Teachers have to start asking themselves hard questions about what school is FOR. If they agree that the purpose of school is to transmit information, then they can go right on lecturing. But if they think that instead of HAVING information students ought to be able to find things out independently, to make sense of data on their own, then they need to realize that there is no sense of feeling guilty about not having taught Chapter 20. Stuffing kids with facts is one thing, helping them develop their own skills so that they can function independently, as lifelong learners, is quite another.
At this point in any discussion with teachers, I normally encounter the “Yeah, but” reaction, another indication of positivism at work.
- Yeah, you’re right, but my principle won’t let me do that.
- Yeah, you’re right, but the curriculum guide says I HAVE TO cover everything up to Chapter 22.
- Yeah, you’re right, but my kids have to take standardized tests, and they have to be ready.


Here is precisely the same form of fatalism my undergraduates exhibit when they say that a teacher can’t refuse merit pay, or can’t stand up for a student treated unfairly, because that’s the way things ARE and it’s impossible to change them. but there’s an enormous difference between being UNABLE to do something and being UNWILLING to do it because it’s difficult.

My students are wrong about not having a choice. They COULD make choices involving self-sacrifice. And teachers are wrong. Change IS possible. Perhaps the principal can be persuaded to allow change. Perhaps she or he can be persuaded by parents whom the teacher enlisted to support the new idea. Or perhaps by a deluge of research articles supporting the proposal. Or by being taken to visit a school where the strategy is working. And if the curriculum guide says that Chapter 22 must be covered, does it say HOW? Why can’t students read it and be responsible for it on their own? Why can’t teachers type, copy, and distribute information they feel their students MUST have instead of lecturing? Why can’t the main points of Chapter 20 be covered in a thematic approach, combined logically with main points of Chapters 4, 12, and 18? Or be the base of independent research projects? And why the curriculum guide itself be changed?

Working with inservice teachers has taught me that they are limited by lack of imagination more than anything else. This is not meant as a critical statement, but as a description of the logical result of a very faulty educational process. Students in schools, including colleges of education, learn what they are taught. In recent history teacher educators have done a bang-up job of teaching teachers to be passive, conforming, authoritative, inflexible, unimaginative, apolitical, and silent. Any imagination that reared its head during their education courses was likely to be directed toward designing attractive bulletin boards, rather than toward designing exciting learning opportunities for children or influencing policy in schools.