I've just recently started reading Joanne Jacobs's blog, and she's got some great stuff. Even better, though, are her TechCentralStation columns. Two that have caught my eye: "Vanishing Valedictorians" and "Dumb, But Pretty."



On the first, Jacobs writes:

Adults are the ones trying to sell the line that everyone is special, which means that nobody is especially special. I think kids instinctively respect excellence. Grades aren't everything. But they're the way schools measure academic achievement, which is supposed to be schools' primary goal.



At the end of the year, students are honored for athletic and artistic excellence, for school spirit and community service. Great. I'm all for it. But let's also honor academic achievers. Viva the valedictorians.

This is an excellent point. Why, in the midst of concerns about too much money being spent on athletics, do we simultaneously reject giving academic excellence the same recognition we give to sports? What is wrong with rewarding academic excellence? We argue that it is important to recognize the arts and athletics because some kids are different, because talents can lie outside of the classroom. Fine. But for some students, academics is their talent. Why punish them for having "traditional" talents? (By way of full disclosure, I was valedictorian of my high school class.)



On the second, Jacobs writes:

I once saw a physics teacher proudly show colleagues a music video his students had made of their hands-on project, a model car. It was multi-media technology! It was hands on! It was . . . Well, it was wrong on the physics. A teacher in the audience -- there to learn how to use technology in their instruction -- pointed out the error. The trainer agreed the students had blown the physics. But they'd done it in multi-media.



I blame the "multiple intelligences" guy, Howard Gardner. He argues that schools focus on linguistic and logical intelligence, ignoring children whose strengths lie in other spheres, such as social, spatial or musical smarts.



It was an idea ripe for abuse. Coupled with the self-esteem crusade, multiple intelligences generated infinite excuses. If "Krisstofyr" can't write a grammatically correct sentence, it's OK because he's intelligent in other ways. The kinesthetic intelligence that lets him shoot paper wads into the wastebasket from the back row may not serve him well as a sub-literate adult. But he can feel good about himself for now.

I've made this point before in other words--there is value to basic skills oriented education. I don't totally agree with Joanne in that I think that manipulating the technology is also a useful skill. However, I do think that it should be a secondary concern. I've made the analogy before and I'll make it again. There is something to be said for learning to drive a car first and then to learn stick shift afterwards. It's a useful skill, but a bonus.



Here is a closely related phenomenon that I experienced as a student and tried to dissuade as a teacher: If the content of a paper was terrible, the student spruced up the presentation (pretty pictures, glossy covers) to obtain a higher grade.

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