Carl Rosin teaches philosophy, English and interdisciplinary studies atRadnor high school near Philadelphia, USA.
When I left university I didn’t consider teaching. I got a job as a technical writer and worked for an organisation that made software for large manufacturing companies. It was a wonderful job for a young person, but after several years I realised that I wanted to be stretched more intellectually and to do something that had an impact on individual people, not a profit margin.
I think philosophy should be a core part of the curriculum. I’m not talking about kids knowing the ideas of 10 philosophers, but about exploring philosophical thinking and understanding critical issues. I teach philosophy as an elective at the high school I’m at. In my course we talk about the philosophy of education, ethics, truth and logic, and how to form an argument. I tell my students that everybody has an opinion and I love that, but I don’t want to ever hear your opinion. When you can take the “I think” and turn it into a convincing argument, that’s when you have real power.
The way I hope that taking the subject pays off the most is through less quantifiable things, such as happiness, self-actualisation and being able to cope with uncertainty. If you give a kid a question and there is an answer, it gives them the false impression that this is the way the world works. We need to encourage young people to be confident enough to challenge their own ideas. If students are self-reflective, they’re better able to assess what their values are.
In the US conformity is a serious issue. As much as we might value individualism, we’re very influenced by peer pressure. This is natural stuff, but if kids can understand why they like or don’t like something and articulate it to their friends, they’ll be happier. Studying philosophy doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness, but it does facilitate the attainment of happiness.
If you give someone a novel to read, and they’re reading it for a test, that’s an insult to the idea of literature and art. When I give a student a book to read, I’m hoping someday that kid will want to have that book on their shelf and talk to people about it. But the craziness we have for measuring things is leading us away from that.
I hate it when a kid says, “Oh, I don’t want to do that, it’s boring.” No, you’re bored. It’s not the same thing. I’m not often bored; I look around and see people I want to talk to, kids I want to challenge, literature I want to read and things I want to think, and there’s not enough time in the day. If I can pass on some of that energy, enthusiasm and respect to my students then I will have been successful.
Something I’m very uncomfortable with is the standardised tests that are used in the US. They’re hugely reductionist. As teachers we should be respecting the things that interest kids. If we constantly teach to a set of requirements, then students won’t have time to explore other things. Something I hear teachers complain about is pupils asking, “Will this be on the test?”
For me, the assessment is the rest of your life. Will you be successful, dynamic and able to give your opinion in a group discussion? The call and response stuff of standardised testing is not creating intellectual leadership, it’s suppressing it. It also lets kids who are doing OK coast. An A grade paper deserves the same amount of constructive feedback as one that receives a C – they are both a work in progress. No student should be in high school thinking that they’re done.
I would like to see the current exam system replaced with a portfolio assessment model. It’s not cost effective, but I think teachers should design how pupils are assessed and a group of unbiased professionals should then vet the quality of these assessments. You wouldn’t necessarily be able to compare results apple to apple with other schools, but you would be creating a dynamic way of examining young people’s knowledge, competencies and skills. As a teacher, I want to be incentivised not to have my students score well, but to develop the most challenging and rigorous curriculum possible.
My school is number one in Pennsylvania’s state rankings, but I wish that hadn’t happened. I like it because I think we’re a very good school, but I hate the fact that schools try to climb that list instead of properly focusing on the quality of their teaching. I want people to see if my students are succeeding or not, but as soon as you put data out there people use it to create rankings – I’d ban them if I could.
Near the end of the philosophy course I teach, I ask pupils to give one of their pieces of work a grade. It’s one of the assignments that I’m most fond of. I get them to do this, and accept their grade without criticism because I want them to feel that ethical transparency that they don’t often feel. If they cheat on a test there are consequences for that, but this is about a duty to tell the truth and reflect on how hard they’ve worked and why. I want to show that I respect them, not by simply saying it, but by handing some power over to them.