The Disposition to Learn

Being willing to be told one is wrong is a necessary disposition for learning.

Docility is crucial for a learner.  In fact, it is a necessary condition for learning, which means that without it, learning cannot occur.  Unfortunately, docility, or the quality of being docile, has taken on the sense of being quiet and meek, shy and retiring, unable or unwilling to raise one's voice.  Yet, as with so many ideas and words in English, if we look at the Latin root we come to a better understanding.  The word "docility" comes from that Latin verb docere, meaning "to teach."  Docility is, therefore, quite simply the quality of being able to be taught, which is not an inherent quality or one shared by all people at all times.  In other words, not everyone is docile.  Not everyone can be taught.

Consider for a moment the obvious.  You could not be taught how to change the oil in your car if you were asleep.  Your dormant state would leave you incapable of learning.  The same would be true if you were listening to music loud enough to render people unconscious.  Unable to hear what the instructor was telling you, you could not learn.  You would likely learn little to nothing about changing your car's oil if you were being instructed while observing the bone protruding from your broken leg.  The intense pain and shock would make you less than docile.

These, of course, are circumstantial limitations to docility, and many people recognize similar limitations at work in the lives of school-aged children.  Poverty, violence, and abuse are but three.

Yet there are other behaviors, attitudes, and mindsets that can limit or entirely block or support a student's docility.  Some of these are derivative of circumstances and others are within the direct control of students themselves, but taken together they form the disposition for learning that every student brings into the classroom, and it is this disposition that determines whether a student at any given moment in any given subject is docile enough to learn.

Perhaps the most significant attitude leading to a docile disposition is the willingness to be told that one is wrong.  Consider two proverbs and the lyrics to a pop song.

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.  (Proverbs 12:1,  ESV)

Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence.  (Proverbs 15:32, ESV)

One night, me with my big mouth,
Couple guys had to put me in my place.
When I see those guys these days,
We just laugh and say,
"Do you remember when?"  ("Cherry Bomb," John Mellencamp)

It is no insult to be told that you are wrong about something.  Admittedly, there are better and worse ways of telling someone this, but regardless of how the information is communicated, a person must be willing to accept it when it is true or he cannot learn.  It is a necessary, a without-which-not characteristic of being docile.

One the best ways parents and those entrusted with the care and nurture and education of young children can prepare them for a lifetime of learning is to help them understand what it means when they are told that they are wrong about something.  It means that they are wrong, nothing more and nothing less.  It does not mean that they are bad.  It is not a statement about their character, unless, of course, that about which they are wrong is a moral action.  It does not mean that the one stating the fact thinks ill of them or will no longer love them.  This last statement is vital to understanding this key component of docility.  My telling a student that he or she has formed a verb incorrectly in no way indicates my lack of love for that student, but rather is proof of my care and concern.  I would not want my students to make fools of themselves by writing something incorrectly.  I love them too much.

To be sure, this is a mature concept to grasp, but then education is largely an enterprise for the mature of any given age.  Those called to the shared journey of discovery that is education must help those on the way know how to accept when they have been told that they are headed down a wrong path.

A Teacher's Jewels

When I attended the commencement for our high school's senior class, I took pictures.  I was hardly alone in this as parents and grandparents and friends of the graduates took enough photos with their phones and tablets to have exhausted Kodak's store of celluloid back in the day.  As a teacher, whose legal responsibility is to act in loco parentis, I shared their pride and beamed widely as my Latin students joined over eight hundred of their classmates to receive their diploma.

Once they have graduated, these students may join a Facebook group of my former students, which spans more than a quarter century.  There we share photos and memories.

Why do I take pictures of my graduates?  Why do I want to keep in contact with them?  Why do I take as much pleasure in their announcements of collegiate and work achievements, marriages, and births as I did when they won a ribbon in a Junior Classical League competition?  It is because of Cornelia.

 



In his Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings, Valerius Maximus reported this about a woman named Cornelia.

Maxima ornamenta esse matronis liberos, apud Pomponium Rufum collectorum libro * sic inuenimus: Cornelia Gracchorum mater, cum Campana matrona apud illam hospita ornamenta sua pulcherrima illius saeculi ostenderet, traxit eam sermone, <donec> e schola redirent liberi, et 'haec' inquit 'ornamenta sunt mea'.  4.4.init.

"Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, when a matron from Campania showed her her jewels, the most beautiful of that time, plied the woman with conversation until her children returned from school and said, 'These are my jewels.'"

 


My wife and I have two wonderful children, and they are, of course, the crown jewels of my life.  Yet these students are jewels as well, filling the treasury of teaching.  I take pride in them much as their own parents do.

This young man spent as much time in the French teacher's (pictured here) room as in mine!

And I love sharing this pride with those parents.  I text them the pictures I have taken and tag them with the photos on Facebook.  I know how much it means to my wife and me when we hear from others about our children.  Many teachers take pictures of their students, and I would encourage all to share those pictures with the students' families.  Like Cornelia, they already see their children as jewels, but it is always nice to know that others think the same.

A Teacher's Natural Habitat

There is a natural habitat for a teacher.  It is a "sound and sweet and wise place" that is "surrounded by beauty and sanity," a place where "the whole human being, not disembodied chunks of him, is the focus of education."

And what may teachers expect in their natural habitat?  They should expect "the joy of teaching" and perhaps even a certain "happy boyish enthusiasm" as "souls [are] born in wonder."  They can expect "cheerful faces, and plenty of them" and "happy students" who are "not eager to leave, because they [are] having too much fun."

You will likely have one of two reactions to such a description of the teacher's natural habitat.  You may sit back and sigh with a faraway look of longing as you heart yearns for such an Eden.  You may also find a certain anger rising within you, a burning, righteous indignation that someone would even dare to describe a place that is so far from your present circumstance that it could not be glimpsed with the Hubble.

I know both of those reactions, but I also know that the descriptions offered above are about what should be, what can be, and what in some places actually is.  These descriptions come from two articles, one about and one by Anthony Esolen.  Tony Esolen was a tenured professor of literature at Providence College in Rhode Island before moving, after decades at that institution, to Thomas More College in New Hampshire.  In addition to being a teacher of literature, he is also a poet, an acute critic of contemporary culture, and a translator, perhaps most notably of Dante.  I have read him for years and can say only this...if you see his name on it, read it.

From the Kindergarten teacher to the dissertation supervisor, any teacher who has spent more than one year in this calling has known the joy of teaching that he describes.  They have known it at least once, or they would not have returned.  

In one article, Esolen writes, "Then came the joy of teaching. I’m a born teacher. I don’t mean to say that I am great at it—I’m quite aware of my flaws, which I’d rather not enumerate. I mean that even when I was a little boy I wanted to show people things, just because I liked them and wanted to share them. Teaching, for me, has always retained much of that happy boyish enthusiasm; it’s why I find it hard to understand people who turn teaching into politics by other means."

This is what teaching is...raw, unbounded, childlike enthusiasm. And if something like justice should come from it because it has been about the work of the true, the good, and the beautiful, then so much the better, but teaching is not first and foremost about justice or someone's finding a job or gaining a credential. It is not, as Tony Esolen puts it, politics by other means.  It is something much grander than that, taking in far more territory, and, when it is allowed to flourish in its natural habitat, it produces a harvest of many of the best things known to man.

And then in that same article he writes of one group of his students, "They were not eager to leave, because they were having too much fun. They were having too much fun—repeat this sentence three times carefully—reading Virgil in the Latin, with a gray-haired fellow they had never met before. I drove home almost in tears."

This is a joy like no other, and I have been blessed to taste it. Teenagers in a last period class on a Friday, deeply engrossed in their Latin and asking questions and contributing meaningfully to the great conversation...my friends, this, this is what education can be, and we must fight each and every effort to turn education, which, because it is a supremely human endeavor, must be characterized by life, into a zombie, the walking dead version of its true self.

So where is this blessed abode of teachers, this Elysium of education?  Some teachers find it by carving it out of the blackboard jungle in which they find themselves.  They must make bricks without straw as they guide and shape minds all while trying to turn their own schools into suitable learning environments.  This, however, is not as it should be, and while decent-minded folk rightly laud their efforts, families of students and the citizenry at large should never for one moment think that this is good.

There are also those who leave a toxic environment for one in which their teaching arts can be given full expression.  Esolen himself is in this category, and it would be pharisaical in the extreme to fault him for it.  He writes, "Sometimes a single encounter with what is healthy and ordinary—I use the word advisedly, with its suggestion that things are in the order that God by means of his handmaid Nature has ordained—is enough to shake you out of the bad dreams of disease and confusion."  By contrast he observes, "I came home recently from a day at Thomas More College, full of good cheer and energy, and for somebody who isn’t getting younger, those can take you a long way. They can add many years to your life as a teacher, whereas discouragement and disappointment lead to exhaustion."

To Be A Child?

And in my heart you will remain forever young. -- Rod Stewart

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. -- 1 Corinthians 13:11, ESV



Our school's chapter of the Indiana Junior Classical League offers a scholarship each year to one of our graduating seniors.  Part of the application requires that candidates pick a Latin quotation and use it as the basis for a discussion of the benefit of Classics to them and their own interest in Classics.

This year one of our seniors chose, "Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum."  This is Cicero's famous statement, "Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child," and it comes from Orator, 119.  At the end of a thoughtful essay, this student, who began as an 8th grader and thus took five years and prepared for the A.P. and I.B. tests along the way, had this to say.

Cicero

 "Being able to understand and parse themes from the Classical era develops a mindset for understanding the out-of-reach parts of the world, separated by either time or by distance.  That ability turns a person from a child, trapped in a singular world of self, to a person of the world, conscientious of those they have never met and may never meet.

"So ask me why I have spent the last five years studying a dead language of a people long since passed.  Ask me why I have bothered to translate classical works from the Latin instead of just reading someone else's translation.  Ask me why it matters if Horace was able to openly attack his contemporaries in his satires like his predecessor Lucilius or not.  My answer will remain the same:  I refuse to remain a child when I can be a person of the world."

It is not news to say that ours is a youth-obsessed age.  "I don't want to grow up.  I'm a Toys R Us kid."  That is the theme song of the present day.  I do not know whether this is the cause or the consequence of our failure to expose children to the great works of literature, art, and music.  Likely as not the two are now caught in a vicious cycle.  Anthony Esolen, yet again, sounds the alarm by merely stating the facts.  Would that those who had ears to hear should do so.  In that article, he cites Henry Van Dyke from an 1893 piece in which Van Dyke will not give in to pessimism with regard to literature, but expects a recovery from poets who merely "please a degenerate race with the short-lived melodies of earthly delight and the wild chants of withering passion."  Esolen is not so sure.  Actually, he is sure...that Van Dyke was wrong.

I would tend to agree with Esolen with regard to our literary and cultural landscape.  Yet there are, as there have always been, the remnants who know and are shaped by the true, the good, and the beautiful.  They are as Aeneas described the Trojan refugees in Aeneid I.30, "reliqui[ae] Danaum et immitis Achilli," the offscourings, if not of the Danaans and savage Achilles, of a society whose systems of education no longer read to become human and to make connection with humanity, but for much duller, more ephemeral, and sadly utilitarian ends.

Aeneas in the storm

I say these remnants exist, for I am blessed to see them in my classes.  Will those who read Caesar and Cicero, Horace and Vergil in high school turn the monstrous and sinking ship of our society, barnacled as it is with grotesqueries imaginable in another age perhaps only to a Dante?  Titanic's rudder was indeed too small.  Yet small is also the mustard seed, and while I am not sure I have its quantity of faith, I do have at least that amount of hope, and that hope stems from students like this senior.

A Heritage of Teaching

2016 saw Indiana celebrate its bicentennial, and as part of that celebration, Hoosier teachers shared stories of the educational heritage in their families.  My family’s Hoosier education heritage stretches back to the late 1800s and has continued nearly unbroken to this day.

On my mother’s father’s side of the family, our story begins with my great grandmother, Flora Carlile, who was born in 1862 and taught in a one-room school house in Washington County.  Five of her children continued as teachers, including my great uncle Edwin Carlile (b. 1886), who taught wood shop at Froebel High School in Gary; my great aunt Bessie Pearl Carlile (b. 1893), who taught in a one-room school house and then the consolidated Finley Township School in Scott County; and my great aunt Goldie Ethel Carlile (b. 1896), who taught in a one-room school house in Scott County and then for 41 years at State Street School (renamed Lillian Emery Elementary School) and Silver Street School in New Albany; and my great aunt Myra Jean Bailey (b. 1899), who taught in the 1920s in a one-room school in Scott County.  Her daughter, Phyllis Anne Thompson (b. 1927), taught English at Scottsburg High School in the 1940s and 1950s, and Anne Thompson’s son-in-law, Joe D. Smith (b. 1946), taught English and served as librarian for 37 years at Scottsburg High School and Scottsburg Middle School.

Froebel High School, Gary, Indiana

Silver Street Elementary, New Albany, Indiana, preparing for a visit by President Bush

Scottsburg High School, Scottsburg, Indiana

Flora’s youngest child was my maternal grandfather, James Hanley Carlile.  Born in 1906 and named after Indiana Governor James Franklin Hanly, he taught in a one-room school house in Scott County in the 1920s and 1930s.

On my mother’s maternal side of the family, her cousin Ottis Ivan Schreiber (b. 1921) served as professor and department chair of English at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.

With such an educational bloodline, it was not surprising that my mother, Patricia Lee Carlile (b. 1937) would want to become a teacher.  Further inspired by her own 2^nd grade teacher, who captivated her attention in the mid-1940s with the first pair of red shoes she had ever seen and then drove her when she was a senior for a visit to what was then Indiana State Teachers College, my mom earned a B.S in Education from Indiana State and later an M.S. from the University of Wisconsin.  She taught fourth grade from 1959-1968 at Mt. Tabor Elementary School in New Albany.

Mt. Tabor Elementary, New Albany, Indiana

Pat Perkins

  

It was at Mt. Tabor that my mother met my father, Norman Ray Perkins (b. 1930), who taught sixth grade there after teaching sixth grade in Lake Fenton, Michigan (1957-1959).  He had earned his B.S. in Education from Indiana University thanks to the G.I. Bill after returning from service in Korea and later earned his M.S. from the University of Michigan.  After they married in December of 1967, my mom left teaching at the end of that school year.  My dad started in the fall of 1968 as the principal of Galena Elementary School in Floyd County and remained there until his retirement in 1992.

Norman Perkins

Galena Elementary School, New Albany, Indiana

My wife, Melissa (Stillions) Perkins, and I have taught Latin in Missouri, Texas, and Indiana, she at elementary, middle school, and high school levels, and I at middle school, high school, and undergraduate levels.  Since 1998 I have been the Latin teacher at North Central High School in Indianapolis and in 2014 was named Indiana Teacher of the Year.

North Central High School, Indianapolis, Indiana

Of Cabbages and Kings

I discovered something in a very roundabout way recently. Two years ago I wrote a blog post about a fantastic connection one of my AP students made between the act of translation and mathematics.

That post prompted one of my former students, Adam Washington, to write a couple of posts of his own. Adam graduated from Indiana University with his Ph.D. in physics. He is now at the University of Sheffield in England as part of the Polymer Physics Group and has published papers with such fantastic titles as "Porosity of Stöber silica observed by spin-echo small angle neutron scattering," and "Spin Echo Small Angle Neutron Scattering using a continuously pumped 3He neutron polarisation analyser."

Prompted by the post I had written, which was inspired by one of my current students at the time, Adam wrote "Linear Algebra for Linguists", which began to explore a mathematical way of looking at translation. He continued that line of thinking in "Intermediate Vectors for Linguists".

I discovered all this when he referenced his work in a comment to this article I had posted on Facebook.

Connections...one student inspiring a teacher who prompted a former student to combine seemingly vastly different areas of human understanding. No words. I simply have no words. This is teaching. This is education. Teachers and students and inspiration and ideas and discovery. How very sweet and wonderful it is.

I Couldn't Eat My Raisins

The following is a true story.

A teacher I know, let's call her "Sally," teaches at a public high school where water bottles and food are forbidden among the students.  This policy exists despite research suggesting that food and water are, when considered in the balance of life, pretty good things and that the lack of food and water can be detrimental to learning.  We also know that ready access to food and water can aid learning.

Sally teaches nearly two hundred students each day in six sections of five different courses.  Not surprisingly she needs a little something to make it to lunch, yet rather than eat or drink in front of her students, since they are forbidden to do so, she sneaks into her neighbor's classroom in one of the six-minute passing periods and during that luxurious break, which she technically should not have since it is expected that she will be standing in the hall between each and every class, she wolfs down a small box of raisins and gulps a quick drink from her water bottle.

Recently her neighbor was engaged with a student in a private conference during that six-minute period, and rather than eat or drink in front of her students, Sally quietly returned her box of raisins and water bottle to their hiding place under her desk.

Now, let's be honest.  Sally did not die from being unable to eat a one-ounce box of raisins that day, but her experience did make me think of this recent Forbes article on the marks of a bad place to work.  The author observes with incredulity that some companies still specify the number of hours that salaried employees must work and goes on to say, "Smart companies know that what’s important is that the work gets done – not how many hours people work. If you see this kind of language in an employee handbook, do not take the job — because you will hate it if you do!"

It is no surprise that teachers find their eating and drinking habits regulated at school when their time is dictated as well.  I know that at Sally's school teachers must work certain hours during finals week and must be in the building all day on the last teacher day of each semester.  It does not matter that their work could be done elsewhere.  What matters is that their hours are accounted for in the actual school building.  They could be watching YouTube videos if their work is done, but they cannot leave the building.

We won't even start to discuss evaluation, about which the Forbes article also has something to say.  "Performance Management is the name of a popular HR hoax and scam that turns any job into a series of tasks and goals that you’ll be held accountable for on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. No job worth doing breaks down into tiny, measurable parts.  Good jobs are whole. You know what your mission is and you work toward your mission every day, checking in with your manager as appropriate. Run away from any company that surrounds you with yardsticks and measurements. Working in a place like that would only raise your blood pressure and destroying your mojo."

I wonder what happened to Sally's mojo when she couldn't eat her raisins.

A Not Untypical Day In High School

I teach at a public high school of just under 4,000 students. Our classes are huge. We are not elite. And yet these things happened today. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

In my Period 2 class of Latin I, one of my students taught the grammar lesson. I have recorded myself teaching key grammar points, posted those videos on our website, and the students must watch them at home while taking notes. The following day students volunteer to teach, or re-present, the lesson. Today Samantha not only put the information on the board, but asked questions of her classmates and and sought volunteers. She did not merely regurgitate information. She taught.

In my A.P. class we discussed an alternative form of a verb in Latin poetry (for you Latin folks out there, it was the -ere suffix for -erunt in 3rd person plural perfect active indicative). In this instance it was the verb fulsere, meaning "they flashed," and one of my students said, "Oh, that's just like in that Catullus poem we read last year where the suns flashed for him." He was referring to Catullus 8, and I simply shook my head in admiring disbelief.

Perhaps my emotional pump had been primed by discussions over the past few days. In my Latin III class we had read about a murder in 53 B.C. on the Appian Way. The wife of the victim demanded that her husband's corpse be displayed in the forum for all to see, and we discussed the parallel with Emmett Till, whose death in 1955 prompted his mother to have an open casket for her son and for Jet magazine to run the pictures. As the story of the ancient murder developed, it described the mob violence that followed and led to the burning of the senate house. My students discussed violence in the modern world and that free speech does not mean shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. They discussed the proper limits to freedom that make freedom livable without devolving into chaos.

Again, it was my A.P. students who just yesterday discussed the dangerous role of rumor as depicted by the Roman epic poet Vergil and as seen today in our social media. In both the Latin III and A.P. discussions, I shared that I was concerned for my students' well being and that they not find themselves caught up in the kinds of messaging or activities that have led to ruined lives.

And then, after school, a young man who observes me twice a week from Indiana University in preparation for student teaching, engaged with me in the most heady and delightful of discussions. We talked about his passion for Medieval works. We looked at the prayers of St. Ambrose and talked about St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, the Dies Irae, and the Stabat Mater. We talked of Boethius, and he introduced me to Alan of Lille.

To be sure, not all days are as rich and satisfying, but those described here are not untypical, and because of that they stand as a testament to both the depth and the breadth it is possible to explore in high school.

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

Music fans from the '80s will remember that the title of this post is also the title of a Janet Jackson song.  Friends of mine will also find it odd that I made a pop music reference since my preferred entertainment is hair metal, but that is beside the point.  Janet Jackson's song perfectly captures the disposition of too many students with regard to their own education, and I would suggest that there is something more.

A colleague recently pointed out that when students realize that it is mathematically not possible for them to pass, or very unlikely that they will, they often turn to general misbehavior.  It is not necessarily anything violent, but with nothing to gain from the class, they create a disruption through talking off topic, playing on their phones, etc.

Many will begin pointing fingers at the teachers in whose classes this takes place.  They should have been more engaging.  They should continue finding ways to reach each student to the very last minute of the semester.  A student who has gained so little from the class is one more sad example of a system that is failing its students.

As I have written before and spoken on many occasions, while it is true that a teacher's poor efforts may be the cause of a student's failure to learn, failure to learn itself is no proof of a teacher's poor efforts.  Yet what I want to focus on here is the purely consumer mentality at work in students who think that if they gain nothing from the class, then there is no reason for them to be in it, a belief that in their minds justifies their misbehavior.

Each fifty minutes my students and I form a small community.  We explore together the language, thought, art, literature, and history of the ancient Roman world.  I would, however, be loathe to think of my students as parasites, only taking in knowledge and never contributing to the shared journey of discovery that is education.  Yes, they are taking something from my class, but they should be contributing something as well, and that contribution is not what they give me in the form of completed assignments and assessments, but the thoughts they speak within the interactions of any given class period.  Students have something to contribute by asking questions, both those of simple clarification of a confusing point and those of the genuine curiosity that is the root of the branching nature of learning.  They contribute by sharing the connections they make between observations in my class and the reading, learning, and experiences from other parts of their lives.  Their contributions take the form of iron sharpening iron as each member of the class makes the others better.

Those entrusted with the development of young minds, teachers, parents, coaches, administrators, teaching assistants, librarians, media specialists, and guidance counselors, along with those less directly yet significantly involved such as policy makers and pundits, must understand that a classroom is not Amazon.com where students place their orders and leave with a product.  The true classroom, whether or not it is bounded by walls, is a dynamic community of learning, and because it is both dynamic and a community, it requires something of all its members, not merely the teacher.  Students who are actively engaged in their learning, even though they may fail to reach a level of achievement that has been desired by someone somewhere, will nevertheless have contributed to the shared journey of discovery and may enjoy the proper confidence that their fellow travelers in class are the better for it.

Playing With Ideas

The officers of our school's chapter of the Indiana Junior Classical League had arranged a meeting for yesterday afternoon, and that should be your first clue that something special was taking place.  I did not call the meeting.  They did.  This extraordinary group of young leaders picked up from their last meeting and began filling my board with dates, ideas, and who would be responsible for accomplishing various tasks.  They asked me for help only when needed, for example in emailing a secretary to schedule room use.

And I sat back and watched.  I listened.  And I was astounded as I so frequently am.

After working for a while on recommendations for college-bound seniors, I needed to take a break, so I went next door to the meeting of Philosophy Club.  I sat down next to a retired colleague who continues to sponsor the club she had sponsored for many years when she taught English and Theory of Knowledge.  And I sat back and watched.  I listened.  And I was astounded once again.  

A small, diverse group of young people discussed what they could know with regard to science.  My colleague did not lead the group.  The students led themselves.  In fact, one of them had prepared the materials you see here to guide the conversation.

When my children were young, they played with joy and abandon with their toys, and it struck me that what was going on in Philosophy Club and what was taking place with the officers of the IJCL was the same thing.  These young people had outgrown childish objects, but they were playing with the toys appropriate to their age, ideas.  The philosophy students were trying out their thoughts about the nature of things in public discourse, and they did so as boldly as any child playing with in a sandbox.  The Latin students gave exercise to their notions of leadership by jumping in and leading.

At play in the field of ideas, these students experienced a uniquely human joy, and it was a pleasure to behold.