Knowing is not thinking

Why don’t most young people want to be intellectuals? Mr. Janko offers a few of the points he’d include in a lesson plan on that topic.

On the day 30 years ago that I began my career as a high school English teacher, I also began my other career as a chronic complainer about what my students didn’t know. One of the first lessons I taught was on a poem about Columbus. The opening line was enough to stump the class: “Behind him lay the gray Azores.” No one had ever heard of those Portuguese islands in the North Atlantic — gray or any other color. And forget about “the Gates of Hercules” in the next line, as well!

I took my complaint about my students’ ignorance to my chairman. His position was simple and straightforward: “That’s what you’re there for” (which I had already figured out, since my poetry lesson had become a minicourse on North Atlantic landfalls).

Today, such complaints from teachers have some cachet, thanks to Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn’s What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? and E. D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy. There’s a growing consensus that youngsters are not only in the dark about such esoterica as the Azores, but also about such comparatively mundane matters as the approximate dates of the Civil War and the identity of the country directly to the south of the U.S. Of course, most of us would agree that, to some extent, “that’s why we’re there” — to help fill in some of the gaps in students’ knowledge. Most of us would also agree, however, that there has to be some common knowledge base on which to build further learning.

Any effort to mandate — or even to identify — an essential body of common knowledge smacks of elitism, some critics charge.

This last point would seem self-evident, but, given the nature of the genus academicus, it has excited a small tempest. Any effort to mandate — or even to identify — an essential body of common knowledge smacks of elitism, some critics charge. Others quickly defend the students, arguing that, while today’s young people don’t know much of what the would-be culture czars think they should know, their heads are filled with all kinds of other knowledge that has its own value. They may not know beans about Stonewall Jackson or Andrew Jackson, but just ask them about Reggie Jackson or Michael Jackson!

The truth of this argument was convincingly demonstrated a few months ago when, in the wake of Ravitch and Finn’s expose, a television reporter took his microphone and camera into a local junior high school classroom and utterly baffled a youngster with questions about the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. The young dunderhead turned into a whiz kid, however, when he started to rattle off everything anyone would ever want to know about the Minnesota Twins’ infield: batting averages, runs batted in, fielding statistics, how fast the first baseman could run the bases — you name it.

So it turns out that the younger set knows something after all. It’s all relative, as Einstein was fond of saying. Maybe we’re just not asking the right questions.

Yet the argument about what’s worth knowing, important as it is, really misses a more fundamental point. I’m willing to concede that many of my students know a great deal, often about subjects in which I have no interest whatsoever. I’m willing to concede, as well, that simply imposing my own interests on my students smacks of arrogance and “cultural imperialism.” And I respect the youngsters enough to be prepared to discuss seriously why I think that Shakespeare is a greater poet than Bruce Springsteen. But the real heart of the matter — the thing that disturbs teachers the most — is not students’ ignorance, but their unwillingness or inability to deal intellectually with what they do know.

But the real heart of the matter — the thing that disturbs teachers the most — is not students’ ignorance, but their unwillingness or inability to deal intellectually with what they do know.

We’ve learned from such writers as George Orwell, for example, that even apparently unpromising and “trivial” subjects can yield the most remarkable insights into human nature and political institutions. (Read Orwell’s “Art of Donald McGill,” which deals with naughty postcards, or his “Raffles and Miss Blandish,” which deals with hard-boiled detective thrillers, to see the depth of perception that can be brought to the dregs of pop culture.) Thus, though it’s troubling to discover how little today’s youngsters know and retain of our history and culture, it’s even more disturbing to realize how unprepared they are to think critically about those things in which they ostensibly have some interest.

One example will illustrate what I mean. Several years ago, when it was fashionable to challenge the standard curriculum as “irrelevant” — the buzz word of the early Seventies — our department began to offer trendy electives instead of “regular” English. A colleague came up with a sure-fire hit, “Sports in Literature,” which of course proved immensely popular. After all, what could be closer to the hearts of teenagers than the exploits of superstars (and even of bench warmers)? But, according to my colleague, it soon became apparent that the students weren’t much interested in sports beyond yesterday’s scores and the state of the league leaders. Class discussions did not move past fan loyalties. It was, “Sez you; he’s a bum!” and other profundities current in the local tavern.

My colleague should have known that a book on the “philosophy of sport” wouldn’t fly, but he hadn’t anticipated his students’ utter lack of interest in the history of the athletic events that had captured their intense interest. Of course, his students had heard of Babe Ruth — but they weren’t curious enough to do any research on him or on Murderers’ Row or on anyone who wasn’t likely to turn up on the back page of that day’s local tabloid. The class could get excited — but never on a level above the kind of bickering about our guys versus your guys that went on between Giant fans and Dodger fans in the bleachers of Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds.

There was such resistance to any serious exploration of what sport is all about that my colleague gave up on the course after three or four terms. The students kept signing up, but, as he said, “It just wasn’t English.”

Complexity and ambiguity are usually tougher to deal with than a nice, straightforward gut feeling or a comfortable simplification.

Why don’t most young people want to be intellectuals? I don’t know for sure, but here are a few of the points that I’d include in my lesson plan on the topic. First, of course, complexity and ambiguity are usually tougher to deal with than a nice, straightforward gut feeling or a comfortable simplification. Ironically, much of what we do in school encourages just that kind of simple approach to subject matter. The growing emphasis on standardized test scores (which supposedly reveal the quality of a school and, of course, of its administration) encourages teachers to toss chunks of pre-digested knowledge to students to be copied into notebooks, memorized, and reproduced on demand for the exam next week or next month.

Second, large and increasingly difficult-to-manage classes almost demand “defensive” teaching that emphasizes control. In practice, this means lots of highly structured busywork and very little (if any) freewheeling — and thus potentially disruptive — discussion. No wonder that most young people see “real” education as: “Don’t confuse me with questions. Just give me the answers to copy — and tell me when the test is.”

Third, if not in school, where on earth would a youngster see an example of how a subject should be approached and discussed? The popular television talk shows — the ones that students might actually watch —generally exploit issues rather than explore them. Even when the airwaves are not befogged by the dopey chit-chat of the glitterati, the “serious discussions” usually consist of a series of emotional outbursts that are not followed up or analyzed, because the host has to keep the ball rolling on to the next sensation. Meanwhile, television news programs routinely reduce all issues to 30- second clips in which two or three authorities or political leaders sum up their opinions. These clips, with their cute and catchy one-liners, more closely resemble night club routines than carefully articulated positions.

When my seniors get to the gatekeeper scene in Macbeth, I really have no business expecting any of them to know what Shakespeare was alluding to when he wrote of “equivocators” and Jesuits. So I explain these terms to my students, and I try to make them care. That’s why I’m there. But I am upset when my students don’t want to take a crack at thinking about Bruce Springsteen or “The Cosby Show.” Because that’s really why we’re all there.

Citation: Janko, E. (1989). Knowing is not thinking. Phi Delta Kappan, 70 (7), 543-544.