Q and A with John Merrow
Question: You moderate a lot of panel discussions at education meetings, and you have a reputation for doing a pretty good job at it. In fact, some of those appearances are embedded above in this post. Can you pass along some tips to the rest of us?
John: Sure, but why are you asking me now?
Question: Well, you're not getting any younger, are you?
John: Fair enough. There's really just one unbreakable commandment for running a worthwhile panel discussion: No opening remarks!
Question: Why not?
John: Because if I ask panelist so-and-so to make a few remarks, I have given up control of the microphone. That means when he or she goes off on a tangent or goes on too long, I cannot interrupt without being rude. But if it's all Q&A, it's always my microphone, and I can interrupt without being rude. Remember, it's supposed to be a 'discussion,' not a series of presentations or 'opening remarks.' How many of these events have you been to where they never even get to a discussion because each panelist takes 10 or 15 minutes -- even though the moderator had told them '5 minutes max!'
Question: What are your other 'rules'?
John: There are two expressions I try to use as often as possible. One is "I don't understand," and the other is "Tell me more."
Question: Tell me more.
John: That's cute.
Question: Well, I'm just trying to follow your example.
John: OK. Here's why. When I hear jargon, even if I understand it, I will say "I don't understand' because that forces the panelist to come down to earth and speak in understandable English. He may be thinking that I am pretty stupid, but he will invariably provide a better, clearer explanation. "Tell me more" works on that same principle.
Question: So those are the secrets?
John: Well, there's more. The moderator has to listen to what people are saying and respond to that. Some moderators seem to feel that it's their job to 'balance' the conversation, giving equal time to everyone. I don't worry about that. In fact, I often tell panelists that they have to speak up if they want to be heard. Life is unfair, and so are panel discussions.
Question: What else?
John: I always ask panelists ahead of time if there's a question they want to be asked. If there is, I ask it, because that allows them to say what they would have said, if there had been opening remarks. Everyone has a set speech, a shtick, and I want to make it easy for them to get it out there for the audience.
Question: How do you see the moderator's role?
John: Good question. Kind of like a conductor.
Question: Orchestra or train?
John: Both, I guess. If the panel has been chosen well, then there will be different voices (instruments), and a good conductor will help them create something worth listening to. But a moderator is also driving a train toward a clear destination, greater understanding of the issue. Remember, the operative word is 'discussion,' but if you look at most convention programs, these events are usually billed as 'panels,' whatever that means. It's all about having a decent conversation, one that sheds light and holds the audience's interest.
Question: You feel pretty strongly about this.
John: Sure, because pedagogy matters. We shouldn't be lecturing when we know that the more interactive and participatory an event is, the more likely it will be interesting to the audience.
Question: Is there an ideal number of panelists?
John: No, but two is too few. I would say that three or four is probably best. I've juggled as many as seven, but that's no fun for anyone.
Question: What about taking questions from the audience?
John: Essential, but here the moderator has to be tough and occasionally rude. A lot of so-called questioners really want to hold forth with their opinions. I always make it clear that I won't tolerate that, but even so someone always gets up and tries to make a speech. I am always forced to interrupt someone and ask (or demand) 'What's your question?'
Question: Your blog is usually about education. In fact, you usually complain about something or other. What's up with this?
John: I am taking a bold stand against boredom, against lousy pedagogy and stultifying panels. Pretty courageous, huh?
Question: Chances are most people won't read this far. You OK with that?
John: Well, if even one moderator behaves differently because of this, I will feel I have actually accomplished something.
Question: I suppose you think you're pretty clever, putting all this information about moderating into Q&A form.
John: You said that, I didn't.
April 2012 Archives
In one of his always interesting "Disruptions" column in the New York Times, Nick Bilton held forth on how robots are replacing workers at Amazon and elsewhere. These robots, a researcher at Johns Hopkins told Bilton, "will help augment people's abilities, allowing us to use robots for things humans cannot do." And, the Hopkins guy adds, we will always "have to have someone who builds the robots."
Columnist Bilton is upset for the workers who will lose their jobs, but his column is also a wake-up call. I read it as an implicit critique of a narrow curriculum that puts aside just about anything that encourages the imagination in favor of 'the basics,' meaning basic reading and basic math.
Stressing the basics is no way to make sure that we will produce people to design, build and operate robots, or create the future in other ways. We need schools that encourage the imagination, that allow and support deep learning, and that fan the sparks of creativity -- not stomp out the fires.
However, a narrow and unimaginative curriculum is not a new phenomenon. Just as armies are supposedly spending their time getting ready to fight the last war, many schools and colleges seem to focus on preparing young people for the day before yesterday -- and have been doing so for a long time.
I have some direct experience in this. In the late 1960s, I taught for two years at a historically Black public college, Virginia State, in Petersburg, Virginia. For a privileged young white man from New England, it was a life-changing experience.
One sociological lesson stuck with me. The college stressed vocational training for its students, most of whom were the first in their families to attend college. While some studied to become chefs and barbers, a very popular major involved computers, which at the time were still pretty new. These students were being trained to be key-punch operators! (Ask your parents!!) It didn't take a wizard to know that, in a very short time, absolutely no one would be able to make a living as a key-punch operator, but that didn't slow down the training program. Disrupting that assembly line would have required more than foresight; it would have meant sticking one's neck out and challenging the comfortable status quo -remember, this was Southside Virginia, not a safe place for African-Americans to challenge the system. Easier and safer to prepare students for yesterday than to make waves and risk one's own career.
I've often wondered what happened to those young men and women. I hope they found other work, and other opportunities to learn new skills.
What about today? Not only are we not challenging the status quo of 'basic education,' we seem to be cutting to the bone and getting rid of 'frills' like the arts. While I am hearing and reading stories about larger classes and fewer 'non-essential' programs in lots of places, Texas seems to be leading the way in cutting education (big surprise).
But, wake up, folks. The arts are basic, as this report from Florida demonstrates. Some of you may have seen our piece for the NewsHour on this topic.
So what do we do about a narrow, boring curriculum and the failing schools that generally seem to accompany that approach? It takes courage to challenge the runaway train of the current approach. As the metaphor suggests, standing in front of a train is not a recipe for a long life. The money and the power are with the status quo.
Some corporations are getting involved, although maybe not as a direct challenge. If you watched the Masters Golf tournament, you saw ExxonMobil commercials about improving America's competitive position in math and science. That company's foundation has spent millions on math and science education. (I also liked that many of the ads said 'Support our Teachers'-- a too-rare message these days.)
Better news comes from San Francisco. Some high tech entrepreneurs are resisting school-as-usual and getting their hands dirty trying to change things. Right now they seem to be involved because they have children of their own, but let's hope they are intent on helping other people's children as well. Let's hope these interesting approaches to schooling become models, not just boutique luxury items for the privileged.
Cursing the darkness never did anybody any good. Let's celebrate -- and copy -- those who are lighting candles to show us the way.
A comprehensive report in late March by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution provides strong evidence that adults in as many as 200 school systems have been cheating on their students' standardized tests.
We looked at this for NewsHour in 2011.
Because I spent three years chronicling the tenure of Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC - another city with a spate of thus-far-unexplained 'wrong to right' erasures on standardized tests -- I am interested in this story. I'd like to know if anyone cheated in the DC schools. If so, who and why?
But a teacher I correspond with occasionally brought me up short recently. My focus on actual, literal cheating -- physically changing answers or giving kids answers in advance -- is too narrow, this teacher wrote.
Here's part of a recent letter:
"While I know that the cheating scandals may be considered important, I'm frankly a bit disappointed that this is the focus because the cheating scandal doesn't really matter in terms of the students and their futures, which should always be the focus of anything related to education. What matters is the lasting damage that is being done to them as a result of the increased pressures being put on the school system over these tests. The lasting damage is the closing of schools with no thoughts as to the repercussions on the community, the constant rotating principals, the removal of teachers connected with the community, the privatization of public schools and property, the fact that schools budgets are getting slashed while the administrative central office expands and gives money to private contractors in huge quantities that accomplish nothing, the constant lack of knowledge about our future in the schools, the increasing class sizes and removal of resources from our neediest schools, etc. The cheating scandal is next to nothing; that is a product of the testing obsession as a whole, something that Michelle Rhee certainly fed, but it is far from the worst part of her tenure. Those test scores mean nothing about how prepared our children are for their futures-whether or not there was cheating."
Supporting her argument that the real issue is preparing kids for their futures is a new report about the arts in our schools, hard data confirming what most reporters have known for a long time: for at least 10 years, the arts have been disappearing from schools populated largely by low-income kids. The report is from the U. S. Department of Education. It tells us that fewer public elementary schools today offer visual arts, dance and drama classes, a decline many attribute to budget cuts and an increased focus on math and reading. Most high schools with large numbers of low income students do not offer music. Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, told reporters that cuts are likely to continue into the next two years because education funding has been slow to pick back up. "We haven't hit bottom yet," he said.
In other words, we're cheating kids on their tests and stealing essential courses like art and music from them! Add to that, we are lying -- because when kids get phony scores telling them they are proficient when they need help, that's an out-and-out lie.
At what point does this trifecta -- lying, cheating and stealing -- become a felony? Seriously!
In the face of this disheartening news, one has to ask, "who benefits?" I'm stumped. Certainly not children, parents and teachers. Could it be the testing companies? Perhaps it's the bevy of expert 'consultants' who advise school systems on how to raise test scores, how to calculate the 'value added' that individual teachers provide, and how to make education more 'businesslike' and efficient?
A far more important question than 'who benefits?' is: What are we going to do about it?
The young teacher started right off making a rookie mistake in the opening minutes of his first class, on his very first day. "How many of you know what a liter is?" he asked his high school math class. "Give me a thumbs up if you know, thumbs down if you don't." None of the kids responded, so he entreated, "Come on, I just need to know where you are. Thumbs up if you know, thumbs down if you don't."
An experienced teacher would not have asked students to volunteer their ignorance. An experienced teacher might have held up an empty milk carton and asked someone to identify it. Once someone had said, "that's a quart of milk," the veteran might have pulled out a one-gallon container to be identified. Only then would she have shown them a liter container, explaining that most countries in the world use a different measuring system, et cetera.
But the rookie didn't know any better. He'd graduated from Yale that spring, had a few weeks of training that summer, thanks to Teach for America, and then was given his own classroom.
Another first year teacher made a rookie mistake in the spring. "How many of you dislike poetry," he asked his high school seniors? "How many of you really hate poetry?" When most of the hands went up, he announced, "That's going to change, because I am going to turn you into poetry lovers." With that simple -- and stupid -- declaration, the rookie had made it all about himself, not about the poems. He had challenged his class on personal terms, making it an ego trip for himself, not an educational journey for his students.
Matters never really improved for the first rookie that year, and he was not invited back for a second year. I was the second rookie. I taught for two years and then moved on, but it wasn't until years later that I recognized how counterproductive my approach to that poetry unit was.
So what's the point? Rookies make rookie mistakes? Or is it that teachers need serious training (I had none whatsoever, not even the equivalent of a TFA summer) before taking over classrooms?
This brings me to the third teacher in this short essay, a young woman I observed doing a bang up job of teaching first graders to read. She seemed to have all the moves down, phonemic awareness, chunking, words that must be memorized (like 'the') because they don't follow the rules, and so forth. Her first graders were reading confidently and competently. We made a piece about it, for the NewsHour.
I knew that she had completed a five-year program at a reputable state university, giving her both a bachelor's and a master's in elementary education and a certificate to teach. In short, she had it all.
Or did she? "That's where you learned how to teach reading," I stated as a half-question. "No," she responded emphatically! "They never said a word about phonics in any of my classes. I had to learn all of that here, on the job."
I was dumbfounded and disbelieving, but a search of that education school's course syllabus and a phone call to a now-retired professor there confirmed what she had said. Phonics was barely acknowledged. Apparently the reading wars continue, at least on that campus, with 'whole language' still planted firmly in the saddle.
Given a choice between bad training and little or none, what is one to do? And if that's the choice right now, what can we do to change the odds? Let me suggest it's time for a 180-degree turn. We need to make it more difficult to become a teacher, which we could do by raising standards for admission into training programs and then providing one-year apprenticeships before teachers are given their own classrooms.
The first change -- tougher admission standards -- applies to virtually every school and college of education: Raise the bar for getting into the profession. Improve programs by weeding out professors who are still waging old battles. Do much more of the training in real schools and real classrooms. (Some schools and colleges of education are already going down this road, including Arizona State, Michigan, Berkeley, and Teachers College. All led by women, by the way. Add to that list Stanford, which was, until recently, also led by a woman.)
The second change -- a one-year apprenticeship -- applies to TFA, which already has remarkably high admission standards to its two-year program. But it's the rare individual who can take over a class after a few weeks of summer training and be genuinely effective. Even successful TFA teachers often admit that much of their first year was a wash, at best. What if TFA were a three-year program, with the first year being an apprenticeship? Would that produce better teaching and also help TFA weed out the ambitious ones seeking largely to punch up their resumés?
As I say, I think the country needs to make a U-turn. Because most schools of education have low admission standards, it's far too easy to become a teacher. And because many of our policies and practices are hyper-critical, and even punitive, toward teachers, it's now very difficult to be a teacher.
It will take a concerted effort on the part of governors and university presidents to make it harder to become a teacher. Governors have to be convinced of the economic and political benefits of having their constituents' children taught by skilled professionals. I fear that the leadership at many universities is comfortable with the 'cash cow' aspect of their education programs, which take in more than they spend. What sort of pressure would be required to get them to change?
But making those changes seems like a walk in the park compared to what it would take to do to reverse our current 'blame the teacher' approach. Making it easier for today's teachers to teach won't happen unless and until we come to our senses. Does anyone see that happening soon?
