What is deconstructionism? A concept that real and meaningful outcomes can be acheived without goal-oriented planning and structure.

What is deconstructionist learning? A natural human response to honest curiosities and questions.

What is deconstructionist teaching? The management of a learning environment that encourages meaningful curiosities and allows for honest response.

What is deconstructionist education? A process of pursuing meaningful curiosities and questions, ideally in an environment that allows such questions to be answered in fulfilling ways. Deconstructionist Education is a new paradigm for how we think about the ways students learn and the ways teachers teach.

A clarification is in order regarding the terminology of Decostructionist Education. A key distinction is that deconstructionist education can be constructive, and constructionist education can be destructive.

It has been traditional and proper to see education as a constuctive event, part of the postitive growth of a human that allows him or her to function as an independent and contributing member of society. Education is probably constructive by definition.

It has also been traditional to see education as a construct, a building up of intelligence by adding layer upon layer of information. This is the traditional paradigm of the education industry--that we deal with a commodity called knowledge. Schools provide it and students consume it. The focal argument of this treatise is that the construct of traditional learning is artificial and misleading; and it impedes the development of meaningful new techniques for education.

There has been a wealth of study and information published in recent years that supports a new, very complex view of how learning happens; and the implications for learning and education are easily and widely recognized. But even the most modern and well thought-out ideas on a new education--ideas on how to teach more effectively--treat knowledge as a construct of information.

When I began writing these notes, I was planning to do no more than keep a journal of classroom experiences and thoughts about my profession. As I continued to write, the notes developed into an argument for a new way of looking at education. It is a new paradigm that rejects the simple notion of education as a process of accumulating information.

The new paradigm--what I have chosen to call Deconstructionist Education--sees knowledge as an immeasurable and dynamic conflux of impressions, experiences, ideas, and personality. It exists in a mind that stretches all through the body, not just in the brain. Knowing is more than the accumulated bits of our experience, and learning is more than an act of accumulation.

As we move into what many call the "Information Age," information is more and more recognized as a commodity, a thing with value that can help us enjoy productive and rewarding lives. While it is sometimes the case that we avoid certain bits of information--facts that make us uncomfortable--information of any type is thought to be good and worthwhile.

It makes easy sense that the acquisition of knowledge--the acquisition of information-- is also a valued exercise. It is curious that there can be so much controversy over education and learning. While there is no disagreement that education should happen, the question of how education should happen is a source of long standing debate.

The western world has long looked to ancient Greece for its model of education. Socratic Dialogue--so named because Plato's teacher Socrates is thought to have come up with the idea--has been the foundation of liberal thought on education methodology for at least three generations. The Socratic Method is a fairly simple one. The teacher guides the student to the discovery of sought-after conclusions by asking a series of questions.

Plato's stories of Socrates are all written in dialogue form and display Socrates' method, but the one dialogue that is devoted to the questions of education and learning is "Meno."

*********here describe the story together with quotes displaying that the method is one of direction to predefined conclusions*****************

The traditional classroom is one where a teacher stands at the front of a classroom, by the chalkboard, and talks to students who are lined up in rows and columns of desks. Sometimes the teacher will be at a lectern where he or she can read from notes or from a book. The arrangement is not very different from that of a small auditorium or church, and it betrays expectations--as with a performer or a preacher--that one person will present something of value to the audience. The teacher will say and write things that the students need to be able to hear and see.

The traditional classroom betrays a traditional and outdated model of knowledge and learning. Knowledge is understood to be an accumulation of information. Learning is seen as the passage of information from a knower to a nonknower. This is a thankfully dated model and for at least thirty years educators have recognized, in a series of steps, that learning is a much more complicated process that must include some amount of processing and manipulation of information. Concepts of Experiential Learning, Active Learning, Multiple Learning Styles, and Mindful Learning*****add to this***** have successively argued that the traditional model is of limited use and value. Especially at the primary school level, classrooms have changed, and teachers have been bringing all kinds of new methods and ideas to the child's school environment.

At higher grade levels it is often difficult to find anything but the traditional classroom. Strict curriulums and standardized testing suggest a goal oriented, "no-nonsense" approach in the classroom. Even among teachers who are aware of contemporary research and the newer models of learning, the feeling is often that there is simply no time for the activities and projects that will lead to better understanding.

Still, given that most teachers have at least some familiarity with recent discoveries, it is difficult to understand why classrooms continue to be managed in traditional ways. Perhaps it can be justified in a situation where the teacher has some special access to information. It is probably a suitable arrangement for some graduate school courses, where the professor is teaching unpublished theories; or in other isolated instances where teacher is reading a story or displaying pictures or otherwise presenting new material to students.

But in a vast majority of situations, the material presented to students is redundant to other sources. Textbooks are designed to present material at appropriate levels of difficulty, and the information that teachers require of their students is very often in the book. If not in the book, most students will be able to satisfy their curiosities with library research. With the use of the Internet, virtually any bit of information can be gathered at the computer.

I am not condoning the idea that computers and individual research can replace the teacher. The point is that traditional style teaching--the teaching of information--offers very little that cannot be enjoyed by the student in a different setting. And there is overwhelming evidence that traditional classroom environments are very inefficient places for stimulating student involvement and interest.

Why, then, do we continue to see resistance to new methods?

In my third year of teaching overseas I was asked to teach a 10th grade English class. About half of the students were enrolled in the British GCSE program. Their English curriculum was standardized and they would take a GCSE exam at the end of the year. A good result on this exam is sometimes very important to students being able to continue their schooling at a high level.

One of the things on our curriculum was the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I made arrangements with one of the fifth grade teachers for us to meet in the auditorium each Friday for several weeks. My 10th graders chose characters at the beginning of each week and they performed a simple presentation of the parts of the novel we had covered since the week before. They would draw scenes from the story on posterboard and answer questions from the younger students.

The advantages of this simple exercise seemed obvious. The students would be engaged in the book in an active way. They would be forced to deal with questions of character and plot, and the story would become real for them in a way that would not be possible sitting at a desk.

Some of my students' parents did not see it quite that way, and complaints were made to the high school principal. The 10th grade students were wasting too much time playing games in English class; they needed to be preparing for their exams.

We were scheduled to finish Great Expectations by Christmas, and following the holidays the students were to take a mock exam, a practice test to help prepare them for June's GCSE exam. The principal decided--depending on the outcome of this mock exam--my students should study with a different teacher. I was told that if my students' scores did not compare favorably to those of the other 10th grade English class, a new teacher would take my place--a teacher who could do a proper job of running the class.

I was justifiably shocked and upset by this decision. Aside from the questionable professionalism and the faulty reasoning (there are, of course, many reasons that one group of students might not score as well as another group), the most distressing thing was the blatant ignorance of contemporary research and thought on how learning happens. The central theme of this research is that real learning does not happen without engagement. The passive consumption of information leads--at best--to an ability to recognize the names of concepts and ideas, but it can never lead to understanding without the student taking some kind of active role with the information, manipulating the information through writing or through dialogue, or through acting a part in a play.

My students did well on their mock exams and stayed with me through the end of the year. By the time GCSE's rolled around there were no longer questions about them being prepared. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that attitudes changed about how classtime can be used most effectively. Teachers who employ methods consistent to what they know about good learning will regularly be challenged, especially in environments with published curriculums and standardized testing.

That is not to say that standardized curriculum and exams are undesirable. They must continue to be used more and more as school administration becomes more centralized and as cultures homogonize. The problem lies with the faulty conclusion that a set curriculum implies traditional, constructionist instruction.

As an example, one might see a history curriculum that specifies knowledge of the American Civil War and the battle of ideas on the slavery issue. It is understandable that a teacher might see that and imply from it that he needs to lecture to the students about the major battles of the war and the slavery issue. That is what happens in the constructionist classroom. The information is understood to be a building up of information--the construction of knowledge with the building blocks of information.

What could happen--what should happen--is that the students engage in a debate on the issues of the Civil War, or that they do role playing exercises imitating the work and responsibilities of the slave owners. Research has shown that only with such exercises will students gain a meaningful understanding of material. The question is not whether they have time for the exercises. It is a question of learning the material or not.

The deconstructionist classroom is built on the recognition that real learning happens at a level that can not be reached passively. Retaining information is a meaningless exercise, equivilent to the work of a computer. The ability to use and manipulate information in meaningful ways is the sign of true learning.

In my own teaching, I have more and more often found it valuable to have students draw pictures of concepts and stories. This is something I first learned in my year as a second grade teacher. Students enjoyed drawing illustrations for the stories we were reading together. Through drawing and painting the students displayed interpretations of the stories and characters that were often complex and revealing. Their young vocabularies and immature language skills would not allow them to explain ideas that would come out naturally in a picture.

A simple example: How might second graders examine the relative importance of particular characters to the story of Little Red Riding Hood? Who's the protagonist--the good guy? Who's the antagonist--the bad guy? These questions are often considered too complex for beginning readers, but they are answered naturally when young students draw scenes from the story. More important characters will be put into the foreground of a picture. Characters they like will be drawn with smiles.

A student's decision to draw an ugly, frowning hunter shows certain sympathy with the wolf, and an interpretation of the story that is original and sophisticated.

I have since used drawing and painting as an activity that allows older students to address more difficult concepts. Sometime in the first two or three meetings of a course called Theory of Knowledge, students are asked to create a drawing or painting with the title "Knowledge." The most common image is that of a brain, but it is also common to see some image of a container being filled with material, perhaps a cup (student) being filled with tea (knowledge) from a pot (teacher).

That image is reflective of a traditional, constructionist education, and as a teacher I see such images with a bit of dismay. For the student to understand himself to be only a receptacle for the material that a teacher pours into him suggests, one, that the student understands his role as a learner to be a passive one; and, two, that when he learns he is accumulating--accumulating the stuff of knowledge.

Knowledge can not be accumulated. Information can be accumulated, but the understanding of information--understanding being implied by the word knowledge--can only be acheived with some kind of active processing on the part of the learner.

I once had an economics student--a very good student who regularly got straight A's--complain to me that we were spending too much time in class with misdirected activities. We were spending class time looking through newspapers and looking for examples of economic observations in everyday news. My student was convinced that we were concerning ourselves with a great deal of information that was not on the course outline--that she would not be able to absorb all the news and still be able to remember the information that she would be tested on--as though there was a limited amount of memory available to her, and if she used it up she could not learn anything more.

Paulo Freire has modeled traditional education with a metaphor to banking. (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) With "banking education" teachers make deposits of information with the student who is expected to safeguard the deposit and make it available for withdrawal at the teacher's request.

With his model, Freire emphasizes another important problem with traditional, constructionist teaching--it encourages a "slave mentality" among students--students who are seen and treated as non-knowers--passive and empty vessels that are to be filled by the teacher with the knowledge of the teacher. The student naturally acclimates to his assumed passive role, and accepts a disempowered relationship to his own education.

There is a wonderful book by Oliver Sachs titled The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Each chapter of the book covers the story of a different patient of Dr. Sachs, a neurologist who writes with a remarkable ability to pass along the wonder of his work.

The second chapter deals with a patient (Jimmie) who has completely lost his ability to remember things. He remembers his life up to his early twenties, but nothing since then, and he is now in his fifties.

******Check this********

It is a truly amazing circumstance. For instance, Jimmy is surprised every time he looks into a mirror. He expects to see himself at the age of 25 and instead sees someone 30 years older. A few moments after he leaves the mirror he again forgets the image. Everytime he returns to the mirror he is again confused and upset by the reflection.

Dr. Sachs was naturally confounded as to how he might help Jimmy. How can someone learn to enjoy life with such a devastating disability? What might Dr. Sachs do for a patient who could not remember his doctor from one appointment to the next, who could not be expected to follow even simple prescriptions of exercise or routine?

Remarkably, after a time, Dr. Sachs did feel that progress was made, even though Jimmy's memory never improved. It answers an important question: Can we learn without remembering? Discussing Jimmy's progress, Sachs says

How lucky for Jimmy that he found Dr. Sachs; and how lucky for the student who finds a teacher that can pass along an attentiveness "to the beauty and soul of the world." Jimmy's case shows us clearly that learning of a very important type--a very sophisticated type--can be encouraged without focus on the facts that are the stuff of memory. Such a focus might well be distraction.

In my teaching of economics it has been common to examine a simple model of economic exchange known as a Circular Flow Diagram. Common to virtually every elementary course in economics, the diagram models the flow of goods and services in exchange for money or for other goods. It is an elegant and simple tool for demonstrating the balance of incomes and expenditures, the concept of income as a flow, etc.

Following an introduction to the model, it was common that I would ask my students to design similar models of their own. Inevitably the students' work would be some variation of a circular flow diagram, even after well-intentioned effort and encouragement to "be original." The construct of the original model dictated the understanding of the relationships, and it was virtually impossible to model in a different way.

Wanting to encourage original models, I decided to give the modeling assignment before discussing the circular flow diagram. The results were mixed. Students naturally found it more difficult; but models did turn out to be more original and, in a few examples, insightful and useful. One model used the analogy of a tree, where roots and branches interact through a trunk. The roots representing the gathering of resources, the branches of labor, and the trunk is the collection of products, growing over time.

The deconstruction of that exercise was to eliminate the Circular Flow Diagram as the lone, legitimate model of macroeconomic activity. For the deconstructionist educator, another important lesson is evident here: Students are legitimate knowers, and teachers are legitimate learners.

The idea of education with a goal of opening new possibilities and new explanations is an idea shared by Ellen Langer in her book The Power of Mindful Learning. Langer criticizes linear problem solving in favor of "a mindful state that remains open to several ways of viewing the situation." She uses the wonderfully contrary phrase of "intelligent ignorance" to describe an approach to learning that de-emphasizes problem solving as it emphasizes a thoughtful-a mindful-approach to learning and to life.

It often happens that teachers will express ignorance and even disinterest in fields other than their own. How common is it, for example, to hear a teacher of literature exclaim, "Mathematics? Forget it. I can not do it and I have no desire to figure it out."

This might be the same teacher who later wonders why students have such poor study habits, and no apparent desire to learn.

Whether we welcome the role or not, teachers serve as important role models for students. When a student--especially a young student--sees an adult dismiss an opportunity to learn, he sees an example. When he later discovers certain topics difficult in his studies, how should we expect him to respond? He will respond as his role models have responded.

If parents and teachers are comfortable with unanswered questions and undiscovered mysteries, their children and students can not be expected to show enthusiasm for learning.

The deconstructionist teacher is a learner first--a master learner--and a knower only secondarily. This does not rule out focus or specialization, but it is a recognition that teacher specialization can lead to a damaging environment where the student assumes the role of non-knower.

My own best experience as a student came in my first year of graduate studies. I was in a small class, maybe ten students, with a professor who was well known in academic circles for his expertise in ancient literature, particularly Homer and the Old Testament. We were at a school that encouraged professors to teach outside of their field; and, in this case, we found ourselves together to study Euclidian geometry.

What was remarkable and memorable about the class was the professor's undying enthusiasm for learning. And he was, truly, learning the material with us. He showed natural confusion, great enthusiasm for ideas, and curiosity that never stopped.

We took turns volunteering to present theorems and proofs from Euclid's Elements. We would offer good-natured challenges to explanations, and we would discuss how theorems were related to each other and to the work as a whole. Our professor did not "teach" us. He shared in our discussions, and he was always prepared with questions that would help us consider the importance of Euclid's work. If one of us had trouble with a presentation, he was always able to help, but he did not always have the answer. It was not uncommon for us to run into mental roadblocks--problems for which we could not find a suitable solution. We would leave class promising each other to research the problem further, and to share our discoveries at the next class meeting.

I am sure that any class with him would have been enjoyable and rewarding, including one on Homer or the Old Testament, but this experience was remarkable in that we were all learning--at a fairly sophisticated level--without the benefit of an expert in the field. What we had instead was an expert educator, a master learner.

One very simple technique for motivating student work is through contests. While competition is not sensibly applied to tests of intelligence--we don't want losers to be labeled as such--it can be a great tool for creating an environment of aggressive research and open ended learning.

I began one such contest by putting up fliers in the school hallways. "A CONTEST!! What was the greatest invention of The Industrial Revolution? A vote to be held October 26." My eighth grade humanities class had just begun work on the Industrial Revolution, and they noticed the fliers as they walked the hallways during the school day.

The question came up naturally, albeit with the suspiscion that I was setting it up--What WAS the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution? I admitted to settting it up, then explained to the students that they would be doing presentations to the school, campaigning for an invention of their choice. They would work in groups of two or three, create posters and write campaign slogans. There would also be a written argument--a position paper--on the importance of their invention.

The students participated in developing a rubric, so we all had a good idea of what work was expected. An "A" project would include a paper, a presentation, a slogan, and a strong explanation of the invention's importance to subsequent history. It was conceeded that the winning project--the project that attracted the most votes--would automatically get an "A."

The next step was to choose inventions. Even this simple exercise required a substantial amount of thoughtful learning. Was the automobile part of the Industrial Revolution? The printing press? Could an idea--like democracy--be considered an invention?

We spent close to two weeks organizing and researching and writing. The last two or three days before the election, fliers and posters started being posted around the school. "Vote for the Microscope" or "The Steam Engine Rules!" I prepared a ballot box and ballots. Presentations were scheduled for morning breaks and the lunch hour.

The actual vote was probably--perhaps inevitably--a reflection of students' popularity as much as of students' work. But the overall project was undoubtably successful, not because it attracted positive attention to the students' work, but because it created an environment of learning that kept the students involved and engaged.

Unfortunately, this kind of project will often give rise to concerns that too much time is being spent "having fun," and the students are not spending enough time "learning." Teachers that pursue these kinds of activities are often viewed as less serious, or less professional. I once had a principal tell me that such activities would be better suited for younger students. "Maybe you should consider teaching at the elementary level, where we are encouraging this kind of teaching."

Activity and engagement are prerequisites to learning at all age levels. The fear that students may not be prepared for the exam begs the question of how they learn. Our competition spurred students to discover--on their own--information about times and places and people, and they natually took it upon themselves to consider the relative influence of different tools and ideas. Better understanding of what life was like during those times is inevitable. The information that students gathered had purpose, and that makes the information both memorable and meaningful.

Good learning is not so much a question of, "What can I remember?" It is more a matter of, "What shall I forget?" In giving information a purpose, we make it more difficult to throw out, more difficult to forget.

Such a simple yet surprising notion, that the brain takes in so much more information than we would ever care to remember. Every moment of every day, our senses are absorbing incalculable numbers of impressions--sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feelings--more than we are capable of counting, certainly more than we are capable of remembering. How could we possibly function if our minds were somehow capable of remembering all the impressions that our sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell send to our brains every moment. Obviously, almost all of those impressions are thrown out instantaneously. As it turns out, the primary responsibility of the brain is to reject impressions, not to remember them. In fact, the brain works as a forgetting machine--absorbing, manipulating, and throwing-out uncountable numbers of impressions every second.

An important question for educators is implied: How does it work that we sometimes change the brain into a remembering machine instead of a forgetting machine?

*****************

Another teacher of mine helped me to understand the importance of honesty in enquiry. Following a seminar that I had particularly enjoyed, I complimented my professor on his skills in playing the Devil's advocate to encourage a deeper understanding of the text we were discussing. He grew visibly upset and embarrassed. For me to believe he was playing Devil's advocate meant he was being dishonest with his questions, that he was claiming not to understand things that he truly did understand. He was genuinely distraught. It was a genuine moment because of the deep caring that was evident in my professor’s concern. He showed an obviously honest and heart-felt ethic that was admirable.

On reflection I realized that the true value of the encounter--and of this teacher’s honesty--is not with some ethical lesson over honesty in enquiry or in student-teacher relations. The more valuable lesson, especially for me as a teacher, has to do with the responsibility the student is willing to accept for his own education. If the teacher always assumes the role of the knower, even skillful dialogue leaves the student in the place of a non-knower, the recipient of a gift--knowledge--from the knower. Such an attitude limits the student’s role to reading the teacher’s mind, searching for answers that the teacher is looking for. It is one of the most common occurrences of the classroom--a teacher fishing for answers--but how much better for the student if the teacher were truly honest, telling students what he knows, and asking questions about things that he truly does not know.

The deconstructionist teacher does not ask questions for which he knows an answer--he does not "fish" for answers. A traditional teacher might ask, "What were the causes of the American Civil War?" What they honestly want to know is, "How many of you read the assigned material?" The deconstructionist educator asks honestly, and always assumes that the students are fulfilling their obligations as learners by preparing for class. The deconstructionist educator might ask the same class, "Do you agree with what the book claims to be the causes of the American Civil War?" Or, "Would you volunteer to fight a war to avoid unfair taxes?"

The point is important enough to bear repeating. Honest questioning allows a teacher the opportunity to be an example to his students as a curious and interested learner, his primary and proper role. Fishing for right answers is not only ethically questionable (a lie is suggested when we ask something we know the answer to) it reinforces the unfortunate constructionist view of student as non-knower, teacher as knower, and knowing as absolute.

In 1990-91, I coordinated a small discussion group among the faculty of the Community College where I was teaching economics. Each week five to ten teachers would meet to discuss a reading of some classical work in the field of education. I remember that Plato's Meno was on our reading list, and Rousseau's Emile, and Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

At one meeting we had been sharing ideas on encouraging student answers and explanations, encouraging student empowerment and using the power of discovery to make lessons more meaningful. Toward the end of the discussion, one participant--incredulous and with a raised voice--said, "Then what if a student decides on an explanation that I know to be wrong? Should I not tell then they are wrong?" Traditional education insists on right answers, and one of the teacher's responsibilities is to correct mistakes. The proper response is clearly, "Yes. We must tell the student he is wrong," and that is pretty much what we agreed on at the time.

That discussion, and my colleague's question, has stayed with me for a very long time. The question, "Should I not tell them they are wrong?" is essential to the primary distinctions of deconstructionist education. Our traditional response, "We must tell the student he is wrong." was clearly insufficient.

The deconstructionist educator recognizes that the ideals of empowerment and discovery are much more important than the confidence of a right answer. He tells the student, "I disagree and this is why. You are free to see the world in your own way, and perhaps your answer makes the most sense to you at this moment; but there will be many inconsistencies for you to justify."

Constructionist education insists on a correct answer, perhaps allowing for the qualification that the "right" answer is a product of well-accepted convention.

Deconstructionist education welcomes the acquisition of new knowing--different understandings--with the qualification that the explanation might encounter many inconsistencies in other areas of knowledge.

A professor who had a remarkable but simple way of opening his lectures taught one of my graduate economics courses. He would walk in at precisely the time class was scheduled to begin and say, simply, "Any questions?"

When I returned to teaching I began using the same technique. It showed a willingness to be responsive to student concerns, it showed a willingness to be spontaneous--to cover material not assigned for that lesson--and it showed respect for the students by allowing for the possibility that students were understanding material on their own. All of this is consistent with the paradigm of deconstructionist education.

However, it was not long though before I changed my own technique for beginning classes. Instead of asking, "Any questions?" I would begin class by asking, "What do you want to do today?" The advantage of this new technique is that it does not present the teacher as knower--as answer giver--and the student as the question haver--a non-knower. Students were now assumed to be fully capable of learning and to take responsibility for further learning.

Better yet is being able to pick up on student conversations that have already begun, and to show interest and curiosity in the aspects of their lives that you find interesting. One simple technique is to be in the classroom as students begin to arrive. Conversations will develop about recent activities, the upcoming basketball game, problems at home or at work. It is not unusual that such mundane conversations can easily and naturally lead to questions about history or language or mathematics.

Not long after I began opening classes with the question, "What do you want to do today?" I began closing classes by asking, "What shall we do next time?" It is not uncommon for that question to be answered long before the end of class, as it is natural during the meeting of any class to find topics and questions that require some research outside of the classroom. That research is the perfect homework. Again spontaneity is important. The discussion has provided a reason for the homework, and the sense of learning as a burden has been dismissed.

A note on curriculum:

There are times, at all grade levels, when students and their teachers are faced with a particular curriculum to be taught; and there may be a very specific and particular--and perhaps demanding--list of topics to cover. This kind of restriction might sway teachers away from strategies that encourage spontaneity or student originated assignments. It is true that younger students may need some guidance; but it has been my experience that even very young students can be given the responsibility of making sure that curriculum gets covered. All they need is a list of topics; and all you need is one student out of the class that is willing to check the class' work against the topics on the list.

With any specified curriculum, it is inevitable that some material will need to be covered that does not appear out of a natural and honest discussion. Of course it will happen that the teacher occasionally needs to take charge of a lesson and say, "Here is some information you should try to remember. Here is something you need to understand. Here is a skill you should practice."

There will naturally be times when discussions do not lead to natural assignments, or when curriculum concerns dictate that class preparation needs to be in a new direction. A more traditional approach to homework will often be needed. Even so, the deconstructionist teacher will offer assignments in a way that honor the capabilities and potential of the student.

Perhaps the teacher will decide that students need to prepare for a discussion on the French Revolution. It is important here that the teacher maintain honesty with themselves about the true goals of the curriculum. Perhaps he will say, "For tomorrow, do some general research on the French Revolution so we can begin talking about it."

That is a much better assignment than what is more typical-- "For tomorrow read pages 56 through 64 of your textbook--the section on the French Revolution."

The first example shows respect for students to learn in their own way and to follow their own curiosities with regard to the topic. The second assignment gives the student the role of a machine--following instructions without regard to purpose. It also suffers from the more immediate problem of students reading with a goal to finishing a certain number of pages--a false construct of the teacher. The honest goal is learning about the French Revolution. The vocabulary of the assignment should reflect that.

The relevant point for the deconstructionist teacher: a teacher's most important responsibility is to present the example and character of a good learner. It is contrary to the student's interests for a teacher to present himself as one who knows the curriculum. A knower is someone who has finished learning, and if you have finished learning, good teaching is probably impossible.

The deconstructionist teacher is a learner first and foremost. Knowledge is treated as a wonderful benefit of a life-long, enjoyable habit of mind that experiences the world with ongoing, tireless curiosity. Every walk down the street brings multitudes of questions with it. Every step into a classroom is a chance to learn more, not only from the books and videos and computers that might be around, but from the fellow learners in the room.

A university professor once offered a model of

What a great and fun exercise to pursue as we get older-to list the things we were taught that are no longer true or accepted. I remember being taught in a middle school science lesson that it was physically impossible for man to fly under his own power. I was later intriged with the Gosamer Project where, a new materials and innovative design allowed not only for human powered flight, but for extensive flights *********************

If we look even further back in time, we find multitudes of obvious mistakes in the science of the times, and so in the teaching of the schools. Aristotle taught that acceleratiion due to gravity was a factor of an object's mass, a belief apparantly unchallenged until Galileo disproved it 1900 years later.

Many of the old mistakes are laughable--the world is flat, the earth is at the center of the universe,

Most of my 16 years of teaching, I have been teaching economics to students from high school to graduate school, always under the guise of economics being a hypothetical construct. If the world liked like this, if people made decisions to maximize their own self-interest, if there is free trade, if producers work to maximize profits, then we can expect an efficient use of resources and an efficient distribution of goods.

It is a wonderful argument first explained and presented by Adam Smith. Western economists have taught the argument--as a hypothetical construct--ever since. And when we teach economics we proudly mention this qualification-maybe once, maybe twice-and we spend the rest of the semester discussing details of how to measure income or how firms minimize costs or how exchange rates get determined. The qualifications of the whole model necessarily get buried and lost under the concerns of definition, measurement, and right answers.

In the end, I would guess that most of my students have left my courses believing that capitalism is superior and efficient, and forgetting my original pleas to remember that modern capitalism shares very little with the very conditional model outlined by Smith and those that have followed in his tradition.

There are very important lessons here for the understanding and application of economic theory; but for us the relevant observation is that students learn "truths" ****************

*********do I keep this?*********

As I write this I am three days finished with my tenth teaching job. My first teaching job was as a substitute in a public school system, my last was as a high school teacher of Economics and English. In between I have taught at a military academy, a business vocational school, a university, two graduate schools of business, two community colleges, and second grade. My students' ages have ranged from 6 to over 60. I have taught everything from elementary reading, to music, to microeconomic modeling.

I begin my eleventh job with some trepidation. Though I have grown to be confident in my skills, teaching has never brought me the kind of feedback that breeds bravado and courage. It is something I find enjoyable; and after only three days I find myself anxious and excited about the school year that begins in August. Course outlines are getting scribbled onto scratch sheets of paper, reading lists are being reviewed.

Now I force myself to fulfill an old promise--to organize and record a few thoughts on my profession. As I begin what is likely to be a modest journal, I recognize (with some surprise) that the breadth of my experience has likely put me in a truly unique position for such an enterprise.

Imagine a school that took the explicit responsibility of discouraging learning and the pursuit of knowledge. How might it look? What would classrooms be like? How would teachers act?

It would likely be a place where students were discouraged from communicating, where they were allowed to play only with strict rules and supervision, where their access to books and computers--to information--was limited. Teachers would treat knowledge as a special and priviledged commodity, something available only to the few who were able to follow strict and rigorous guidelines.

Unfortunately, that school might look very much like the schools I went to.

The deconstructionist school is an open environment where students and teachers are surrounded by sources of information, its easy availability diminishing its cost. Questions of any type are answered immediately and aggressively. "How old is Michael Jackson? I don't know. Let's find out." When the student is ready for a more important question, he has a mental reference in place for how to deal with the curiosity. Pursue it. Open an encyclopedia. Ask someone who might know. Do an internet search.

What should never happen is that the teacher responds, "How old is Michael Jackson? Who cares? That is not important."

If we want students to see learning as a positive exercise, all curiosities must be treated as worthwhile and important.

I remember one meeting of a grad. school education courses at Michigan State. We were asked to consider and record our worst experience as a teacher, then our best experience as a teacher. We took turns describing our bad experiences, then our good experiences, then we discussed the results.

The list of bad experiences was predictable and not particularly interesting--situations where students misbehaved or someone was embarassed or hurt.

Descriptions of the good experiences were more varied, but--quite remarkably--they had one thing in common. Every one of us described a situation where we were forced to adlib--situations where we were unprepared, or we were forced to deal with a turn of events we had not anticipated. *****see notes from the class******

It may be that both tiers have a common foundation in respect for the student. And the two tiers are empowerment and meaningful learning.

Standard debate over education technique can be labeled and modeled as top-down or bottom-up. Top-down teaching is consistent with what I have called traditional education, where students listen to and watch teachers, gathering explanation and definition. First there is introduction to a concept and its meaning. Second there is application, where the concept is app

Bottom-up teaching focuses first on experience, recognizing that context and interest are necessary for meaningful

(ref. Langer here)

Pat Wolfe--I need to find her--or some of her work--with an internet search.