Work in an urban school district, and you quickly realize the reality of these words:

Economically disadvantaged students, who often use the computer for remediation and basic skills, learn to do what the computer tells them, while more affluent students, who use it to learn programming and tool applications, learn to tell the computer what to do. Those who cannot claim computers as their own tool for exploring the world never grasp the power of technology…They are controlled by technology as adults–just as drill-and-practice routines controlled them as students.
Source: Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in Education

I learned this lesson working in a smaller urban school district as a bilingual/ESL teacher. The lesson there, put kids in front of computers so that they can be drilled in grammar. After all, drill-n-practice in grammar would surely translate into gains for writing and speaking proficiency. NOT!

“In my eyes,” shares Robert Peterson, “many children in urban America are oppressed by a few key institutions: school, family, and community.” How do we accomplish this in schools while at the same time congratulating ourselves that we’re doing well? Well, let’s take a look.

It’s important to review the long-standing research.

Independent studies of integrated learning system technologies have subsequently confirmed that learning discrete skills in isolation does little to support students in transferring knowledge to other domains of experience. This lack of transferability of skills from integrated learning system performance to other tasks is well-documented in the research literature (NCREL, 2002).

Machines are not as effective as live teachers; ILS teaching is too mechanical, too impersonal; Pupils will find ILS instruction boring and repetitive, and thus can lose their motivation to learn; ILS can teach routine skills but they cannot teacher higher order thinking skills or conceptual thinking (White, 1993).

Low socio-economic status (SES) schools with predominately minority populations used their computers to administer drill and practice computer-based instruction. Low SES schools with predominately white populations preferred to use computers with their higher-achieving students to teach programming and computer skills (Balajthy, 1989).

As you can see from the bolded section above, as well as the quote from Toward Digital Equity, the observation that technology is often used for drill-n-kill with low socio-economic groups of students (allow me to put this baldly–Americans of African, Hispanic descent).

Consider that research study after study finds technology drill-n-kill is ineffective:

Randomized controlled trial of 512 3rd through 6th grade students reading substantially below grade level in 4 elementary schools in an economically disadvantaged, urban school district. Students were randomly assigned within each school and grade into either a group that used Fast ForWord as an add-on to their regular reading instruction, or a control group that did not.

The school district appears to have implemented Fast ForWord effectively, with teacher training and other support provided by Fast ForWord’s developer. However, just under half of the students in the intervention group fully completed the program. No significant effect on students’ reading achievement, as measured by their scores on the state’s standardized reading assessment as well as other researcher-administered standardized tests.

Finally, consider this recent blog post at Educational Insanity.

Overall, African-American students are much more likely to use computers to practice or drill on math facts than White students. Given the significant achievement gap that exists, these differences partly explain why, overall, the there is a negative correlation between using computers to practice or drill on math facts and math achievement.

The names of the drill-n-practice, tutorial tools don’t even matter anymore. They’ve been passed like hot potatoes from one large company to another. What DOES matter is how educators in schools continue to use technology to DOMESTICATE children rather than EMPOWER them. Every time we sit a child down in front of a computer and expect it to drill them on a skill, we are teaching them to be obedient (and that it is good to be so), not ask questions but to answer them.

Giving children more and more drills in phonics and basic skills never has and never will lead to powerful forms of literacy. In fact, directive, domesticating teaching styles…which invariably accompany the skills and drills “solution,” replicate the authoritarian, conformist, powerless societies of intimates that make implicit, context-dependent language and communication inevitable and explicit, context-independent language unnecessary.

Yes, that’s right. When you purchase a drill-n-practice program, you are replicating authoritarian, conformist, and developing an attitude of powerlessness among your students. Wow, why would you waste tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on an integrated learning system or even $20 on drill-n-kill for your child at home?

Patrick Finn writes in his book, Literacy with an Attitude, the following:

First, there is empowering education, which leads to powerful literacy, the kind of literacy that leads to positions of power and authority. Second, there is domesticating education, which leads to functional literacy, literacy that makes a person productive and dependable but not troublesome. Over time, political, social and economic forces have brought us to a place where the working class (and to a surprising degree, the middle class) gets domesticating education and functional literacy, and the rich get empower education and powerful literacy. We don’t worry about a literate working class because the kind of literacy they get doesn’t make them dangerous.

This is exactly the kind of education I saw time and again as I travelled from district to district as a classroom teacher, campus instructional technology coordinator and district instructional technology specialist, and regional education specialist. As I’ve read Finn’s book, I am amazed at how well it explains my experiences as a bilingual educator who often found himself in portable buildings with his class. Consider this statement:

Powerful literacy involves creativity and reason–the ability to evaluate, analyze and synthesize what is read…it is also the ability to write one’s ideas so that another person can understand them.

For me, this is creativity, which students seldom have the opportunity to develop in schools because dangerous literacy students in schools today can get teachers’ fired. However, as Gary Stager pointed out in one comment, it is teachers who should be fired for NOT encouraging this type of literacy. Yet, often, they willingly send their students to drill-n-practice labs.

Here are some other highlights from Finn’s work that point to our domesticating education in schools today:

• Domesticate the poor rather than rile them up.
• Stories are expressions of conformity and solidarity.
• Hyperbole is a lie.
• Remixing ideas is a lie.
• Nothing happens when you teach people to be performative or functionally literate
• Skills and drills solutions…replicates authoritarian, conformist, powerless, implicit, context-dependent language and communication

Just get along, just support the economic model, but don’t rock the boat. That’s the message our schools send when we teach writing and focus on mechanics, and in math when we teach facts and formulas without context and engaging problem-solving opportunities. This quote from Richard Florida (Rise of the Creative Class) points to the way ahead:

The key to those who are in lower class rising is not more social welfare, but supporting the emergence of their creativity.

Steve Hargadon recently shared in this keynote that publishing will change everything, and that a tidal wave of change is coming at us. Yes, as more of our children become creative. Steve shares that The Internet is becoming a platform of unparalleled creativity….Customization, Collaboration and Creation are the New Model.

“Human talent is deep, diverse, and extraordinarily rich….Education should expose and develop that …. We assume that talent is identified and nurtured by education…However, countless people go through the whole of their education without discovering/ connecting with their true elemental talents and ability. That is because education was designed to do something else…”
Source: Sir Ken Robinson

I have to put the drill-n-practice stuff in the background. WE have to focus on supporting the emergence of our children’s creativity. DOING this is challenging. Some ideas that Finn has, and which I encourage with different technology tools:

1. Expression and publication are not put off until the students have mastered the canons of correctness.
   Tech Connection: Aren’t blogs and wikis excellent ways to encourage children to express and publish their work BEFORE it’s perfect?
2. Students learn to be critical of inequities, become critical agents
   Tech Connection: Use citizen-journalism approaches–and the digital tools–to fact-check reality portrayed by “authoritarian” sources like the media, the government, institutions, etc. Use technology as a tool to understand the world and when injustices are uncovered, act not simply complain.
3. Provide conditions where students can speak, write, assert their own histories, voices, and learning experiences.
   Tech Connection: Pretty much, the whole range of Read/Write Web tools, including digital storytelling, voicethread productions and more.
4. Students as agents of civic courage – acquire knowledge and courage that will make despair unconvincing and hope practical.
   Tech Connection: What about YouthVoices?

Finn has some suggestions/observations as to how to best get to an empowering education, helping students achieve transformational learning. He bases the approaches on Paulo Friere’s work, as well as Robert Peterson’s work, quoted at the beginning of this blog post.

Peterson (Rethinking Our Classrooms) has some advice, as cited by Finn. Can you imagine GlobalVoicesOnline.org kind of writing coming out of your children? And, would you get fired in your school district for actually writing about oppression in this way? Peterson has some specific advice for you as you encourage your children to become critical agents who have the civic courage to speak, write and assert their own experiences:

• Bring the wold into your classroom, so that children start reflecting on their own lives.
• Deal with power relations in the classroom. That is, construct a classroom in which students have the maximum amount of power that is legally permitted and that they can socially handle. To accomplish this:
  1-Create a positive atmosphere through activities that stress self-affirmation, mutual respect, communication, group decision-making, and cooperation.
  2-Engage in small-group problem solving sessions with students.
  3-Engage in dialogue with your students that asks these questions: a) What do you see?; b) What’s happening to your feelings?; c) Relate it to your life; d) Why do we face these problems?; e) What can we do about it?
  4-Use controversial posters and quotations to encourage writing and discussion, as well as model social responsibility.

I am not the only one, I’m sure, that sees how blogging, podcasting for social justice could have an immense impact on our students and people out there. Finn writes something that is particularly fascinating, a sentence my eyes slipped over without reading and then I was pulled up short:

We engage in dozens of political acts and make dozens of political statements in our classrooms every day that support the status quo. We don’t think of them as political because they are not controversial.

Oppressing our offspring…could just as easily be empowering our educators to deal with these topics, to move beyond drill-n-kill to create-n-collaborate.

Ah well. Thanks for coming along on this blog entry. I’d been reading Finn and the blog entry at Educational Insanity brought it to a head for me.

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