Secondary Creep (post 2)

Kitzhaber’s three problems in FYC (confusion about aim of course, lack of confidence in faculty, less rigorous texts) made me nod vigorously. I would add that the problems we see in FYC are magnified in the secondary setting (though one might argue standardized tests have provided a clear—but wrongheaded, destructive, and pleasure-destroying—aim). I recognize the secondary and postsecondary environment to be different, but I think it can be instructive to consider some of the issues in high school English instruction not only because the same problems occur in college, but because there is a strong governmental movement in favor of applying the secondary model to the college setting (secondary creep, a friend of mine calls it).

First, the lack of aim in high school Engish is obvious. High schools claim to be preparing students for college, but they’re really preparing them for exit exams. In Texas this currently means teaching students little more than narration and description (what I think are the “lesser” of D’Angelo’s four pseudo-modes). This means student pass the exit exam but can't write at the college level. In college, however, there is also considerable debate over whether FYC should be preparing students to be English majors (generally lit focus), preparing them to write in other college courses of various majors, or preparing them for the “real world,” and the focus changes accordingly.

Likewise, secondary teachers get extremely little respect (both socially and financially) despite doing what is actually much more work than college instructors. And this is actually getting worse; witness the manufactured rage against teachers (aka-public sector employees) in Wisconsin. Let me add that there really are a lot of terrible teachers out there (there are great ones, of course, but here in the RGV, where pay and education are especially weak, there are five bad for every good one). However, iunions aren't to blame; it’s the lack of respect and low pay (and frankly, I’m suspicious of education degrees as well, with some good statistical backing, I think), which taken together means something like half our teachers scored, as students, in the bottom 25% of the SAT or ACT. There’s no competition to be a teacher, either in education or in the job market; almost anyone who wants to be a teacher can be.

In secondary, I believe standardized testing is seen as the solution to the teacher quality issue. The idea seems to be that it’s okay to hire mediocre people because instruction will be so rigidly defined and the results evaluated outside the classroom that any warm body could manage. This is insane, of course, and as a college instructor I will fight fiercely any attempt to establish a similar system, but I think it’s already happening. First, we've decided to staff FYC with grad students. This leads to the push for standardization. For example, at my college we have to define how our instruction relates to a set of uniform goals (with more nested and specific sets of goals being added each year). In effect, the standards for a standardized test are already in place. D’Angelo’s pseudo-modes are also favorites of the standardizing set, as is the movement away from invention and toward more prescriptive instruction mentioned by Crowley, and the general push to teach grammar. A college-level national standardized test—already proposed by George W. Bush’s special commission on higher ed—creeps closer all the time.

I want to say more about Shaughnessy because I think the CUNY situation is now the average situation for most colleges (certainly for mine), but in the interest of space let me just suggest that one possible solution to many of these issues also addresses Kitzhaber’s third criticism: make the whole course much more rigorous. I suspect watered down courses aren’t engaging or sufficiently instructive for students, and simultaneously create the impression that FYC instructors aren’t really experts in the first place (and perhaps also allow those who really aren’t expert to teach what they should not be teaching). Plus, watered-down courses create the perceived need for a standardized test. This will be expensive and will lead to a higher failure rate, and so it'll likely never happen, but I think it's what should happen.

Let’s not replicate in college the system of top-down quantifiable standardization and testing that’s failing so miserably in high schools.