On Learning and Teaching

Beating Time - by Barbara Kingsolver

Commemorating the removal of poetry as a requirement in Arizona's schools, August 1997

The Governor interdicted: poetry is evicted
from our curricula,
for metaphor and rhyme take time
from science. Our children's self-reliance rests
upon the things we count on. The laws
of engineering. Poeteering squanders time, and time
is money. He said: let the chips fall where they may.

The Governor's voice fell down through quicksilver
microchip song hummed along and the law
was delivered to its hearing. The students
of engineering bent to their numbers in silent
classrooms, where the fans overhead
whispered "I am I am" in iambic pentameter.
Unruly and fractious numbers were discarded at the bell.
In the crumpled, cast-off equations,
small black figures shaped like tadpoles
formed a nation, unobserved, in the wastepaper basket.

Outside, a storm is about to crack the sky.
Lightning will score dry riverbeds, peeling back the mud
like a plow, bellowing, taking out bridges,
completely unexpectedly.

The children too young to have heard
of poetry's demise turn their eyes
to the windows, to see what they can count on.
They will rise and dance to the iamb of the fans,
whispering illicit rhymes, watching the sky for a sign
while the rain beats time.

****

Not far behind, California is working hard to beat the magic and the mystery out of learning, victim of the pseudo-science of standardized testing. Five of the six items on the agenda for our next department chair meeting are related to standards and standardized testing. We are told that during observations, we should be seen identifying the standards we are addressing in the lesson and that students should be able to parrot back the name and number of the standard. What happened to relating lessons to real life; to students taking the lesson and letting their imaginations run with it? I've heard it said that a high level administrator observes that teaching novels is not an efficient use of class time as it does not directly improve test scores. What happened to the joy, the mystery, the magic of literature?

Granted, the lock-step is not as evident yet in the teaching of foreign language. There is as yet, no state or national Spanish test required for our students. And I would welcome such a test if it were proficiency based. I am grateful that my students take I.B. and A.P. exams because it gives us a bar to shoot for. I also find value in standards, as long as they lead to transparency in teaching. Realistic standards keep us focused on the same goal and help us communicate to students what that goal is. However, restricting teaching to preparation for multiple choice tests is not a worthwhile outcome.

INCIDENTE DOMESTICO - Miguel de Unamuno

Traza la niña toscos garrapatos,
de escritura remedo, me los presenta y dice
con un mohín de inteligente gesto:

"¿Qué dice aquí, papá?"

Miro unas líneas que parecen versos.
"¿Aquí ?" "Si, aquí; lo he escrito yo; ¿qué dice?
porque yo no sé leerlo..."
Aquí no dice nada!", le contesté al momento.

"¿Nada ?", y se queda un rato pensativa
o así me lo parece, por lo menos,
pues ¿está en los demás o está en nosotros
eso a que damos en llamar talento?

Luego, reflexionando, me decía:
¿Hice bien revelándole el secreto?
-no el suyo ni el de aquellas toscas líneas,
mío, por supuesto-.

¿Sé yo si alguna musa misteriosa,
un subterráneo genio,
un espíritu errante que a la espera
para encarnar está de humano cuerpo,
no le dictó esas líneas
de enigmáticos versos?

¿Sé yo si son la gráfica envoltura
de un idioma de siglos venideros?
¿Sé yo si dicen algo?
¿He vivido yo acaso de ellas dentro?

No dicen mas los arboles, las nubes
los pájaros, los ríos, los luceros ...
¡No dicen más y nos lo dicen todo!
¿Quién sabe de secretos?
***
The child scribbles roughly across the page
and presents it too me with an intelligent glance:
What does it say here, papa?

I look at the verse-like lines.
"Here?" "Yes, here; I wrote it myself.
What does it say because I don't know how to read it."
"It says nothing here!" I answer after a moment.

"Nothing?" She is silent a moment, pensive,
-or so it seems to me at least,
but is it through us or through others
that we call that which is talent?

Later, reflecting, I say to myself:
Did I do right by revealing the secret to her?
-Not hers, nor that of those rough scribbles,
mine, of course-.

Do I know if some mysterious muse,
some subterranean genius,
a wandering spirit awaiting human form
dictated those lines of enigmatic verse?

Do I know whether they are the graphic form
of some language of future centuries?
Do I know if they say anything?
Have I perhaps lived within them?

Don't the trees say more, the clouds,
the birds, the rivers, the stars...
They say no more and they tell us everything!
Who knows about secrets?

*****

Skill practice and development are important strategies and goals. However, what is teaching and learning if it is not also about spontaneity, joy, magic and mystery!