There are some things that really interest me when it comes to engagement, motivation, and finding ways to get students to realize that education is important. One of these is the idea of making student work more “personal”. I bring this up only because it seems to be that emphasizing a personal feel of work does leave open an opportunity for the standards of society to diminish as they are not used to emphasizing high vocabulary and scholarly tones in their writing. Is this bad? I really haven’t thought long enough about it yet. Just indulge me for a second.
I believe that students need to feel connected to their work and develop their own point of view on topics, but if we are accepting this concept then there is a question that we must be asking ourselves.
When do we reach a point in school where students no longer need to model those that are “experts” in their respective fields in hopes of encouraging more “ownership” of personal work?
Again, I believe in students putting thought and feeling into their own work, but don’t they need to be grounded in understanding what is deemed an acceptable level of academic work prior to putting their own spin on it? Should they be modeling their writing after some of the “greats” of the past to ensure that we maintain scholarly language, or is it more important for them to put their own twist on language and, potentially, downgrade the quality of work that society produces as time continues?
Kids grow up attempting to replicate the actions of Michael Jordan, Alex Rodriguez, and Lebron James because those are the elites of their trade. Ask any 40 NBA basketball players how they developed their game, and I am convinced that most of them will say “by watching Michael Jordan”.
So…what do we think?
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There’s definitely something to this.
Research on expertise talks about how Mozart’s early work is basically variations on music by other composers. It is only after he emulated them and practiced for nearly a decade that you see the ‘creative genius’.
Similarly, (I don’t know if it still works this way), aspiring artists used to learn technique by copying ‘the great masters’.
I agree that looking at experts in the fields are important. Scholarly writing is not. It is a elite way of speaking that’s leaving the majority of the population out of learning and experiencing their greatness. Scholarly writing takes years to understand and is often misunderstood. What are we missing in terms of development of language as a society if we think at a certain time everyone must start to sound the same. We should help students learn how to articulate their thoughts and use the best language to decide their thoughts and ideas. We do not need esoteric scholars that only speak to themselves.
David,
I understand your point. Here is another part of the question though: at what point does the quality of language and articulation of thoughts diminish if we do not maintain a certain level of “complex” words in everyday society and instruct at critical times of child development? I am not saying that this is appropriate. What I am saying is what obligation do we have to ensure that students understand a certain level of language development in all schools and educational settings. The kicker to me is, quite frankly, that working with students vocabulary and language comprehension is quite possibly the cheapest instructional strategy available (basically free) and yet vocabulary has continued to diminish through time and across multiple platforms, experiences, etc.
Anyway, back to my question to you: at what point does the quality of language and articulation of thoughts diminish if we do not maintain a certain level of “complex” words in everyday society and instruct at critical times of child development?
Thanks again!
A question back at you: What are the points of complex words or any words for that matter? My point is that language is about communication, about expression, about culture, and often status. Do we just want to focus on continuing the system of elitist esoteric control of language?
Some of the greatest thinkers and writers do not write with a scholarly tongue. I think the best way to move language forward while continuing to embrace the wonders and beauty of language is learning about new things that are meaningful. When you learn about new parts of the world or different vocations you do not merely learn the facts or the knowledge, but also list and list of new vocabulary words. I am guessing you did not just sit do and open a dictionary and look up all the education vocabulary that you now use, you learned them with a context that has meaning. Just like in math or in science it is pointless to rote learn words if you have no understanding of their use or purpose.
Do I think we should be mindful of the words that we present to our children, yes I do. However, teaching complex words just to prepare children to one day be scholars is pointless and not without its own set of moral, ethical and pragmatic questions? How do we know what the complex words of the future are going to be? How do we chose what words should be spoken? Is this democratic?
I agree that language has power, however I think there are more holistic ways to improve the way we speak and write than just teaching vocabulary. As always, thank you for the discussion!
David
This could end up being a very long answer with two parts:
First, I believe that we learn language for the same reason we learn Trigonometry, Calculus, Chemistry, and many other subjects in school. It isn’t so much the need to know the information as it is for us to experience a wide variety of genres and expand our thinking. It just so happens that language transfers from course to course so, in my view, it should be at a level that is representative of this type of immersion.
Now, I absolutely agree that vocabulary should not be learned as an island with no regard for context, but the reality is that it isn’t even being covered within context. I don’t think that advanced vocabulary and wording should be promoted as a way to maintain an elitist society (as most people do), but I do think that maintaining some form of complexity in language and communication is important in expanding minds and teaching students how to think. This mentality is in stark contrast to the traditional beliefs of language and vocabulary that elitists promote as you have pointed out. (To those people you and I can team up and throw rocks at them. They are simply morons.)
Second, I am concerned about a diminishing ability of students to think critically about the words and language they use to present themselves and about their inability to decipher mainstream language as the world evolves. How do I see this happening? Engage in conversations with enough high school students and you will notice a pattern of immature vocabulary that consists of an overuse of “like” as well as other “fillers” and the occasional street jargon. I notice this across the board from Advanced Placement students to first week freshman.
As the population expands and record numbers enter the workforce, employers are going to be looking for ways to differentiate between applicants. Do they need to run around and cite information in APA form? Of course not as that would be asinine. But the reality is that employers want educated people that can represent the company in a positive light, which includes their appearance. Language is a part of this.
My main point isn’t to ensure elitist scholarly work and elitist language. We all know that those people are NEVER heard by mainstream society and their ideas EVER utilized simply because they use language and jargon to maintain their cult. I want kids to develop advanced vocabulary and language to ensure an adequate ability to think and have a larger menu of options to pursue upon graduation. Regardless of how we believe culture to progress, there is some validity to the correlation of language proficiency and options following graduation.
Told you it was a long answer.
Thank you as well!
I agree with you. My position is not theoretical, it is phenomenological. I learned through modelling and continue to do so. I have a talented son who loves to play the guitar. For some reason he concluded he did not need to study the music of others or learn their techniques. His music fails because of that. Social learning theory makes sense and we should not abandon it.
I’ll jump in with new questions: what happens when we, as a culture, lose our appreciation of beauty? Our willingness to pursue it? What happens when we stop looking to masters of all sorts – artists, care-givers, teachers – for the sparks that fire our own creative thinking and the finding of elegant solutions for messy problems? What happens when we say beauty is either/or, or pass/fail, or procedural/heuristic [sorry?]?
The danger isn’t in losing a vocabulary, it’s in losing the ability appreciate the complex beauty of what’s been created and the drive to understand and surpass it.
The danger is in running schools that find numbers beautiful and failures ugly.
Students don’t have an intrinsic drive to learn particular words until they matter to them. If schools don’t provide students with opportunities to discover the beauty and joy of maths and letters and social sciences and arts and trades, who will care what anyone says anyway?
I believe that students need to feel connected to their work and develop their own point of view on topics.
This is a gross simplification, which unfortunately circumcents what we know how learning. The point ofcwhich is that we all build personal mental models and when knew information comes along we. Change of point of view. We naturally make these connections, teachers do not do this for students, but they can help construct deeper and broader links
Perhaps we need to reiterate people reach mastery in different ways. Most of my grade four and fives approach creative writing by ‘remixing’ familiar stories from their lives: books, movies, and always TV shows. The characters tend to be their friends. A few draw on familiar literary narrative archetypes to tell unique stories with imaginary characters.
I think most young writers are hesitant to work without a scaffold such as a familiar tale. Their perception of ownership lies in their ability to give the template their own flavour and also lies in the success they feel in matching the model. We were studying the skeletal system this month. I planned to dump some materials on my students and ask them to design their own models. I backed away from this and we built a model of the spine together. The results pleased them quite a bit. If one of them had formulated their own model design, or if some of the writers had presented alternative plans to my suggested writing, I would have encouraged them to try.
I wonder what we are prepared to accept when we speak of ownership. When we set a student learning outcome for our students, write it on the white board, clarify goals, and set them to it; what is our response when a student suggests they don’t want to do the math at all. Do we explore alternative learning outcomes or do we exert authority, influence or power to redirect the young person back to our selected outcome? Nobody seems to want to engage me in a discussion of what student “ownership” means to them. If it simply means engagement with the goal of mastering curriculum outcomes, then I think the word ownership is misleading.
Interesting thoughts here (and especially thought provoking to me since I am one that feels SO strongly about student ownership of work from my own personal teaching experiences).
I totally understand (and agree) that we must model “the greats” for our students…and through modeling, students’ “language” will develop and continue to grow. I want my students to know/understand the complexities (if you will) of past and modern society. However, in order for them to do this, they HAVE to take ownership of the concept/piece of literature/term/etc. at hand.
The beauty of language, and watching students develop, is the fact that once they master “the greats” that I’ve modeled, then they can truly apply what they have learned through their choice of style/venue. It’s not about diminishing the language…it’s about students’ mastering that language and then applying it to the real world around them.
And, to answer your last question, student “ownership” to me means not only engagement and mastery, but the ability to use language in a way that connects kids to the real world around them in which they are actively interacting and consuming, producing [and the list continues] in every day (if that makes sense
).
However, you have a point…when we, as educators, use the word ownership we need to ensure it means more than engagement because it truly does! Thanks for sharing!