One last interesting observation, throughout the entire section on the student, Gregory never excuses the teacher if the student will not give attention. It is never the student’s fault. If the student is not giving his attention to the lesson, this does not mean that the teacher does not need to teach. It means that the teacher needs to take a step back and build interest and attention. There needs to be a call to order and a call to action. If there is a particularly bad case, parents should be called in as well. This is a joint effort. Teachers work on behalf of the parents. If Johnny won’t sit in his seat and listen to the teacher when the teacher is giving an honest effort to engage Johnny, Johnny should be turned over to his parents until he is ready to come to class as a student. Johnny may need to be slapped in the head, or he may need to be taught how to learn. Little Johnny not doing well in class is going to fall upon either the failings of the teacher or the parents. Johnny might be failing, and there is a level of responsibility on him. ultimately, it does fall back onto the parents and teachers though.
All this to say that a learner is one who comes to class ready to give attention and interest, while a teacher does their best to keep it. Education is a privilege that should not be taken lightly. Parents should raise their kids to understand this gift and to take advantage of it, not to abuse it. Teachers, empower your students to rise above where they are at. They have come to learn, so teach them, even if it takes extra time and effort. Knowledge gained through effort and sweat will not be forgotten easily or taken lightly.
Gregory, John Milton. The Seven Laws of Teaching. Veritas Press, 2004.